Nobel Laureate: The Many Other Allais Paradoxes

By Bertrand R. Munier

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

Maurice Allais is know for the 1952 "Allais paradox," but other very important parts of his work remain virtually unknown to most economists. As Paul Samuelson (1983) wrote, "Had Allais' earliest writings been in English, a whole generation of economic th...

$1,000 Cash Back: The Pass-Through of Auto Manufacturer Promotions

By Meghan Busse, Jorge Silva-Risso, and Florian Zettelmeyer

American Economic Review, September 2006

Automobile manufacturers frequently use promotions involving cash incentives. While payments are nominally directed to either customers or dealers, the ultimate beneficiary of the promotion depends on the outcome of price negotiation. We use program ev...

The Effects of Job Corps Training on Wages of Adolescents and Young Adults

By German Blanco, Carlos A. Flores, and Alfonso Flores-Lagunes

American Economic Review, May 2013

Previous evaluations of Job Corps document disparate effects on the earnings of adolescents (aged 16-19) and young adults (aged 20-24). These are conjectured to be due to differential human capital accumulation within the program between these groups. If ...

On the Evolution of the World Income Distribution

[Symposium: Distribution of World Income]

By Charles I. Jones

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1997

The post-World War I period has seen substantial changes in the world income distribution. As a result, the shape of the distribution has changed from something that looks like a normal distribution in 1960 to a bimodal 'twin peaks' distribution in 1988. ...

The Bidder's Curse: Comment

By Henry S. Schneider

American Economic Review, April 2016

The prices of auctions on eBay often exceed eBay's fixed-price "Buy- It-Now" prices. I investigate the causes of this overbidding, focusing on the interpretation in Malmendier and Lee (2011) that the observed overbidding cannot be explained "without al...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2014

Adverse Selection in Durable Goods Markets

By Igal Hendel and Alessandro Lizzeri

American Economic Review, December 1999

We present a dynamic model of adverse selection to examine the interactions between new and used goods markets. We find that the used market never shuts down, the volume of trade can be large, and distortions are lower than previously thought. New cars pr...

Changes in Transportation Infrastructure and Commuting Patterns in US Metropolitan Areas, 1960-2000

By Nathaniel Baum-Snow

American Economic Review, May 2010

Risk and Precautionary Saving in Two-Person Households

By Patricia Apps, Yuri Andrienko, and Ray Rees

American Economic Review, March 2014

The existing literature on precautionary saving is based almost entirely on the assumption that the household acts as if it consisted of a single individual decision-taker. In reality saving decisions are typically taken by two-person households. This p...

Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function

By Barbara Petrongolo and Christopher A. Pissarides

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2001

This paper surveys the microfoundations, empirical evidence, and estimation issues underlying the aggregate matching function. There is no consensus yet on microfoundations but one is emerging on estimation. An aggregate, constant returns, Cobb-Douglas ma...

International Monetary Relations: Taking Finance Seriously

[Symposium: The Global Monetary System]

By Maurice Obstfeld and Alan M. Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2017

In this essay, we highlight the interactions of the international monetary system with financial conditions, not just with the output, inflation, and balance of payments goals usually discussed. We review how financial conditions and outright financial cr...

Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War

By Benjamin F. Jones and Benjamin A. Olken

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2009

Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new dataset of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify the...

The Market for Corporate Control: The Empirical Evidence Since 1980

[Symposium: Takeovers]

By Gregg A. Jarrell, James A. Brickley, and Jeffry M. Netter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1988

In the 1980s, the market for corporate control has been increasingly active, and the quantity of output of academic researchers studying corporate control questions has mirrored the market activity. This review examines the returns to bidders and targets,...

Medicare Reform: The Larger Picture

[Symposium: The Future of Medicare]

By Victor R. Fuchs

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2000

The "Medicare problem" is examined as part of the larger problem of providing for the overall financial needs of the elderly. Several myths about Medicare are discussed, and sources and uses of the elderly's "full income" are estimated. The paper explores...

Remembering Joseph A. Pechman, 1918-1989

By Henry J. Aaron

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1990

Joe Pechman joined the staff of the Brookings Institution in 1960. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1937 and the University of Wisconsin in 1942. During World War II, he worked in the war time Office of Price Administration and later serv...

Revisiting Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis

By Roger E. Backhouse

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2015

Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis played a major role in defining how economic theory was undertaken for many years after the Second World War. This paper fills out Samuelson's account of the book's origins and corrects some detai...

Competing for Loyalty: The Dynamics of Rallying Support

By Matias Iaryczower and Santiago Oliveros

American Economic Review, October 2017

We consider a class of dynamic collective action problems in which either a single principal or two competing principals vie for the support of members of a group. We focus on the dynamic problem that emerges when agents negotiate and commit their support...

Labor-Market Integration, Investment in Risky Human Capital, and Fiscal Competition

By David E. Wildasin

American Economic Review, March 2000

This paper presents a general-equilibrium model where human capital investment increases specialization and exposes skilled workers to region-specific earnings risk Interjurisdictional mobility of skilled labor mitigates these risks; state-contingent migr...

Economic Effects of Childhood Exposure to Tropical Disease

By Hoyt Bleakley

American Economic Review, May 2009

Horizontal Mergers: Triage and Treatment

[Symposium: Horizontal Mergers and Antitrust]

By Franklin M. Fisher

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1987

The pursuit of any sort of structural policy towards oligopoly presupposes that we can recognize anticompetitive structures when we see them. Unfortunately, that requisite is not easy to meet, and there is a temptation to avoid difficult analysis in favor...