Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers

By Efraim Benmelech and Claude Berrebi

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2007

This paper studies the relation between the human capital of suicide bombers and the outcomes of their suicide attacks. We argue that human capital is an important factor in the production of terrorism and that if terrorists behave rationally, we should o...

Expectations, Learning, and Business Cycle Fluctuations

By Stefano Eusepi and Bruce Preston

American Economic Review, October 2011

This paper develops a theory of expectations-driven business cycles based on learning. Agents have incomplete knowledge about how market prices are determined and shifts in expectations of future prices affect dynamics. Learning breaks the tight link betw...

Developments in Non-expected Utility Theory: The Hunt for a Descriptive Theory of Choice under Risk

By Chris Starmer

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2000

This article reviews recent developments in the economic theory of individual decision making under risk. Since the 1950s it has been known that individual choices violate the standard model of expected utility in predictable ways. Considerable research e...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2013

Correspondence

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1996

Recessions, Older Workers, and Longevity: How Long Are Recessions Good for Your Health?

By Courtney C. Coile, Phillip B. Levine, and Robin McKnight

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2014

Although past research has found that recessions reduce contemporaneous mortality, workers nearing retirement age may experience reduced longevity attributable to lengthy unemployment spells and lost health insurance at a particularly vulnerable time. To ...

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2012

The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer

[Symposium: Macroeconomic Lessons]

By N. Gregory Mankiw

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2006

The subfield of macroeconomics was born, not as a science, but more as a type of engineering. The problem that gave birth to our field was the Great Depression. God put macroeconomists on earth not to propose and test elegant theories but to solve practic...

Rainfall Forecasts, Weather, and Wages over the Agricultural Production Cycle

By Mark R. Rosenzweig and Christopher Udry

American Economic Review, May 2014

We look at the effects of rainfall forecasts and realized rainfall on equilibrium agricultural wages over the course of the agricultural production cycle. We show theoretically that a forecast of good weather can lower wages in the planting stage, by lowe...

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2008

The Effect of Unemployment Benefits and Nonemployment Durations on Wages

By Johannes F. Schmieder, Till von Wachter, and Stefan Bender

American Economic Review, March 2016

We estimate that unemployment insurance (UI ) extensions reduce reemployment wages using sharp age discontinuities in UI eligibility in Germany. We show this effect combines two key policy parameters: the effect of UI on reservation wages and the effec...

Forensic Finance

By Jay R. Ritter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2008

During popular prime-time television shows, forensic investigators use specialized but wide-ranging scientific knowledge of chemical trace evidence, bacteria, DNA, teeth, insects, and other specialties to collect and sift evidence of possible crimes. In e...

A Schumpeterian Model of Protection and Relative Wages

By Elias Dinopoulos and Paul Segerstrom

American Economic Review, June 1999

This paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model of R&D-based trade between two structurally identical countries in which both innovation and skill acquisition rates are endogenously determined. Trade liberalization increases R&D investment and the...

Access Pricing, Bypass, and Universal Service

By Mark Armstrong

American Economic Review, May 2001

Climate Clubs: Overcoming Free-Riding in International Climate Policy

By William Nordhaus

American Economic Review, April 2015

Notwithstanding great progress in scientific and economic understanding of climate change, it has proven difficult to forge international agreements because of free-riding, as seen in the defunct Kyoto Protocol. This study examines the club as a model for...

Government Failures in Development

[Symposium: The State and Economic Development]

By Anne O. Krueger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1990

By the 1970s and early 1980s, governments in most developing countries were mired down in economic policies that were manifestly unworkable. Whether market failures had been present or not, most knowledgeable observers concluded that there had been coloss...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2011

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1999

Estate Taxation, Entrepreneurship, and Wealth

By Marco Cagetti and Mariacristina De Nardi

American Economic Review, March 2009

This paper studies the estate tax in a quantitative framework with business investment, borrowing constraints, estate transmission, and wealth inequality. We find that the estate tax has little effect on the saving and investment decisions of small bus...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2014