Ethnicity and Development in Africa: A Reappraisal

By Robert H. Bates

American Economic Review, May 2000

Peers at Work

By Alexandre Mas and Enrico Moretti

American Economic Review, March 2009

We study peer effects in the workplace. Specifically, we investigate whether, how, and why the productivity of a worker depends on the productivity of coworkers in the same team. Using high-frequency data on worker productivity from a large supermarket...

Assignment of Arrival Slots

By James Schummer and Rakesh V. Vohra

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2013

Industry participants agree that, when inclement weather forces the FAA to reassign airport landing slots, incentives and property rights should be respected. We show that the FAA's Compression algorithm is incentive compatible, but fails to guarantee ...

Converting Resources from Military to Non-military Uses

By Jurgen Brauer and John Tepper Marlin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1992

As a proportion of gross national product, U.S. military spending has declined steadily since the mid-1980s. The end of the Cold War has given rise to calls for even more cuts in military spending. In early 1992, President George Bush proposed to reduce m...

Conflicts of Interest and Steering in Residential Brokerage

By Panle Jia Barwick, Parag A. Pathak, and Maisy Wong

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2017

This paper documents uniformity in real estate commission rates offered to buyers' agents using 653,475 residential listings in eastern Massachusetts from 1998–2011. Properties listed with lower commission rates experience less favorable transaction...

Leaving Poverty Behind? The Effects of Generous Income Support Paired with Activation

By Simen Markussen and Knut Røed

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2016

We evaluate a comprehensive activation program in Norway targeted at hard-to-employ social assistance claimants with reduced work capacity. The program offers a combination of tailored rehabilitation, training, and job practice, and a generous, stable, an...

The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to US Wage Inequality over Three Decades: A Reassessment

By David H. Autor, Alan Manning, and Christopher L. Smith

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2016

We reassess the effect of minimum wages on US earnings inequality using additional decades of data and an IV strategy that addresses potential biases in prior work. We find that the minimum wage reduces inequality in the lower tail of the wage distributio...

International Credit Flows and Pecuniary Externalities

By Markus K. Brunnermeier and Yuliy Sannikov

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2015

This paper develops a dynamic two-country neoclassical stochastic growth model with incomplete markets. Short-term credit flows can be excessive and reverse suddenly. The equilibrium outcome is constrained inefficient due to pecuniary externalities. First...

Made in America? The New World, the Old, and the Industrial Revolution

By Gregory Clark, Kevin H. O'Rourke, and Alan M. Taylor

American Economic Review, May 2008

Distortions in the International Migrant Labor Market: Evidence from Filipino Migration and Wage Responses to Destination Country Economic Shocks

By David McKenzie, Caroline Theoharides, and Dean Yang

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2014

We use an original panel dataset of migrant departures from the Philippines to identify the responsiveness of migrant numbers and wages to GDP shocks in destination countries. We find a large, significant response of migrant numbers to GDP shocks at d...

Retrospectives: The Economics of Leon Hirsch Keyserling

By W. Robert Brazelton

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1997

The economics of Leon H. Keyserling influenced the Roosevelt era in terms of housing, agriculture, labor, and antitrust legislation. During the Truman era, discussed herein, Keyserling was influential as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, stressin...

Applying Fixed Effects to Hierarchical Segregation Models

By Dina Shatnawi, Ronald Oaxaca, and Michael Ransom

American Economic Review, May 2011

This paper expands the empirical implementation of hierarchical segregation models to allow for the use of panel methods. We use firm level data collected between 1977 and 1985 from a regional grocery store that faced a title VII class-action lawsuit over...

The Persistent Reduction in Poverty from Filing a Tax Return

By Shanthi P. Ramnath and Patricia K. Tong

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2017

Low-income households not required to file often fail to receive benefits provided through the tax code. In 2008, the US government made people with at least $3,000 in earnings eligible for a stimulus payment if they filed a tax return. Using eligibility ...

Vertical Integration and Firm Boundaries: The Evidence

By Francine Lafontaine and Margaret Slade

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2007

Since Ronald H. Coase's (1937) seminal paper, a rich set of theories has been developed that deal with firm boundaries in vertical or input–output structures. In the last twenty-five years, empirical evidence that can shed light on those theories also...

Investment Banks as Corporate Monitors in the Early Twentieth Century United States

By Carola Frydman and Eric Hilt

American Economic Review, July 2017

We study the effect of financial relationships on firms' investment decisions and access to external finance. In the early twentieth century, securities underwriters commonly held directorships with American corporations. Section 10 of the Clayton Antitru...

Labor Market Rigidities: At the Root of Unemployment in Europe

[Symposium: European Unemployment]

By Horst Siebert

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1997

This paper studies the major institutional changes at the root of the increase in the west European unemployment trade in the last quarter century from below 3 percent to 11 percent. The institutional characteristics of wage bargaining and the legal rules...

Fiscal Imbalances and Borrowing Costs: Evidence from State Investment Losses

By Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua D. Rauh

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2012

During the last quarter of 2008, financial losses in state pension funds varied from 12 percent to 68 percent of the revenue generated by the state government. We quantify a sovereign default channel in the state municipal market by examining how changes ...

Limited-Purpose Banking--Moving from "Trust Me" to "Show Me" Banking

By Christophe Chamley, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, and Herakles Polemarchakis

American Economic Review, May 2012

There are many alleged culprits for the bank runs of 2008 and their devastating economic fallout. But proprietary information and leverage top our list. Claims of proprietary information forced financial markets to operate on trust, while providing the p...

Takings, Compensation and Endangered Species Protection on Private Lands

[Symposium: Endangered Species Act]

By Robert Innes, Stephen Polasky, and John Tschirhart

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

Preserving endangered species on private land benefits the public, but may confer cost on landowners if property is 'taken.' Government compensation to landowners can offset costs, although the Endangered Species Act does not require compensation. The aut...

The Future of US Economic Growth

By John G. Fernald and Charles I. Jones

American Economic Review, May 2014

Modern growth theory suggests that more than three-quarters of growth since 1950 reflects rising educational attainment and research intensity. As these transition dynamics fade, US economic growth is likely to slow at some point. However, the rise of Chi...