Information Percolation

By Darrell Duffie, Gaston Giroux, and Gustavo Manso

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2010

We study the "percolation" of information of common interest through a large market as agents encounter and reveal information to each other over time. We provide an explicit solution for the dynamics of the cross-sectional distribution of posterior be...

Mechanisms for Repeated Trade

By Andrzej Skrzypacz and Juuso Toikka

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2015

How does feasibility of efficient repeated trade depend on the features of the environment such as persistence of values, private information about their evolution, or trading frequency? We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for efficient, unsubs...

A Retrospective Look at the U.S. Productivity Growth Resurgence

[Symposium: Productivity]

By Dale W. Jorgenson, Mun S. Ho, and Kevin J. Stiroh

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2008

It is widely recognized that information technology was critical to the dramatic acceleration of U.S. labor productivity growth in the mid 1990s. This paper traces the evolution of productivity estimates to document how and when this perception emerged. E...

Fallibility in Human Organizations and Political Systems

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By Raaj Kumar Sah

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This paper presents a perspective on some organizational consequences of human fallibility. It may be easier to get a flavor of the relevant issues by examining the role of fallibility in specific settings, rather than through abstract arguments. So, in t...

Sharp for SARP: Nonparametric Bounds on Counterfactual Demands

By Richard Blundell, Martin Browning, Laurens Cherchye, Ian Crawford, Bram De Rock, and Frederic Vermeulen

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2015

Sharp nonparametric bounds are derived for counterfactual demands and Hicksian compensating and equivalent variations. These "i-bounds" refine and extend earlier results of Blundell, Browning, and Crawford (2008). We show that their bounds are sharp under...

Selected International Aspects of Carbon Taxation

By Charles E. McLure Jr.

American Economic Review, May 2014

Disparate commitments to reduce GHG emissions create demands for border carbon adjustments (BCAs) to prevent negative competitive effects and carbon leakage. BCAs that accomplish economic objectives and are administratively feasible, WTO-legal, and politi...

The Impact of Medical and Nursing Home Expenses on Savings

By Karen A. Kopecky and Tatyana Koreshkova

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2014

We consider a life-cycle model with idiosyncratic risk in earnings, out-of-pocket medical and nursing home expenses, and survival. Partial insurance is available through welfare, Medicaid, and social security. Calibrating the model to the United States we...

Report of the Committee on Economic Education for 2010

By Michael Watts

American Economic Review, May 2011

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1993

Markets: The U.S. Lodging Industry

By Arturs Kalnins

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2006

The U.S. lodging industry appears highly competitive. Ownership concentration appears to be low. Fixed costs are high relative to variable costs and unused rooms cannot be stored for future sale, so price-cutting should be attractive. However, this paper ...

More Evidence on the Performance of Merger Simulations

By Matthew C. Weinberg

American Economic Review, May 2011

Merger simulations are commonly used to simulate the effects of potential mergers. Despite the large resources devoted to merger review, little evidence exists on the accuracy of these methods. This paper uses the acquisition of Tambrands by Proctor and G...

Distinguished Fellow: Reflections of Thomas Schelling

By Richard Zeckhauser

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1989

Thomas Crombie Schelling thinks about the essence of phenomena. He distills such essences and demonstrates their presence in many important social phenomena. We shall chronicle three stages of his life, designated by the titles of his books: The Strategy ...

Foreign-Born Teaching Assistants and the Academic Performance of Undergraduates

By George J. Borjas

American Economic Review, May 2000

Policy Watch: Income-Contingent College Loans

By Alan B. Krueger and William G. Bowen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1993

We consider the recently proposed "income-contingent loan" (ICL), in which Congress would establish a national trust fund from which students could borrow money to finance the cost of attending college; students would repay these loans by contributing a f...

Surprised by the Parimutuel Odds?

By Marco Ottaviani and Peter Norman Sørensen

American Economic Review, December 2009

Empirical analyses of parimutuel betting markets have documented that market probabilities of favorites (longshots) tend to underestimate (overestimate) the corresponding empirical probabilities. We argue that this favorite-longshot bias is consistent wit...

Knowledge of Future Job Loss and Implications for Unemployment Insurance

By Nathaniel Hendren

American Economic Review, July 2017

This paper studies the implications of individuals' knowledge of future job loss for the existence of an unemployment insurance (UI) market. Learning about job loss leads to consumption decreases and spousal labor supply increases. This suggests existing ...

The Importance of Being Wanted

By Quy-Toan Do and Tung D. Phung

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2010

We identify birth wantedness as a source of better child outcomes. In Vietnam, the year of birth is widely believed to determine success. As a result, cohorts born in auspicious years are 12 percent larger. Comparing siblings with one another, those of au...

Compensating Differentials for Sexual Harassment

By Joni Hersch

American Economic Review, May 2011

Workplace sexual harassment is illegal, but many workers report that they have been sexually harassed. Exposure to the risk of sexual harassment may decrease productivity, which would reduce wages. Alternatively, workers may receive a compensating differe...

Labor Economics and the Psychology of Organizations

[Symposium: Organizations and Economics]

By Edward P. Lazear

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This essay is a discussion of how economists are attempting to understand institutions within the organizations of the labor market. The institutions and issues discussed include mandatory retirement; discontinuous jumps in wages; pay compression; rights ...

Research in Economic Education: Five New Initiatives

By Michael K. Salemi, John J. Siegfried, Kim Sosin, William B. Walstad, and Michael Watts

American Economic Review, May 2001