An Interim Evaluation of Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Trading

[Symposium: SO2 Trading]

By Richard Schmalensee, Paul L. Joskow, A. Denny Ellerman, Juan Pablo Montero, and Elizabeth M. Bailey

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

This paper summarizes recent empirical research on compliance costs and strategies and on permit market performance under the U.S. acid rain program, the first large-scale, long-term program to use tradeable emissions permits to control pollution. An effi...

On the Verges of Overconfidence

[Symposium: Overconfidence]

By Ulrike Malmendier and Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2015

This symposium provides several examples of overconfidence in certain economic contexts. Michael Grubb looks at "Overconfident Consumers in the Marketplace." Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate consider "Behavioral CEOs: The Role of Managerial Overc...

Are Restaurants Really Supersizing America?

By Michael L. Anderson and David A. Matsa

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2011

While many researchers and policymakers infer from correlations between eating out and body weight that restaurants are a leading cause of obesity, a basic identification problem challenges these conclusions. We exploit the placement of Interstate Highway...

Microeconomic Approaches to Development: Schooling, Learning, and Growth

[Symposium: The Agenda for Development Economics]

By Mark R. Rosenzweig

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2010

Within the field of economic development over the past 15 years or so, particularly significant advances have been made in what can be loosely called micro-development, an area defined principally by the units that are examined, not by a particular method...

Longevity Complementarities under Competing Risks

By William H. Dow, Tomas J. Philipson, and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

American Economic Review, December 1999

Mortality Reductions, Educational Attainment, and Fertility Choice

By Rodrigo R. Soares

American Economic Review, June 2005

This paper develops a model where reductions in mortality are the main force behind economic development. The model generates a pattern of changes similar to the demographic transition, where gains in life expectancy at birth are followed by reductions in...

Property Taxation, Zoning, and Efficiency in a Dynamic Tiebout Model

By Levon Barseghyan and Stephen Coate

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2016

This paper presents a dynamic Tiebout model and uses it to revisit a classic argument in public finance. The argument, due to Hamilton (1975), is that a system of governments financing services with property taxes will produce an efficient allocation of h...

Climate Shocks and Exports

By Benjamin F. Jones and Benjamin A. Olken

American Economic Review, May 2010

Monitoring, Motivation, and Management: The Determinants of Opportunistic Behavior in a Field Experiment

By Daniel S. Nagin, James B. Rebitzer, Seth Sanders, and Lowell J. Taylor

American Economic Review, September 2002

Economic models of incentives in employment relationships are based on a specific theory of motivation: employees are "rational cheaters," who anticipate the consequences of their actions and shirk when the marginal benefits exceed costs. We investigate t...

Patent Quality and Examination in Europe

By Dietmar Harhoff

American Economic Review, May 2016

This paper reports on effects of recent administrative reforms at the European Patent Office (EPO). In EPO-granted patents, claims numbers started to decline in 2008 when new claims fees became effective, claims sections in patents became shorter, and ind...

High Unemployment Yet Few Small Firms: The Role of Centralized Bargaining in South Africa

By Jeremy R. Magruder

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2012

South Africa has very high unemployment, yet few adults work informally in small firms. This paper tests whether centralized bargaining, by which unionized large firms extend arbitration agreements to nonunionized smaller firms, contributes to this probl...

Governance Institutions and Economic Activity

By Avinash Dixit

American Economic Review, March 2009

Physicians Treating Physicians: Information and Incentives in Childbirth

By Erin M. Johnson and M. Marit Rehavi

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2016

This paper provides new evidence on the interaction between patient information and physician financial incentives. Using rich microdata on childbirth, we compare the treatment of physicians when they are patients with that of comparable nonphysicians. We...

Fiscal Consolidation in an Open Economy

By Christopher J. Erceg and Jesper Lindé

American Economic Review, May 2012

his paper uses a New Keynesian DSGE model of a small open economy to compare how the effects of fiscal consolidation differ depending on whether monetary policy is constrained by currency union membership or by the zero lower bound on policy rates. We sho...

Is the Impact of Health Shocks Cushioned by Socioeconomic Status? The Case of Low Birthweight

By Janet Currie and Rosemary Hyson

American Economic Review, May 1999

Human Capital Prices, Productivity, and Growth

By Audra J. Bowlus and Chris Robinson

American Economic Review, December 2012

Separate identification of the price and quantity of human capital has important implications for understanding key issues in economics. Price and quantity series are derived for four education levels. The price series are highly correlated and they ex...

Time to Build and Fluctuations in Bulk Shipping

By Myrto Kalouptsidi

American Economic Review, February 2014

This paper explores the nature of fluctuations in world bulk shipping by quantifying the impact of time to build and demand uncertainty on investment and prices. We examine the impact of both construction lags and their lengthening in periods of high i...

The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya

By Robin Burgess, Remi Jedwab, Edward Miguel, Ameet Morjaria, and Gerard Padró i Miquel

American Economic Review, June 2015

Ethnic favoritism is seen as antithetical to development. This paper provides credible quantification of the extent of ethnic favoritism using data on road building in Kenyan districts across the 1963-2011 period. Guided by a model, it then examines wheth...

Momentum Traders in the Housing Market: Survey Evidence and a Search Model

By Monika Piazzesi and Martin Schneider

American Economic Review, May 2009

The Effect of Grade Retention on High School Completion

By Brian A. Jacob and Lars Lefgren

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2009

Low-achieving students in many school districts are retained in a grade to allow them to gain the academic or social skills that teachers believe are necessary to succeed academically. In this paper, we use plausibly exogenous variation in retention ge...