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作者:Macchi, Elisa
作者单位:Brown University
摘要:I study the economic value of obesity-a status symbol in poor countries associated with raised health risks. Randomizing decision-makers in Kampala, Uganda to view weight-manipulated portraits, I find that obesity is perceived as a reliable signal of wealth but not of beauty or health. Thus, leveraging a real-stakes experi-ment involving professional loan officers, I show that being obese facilitates access to credit. The large obesity premium, compara-ble to raising borrower self-reported ear...
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作者:Rubens, Michael
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
摘要:I examine the effects of oligopsony power on allocative efficiency and income redistribution by studying a size regulation in the Chinese tobacco industry that led to ownership consolidation. I show that separate identification of input price markdowns, goods price markups, and productivity is challenging when a subset of inputs is nonsubstitutable, which often holds for materials, and construct and estimate a model to overcome this challenge. I find that the regulation increased input price m...
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作者:Cappelen, Alexander W.; Cappelen, Cornelius; Tungodden, Bertil
作者单位:Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); University of Bergen
摘要:A main focus in economics is how to design optimal policies in second-best situations, which often requires a trade-off between giving some individuals more than they deserve, false positives, and others less than they deserve, false negatives. This paper provides novel evidence on people's second-best fairness preferences from large-scale experimental studies in the United States and Norway. The majority of people are more concerned with false negatives than with false positives, but we docum...
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作者:Chodorow-Reich, Gabriel; Karabarbounis, Loukas; Kekre, Rohan
作者单位:Harvard University; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis; University of Chicago
摘要:Greece experienced a boom until 2007, followed by a collapse of unprecedented magnitude and persistence. We assess the sources of the boom and the bust, using a rich estimated dynamic general equilibrium model. External demand and government consumption fueled the boom in production, whereas transfers fueled the boom in consumption. Different from the standard narrative, wages and prices declined substantially during the bust. Tax policy accounts for the largest fraction of the bust in product...
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作者:Ostrovsky, Michael
作者单位:Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:Choice screen auctions have been recently deployed in 31 European countries, allowing consumers to choose their preferred search engine on Google's Android platform instead of being automatically defaulted to Google's own search engine. I show that a seemingly minor detail in the design of these auctions-whether they are conducted on a per appearance or a per install basis-plays a major role in the mix and characteristics of auction winners and, consequently, in their expected market share. Fu...
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作者:Albagli, Elias; Hellwig, Christian; Tsyvinski, Aleh
作者单位:Central Bank of Chile; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:We analyze the consequences of noisy information aggregation for investment. Market imperfections create endogenous rents that cause overinvestment in upside risks and underinvestment in downside risks. In partial equilibrium, these inefficiencies are particularly severe if upside risks are coupled with easy scalability of investment. In general equilibrium, the shareholders' collective attempts to boost value of individual firms leads to a novel externality operating through price that amplif...
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作者:Avoyan, Ala; Ramos, Joao
作者单位:Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; University of Southern California
摘要:We experimentally examine the efficacy of a novel pre-play institution in a well-known coordination game-the minimum-effort game-in which coordination failures are robust and persistent phenomena. This new institution allows agents to communicate while incrementally committing to their words, leading to a distinct theoretical prediction: the efficient outcome is uniquely selected in the extended coordination game. We find that commitment-enhanced communication significantly increases subjects'...