Designing Call Auction Institutions to Eliminate Price Bubbles: Is English Dutch the Best?

By Cary Deck, Maroš Servátka, and Steven Tucker

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2020

The bubble-and-burst pattern in asset markets is among the most replicable results in experimental economics. Using controlled laboratory experiments, we compare mispricing in markets organized by standard double auction rules with mispricing in markets o...

Earnings Risk in the Household: Evidence from Millions of US Tax Returns

By Seth Pruitt and Nicholas Turner

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2020

Using detailed Internal Revenue Service administrative data on millions of households, we find that households effectively insure against much of the risk facing primary earners. We show that households face less risk than males alone, and households face...

Submissions open for the 2020 TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award

[News]

May 29, 2020

Submissions must be postmarked by September 7, 2020.

Tariff exemptions and political connections

[Research Highlight]

May 29, 2020

Why do special economic zones exist?

Why Special Economic Zones? Using Trade Policy to Discriminate across Importers

By Matthew Grant

American Economic Review, May 2020

Tariffs are generally assumed to depend on the product, not the identity of the importer. However, special economic zones are a common, economically important policy used worldwide to lower tariffs on selected goods for selected manufacturers. I show this...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

Measuring Time Preferences

By Jonathan Cohen, Keith Marzilli Ericson, David Laibson, and John Myles White

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

We review research that measures time preferences—i.e., preferences over intertemporal trade-offs. We distinguish between studies using financial flows, which we call "money earlier or later" (MEL) decisions, and studies that use time-dated consumption/...

The Economics of Language

By Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

This paper brings together methodological, theoretical, and empirical analysis into the framework of linguistic diversity. It reflects both historical and contemporary research by economists and other social scientists on the impact of language on economi...

Radical Markets by Eric Posner and E. Glen Weyl: A Review Essay

By David K. Levine

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

At a time when standards of living have improved more than any time in history, this book makes a proposal for radical change. It is based—loosely—on market design principles. The plan for attacking overlapping ownership is reasonably well thought out...

The Limits of the Commune: A Review of The Mystery of the Kibbutz

By John V. C. Nye

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

Ran Abramitzky's book, The Mystery of the Kibbutz: Egalitarian Principles in a Capitalist World, tries to answer the questions of why the communal kibbutz worked so well in Israel's formative years and what limits its current success in modern Is...

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2020

AER: Insights Q&A with Editor Amy Finkelstein

[News]

May 19, 2020

As AER: Insights approaches its first anniversary, its founding editor, Amy Finkelstein, answers some questions about the journal.

2019 Signaling Candidate Survey

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2019 Signaling Employer Survey

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Take it again

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Retaking the SAT boosts scores and college enrollment, especially for minority and low-income students.

Few companies, fewer products

[Research Highlight]

May 12, 2020

The oligopolistic smartphone market isn't producing enough phones for consumers.

Competition, Product Proliferation, and Welfare: A Study of the US Smartphone Market

By Ying Fan and Chenyu Yang

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2020

This paper studies (1) whether, from a welfare point of view, oligopolistic competition leads to too few or too many products in a market, and (2) how a change in competition affects the number and the composition of product offerings. We address these tw...

Financial culture

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Do bankers have different values than the rest of society?