Labor Standards: Where Do They Belong on the International Trade Agenda?

[Symposium: Trade, Labor and the Environment]

By Drusilla K. Brown

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

During the past decade, universal labor standards have become the focus of intense debate. Advocates argue from humanitarian concerns and the interests of industrialized-country labor, seeking enforcement with WTO sanctions. Opponents regard labor regulat...

University Differences in the Graduation of Minorities in STEM Fields: Evidence from California

By Peter Arcidiacono, Esteban M. Aucejo, and V. Joseph Hotz

American Economic Review, March 2016

We examine differences in minority science graduation rates among University of California campuses when racial preferences were in place. Less prepared minorities at higher ranked campuses had lower persistence rates in science and took longer to grad...

Motherhood Delay and the Human Capital of the Next Generation

By Amalia R. Miller

American Economic Review, May 2009

Retrospectives: Ethics and the Invisible Hand

By Jerry Evensky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1993

As modern economists, we use Adam Smith's "invisible hand" metaphor confident that we all know what it means in our discourse: it reflects our admiration for the elegant and smooth functioning of the market system as a coordinator of autonomous individual...

Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2 X 2 Games: Reply

By Reinhard Selten, Thorsten Chmura, and Sebastian J. Goerg

American Economic Review, April 2011

This is a reply to "Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2 X 2 Games: Comment" by Brunner, Camerer, and Goeree which corrects some computational errors in Selten and Chmura (2008) and extends the comparison of five stationary concepts to data from previou...

Sticky Leverage

By João Gomes, Urban Jermann, and Lukas Schmid

American Economic Review, December 2016

We develop a tractable general equilibrium model that captures the interplay between nominal long-term corporate debt, inflation, and real aggregates. We show that unanticipated inflation changes the real burden of debt and, more significantly, leads to a...

Teaching the Tax Code: Earnings Responses to an Experiment with EITC Recipients

By Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2013

We conducted a randomized experiment with 43,000 EITC recipients at H&R Block. Tax preparers gave simple, personalized information about the EITC schedule to half of their clients. We find no significant effects of information provision on earnings in the...

Carbon Markets 15 Years after Kyoto: Lessons Learned, New Challenges

[Symposium: Trading Pollution Permits]

By Richard G. Newell, William A. Pizer, and Daniel Raimi

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2013

Carbon markets are substantial and they are expanding. There are many lessons from market experiences over the past eight years: there should be fewer free allowances, better management of market-sensitive information, and a recognition that trading syste...

What Matters (and What Does Not) in Households' Decision to Invest in Malaria Prevention?

By Pascaline Dupas

American Economic Review, May 2009

Retrospectives: Adam Smith's Invisible Hands

By Joseph Persky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

After more than two centuries, Adam Smith's famous simile comparing the market system to an invisible hand continues to convey the essential message of Anglo-American political economy. In fact, Smith's buoyant optimism in the efficacy of his system of "n...

Acquisitions, Productivity, and Profitability: Evidence from the Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry

By Serguey Braguinsky, Atsushi Ohyama, Tetsuji Okazaki, and Chad Syverson

American Economic Review, July 2015

We explore how changes in ownership affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find that acquired firms' production facilities were not on aver...

Economics of the Endangered Species Act

[Symposium: Endangered Species Act]

By Gardner M. Brown and Jason F. Shogren

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of our most far-reaching and controversial environmental laws. While the benefits of protecting endangered species accrue to the entire nation, a significant fraction of the costs are borne by the private landowne...

Welfare Consequences of Information Aggregation and Optimal Market Size

By Kei Kawakami

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2017

We analyze the welfare implications of information aggregation in a trading model where traders have both idiosyncratic endowment risk and asymmetric information about security payoffs. The optimal market size balances two forces: (i) the risk-sharing rol...

Corrigendum: Women, Wealth, and Mobility

By Lena Edlund and Wojciech Kopczuk

American Economic Review, June 2009

Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers

By Olivier J. Blanchard and Daniel Leigh

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected. The re...

From Exxon to BP: Has Some Number Become Better Than No Number?

[Symposium: Contingent Valuation]

By Catherine L. Kling, Daniel J. Phaneuf, and Jinhua Zhao

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2012

On March 23, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound and released over 250,000 barrels of crude oil, resulting in 1300 miles of oiled shoreline. The Exxon spill ignited a debate about the appropriate compensation for damages su...

Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity and the Case for Temporary Inflation in the Eurozone

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martin Uribe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Since the onset of the Great Recession in peripheral Europe, nominal hourly wages have not fallen from the high levels they had reached during the boom years -- this in spite of widespread increases in unemployment. This observation evokes a well-known ...

Cognition and Incomplete Contracts

By Jean Tirole

American Economic Review, March 2009

Thinking about contingencies, designing covenants, and seeing through their implications is costly. Parties to a contract accordingly use heuristics and leave it incomplete. The paper develops a model of limited cognition and examines its consequences ...

Retirement and Home Production: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

By Elena Stancanelli and Arthur Van Soest

American Economic Review, May 2012

Existing studies show that individuals who retire replace some private consumption with home production, but do not consider joint behavior of couples. Here we analyze the causal effect of retirement of each partner on hours of home production for both pa...

Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data

By Athanasios Orphanides

American Economic Review, September 2001

This paper examines the magnitude of informational problems associated with the implementation and interpretation of simple monetary policy rules. Using Taylor's rule as an example, I demonstrate that real-time policy recommendations differ considerably f...