The Devil Is in the Details: Implications of Samuel Bowles's The Moral Economy for Economics and Policy Research

By Rachel Kranton

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2019

All economists should buy and read The Moral Economy by Samuel Bowles. The book challenges basic premises of economic theory and questions policies based on monetary incentives. Incentives not only crowd out intrinsic motivations, they erode the ...

Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor

[Symposium: Automation and Employment]

By Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2019

We present a framework for understanding the effects of automation and other types of technological changes on labor demand, and use it to interpret changes in US employment over the recent past. At the center of our framework is the allocation of tasks...

Auctions with Limited Commitment

By Qingmin Liu, Konrad Mierendorff, Xianwen Shi, and Weijie Zhong

American Economic Review, March 2019

We study the role of limited commitment in a standard auction environment. In each period, the seller can commit to an auction with a reserve price but not to future reserve prices. We characterize the set of equilibrium profits attainable for the seller ...

Learning Theory and Heterogeneous Play in a Signaling-Game Experiment

By Drew Fudenberg and Emanuel Vespa

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2019

We study the effect of how types are assigned to participants in a signaling-game experiment. The sender has two actions, In and Out, and two types. In one treatment, types are i.i.d. in every period, and senders gather experience with both types. In the ...

The Marginal Propensity to Consume over the Business Cycle

By Tal Gross, Matthew J. Notowidigdo, and Jialan Wang

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2020

We estimate how the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of liquidity varies over the business cycle. Ten years after a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the bankruptcy flag is removed from the filer's credit report, generating an increase in credit score. In the...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2019

Clearing the Fog: The Predictive Power of Weather for Employment Reports and Their Asset Price Responses

By Daniel J. Wilson

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2019

This paper exploits vast granular data—with over one million county-month observations—to estimate a dynamic panel data model of weather's local employment effects. The fitted county model is then aggregated and used to generate in-sample and rolling ...

Compliance Behavior in Networks: Evidence from a Field Experiment

By Francesco Drago, Friederike Mengel, and Christian Traxler

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2020

This paper studies the spread of compliance behavior in neighborhood networks in Austria. We exploit a field experiment that varied the content of mailings sent to potential evaders of TV license fees. The data reveal a strong treatment spillover: untreat...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2019

Beliefs about Gender

By Pedro Bordalo, Katherine Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli, and Andrei Shleifer

American Economic Review, March 2019

We conduct laboratory experiments that explore how gender stereotypes shape beliefs about ability of oneself and others in different categories of knowledge. The data reveal two patterns. First, men's and women's beliefs about both oneself and others exce...

Doctoral Dissertations in Economics

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2019

All the Single Ladies: Job Promotions and the Durability of Marriage

By Olle Folke and Johanna Rickne

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2020

We study how promotions to top jobs affect the probability of divorce. We compare the relationship trajectories of winning and losing candidates for mayor and parliamentarian and find that a promotion to one of these jobs doubles the baseline probability ...

Report by the AEA Data Editor

By Lars Vilhuber

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

Environmentalism with Chinese Characteristics—A Review of Matthew E. Kahn and Siqi Zheng's Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China

By Ian Coxhead

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2019

China's dramatic rise from poverty to global economic prominence has been accompanied by an equally dramatic increase in environmental damages. The book under review presents an exploration of economic and political economy factors that might bring abou...

The Impacts of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Work on Income and Health: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

By Christopher Blattman and Stefan Dercon

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2018

Working with five Ethiopian firms, we randomized applicants to an industrial job offer, an "entrepreneurship" program of $300 plus business training, or control status. Industrial jobs offered more and steadier hours but low wages and risky conditions. Th...

Central Bank Forward Guidance and the Signal Value of Market Prices

By Stephen Morris and Hyun Song Shin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Central banks use forward guidance to steer market expectations of future monetary policy moves. At the same time, they rely on market prices to gauge the likely path of the economy and the appropriate stance of monetary policy. This two-way flow between ...

Gender Homophily in Referral Networks: Consequences for the Medicare Physician Earnings Gap

By Dan Zeltzer

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2020

I assess the extent to which the gender gap in physician earnings may be driven by physicians' preference for referring to specialists of the same gender. Analyzing administrative data on 100 million Medicare patient referrals, I provide robust evidence t...

Direct and Spillover Effects of Middle School Vaccination Requirements

By Christopher S. Carpenter and Emily C. Lawler

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2019

We study the direct and spillover effects of state requirements that middle school youths obtain a tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (Tdap) booster prior to middle school entry. These mandates significantly increased Tdap vaccine take-up and reduced pert...

Report of the Editor: American Economic Review: Insights

By Amy Finkelstein

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

Nominal Wage Rigidity in Village Labor Markets

By Supreet Kaur

American Economic Review, October 2019

This paper develops a new approach to test for downward wage rigidity by examining transitory shocks to labor demand (i.e., rainfall) across 600 Indian districts. Nominal wages rise during positive shocks but do not fall during droughts. In addition, tran...