Beggar-Thy-Neighbor Effects of Exchange Rates: A Study of the Renminbi

By Aaditya Mattoo, Prachi Mishra, and Arvind Subramanian

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2017

This paper estimates the effect of China's exchange rate changes on exports of developing countries in third markets. The degree of competition between China and its developing country competitors in specific products and destinations plays a key role in ...

Uncertainty and Trade Agreements

By Nuno Limão and Giovanni Maggi

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2015

We explore conditions under which trade agreements can provide gains by reducing trade policy uncertainty. Given the degree of income risk aversion, this is more likely when economies are more open, export supply elasticities are lower, and economies more...

Information Choice Technologies

By Christian Hellwig, Sebastian Kohls, and Laura Veldkamp

American Economic Review, May 2012

Theories based on information costs or frictions have become increasing popular in macroeconomics and macro-finance. The literature has used various types of information choices, such as rational inattention, inattentiveness, information markets and costl...

Does the Market for Women's Labor Need Fixing?

[Symposium: Women in the Labor Market]

By Barbara R. Bergmann

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989

I will start by reviewing the evidence that discrimination against women is currently serious and has important consequences for their pay and status. Some of this evidence is of a variety that economists do not commonly examine or take account of. On the...

Details Matter: The Impact of Presentation and Information on the Take-Up of Financial Incentives for Retirement Saving

By Emmanuel Saez

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2009

We examine the effects of presentation and information on the take-up of financial subsidies for retirement saving in a large randomized experiment carried out with H&R Block. The subsidies raise take-up and contributions with larger effects when the s...

The Economics of Treasury Securities Markets

By Sushil Bikhchandani and Chi-fu Huang

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1993

The market for Treasury securities attracted considerable attention recently, after alleged infringements by Salomon Brothers. Several questions have been raised about the best way of selling U.S. government debt. One issue is whether altering the auction...

Affirmative Action: One Size Does Not Fit All

By Kala Krishna and Alexander Tarasov

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2016

This paper identifies a new reason for giving preferences to the disadvantaged using a model of contests. There are two forces at work: the effort effect working against giving preferences and the selection effect working in favor of them. When educati...

Child Health and Conflict in Côte d'Ivoire

By Camelia Minoiu and Olga Shemyakina

American Economic Review, May 2012

We examine the impact of the 2002-07 civil conflict in Côte d'Ivoire on children's health status measured by height-for-age. We use pre- and post-war survey data coupled with information on the location of violent incidents to capture exposure to th...

Gender and Race Heterogeneity: The Impact of Students with Limited English on Native Students' Performance

By Timothy M. Diette and Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere

American Economic Review, May 2014

Recent evidence suggests that exposure to a larger share of Limited English (LE) students is associated with a slight decline in performance for students at the top of the achievement distribution. In this paper we explore whether LE peer effects differ b...

(Indirect) Input Linkages

By Marcela Eslava, Ana Cecília Fieler, and Daniel Yi Xu

American Economic Review, May 2015

Relative to backward firms, technologically-advanced firms source inputs from other advanced firms. These sourcing patterns lead to a magnification effect of technology adoption. A firm that adopts higher-technology increases the relative supply and deman...

How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project

By William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julian Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, Jarkko Turunen, and Melanie E. Ward

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2007

Workers' wages are not set in a spot market. Instead, the wages of most workers -- at least those who do not switch jobs -- typically change only annually and are mediated by a complex set of institutions and factors such as contracts, unions, standards o...

Gender and Performance: Evidence from School Assignment by Randomized Lottery

By Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger

American Economic Review, May 2006

Exchange-Rate Policy and the Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates

By Günter Coenen and Volker W. Wieland

American Economic Review, May 2004

How Do Teachers Improve? The Relative Importance of Specific and General Human Capital

By Ben Ost

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2014

One of the most consistent findings in the literature on teacher quality is that teachers improve with experience, especially in the first several years. This study extends this research by separately identifying the benefits of general teaching experi...

Retrospectives: Ceteris Paribus

By Joseph Persky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1990

In Webster's Dictionary is an example of how to use "ceteris paribus": [S]taple-growing states are, ceteris paribus, more favorable to slave labor than manufacturing states." I suspect it would take a minor treatise to elucidate fully the ceteris paribus ...

Behavior Policies and Teen Traffic Safety

By Thomas S. Dee and William N. Evans

American Economic Review, May 2001

Selective versus Universal Vouchers: Modelling Median Voter Preferences in Education

By Zhiqi Chen and Edwin G. West

American Economic Review, December 2000

The Politics of Financial Development: A Review of Calomiris and Haber's Fragile by Design

By Peter L. Rousseau

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2016

Fragile by Design by Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber introduces a framework for understanding financial crises and credit abundance with politics at its center. Using the historical experiences of five nations to illustrate, the authors...

Polarization and Ambiguity

By Sandeep Baliga, Eran Hanany, and Peter Klibanoff

American Economic Review, December 2013

We offer a theory of polarization as an optimal response to ambiguity. Suppose individual A's beliefs first-order stochastically dominate individual B's. They observe a common signal. They exhibit polarization if A's posterior dominates her prior and B'...

Tax-Motivated Trading by Individual Investors

By Zoran Ivković, James Poterba, and Scott Weisbenner

American Economic Review, December 2005

We analyze stock trades made by individuals holding stock in both taxable and tax-deferred accounts. By comparing trades across these two types of accounts, we uncover a capital gains lock-in effect in taxable accounts. The lock-in effect is more pronounc...