Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2015

Complex Tax Incentives

By Johannes Abeler and Simon Jäger

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

How does complexity affect people's reaction to tax changes? To answer this question, we conduct an experiment in which subjects work for a piece rate and face taxes. One treatment features a simple tax system, the other a complex one. Subjects' economic ...

Return to Treatment in the Formal Health Care Sector: Evidence from Tanzania

By Achyuta Adhvaryu and Anant Nyshadham

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

Improving access to the formal health care sector is a primary public health goal in many low-income countries. But the returns to this access are unclear, given that the quality of care at public health facilities is often considered inadequate. We explo...

The Long-Term Direct and External Effects of Jewish Expulsions in Nazi Germany

By Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel and Mutlu Yuksel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

This paper examines the long-term direct and spillover effects of large-scale human capital loss caused by the persecution of Jewish professionals in Nazi Germany. Using region-by-cohort variation in the percentage of the Jewish population as a quasi-expe...

Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education

By Najy Benhassine, Florencia Devoto, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Victor Pouliquen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been shown to increase human capital investments, but their standard features make them expensive. We use a large randomized experiment in Morocco to estimate an alternative government-run program, a "labeled cash tr...

Human Capital and the Lifetime Costs of Impatience

By Brian C. Cadena and Benjamin J. Keys

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

In this paper, we examine the role of impatience in human capital formation—arguably the most important investment decision individuals make during their lifetimes. We focus on a set of investment behaviors that cannot be explained solely by variation i...

Housing Vouchers and the Price of Rental Housing

By Michael D. Eriksen and Amanda Ross

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

We estimate the effect of increasing the supply of housing vouchers on rents using a panel of housing units in the American Housing Survey. We do not find that an increase in vouchers affected the overall price of rental housing but do estimate difference...

Taxpayer Search for Information: Implications for Rational Attention

By Jeffrey L. Hoopes, Daniel H. Reck, and Joel Slemrod

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

We examine data on capital-gains-tax-related information search to determine when and how taxpayers acquire information. We find seasonal increases in information search around tax deadlines, suggesting that taxpayers seek information to comply with tax l...

Asymmetric Incentives in Subsidies: Evidence from a Large-Scale Electricity Rebate Program

By Koichiro Ito

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

Many countries use substantial public funds to subsidize reductions in negative externalities. Such policy designs create asymmetric incentives because increases in externalities remain unpriced. I investigate the implications of such policies by using a ...

US State Fiscal Policy and Natural Resources

By Alexander James

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

An analytical framework predicts that, in response to an exogenous increase in resource-based government revenue, a benevolent government will partially substitute away from taxing income, increase spending and save. Fifty-one years of US-state level data...

Did the Americanization Movement Succeed? An Evaluation of the Effect of English-Only and Compulsory Schooling Laws on Immigrants

By Adriana Lleras-Muney and Allison Shertzer

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

We provide the first estimates of the effect of statutes requiring English as the language of instruction and compulsory schooling laws on the school enrollment, work, literacy, and English fluency of immigrant children during the Americanization period (...

Valuing the Wind: Renewable Energy Policies and Air Pollution Avoided

By Kevin Novan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

Exploiting variation in the hourly production from wind turbines, this paper quantifies the heterogeneity in the marginal impact of renewable electricity on pollution. The results reveal that output from competing renewable capacity additions—e.g., ...

How Is Tax Policy Conducted over the Business Cycle?

By Carlos A. Vegh and Guillermo Vuletin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

It is well known by now that government spending has typically been procyclical in developing economies but acyclical or countercyclical in industrial countries. Little, if any, is known, however, about the cyclical behavior of tax rates (as opposed to ta...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation

[Symposium: Automation and Labor Markets]

By David H. Autor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

In this essay, I begin by identifying the reasons that automation has not wiped out a majority of jobs over the decades and centuries. Automation does indeed substitute for labor—as it is typically intended to do. However, automation also comple...

The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: Is This Time Different?

[Symposium: Automation and Labor Markets]

By Joel Mokyr, Chris Vickers, and Nicolas L. Ziebarth

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

Technology is widely considered the main source of economic progress, but it has also generated cultural anxiety throughout history. The developed world is now suffering from another bout of such angst. Anxieties over technology can take on several fo...

Is a Cambrian Explosion Coming for Robotics?

[Symposium: Automation and Labor Markets]

By Gill A. Pratt

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

About half a billion years ago, life on earth experienced a short period of very rapid diversification called the "Cambrian Explosion." Many theories have been proposed for the cause of the Cambrian Explosion, one of the most provocative being the evolu...

Promises and Perils of Pre-analysis Plans

[Symposium: Pre-Analysis Plans in Economics]

By Benjamin A. Olken

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

The purpose of this paper is to help think through the advantages and costs of rigorous pre-specification of statistical analysis plans in economics. A pre-analysis plan pre-specifies in a precise way the analysis to be run before examining the data. ...

Pre-analysis Plans Have Limited Upside, Especially Where Replications Are Feasible

[Symposium: Pre-Analysis Plans in Economics]

By Lucas C. Coffman and Muriel Niederle

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

The social sciences—including economics—have long called for transparency in research to counter threats to producing robust and replicable results. In this paper, we discuss the pros and cons of three of the more prominent proposed approach...

Law, Regulation, and the Business Climate: The Nature and Influence of the World Bank Doing Business Project

[Symposium: Doing Business]

By Timothy Besley

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

The importance of a well-functioning legal and regulatory system in creating an effective market economy is now widely accepted. One flagship project that tries to measure the environment in which businesses operate in countries across the world is the ...