Regional Effects of Trade Reform: What Is the Correct Measure of Liberalization?

By Brian K. Kovak

American Economic Review, August 2013

A growing body of research examines the regional effects of trade liberalization using a weighted average of trade policy changes across industries. This paper develops a specific-factors model of regional economies that provides a theoretical foundation ...

Limited Life Expectancy, Human Capital and Health Investments

By Emily Oster, Ira Shoulson, and E. Ray Dorsey

American Economic Review, August 2013

Human capital theory predicts that life expectancy will impact human capital attainment. We estimate this relationship using variation in life expectancy driven by Huntington disease, an inherited neurological disorder. We compare investments for individu...

Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Great Britain and the United States since 1850: Comment

By Yu Xie and Alexandra Killewald

American Economic Review, August 2013

Using historical census and survey data, Long and Ferrie (2013) found a significant decline in social mobility in the United States from 1880 to 1973. We present two critiques of the Long-Ferrie study. First, the data quality of the Long-Ferrie study is m...

Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Great Britain and the United States since 1850: Comment

By Michael Hout and Avery M. Guest

American Economic Review, August 2013

We reanalyze Long and Ferrie's data. We find that the association of occupational status across generations was quite similar over time and place. Two significant differences were: (i) American farms in 1880 were far more open to men who had nonfarm backg...

Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Great Britain and the United States since 1850: Reply

By Jason Long and Joseph Ferrie

American Economic Review, August 2013

We respond to several criticisms by Avery Guest and Michael Hout (2013) and Yu Xie and Alexandra Killewald (2013) to Jason Long and Joseph Ferrie (2013). We do not dispute Guest and Hout's characterization of the importance of total mobility in addition t...

Matching with Contracts: Comment

By Orhan Aygün and Tayfun Sönmez

American Economic Review, August 2013

The matching with contracts model (Hatfield and Milgrom 2005) is widely considered to be one of the most important advances of the last two decades in matching theory. One of their main messages is that the set of stable allocations is non-empty under a s...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, August 2013

Including: "Mark Nerlove: Distinguished Fellow 2012"

The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective

[Symposium: The Top 1 Percent]

By Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

The top 1 percent income share has more than doubled in the United States over the last 30 years, drawing much public attention in recent years. While other English-speaking countries have also experienced sharp increases in the top 1 percent income sha...

Defending the One Percent

[Symposium: The Top 1 Percent]

By N. Gregory Mankiw

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Imagine a society with perfect economic equality. Then, one day, this egalitarian utopia is disturbed by an entrepreneur with an idea for a new product. Think of the entrepreneur as Steve Jobs as he develops the iPod, J. K. Rowling as she writes her Har...

It's the Market: The Broad-Based Rise in the Return to Top Talent

[Symposium: The Top 1 Percent]

By Steven N. Kaplan and Joshua Rauh

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

One explanation that has been proposed for rising inequality is that technical change allows highly talented individuals, or "superstars" to manage or perform on a larger scale, applying their talent to greater pools of resources and reaching larger num...

The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes

[Symposium: The Top 1 Percent]

By Josh Bivens and Lawrence Mishel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

The debate over the extent and causes of rising inequality of American incomes and wages has now raged for at least two decades. In this paper, we will make four arguments. First, the increase in the incomes and wages of the top 1 percent over the last ...

Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility

[Symposium: The Top 1 Percent]

By Miles Corak

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

My focus is on the degree to which increasing inequality in the high-income countries, particularly in the United States, is likely to limit economic mobility for the next generation of young adults. I discuss the underlying drivers of opportunity that ...

Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?

[Symposium: The Top 1 Percent]

By Adam Bonica, Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Moreover, these new inequalities have primarily benefited the top 1 percent and even...

What Is European Integration Really About? A Political Guide for Economists

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Enrico Spolaore

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Europe's monetary union is part of a broader process of integration that started in the aftermath of World War II. In this "political guide for economists," we look at the creation of the euro within the bigger picture of European integration. How and w...

Political Credit Cycles: The Case of the Eurozone

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Luis Garicano, and Tano Santos

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

We study the mechanisms through which the entry into the euro delayed, rather than advanced, key economic reforms in the eurozone periphery and led to the deterioration of important institutions in these countries. We show that the abandonment of the re...

Cross of Euros

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Kevin H. O'Rourke and Alan M. Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

The eurozone currently confronts severe short-run macroeconomic adjustment problems and a deficient institutional architecture that has to be reformed in the longer run. Europe's efforts at economic and monetary union are historically unprecedented. How...

Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity and the Case for Temporary Inflation in the Eurozone

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martin Uribe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Since the onset of the Great Recession in peripheral Europe, nominal hourly wages have not fallen from the high levels they had reached during the boom years -- this in spite of widespread increases in unemployment. This observation evokes a well-known ...

Retrospectives: John Maynard Keynes, Investment Innovator

By David Chambers and Elroy Dimson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

John Maynard Keynes made a major contribution to the development of professional investment management. Based on detailed archival research at King's College, Cambridge, we describe Keynes' investment philosophy, his investment performance, and the evol...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013