The EITC, Tax Refunds, and Unemployment Spells

By Sara LaLumia

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2013

The earned income tax credit generates large average tax refunds for low-income parents, and these refunds are distributed in a narrow time frame. I rely on this plausibly exogenous source of variation in liquidity to investigate the effect of cash on ...

Report: Committee on Economic Education

By Sam Allgood

American Economic Review, May 2016

Markets in China and Europe on the Eve of the Industrial Revolution

By Carol H. Shiue and Wolfgang Keller

American Economic Review, September 2007

Why did Western Europe industrialize first? An influential view holds that its exceptionally well-functioning markets supported with a certain set of institutions provided the incentives to make investments needed to industrialize. This paper examines t...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2016

No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete When Competing against Self

By Coren L. Apicella, Elif E. Demiral, and Johanna Mollerstrom

American Economic Review, May 2017

We report on two experiments investigating whether there is a gender difference in the willingness to compete against oneself (self-competition), similar to what is found when competing against others (other-competition). In one laboratory and one online ...

Exogenous versus Endogenous Separation

By Shigeru Fujita and Garey Ramey

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2012

This paper assesses how various approaches to modeling the separation margin affect the quantitative ability of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor matching model. The model with a constant separation rate fails to produce realistic volatility and productivit...

Free to Choose? Reform, Choice, and Consideration Sets in the English National Health Service

By Martin Gaynor, Carol Propper, and Stephan Seiler

American Economic Review, November 2016

Choice in public services is controversial. We exploit a reform in the English National Health Service to assess the effect of removing constraints on patient choice. We estimate a demand model that explicitly captures the removal of the choice constraint...

Expanding "Choice" in School Choice

By Atila Abdulkadiroğlu, Yeon-Koo Che, and Yosuke Yasuda

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2015

Gale-Shapley's deferred acceptance (henceforth DA) mechanism has emerged as a prominent candidate for placing students to public schools. While DA has desirable fairness and incentive properties, it limits the applicants' abilities to communicate their pr...

How Large Are the Effects from Temporary Changes in Family Environment: Evidence from a Child-Evacuation Program during World War II

By Torsten Santavirta

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2012

During World War II, some 50,000 Finnish children were evacuated to Sweden and placed in foster families. The evacuation scheme limited sharply the scope for selection into foster care based on background characteristics. A first-come first-served policy ...

Effectiveness of Employer-Provided Financial Information: Hiring to Retiring

By Robert L. Clark, Melinda Sandler Morrill, and Steven G. Allen

American Economic Review, May 2012

Workers plan and save for retirement throughout their careers. Individuals must navigate complex financial instruments and understand public and employer-provided retirement plan characteristics. Beginning when a worker is first hired, most employers prov...

Persistent Antimarket Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement after the Holocaust

By Irena Grosfeld, Alexander Rodnyansky, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2013

We estimate long-term effects of Jewish presence in Europe before World War II, using discontinuity at the border of the "Pale of Settlement" area where Jews were allowed to live in the Russian Empire. Current residents of the Pale have lower support for ...

Correlation Misperception in Choice

By Andrew Ellis and Michele Piccione

American Economic Review, April 2017

We present a decision-theoretic analysis of an agent's understanding of the interdependencies in her choices. We provide the foundations for a simple and flexible model that allows the misperception of correlated risks. We introduce a framework in which t...

Factor Proportions and Relative Wages: The Supply-Side Determinants of Wage Inequality

[Symposium: Wage Inequality]

By Robert H. Topel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1997

Supply-side factors may contribute to rising wage inequality. First, certain changes in the supply of skills allegedly exacerbate wage inequality. Women's increased labor force participation and increased immigration are the leading candidates; both alleg...

Can Tax Breaks Beat Geography? Lessons from the French Enterprise Zone Experience

By Anthony Briant, Miren Lafourcade, and Benoît Schmutz

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2015

This paper shows that urban geography matters to the effectiveness of place-based policies, using the French enterprise zone program as a case study. Whereas this program created more jobs in spatially integrated neighborhoods, its impact on local wages w...

Generational Accounting around the Globe

By Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Bernd Raffelhuschen

American Economic Review, May 1999

Trade and Exposure

By Kathryn M. E. Dominguez and Linda L. Tesar

American Economic Review, May 2001

In Honor of David Kreps, Winner of the John Bates Clark Medal

By Jean Tirole

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1990

David Kreps is the winner of the 1989 John Bates Clark Medal, given to "that American economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." I will try to explain where Kreps's contributions fit i...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2016

Aggregate Uncertainty Can Lead to Incorrect Herds

By Ignacio Monzón

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2017

A continuum of homogeneous rational agents choose between two competing technologies. Agents observe a private signal and sample others' previous choices. Signals have an aggregate component of uncertainty, so aggregate behavior does not necessarily refle...

The Long-Term Direct and External Effects of Jewish Expulsions in Nazi Germany

By Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel and Mutlu Yuksel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

This paper examines the long-term direct and spillover effects of large-scale human capital loss caused by the persecution of Jewish professionals in Nazi Germany. Using region-by-cohort variation in the percentage of the Jewish population as a quasi-expe...