The Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the Cost of Capital

[Symposium: Tax Reform]

By Alan J. Auerbach

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1987

The broad outlines of the recently passed Tax Reform Act of 1986 suggest a shift in the tax burden toward business. Over the five-year period 1987-1991, corporate tax revenues are projected to increase by $120.3 billion with individual tax revenues declin...

Classroom Games: Voluntary Provision of a Public Good

By Charles A. Holt and Susan K. Laury

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1997

This paper describes a simple public goods game, implemented with playing cards in a classroom setup. Students choose whether to contribute to the provision of a public good in a situation where it is privately optimal not to contribute, but socially opti...

Human Capital Risk, Contract Enforcement, and the Macroeconomy

By Tom Krebs, Moritz Kuhn, and Mark L. J. Wright

American Economic Review, November 2015

We use microdata to show that young households with children are underinsured against the risk that an adult member of the household dies. This empirical finding can be explained by a macroeconomic model with human capital risk, age-dependent returns to h...

International Coordination of Trade and Domestic Policies

By Josh Ederington

American Economic Review, December 2001

Optimal Interventions in Markets with Adverse Selection

By Thomas Philippon and Vasiliki Skreta

American Economic Review, February 2012

We study the design of interventions to stabilize financial markets plagued by adverse selection. Our contribution is to analyze the information revealed by participation decisions. Taking part in a government program carries a stigma, and outside option...

Fewer Monies, Better Monies

By Rudi Dornbusch

American Economic Review, May 2001

Carrots and Sticks: Fertility Effects of China's Population Policies

By Marjorie McElroy and Dennis Tao Yang

American Economic Review, May 2000

Quantifying the Contribution of Search to Wage Inequality

By Volker Tjaden and Felix Wellschmied

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2014

We empirically establish that one-third of job transitions leads to wage losses. Using a quantitative on-the-job search model, we find that 60 percent of them are movements down the job ladder. Accounting for them, our baseline calibration matches the ...

All for One? Family Size and Children's Educational Distribution under Credit Constraints

By Jeanne Lafortune and Soohyung Lee

American Economic Review, May 2014

This paper examines the possibility that a child's years of schooling could increase in the number of siblings, instead of being diminished by competition for parents' resources: if unable to finance the education of their younger children, parents may do...

The Bundling of Academic Journals

By Aaron S. Edlin and Daniel L. Rubinfeld

American Economic Review, May 2005

Is the US Public Corporation in Trouble?

[Symposium: The Modern Corporation]

By Kathleen M. Kahle and René M. Stulz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2017

We examine the current state of the US public corporation and how it has evolved over the last 40 years. After falling by 50 percent since its peak in 1997, the number of public corporations is now smaller than 40 years ago. These corporations are now...

Catching Up with the Economy

By Robert W. Fogel

American Economic Review, March 1999

The Political Economy of Debt Bondage

By Ulf von Lilienfeld-Toal and Dilip Mookherjee

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2010

What are the effects of restricting bonded labor clauses in tenancy or debt contracts? While such restrictions reduce agents' ability to credibly commit ex ante to repay principals in states where they default on their financial obligations, they also gen...

Meese-Rogoff Redux: Micro-Based Exchange-Rate Forecasting

By Martin D. D. Evans and Richard K. Lyons

American Economic Review, May 2005

Balance Sheets and Exchange Rate Policy

By Luis Felipe Céspedes, Roberto Chang, and Andrés Velasco

American Economic Review, September 2004

Monetary Policy and Market Interest Rates

By Tore Ellingsen and Ulf Soderstrom

American Economic Review, December 2001

Departure Times in Y-Shaped Traffic Networks with Multiple Bottlenecks

By Terry E. Daniel, Eyran J. Gisches, and Amnon Rapoport

American Economic Review, December 2009

We study the departure time decisions of commuters traversing a traffic network with the goal of arriving at a common destination at a specified time. There are costs associated with arriving either too early or too late, and with delays experienced at bo...

Technology Improves Learning in Large Principles of Economics Classes: Using Our WITS

By Sheryl B. Ball, Catherine Eckel, and Christian Rojas

American Economic Review, May 2006

The Determinants of Equilibrium Unemployment

By Eran Yashiv

American Economic Review, December 2000

The paper takes the search and matching model of the aggregate labor market to the data. It tests the model's empirical validity and employs structural estimation to generate a characterization of the optimal behavior of firms and workers. The model is ap...

Estimating the Value of a Statistical Life: The Importance of Omitted Variables and Publication Bias

By Orley Ashenfelter and Michael Greenstone

American Economic Review, May 2004