Can the West Save Africa?

By William Easterly

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2009

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort toward Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a celebrity mass advocacy campaign, and decisions by Western leaders to make Africa a major foreign policy priority. This survey contrasts ...

Market and Public Liquidity

By Patrick Bolton, Tano Santos, and Jose A. Scheinkman

American Economic Review, May 2009

Is It Too Late to Bail Out the Troubled Countries in the Eurozone?

By Juan Carlos Conesa and Timothy J. Kehoe

American Economic Review, May 2014

In January 1995, US President Bill Clinton organized a bailout for Mexico that imposed penalty interest rates and induced the Mexican government to reduce its debt, ending the debt crisis. Can the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and In...

A Political-Economy Theory of Trade Agreements

By Giovanni Maggi and Andrés Rodríguez-Clare

American Economic Review, September 2007

We present a model where trade agreements are motivated by the desire of governments to commit vis-à-vis domestic lobbies, in addition to standard terms-of-trade externalities. The model predicts that trade liberalization is deeper when capital is...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2008

Symposium on New Institutions for Developing Country Debt

[Symposium: New Institutions for Developing Country Debt]

By Kenneth Rogoff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1990

Kenneth Rogoff provides a brief synopsis of the developing country debt problem.

Report: Committee on Government Relations

By Jonathan Skinner

American Economic Review, May 2016

Asymmetric Contests with Head Starts and Nonmonotonic Costs

By Ron Siegel

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2014

This paper studies equilibrium behavior in a class of games that models asymmetric multiprize competitions in which players' costs need not be strictly increasing in their performance. Such costs accommodate various types of asymmetries, including head st...

The Reasons for CSWEP

By Carolyn Shaw Bell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1998

Both overt and covert instances of less than equal treatment for women and men were taken for granted until the so-called 'women's movement' of the l960s, of which CSWEP was a part. 'Economics is a man's field' summarizes the environment in the profession...

Getting the 21st-Century GDP Right: What's Underway?

By Brent R. Moulton

American Economic Review, May 2000

Privatization Is Transition--Or Is It?

[Symposium: Transition from Socialism]

By Josef C. Brada

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1996

Various means of creating a private sector have been used in transition economies, including restitution, privatization of state firms through sales or voucher schemes, and start-ups of new private firms. The privatization of state-owned firms raises ques...

Messaging and the Mandate: The Impact of Consumer Experience on Health Insurance Enrollment through Exchanges

By Natalie Cox, Benjamin Handel, Jonathan Kolstad, and Neale Mahoney

American Economic Review, May 2015

The ability of web-based retailers to learn about and provide targeted consumer experiences is touted as an important distinction from traditional retailers. In principal, web-based insurance exchanges could benefit from these advantages. Using data from ...

Missing Import Price Changes and Low Exchange Rate Pass-Through

By Etienne Gagnon, Benjamin R. Mandel, and Robert J. Vigfusson

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2014

A large body of empirical work has found that exchange rate movements have only modest effects on U.S. inflation. However, exchange rate pass-through may be underestimated because some price changes are missed when constructing price indexes. We invest...

Monopsony, Mobility, and Sex Differences in Pay: Missouri School Teachers

By Michael R. Ransom and Val E. Lambson

American Economic Review, May 2011

We examine the sex differences in the pay of school teachers in Missouri. In Missouri school districts, pay is determined by a salary schedule that maps teaching experience and education level of an individual to a salary level. In spite of this apparentl...

Agglomeration of Invention in the Bay Area: Not Just ICT

By Chris Forman, Avi Goldfarb, and Shane Greenstein

American Economic Review, May 2016

We document that the Bay Area rose from 4% of all successful US patent applications in 1976 to 16% in 2008. This is partly driven by the increase in the prevalence of information and communication technology; however, even for patents unrelated to informa...

Stop the Clock Policies and Career Success in Academia

By Colleen Flaherty Manchester, Lisa M. Leslie, and Amit Kramer

American Economic Review, May 2010

The Administrative Foundations of Self-Enforcing Constitutions

By Yadira Gonzalez de Lara, Avner Greif, and Saumitra Jha

American Economic Review, May 2008

The Effect of Absenteeism and Clinic Protocol on Health Outcomes: The Case of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Kenya

By Markus Goldstein, Joshua Graff Zivin, James Habyarimana, Cristian Pop-Eleches, and Harsha Thirumurthy

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

We show that pregnant women whose first clinic visit coincides with the nurse's attendance are 58 percentage points more likely to test for HIV and 46 percent more likely to deliver in a hospital. Furthermore, women with high pretest expectations of be...

Risk Protection, Service Use, and Health Outcomes under Colombia's Health Insurance Program for the Poor

By Grant Miller, Diana Pinto, and Marcos Vera-Hernández

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2013

Unexpected medical care spending imposes considerable financial risk on developing country households. Based on managed care models of health insurance in wealthy countries, Colombia's Régimen Subsidiado is a publicly financed insurance program target...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2017