The Coase Theorem at Sixty

By Steven G. Medema

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

The Coase theorem is one of the most influential and controversial ideas to emerge from post-World War II economics. This article examines the theorem's origins, diffusion, and the wide variety of uses to which it has been put by economists and others ove...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

Doctoral Dissertations in Economics

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

How Well Do Automated Linking Methods Perform? Lessons from US Historical Data

By Martha J. Bailey, Connor Cole, Morgan Henderson, and Catherine Massey

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

This paper reviews the literature in historical record linkage in the United States and examines the performance of widely used record-linking algorithms and common variations in their assumptions. We use two high-quality, hand-linked data sets and one ...

Potential Outcome and Directed Acyclic Graph Approaches to Causality: Relevance for Empirical Practice in Economics

By Guido W. Imbens

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

In this essay I discuss potential outcome and graphical approaches to causality, and their relevance for empirical work in economics. I review some of the work on directed acyclic graphs, including the recent The Book of Why (Pearl and Mackenzie ...

The Parable of the Auctioneer: Complexity in Paul R. Milgrom's Discovering Prices

By Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Teytelboym

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

Designing marketplaces in complex settings requires both novel economic theory and real-world engineering, often drawing upon ideas from fields such as computer science and operations research. In Discovering Prices: Auction Design in Markets with Com...

Arrival of Young Talent: The Send-Down Movement and Rural Education in China

By Yi Chen, Ziying Fan, Xiaomin Gu, and Li-An Zhou

American Economic Review, November 2020

This paper estimates the effects on rural education of the send-down movement during the Cultural Revolution, when about 16 million urban youth were mandated to resettle in the countryside. Using a county-level dataset compiled from local gazetteers and p...

Rural education and the send-down movement

[Research Highlight]

December 10, 2020

A chaotic episode in China’s past paved the way for better schooling in the countryside.

Competition and Entry in Agricultural Markets: Experimental Evidence from Kenya

By Lauren Falcao Bergquist and Michael Dinerstein

American Economic Review, December 2020

African agricultural markets are characterized by low farmer revenues and high consumer food prices. Many have worried that this wedge is partially driven by imperfect competition among intermediaries. This paper provides experimental evidence from Kenya ...

Upgrading Education with Technology: Insights from Experimental Research

By Maya Escueta, Andre Joshua Nickow, Philip Oreopoulos, and Vincent Quan

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020

In recent years, there has been widespread interest around the potential for technology to transform learning. As investment in education technology continues to grow, students, parents, and teachers face a seemingly endless array of education technolog...

Hidden genius

[Page]

How does a successful research career relate to where someone was born?