Shocks and Frictions in US Business Cycles: A Bayesian DSGE Approach

By Frank Smets and Rafael Wouters

American Economic Review, June 2007

Using a Bayesian likelihood approach, we estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for the US economy using seven macroeconomic time series. The model incorporates many types of real and nominal frictions and seven types of structural sho...

Evolution and Game Theory

[Symposium: Evolutionary Economics]

By Larry Samuelson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2002

Research in noncooperative game theory has focused attention on two questions: Should we expect equilibrium play? If so, which of the multiple equilibria that arise in many games should we expect? This paper summarizes recent approaches to these questions...

Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise

By Alfred D. Chandler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1992

In my book Scale and Scope (1990), I focused on the history of the modern industrial firm from the 1880s, when such firms first appeared, through World War II. I did so by comparing the fortunes of more than 600 enterprises—the 200 largest industria...

Neuroeconomic Foundations of Economic Choice--Recent Advances

[Symposium: Neuroeconomics]

By Ernst Fehr and Antonio Rangel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2011

Neuroeconomics combines methods and theories from neuroscience psychology, economics, and computer science in an effort to produce detailed computational and neurobiological accounts of the decision-making process that can serve as a common foundation for...

Data Watch: Research Data from Transition Economies

By Randall K. Filer and Jan Hanousek

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2002

Ten years into the transition from communism in the countries of the former Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe, a cursory search of the EconLit database turns up hundreds of empirical studies published in refereed journals that deal with various ...

The Informational Role of Voluntary Certification: Evidence from the Mexican Clean Industry Program

By Andrew D. Foster and Emilio Gutierrez

American Economic Review, May 2013

In the presence of imperfect information, voluntary certification can provide an important complement to mandatory inspections as a basis for environmental regulation in low income countries. Using data from Mexico's Clean Industry Program, we show that p...

A Labor Supply Elasticity Accord?

By Lars Ljungqvist and Thomas J. Sargent

American Economic Review, May 2011

A dispute about the size of the aggregate labor supply elasticity has been fortified by a contentious aggregation theory used by real business cycle theorists. The replacement of that aggregation theory with one more congenial to microeconomic observation...

Insurgent Compensation: Evidence from Iraq

By Benjamin W. Bahney, Radha K. Iyengar, Patrick B. Johnston, Danielle F. Jung, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Howard J. Shatz

American Economic Review, May 2013

Participating in insurgency is physically risky. Why do people do so? Using new data on 3,799 payments to insurgent fighters by Al Qa'ida Iraq, we find that: (i) wages were extremely low relative to outside options, even compared to unskilled labor; (ii) ...

Social Capital and Political Accountability

By Tommaso Nannicini, Andrea Stella, Guido Tabellini, and Ugo Troiano

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2013

We investigate a channel through which social capital may improve economic well-being and the functioning of institutions: political accountability. The main idea is that voters who share values and beliefs that foster cooperation are more likely to vo...

Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments

By Jonathan Guryan, Kory Kroft, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2009

This paper uses random assignment in professional golf tournaments to test for peer effects in the workplace. We find no evidence that playing partners' ability affects performance, contrary to recent evidence on peer effects in the workplace from labo...

Life-Cycle Prices and Production

By Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst

American Economic Review, December 2007

We use scanner data and time diaries to document how households substitute time for money through shopping and home production. We document substantial heterogeneity in prices paid for identical goods for the same area and time, with older households s...

Endogenous Information Flows and the Clustering of Announcements

By Viral V. Acharya, Peter DeMarzo, and Ilan Kremer

American Economic Review, December 2011

We consider the strategic timing of information releases in a dynamic disclosure model. Because investors don't know whether or when the firm is informed, the firm will not necessarily disclose immediately. We show that bad market news can trigger the imm...

Discrimination in Grading

By Rema N. Hanna and Leigh L. Linden

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2012

We report the results of an experiment that was designed to test for discrimination in grading in India. We recruited teachers to grade exams. We randomly assigned child "characteristics" (age, gender, and caste) to the cover sheets of the exams to ensure...

Restructuring, Competition and Regulatory Reform in the U.S. Electricity Sector

By Paul L. Joskow

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1997

The U.S. electricity sector is going through dramatic changes. The changes are expanding competition in the generating segment of the industry, making it possible for consumers to choose among competing generation service suppliers, and reforming the regu...

Should Aid Reward Performance? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Health and Education in Indonesia

By Benjamin A. Olken, Junko Onishi, and Susan Wong

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2014

We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into ...

Common Knowledge

[Symposium: Common Knowledge]

By John Geanakoplos

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1992

An event is common knowledge among a group of agents if each one knows it, if each one knows that the others know it, if each one knows that each one knows that the others know it, and so on. Thus, common knowledge is the limit of a potentially infinite c...

The Impact of the Massachusetts Health Care Reform on Health Care Use among Children

By Sarah Miller

American Economic Review, May 2012

In 2006 Massachusetts enacted a major health care reform aimed at achieving near-universal coverage in the state. While other studies have found that this reform substantially affected the use of health services in general, the impact of the reform on chi...

Deregulation and the Labor Market

[Symposium: Legacy of Deregulation]

By James Peoples

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

This paper examines the earnings and employment effect of deregulation in the trucking, railroad, airlines, and telecommunications industries. Findings on nonmanagement workers suggest labor earnings fell sharply in trucking, somewhat in airlines, slightl...

The Modern Expansion of Tort Liability: Its Sources, Its Effects, and Its Reform

[Symposium: The Economics of Liability]

By George L. Priest

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1991

This paper reviews the development of tort law during the 20th century with particular attention to the broad expansion of liability since the 1970s. It attempts to explain the origins of the expansion of liability; to present examples of its effects on p...

The Home Economics of E-Money: Velocity, Cash Management, and Discount Rates of M-Pesa Users

By Isaac Mbiti and David N. Weil

American Economic Review, May 2013

We study the mobile phone-based money transfer system in Kenya. Based on aggregate data, we estimate that the velocity with which units of e-money are transferred among users is approximately four times per month, and that the average number of transfers ...