Fiscal Externalities and Optimal Unemployment Insurance

By Nicholas Lawson

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2017

A common finding of the optimal unemployment insurance (UI) literature is that the optimal replacement rate is around 50 percent; however, a key assumption is that UI is the only government spending activity. I show that optimal UI levels may be dramatica...

Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles

By Andrew E. Clark, Paul Frijters, and Michael A. Shields

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2008

The well-known Easterlin paradox points out that average happiness has remained constant over time despite sharp rises in GNP per head. At the same time, a micro literature has typically found positive correlations between individual income and individ...

The Changing Role of Government in Financing Health Care: An International Perspective

By Mark Stabile and Sarah Thomson

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2014

This paper explores the changing role of government involvement in health care financing policy outside the United States. It provides a review of the economics literature in this area to elucidate the implications of recent policy changes on efficiency, ...

Estate Taxation with Altruism Heterogeneity

By Emmanuel Farhi and Iván Werning

American Economic Review, May 2013

We develop a theory of optimal estate taxation in a model where bequest inequality is driven by differences in parental altruism. We show that a wide range of results are possible, from positive taxes to subsidies. The results depend on redistributive obj...

Preemption Games: Theory and Experiment

By Steven T. Anderson, Daniel Friedman, and Ryan Oprea

American Economic Review, September 2010

Several impatient investors with private costs Ci face an indivisible irreversible investment opportunity whose value V is governed by geometric Brownian motion. The first investor i to seize the opportunity receives ...

Teaching Statistics and Econometrics to Undergraduates

By William E. Becker and William H. Greene

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

Traditionally econometrics and economics statistics have been taught in the theory and proof, chalk and talk mode commonly found in the teaching of mathematics. We advance the use of computer technology in the teaching of quantitative methods to get stude...

Quantile Regression

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Roger Koenker and Kevin F. Hallock

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

Quantile regression, as introduced by Koenker and Bassett (1978), may be viewed as an extension of classical least squares estimation of conditional mean models to the estimation of an ensemble of models for several conditional quantile functions. The cen...

Intertemporal Depletion of Resource Sites by Spatially Distributed Users

By Gerard Gaudet, Michel Moreaux, and Stephen W. Salant

American Economic Review, September 2001

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2009

The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment

By Justin R. Pierce and Peter K. Schott

American Economic Review, July 2016

This paper links the sharp drop in US manufacturing employment after 2000 to a change in US trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries more exposed to the change experience greater employment loss, increased imp...

Decoupling and Recoupling

By Anton Korinek, Agustin Roitman, and Carlos A. Végh

American Economic Review, May 2010

Do Output Contractions Cause Investment in Fiscal Capacity?

By Christian Gillitzer

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2017

This paper shows that an economic slump can induce a government to invest in fiscal capacity. Large negative income shocks stress the revenue-raising capability of narrow tax bases, making an increase in tax base breadth desirable relative to its fixed im...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2017

Coarse Competitive Equilibrium and Extreme Prices

By Faruk Gul, Wolfgang Pesendorfer, and Tomasz Strzalecki

American Economic Review, January 2017

We introduce a notion of coarse competitive equilibrium, to study agents' inability to tailor their consumption to prices. Our goal is to incorporate limited cognitive ability (in particular limited attention, memory, and complexity) into the analysis of ...

Rules and Authorities in International Monetary Arrangements: The Role of the Central Bank

By Robert Z. Aliber

American Economic Review, May 2000

Risk, Delay, and Convex Self-Control Costs

By Drew Fudenberg and David K. Levine

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

We develop a dual-self model of self-control that is compatible with modern dynamic macroeconomic theory and evidence. We show that a convex cost of self-control explains a wide range of behavioral anomalies concerning risk, including the Allais paradox,...

Intermediation Reduces Punishment (and Reward)

By Lucas C. Coffman

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2011

This paper shows moral decision making is not well predicted by the overall fairness of an act but rather by the fairness of the consequences that follow directly. In laboratory experiments, third-party punishment for keeping money from a poorer player de...

Law, Coercion, and Expression: A Review Essay on Frederick Schauer's The Force of Law and Richard McAdams's The Expressive Powers of Law

By Eric Rasmusen

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2017

What is law and why do people obey it? This question from jurisprudence has recently been tackled using the tools of economics. The field of law and economics has long studied how fines and imprisonment affect behavior. Nobody believes, however, that all ...

The Medium-Term Impact of Medicare Part D on Pharmaceutical Prices

By Mark G. Duggan and Fiona Scott Morton

American Economic Review, May 2011

Medicare Part D began coverage of prescription drugs in 2006. Using data from the first year of the program we found that Part D reduced pharmaceutical prices for Medicare recipients, with these effects driven by enrollees previously without drug coverage...

Can Mobile Phones Improve Learning? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Niger

By Jenny C. Aker, Christopher Ksoll, and Travis J. Lybbert

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

The returns to educational investments hinge on whether such investments can improve the quality and persistence of educational gains. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of an adult education program in Niger, in which some students learne...