Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching

By Ran Abramitzky, Adeline Delavande, and Luis Vasconcelos

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2011

We assemble a novel dataset to study the impact of male scarcity on marital assortative matching and other marriage market outcomes using the large shock that WWI caused to the number of French men. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that...

Structural Change Out of Agriculture: Labor Push versus Labor Pull

By Francisco Alvarez-Cuadrado and Markus Poschke

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2011

A declining agricultural employment share is a key feature of economic development. Its main drivers are: improvements in agricultural technology combined with Engel's law release resources from agriculture ("labor push"), and improvements in industrial t...

Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children's Zone

By Will Dobbie and Roland G. Fryer Jr.

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2011

Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), an ambitious social experiment, combines community programs with charter schools. We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ charters on educational outcomes. Both lottery and instrumental variable identi...

Learning about Risk and Return: A Simple Model of Bubbles and Crashes

By William A. Branch and George W. Evans

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2011

This paper demonstrates that an asset pricing model with least-squares learning can lead to bubbles and crashes as endogenous responses to the fundamentals driving asset prices. When agents are risk-averse they need to make forecasts of the conditional v...

Subsidizing Vocational Training for Disadvantaged Youth in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Trial

By Orazio Attanasio, Adriana Kugler, and Costas Meghir

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2011

This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized training program for disadvantaged youth introduced in Colombia in 2005. This randomized trial offers a unique opportunity to examine the impact of training in a middle income country. We use originally coll...

Interest Rate Risk and Other Determinants of Post-WWII US Government Debt/GDP Dynamics

By George J. Hall and Thomas J. Sargent

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2011

This paper uses a sequence of government budget constraints to motivate estimates of returns on the US Federal government debt. Our estimates differ conceptually and quantitatively from the interest payments reported by the US government. We use our esti...

Returns to Local-Area Health Care Spending: Evidence from Health Shocks to Patients Far from Home

By Joseph J. Doyle

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2011

Health care spending varies widely across markets, and previous research finds little evidence that higher spending translates into better health outcomes. The main innovation in this paper exploits this cross-sectional variation in hospital spending in a...

Do Social Connections Reduce Moral Hazard? Evidence from the New York City Taxi Industry

By C. Kirabo Jackson and Henry S. Schneider

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2011

This study investigates the role of social networks in aligning the incentives of agents in settings with incomplete contracts. Specifically, the study examines the New York City taxi industry where taxis are often leased and lessee-drivers have worse dri...

Corrigendum: Mechanisms and Impacts of Gender Peer Effects at School

By Victor Lavy and Analía Schlosser

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2011

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

Testing Game Theory in the Field: Swedish LUPI Lottery Games

By Robert Östling, Joseph Tao-yi Wang, Eileen Y. Chou, and Colin F. Camerer

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

Game theory is usually difficult to test in the field because predictions typically depend sensitively on features that are not controlled or observed. We conduct one such test using both laboratory and field data from the Swedish lowest unique positive ...

Risk, Delay, and Convex Self-Control Costs

By Drew Fudenberg and David K. Levine

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

We develop a dual-self model of self-control that is compatible with modern dynamic macroeconomic theory and evidence. We show that a convex cost of self-control explains a wide range of behavioral anomalies concerning risk, including the Allais paradox,...

Can Warranties Substitute for Reputations?

By James W. Roberts

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

In markets where product quality is imperfectly observed or delivery is uncertain, seller reputations and product guarantees or warranties can impact equilibrium prices and quantities. Using data from a decentralized online market, this paper empirically ...

Getting More Work for Nothing? Symbolic Awards and Worker Performance

By Michael Kosfeld and Susanne Neckermann

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

We study the impact of status and social recognition on worker performance in a field experiment. In collaboration with an international non-governmental organization, we hired students to work on a database project. Students in the award treatment were ...

On the Determinants of Organizational Forgetting

By Guy David and Tanguy Brachet

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

Studies of organizational learning and forgetting identify potential channels through which the firm's production experience is lost. These channels have differing implications for efficient resource allocation within the firm, but their relative importan...

Menu Pricing and Learning

By Alessandro Bonatti

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

We analyze the design of dynamic menus to sell experience goods. The quality of the product is initially unknown, and the total quantity sold in each period determines the amount of information in the market. We characterize the optimum menu as a function...

Equilibrium Selection in the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Axiomatic Approach and Experimental Evidence

By Matthias Blonski, Peter Ockenfels, and Giancarlo Spagnolo

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

We propose an axiomatic approach for equilibrium selection in the discounted, infinitely repeated symmetric Prisoner's Dilemma. Our axioms characterize a unique selection criterion that is also useful as a tool for applied comparative statics exercises a...

Names and Reputations: An Empirical Analysis

By Ryan C. McDevitt

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

This paper tests several predictions from the literature on firm reputation, and confirms a main result: poor performance leads a firm to conceal its reputation. A residential plumbing firm with a record of complaints one standard deviation above the mea...

Kludged

By Jeffrey C. Ely

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

Is there reason to believe that our brains have evolved to make efficient decisions so that the details of the internal process are irrelevant? I develop a model which illustrates a limitation of adaptive processes: improvements tend to come in the form ...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2011