The Status Quo and Belief Polarization of Inattentive Agents: Theory and Experiment

By Vladimír Novák, Andrei Matveenko, and Silvio Ravaioli

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

We show that rational but inattentive agents can become polarized ex-ante. We present how optimal information acquisition, and subsequent belief formation, depend crucially on the agent-specific status quo valuation. Beliefs can systematically—in expe...

Consistent Depth of Reasoning in Level-k Models

By David J. Cooper, Enrique Fatas, Antonio J. Morales, and Shi Qi

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Level-k models often assume that individuals employ a fixed depth of reasoning across different games. We study this assumption by having subjects make choices in five classes of games chosen to identify inconsistent depth of reasoning. We demonstrate ...

A New Era of Midnight Mergers: Antitrust Risk and Investor Disclosures

By John M. Barrios and Thomas G. Wollmann

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Antitrust authorities search public documents to discover anticompetitive mergers. Thus, investor disclosures may alert them to deals that would otherwise go undetected, creating disincentives for managers to divulge certain transactions. We study this...

Economist Nobel Laureates

[Page]

Robert M. Solow (1924–2023)

[News]

December 22, 2023

The economics profession is saddened by the loss of the Nobel laureate and former AEA president.

ASSA 2024 Live-Streamed Sessions

[Page]

Call for Papers: 80th Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance

[News]

December 22, 2023

The submission deadline is February 15, 2024.

Assistant Professor with a primary research focus on Economic History

[Page]

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

Increasing the Cost of Informal Employment: Evidence from Mexico

By Brenda Samaniego de la Parra and León Fernández Bujanda

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

We estimate the effect of increasing the cost of informal jobs on formal firms' and workers' outcomes. We combine administrative records and household surveys and exploit exogenous variation in the cost of informality generated by over 480,000 random work...

The Impact of Youth Medicaid Eligibility on Adult Incarceration

By Samuel Arenberg, Seth Neller, and Sam Stripling

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

This paper identifies an important spillover associated with public health insurance: reduced incarceration. In 1990, Congress passed legislation that increased Medicaid eligibility for individuals born after September 30, 1983. We show that Black childre...

The Unintended Consequences of Test-Based Remediation

By David Figlio and Umut Ozek

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

School systems around the world use achievement tests to assign students to schools, classes, and instructional resources, including remediation. Using a regression discontinuity design, we study a Florida policy that places middle school students who sco...

At What Level Should One Cluster Standard Errors in Paired and Small-Strata Experiments?

By Clément de Chaisemartin and Jaime Ramirez-Cuellar

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

In matched pairs experiments in which one cluster per pair of clusters is assigned to treatment, to estimate treatment effects, researchers often regress their outcome on a treatment indicator and pair fixed effects, clustering standard errors at the unit...

Does Exposure to Other Ethnic Regions Promote National Integration? Evidence from Nigeria

By Oyebola Okunogbe

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

This paper examines how temporary exposure to a different ethnic region affects national integration, using original survey data from participants in Africa's largest national youth service program. Seven years later, participants randomly assigned to ser...

Employer Concentration and Wages for Specialized Workers

By Anna Thoresson

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

This paper studies how wages respond to a sudden change in employer concentration by using the deregulation of the Swedish pharmacy industry. The reform involved a substantial and policy-driven increase in the number of employers that varied by local labo...

Informed Enforcement: Lessons from Pollution Monitoring in China

By Sebastian Axbard and Zichen Deng

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

Government regulations are often imperfectly enforced by public officials. In this study, we exploit the introduction of air pollution monitors in China to investigate whether real-time monitoring of policy outcomes affects the enforcement of existing reg...

Reversing the Resource Curse: Foreign Corruption Regulation and the Local Economic Benefits of Resource Extraction

By Hans B. Christensen, Mark Maffett, and Thomas Rauter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

We examine how foreign corruption regulation affects the economic benefits communities receive from extraction activities in the resource-rich areas of Africa. After a mid-2000s increase in enforcement of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), night...

Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from US Circuit Courts

By Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen, and Arianna Ornaghi

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

Do gender attitudes influence interactions with female judges in US circuit courts? In this paper, we propose a judge-specific measure of gender attitudes based on use of gender-stereotyped language in the judge's authored opinions. Exploiting quasi-rando...

Is It Who You Are or What You Get? Comparing the Impacts of Loans and Grants for Microenterprise Development

By Bruno Crépon, Mohamed El Komi, and Adam Osman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

Is the type of financial support provided to businesses more important than which businesses receive it? Loans and grants can lead to differences in optimal investments and in scope for moral hazard. We randomize 3,293 business loan applicants into receiv...

Affirmative Action and Precollege Human Capital

By Mitra Akhtari, Natalie Bau, and Jean-William Laliberté

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

Though racial affirmative action (AA) policies are widespread in college admissions, evidence on their effects before college is limited. We study a US Supreme Court ruling that reinstated AA in three states. Using nationwide SAT data, we separately ident...