Ability-Tracking, Instructional Time, and Better Pedagogy: The Effect of Double-Dose Algebra on Student Achievement

By Kalena E. Cortes and Joshua S. Goodman

American Economic Review, May 2014

This paper provides new evidence on tracking by studying an innovative curriculum implemented by Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In 2003, CPS enacted a double-dose algebra policy requiring 9th grade students with 8th grade math scores below the national med...

Democracy and Development: The Devil in the Details

By Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini

American Economic Review, May 2006

Children in the Vanguard of the U.S. Welfare State: A Review of Janet Currie's The Invisible Safety Net and Jane Waldfogel's What Children Need

By Eugene Smolensky

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2007

Policy driven social science research intended to influence the future of the U.S. welfare state has, during the past decade, emphasized improving the life-chances of children, particularly children disadvantaged at birth by the socioeconomic status of...

Competition, Comparative Performance, and Market Transparency

By Bruce I. Carlin, Shaun William Davies, and Andrew Iannaccone

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2012

We study how competition affects market transparency, taking into account that comparative performance is assessed via tournaments and contests. Extending Dye (1985) to a multi-firm setting in which top performers are rewarded, we show that increased com...

Reflections on 25 Years of CSWEP

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

The Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Here, we republish the text of the resolution that created CSWEP, along with comments on the role of CSWEP in the economics profession from Robin L....

Executive Compensation: Six Questions That Need Answering

By John M. Abowd and David S. Kaplan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1999

This article address six questions concerning executive compensation, drawing on recent advances in the study of executive compensation, including the role of stock and option holdings: How much does executive compensation cost the firm? How much is execu...

The Doing Business Project: How It Started: Correspondence

By Simeon Djankov

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2016

How Deep Are the Roots of Economic Development?

By Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2013

The empirical literature on economic growth and development has moved from the study of proximate determinants to the analysis of ever deeper, more fundamental factors, rooted in long-term history. A growing body of new empirical work focuses on the me...

Takeovers: Their Causes and Consequences

[Symposium: Takeovers]

By Michael C. Jensen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1988

Economists have accumulated considerable evidence and knowledge on the effects of the takeover market. Here, I focus on current aspects of the controversy. My assessment is that the market for corporate control is creating large benefits for shareholders ...

Welfare Cost of Business Cycles with Idiosyncratic Consumption Risk and a Preference for Robustness

By Martin Ellison and Thomas J. Sargent

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2015

The welfare cost of random consumption fluctuations is known from De Santis (2007) to be increasing in the level of uninsured idiosyncratic consumption risk. It is known from Barillas, Hansen, and Sargent (2009) to increase if agents care about robustness...

Do Child Tax Benefits Affect the Well-Being of Children? Evidence from Canadian Child Benefit Expansions

By Kevin Milligan and Mark Stabile

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2011

We exploit changes in child benefits in Canada to study the impact of family income on child and family well-being. Using variation in child benefits across province, time, and family type, we study outcomes spanning test scores, mental health, physical h...

Understanding Bubbly Episodes

By Vasco M. Carvalho, Alberto Martin, and Jaume Ventura

American Economic Review, May 2012

Over the last two decades US aggregate wealth has fluctuated substantially. Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, the effects of these boom-and-bust cycles have come to dominate academic and policy discussions. How can we explain these fluctuations...

Economic Forecasting

By Graham Elliott and Allan Timmermann

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2008

Forecasts guide decisions in all areas of economics and finance and their value can only be understood in relation to, and in the context of, such decisions. We discuss the central role of the loss function in helping determine the forecaster's objectiv...

Decentralization, Hierarchies, and Incentives: A Mechanism Design Perspective

By Dilip Mookherjee

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2006

Separation of ownership from management, multidivisional firm organizations, delegation of production decisions to worker teams, delegation of pricing and advertising decisions to retail franchisers, reliance on intermediaries in trade or finance, and d...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2009

The Role of Unemployment in the Rise in Alternative Work Arrangements

By Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger

American Economic Review, May 2017

The share of U.S. workers in alternative work arrangements has increased substantially in recent decades. Micro longitudinal analyses show that unemployed workers are much more likely to transition into alternative work arrangements than other workers. Ma...

Do Expert Reviews Affect the Demand for Wine?

By Richard Friberg and Erik Grönqvist

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

We examine the demand for wines in Sweden using five years of weekly data on sales, advertising, and expert reviews. The effect of a favorable review peaks in the week after publication with an increase in demand of 6 percent, and the effect remains signi...

Voting on the Budget Deficit: Comment

By Ben D. Peletier, Robert A. J. Dur, and Otto H. Swank

American Economic Review, December 1999

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2011

Should America Save for Its Old Age? Fiscal Policy, Population Aging, and National Saving

[Symposium: Fiscal Policy]

By Douglas W. Elmendorf and Louise M. Sheiner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2000

We examine whether the aging of the U.S. population adds force to traditional arguments for boosting national saving and conclude--perhaps surprisingly--that it may not. Aging boosts the demands on future resources, but it also changes the rate of return ...