The Optimal Timing of Unemployment Benefits: Theory and Evidence from Sweden

By Jonas Kolsrud, Camille Landais, Peter Nilsson, and Johannes Spinnewijn

American Economic Review, April 2018

This paper provides a simple, yet robust framework to evaluate the time profile of benefits paid during an unemployment spell. We derive sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the marginal insurance value and incentive costs of unemployment benefits p...

Towards the Greater Good? EU Commissioners' Nationality and Budget Allocation in the European Union

By Kai Gehring and Stephan A. Schneider

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2018

We demonstrate that the nationalities of EU Commissioners influence budget allocation decisions in favor of their country of origin. Our focus is on the Commissioners for Agriculture, who are exclusively responsible for a specific fund that accounts for t...

CSMGEP Profile: Rhonda Sharpe

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University Innovation and the Professor's Privilege

By Hans K. Hvide and Benjamin F. Jones

American Economic Review, July 2018

National policies take varied approaches to encouraging university-based innovation. This paper studies a natural experiment: the end of the "professor's privilege" in Norway, where university researchers previously enjoyed full rights to their innovation...

Life after Lead: Effects of Early Interventions for Children Exposed to Lead

By Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2018

Lead pollution is consistently linked to cognitive and behavioral impairments, yet little is known about the benefits of public health interventions for children exposed to lead. This paper estimates the long-term impacts of early-life interventions (e.g....

The Labor Market Integration of Refugee Migrants in High-Income Countries

[Symposium: Assimilation of Refugees]

By Courtney Brell, Christian Dustmann, and Ian Preston

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2020

We provide an overview of the integration of refugees into the labor markets of a number of high-income countries. Discussing the ways in which refugees and economic migrants are differently selected and so might be expected to perform differently in a ...

Childhood Circumstances and Adult Outcomes: Act II

By Douglas Almond, Janet Currie, and Valentina Duque

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2018

That prenatal events can have life-long consequences is now well established. Nevertheless, research on the fetal origins hypothesis is flourishing and has expanded to include the early childhood (postnatal) environment. Why does this literature have a ...

Emi Nakamura: 2019 John Bates Clark Medalist

By Janice Eberly and Michael Woodford

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2020

Emi Nakamura is the 2019 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association. Emi is an empirical macroeconomist whose work has studied the nature of price-setting and the effects of monetary and fiscal policies, among other iss...

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2018

What Do Trade Agreements Really Do?

[Symposium: Does the US Really Gain From Trade?]

By Dani Rodrik

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2018

Economists have a tendency to associate "free trade agreements" all too closely with "free trade." They may be unaware of some of the new (and often problematic) beyond-the-border features of current trade agreements. As trade agreements have evolved ...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2018

Why Does the Indian State Both Fail and Succeed?

[Symposium: Economics of India]

By Devesh Kapur

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2020

The Indian state's performance spans the spectrum from woefully inadequate, especially in core public goods provision, to surprisingly impressive in successfully managing complex tasks and on a massive scale. It has delivered better on macroeconomic rat...

Report of Independent Auditor

American Economic Review, June 2019

Early School Exposure, Test Scores, and Noncognitive Outcomes

By Thomas Cornelissen and Christian Dustmann

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2019

We estimate the effects of receiving additional schooling before age five on cognitive and noncognitive outcomes, exploiting unique school entry rules in England that cause variation in the age at school entry and the effective length of the first school ...

The Great Indian Demonetization

[Symposium: Economics of India]

By Amartya Lahiri

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2020

On November 8, 2016, India demonetized 86 percent of its currency in circulation. The stated objectives of the move were to seize undeclared income, to destroy counterfeit currency, to speed up formalization of the economy, and to increase the tax base. I...

Solo Self-Employment and Alternative Work Arrangements: A Cross-Country Perspective on the Changing Composition of Jobs

By Tito Boeri, Giulia Giupponi, Alan B. Krueger, and Stephen Machin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2020

The nature of self-employment is changing in most OECD countries. Solo self-employment is increasing relative to self-employment with dependent employees, often being associated with the development of gig economy work and alternative work arrangements....

Asylum Migration to the Developed World: Persecution, Incentives, and Policy

[Symposium: Assimilation of Refugees]

By Timothy J. Hatton

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2020

The European migration crisis of 2015-2016 and the migrants from Central America gathering on the US border since 2017 have created headlines and presented challenges for Western governments. In this paper, I examine the trends in, and determinants of, th...

The Economics of Maps

By Abhishek Nagaraj and Scott Stern

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2020

For centuries, maps have codified the extent of human geographic knowledge and shaped discovery and economic decision-making. Economists across many fields, including urban economics, public finance, political economy, and economic geography, have long ...

The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire

By Andrei Markevich and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

American Economic Review, April 2018

We document substantial increases in agricultural productivity, industrial output, and peasants' nutrition in Imperial Russia as a result of the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Before the emancipation, provinces where serfs constituted the majority of agric...

Does Regulatory Jurisdiction Affect the Quality of Investment-Adviser Regulation?

By Ben Charoenwong, Alan Kwan, and Tarik Umar

American Economic Review, October 2019

The Dodd-Frank Act shifted regulatory jurisdiction over "midsize" investment advisers from the SEC to state-securities regulators. Client complaints against midsize advisers increased relative to those continuing under SEC oversight by 30 to 40 percent of...