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作者：Boffa, Federico; Piolatto, Amedeo; Ponzetto, Giacomo A. M.
作者单位：Free University of Bozen-Bolzano; University of Barcelona; Pompeu Fabra University; Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI); Barcelona School of Economics
摘要：This article explains why decentralization can undermine accountability and answers three questions: what determines if power should be centralized or decentralized when regions are heterogeneous? How many levels of government should there be? How should state borders be drawn? We develop a model of political agency in which voters differ in their ability to monitor rent-seeking politicians. We find that rent extraction is a decreasing and convex function of the share of informed voters, becau...
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作者：Malmendier, Ulrike; Nagel, Stefan
作者单位：National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要：How do individuals form expectations about future inflation? We propose that individuals overweight inflation experienced during their lifetimes. This approach modifies existing adaptive learning models to allow for age-dependent updating of expectations in response to inflation surprises. Young individuals update their expectations more strongly than older individuals since recent experiences account for a greater share of their accumulated lifetime history. We find support for these predicti...
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作者：Jackson, C. Kirabo; Johnson, Rucker C.; Persico, Claudia
作者单位：Northwestern University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：Since the Coleman Report, many have questioned whether public school spending affects student outcomes. The school finance reforms that began in the early 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s caused dramatic changes to the structure of K-12 education spending in the United States. To study the effect of these school finance reform-induced changes in public school spending on long-run adult outcomes, we link school spending and school finance reform data to detailed, nationally representative dat...
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作者：Farhi, Emmanuel; Gabaix, Xavier
作者单位：Harvard University; New York University
摘要：We propose a new model of exchange rates, based on the hypothesis that the possibility of rare but extreme disasters is an important determinant of risk premia in asset markets. The probability of world disasters as well as each country's exposure to these events is time-varying. This creates joint fluctuations in exchange rates, interest rates, options, and stock markets. The model accounts for a series of major puzzles in exchange rates: excess volatility and exchange rate disconnect, forwar...
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作者：Sampson, Thomas
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：This article develops an idea flows theory of trade and growth with heterogeneous firms. Entrants learn from incumbent firms, and the diffusion technology is such that learning depends not on the frontier technology, but on the entire distribution of productivity. By shifting the productivity distribution upward, selection causes technology diffusion, and in equilibrium this dynamic selection process leads to endogenous growth without scale effects. On the balanced growth path, the productivit...
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作者：Arkolakis, Costas
作者单位：Yale University
摘要：This article develops an analytical framework to study firm and exporter growth and provides a dynamic foundation for a standard general equilibrium trade model. Firm-level growth is the result of idiosyncratic productivity improvements with a continuous arrival of new potential producers. A firm enters a market if it is profitable to incur the marginal cost to reach the first consumer and pays an increasing marketing cost to reach additional consumers. I calibrate the model using data on the ...
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作者：Khan, Adnan Q.; Khwaja, Asim I.; Olken, Benjamin A.
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Harvard University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：Performance pay for tax collectors has the potential to raise revenues, but might come at a cost if it increases the bargaining power of tax collectors vis-A -vis taxpayers. We report the first large-scale field experiment on these issues, where we experimentally allocated 482 property tax units in Punjab, Pakistan, into one of three performance pay schemes or a control. After two years, incentivized units had 9.4 log points higher revenue than controls, which translates to a 46% higher growth...
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作者：Gelber, Alexander; Isen, Adam; Kessler, Judd B.
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; United States Department of the Treasury; University of Pennsylvania
摘要：Programs to encourage labor market activity among youth, including public employment programs and wage subsidies like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, can be supported by three broad rationales. They may (i) provide contemporaneous income support to participants; (ii) encourage work experience that improves future employment and/or educational outcomes of participants; and/or (iii) keep participants out of trouble. We study randomized lotteries for access to the New York City (NYC) Summer Yout...
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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：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...
