Is a Uniform Social Policy Better? Fiscal Federalism and Factor Mobility

By Roberto Perotti

American Economic Review, June 2001

This paper develops a two-country model to study two questions. How do the degrees of centralization of redistribution and of factor mobility affect the productive efficiency of the economies? What degrees of centralization of redistribution and of factor...

Hedging against the Government: A Solution to the Home Asset Bias Puzzle

By Tiago C. Berriel and Saroj Bhattarai

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2013

We explain why international nominal bonds and equity portfolios are biased domestically. In our model, holding domestic government nominal debt provides a hedge against shocks to bond returns and the impact on taxes they induce. For this result, only ...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, January 2017

Limiting Buyer Discretion: Effects on Performance and Price in Long-Term Contracts

By Lisa J. Cameron

American Economic Review, March 2000

Why Does Trend Growth Affect Equilibrium Employment? A New Explanation of an Old Puzzle

By Michael W. L. Elsby and Matthew D. Shapiro

American Economic Review, June 2012

That the employment rate appears to respond to changes in trend growth is an enduring macroeconomic puzzle. This paper shows that, in the presence of a return to experience, a slowdown in productivity growth raises reservation wages, thereby lowering aggr...

The Introduction of Markets in a Hypercentralized Economy: The Case of Romania

By Avner Ben-Ner and J. Michael Montias

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1991

This paper discusses communist Romania, the economy in the Ceausescu era, 1965-1989, the economy after the Revolution of December 22, 1989, and current problems and prospects for the Romanian economy.

Social Value and the Speed of Innovation

By Kevin M. Murphy and Robert H. Topel

American Economic Review, May 2007

The Economics Major as Part of a Liberal Education: The Teagle Report

By David Colander and KimMarie McGoldrick

American Economic Review, May 2009

Business Cycles and Gender Diversification: An Analysis of Establishment-Level Gender Dissimilarity

By Cynthia Bansak, Mary E. Graham, and Allan A. Zebedee

American Economic Review, May 2012

During recessions, the focus on male job losses may overshadow other important outcome variables. We examine the effects of economic downturns on occupational segregation by gender, using staffing data from over 6 million private-sector US establishments ...

Challenges in Constructing a Survey-Based Well-Being Index

By Daniel J. Benjamin, Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, and Miles Kimball

American Economic Review, May 2017

How should a survey-based measure of well-being be implemented? How could it be constructed in a systematic and politically neutral way? These questions should be approached by economists with the same level of care that has been taken in the theoretical ...

The Wrong Shape of Insurance? What Cross-Sectional Distributions Tell Us about Models of Consumption Smoothing

By Tobias Broer

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2013

This paper shows how two standard models of consumption risk-sharing—self-insurance through borrowing and saving and limited commitment to insurance contracts—replicate similarly well the standard, second-moment measures of insurance observed in US...

Incremental Universalism for the United States: The States Move First?

[Symposium: Health Care]

By Jonathan Gruber

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2008

The latest wave of health care proposals and laws in the United Sates has been marked by what I call "incremental universalism" -- that is, getting to universal health insurance coverage by filling the gaps in the existing system, rather than ripping up t...

The USSR before the Fall: How Poor and Why

[Symposium: Economic Transition in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe]

By Abram Bergson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1991

This essay appraises the scholarly findings on the level of consumption and output in the USSR, compared with that in the West. Such aggregative calculations are onerous for any country, and not very surprisingly have encountered particular difficulty whe...

The Estate Tax and Inter Vivos Transfers over Time

By Kathleen McGarry

American Economic Review, May 2013

The strong dislike evidenced by the American public towards the estate tax suggests that the wealthy wish to transfer resources to their heirs tax-free and would thus exploit mechanisms allowing them to reduce the tax burden whenever possible. However, I ...

The Effects of Rate Regulation on Demand for Supplemental Health Insurance

By M. Kate Bundorf and Kosali I. Simon

American Economic Review, May 2006

Crises and Recoveries in an Empirical Model of Consumption Disasters

By Emi Nakamura, Jón Steinsson, Robert Barro, and José Ursúa

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2013

We estimate an empirical model of consumption disasters using new data on consumption for 24 countries over more than 100 years, and study its implications for asset prices. The model allows for partial recoveries after disasters that unfold over multi...

Governance and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

[Symposium: Slow Growth in Africa]

By Benno J. Ndulu and Stephen A. O'Connell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1999

Real income per head in much of sub-Saharan Africa grew rapidly in the 1960s, but faltered following the first OPEC oil price shock in 1973-74, and then stagnated or fell from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Africa also saw a broad wave of authoritaria...

LEP Language Disability, Immigration Reform, and English-Language Acquisition

By Alberto Dávila and Marie T. Mora

American Economic Review, May 2016

Policy might partly shape the English-language acquisition of Hispanics migrating to the U.S. mainland, particularly policies related to limited-English-language disability benefits and immigration reform. Using data from the American Community Survey, we...

Job to Job Movements in a Simple Search Model

By Pietro Garibaldi and Espen R. Moen

American Economic Review, May 2010

Optimal Taxation and Social Insurance with Endogenous Private Insurance

By Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2010

We characterize welfare gains from government intervention when the private sector provides partial insurance. We analyze models in which adverse selection, pre-existing information, or imperfect optimization create a role for government intervention. We ...