Regulation by Shaming: Deterrence Effects of Publicizing Violations of Workplace Safety and Health Laws

By Matthew S. Johnson

American Economic Review, June 2020

Publicizing firms' socially undesirable actions may enhance firms' incentives to avoid such actions. In 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began issuing press releases about facilities that violated safety and health regulation...

Regulation by shaming

[Research Highlight]

June 18, 2020

Publicizing safety violations at one company has ripple effects that lead to improvements at other workplaces.

The tyranny of the top five

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Is there too much pressure to publish in the highest-ranked journals?

CSWEP Panel Event - July 7, 2020

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2020 Candidates for Office

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The Fall in Global Fertility: A Quantitative Model

By Tiloka de Silva and Silvana Tenreyro

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2020

Over the past six decades, fertility rates have fallen dramatically in most middle- and low-income countries. To analyze these developments, we study a quantitative model of endogenous human capital and fertility choice, augmented to allow for social norm...

Promoting smaller families

[Research Highlight]

June 25, 2020

Fertility rates are declining in poor countries. Family planning campaigns are part of the reason why.

CSWEP Panel Events

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Valuing past performance

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How much do reference letters boost a job seeker's prospects for landing an interview?

Room to grow

[Research Highlight]

July 16, 2020

Are social insurance mandates holding back entrepreneurs?

Does Mandating Social Insurance Affect Entrepreneurial Activity?

By Youssef Benzarti, Jarkko Harju, and Tuomas Matikka

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2020

This paper estimates the effect of relaxing the social insurance mandate on entrepreneurial activity using rich administrative data from Finland. We find that relaxing the social insurance mandate leads entrepreneurs to reduce their contributions by 16 pe...

Managing the national debt

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What type of bonds should governments issue?

Fenced Out: The Impact of Border Construction on US-Mexico Migration

By Benjamin Feigenberg

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2020

This paper estimates the impact of the US-Mexico border fence on US-Mexico migration by exploiting variation in the timing and location of US government investment in fence construction. Using Mexican survey data and data I collected on fence construction...

Building barriers

[Research Highlight]

July 15, 2020

Benjamin Feigenberg discusses the effectiveness of border walls on deterring migration.

2020 PCAOB-ERA Conference on Auditing and Capital Markets Call for Papers

[News]

July 20, 2020

Conference to be held virtually on October 29-30, 2020.

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2020

Imitation Perfection—A Simple Rule to Prevent Discrimination in Procurement

By Helene Mass, Nicolas Fugger, Vitali Gretschko, and Achim Wambach

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2020

Procurement regulation aimed at curbing discrimination requires equal treatment of sellers. However, Deb and Pai (2017) show that such regulation imposes virtually no restrictions on the ability to discriminate. We propose a simple rule—imitation perfec...

Pricing Network Effects: Competition

By Itay P. Fainmesser and Andrea Galeotti

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2020

We study the practice of influencer marketing in oligopoly markets and its effect on market efficiency. In our model, each consumer is influenced by choices of a subset of other consumers. Firms gather information on consumers' influence and price discrim...

Image versus Information: Changing Societal Norms and Optimal Privacy

By S. Nageeb Ali and Roland Bénabou

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2020

We analyze the costs and benefits of using social image to foster desirable behaviors. Each agent acts based on his intrinsic motivation, private assessment of the public good, and reputational concern for appearing prosocial. A Principal sets the general...

Revealed Preference Analysis with Normal Goods: Application to Cost-of-Living Indices

By Laurens Cherchye, Thomas Demuynck, Bram De Rock, and Khushboo Surana

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2020

We present a revealed preference methodology for nonparametric demand analysis under the assumption of normal goods. Our methodology is flexible in that it allows for imposing normality on any subset of goods. We show the usefulness of our methodology for...