Can Mobile Phones Improve Learning? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Niger

By Jenny C. Aker, Christopher Ksoll, and Travis J. Lybbert

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

The returns to educational investments hinge on whether such investments can improve the quality and persistence of educational gains. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of an adult education program in Niger, in which some students learne...

Longer-Term Impacts of Mentoring, Educational Services, and Learning Incentives: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in the United States

By Núria Rodríguez-Planas

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

This paper reports on a randomized evaluation of a program designed to improve high school graduation and postsecondary education enrollment among low-performing high school students. Treated youths were offered mentoring, educational services, and financ...

Limited Insurance within the Household: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya

By Jonathan Robinson

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

In developing countries, unexpected income shocks are common but informal insurance is typically incomplete. An important question is therefore whether risk-sharing within the household is effective. This paper presents results from a field experiment wit...

The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

By Lakshmi Iyer, Anandi Mani, Prachi Mishra, and Petia Topalova

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increa...

Deregulation, Consolidation, and Efficiency: Evidence from US Nuclear Power

By Lucas W. Davis and Catherine Wolfram

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

Beginning in the late 1990s, electricity markets in many US states were deregulated, and almost half of the nation's 103 nuclear power reactors were sold to independent power producers. Deregulation has been accompanied by substantial market consolidatio...

Access, Sorting, and Achievement: The Short-Run Effects of Free Primary Education in Kenya

By Adrienne M. Lucas and Isaac M. Mbiti

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

We examine the impact of the Kenyan Free Primary Education program on student participation, sorting, and achievement on the primary school exit examination. Exploiting variation in pre-program dropout rates between districts, we find that the program inc...

Are Big-Time Sports a Threat to Student Achievement?

By Jason M. Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen, and Glen R. Waddell

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

We consider the relationship between collegiate football success and non-athlete student performance. We find that the team's success significantly reduces male grades relative to female grades, and only in fall quarters, which coincides with the footbal...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, October 2012

Includes: Daniel Kahneman: Distinguished Fellow 2011

The Collateral Channel: How Real Estate Shocks Affect Corporate Investment

By Thomas Chaney, David Sraer, and David Thesmar

American Economic Review, October 2012

What is the impact of real estate prices on corporate investment? In the presence of financing frictions, firms use pledgeable assets as collateral to finance new projects. Through this collateral channel, shocks to the value of real estate can have a la...

Modeling the Change of Paradigm: Non-Bayesian Reactions to Unexpected News

By Pietro Ortoleva

American Economic Review, October 2012

Bayes' rule has two well-known limitations: 1) it does not model the reaction to zero-probability events; 2) a sizable empirical evidence documents systematic violations of it. We characterize axiomatically an alternative updating rule, the Hypothesis Te...

Markups and Firm-Level Export Status

By Jan De Loecker and Frederic Warzynski

American Economic Review, October 2012

In this paper, we develop a method to estimate markups using plant-level production data. Our approach relies on cost-minimizing producers and the existence of at least one variable input of production. The suggested empirical framework relies on the est...

The Evolution of Brand Preferences: Evidence from Consumer Migration

By Bart J. Bronnenberg, Jean-Pierre H. Dubé, and Matthew Gentzkow

American Economic Review, October 2012

We study the long-run evolution of brand preferences, using new data on consumers' life histories and purchases of consumer packaged goods. Variation in where consumers have lived in the past allows us to isolate the causal effect of past experiences on c...

The Contribution of Large and Small Employers to Job Creation in Times of High and Low Unemployment

By Giuseppe Moscarini and Fabien Postel-Vinay

American Economic Review, October 2012

We document a negative correlation, at business cycle frequencies, between the net job creation rate of large employers and the level of aggregate unemployment that is much stronger than for small employers. The differential growth rate of employment betw...

The Rise of the Service Economy

By Francisco J. Buera and Joseph P. Kaboski

American Economic Review, October 2012

This paper analyzes the role of specialized high-skilled labor in the disproportionate growth of the service sector. Empirically, the importance of skill-intensive services has risen during a period of increasing relative wages and quantities of high-skil...

Liquidity, Monetary Policy, and the Financial Crisis: A New Monetarist Approach

By Stephen D. Williamson

American Economic Review, October 2012

A model of public and private liquidity integrates financial intermediation theory with a New Monetarist monetary framework. Non-passive fiscal policy and costs of operating a currency system imply that an optimal policy deviates from the Friedman rule. ...

How General Are Risk Preferences? Choices under Uncertainty in Different Domains

By Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, Iuliana Pascu, and Mark R. Cullen

American Economic Review, October 2012

We analyze the extent to which individuals' choices over five employer-provided insurance coverage decisions and one 401(k) investment decision exhibit systematic patterns, as would be implied by a general utility component of risk preferences. We provide...

Sinking, Swimming, or Learning to Swim in Medicare Part D

By Jonathan D. Ketcham, Claudio Lucarelli, Eugenio J. Miravete, and M. Christopher Roebuck

American Economic Review, October 2012

Under Medicare Part D, senior citizens choose prescription drug insurance offered by numerous private insurers. We examine nonpoor enrollees- actions in 2006 and 2007 using panel data. Our sample reduced overspending by $298 on average, with gains by 81 p...

Maturity, Indebtedness, and Default Risk

By Satyajit Chatterjee and Burcu Eyigungor

American Economic Review, October 2012

We advance quantitative-theoretic models of sovereign debt by proving the existence of a downward sloping equilibrium price function for long-term debt and implementing a novel method to accurately compute it. We show that incorporating long-term debt al...

Trade Costs, Asset Market Frictions, and Risk Sharing

By Doireann Fitzgerald

American Economic Review, October 2012

I use bilateral import data to test for and quantify the importance of trade costs and asset market frictions in explaining the failure of perfect international consumption risk sharing. I find that while frictions in international asset markets significa...

Disaster Risk and Business Cycles

By François Gourio

American Economic Review, October 2012

Motivated by the evidence that risk premia are large and countercyclical, this paper studies a tractable real business cycle model with a small risk of economic disaster, such as the Great Depression. An increase in disaster risk leads to a decline of em...