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作者:Ludwig, Jens; Miller, Douglas L.
作者单位:Georgetown University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Davis
摘要:This paper exploits a new source of variation in Head Start funding to identify the program's effects on health and schooling. In 1965 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) provided technical assistance to the 300 poorest counties to develop Head Start proposals. The result was a large and lasting discontinuity in Head Start funding rates at the OEO cutoff for grant-writing assistance. We find evidence of a large drop at the OEO cutoff in mortality rates for children from causes that could ...
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作者:Koren, Miklos; Tenreyro, Silvana
作者单位:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要:Why is GDP growth so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? We identify three possible reasons: G) poor countries specialize in fewer and more volatile sectors; GO poor countries experience more frequent and more severe aggregate shocks (e.g., from macroeconomic policy); and (iii) poor countries' macroeconomic fluctuations are more highly correlated with the shocks affecting the sectors they specialize in. We show how to decompose volatility into the various sources, quantify ...
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作者:Di Tella, Rafael; Galiani, Sebastian; Schargrodsky, Ernesto
作者单位:Harvard University; Washington University (WUSTL); Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
摘要:We study the formation of beliefs in a squatter settlement in the outskirts of Buenos Aires exploiting a natural experiment that induced an allocation of property rights that is exogenous to the characteristics of the squatters. There are significant differences in the beliefs that squatters with and without land titles declare to hold. Lucky squatters who end up with legal titles report beliefs closer to those that favor the workings of a free market. Examples include materialist and individu...
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作者:Hall, Robert E.; Jones, Charles I.
作者单位:Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要:Over the past half century, Americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: Is the growth of health spending a rational response to changing economic conditions-notably the growth of income per person? We develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the ca...
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作者:Alessandria, George; Choi, Horag
作者单位:University of Auckland; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Philadelphia
摘要:Firms start and stop exporting. Previous research suggests that these export participation decisions alter the comovement of net exports with the real exchange rate. We evaluate these predictions in a general equilibrium environment. Specifically, assuming firms face an up-front, sunk cost of entering foreign markets, and a smaller period-by-period continuation cost, we derive the discrete entry and exit decisions yielding exporter dynamics in an open economy business cycle model. The model's ...
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作者:Cremer, Jacques; Garicano, Luis; Prat, Andrea
作者单位:Universite PSL; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS); Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); University of Chicago; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要:We characterize efficient technical languages and study their interaction with the scope and structure of organizations. Efficient languages use precise words for frequent events and vague words for unusual ones. A broader organizational scope allows for more synergies to be captured, but reduces within-unit efficiency, since it requires a more generic language. A manager working as specialized translator may also be used to achieve between-unit coordination while maintaining separate language...
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作者:Black, Sandra E.; Devereux, Paul J.; Salvanes, Kjell G.
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University College Dublin; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other hard-to-measure characteristics. By applying within twin techniques using an unusually rich dataset from Norway, we examine the effects of birth weight on both short-run and long-run outcomes for the same coh...
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作者:Sacerdote, Bruce
作者单位:Dartmouth College; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:I analyze a new set of data on Korean American adoptees who were quasi-randomly assigned to adoptive families. I find large effects on adoptees' education, income, and health from assignment to parents with more education and from assignment to smaller families. Parental education and family size are significantly more correlated with adoptee outcomes than are parental income or neighborhood characteristics. Outcomes such as drinking, smoking, and the selectivity of college attended are more d...