-
作者：Bleakley, Hoyt; Lin, Jeffrey
作者单位：University of Chicago; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Philadelphia
摘要：Many cities in North America formed at obstacles to water navigation, where continued transport required overland hauling or portage. Portage sites attracted commerce and supporting services, and places where the falls provided water power attracted manufacturing during early industrialization. We examine portage sites in the U.S. South, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, including those on the fall line, a geomorphological feature in the southeastern United States marking the final rapids on rivers b...
-
作者：Kling, Jeffrey R.; Mullainathan, Sendhil; Shafir, Eldar; Vermeulen, Lee C.; Wrobel, Marian V.
作者单位：National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University; Princeton University; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison
摘要：Consumers need information to compare alternatives for markets to function efficiently. Recognizing this, public policies often pair competition with easy access to comparative information. The implicit assumption is that comparison friction-the wedge between the availability of comparative information and consumers' use of it-is inconsequential because when information is readily available, consumers will access this information and make effective choices. We examine the extent of comparison ...
-
作者：Mian, Atif; Sufi, Amir
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Chicago
摘要：We evaluate the impact of the 2009 Cash for Clunkers program on short- and medium-run auto purchases. Our empirical strategy exploits variation across U.S. cities in ex ante exposure to the program as measured by the number of clunkers in the city as of summer 2008. We find that the program induced the purchase of an additional 370,000 cars in July and August 2009. However, we find strong evidence of reversal; high clunker counties bought fewer autos in the 10 months after the program expired,...
-
作者：Acemoglu, Daron; Golosov, Mikhail; Tsyvinski, Aleh; Yared, Pierre
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Yale University; Columbia University
摘要：We develop a dynamic theory of resource wars and study the conditions under which such wars can be prevented. Our focus is on the interaction between the scarcity of resources and the incentives for war in the presence of limited commitment. We show that a key parameter determining the incentives for war is the elasticity of demand. Our first result identifies a novel externality that can precipitate war: price-taking firms fail to internalize the impact of their extraction on military action....
-
作者：Bordalo, Pedro; Gennaioli, Nicola; Shleifer, Andrei
作者单位：University of London; Pompeu Fabra University; Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI); Harvard University
摘要：We present a theory of choice among lotteries in which the decision maker's attention is drawn to (precisely defined) salient payoffs. This leads the decision maker to a context-dependent representation of lotteries in which true probabilities are replaced by decision weights distorted in favor of salient payoffs. By specifying decision weights as a function of payoffs, our model provides a novel and unified account of many empirical phenomena, including frequent risk-seeking behavior, invaria...
-
作者：Jensen, Robert
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
摘要：Do labor market opportunities for women affect marriage and fertility decisions? We provided three years of recruiting services to help young women in randomly selected rural Indian villages get jobs in the business process outsourcing industry. Because the industry was so new at the time of the study, there was almost no awareness of these jobs, allowing us in effect to exogenously increase women's labor force opportunities from the perspective of rural households. We find that young women in...
-
作者：Padro i Miquel, Gerard; Yared, Pierre
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; National Bureau of Economic Research; Columbia University
摘要：This article characterizes optimal policy when a government uses indirect control to exert its authority. We develop a dynamic principal-agent model in which a principal (a government) delegates the prevention of a disturbance-such as riots, protests, terrorism, crime, or tax evasion-to an agent who has an advantage in accomplishing this task. Our setting is a standard repeated moral hazard model with two additional features. First, the principal is allowed to exert direct control by interveni...
-
作者：DellaVigna, Stefano; List, John A.; Malmendier, Ulrike
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Chicago
摘要：Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, for example, due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike saying no, for example, due to social pressure. We design a door-to-door fund-raiser in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a flyer on their ...
-
作者：Aghion, Philippe; Fudenberg, Drew; Holden, Richard; Kunimoto, Takashi; Tercieux, Olivier
作者单位：Harvard University; University of New South Wales Sydney; Hitotsubashi University; Paris School of Economics
摘要：We consider the robustness of extensive form mechanisms to deviations from common knowledge about the state of nature, which we refer to as information perturbations. First, we show that even under arbitrarily small information perturbations the Moore-Repullo mechanism does not yield (even approximately) truthful revelation and that in addition the mechanism has sequential equilibria with undesirable outcomes. More generally, we prove that any extensive form mechanism is fragile in the sense t...
-
作者：Philippon, Thomas; Reshef, Ariell
作者单位：New York University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Virginia
摘要：We study the allocation and compensation of human capital in the U.S. finance industry over the past century. Across time, space, and subsectors, we find that financial deregulation is associated with skill intensity, job complexity, and high wages for finance employees. All three measures are high before 1940 and after 1985, but not in the interim period. Workers in finance earn the same education-adjusted wages as other workers until 1990, but by 2006 the premium is 50% on average. Top execu...
