Superstar Cities

By Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2013

We document large long-run differences in average house price appreciation across metropolitan areas over the past 50 years, and show they can be explained by an inelastic supply of land in some unique locations combined with an increasing number of hi...

Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates

By Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff

American Economic Review, September 2014

Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores ("value-added") a good measure of their quality? One reason this question has sparked debate is disagreement about whether value-added (VA) measures provide unbiased estimates of teachers' causal impacts on s...

Using Loopholes to Reveal the Marginal Cost of Regulation: The Case of Fuel-Economy Standards

By Soren T. Anderson and James M. Sallee

American Economic Review, June 2011

Estimating the cost of regulation is difficult. Firms sometimes reveal costs indirectly, however, when they exploit loopholes to avoid regulation. We apply this insight to fuel economy standards for automobiles. These standards feature a loophole that ...

On the Antitrust Treatment of Production Joint Ventures

[Symposium: Collaboration, Innovation and Antitrust]

By Carl Shapiro and Robert D. Willig

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1990

The U.S. Congress is currently considering several bills to alter the antitrust treatment of collaborative production activities among rival firms. This paper sketches the tradeoffs involved in altering U.S. antitrust treatment of joint venture production...

The Demand for Food of Poor Urban Mexican Households: Understanding Policy Impacts Using Structural Models

By Manuela Angelucci and Orazio Attanasio

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2013

We use Oportunidades, a conditional cash transfer to women, to show that standard demand models do not represent the sample's behavior: Oportunidades increases eligible households' food budget shares, despite food being a necessity; demand for food and...

Ethnicity and Conflict: An Empirical Study

By Joan Esteban, Laura Mayoral, and Debraj Ray

American Economic Review, June 2012

We examine empirically the impact of ethnic divisions on conflict, by using a specification based on Esteban and Ray (2011). That theory links conflict intensity to three indices of ethnic distribution: polarization, fractionalization, and the Gini-Greenb...

The Changing Incidence of Geography

By James E. Anderson and Yoto V. Yotov

American Economic Review, December 2010

The incidence of bilateral trade costs is calculated here using neglected properties of the structural gravity model, disaggregated by commodity and region, and re-aggregated into forms useful for economic geography. For Canada's provinces, 1992-2003, sel...

Naked Exclusion with Private Offers

By Jeanine Miklós-Thal and Greg Shaffer

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2016

We consider a seller's ability to deter potential entrants by offering exclusive contracts to downstream buyers. Previous literature has shown that this can be a profitable strategy if there is a coordination failure on the part of the buyers or if the se...

The Effect of Evaluation on Teacher Performance

By Eric S. Taylor and John H. Tyler

American Economic Review, December 2012

Teacher performance evaluation has become a dominant theme in school reform efforts. Yet, whether evaluation changes the performance of teachers, the focus of this paper, is unknown. Instead, evaluation has largely been studied as an input to selective d...

A Theory of Political Transitions

By Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

American Economic Review, September 2001

We develop a theory of political transitions inspired by the experiences of Western Europe and Latin America. Nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite. The initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening revolution, especiall...

The Causes and Consequences of Wal-Mart's Growth

By Emek Basker

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2007

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer and the largest private employer in the United States. The competitive pressures created by large retailers have long been controversial, and Wal-Mart's growth has raised concerns about its economic impact on workers, comm...

Unconventional Fiscal Policy at the Zero Bound

By Isabel Correia, Emmanuel Farhi, Juan Pablo Nicolini, and Pedro Teles

American Economic Review, June 2013

When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates binds, monetary policy cannot provide appropriate stimulus. We show that, in the standard New Keynesian model, tax policy can deliver such stimulus at no cost and in a time-consistent manner. There is...

Sticky-Price Models and Durable Goods

By Robert B. Barsky, Christopher L. House, and Miles S. Kimball

American Economic Review, June 2007

The inclusion of a durable goods sector in sticky-price models has strong and unexpected implications. Even if most prices are flexible, a small durable goods sector with sticky prices may be sufficient to make aggregate output react to monetary policy as...

Retrospectives: Who Said "Debauch the Currency": Keynes or Lenin?

By Michael V. White and Kurt Schuler

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2009

One frequently quoted passage from the work of John Maynard Keynes is that "the best way to destroy the capitalist system [is] to debauch the currency." The passage, attributed to Vladimir Illyich Lenin, appears in Keynes' book The Economic Consequenc...

Sanctions: Some Simple Analytics

By Jonathan Eaton and Maxim Engers

American Economic Review, May 1999

The Nature of Risk Preferences: Evidence from Insurance Choices

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

American Economic Review, October 2013

We use data on insurance deductible choices to estimate a structural model of risky choice that incorporates "standard" risk aversion (diminishing marginal utility for wealth) and probability distortions. We find that probability distortions—characte...

Puzzles: Love and Spaghetti, the Opportunity Cost of Virtue

By Ted Bergstrom

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1989

In honor of St. Valentine's day, we offer a puzzle about love and a puzzle about virtue.

Some Economics of Trade Secret Law

[Symposium: Intellectual Property]

By David D. Friedman, William M. Landes, and Richard A. Posner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1991

Despite the practical importance of trade secrets to the business community, the law of trade secrets is a neglected orphan in economic analysis. This paper sketches an approach to the economics of trade secret law that connects it more closely both to ot...

What Trade-Off of Risk and Incentives?

By Canice Prendergast

American Economic Review, May 2000

European Telecommunications Markets on the Verge of Full Liberalization

[Symposium: Telecommunications Deregulation Around The World]

By Leonard Waverman and Esen Sirel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1997

January 1, 1998 is the date when voice telephony is fully liberalized in most European countries. The process of privatization and liberalization has been uneven across Europe; actively embraced by countries such as the U. K., Sweden, and Finland, while o...