Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2015

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2015

Improving College Access and Success for Low-Income Students: Evidence from a Large Need-Based Grant Program

By Gabrielle Fack and Julien Grenet

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

Using comprehensive administrative data on France's single largest financial aid program, this paper provides new evidence on the impact of large-scale need-based grant programs on the college enrollment decisions, persistence, and graduation rates of low...

Should Cash Transfers Be Conditional? Conditionality, Preventive Care, and Health Outcomes

By Orazio P. Attanasio, Veruska Oppedisano, and Marcos Vera-Hernández

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

We study a Conditional Cash Transfer program in which the cash transfers to the mother only depend on the fulfillment of the national preventive visit schedule by her children born before she registered in the program. We estimate that preventive visits o...

One Laptop per Child at Home: Short-Term Impacts from a Randomized Experiment in Peru

By Diether W. Beuermann, Julian Cristia, Santiago Cueto, Ofer Malamud, and Yyannu Cruz-Aguayo

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

This paper presents results from a randomized controlled trial whereby approximately 1,000 OLPC XO laptops were provided for home use to children attending primary schools in Lima, Peru. The intervention increased access and use of home computers, with so...

Social Networks and the Decision to Insure

By Jing Cai, Alain De Janvry, and Elisabeth Sadoulet

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

Using data from a randomized experiment in rural China, we study the influence of social networks on weather insurance adoption and the mechanisms through which they operate. To quantify network effects, the experiment provides intensive information sessi...

Regulatory Redistribution in the Market for Health Insurance

By Jeffrey Clemens

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

Community-rating regulations equalize the insurance premiums faced by the healthy and the unhealthy. Intended reductions in the unhealthy's premiums can be undone, however, if the healthy forgo coverage. The severity of this adverse selection problem hing...

Do Opposites Detract? Intrahousehold Preference Heterogeneity and Inefficient Strategic Savings

By Simone Schaner

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

This paper uses a field experiment to test whether intrahousehold heterogeneity in discount factors leads to inefficient strategic savings behavior. I gave married couples in rural Kenya the opportunity to open both joint and individual bank accounts at r...

Legal Status and the Criminal Activity of Immigrants

By Giovanni Mastrobuoni and Paolo Pinotti

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

We exploit exogenous variation in legal status following the January 2007 European Union enlargement to estimate its effect on immigrant crime. We difference out unobserved time-varying factors by (i) comparing recidivism rates of immigrants from the "new...

Channeling Remittances to Education: A Field Experiment among Migrants from El Salvador

By Kate Ambler, Diego Aycinena, and Dean Yang

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

We implement a randomized experiment offering Salvadoran migrants matching funds for educational remittances, which are channeled directly to a beneficiary student in El Salvador chosen by the migrant. The matches lead to increased educational expenditure...

Labor Market Effects of Social Programs: Evidence from India's Employment Guarantee

By Clément Imbert and John Papp

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

We estimate the effect of a large rural workfare program in India on private employment and wages by comparing trends in districts that received the program earlier relative to those that received it later. Our results suggest that public sector hiring cr...

The Role of Connections in Academic Promotions

By Natalia Zinovyeva and Manuel Bagues

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

This paper analyzes how evaluators' private information and subjective biases affect evaluations in academia. We use evidence from centralized selection exams in Spain, where evaluators are randomly assigned to promotion committees. Candidates are signifi...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2015

Climate Clubs: Overcoming Free-Riding in International Climate Policy

By William Nordhaus

American Economic Review, April 2015

Notwithstanding great progress in scientific and economic understanding of climate change, it has proven difficult to forge international agreements because of free-riding, as seen in the defunct Kyoto Protocol. This study examines the club as a model for...

The Housing Market(s) of San Diego

By Tim Landvoigt, Monika Piazzesi, and Martin Schneider

American Economic Review, April 2015

This paper uses an assignment model to understand the cross section of house prices within a metro area. Movers' demand for housing is derived from a life-cycle problem with credit market frictions. Equilibrium house prices adjust to assign houses that di...

Has the US Finance Industry Become Less Efficient? On the Theory and Measurement of Financial Intermediation

By Thomas Philippon

American Economic Review, April 2015

A quantitative investigation of financial intermediation in the United States over the past 130 years yields the following results: (i) the finance industry's share of gross domestic product (GDP) is high in the 1920s, low in the 1960s, and high again aft...

The Anatomy of a Credit Crisis: The Boom and Bust in Farm Land Prices in the United States in the 1920s

By Raghuram Rajan and Rodney Ramcharan

American Economic Review, April 2015

Does credit availability exacerbate asset price inflation? Are there long run consequences? During the farm land price boom and bust before the Great Depression, we find that credit availability directly inflated land prices. Credit also amplified the rel...

How Elastic Are Preferences for Redistribution? Evidence from Randomized Survey Experiments

By Ilyana Kuziemko, Michael I. Norton, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva

American Economic Review, April 2015

We analyze randomized online survey experiments providing interactive, customized information on US income inequality, the link between top income tax rates and economic growth, and the estate tax. The treatment has large effects on views about inequality...

Wages and Informality in Developing Countries

By Costas Meghir, Renata Narita, and Jean-Marc Robin

American Economic Review, April 2015

We develop an equilibrium wage-posting model with heterogeneous firms that decide to locate in the formal or the informal sector and workers who search randomly on and off the job. We estimate the model on Brazilian labor force survey data. In equilibr...

Medicare Part D: Are Insurers Gaming the Low Income Subsidy Design?

By Francesco Decarolis

American Economic Review, April 2015

This paper shows how in Medicare Part D insurers' gaming of the subsidy paid to low-income enrollees distorts premiums and raises the program cost. Using plan-level data from the first five years of the program, I find multiple instances of pricing strate...