The Labor Market Impact of Mandated Employment Verification Systems

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes and Cynthia Bansak

American Economic Review, May 2012

Employment verification systems covered about one out of four people hired in the United States in 2010. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of state-level employment verification mandates on the employment and wages of likely unauthorized workers acros...

Why Have Americans Become More Obese?

By David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, and Jesse M. Shapiro

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2003

Americans have become considerably more obese over the past 25 years. This increase is primarily the result of consuming more calories. The increase in food consumption is itself the result of technological innovations which made it possible for food to b...

The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas

By Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2010

This paper provides an overview of the long-term impacts of the Columbian Exchange -- that is, the exchange of diseases, ideas, food crops, technologies, populations, and cultures between the New World and the Old World after Christopher Columbus' voyage ...

Selection, Agriculture, and Cross-Country Productivity Differences

By David Lagakos and Michael E. Waugh

American Economic Review, April 2013

Cross-country labor productivity differences are larger in agriculture than in non-agriculture. We propose a new explanation for these patterns in which the self-selection of heterogeneous workers determines sector productivity. We formalize our theory...

Heterogeneity in Intra-monthly Consumption Patterns, Self-Control, and Savings at Retirement

By Giovanni Mastrobuoni and Matthew Weinberg

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2009

Using data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals, this paper describes the shape of consumption profiles over the month for Social Security benefit recipients that have saved different amounts for retirement. Individuals with income ...

Consumption Volatility, Marketization, and Expenditure in an Emerging Market Economy

By Daniel L. Hicks

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2015

In response to income fluctuations, households smooth consumption by substituting between market expenditure and time inputs. This paper provides evidence of this substitution in the context of food consumption over transitory and permanent income fluctua...

Population, Food, and Knowledge

By D. Gale Johnson

American Economic Review, March 2000

Consumption Responses to In-Kind Transfers: Evidence from the Introduction of the Food Stamp Program

By Hilary W. Hoynes and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2009

Economists have strong theoretical predictions about how in-kind transfers, such as providing vouchers for food, impact consumption. Despite the prominence of the theory, there is little empirical work on responses to in-kind transfers, and most existi...

Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle

By Hamish Low, Costas Meghir, and Luigi Pistaferri

American Economic Review, September 2010

We specify a life-cycle model of consumption, labor supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions. We distinguish different sources of risk, including shocks to productivity, job arrival, and job destruction. Allowing for job mobility has a ...

Trade, Tastes, and Nutrition in India

By David Atkin

American Economic Review, August 2013

This paper explores the causes and consequences of regional taste differences. I introduce habit formation into a standard general equilibrium model. Household tastes evolve over time to favor foods consumed as a child. Thus, locally abundant foods are...

The Impact of Medicaid on Labor Market Activity and Program Participation: Evidence from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment

By Katherine Baicker, Amy Finkelstein, Jae Song, and Sarah Taubman

American Economic Review, May 2014

In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery for the chance to apply for Medicaid. Using this randomized design and 2009 administrative data, we find no significant effect of Medicaid on employment or earnings. Our 95 ...

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...

Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire

By Robert C. Allen

American Economic Review, December 2017

A new basis for an international poverty measurement is proposed based on linear programming for specifying the least cost diet and explicit budgeting for nonfood spending. This approach is superior to the World Bank's $1-a-day line because it is (i) clea...

Testing Paternalism: Cash versus In-Kind Transfers

By Jesse M. Cunha

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2014

Welfare programs are often implemented in-kind to promote outcomes that might not be realized under cash transfers. This paper tests whether such paternalistically motivated transfers are justified compared to cash, using a randomized controlled trial ...

Political Economy of Public Policies: Insights from Distortions to Agricultural and Food Markets

By Kym Anderson, Gordon Rausser, and Johan Swinnen

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2013

The agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies. Many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational, while others have been gradual but persis...

Oil for What?-Illicit Iraqi Oil Contracts and the U.N. Security Council

By Paul Heaton

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005

The Oil-For-Food program was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 986 in 1995 as a means of providing humanitarian relief to Iraq, which had been under U.N. economic sanctions since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. After the invasion of ...

Access to Food and the Biological Standard of Living: Perspectives on the Nutritional Status of Native Americans

By John Komlos

American Economic Review, March 2003

Promises and Perils of Pre-analysis Plans

[Symposium: Pre-Analysis Plans in Economics]

By Benjamin A. Olken

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

The purpose of this paper is to help think through the advantages and costs of rigorous pre-specification of statistical analysis plans in economics. A pre-analysis plan pre-specifies in a precise way the analysis to be run before examining the data. ...

Time Use and Food Consumption

By Marianne Bertrand and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

American Economic Review, May 2009

Are Biofuels the Culprit? OPEC, Food, and Fuel

By Gal Hochman, Deepak Rajagopal, and David Zilberman

American Economic Review, May 2010