Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2019

A Theory of Experimenters: Robustness, Randomization, and Balance

By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Sylvain Chassang, Sergio Montero, and Erik Snowberg

American Economic Review, April 2020

This paper studies the problem of experiment design by an ambiguity-averse decision-maker who trades off subjective expected performance against robust performance guarantees. This framework accounts for real-world experimenters' preference for randomiz...

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2019

Informational Autocrats

[Symposium: Modern Populism]

By Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2019

In recent decades, dictatorships based on mass repression have largely given way to a new model based on the manipulation of information. Instead of terrorizing citizens into submission, "informational autocrats" artificially boost their popularity by c...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2018

Unconventional Monetary Policies in the Euro Area, Japan, and the United Kingdom

[Symposium: Unconventional Monetary Policy]

By Giovanni Dell'Ariccia, Pau Rabanal, and Damiano Sandri

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2018

The global financial crisis hit hard in the euro area, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Real GDP from peak to trough contracted by about 6 percent in the euro area and the United Kingdom and by 9 percent in Japan. In all three cases, central banks cut int...

Are Local Tax Rates Strategic Complements or Strategic Substitutes?

By Raphaël Parchet

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2019

The identification of strategic interactions among local governments is typically plagued by endogeneity problems. I exploit the fact that local jurisdictions located close to a state border have some neighbors in another state and instrument the tax rate...

Trade, Migration, and Productivity: A Quantitative Analysis of China

By Trevor Tombe and Xiaodong Zhu

American Economic Review, May 2019

We study how goods- and labor-market frictions affect aggregate labor productivity in China. Combining unique data with a general equilibrium model of internal and international trade, and migration across regions and sectors, we quantify the magnitude an...

How Do Individuals Repay Their Debt? The Balance-Matching Heuristic

By John Gathergood, Neale Mahoney, Neil Stewart, and Jörg Weber

American Economic Review, March 2019

We study how individuals repay their debt using linked data on multiple credit cards. Repayments are not allocated to the higher interest rate card, which would minimize the cost of borrowing. Moreover, the degree of misallocation is invariant to the econ...

Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee, Atlanta, GA, January 4, 2019

By Peter L. Rousseau

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

Financial Education versus Costly Counseling: How to Dissuade Borrowers from Choosing Risky Mortgages?

By Sumit Agarwal, Gene Amromin, Itzhak Ben-David, Souphala Chomsisengphet, and Douglas D. Evanoff

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2020

This paper explores the effects of mandatory third-party review of mortgage contracts on consumer choice. The study is based on a legislative pilot carried out in Illinois in 2006, under which mortgage counseling was triggered by applicant credit scores o...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, December 2018

Changing How Literacy Is Taught: Evidence on Synthetic Phonics

By Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally, and Martina Viarengo

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2018

A significant number of people have very low levels of literacy in many OECD countries. This paper studies a national change in policy and practice in England that refocused the teaching of reading around "synthetic phonics." This was a low-cost intervent...

What Do Economists Have to Say about the Clean Air Act 50 Years after the Establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency?

[Symposium: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Clean Air and Water Acts]

By Janet Currie and Reed Walker

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2019

Air quality in the United States has improved dramatically over the past 50 years in large part due to the introduction of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce it. This article is a reflection on the 50-year...

Evolving Measurement for an Evolving Economy: Thoughts on 21st Century US Economic Statistics

[Symposium: Public Provision of Economic Data]

By Ron S. Jarmin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2019

The system of federal economic statistics developed in the 20th century has served the country well, but the current methods for collecting and disseminating these data products are unsustainable. These statistics are heavily reliant on sample surveys. ...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2018

Satisfaction Guaranteed: When Moral Hazard Meets Moral Preferences

By James Andreoni

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2018

The fear of moral hazard—especially in the age of Internet commerce—can depress or prevent profitable trades. Experiments show, however, that many people prefer honesty to deceit and would not succumb to moral hazard. This paper asks a whether we can ...

Using Linked Survey and Administrative Data to Better Measure Income: Implications for Poverty, Program Effectiveness, and Holes in the Safety Net

By Bruce D. Meyer and Nikolas Mittag

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2019

We examine the consequences of survey underreporting of transfer programs for prototypical analyses of low-income populations. We link administrative data for four transfer programs to the CPS to correct its severe understatement of transfer dollars recei...

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2018

Mismatch of Talent: Evidence on Match Quality, Entry Wages, and Job Mobility

By Peter Fredriksson, Lena Hensvik, and Oskar Nordström Skans

American Economic Review, November 2018

We examine the impact of mismatch on entry wages, separations, and wage growth using unique data on worker talents. We show that workers are sorted on comparative advantage across jobs within occupations. The starting wages of inexperienced workers are un...