Is the Mediterranean the New Rio Grande? US and EU Immigration Pressures in the Long Run

[Symposium: Immigration and Labor Markets]

By Gordon Hanson and Craig McIntosh

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

How will worldwide changes in population affect pressures for international migration in the future? We examine the past three decades, during which population pressures contributed to substantial labor flows from neighboring countries into the United Sta...

Global Talent Flows

[Symposium: Immigration and Labor Markets]

By Sari Pekkala Kerr, William Kerr, Çağlar Özden, and Christopher Parsons

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

Highly skilled workers play a central and starring role in today's knowledge economy. Talented individuals make exceptional direct contributions--including breakthrough innovations and scientific discoveries--and coordinate and guide the actions of many o...

Game Theory in Economics and Beyond

[Symposium: What is Happening in Game Theory?]

By Larry Samuelson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

Within economics, game theory occupied a rather isolated niche in the 1960s and 1970s. It was pursued by people who were known specifically as game theorists and who did almost nothing but game theory, while other economists had little idea what game theo...

New Directions for Modelling Strategic Behavior: Game-Theoretic Models of Communication, Coordination, and Cooperation in Economic Relationships

[Symposium: What is Happening in Game Theory?]

By Vincent P. Crawford

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

In this paper, I discuss the state of progress in applications of game theory in economics and try to identify possible future developments that are likely to yield further progress. To keep the topic manageable, I focus on a canonical economic problem th...

Whither Game Theory? Towards a Theory of Learning in Games

[Symposium: What is Happening in Game Theory?]

By Drew Fudenberg and David K. Levine

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

Game theory has been a huge success in economics. Many important questions have been answered, and game theoretic methods are now central to much economic investigation. We suggest areas where further advances are important, and argue that models of learn...

The View from Above: Applications of Satellite Data in Economics

By Dave Donaldson and Adam Storeygard

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

The past decade or so has seen a dramatic change in the way that economists can learn by watching our planet from above. A revolution has taken place in remote sensing and allied fields such as computer science, engineering, and geography. Petabytes of sa...

Village and Larger Economies: The Theory and Measurement of the Townsend Thai Project

By Robert M. Townsend

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

I have spent close to 20 years cataloging transactions between households in Thai villages, along with a research team. Just this past summer, we documented a number of ways in which even relatively poor villages have money markets not dissimilar in some ...

Diversity in the Economics Profession: A New Attack on an Old Problem

By Amanda Bayer and Cecilia Elena Rouse

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

The economics profession includes disproportionately few women and members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups, relative both to the overall population and to other academic disciplines. This underrepresentation within the f...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

Political Economy of Redistribution in the United States in the Aftermath of World War II--Evidence and Theory

By Roel Beetsma, Alex Cukierman, and Massimo Giuliodori

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

We present legislative, historical and statistical evidence of a substantial upward ratchet in transfers and taxes in the US due to World War II. This finding is explained within a political-economy framework with defense spending responding to a war thre...

Do Consumers Exploit Commitment Opportunities? Evidence from Natural Experiments Involving Liquor Consumption

By B. Douglas Bernheim, Jonathan Meer, and Neva K. Novarro

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

This paper provides evidence concerning the extent to which consumers of liquor employ commitment devices. One widely recommended commitment strategy is to regulate alcohol consumption by deliberately manipulating availability. The paper assesses the prev...

How Do Providers Respond to Changes in Public Health Insurance Coverage? Evidence from Adult Medicaid Dental Benefits

By Thomas Buchmueller, Sarah Miller, and Marko Vujicic

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

This study evaluates how large changes in public health insurance coverage affect provider behavior and patient wait times by analyzing a common type of primary care: dental services. When states expand coverage of dental services to adult Medicaid benefi...

The Effects of Tobacco Control Policies on Tobacco Products, Tar, and Nicotine Purchases among Adults: Evidence from Household Panel Data

By Chad Cotti, Erik Nesson, and Nathan Tefft

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

We analyze the Nielsen Household Consumer Panel to estimate the effects of tobacco policies on tobacco-related purchases using within-household variation. We also match purchases to cigarette contents from NHANES. Higher cigarette taxes reduce cigarette p...

Workers' Spending Response to the 2011 Payroll Tax Cuts

By Grant Graziani, Wilbert van der Klaauw, and Basit Zafar

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

This paper investigates workers' spending response to the 2011 payroll tax cuts. Respondents were surveyed at the beginning and end of 2011, which allows the comparison of ex ante and ex post reported use of the extra income. While workers on average inte...

Nonparametric Evidence on the Effects of Financial Incentives on Retirement Decisions

By Day Manoli and Andrea Weber

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

This paper presents new evidence on the effects of retirement benefits on labor force participation decisions. The analysis is based on a mandated rule for employer-provided retirement benefits in Austria that creates discontinuities in the incentives for...

The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance

By Steven D. Levitt, John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

We explore the power of behavioral economics to influence the level of effort exerted by students in a low stakes testing environment. We find a substantial impact on test scores from incentives when the rewards are delivered immediately. There is suggest...

Trade Costs, CO₂, and the Environment

By Joseph S. Shapiro

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

This paper quantifies how international trade affects CO2 emissions and analyzes the welfare consequences of regulating the CO2 emissions from shipping. To this end, the paper describes a model of trade and the environment, compiles ...

Do Health Care Providers Respond to Demand-Side Incentives? Evidence from Indonesia

By Margaret Triyana

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

This paper exploits the subdistrict randomization of Indonesia's household Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program to analyze how the program affects the local health care market. The CCT program is associated with increased use of midwives as the main de...

Resource Constraints and the Criminal Justice System: Evidence from Judicial Vacancies

By Crystal S. Yang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2016

Ten percent of federal judgeships are currently vacant, yet little is known on the impact of these vacancies on criminal justice outcomes. Using judge deaths and pension eligibility as instruments for vacancies, I find that prosecutors dismiss more cases ...