How Can Lower-Income Countries Collect More Taxes? The Role of Technology, Tax Agents, and Politics

[Symposium: Taxation and Developing Countries]

By Oyebola Okunogbe and Gabriel Tourek

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Increasing tax revenues is a major policy goal in many low- and lower-middle-income countries. While economic growth is an important determinant of taxation, available evidence indicates that it does not automatically increase taxation. Rather, countrie...

Sugar taxes, homelessness, and the Nobel Prize

[News]

February 01, 2024

Reading recommendations from Timothy Taylor, managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives"

Call for Applications: Miller Indigenous Economic Development Fellowship

[News]

February 08, 2024

The deadline for this opportunity is March 1, 2024.

The roots of US innovation clusters

[Research Highlight]

February 09, 2024

Daniel Gross and Bhaven Sampat discuss the impact of one of the largest shocks to federal R&D funding in US economic history.

America, Jump-Started: World War II R&D and the Takeoff of the US Innovation System

By Daniel P. Gross and Bhaven N. Sampat

American Economic Review, December 2023

During World War II, the US government's Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) supported one of the largest public investments in applied R&D in US history. Using data on all OSRD-funded invention, we show this shock had a formative impact ...

Battista Severgnini on the intergenerational transmission of income

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How are grandchildren impacted when a grandparent is laid off?

Christina Maass on measuring crime

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Can news reports help shed light on the true level of crime?

Haewon Oh on limiting antidepressants

[Page]

Why does South Korea have the highest suicide rate among OECD countries? The country's drug policies may play a part.

Michele Dathan on the corporate bond boom

[Page]

Why did corporate bond issuance surge during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Rainer Kotschy on population aging and economic growth

[Page]

Will smaller working-age populations slow economic growth?

Age limits for judges

[Page]

Do mandatory retirement policies for judges improve the performance of US courts?

Methods Matter: p-Hacking and Publication Bias in Causal Analysis in Economics

By Abel Brodeur, Nikolai Cook, and Anthony Heyes

American Economic Review, November 2020

The credibility revolution in economics has promoted causal identification using randomized control trials (RCT), difference-in-differences (DID), instrumental variables (IV) and regression discontinuity design (RDD). Applying multiple approaches to over ...

Methods Matter: p-Hacking and Publication Bias in Causal Analysis in Economics: Comment

By Sebastian Kranz and Peter Pütz

American Economic Review, September 2022

Brodeur, Cook, and Heyes (2020) study hypothesis tests from economic articles and find evidence for p-hacking and publication bias, in particular for instrumental variable and difference-in-difference studies. When adjusting for rounding errors (introduci...

Methods Matter: p-Hacking and Publication Bias in Causal Analysis in Economics: Reply

By Abel Brodeur, Nikolai Cook, and Anthony Heyes

American Economic Review, September 2022

In Brodeur, Cook, and Heyes (2020) we present evidence that instrumental variable (and to a lesser extent difference-in-difference) articles are more p-hacked than randomized controlled trial and regression discontinuity design articles. We also find no e...

When Does Regulation Distort Costs? Lessons from Fuel Procurement in US Electricity Generation

By Steve Cicala

American Economic Review, January 2015

This paper evaluates changes in fuel procurement practices by coal and gas-fired power plants in the United States following state-level legislation that ended cost-of-service regulation of electricity generation. I find that deregulated plants substantia...

When Does Regulation Distort Costs? Lessons from Fuel Procurement in US Electricity Generation: Comment

By Jin Soo Han, Jean-François Houde, Arthur A. van Benthem, and Jose Miguel Abito

American Economic Review, April 2021

We revisit one of the results in Cicala (2015) and show that the previously estimated large and significant effects of US electricity restructuring on fuel procurement are not robust to the presence of outliers. Using methodologies from the robust statist...

When Does Regulation Distort Costs? Lessons from Fuel Procurement in US Electricity Generation: Reply

By Steve Cicala

American Economic Review, April 2021

The average effect of deregulatory policies on fuel prices at coal-fired power plants is strongly influenced by plants that were initially paying the highest prices for fuel. Primary sources document that these plants were locked into long-term, high-cost...

Geographic Dispersion of Economic Shocks: Evidence from the Fracking Revolution: Reply

By James Feyrer, Erin Mansur, and Bruce Sacerdote

American Economic Review, June 2020

Measuring the geographic spillovers from an economic shock remains a challenging econometric problem. In Feyrer, Mansur, and Sacerdote (2017) we study the propagation of positive shocks from the recent boom in oil and gas production in the United States...

Geographic Dispersion of Economic Shocks: Evidence from the Fracking Revolution: Comment

By Alexander G. James and Brock Smith

American Economic Review, June 2020

Feyrer, Mansur, and Sacerdote (2017) estimates the spatial dispersion of the effects of the recent shale-energy boom by unconditionally regressing income and employment on energy production at various levels of geographic aggregation. However, producing c...

Geographic Dispersion of Economic Shocks: Evidence from the Fracking Revolution

By James Feyrer, Erin T. Mansur, and Bruce Sacerdote

American Economic Review, April 2017

We track the geographic and temporal propagation of local economic shocks from new oil and gas production generated by hydrofracturing. Each million dollars of new production produces $80,000 in wage income and $132,000 in royalty and business income with...