The Distortionary Effects of Incentives in Government: Evidence from China's "Death Ceiling" Program

By Raymond Fisman and Yongxiang Wang

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2017

We study a 2004 program designed to motivate Chinese bureaucrats to reduce accidental deaths. Each province received a set of "death ceilings" that, if exceeded, would impede government officials' promotions. For each category of accidental deaths, we obs...

Why Has US Policy Uncertainty Risen since 1960?

By Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, Brandice Canes-Wrone, Steven J. Davis, and Jonathan Rodden

American Economic Review, May 2014

We consider two classes of explanations for the rise in policy-related economic uncertainty in the United States since 1960. The first stresses growth in government spending, taxes, and regulation. A second stresses increased political polarization and i...

Natural Disasters, Economic Development, and Humanitarian Aid

By David Strömberg

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2007

Natural disasters are one of the major problems facing humankind. Between 1980 and 2004, two million people were reported killed and five billion people cumulatively affected by around 7,000 natural disasters, according to the dataset maintained by the Ce...

Interview with Edmund S. Phelps

By Howard R. Vane and Chris Mulhearn

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2009

Edmund S. Phelps has been McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University in New York City, New York, since 1982 and director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University's Earth Institute since 2001. In 2006, he was award...

Part D Formulary and Benefit Design as a Risk-Steering Mechanism

By Dana P. Goldman, Geoffrey F. Joyce, and William B. Vogt

American Economic Review, May 2011

Medicare Part D relies upon drug plan competition. Plans have enormous scope to design benefits and to set premiums, but they may not charge differential premiums based on risk. We use the formulary and benefit design of all Medicare prescription drug pla...

Conditional Cash Transfers, Public Provision of Private Goods, and Income Redistribution

By Firouz Gahvari and Enlinson Mattos

American Economic Review, March 2007

This paper examines the role of cash transfers as a screening device when combined with in-kind transfers. It shows that linking in-kind to cash transfers makes first-best redistribution possible despite the government's inability to tell rich and poor in...

Report of the Secretary

By Peter L. Rousseau

American Economic Review, May 2016

Simultaneous Model of Innovation, Secrecy, and Patent Policy

By Klaus Kultti, Tuomas Takalo, and Juuso Toikka

American Economic Review, May 2006

Appliance Ownership and Aspirations among Electric Grid and Home Solar Households in Rural Kenya

By Kenneth Lee, Edward Miguel, and Catherine Wolfram

American Economic Review, May 2016

In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are active debates about whether increases in energy access should be driven by investments in electric grid infrastructure or small-scale "home solar" systems (e.g., solar lanterns and solar home systems). We summarize the re...

Development from Representation? A Study of Quotas for the Scheduled Castes in India

By Francesca Refsum Jensenius

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2015

This paper estimates the constituency-level development effects of quotas for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) in India, using a unique dataset of development indicators for more than 3,100 state assembly constituencies in 15 Indian states in 1971 and 2001. Mat...

Drug Innovations and Welfare Measures Computed from Market Demand: The Case of Anti-cholesterol Drugs

By Abe Dunn

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2012

The pharmaceutical industry is characterized as having substantial investment in R&D and a large number of new product introductions, which poses special problems for price measurement caused by the quality of drug products changing over time. This paper...

Comments: Robert Solow, Murray Wiedenbaum, V. V. Chari, and Patrick J. Kehoe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2008

The Future Information Infrastructure in Economics

[Symposium: Electronic Journals in Economics]

By William L. Goffe and Robert P. Parks

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1997

This paper is a first look at how the information infrastructure for economists will change with the arrival of the Internet. While paper has long been used for the flow of information in the profession, computer networks are starting to supplement it and...

Individual versus Parental Consent in Marriage: Implications for Intra-Household Resource Allocation and Growth

By Lena Edlund and Nils-Petter Lagerlöf

American Economic Review, May 2006

Distinguishing Income from Substitution Effects in Disability Insurance

By David H. Autor and Mark G. Duggan

American Economic Review, May 2007

Skewed Bidding in Pay-per-Action Auctions for Online Advertising

By Nikhil Agarwal, Susan Athey, and David Yang

American Economic Review, May 2009

The Role of Preferences and Opportunity Costs in Determining the Time Allocated to Housework

By Leslie S. Stratton

American Economic Review, May 2012

Research on intrahousehold time allocations has assumed that housework is a necessary evil and focused exclusively on the causal role of opportunity costs. In fact, agents likely act to maximize happiness, and preferences regarding even mundane household ...

Optimal Adoption of Complementary Technologies

By Boyan Jovanovic and Dmitriy Stolyarov

American Economic Review, March 2000

When a production process requires two extremely complementary inputs, conventional wisdom holds that a firm would always upgrade them simultaneously. We show, however, that if upgrading each input involves a fixed cost, the firm may upgrade them at diffe...

On the Workability of Market Socialism

By Pranab Bardhan and John E. Roemer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1994

Contrary to the claim of Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny (1994), it is conceivable under market socialism to take firms out of the orbit of state control and that a less narrow theory of the state than theirs allows the possibility of democratic soci...

Family, Education, and Sources of Wealth among the Richest Americans, 1982-2012

By Steven N. Kaplan and Joshua D. Rauh

American Economic Review, May 2013

We examine characteristics of the 400 wealthiest individuals in the United States over the past three decades as tabulated by Forbes Magazine, and analyze which theories of increasing inequality are most consistent with these data. The people of the Forbe...