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作者：Luttmer, Erzo G. J.
作者单位：University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis
摘要：This paper describes an analytically tractable model of balanced growth that is consistent with the observed size distribution of firms. Growth is the result of idiosyncratic firm productivity improvements, selection of successful firms, and imitation by entrants. Selection tends to improve aggregate productivity at a fast rate if entry and imitation are easy. The empirical phenomenon of Zipf's law can be interpreted to mean that entry costs are high or that imitation is difficult, or both. Th...
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作者：DellaVigna, Stefano; Kaplan, Ethan
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; Stockholm University
摘要：Does media bias affect voting? We analyze the entry of Fox News in cable markets and its impact on voting. Between October 1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced in the cable programming of 20 percent of U. S. towns. Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic, conditional on a set of controls. Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market ...
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作者：Jensen, Robert
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：When information is limited or costly, agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage. Excess price dispersion across markets can arise, and goods may not be allocated efficiently. In this setting, information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare. Between 1997 and 2001, mobile phone service was introduced throughout Kerala, a state in India with a large fishing industry. Using microlevel survey data, we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and whol...
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作者：Niederle, Muriel; Vesterlund, Lise
作者单位：Stanford University; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); University of Pittsburgh; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment. Participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task, first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme. Although there are no gender differences in performance, men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance. While 73 percent of the men select the tournament, only 35 perce...
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作者：Banerjee, Abhijit V.; Cole, Shawn; Duflo, Esther; Linden, Leigh
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Harvard University; Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：This paper presents the results of two randomized experiments conducted in schools in urban India. A remedial education program hired young women to teach students lagging behind in basic literacy and numeracy skills. It increased average test scores of all children in treatment schools by 0.28 standard deviation, mostly due to large gains experienced by children at the bottom of the test-score distribution. A computer-assisted learning program focusing on math increased math scores by 0.47 st...
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作者：Kremer, Michael; Miguel, Edward
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：We use a randomized evaluation of a Kenyan deworming program to estimate peer effects in technology adoption and to shed light on foreign aid donors' movement towards sustainable community provision of public goods. Deworming is a public good since much of its social benefit comes through reduced disease transmission. People were less likely to take deworming if their direct first-order or indirect second-order social contacts were exposed to deworming. Efforts to replace subsidies with sustai...
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作者：Weil, David N.
作者单位：Brown University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：I use microeconomic estimates of the effect of health on individual outcomes to construct macroeconomic estimates of the proximate effect of health on GDP per capita. I employ a variety of methods to construct estimates of the return to health, which I combine with cross-country and historical data on height, adult survival rates, and age at menarche. Using my preferred estimate, eliminating health differences among countries would reduce the variance of log GDP per worker by 9.9 percent and r...
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作者：Aguiar, Mark; Hurst, Erik
作者单位：University of Rochester; University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：In this paper, we use five decades of time-use surveys to document trends in the allocation of time within the United States. We find that a dramatic increase in leisure time lies behind the relatively stable number of market hours worked between 1965 and 2003. Specifically, using a variety of definitions for leisure, we show that leisure for men increased by roughly six to nine hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by roughly four to eight hours per week (dri...
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作者：Mortimer, Julie Holland
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：U. S. copyright law effectively prevents direct price discrimination for copyright holders that sell to different markets. In response, these firms can engage in indirect price discrimination. I derive theoretical predictions about the use of indirect price discrimination, and I analyze how optimal pricing strategies differ for different products. Using data on VHS and DVD movie distribution, I find that firms' pricing choices are consistent with the predictions of theory and that firms' use o...
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作者：Shimer, Robert; Werning, Ivan
作者单位：University of Chicago; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：This paper argues that a risk-averse worker's after-tax reservation wage encodes all the relevant information about her welfare. This insight leads to a novel test for the optimality of unemployment insurance based on the responsiveness of reservation wages to unemployment benefits. Some existing estimates imply significant gains to raising the current level of unemployment benefits in the United States but highlight the need for more research on the determinants of reservation wages. Our appr...
