A Model of Sequential Crisis Management

By Fei Li and Jidong Zhou

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, November 2023

We propose a model of how multiple societies respond to a common crisis. A government faces a "damned-either-way" policymaking dilemma: aggressive intervention contains the crisis, but the resulting good outcome makes people skeptical about the costly res...

Distortion by Audit: Evidence from Public Procurement

By Maria Paula Gerardino, Stephan Litschig, and Dina Pomeranz

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Public sector audits are key to state capacity. However, they can create unintended distortions. Regression discontinuity analysis from Chile shows that audits lowered the use of auctions for public procurement, reduced supplier competition, and increas...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, November 2023

The Impact of Regulation on Innovation

By Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, and John Van Reenen

American Economic Review, November 2023

We present a framework that can be used to assess the equilibrium impact of regulation on endogenous innovation with heterogeneous firms. We implement this model using French firm-level panel data, where there is a sharp increase in the burden of labor re...

Selection on Welfare Gains: Experimental Evidence from Electricity Plan Choice

By Koichiro Ito, Takanori Ida, and Makoto Tanaka

American Economic Review, November 2023

We study a problem in which policymakers need to screen self-selected individuals by unobserved heterogeneity in social welfare gains from a policy intervention. In our framework, the marginal treatment effects and marginal treatment responses arise as ke...

Unpacking P-hacking and Publication Bias

By Abel Brodeur, Scott Carrell, David Figlio, and Lester Lusher

American Economic Review, November 2023

We use unique data from journal submissions to identify and unpack publication bias and p-hacking. We find initial submissions display significant bunching, suggesting the distribution among published statistics cannot be fully attributed to a publication...

Is There a VA Advantage? Evidence from Dually Eligible Veterans

By David C. Chan, David Card, and Lowell Taylor

American Economic Review, November 2023

We study public versus private provision of health care for veterans aged 65 and older who may receive care provided by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and in private hospitals financed by Medicare. Utilizing the ambulance design of Doyle et al...

Measuring Upward Mobility

By Debraj Ray ⓡ Garance Genicot

American Economic Review, November 2023

We conceptualize and measure upward mobility over income or wealth. At the core of our exercise is the Growth Progressivity Axiom: transfers of instantaneous growth rates from relatively rich to poor individuals increases upward mobility. This axiom, alon...

A Sufficient Statistics Approach for Macro Policy

By Régis Barnichon and Geert Mesters

American Economic Review, November 2023

The evaluation of macroeconomic policy decisions has traditionally relied on the formulation of a specific economic model. In this work, we show that two statistics are sufficient to detect, often even correct, nonoptimal policies, i.e., policies that do ...

Who Controls the Agenda Controls the Legislature

By S. Nageeb Ali, B. Douglas Bernheim, Alexander W. Bloedel, and Silvia Console Battilana

American Economic Review, November 2023

We model legislative decision-making with an agenda setter who can propose policies sequentially, tailoring each proposal to the status quo that prevails after prior votes. Voters are sophisticated, and the agenda setter cannot commit to future proposals....

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Testing two theories of the origin of government

[Research Highlight]

October 27, 2023

Leander Heldring discusses the formation of ancient states in Iraq.

The Economic Origins of Government

By Robert C. Allen, Mattia C. Bertazzini, and Leander Heldring

American Economic Review, October 2023

We test between cooperative and extractive theories of the origins of government. We use river shifts in southern Iraq as a natural experiment, in a new archeological panel dataset. A shift away creates a local demand for a government to coordinate becaus...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2023

Electoral Cycles in Macroprudential Regulation

By Karsten Müller

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2023

Do politics matter for macroprudential policies? I show that changes in macroprudential regulation exhibit a predictable electoral cycle in the run-up to 221 elections across 58 countries from 2000 through 2014. Policies restricting mortgages and consumer...

Dynamic Impacts of School-Based Internet Access on Student Learning: Evidence from Peruvian Public Primary Schools

By Leah K. Lakdawala, Eduardo Nakasone, and Kevin Kho

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2023

We investigate the impacts of school-based internet access on second graders' test scores, using over 2 million student observations from a panel of Peruvian public primary schools. We identify effects up to 6+ years after installation on different cohort...