The Fundamental Institutions of China's Reforms and Development

By Chenggang Xu

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

China's economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction. However, China's institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer from serious shortcomings. To solve the "China puzzle," this paper analyzes ...

Economic Liberalization and Indian Economic Growth: What's the Evidence?

By Ashok Kotwal, Bharat Ramaswami, and Wilima Wadhwa

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

India's growth and poverty performance over the last three decades has been a subject of great curiosity. Unlike the East Asian countries, India's growth spurt is not associated with exceptionally high domestic savings or foreign capital inflows or manufa...

European Integration at the Crossroads: A Review Essay on the 50th Anniversary of Bela Balassa's Theory of Economic Integration

By André Sapir

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

Bela Balassa's Theory of Economic Integration, published fifty years ago, is a remarkable, yet little known book. This essay reviews developments in the economic literature and in the process of European integration since the book's publication, ...

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

Doctoral Dissertations in Economics

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2011

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

The Short- and Long-Term Career Effects of Graduating in a Recession

By Philip Oreopoulos, Till von Wachter, and Andrew Heisz

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

This paper analyzes the magnitude and sources of long-term earnings declines associated with graduating from college during a recession. Using a large longitudinal university-employer-employee dataset, we find that the cost of recessions for new graduates...

Partisan Grading

By Talia Bar and Asaf Zussman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

We study grading outcomes associated with professors in an elite university in the United States who were identified—using voter registration records from the county where the university is located—as either Republicans or Democrats. The evide...

An Empirical Investigation of the Option Value of College Enrollment

By Kevin M. Stange

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

This paper quantifies the option value arising from sequential schooling decisions made in the presence of uncertainty and learning about academic ability. College attendance has option value since enrolled students have the option, but not obligation, to...

School Desegregation and Urban Change: Evidence from City Boundaries

By Leah Platt Boustan

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

I examine changes in the city-suburban housing price gap in metropolitan areas with and without court-ordered desegregation plans over the 1970s, narrowing my comparison to housing units on opposite sides of district boundaries. Desegregation of public sc...

When the Saints Go Marching Out: Long-Term Outcomes for Student Evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

By Bruce Sacerdote

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

I examine long-term academic performance and college going for students affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Students who are forced to switch schools due to the hurricanes experience sharp declines in test scores in the first year following the hurr...

Sorting in Experiments with Application to Social Preferences

By Edward P. Lazear, Ulrike Malmendier, and Roberto A. Weber

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

Individuals sort into and out of economic environments based on their preferences and in response to relative prices. We demonstrate the importance of such sorting for the measurement of social preferences, using two laboratory experiments. First, allowin...

Investing Cash Transfers to Raise Long-Term Living Standards

By Paul J. Gertler, Sebastian W. Martinez, and Marta Rubio-Codina

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

Using data from a randomized experiment, we find that poor rural Mexican households invested part of their cash transfers from the Oportunidades program in productive assets, increasing agricultural income by almost 10 percent after 18 months of benefits...

Do Expert Reviews Affect the Demand for Wine?

By Richard Friberg and Erik Grönqvist

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

We examine the demand for wines in Sweden using five years of weekly data on sales, advertising, and expert reviews. The effect of a favorable review peaks in the week after publication with an increase in demand of 6 percent, and the effect remains signi...

Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India

By Irma Clots-Figueras

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

This paper shows that the gender of politicians affects the educational levels of individuals who grow up in the districts where these politicians are elected. A unique dataset collected on politicians in India is matched with individual data by cohort an...

Enhancing Cognitive Functioning: Medium-Term Effects of a Health and Family Planning Program in Matlab

By Tania Barham

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

It is believed that early life circumstances are crucial to success later in life. Yet causal evidence that the impacts of early childhood health interventions continue into late childhood and adolescence is sparse. This paper exploits a quasi-random pla...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2012

Contagious Adverse Selection

By Stephen Morris and Hyun Song Shin

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2012

We illustrate the corrosive effect of even small amounts of adverse selection in an asset market and show how it can lead to the total breakdown of trade. The problem is the failure of "market confidence," defined as approximate common knowledge of an upp...