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作者：Atal, Juan Pablo; Fang, Hanming; Karlsson, Martin; Ziebarth, Nicolas R.
作者单位：National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Duisburg Essen; University of Gothenburg; University of Mannheim
摘要：German long-term health insurance (GLTHI) represents the largest market for private long-term health insurance contracts in the world. We show that GLTHI's contract design coincides with the optimal dynamic contract for individuals with constant lifetime income profiles. After estimating the key ingredients of a life-cycle model, we find that, under a variety of assumptions, GLTHI achieves welfare that is at most 4% lower than for the optimal contract. Relative to the gains of replacing short-...
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作者：Nath, Ishan
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - San Francisco
摘要：This paper evaluates the potential for global reallocation between agricultural and nonagricultural production to contribute to climate change adaptation. Empirical estimates using a global sample of firms suggest that rising temperatures reduce productivity less in nonagriculture than angriculture, implying large potential gains if hot countries could increase food imports and shift labor toward manufacturing. However, model counterfactuals show that subsistence consumption needs and high tra...
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作者：Raz, Itzchak Tzachi
作者单位：Hebrew University of Jerusalem
摘要：This paper examines how environmental heterogeneity influences the formation of close-knit communities. I provide support for the social learning hypothesis, which posits that diverse environmental conditions limited American farmers' ability to learn from neighbors, weakening communal ties. I document a negative county-level association between soil heterogeneity and close-knit communities. Using individual-level data on nineteenth-century domestic migrants, I show that this association is no...
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作者：Angeletos, George-Marios; Sastry, Karthik A.
作者单位：Northwestern University; Princeton University
摘要：We study the efficiency of inattentive but otherwise frictionless economies by augmenting the Arrow-Debreu framework with a flexible form of rational inattention. If attention costs satisfy an invariance condition embedded in Sims's mutual information specification, a version of the first welfare theorem holds no matter the degree of inattention. More generally, however, a cognitive externality may emerge, and welfare may be improved by regulating and simplifying markets. We discuss how these ...
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作者：Matouschek, Niko; Powell, Michael; Reich, Bryony
作者单位：Northwestern University; University of Cambridge
摘要：Products are increasingly made by assembling separately produced modules. Motivated by the notion that a firm's production function drives its organization, we explore how modular production shapes a firm's communication structure. Decisions are partitioned into modules and require closer coordination within modules than across. Each agent knows the state his decision must be adapted to. The principal decides whom each agent tells about his state, given that each communication link comes at a ...
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作者：Boerma, Job; Tsyvinski, Aleh; Zimin, Alexander P.
作者单位：University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; Yale University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：We fully solve a sorting problem with heterogeneous firms and multiple heterogeneous workers whose skills are imperfect substitutes. We show that optimal sorting, which we call mixed and countermonotonic, is comprised of two regions. In the first region, mediocre firms sort with mediocre workers and coworkers such that the output losses are equal across all these teams (mixing). In the second region, a high-skill worker sorts with low-skill coworkers and a high-productivity firm (countermonoto...
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作者：Urgun, Can; Yariv, Leeat
作者单位：Princeton University; Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We provide a framework for analyzing search across correlated samples. The agent-a mineral prospecting team, a drug company, a politician-tracks observations over a Brownian path. The agent chooses the search speed and retrospectively picks the best observation when deciding to complete the search. We show that the optimal search speed is U-shaped: it is highest when approaching a breakthrough or when nearing search termination. Unlike search across independent samples, search optimally stops ...
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作者：Chiappori, Pierre-Andre; Costa Dias, Monica; Meghir, Costas; Zhang, Hanzhe
作者单位：Columbia University; University of Bristol; Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Michigan State University
摘要：Positive assortative matching refers to the tendency of individuals with similar characteristics to form partnerships. Measuring the extent to which assortative matching differs between two economies is challenging when the marginal distributions of the sorting characteristic (e.g., education) change for either or both sexes. We show how the use of different measures can generate different conclusions. We provide an axiomatic characterization for the odds ratio, normalized trace, and likelihoo...
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作者：Neumeyer, Pablo Andres; Nicolini, Juan Pablo
作者单位：Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis
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作者：Conner, Peter; Einav, Liran; Finkelstein, Amy; Persson, Petra
作者单位：Karolinska Institutet; Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
摘要：We study the introduction of a noninvasive prenatal screening-cell-free DNA (cfDNA) screening-which is used to target a more costly invasive test that elevates miscarriage risk. Using Swedish administrative data, we document that coverage of cfDNA substantially increases cfDNA screening and reduces invasive testing. We develop and estimate a stylized model of prenatal choices and find that narrow targeting of cfDNA coverage can improve outcomes and reduce costs, while broader coverage also imp...
