Unilateral Divorce, the Decreasing Gender Gap, and Married Women's Labor Force Participation

By Raquel Fernández and Joyce Wong

American Economic Review, May 2014

Married women's labor force participation (LFP) increased dramatically in the United States between the 1940 and 1960 cohort. The two cohorts lived under different divorce regimes (unilateral divorce rather than mutual consent). The 1960 cohort also had a...

Manufacturing Firms in Developing Countries: How Well Do They Do, and Why?

By James R. Tybout

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2000

The manufacturing sectors of developing countries have traditionally been relatively protected. They have also been subject to heavy regulation, much of which has favored large firms. Accordingly, it is often argued that in these countries: (1) markets to...

A Trapped-Factors Model of Innovation

By Nicholas Bloom, Paul M. Romer, Stephen J. Terry, and John Van Reenen

American Economic Review, May 2013

We explain a counterintuitive empirical finding: Firms facing more import competition do more innovation. In our model, factors are trapped inside a firm. An increase in import competition encourages a firm to innovate by reducing the opportunity cost of ...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

Corporate Incentives and Nuclear Safety

By Catherine Hausman

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2014

Following electricity market restructuring, approximately half of all commercial US nuclear power reactors were sold by price-regulated public utilities to independent power producers. At the time of the sales, some policymakers raised concerns that these...

Inheritances, Intergenerational Transfers, and the Accumulation of Health

By Katherine Grace Carman

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper considers the mechanisms behind a positive correlation between inheritances and health. First, there may merely be a correlation: those from families with enough wealth to provide an inheritance tend to have better health. Second, financial res...

Did Science Cause the Industrial Revolution?

By Cormac Ó Gráda

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2016

The role of science and technology in the First Industrial Revolution is still contested. Some scholars, focusing on the textiles sector, argue that skilled and talented artisans with no scientific training were mainly responsible for the key inventions; ...

Distinguishing Probability Weighting from Risk Misperceptions in Field Data

By Levon Barseghyan, Francesca Molinari, Ted O'Donoghue, and Joshua C. Teitelbaum

American Economic Review, May 2013

We outline a strategy for distinguishing rank-dependent probability weighting from systematic risk misperceptions in field data. Our strategy relies on singling out a field environment with two key properties: (i) the objects of choice are money lotteries...

Aftershocks: The Impact of Clinic Violence on Abortion Services

By Mireille Jacobson and Heather Royer

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2011

Between 1973 and 2003, abortion providers in the United States were the targets of over 300 acts of extreme violence. Using unique data on attacks and on abortions, abortion providers, and births, we examine how anti-abortion violence has affected provide...

Rational Expectations in Games

By Robert J. Aumann and Jacques H. Dreze

American Economic Review, March 2008

A player i's actions in a game are determined by her beliefs about other players; these depend on the game's real-life context, not only its formal description. Define a game situation as a game together with such beliefs; call the beliefs— and i...

The Economic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law

By A. Mitchell Polinsky and Steven Shavell

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2000

This article surveys the theory of the public enforcement of law--the use of public agents (inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. We first present the basic elements of the theory, focusing on t...

Editor's Introduction

By William R. Johnson and Samantha Bennett

American Economic Review, May 2013

Agriculture and the Transition to the Market

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

By Karen Brooks, J. Luis Guasch, Avishay Braverman, and Csaba Csaki

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1991

Agricultural sectors in Eastern and Central Europe are large, and a substantial number of people are directly affected by changes in producer prices, farm employment, and land ownership. Retail food markets are among the most distorted in the pre-transiti...

Country Solidarity in Sovereign Crises

By Jean Tirole

American Economic Review, August 2015

When will solidarity, which emerges spontaneously from the fear of spillovers, be reinforced through contracting? The optimal pact between countries that differ substantially in their probability of distress is a simple debt contract with market financing...

The Coevolution of Segregation, Polarized Beliefs, and Discrimination: The Case of Private versus State Education

By Gilat Levy and Ronny Razin

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2017

In this paper we analyze the coevolution of segregation into private and state schools, beliefs about the educational merits of different schools, and labor market discrimination. In a dynamic model, we characterize a necessary and sufficient condition on...

Behavioral Implementation

By Geoffroy de Clippel

American Economic Review, October 2014

Implementation theory assumes that participants' choices are rational, in the sense of being consistent with the maximization of a context- independent preference. The paper investigates implementation under complete information when individuals' choi...

Estimating Average Treatment Effects with Continuous and Discrete Covariates: The Case of Swan-Ganz Catheterization

By Qi Li, Jeffrey S. Racine, and Jeffrey M. Wooldridge

American Economic Review, May 2008

Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?

By Rahi Abouk and Scott Adams

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

Since 2007, many states passed laws prohibiting text messaging while driving. Using vehicular fatality data from across the United States and standard difference-in-differences techniques, bans appear moderately successful at reducing single-vehicle, si...

Investment and Usage of New Technologies: Evidence from a Shared ATM Network

By Stijn Ferrari, Frank Verboven, and Hans Degryse

American Economic Review, June 2010

The success of new technologies depends on both the firms' investment and consumers' usage decisions. We study this problem in a shared ATM network. Inefficiencies may arise because banks coordinate investment, and consumers may not make proper use of t...

An Empirical Investigation of the Option Value of College Enrollment

By Kevin M. Stange

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

This paper quantifies the option value arising from sequential schooling decisions made in the presence of uncertainty and learning about academic ability. College attendance has option value since enrolled students have the option, but not obligation, to...