Nine Facts about Top Journals in Economics

By David Card and Stefano DellaVigna

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013

How has publishing in top economics journals changed since 1970? Using a data set that combines information on all articles published in the top-five journals from 1970 to 2012 with their Google Scholar citations, we identify nine key trends. First, annua...

Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?

By Daniel S. Hamermesh

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013

Presenting data on all full-length articles in the three top general economics journals for one year in each decade 1960s-2010s, I analyze changes in patterns of coauthorship, age structure and methodology, and their possible causes. The distribution of n...

Uncertainty Measures for Economics Journal Impact Factors

By David I. Stern

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013

Academic economists appear to be intensely interested in rankings of journals, institutions, and individuals. Yet there is little discussion of the uncertainty associated with these rankings. To illustrate the uncertainty associated with citations-based r...

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013

Young Adult Obesity and Household Income: Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers

By Randall Akee, Emilia Simeonova, William Copeland, Adrian Angold, and E. Jane Costello

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

We investigate the effect of household cash transfers during childhood on young adult body mass indexes (BMI). The effects of extra income differ depending on the household's initial socioeconomic status (SES). Children from the initially poorest househ...

School Inputs, Household Substitution, and Test Scores

By Jishnu Das, Stefan Dercon, James Habyarimana, Pramila Krishnan, Karthik Muralidharan, and Venkatesh Sundararaman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Empirical studies of the relationship between school inputs and test scores typically do not account for household responses to changes in school inputs. Evidence from India and Zambia shows that student test scores are higher when schools receive unan...

The Effect of Absenteeism and Clinic Protocol on Health Outcomes: The Case of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Kenya

By Markus Goldstein, Joshua Graff Zivin, James Habyarimana, Cristian Pop-Eleches, and Harsha Thirumurthy

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

We show that pregnant women whose first clinic visit coincides with the nurse's attendance are 58 percentage points more likely to test for HIV and 46 percent more likely to deliver in a hospital. Furthermore, women with high pretest expectations of be...

Health, Height, Height Shrinkage, and SES at Older Ages: Evidence from China

By Wei Huang, Xiaoyan Lei, Geert Ridder, John Strauss, and Yaohui Zhao

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

In this paper, we build on the literature that examines associations between height and health outcomes of the elderly. We investigate the associations of height shrinkage at older ages with socioeconomic status, finding that height shrinkage for both men...

The Demand for, and Consequences of, Formalization among Informal Firms in Sri Lanka

By Suresh de Mel, David McKenzie, and Christopher Woodruff

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

A field experiment in Sri Lanka provides informal firms incentives to formalize. Information about the registration process and reimbursement of direct costs does not increase registration. Payments equivalent to one-half to one month (alternatively, two...

Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market

By Jeanne Lafortune

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

I explore how a gender's scarcity may impact educational investments using exogenous variation in the marriage market of second generation Americans in early twentieth century. I find that worse marriage market conditions spur higher pre-marital investme...

Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?

By Rahi Abouk and Scott Adams

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Since 2007, many states passed laws prohibiting text messaging while driving. Using vehicular fatality data from across the United States and standard difference-in-differences techniques, bans appear moderately successful at reducing single-vehicle, si...

Development Effects of Electrification: Evidence from the Topographic Placement of Hydropower Plants in Brazil

By Molly Lipscomb, A. Mushfiq Mobarak, and Tania Barham

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

We estimate the development effects of electrification across Brazil over the period 1960-2000. We simulate a time series of hypothetical electricity grids for Brazil for the period 1960-2000 that show how the grid would have evolved had infrastructure...

The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia's Mortality Crisis

By Jay Bhattacharya, Christina Gathmann, and Grant Miller

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia's 40 percent surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994. Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol-related causes and among working-age men (the heaviest drinkers), th...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Is There a Trade-Off between Inflation and Output Stabilization?

By Alejandro Justiniano, Giorgio E. Primiceri, and Andrea Tambalotti

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2013

We find that the answer is no in an estimated DSGE model of the US economy in which exogenous movements in workers' market power are not a major driver of observed economic fluctuations. If they are, the tension between the conflicting stabilization ob...

Importing Skill-Biased Technology

By Ariel Burstein, Javier Cravino, and Jonathan Vogel

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2013

The production of capital equipment is concentrated among a small group of countries, and many countries import a large share of their equipment. If capital-skill complementarity is an important feature of technology, international trade may have impor...

Capital-Skill Complementarity and the Skill Premium in a Quantitative Model of Trade

By Fernando Parro

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2013

Technological change has reduced the relative price of capital goods. Reductions in trade costs make it cheaper to import capital goods. With capital-skill complementarity, both can increase the skill premium. I construct a general-equilibrium trade mo...