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作者：Duflo, Esther; Pande, Rohini
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Harvard University
摘要：This paper studies the productivity and distributional effects of large irrigation dams in India. Our instrumental variable estimates exploit the fact that river gradient affects a district's suitability for dams. In districts located downstream from a dam, agricultural production increases, and vulnerability to rainfall shocks declines. In contrast, agricultural production shows an insignificant increase in the district where the dam is located but its volatility increases. Rural poverty decl...
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作者：Caselli, Francesco; Feyrer, James
作者单位：Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; National Bureau of Economic Research; Dartmouth College
摘要：Whether or not the marginal product of capital (MPK) differs across countries is a question that keeps coming up in discussions of comparative economic development and patterns of capital flows. Using easily accessible macroeconomic data we find that MPKs are remarkably similar across countries. Hence, there is no prima facie support for the view that international credit frictions play a major role in preventing capital flows from rich to poor countries. Lower capital ratios in these countrie...
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作者：Nunn, Nathan
作者单位：University of British Columbia
摘要：Is a country's ability to enforce contracts an important determinant of comparative advantage? To answer this question, I construct a variable that measures, for each good, the proportion of its intermediate inputs that require relationship-specific investments. Combining this measure with data on trade flows and judicial quality, 1 find that countries with good contract enforcement specialize in the production of goods for which relationship-specific investments are most important. According ...
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作者：Golosov, Mikhail; Tsyvinski, Aleh
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University
摘要：We study optimal taxation in an economy where the skills of agents evolve stochastically over time and are private information and in which agents can trade unobservably in competitive markets. We show that competitive equilibria are constrained inefficient. The government can improve welfare by distorting capital accumulation with the sign of the distortion depending on the nature of the skill process. Finally, we show that private insurance provision responds endogenously to policy, that gov...
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作者：Chetty, Raj; Szeidl, Adam
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Many households devote a large fraction of their budgets to consumption commitments-goods that involve transaction costs and are infrequently adjusted. This paper characterizes risk preferences in an expected utility model with commitments. We show that commitments affect risk preferences in two ways: (1) they amplify risk aversion with respect to moderate-stake shocks, and (2) they create a motive to take large-payoff gambles. The model thus helps resolve two basic puzzles in expected utility...
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作者：Echenique, Federico; Fryer, Roland G., Jr.
作者单位：California Institute of Technology; Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We develop an index of segregation based on two premises: (1) a measure of segregation should disaggregate to the level of individuals, and (2) an individual is more segregated the more segregated are the agents with whom she interacts. We present an index that satisfies (1) and (2) and that is based on agents' social interactions: the extent to which blacks interact with blacks, whites with whites, etc. We use the index to measure school and residential segregation. Using detailed data on fri...
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作者：Bandiera, Oriana; Barankay, Iwan; Rasul, Imran
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of Essex; University of London; University College London
摘要：We present evidence from a firm level experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial compensation from fixed wages to performance pay based on the average productivity of lower-tier workers. Theory suggests that managerial incentives affect both the mean and dispersion of workers' productivity through two channels. First, managers respond to incentives by targeting their efforts towards more able workers, implying that both the mean and the dispersion increase. Second, man...
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作者：Snowberg, Erik; Wolfers, Justin; Zitzewitz, Eric
作者单位：Stanford University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Analyses of the effects of election outcomes on the economy have been hampered by the problem that economic outcomes also influence elections. We sidestep these problems by analyzing movements in economic indicators caused by clearly exogenous changes in expectations about the likely winner during election day. Analyzing high frequency financial fluctuations following the release of flawed exit poll data on election day 2004, and then during the vote count we find that markets anticipated high...
