Behavior under Extreme Conditions: The Titanic Disaster

By Bruno S. Frey, David A. Savage, and Benno Torgler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2011

During the night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage. Two hours and 40 minutes later she sank, resulting in the loss of 1,501 lives—more than two-thirds of her 2,207 passengers and crew. This remains one ...

Immigration Economics by George J. Borjas: A Review Essay

By David Card and Giovanni Peri

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2016

We review Immigration Economics by George J. Borjas, published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. The book is written as a graduate-level textbook, and summarizes and updates many of Borjas's important contributions to the field over the past thi...

Culture, Ethnicity, and Diversity

By Klaus Desmet, Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín, and Romain Wacziarg

American Economic Review, September 2017

We investigate the empirical relationship between ethnicity and culture, defined as a vector of traits reflecting norms, values, and attitudes. Using survey data for 76 countries, we find that ethnic identity is a significant predictor of cultural values,...

Unemployment, Vacancies, Wages

By Peter Diamond

American Economic Review, June 2011

Institutional Economics: Then and Now

By Malcolm Rutherford

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2001

This article gives a history of American institutionalism, and a brief comparison with the more recent "new" institutional economics. Institutionalism was a significant element in American economics between the Wars, but declined rapidly thereafter. The a...

Search at the Margin

By José A. Carrasco and Lones Smith

American Economic Review, October 2017

We extend search theory to multiple indivisible units and perfectly divisible assets, solving them respectively with induction and recursion. Buyer demands and prices are random, and the seller can partially exercise orders. With divisible assets, the Bel...

Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves

By Rema Hanna, Esther Duflo, and Michael Greenstone

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2016

Laboratory studies suggest that improved cooking stoves can reduce indoor air pollution, improve health, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. We provide evidence, from a large-scale randomized trial in India, on the benefits of a...

The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets

By M. Keith Chen

American Economic Review, April 2013

Languages differ widely in the ways they encode time. I test the hypothesis that the languages that grammatically associate the future and the present, foster future-oriented behavior. This prediction arises naturally when well-documented effects of la...

What is Discrimination? Gender in the American Economic Association, 1935-2004

By Stephen G. Donald and Daniel S. Hamermesh

American Economic Review, September 2006

We illustrate problems of measuring discrimination using elections to AEA offices. With a new econometric technique, we find female candidates have a much better than random chance of victory. This advantage is either reverse discrimination or reflects be...

Bargaining over Entry with a Compulsory License Deadline: Price Spillovers and Surplus Expansion

By Eric W. Bond and Kamal Saggi

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2017

We analyze bargaining between a developing country (South) and a multinational firm over the local price of its patented product. We use an alternating offers bargaining game in which the South can resort to compulsory licensing (CL) if the two parties fa...

Probabilistic Patents

[Symposium: Intellectual Property Rights]

By Mark A. Lemley and Carl Shapiro

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2005

Economists often assume that a patent gives its owner a well-defined legal right to exclude others from practicing the invention described in the patent. In practice, however, the rights afforded to patent holders are highly uncertain. Under patent law, a...

Real Exchange Rate Adjustment in and out of the Eurozone

By Martin Berka, Michael B. Devereux, and Charles Engel

American Economic Review, May 2012

It is often suggested that currency unions unduly inhibit the efficient adjustment of real exchange rates. Recently, this has been seen as a key failure of the Eurozone. This paper presents evidence that throws doubt on this conclusion. Our evidence sugge...

A Teacher Like Me: Does Race, Ethnicity, or Gender Matter?

By Thomas S. Dee

American Economic Review, May 2005

Migration, Remittances, and Male and Female Employment Patterns

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes and Susan Pozo

American Economic Review, May 2006

Line-Item Veto: Where Is Thy Sting?

By John R. Carter and David Schap

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1990

Proponents of giving the president the authority to use a line-item veto argue that the institutional change is needed to limit special-interest legislation and restrain spending. Opponents respond that it would grant too much added power to the president...

Matching Patterns When Group Size Exceeds Two

By Christian Ahlin

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2017

We study one-sided matching when groups with n > 2 members are being formed. Type-complementarity rules out all but the rank-ordered grouping. Type-substitutability (for example, matching to share risk) rules out much less. It requires that every two g...

Toward National Well-Being Accounts

By Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz, and Arthur Stone

American Economic Review, May 2004

Front Matter

American Economic Review, June 2011

Including: Elhanan Helpman: Distinguished Fellow: 2010

Bringing the Market inside the Firm?

By George Baker, Robert Gibbons, and Kevin J. Murphy

American Economic Review, May 2001

The Employment of Low-Skilled Immigrant Men in the United States

By Brian Duncan and Stephen J. Trejo

American Economic Review, May 2012

Using microdata from the 2000 Census, we analyze how the employment rates of foreign-born and US-born men vary with education. After a period of adjustment during the first few years upon arrival, the overall employment rate of immigrant men quickly appro...