Parties or Problem Sets: Review Article on How College Works and Paying for the Party

By William R. Johnson

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

The potential of Internet-enabled distance learning to transform higher education focuses attention on exactly what residential higher-education institutions do for and to their students. Two recent books marshal detailed quantitative and subjective data ...

Game Theory and Cold War Rationality: A Review Essay

By E. Roy Weintraub

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

This essay reviews new histories of the role of game theory and rational decision making in shaping the social sciences, economics among them, in the postwar period. The recent books The World the Game Theorists Made by Paul Erickson and How Rea...

Comments on Economic Models, Economics, and Economists: Remarks on Economics Rules by Dani Rodrik

By Ariel Rubinstein

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

This essay reviews Dani Rodrik's superb book Economics Rules and argues that it can serve as an ideal platform for discussing what economists can and should accomplish. The essay comments on some of the major issues in contemporary economics examin...

Hansen and Sargent's Recursive Models of Dynamic Linear Economies: A Review Essay

By Kenneth D. West

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

Lars Peter Hansen and Thomas J. Sargent's book, Recursive Models of Dynamic Linear Economies, exposits, extends, and applies methods for solution and analysis of dynamic stochastic linear quadratic models. The book, which can be used as a monograph...

A Review of Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future

By Susan Rose-Ackerman

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

Capitalism and law go together in Geoffrey M. Hodgson's comprehensive analysis of the intellectual history and practical development of the capitalist system in Western Europe and North America. Given the breadth and depth of Professor Hodgson's reading i...

Capitalism and Socialism: A Review of Kornai's Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy

By Chenggang Xu

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

Understanding the nature of capitalism has been a central theme of economics. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the global financial crisis spurred the reemergence of the political economy as a new frontier and the revival of interest in the nature of ...

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2017

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment

By Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

In an experiment on Airbnb, we find that applications from guests with distinctively African American names are 16 percent less likely to be accepted relative to identical guests with distinctively white names. Discrimination occurs among landlords of all...

Sanitation and Education

By Anjali Adukia

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

I explore whether the absence of school sanitation infrastructure impedes educational attainment, particularly among pubescent-age girls, using a national Indian school latrine construction initiative and administrative school-level data. School latrine c...

Expertise versus Bias in Evaluation: Evidence from the NIH

By Danielle Li

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

Evaluators with expertise in a particular field may have an informational advantage in separating good projects from bad. At the same time, they may also have personal preferences that impact their objectivity. This paper examines these issues in the cont...

Signing Up New Fathers: Do Paternity Establishment Initiatives Increase Marriage, Parental Investment, and Child Well-Being?

By Maya Rossin-Slater

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

With nearly half of US births occurring out of wedlock, understanding how parents navigate their relationship options is important. This paper examines the consequences of a large exogenous change to parental relationship contract options on parental beha...

Vocational Training for Disadvantaged Youth in Colombia: A Long-Term Follow-Up

By Orazio Attanasio, Arlen Guarín, Carlos Medina, and Costas Meghir

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

We evaluate the long-term impacts of a randomized Colombian training and job placement program. Following the large short-term effects, we now find that the program effects persist, increasing formal participation and earnings contributions to social secu...

Dodging the Taxman: Firm Misreporting and Limits to Tax Enforcement

By Paul Carrillo, Dina Pomeranz, and Monica Singhal

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

Reducing tax evasion is a priority for many governments. A growing literature argues that verifying taxpayer reports against third-party information is critical for tax collection. However, effectiveness can be limited when tax authorities face constraint...

Saving Soviet Science: The Impact of Grants When Government R&D Funding Disappears

By Ina Ganguli

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

I estimate the impact of a historic grant program, funded by George Soros, that provided grants to over 28,000 Soviet scientists shortly after the end of the USSR. Exploiting a discontinuity in the grant eligibility formula, I show that the grants more th...

The Distortionary Effects of Incentives in Government: Evidence from China's "Death Ceiling" Program

By Raymond Fisman and Yongxiang Wang

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

We study a 2004 program designed to motivate Chinese bureaucrats to reduce accidental deaths. Each province received a set of "death ceilings" that, if exceeded, would impede government officials' promotions. For each category of accidental deaths, we obs...

Wealth Heterogeneity and the Income Elasticity of Migration

By Samuel Bazzi

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

How do income shocks affect international migration flows from poor countries? Income growth not only increases the opportunity cost of migration but also eases liquidity constraints. I develop a method to separate these countervailing individual effects ...

The Local Political Economy Effects of School Construction in Indonesia

By Monica Martinez-Bravo

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

A by-product of the extension of mass education is the increase in the level of education of those eligible for political offices. This can have a profound impact on the effectiveness of local governments. In this paper, I examine the effects of a large s...