The Long-Run Effects of a Public Policy on Alcohol Tastes and Mortality

By Lorenz Kueng and Evgeny Yakovlev

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

We study the long-run effects of Russia's anti-alcohol campaign, which dramatically altered the relative supply of hard and light alcohol in the late 1980s. We find that this policy shifted young men's long-run preferences from hard to light alcohol dec...

Influence and Information in Team Decisions: Evidence from Medical Residency

By David C. Chan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

I study team decisions among physician trainees. Exploiting a discontinuity in team roles across trainee tenure, I find evidence that teams alter decision-making, concentrating influence in the hands of senior trainees. I also demonstrate little convergen...

Relative Prices and Climate Policy: How the Scarcity of Nonmarket Goods Drives Policy Evaluation

By Moritz A. Drupp and Martin C. Hänsel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Climate change not only impacts production and market consumption but also the relative scarcity of nonmarket goods, such as environmental amenities. We study fundamental drivers of the resulting relative price changes, their potential magnitude, and thei...

Who Benefits When Firms Game Corrective Policies?

By Mathias Reynaert and James M. Sallee

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Firms sometimes comply with externality-correcting policies by gaming the measure that determines policy. This harms buyers by eroding information, but it benefits them when cost savings are passed through into prices. We develop a model that highlights t...

The Impact of Paid Maternity Leave on Maternal Health

By Aline Bütikofer, Julie Riise, and Meghan M. Skira

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

We examine the impact of the introduction of paid maternity leave in Norway in 1977 on maternal health in the medium and long term. Using administrative data combined with survey data on the health of women around age 40, we find the reform improved a ran...

Can Successful Schools Replicate? Scaling Up Boston's Charter School Sector

By Sarah R. Cohodes, Elizabeth M. Setren, and Christopher R. Walters

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Can schools that boost student outcomes reproduce their success at new campuses? We study a policy reform that allowed effective charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to replicate their school models at new locations. Estimates based on randomized admi...

Climate Change and Agriculture: Subsistence Farmers' Response to Extreme Heat

By Fernando M. Aragón, Francisco Oteiza, and Juan Pablo Rud

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

This paper examines how subsistence farmers respond to extreme heat. Using microdata from Peruvian households, we find that high temperatures reduce agricultural productivity, increase area planted, and change crop mix. These findings are consistent with ...

Improving Police Performance in Rajasthan, India: Experimental Evidence on Incentives, Managerial Autonomy, and Training

By Abhijit Banerjee, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Daniel Keniston, and Nina Singh

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2021

Management matters for firms, but what practices are optimal in hierarchical government organizations? And can skilled managers identify them? A large-scale randomized trial conducted with the police of Rajasthan, India, tested four interventions recommen...

The consequences of school choice

[Research Highlight]

January 27, 2021

Harvard professor Chris Avery discusses how allowing students to leave their neighborhood for their education may undercut policymakers' goals.

The Distributional Consequences of Public School Choice

By Christopher Avery and Parag A. Pathak

American Economic Review, January 2021

School choice systems aspire to delink residential location and school assignments by allowing children to apply to schools outside of their neighborhood. However, choice programs also affect incentives to live in certain neighborhoods, and this feedback ...

Staffing the Higher Education Classroom

[Symposium: Economics of Higher Education]

By David Figlio and Morton Schapiro

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

We discuss some centrally important decisions faced by colleges and universities regarding how to staff their undergraduate classrooms. We describe the multitasking problem faced by research-intensive institutions and explore the degree to which there may...

The Globalization of Postsecondary Education: The Role of International Students in the US Higher Education System

[Symposium: Economics of Higher Education]

By John Bound, Breno Braga, Gaurav Khanna, and Sarah Turner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

In the four decades since 1980, US colleges and universities have seen the number of students from abroad quadruple. This rise in enrollment and degree attainment affects the global supply of highly educated workers, the flow of talent to the US labor mar...

Why Does the United States Have the Best Research Universities? Incentives, Resources, and Virtuous Circles

[Symposium: Economics of Higher Education]

By W. Bentley MacLeod and Miguel Urquiola

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

Around 1875, the US had none of the world’s leading research universities; today, it accounts for the majority of the top-ranked. Many observers cite events surrounding World War II as the source of this reversal. We present evidence that US research un...

Taxing Our Wealth

By Florian Scheuer and Joel Slemrod

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

This paper evaluates proposals for an annual wealth tax. While a dozen OECD countries levied wealth taxes in the recent past, now only three retain them, with only Switzerland raising a comparable fraction of revenue as recent proposals for a US wealth ta...

Melissa Dell: Winner of the 2020 Clark Medal

By Daron Acemoglu

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

The 2020 John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association was awarded to Melissa Dell, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, for her path-breaking contributions in political economy, economic history, and economic development. This arti...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

The Elusive Employment Effect of the Minimum Wage

[Symposium: Minimum Wage]

By Alan Manning

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

It is hard to find a negative effect on the employment effect of rises in the minimum wage: the elusive employment effect. It is much easier to find an impact on wages. This paper argues the elusive employment effect is unlikely to be solved by better dat...

How Do Firms Respond to Minimum Wage Increases? Understanding the Relevance of Non-employment Margins

[Symposium: Minimum Wage]

By Jeffrey Clemens

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

This paper discusses non-employment margins through which firms may respond to minimum wage increases.  Margins of interest include evasion, output prices, noncash compensation, job attributes including effort requirements, the firm’s mix of low- and h...

Estimating Judicial Ideology

[Symposium: Polarization in Courts]

By Adam Bonica and Maya Sen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

We review the substantial literature on estimating judicial ideology, from the US Supreme Court to the lowest state court. As a way to showcase the strengths and drawbacks of various measures, we further analyze trends in judicial polarization within the ...

The Rise of American Minimum Wages, 1912–1968

[Symposium: Minimum Wage]

By Price V. Fishback and Andrew J. Seltzer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2021

This paper studies the judicial, political, and intellectual battles over minimum wages from the early state laws of the 1910s through the peak in the real federal minimum in 1968. Early laws were limited to women and children and were ruled unconstitutio...