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作者：Andersen, Steffen; Campbell, John Y.; Nielsen, Kasper Meisner; Ramadorai, Tarun
作者单位：Copenhagen Business School; Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Imperial College London; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
摘要：We build an empirical model to attribute delays in mortgage refinancing to psychological costs inhibiting refinancing until incentives are sufficiently strong; and behavior, potentially attributable to information-gathering costs, lowering the probability of household refinancing per unit time at any incentive. We estimate the model on administrative panel data from Denmark, where mortgage refinancing without cash-out is unconstrained. Middle-aged and wealthy households act as if they have hig...
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作者：Fisman, Raymond; Shi, Jing; Wang, Yongxiang; Wu, Weixing
作者单位：Boston University; Shandong University of Finance & Economics; Macquarie University; University of Southern California; Shanghai Jiao Tong University; University of International Business & Economics
摘要：We study how sharing a hometown or college connection with an incumbent member of China's Politburo affects a candidate's likelihood of selection as a new member. In specifications that include fixed effects to absorb quality differences across cities and colleges, we find that hometown and college connections are each associated with 5-9 percentage point reductions in selection probability. This connections penalty is equally strong for retiring Politburo members, arguing against quota-based ...
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作者：Asher, Sam; Novosad, Paul
作者单位：Johns Hopkins University; Dartmouth College
摘要：Nearly one billion people worldwide live in rural areas without access to national paved road networks. We estimate the impacts of India's $40 billion national rural road construction program using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and comprehensive house-hold and firm census microdata. Four years after road construction, the main effect of new feeder roads is to facilitate the movement of workers out of agriculture. However, there are no major changes in agricultural outcomes, income, o...
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作者：Gregg, Amanda G.
作者单位：Middlebury College
摘要：In Imperial Russia, incorporation required an expensive special concession, yet over 4,000 Russian firms incorporated before 1914. I identify the characteristics of incorporating firms and measure the productivity gains and growth in machine power enjoyed by corporations using newly-constructed factory-level panel data compiled from Russian factory censuses. Factories owned by corporations were larger, more productive, and more mechanized than unincorporated factories. Higher productivity fact...
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作者：Ichihashi, Shota
作者单位：Bank of Canada
摘要：I study the welfare and price implications of consumer privacy. A consumer discloses information to a multiproduct seller, which learns about his preferences, sets prices, and makes product recommendations. Although the consumer benefits from accurate recommendations, the seller may use the information to price discriminate. I show that the seller prefers to commit to not use information for pricing in order to encourage information disclosure. However, this commitment hurts the consumer, who ...
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作者：Ambrus, Attila; Field, Erica; Gonzalez, Robert
作者单位：Duke University; University of South Carolina System; University of South Carolina Columbia
摘要：How do geographically concentrated income shocks influence the long-run spatial distribution of poverty within a city? We examine the impact on housing prices of a cholera epidemic in one neighborhood of nineteenth century London. Ten years after the epidemic, housing prices are significantly lower just inside the catchment area of the water pump that transmitted the disease. Moreover, differences in housing prices persist over the following 160 years. We make sense of these patterns by buildi...
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作者：Sadler, Evan
作者单位：Columbia University
摘要：Behaviors and information often spread via person-to-person diffusion. This paper highlights how diffusion processes can facilitate coordination. I study contagion in a discrete network with Bayesian players. In addition to characterizing the extent and rate of adoption, we uncover a new effect: when large cascades are possible in equilibrium, exposure conveys information about a player's network position. This effect underscores a novel trade-off in the design of marketing campaigns, suggesti...
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作者：Matsumoto, Brett
摘要：Fang and Gong (2017) develop a procedure to detect potential over-billing of Medicare by physicians. In their empirical analysis, they use aggregated claims data that can overstate the number of services performed due to features of Medicare billing. In this comment, I show how auditors can use detailed claims-level data to better target improper overbilling.
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作者：Grant, Matthew
作者单位：Stanford University
摘要：Tariffs are generally assumed to depend on the product, not the identity of the importer. However, special economic zones are a common, economically important policy used worldwide to lower tariffs on selected goods for selected manufacturers. I show this is motivated by policymakers' desire to discriminate across buyers when a tax is intended to raise prices for sellers, through a mechanism distinct from existing theories of optimal taxation. Using a new dataset compiled from public records a...
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作者：Dovis, Alessandro; Kirpalani, Rishabh
作者单位：University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison
摘要：Expectations of transfers by central governments incentivize overborrowing by local governments. In this paper, we ask if fiscal rules can reduce overborrowing if central governments cannot commit to enforce penalties when rules are violated. We study a model in which the central government's type is unknown and show that fiscal rules increase overborrowing if the central government's reputation is low. In contrast, fiscal rules are effective in lowering debt if the central government's reputa...
