Market Regulations, Prices, and Productivity

By Gilbert Cette, Jimmy Lopez, and Jacques Mairesse

American Economic Review, May 2016

This study is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to infer the consequences on productivity entailed by anticompetitive regulations in product and labor markets through their impacts on production prices and wages. Results show that changes in production...

Regulation, Institutions, and Productivity: New Macroeconomic Evidence from OECD Countries

By Balázs Égert

American Economic Review, May 2016

This paper seeks to understand the drivers of country-level multi-factor productivity (MFP) with a special emphasis on product and labour market policies and the quality of institutions. For a panel of OECD countries, we find that anticompetitive product ...

Crowdsourcing City Government: Using Tournaments to Improve Inspection Accuracy

By Edward L. Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers, and Michael Luca

American Economic Review, May 2016

The proliferation of big data makes it possible to better target city services like hygiene inspections, but city governments rarely have the in-house talent needed for developing prediction algorithms. Cities could hire consultants, but a cheaper alterna...

Personalized Risk Assessments in the Criminal Justice System

By Sharad Goel, Justin M. Rao, and Ravi Shroff

American Economic Review, May 2016

In an effort to bring greater efficiency, equity, and transparency to the criminal justice system, statistical risk assessment tools are increasingly used to inform bail, sentencing, and parole decisions. We examine New York City's stop-and-frisk program,...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, June 2016

Front Matter includes Gary Chamberlain: Distinguished Fellow 2015.

Measuring and Understanding Behavior, Welfare, and Poverty

By Angus Deaton

American Economic Review, June 2016

Do Schools Matter for High Math Achievement? Evidence from the American Mathematics Competitions

By Glenn Ellison and Ashley Swanson

American Economic Review, June 2016

This paper uses data from the American Mathematics Competitions to examine the rates at which different high schools produce high-achieving math students. There are large differences in the frequency with which students from seemingly similar schools reac...

Too-Systemic-to-Fail: What Option Markets Imply about Sector-Wide Government Guarantees

By Bryan Kelly, Hanno Lustig, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh

American Economic Review, June 2016

We examine the pricing of financial crash insurance during the 2007-2009 financial crisis in US option markets, and we show that a large amount of aggregate tail risk is missing from the cost of financial sector crash insurance during the crisis. The diff...

Agricultural Productivity and Structural Transformation: Evidence from Brazil

By Paula Bustos, Bruno Caprettini, and Jacopo Ponticelli

American Economic Review, June 2016

We study the effects of the adoption of new agricultural technologies on structural transformation. To guide empirical work, we present a simple model where the effect of agricultural productivity on industrial development depends on the factor-bias of te...

The Demand for Energy-Using Assets among the World's Rising Middle Classes

By Paul J. Gertler, Orie Shelef, Catherine D. Wolfram, and Alan Fuchs

American Economic Review, June 2016

We study household decisions to acquire energy-using assets in the presence of rising incomes. We develop a theoretical framework to characterize the effect of income growth on asset purchases when consumers face credit constraints. We use large and plaus...

Domestic Value Added in Exports: Theory and Firm Evidence from China

By Hiau Looi Kee and Heiwai Tang

American Economic Review, June 2016

China has defied the declining trend in domestic content in exports in many countries. This paper studies China's rising domestic content in exports using firm- and customs transaction-level data. The approach embraces firm heterogeneity and hence reduces...

Attention Discrimination: Theory and Field Experiments with Monitoring Information Acquisition

By Vojtěch Bartoš, Michal Bauer, Julie Chytilová, and Filip Matějka

American Economic Review, June 2016

We integrate tools to monitor information acquisition in field experiments on discrimination and examine whether gaps arise already when decision makers choose the effort level for reading an application. In both countries we study, negatively stereotyped...

Measuring Discounting without Measuring Utility

By Arthur E. Attema, Han Bleichrodt, Yu Gao, Zhenxing Huang, and Peter P. Wakker

American Economic Review, June 2016

We introduce a new method to measure the temporal discounting of money. Unlike preceding methods, our method requires neither knowledge nor measurement of utility. It is easier to implement, clearer to subjects, and requires fewer measurements than existi...

Does Affirmative Action Work? Caste, Gender, College Quality, and Academic Success in India

By Surendrakumar Bagde, Dennis Epple, and Lowell Taylor

American Economic Review, June 2016

Public policy in modern India features affirmative action programs intended to reduce inequality that stems from a centuries-old caste structure and history of disparate treatment by gender. We study the effects of one such affirmative action program: an ...

Rational Inattention and Organizational Focus

By Wouter Dessein, Andrea Galeotti, and Tano Santos

American Economic Review, June 2016

This paper studies optimal communication flows in organizations. A production process can be coordinated ex ante, by letting agents stick to a prespecified plan of action. Alternatively, agents may adapt to task-specific shocks, in which case tasks must b...

Technological Innovations, Downside Risk, and the Modernization of Agriculture

By Kyle Emerick, Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet, and Manzoor H. Dar

American Economic Review, June 2016

We use a randomized experiment in India to show that improved technology enhances agricultural productivity by crowding in modern inputs and cultivation practices. Specifically, we show that a new rice variety that reduces downside risk by providing flood...

Optimal Expectations and Limited Medical Testing: Evidence from Huntington Disease: Corrigendum

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

American Economic Review, June 2016

Independent Auditor's Report

American Economic Review, June 2016

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2016