Escaping from a Liquidity Trap and Deflation: The Foolproof Way and Others

By Lars E.O. Svensson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

Existing proposals to escape from a liquidity trap and deflation, including my "Foolproof Way," are discussed in the light of the optimal way to escape. The optimal way involves three elements: (1) an explicit central-bank commitment to a higher future pr...

The Unholy Trinity of Financial Contagion

[Symposium: International Financial Architecture]

By Graciela L. Kaminsky, Carmen M. Reinhart, and Carlos A. Végh

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

Over the last 20 years, some financial events, such as devaluations or defaults, have triggered an immediate adverse chain reaction in other countries--which we call fast and furious contagion. Yet, on other occasions, similar events have failed to trigge...

Anomalies: The Law of One Price in Financial Markets

By Owen A. Lamont and Richard H. Thaler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

The Law of One price states that identical goods (or securities) should sell for identical prices. In financial markets the law of one price is thought to hold almost exactly, and is the basis for much of financial economic theory. We present evidence on ...

Restructuring Sovereign Debt

[Symposium: International Financial Architecture]

By Barry Eichengreen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

This paper provides new empirical evidence relevant to the debate over the desirability of reforms to the way that financial markets and the international community deal with sovereign debt crises. In particular, given the ongoing opposition of investors ...

The Mirage of Exchange Rate Regimes for Emerging Market Countries

[Symposium: International Financial Architecture]

By Guillermo A. Calvo and Frederic S. Mishkin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

This paper argues that much of the debate on choosing an exchange rate regime misses the boat. It begins by discussing the standard theory of choice between exchange rate regimes, and then explores the weaknesses in this theory, especially when it is appl...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

Does Antitrust Policy Improve Consumer Welfare? Assessing the Evidence

[Symposium: Activist Antitrust?]

By Robert W. Crandall and Clifford Winston

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

This paper reviews the literature and assesses the effects of antitrust policy and enforcement on consumer welfare. We find no evidence that antitrust policy in the areas of monopolization, collusion, and mergers has provided much benefit to consumers and...

Comments

By Luigi L. Pasinetti, Franklin M. Fisher, Jesus Felipe, J.S.L. McCombie, Robert L. Greenfield, Avi J. Cohen, G.C. Harcourt, William H. Kaempfer, Anton D. Lowenberg, Lance E. Davis, and Stanley Engerman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2003

Medicare Part D and the Financial Protection of the Elderly

By Gary V. Engelhardt and Jonathan Gruber

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2011

We examine the impact of the expansion of public prescription-drug insurance coverage from Medicare Part D and find evidence of substantial crowd-out. Using the 2002-2007 waves of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we estimate the extension of Part D ...

Earnings Losses of Displaced Workers Revisited

By Kenneth A. Couch and Dana W. Placzek

American Economic Review, March 2010

Earnings losses of Connecticut workers affected by mass layoff are calculated using administrative data. Estimated reductions are initially more than 30 percent and six years later, as much as 15 percent. The Connecticut estimates are smaller than compara...

Control Functions and Simultaneous Equations Methods

By Richard Blundell, Dennis Kristensen, and Rosa L. Matzkin

American Economic Review, May 2013

The control function approach is a convenient method of estimation in simultaneous equation systems. This requires that the system can be expressed in triangular form with variables satisfying a conditional mean independence restriction. Linear simultaneo...

Disability Insurance and Health Insurance Reform: Evidence from Massachusetts

By Nicole Maestas, Kathleen J. Mullen, and Alexander Strand

American Economic Review, May 2014

As health insurance becomes available outside of the employment relationship as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the cost of applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)–potentially going without health insurance coverage durin...

Declining Mortality Inequality within Cities during the Health Transition

By Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn

American Economic Review, May 2015

In the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, large cities had extremely high death rates from infectious disease. Within major cities such as New York City and Philadelphia, there was significant variation at any point in time in the mort...

Merger Policy with Merger Choice

By Volker Nocke and Michael D. Whinston

American Economic Review, April 2013

We analyze the optimal policy of an antitrust authority towards horizontal mergers when merger proposals are endogenous and firms choose among alternative mergers. In our model, the optimal policy of an antitrust authority that seeks to maximize expected ...

Weak Instruments: Diagnosis and Cures in Empirical Econometrics

By Jinyong Hahn and Jerry Hausman

American Economic Review, May 2003

Capacity and Utilization in Health Care: The Effect of Empty Beds on Neonatal Intensive Care Admission

By Seth Freedman

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2016

Because geographic variation in medical care utilization is jointly determined by both supply and demand, it is difficult to empirically estimate whether capacity itself has a causal impact on utilization in health care. In this paper, I exploit short-...

Strategic Tournaments

By Ayala Arad and Ariel Rubinstein

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2013

A strategic (round-robin) tournament is a simultaneous n-player game built on top of a symmetric two-player game G. Each player chooses one action in G and is matched to play G against all other players. The winner of the tournament is the player who a...

Libertarian Paternalism

By Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

American Economic Review, May 2003

Incentive Schemes for Local Government: Theory and Evidence from Comprehensive Performance Assessment in England

By Ben Lockwood and Francesco Porcelli

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2013

This paper studies Comprehensive Performance Assessment, an explicit incentive scheme for local government in England. Motivated by a theoretical political agency model, we predict that CPA should increase service quality and local taxation, but have an a...

New Millennium Economics: How Did It Get This Way, and What Way Is It?

[Symposium: Forecasts for the Future of Economics]

By David Colander

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2000

This paper is a discussion of the changes in the economics profession that occurred (or at least are suggested will occur) between 2000 and 2050. Structural changes include the growth of virtual universities, the movement of the center of economics out of...