The Superiority of Economists

By Marion Fourcade, Etienne Ollion, and Yann Algan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2015

In this essay, we analyze the dominant position of economics within the network of the social sciences in the United States. We begin by documenting the relative insularity of economics, using bibliometric data. Next we analyze the tight management of t...

The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions

By Steven C. McMullen and Kathryn E. Rouse

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2012

In 2007, 22 Wake County, North Carolina traditional calendar schools were switched to year-round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which the...

The Economics of Child Labor: Comment

By Kenneth A. Swinnerton and Carol Ann Rogers

American Economic Review, December 1999

Crisis and Responses: The Federal Reserve in the Early Stages of the Financial Crisis

[Symposium: Early Stages of the Credit Crunch]

By Stephen G. Cecchetti

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2009

Realizing that their traditional instruments were inadequate for responding to the crisis that began on August 9, 2007, Federal Reserve officials improvised. Beginning in mid-December 2007, they implemented a series of changes directed at ensuring that li...

Efficient Kidney Exchange: Coincidence of Wants in Markets with Compatibility-Based Preferences

By Alvin E. Roth, Tayfun Sönmez, and M. Utku Ünver

American Economic Review, June 2007

Patients needing kidney transplants may have donors who cannot donate to them because of blood or tissue incompatibility. Incompatible patient-donor pairs can exchange donor kidneys with other pairs only when there is a "double coincidence of wants." D...

When the Saints Go Marching Out: Long-Term Outcomes for Student Evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

By Bruce Sacerdote

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012

I examine long-term academic performance and college going for students affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Students who are forced to switch schools due to the hurricanes experience sharp declines in test scores in the first year following the hurr...

Wiring the Labor Market

[Symposium: E-Commerce]

By David H. Autor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2001

Workers and jobs are naturally heterogeneous and the quality of their interaction when paired is difficult to forecast. The Internet promises to open new channels for worker-firm communications. What are the consequences of this opening? I discuss three l...

Assessing Affirmative Action

By Harry Holzer and David Neumark

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2000

Economic research provides extensive evidence regarding discrimination against women and minorities, and some evidence on the redistributive effects of affirmative action. However, it provides much less evidence on affirmative action's impact on efficienc...

Equilibrium Selection in the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Axiomatic Approach and Experimental Evidence

By Matthias Blonski, Peter Ockenfels, and Giancarlo Spagnolo

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

We propose an axiomatic approach for equilibrium selection in the discounted, infinitely repeated symmetric Prisoner's Dilemma. Our axioms characterize a unique selection criterion that is also useful as a tool for applied comparative statics exercises a...

Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce

[Symposium: E-Commerce]

By David Lucking-Reiley and Daniel F. Spulber

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2001

Just as the industrial revolution mechanized the manufacturing functions of firms, the information revolution is automating their merchant functions. Four types of potential productivity gains are expected from business-to-business (B2B) electronic commer...

Diverging Opinions

By James Andreoni and Tymofiy Mylovanov

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2012

People often see the same evidence but draw opposite conclusions, becoming polarized over time. More surprisingly, disagreements persist even when they are commonly known. We derive a model and present an experiment showing that opinions can diverge when ...

Policy Watch: Infrastructure Investment and Economic Growth

By Alicia H. Munnell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1992

In the late 1980s, David Aschauer (1989) triggered a long overdue dialogue among economists and political leaders when he published a study arguing that much of the decline in U.S. productivity that occurred in the 1970s was precipitated by declining rate...

Does the "New Economy" Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?

[Symposium: Computers and Productivity]

By Robert J. Gordon

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2000

During the four years 1995-99 U.S. productivity growth experienced a strong revival and achieved growth rates exceeding that of the "golden age" of 1913-72. Accordingly many observers have declared the "New Economy" to be an Industrial Revolution even mor...

Parental Education and Offspring Outcomes: Evidence from the Swedish Compulsory School Reform

By Petter Lundborg, Anton Nilsson, and Dan-Olof Rooth

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2014

We use the Swedish compulsory school reform to estimate the causal effect of parental education on sons' outcomes. To this end, we use data from the Swedish military enlistment register on the entire population of males and consider outcomes, such as c...

The Cross Section of Foreign Currency Risk Premia and Consumption Growth Risk

By Hanno Lustig and Adrien Verdelhan

American Economic Review, March 2007

Aggregate consumption growth risk explains why low interest rate currencies do not appreciate as much as the interest rate differential and why high interest rate currencies do not depreciate as much as the interest rate differential. Domestic investor...

Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo

By Robert Dorfman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1989

This article will describe the enduring relationship between Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo initiated by a letter Malthus sent to Ricardo in June 1811. It was, very likely, the most remarkable and most fruitful collaboration in the history of economics....

Research on the Economics Profession

By David Colander

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

In this article, I survey some recent contributions to research on the profession, both to bring nonspecialists up to date on what is being done and to inform specialists of other researchers who are doing similar work. The economics profession is interes...

Collateral Damage: Effects of the Japanese Bank Crisis on Real Activity in the United States

By Joe Peek and Eric S. Rosengren

American Economic Review, March 2000

The Japanese banking crisis provides a natural experiment to test whether a loan supply shock can affect real economic activity. Because the shock was external to U.S. credit markets, yet connected through the Japanese bank penetration of U.S. markets, th...

Optimal Taxation and Optimal Tax Systems

By Joel Slemrod

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1990

In its current state, optimal tax theory is incomplete as a guide to action for critical issues in tax policy. It is incomplete because it has not yet come to terms with taxation as a system of coercively collecting revenues from individuals who will tend...

The Private and Public Economics of Renewable Electricity Generation

[Symposium: Energy Challenges]

By Severin Borenstein

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2012

Generating electricity from renewable sources is more expensive than conventional approaches but reduces pollution externalities. Analyzing the tradeoff is much more challenging than often presumed because the value of electricity is extremely dependent ...