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作者:Bleakley, Hoyt; Ferrie, Joseph
作者单位:University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research; Northwestern University
摘要:Does the lack of wealth constrain parents' investments in the human capital of their descendants? We conduct a nearly 50-year follow-up of an episode in which such constraints would have been plausibly relaxed by a random allocation of substantial wealth to families. We track descendants of participants in Georgia's Cherokee Land Lottery of 1832, in which nearly every adult white male in the state took part. Winners received close to the median level of wealth-a large financial windfall orthog...
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作者:Haushofer, Johannes; Shapiro, Jeremy
作者单位:Princeton University
摘要:We use a randomized controlled trial to study the response of poor households in rural Kenya to unconditional cash transfers from the NGO GiveDirectly. The transfers differ from other programs in that they are explicitly unconditional, large, and concentrated in time. We randomized at both the village and household levels; furthermore, within the treatment group, we randomized recipient gender (wife versus husband), transfer timing (lump-sum transfer versus monthly installments), and transfer ...
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作者:Hottman, Colin J.; Redding, Stephen J.; Weinstein, David E.
作者单位:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors; Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Columbia University
摘要:We develop and structurally estimate a model of heterogeneous multiproduct firms that can be used to decompose the firm-size distribution into the contributions of costs, appeal (quality or taste), markups, and product scope. Using Nielsen barcode data on prices and sales, we find that variation in firm appeal and product scope explains at least four fifths of the variation in firm sales. We show that the imperfect substitutability of products within firms, and the fact that larger firms suppl...
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作者:Bierbrauer, Felix J.; Boyer, Pierre C.
作者单位:University of Cologne; University of Mannheim; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique
摘要:We study political competition in an environment in which voters have private information about their preferences. Our framework covers models of income taxation, public-goods provision, or publicly provided private goods. Politicians are vote-share maximizers. They can propose any policy that is resource-feasible and incentive-compatible. They can also offer special favors to subsets of the electorate. We prove two main results. First, the unique symmetric equilibrium is such that policies ar...
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作者:Broner, Fernando; Ventura, Jaume
作者单位:Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI); Pompeu Fabra University; Barcelona School of Economics
摘要:During the past three decades, many countries have lifted restrictions on cross-border financial transactions. We present a simple model that can account for the observed effects of financial globalization. The model emphasizes the role of imperfect enforcement of domestic debts and the interactions between domestic and foreign debts. Financial globalization can lead to a variety of outcomes: (i) domestic capital flight and ambiguous effects on net capital flows, investment, and growth; (ii) c...
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作者:Casaburi, Lorenzo; Troiano, Ugo
作者单位:Stanford University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:The incentives of political agents to enforce tax collection are key determinants of the levels of compliance. We study the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti tax evasion policy in Italy that used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. The program induced monetary and non-monetary benefits for non-evaders and an increase in local government expenditures. A one standard deviation increase in town-level program intens...
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作者:Akerlof, Robert; Holden, Richard
作者单位:University of Warwick; University of New South Wales Sydney
摘要:Most projects, in most walks of life, require the participation of multiple parties. While it is difficult to unite individuals in a common endeavor, some people, who we call movers and shakers, seem able to do it. The article specifically examines moving and shaking of an investment project, whose return depends on its quality and the total capital invested in it. We analyze a model with two types of agents: managers and investors. Managers and investors initially form social connections. Man...
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作者:Kirkeboen, Lars J.; Leuven, Edwin; Mogstad, Magne
作者单位:Statistics Norway; University of Oslo; University of Chicago
摘要:This article examines the labor market payoffs to different types of postsecondary education, including field and institution of study. Instrumental variables (IV) estimation of the payoff to choosing one type of education compared to another is made particularly challenging by individuals choosing between several types of education. Not only does identification require one instrument per alternative, but it is also necessary to deal with the issue that individuals who choose the same educatio...
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作者:Fajgelbaum, Pablo D.; Khandelwal, Amit K.
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; National Bureau of Economic Research; Columbia University
摘要:Individuals that consume different baskets of goods are differentially affected by relative price changes caused by international trade. We develop a methodology to measure the unequal gains from trade across consumers within countries. The approach requires data on aggregate expenditures and parameters estimated from a nonhomothetic gravity equation. We find that trade typically favors the poor, who concentrate spending in more traded sectors.
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作者:David, Joel M.; Hopenhayn, Hugo A.; Venkateswaran, Venky
作者单位:University of Southern California; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; New York University
摘要:We propose a theory linking imperfect information to resource misallocation and hence to aggregate productivity and output. In our setup, firms look to a variety of noisy information sources when making input decisions. We devise a novel empirical strategy that uses a combination of firm-level production and stock market data to pin down the information structure in the economy. Even when only capital is chosen under imperfect information, applying this methodology to data from the United Stat...