The Changing Selectivity of American Colleges

[Symposium: College Admissions]

By Caroline M. Hoxby

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2009

Over the past few decades, the average college has not become more selective: the reverse is true, though not dramatically. People who believe that college selectivity is increasing may be extrapolating from the experience of a small number of colleges su...

Understanding the "Family Gap" in Pay for Women with Children

By Jane Waldfogel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1998

As the gender gap in pay between women and men has been narrowing, the 'family gap' in pay between mothers and nonmothers has been widening. One reason may be the institutional structure in the United States, which has emphasized equal pay and opportunity...

Whither Game Theory? Towards a Theory of Learning in Games

[Symposium: What is Happening in Game Theory?]

By Drew Fudenberg and David K. Levine

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

Game theory has been a huge success in economics. Many important questions have been answered, and game theoretic methods are now central to much economic investigation. We suggest areas where further advances are important, and argue that models of learn...

Aiming for Efficiency Rather Than Proficiency

[Symposium: No Child Left Behind]

By Derek Neal

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2010

The No Child Left Behind law is flawed for many reasons, but the most important is that it is built around proficiency targets. Proficiency rates are not useful metrics of school performance because universal proficiency is not a socially efficient goal f...

Some Lasting Effects of Undergraduate Economics on Retirement Planning

By William Bosshardt and William B. Walstad

American Economic Review, May 2017

This study investigated the likely effects of undergraduate economics on whether a college graduate has opened a retirement account four years after graduation. Economic education is measured by the number of economics credit hours or whether a college gr...

On Economic Interdependence and War

By Massimo Morelli and Tommaso Sonno

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2017

In this article, we review the book Economic Interdependence and War by Dale C. Copeland, and take this opportunity to describe and discuss the current debate on the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective. We also provide novel insights on the...

Of Hype and Hyperbolas: Introducing the New Economic Geography

By J.Peter Neary

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

Reviewing The Spatial Economy by Fujita, Krugman, and Venables, this paper argues that the key contribution of the new economic geography is a framework in which standard building blocks of mainstream economics (especially rational decision making and sim...

Until the Bitter End: On Prospect Theory in a Dynamic Context

By Sebastian Ebert and Philipp Strack

American Economic Review, April 2015

We provide a result on prospect theory decision makers who are naïve about the time inconsistency induced by probability weighting. If a market offers a sufficiently rich set of investment strategies, investors postpone their trading decisions indefinite...

Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market

By Leo Kaas and Philipp Kircher

American Economic Review, October 2015

We develop and analyze a labor market model in which heterogeneous firms operate under decreasing returns and compete for labor by posting long-term contracts. Firms achieve faster growth by offering higher lifetime wages, which allows them to fill vacan...

Collective Moral Hazard, Maturity Mismatch, and Systemic Bailouts

By Emmanuel Farhi and Jean Tirole

American Economic Review, February 2012

The article shows that time-consistent, imperfectly targeted support to distressed institutions makes private leverage choices strategic complements. When everyone engages in maturity mismatch, authorities have little choice but intervening, creating both...

Intergenerational Transfers and the Accumulation of Wealth

By William G. Gale and John Karl Scholz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

This paper uses household data to provide direct estimates of intergenerational transfers as a source of wealth. The authors distinguish between intended transfers (for example, gifts to other households) and possibly unintended transfers (bequests) and e...

Reallocation, Firm Turnover, and Efficiency: Selection on Productivity or Profitability?

By Lucia Foster, John Haltiwanger, and Chad Syverson

American Economic Review, March 2008

We investigate the nature of selection and productivity growth in industries where we observe producer-level quantities and prices separately. We show there are important differences between revenue and physical productivity. Because physical productiv...

An Assessment of TARP Assistance to Financial Institutions

[Symposium: The Bailouts of 2007-2009]

By Charles W. Calomiris and Urooj Khan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2015

Six years after the passage of the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly known as TARP, it remains hard to measure the total social costs and benefits of the assistance to banks provided under TARP programs. TARP was not a single approach to assist...

Review of Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion Edited by Peter J. Richerson and Morten H. Christiansen

By Paola Giuliano

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2016

Peter J. Richerson and Morten H. Christiansen have assembled a compelling picture of the evolution of societies, technology, language, and religion--with culture at the epicenter. The book is a must-have for economists and any other social scientists inte...

The Benefits of Asymmetric Markets

By Tibor Scitovsky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1990

Economists are often so mesmerized by the magic of perfect competition that they neglect or fail to notice other, equally important achievements of the real market economy around us, most of which seem to result from monopoly tempered by competition and c...

Corporate Conflicts of Interest

[Symposium: Enron and Conflict of Interest]

By Joel S. Demski

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2003

This paper surveys conflicts of interest in the corporate governance arena, with emphasis on auditors, boards of directors, analysts and investment bankers, regulators, management, attorneys and investors. Enron provides a host of examples as well. I stre...

A Review Essay on GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane Coyle

By Moshe Syrquin

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2016

GDP, the most fundamental concept of aggregate economics, is often misunderstood and misused. In a brief book, Diane Coyle attempts to demystify and clarify the concept by providing what she calls "an affectionate history." The product is a lucid and clea...

Doctoral Dissertations in Economics

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2009

Mortality Inequality

By Sam Peltzman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2009

The paper describes how changes in the inequality of lifetimes have contributed to changes in the social distribution of welfare. I address the following questions: How can we measure inequality of lifetimes? How has this kind of inequality changed over t...

Capital Shortfall: A New Approach to Ranking and Regulating Systemic Risks

By Viral Acharya, Robert Engle, and Matthew Richardson

American Economic Review, May 2012

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 has given way to the sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012, yet many of the banking issues remain the same. We discuss a method to estimate the capital that a financial firm would need to raise if we have another financial ...