Liability Insurance: Equilibrium Contracts under Monopoly and Competition

By Jorge Lemus, Emil Temnyalov, and John L. Turner

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021

In liability lawsuits (e.g., patent infringement), a plaintiff demands compensation from a defendant, and the parties often negotiate a settlement to avoid a costly trial. Liability insurance creates bargaining leverage for the defendant in this settlemen...

Wait-and-See or Step In? Dynamics of Interventions

By Dana Foarta and Takuo Sugaya

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021

We study the optimal intervention policy to stop projects in a relational contract between a principal and a policymaker. The policymaker is privately informed about his ability and privately chooses how much effort to exert. Before a project is completed...

Mobilizing the masses to murder

[Research Highlight]

January 28, 2021

How did political elites in Rwanda get civilians to participate in genocide?

Immigrants and upward mobility

[Page]

Children of foreign-born parents climb the income ladder faster than kids of US-born parents, especially among the poorest families.

AEASTAT: 2021 Annual Meeting

[Page]

Sessions for AEA Committee on Economic Statistics, 2021 ASSA meetings

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

The Sensitivity of Housing Demand to Financing Conditions: Evidence from a Survey

By Andreas Fuster and Basit Zafar

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Measuring the sensitivity of housing demand to mortgage rates and available leverage is challenging because there is generally no exogenous variation in these variables. This paper circumvents this issue by designing a strategic survey in which respondent...

Rising Intergenerational Income Persistence in China

By Yi Fan, Junjian Yi, and Junsen Zhang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

This paper documents an increasing intergenerational income persistence in China since economic reforms were introduced in 1979. The intergenerational income elasticity increases from 0.390 for the 1970–1980 birth cohort to 0.442 for the 1981–1988 bir...

Parental Support, Savings, and Student Loan Repayment

By Lance Lochner, Todd Stinebrickner, and Utku Suleymanoglu

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Using unique survey and administrative data from Canada, we document that parental support and personal savings substantially reduce student loan repayment problems. Developing a model of student borrowing and repayment, we show that nonmonetary costs of ...

The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality

By Lorenz Kueng and Evgeny Yakovlev

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

We study the long-run effects of Russia's anti-alcohol campaign, which dramatically altered the relative supply of hard and light alcohol in the late 1980s. We find that this policy shifted young men's long-run preferences from hard to light alcohol dec...

Influence and Information in Team Decisions: Evidence from Medical Residency

By David C. Chan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

I study team decisions among physician trainees. Exploiting a discontinuity in team roles across trainee tenure, I find evidence that teams alter decision-making, concentrating influence in the hands of senior trainees. I also demonstrate little convergen...

Relative Prices and Climate Policy: How the Scarcity of Nonmarket Goods Drives Policy Evaluation

By Moritz A. Drupp and Martin C. Hänsel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Climate change not only impacts production and market consumption but also the relative scarcity of nonmarket goods, such as environmental amenities. We study fundamental drivers of the resulting relative price changes, their potential magnitude, and thei...

Who Benefits When Firms Game Corrective Policies?

By Mathias Reynaert and James M. Sallee

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Firms sometimes comply with externality-correcting policies by gaming the measure that determines policy. This harms buyers by eroding information, but it benefits them when cost savings are passed through into prices. We develop a model that highlights t...

The Impact of Paid Maternity Leave on Maternal Health

By Aline Bütikofer, Julie Riise, and Meghan M. Skira

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

We examine the impact of the introduction of paid maternity leave in Norway in 1977 on maternal health in the medium and long term. Using administrative data combined with survey data on the health of women around age 40, we find the reform improved a ran...

Can Successful Schools Replicate? Scaling Up Boston's Charter School Sector

By Sarah R. Cohodes, Elizabeth M. Setren, and Christopher R. Walters

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Can schools that boost student outcomes reproduce their success at new campuses? We study a policy reform that allowed effective charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to replicate their school models at new locations. Estimates based on randomized admi...

Climate Change and Agriculture: Subsistence Farmers' Response to Extreme Heat

By Fernando M. Aragón, Francisco Oteiza, and Juan Pablo Rud

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

This paper examines how subsistence farmers respond to extreme heat. Using microdata from Peruvian households, we find that high temperatures reduce agricultural productivity, increase area planted, and change crop mix. These findings are consistent with ...

Improving Police Performance in Rajasthan, India: Experimental Evidence on Incentives, Managerial Autonomy, and Training

By Abhijit Banerjee, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Daniel Keniston, and Nina Singh

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Management matters for firms, but what practices are optimal in hierarchical government organizations? And can skilled managers identify them? A large-scale randomized trial conducted with the police of Rajasthan, India, tested four interventions recommen...

The consequences of school choice

[Research Highlight]

January 27, 2021

Harvard professor Chris Avery discusses how allowing students to leave their neighborhood for their education may undercut policymakers' goals.

The Distributional Consequences of Public School Choice

By Christopher Avery and Parag A. Pathak

American Economic Review, January 2021

School choice systems aspire to delink residential location and school assignments by allowing children to apply to schools outside of their neighborhood. However, choice programs also affect incentives to live in certain neighborhoods, and this feedback ...

Staffing the Higher Education Classroom

[Symposium: Economics of Higher Education]

By David Figlio and Morton Schapiro

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

We discuss some centrally important decisions faced by colleges and universities regarding how to staff their undergraduate classrooms. We describe the multitasking problem faced by research-intensive institutions and explore the degree to which there may...