-
作者：Huang, Zhangkai; Li, Lixing; Ma, Guangrong; Xu, Lixin Colin
作者单位：Tsinghua University; Peking University; Renmin University of China; The World Bank
摘要：Hayek (1945) argues that local information is key to understanding the efficiency of alternative economic systems and whether production should be centralized or decentralized. The Chinese experience of decentralizing SOEs confirms this insight: when the distance to the government is farther, the SOE is more likely to be decentralized, and this distance-decentralization link is more pronounced with higher communication costs and greater firm-performance heterogeneity. However, when the Chinese...
-
作者：Leeper, Eric M.; Traum, Nora; Walker, Todd B.
作者单位：Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; National Bureau of Economic Research; North Carolina State University; Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington
摘要：We quantify government spending multipliers in US data using Bayesian prior and posterior analysis of a monetary model with fiscal details and two distinct monetary-fiscal policy regimes. The combination of model specification, observable data, and relatively diffuse priors for some parameters lands posterior estimates in regions of the parameter space that yield fresh perspectives on the transmission mechanisms that underlie government spending multipliers. Short-run output multipliers are co...
-
作者：Thomassen, Oyvind; Smith, Howard; Seiler, Stephan; Schiraldi, Pasquale
作者单位：Seoul National University (SNU); University of Oxford; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Stanford University; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：In many competitive settings, consumers buy multiple product categories, and some prefer to use a single firm, generating complementary cross-category price effects. To study pricing in supermarkets, an organizational form where these effects are internalized, we develop a multi-category, multi-seller demand model and estimate it using UK consumer data. This class of model is used widely in theoretical analysis of retail pricing. We quantify cross-category pricing effects and find that interna...
-
作者：Besley, Timothy; Folke, Olle; Persson, Torsten; Rickne, Johanna
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Uppsala University; Stockholm University; Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
摘要：We develop a model where party leaders choose the competence of politicians on the ballot to trade off electoral success against their own survival. The predicted correlation between the competence of party leaders and followers is strongly supported in Swedish data. We use a novel approach, based on register data for the earnings of the whole population, to measure the competence of all politicians in 7 parties, 290 municipalities, and 10 elections (for the period 1982-2014). We ask how compe...
-
作者：Chiappori, Pierre-Andre; Salanie, Bernard; Weiss, Yoram
作者单位：Columbia University; Tel Aviv University
摘要：We construct a model of household decision-making in which agents consume a private and a public good, interpreted as children's welfare. Children's utility depends on their human capital, which depends on the time their parents spend with them and on the parents' human capital. We first show that as returns to human capital increase, couples at the top of the income distribution should spend more time with their children. This in turn should reinforce assortative matching, in a sense that we ...
-
作者：Adam, Klaus; Marcet, Albert; Beutel, Johannes
作者单位：University of Mannheim; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Autonomous University of Barcelona; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Institut d'Analisi Economica (IAE); Barcelona School of Economics; ICREA; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Deutsche Bundesbank
摘要：Investors' subjective capital gains expectations are a key element explaining stock price fluctuations. Survey measures of these expectations display excessive optimism (pessimism) at market peaks (troughs). We formally reject the hypothesis that this is compatible with rational expectations. We then incorporate subjective price beliefs with such properties into a standard asset-pricing model with rational agents (internal rationality). The model gives rise to boom-bust cycles that temporarily...
-
作者：Friebel, Guido; Heinz, Matthias; Krueger, Miriam; Zubanov, Nikolay
作者单位：Goethe University Frankfurt; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; IZA Institute Labor Economics; University of Cologne; Deutsche Bundesbank; University of Konstanz
摘要：In a field experiment with a retail chain (1,300 employees, 193 shops), randomly selected sales teams received a bonus. The bonus increases both sales and number of customers dealt with by 3 percent. Each dollar spent on the bonus generates $3.80 in sales, and $2.10 in profit. Wages increase by 2.2 percent while inequality rises only moderately. The analysis suggests effort complementarities to be important, and the effectiveness of peer pressure in overcoming free-riding to be limited. After ...
-
作者：Ollar, Mariann; Penta, Antonio
作者单位：University of Groningen; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison
摘要：Multiplicity of equilibria and the dependence on strong common knowledge assumptions are well-known problems in mechanism design. We address them by studying full implementation via transfer schemes, under general restrictions on agents' beliefs. We show that incentive-compatible transfers ensure uniqueness-and hence full implementation-if they induce sufficiently weak strategic externalities. We then design transfers for full implementation by using information on beliefs in order to weaken t...
-
作者：McKenzie, David
作者单位：The World Bank
摘要：Almost all firms in developing countries have fewer than ten workers, with a modal size of one. Are there potential high-growth entrepreneurs, and can public policy help identify them and facilitate their growth? A large-scale national business plan competition in Nigeria provides evidence on these questions. Random assignment of US$34 million in grants provided each winner with approximately US$50,000. Surveys tracking applicants over five years show that winning leads to greater firm entry, ...
