The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying

By William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln, and Prachi Mishra

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2014

How is economic policy made? In this paper we study a key determinant of the answer to the question: lobbying by firms. Estimating a binary choice model of firm behavior, we find significant evidence for the idea that barriers to entry induce persistence ...

If Exchange Rates are Random Walks, Then Almost Everything We Say About Monetary Policy is Wrong

By Fernando Alvarez, Andrew Atkeson, and Patrick J. Kehoe

American Economic Review, May 2007

Mental Accounting in Portfolio Choice: Evidence from a Flypaper Effect

By James J. Choi, David Laibson, and Brigitte C. Madrian

American Economic Review, December 2009

Consistent with mental accounting, we document that investors sometimes choose the asset allocation for one account without considering the asset allocation of their other accounts. The setting is a firm that changed its 401(k) matching rules. Initially, ...

Why Is Infant Mortality Higher in the United States Than in Europe?

By Alice Chen, Emily Oster, and Heidi Williams

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2016

The United States has higher infant mortality than peer countries. In this paper, we combine microdata from the United States with similar data from four European countries to investigate this US infant mortality disadvantage. The US disadvantage persi...

Cycles of Conflict: An Economic Model

By Daron Acemoglu and Alexander Wolitzky

American Economic Review, April 2014

We propose a model of cycles of conflict and distrust. Overlapping generations of agents from two groups sequentially play coordination games under incomplete information about whether the other side consists of bad types who always take bad actions. G...

Bid Takers or Market Makers? The Effect of Auctioneers on Auction Outcome

By Nicola Lacetera, Bradley J. Larsen, Devin G. Pope, and Justin R. Sydnor

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2016

Auction design has been studied extensively; however, within a given design, does the process of how an auction is conducted matter as well? We address this question by looking for heterogeneity in the performance of auctioneers in English auctions. We an...

Measuring the Benefits of Greater Spatial Granularity in Short-Term Pricing in Wholesale Electricity Markets

By Frank A. Wolak

American Economic Review, May 2011

Hourly generation unit-level output levels, detailed information on the technological characteristics of generation units, and daily delivered natural gas prices to all generation units for the California wholesale electricity market before and after the ...

The Use of Performance Measures in Incentive Contracting

By George Baker

American Economic Review, May 2000

The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development

By Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2008

The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of cognitive skills in promoting ...

Mismeasured Variables in Econometric Analysis: Problems from the Right and Problems from the Left

[Symposium: Econometric Tools]

By Jerry Hausman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2001

The effect of mismeasured variables in the most straightforward regression analysis with a single regressor variable leads to a least squares estimate that is downward biased in magnitude toward zero. I begin by reviewing classical issues involving mismea...

Efficient Bailouts?

By Javier Bianchi

American Economic Review, December 2016

We develop a quantitative equilibrium model of financial crises to assess the interaction between ex post interventions in credit markets and the buildup of risk ex ante. During a systemic crisis, bailouts relax balance sheet constraints and mitigate the ...

Experimentation, Patents, and Innovation

By Daron Acemoglu, Kostas Bimpikis, and Asuman Ozdaglar

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2011

This paper studies a simple model of experimentation and innovation. Our analysis suggests that patents improve the allocation of resources by encouraging rapid experimentation and efficient ex post transfer of knowledge. Each firm receives a signal on th...

Belief Elicitation with a Synchronized Lottery Choice Menu That Is Invariant to Risk Attitudes

By Charles A. Holt and Angela M. Smith

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2016

This paper uses a Bayesian information processing task to compare belief elicitation mechanisms including a quadratic scoring rule, a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak pricing procedure, and a two-stage menu of lottery choices that is structured to identify a preci...

The Impact of Regulations on the Supply and Quality of Care in Child Care Markets

By V. Joseph Hotz and Mo Xiao

American Economic Review, August 2011

We examine the impact of state child care regulations on the supply and quality of care in child care markets. We exploit panel data on both individual establishments and local markets to control for state, time, and, where possible, establishment-specifi...

The Polish Zloty, 1990-1999: Success and Underperformance

By Domenico Mario Nuti

American Economic Review, May 2000

Moral Hazard and Customer Loyalty Programs

By Leonardo J. Basso, Matthew T. Clements, and Thomas W. Ross

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2009

Frequent-flier plans (FFPs) may be the most famous of customer loyalty programs, and there are similar schemes in other industries. We present a theory that models FFPs as efforts to exploit the agency relationship between employers (who pay for ticket...

Corrigendum: The Price Effects of a Large Merger of Manufacturers: A Case Study of Maytag Whirlpool

By Orley C. Ashenfelter, Daniel S. Hosken, and Matthew C. Weinberg

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2014

Money, Liquidity, and Monetary Policy

By Tobias Adrian and Hyun Song Shin

American Economic Review, May 2009

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2017

Real and Money Wage Rates

By John T. Dunlop

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1998

In the General Theory, John Maynard Keynes held money and real wage rates move in opposite directions. In expansion, prices increase faster because of increasing costs and a rise in the proportion of product going to profits. Neoclassical economists held ...