Markups, Aggregation, and Inventory Adjustment

By Daniele Coen-Pirani

American Economic Review, December 2004

In this paper I suggest a unified explanation for two puzzles in the inventory literature: first, estimates of inventory speeds of adjustment in aggregate data are very small relative to the apparent rapid reaction of stocks to unanticipated variations in...

Constructing Price Indexes across Space and Time: The Case of the European Union

By Robert J. Hill

American Economic Review, December 2004

This paper considers the problem of how to construct and reconcile price indexes across space and time. A general taxonomy of panel price index methods, containing four broad classes, is proposed, along with five criteria for discriminating between them. ...

Rationalizing the Penn World Table: True Multilateral Indices for International Comparisons of Real Income

By J. Peter Neary

American Economic Review, December 2004

Real incomes are routinely compared internationally using methods that "correct" for deviations from purchasing power parity. The most widely used of these is the Geary method which, though theoretically suspect, underlies the Penn World Table. This paper...

Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities

By Jan Eeckhout

American Economic Review, December 2004

Two empirical regularities concerning the size distribution of cities have repeatedly been established: Zipf's law holds (the upper tail is Pareto), and city growth is proportionate. Census 2000 data are used covering the entire size distribution, not jus...

When Does Learning in Games Generate Convergence to Nash Equilibria? The Role of Supermodularity in an Experimental Setting

By Yan Chen and Robert Gazzale

American Economic Review, December 2004

This study clarifies the conditions under which learning in games produces convergence to Nash equilibria in practice. We experimentally investigate the role of supermodularity, which is closely related to the more familiar concept of strategic complement...

Addiction and Cue-Triggered Decision Processes

By B. Douglas Bernheim and Antonio Rangel

American Economic Review, December 2004

We propose a model of addiction based on three premises: (i) use among addicts is frequently a mistake; (ii) experience sensitizes an individual to environmental cues that trigger mistaken usage; (iii) addicts understand and manage their susceptibilities....

Economic Understanding in US High School Courses

By William B. Walstad

American Economic Review, May 2013

The effects of courses on student achievement are studied using 2006 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in economics. A regression analysis showed expected and significant achievement differences by course, with the highest s...

Aggregating Local Preferences to Guide Marginal Policy Adjustments

By Daniel J. Benjamin, Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Nichole Szembrot

American Economic Review, May 2013

We propose a social choice rule for aggregating preferences elicited from surveys into a marginal adjustment of policy from the status quo. The mechanism is: (i) symmetric in its treatment of survey respondents; (ii) ordinal, using only the orientation of...

Status Incentives

By Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

American Economic Review, May 2008

Telling Better Stories in Introductory Macro

By David Colander

American Economic Review, May 2000

The Continuous Combinatorial Auction Architecture

By Charles R. Plott, Hsing-Yang Lee, and Travis Maron

American Economic Review, May 2014

The paper reports the architecture of a continuous combinatorial auction. Preferences are based on sets of items and feasibility requires the nonintersection of sets. Countdown clocks replace eligibility and activity requirements typical of rounds-based a...

The Changing Distributions of New Ph.D. Economists and Their Employment: Implications for the Future

By Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1999

This essay addressed the changing demographic composition of new Ph.D.s in economics and the changing distribution of the jobs that they are obtaining. It discusses how future trends may interact to influence the types of training that economists may prov...

Correspondence

By Douglas Holtz-Eakin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1993

The Evolution of Egalitarian Sociolinguistic Conventions

By Suresh Naidu, Sung-Ha Hwang, and Samuel Bowles

American Economic Review, May 2017

Motivated by historical examples and ideas from socio-linguistics, in particular the "non-reciprocal power semantic" of Brown and Gilman (1960), we extend evolutionary models of language to incorporate intentional linguistic innovations among conventions ...

Symposium on Public and Private Unionization

[Symposium: Explaining Savings]

By Edward P. Lazear

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1988

Understanding the source of the decline of private sector unions and concomitant rise of public sectors unions is essential. Without that knowledge, the welfare effects of the changes cannot be ascertained. The two essays that follow take us a long way do...

Owner-Occupied Housing: Life-Cycle Implications for the Household Portfolio

By Marjorie Flavin and Takashi Yamashita

American Economic Review, May 2011

The paper constructs a model of optimal portfolio allocation incorporating the role of housing as collateral. Current house value is a state variable in the portfolio decision due to a nonconvex adjustment cost. Holding risk aversion constant, the percent...

Business Fixed Investment and "Bubbles": The Japanese Case

By Robert S. Chirinko and Huntley Schaller

American Economic Review, June 2001

Adult Antiretroviral Therapy and Child Health: Evidence from Scale-Up in Zambia

By Adrienne M. Lucas and Nicholas L. Wilson

American Economic Review, May 2013

One in five Zambian children lives with an HIV/AIDS-infected adult. We estimate the effect that the availability of adult antiretroviral therapy (ART) has on the health of such children. Using a triple difference specification, we find that adult access t...

The Effects of School Calendar Type on Maternal Employment across Racial Groups: A Story of Child Care Availability

By Jennifer Graves

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper presents evidence that school districts' use of an alternative academic calendar, the year-round school calendar, results in a reduction in maternal employment for women with school-aged children that varies in magnitude across racial groups. N...

An Asset Allocation Puzzle: Comment

By Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, James V. Jordan, and Roland Portait

American Economic Review, September 2001