Toward an International Migration Regime

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

American Economic Review, May 2016

Few if any issues in public policy are as muddled and contentious as international migration. There is no international regime that establishes standards and principles for national migration policies other than in the case of refugees (migrants escaping ...

Language, Meaning, and Games: A Model of Communication, Coordination, and Evolution

By Stefano Demichelis and Jorgen W. Weibull

American Economic Review, September 2008

Language is a powerful coordination device. We generalize the cheap-talk approach to pre-play communication by way of introducing a meaning correspondence between messages and actions, and by postulating two axioms met by natural languages. Players hav...

Trade Costs, Asset Market Frictions, and Risk Sharing

By Doireann Fitzgerald

American Economic Review, October 2012

I use bilateral import data to test for and quantify the importance of trade costs and asset market frictions in explaining the failure of perfect international consumption risk sharing. I find that while frictions in international asset markets significa...

Active and Passive Waste in Government Spending: Evidence from a Policy Experiment

By Oriana Bandiera, Andrea Prat, and Tommaso Valletti

American Economic Review, September 2009

We propose a distinction between active and passive waste as determinants of the cost of public services. Active waste entails utility for the public decision maker, whereas passive waste does not. We analyze purchases of standardized goods by Italian ...

Do Investors Trade Too Much?

By Terrance Odean

American Economic Review, December 1999

Financial Globalization, Inequality, and the Rising Public Debt

By Marina Azzimonti, Eva de Francisco, and Vincenzo Quadrini

American Economic Review, August 2014

During the last three decades government debt has increased in most developed countries. During the same period we have also observed a significant liberalization of international financial markets. We propose a multi-country model with incomplete markets...

Search and Satisficing

By Andrew Caplin, Mark Dean, and Daniel Martin

American Economic Review, December 2011

Many everyday decisions are made without full examination of all available options, and, as a result, the best available option may be missed. We develop a search-theoretic choice experiment to study the impact of incomplete consideration on the quality o...

Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?

By Frederick van der Ploeg

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2011

Are natural resources a "curse" or a "blessing"? The empirical evidence suggests that either outcome is possible. This paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natura...

Economic Growth: How Good Can It Get?

By Frank P. Stafford

American Economic Review, May 1999

Estimating a Structural Model of Herd Behavior in Financial Markets

By Marco Cipriani and Antonio Guarino

American Economic Review, January 2014

We develop a new methodology to estimate herd behavior in financial markets. We build a model of informational herding that can be estimated with financial transaction data. In the model, rational herding arises because of information-event uncertainty...

Can Compulsory Military Service Raise Civilian Wages? Evidence from the Peacetime Draft in Portugal

By David Card and Ana Rute Cardoso

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

We provide new evidence on the long-term impacts of peacetime conscription, using longitudinal data for Portuguese men born in 1967. These men were inducted at age 21, allowing us to use preconscription wages to control for ability differences between con...

Malthusian Dynamism and the Rise of Europe: Make War, Not Love

By Nico Voigtlander and Hans-Joachim Voth

American Economic Review, May 2009

A True Development Round? A Review of Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton's Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development

By Robert Z. Lawrence

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2007

In Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development, Stiglitz and Charlton prescribe what a multilateral trade agreement--that promotes development and is fair for all--would include. This review appraises their prescriptions and offers some...

The Rise in Mortgage Defaults

[Symposium: Early Stages of the Credit Crunch]

By Christopher Mayer, Karen Pence, and Shane M. Sherlund

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2009

The first hints of trouble in the mortgage market surfaced in mid-2005, and conditions subsequently began to deteriorate rapidly. Mortgage defaults and delinquencies are particularly concentrated among borrowers whose mortgages are classified as "subprime...

The Safe-Asset Share

By Gary Gorton, Stefan Lewellen, and Andrew Metrick

American Economic Review, May 2012

We document that the percentage of all U.S. assets that are "safe" has remained stable at about 33 percent since 1952. This stable ratio is a rare example of calm in a rapidly changing financial world. Over the same time period, the ratio of U.S. assets...

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2012

Complex Tax Incentives

By Johannes Abeler and Simon Jäger

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

How does complexity affect people's reaction to tax changes? To answer this question, we conduct an experiment in which subjects work for a piece rate and face taxes. One treatment features a simple tax system, the other a complex one. Subjects' economic ...

Of Smart Phone Wars and Software Patents

[Symposium: Patents]

By Stuart Graham and Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2013

Among the main criticisms currently confronting the US Patent and Trademark Office are concerns about software patents and what role they play in the web of litigation now proceeding in the smart phone industry. We will examine the evidence on the litigat...

Intrinsic Motivation and Incentives

By Canice Prendergast

American Economic Review, May 2008

Recent Trends in the Size Distribution of Household Wealth

By Edward N. Wolff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

Based on the Survey of Consumer Finances, the distribution of wealth in the United States became much more unequal in the 1980s and that trend continued, albeit at a slower pace, in the 1990s. The only households that saw their mean net worth rise in abso...