New Evidence on the Aftermath of Financial Crises in Advanced Countries

By Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer

American Economic Review, October 2017

This paper examines the aftermath of postwar financial crises in advanced countries. We construct a new semiannual series on financial distress in 24 OECD countries for the period 1967-2012. The series is based on assessments of the health of countries' f...

How Economics Faculty Can Survive (and Perhaps Thrive) in a Brave New Online World

[Symposium: Online Higher Education]

By Peter Navarro

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2015

The academy in which we toil is moving rapidly towards a greater role for online delivery of higher education, and both fans and skeptics offer strong reasons to believe this technological shock will have substantial disruptive effects on faculty. H...

A Reassessment of Real Business Cycle Theory

By Ellen R. McGrattan and Edward C. Prescott

American Economic Review, May 2014

During the downturn of 2008–2009, output and hours fell significantly, but labor productivity rose. These facts have led many to conclude that there is a significant deviation between observations and current macrotheories that assume business cycle...

Economic Education in U.S. High Schools

By William B. Walstad

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

The teaching of economics at the high school level is vital for increasing basic economic literacy. This assessment of high school economics in the United States covers seven topics: enrollments in courses; course content; the testing of students; achieve...

A Flawed Ideological Critique

By William B. Walstad

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1991

In their critique of the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL), Nelson and Sheffrin draw the conclusion that the TEL is an ideological test. In making their case, however, they neglect to cite the TEL Examiner's Manual by John Soper and myself (1987). In the 67...

Bid Preference Programs and Participation in Highway Procurement Auctions

By Elena Krasnokutskaya and Katja Seim

American Economic Review, October 2011

We use data from highway procurement auctions subject to California's Small Business Preference program to study the effect of bid preferences on auction outcomes. Our analysis is based on an estimated model of firms' bidding and participation decisions,...

Contingent Valuation: Is Some Number Better than No Number?

[Symposium: Contingent Valuation]

By Peter A. Diamond and Jerry A. Hausman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

Without market outcomes for comparison, internal consistency tests, particularly adding-up tests, are needed for credibility. When tested, contingent valuation has failed. Proponents find surveys tested poorly done. To the authors' knowledge, no survey ha...

Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy

By Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus

American Economic Review, August 2011

This study presents a framework to include environmental externalities into a system of national accounts. The paper estimates the air pollution damages for each industry in the United States. An integrated-assessment model quantifies the marginal damages...

The New Patent Intermediaries: Platforms, Defensive Aggregators, and Super-Aggregators

[Symposium: Patents]

By Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2013

The patent market consists mainly of privately negotiated, bilateral transactions, either sales or cross-licenses, between large companies. There is no eBay, Amazon, New York Stock Exchange, or Kelley's Blue Book equivalent for patents, and when buyers a...

Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces

[Symposium: Household Economics]

By Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2007

We document key facts about marriage and divorce, comparing trends through the past 150 years and outcomes across demographic groups and countries. While divorce rates have risen over the past 150 years, they have been falling for the past quarter century...

Signaling Character in Electoral Competition

By Navin Kartik and R. Preston McAfee

American Economic Review, June 2007

We study a one-dimensional Hotelling-Downs model of electoral competition with the following innovation: a fraction of candidates have "character" and are exogenously committed to a campaign platform; this is unobservable to voters. Character is desira...

Can trade policy drive economic development?

[Research Highlight]

March 26, 2016

The role of trade in South Korea’s economic growth miracle

Putting forth their best effort?

[Page]

US students are falling behind their peers in other countries on academic assessments. How much of the gap could be explained by lackluster effort?

Keep it in the ground

[Research Highlight]

February 26, 2020

How much does restricting the supply of federal coal reduce carbon emissions?

From "Traditional" to Research-Based Instructional Strategies: An Assessment of Learning Gains

By Sarah B. Cosgrove and Neal H. Olitsky

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

The cognitive science literature provides several research based instructional strategies (RBIS) proven to be effective in student learning. Given the prevalence of lecture-based classes and instructor-led discussions, understanding the effects of switchi...

School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement

By Julien Lafortune, Jesse Rothstein, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2018

We study the impact of post-1990 school finance reforms, during the so-called "adequacy" era, on absolute and relative spending and achievement in low-income school districts. Using an event study research design that exploits the apparent randomness of r...

The "Standard Error" of Event Studies: Lessons from the 2016 Election

By Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

The 2016 Election offers an unusually stark warning about the limitations of event studies. In four separate pre-election event windows, financial market responses to shifts in electoral probabilities were consistent with expectations that a surprise Trum...

Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia

By Mauricio Romero, Justin Sandefur, and Wayne Aaron Sandholtz

American Economic Review, February 2020

In 2016, the Liberian government delegated management of 93 randomly selected public schools to private providers. Providers received US$50 per pupil, on top of US$50 per pupil annual expenditure in control schools. After one academic year, students in ou...

Long-Term Treatment Effects of Job Search Assistance and Training: A Summary of Recent Evidence

By Day Manoli and Ankur Patel

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

This paper presents a summary of recent evidence on long-term treatment effects from job search assistance and training services on labor market outcomes. The evidence is based on merging program data from three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to admi...

A Bias of Screening

By David Lagziel and Ehud Lehrer

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2019

This paper deals with the issue of screening. It focuses on a decision maker who, based on noisy unbiased assessments, screens elements from a general set. Our analysis shows that stricter screening not only reduces the number of accepted elements, but po...