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作者：Chandra, Amitabh; Finkelstein, Amy; Sacarny, Adam; Syverson, Chad
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Columbia University
摘要：The conventional wisdom for the health care sector is that idiosyncratic features leave little scope for market forces to allocate consumers to higher performance producers. However, we find robust evidence across several different conditions and performance measures that higher quality hospitals have higher market shares and grow more over time. The relationship between performance and allocation is stronger among patients who have greater scope for hospital choice, suggesting that patient de...
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作者：Bordignon, Massimo; Nannicini, Tommaso; Tabellini, Guido
作者单位：Catholic University of the Sacred Heart; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; Bocconi University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; IZA Institute Labor Economics; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要：We compare single round versus runoff elections under plurality rule, allowing for partly endogenous party formation. Under runoff elections, the number of political candidates is larger, but the influence of extremist voters on equilibrium policy, and hence policy volatility, is smaller because the bargaining power of the political extremes is reduced compared to single round elections. The predictions on the number of candidates and on policy volatility are confirmed by evidence from a regre...
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作者：Mitman, Kurt
作者单位：Stockholm University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要：I study the implications of two major debt-relief policies in the United States: the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) and the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). To do so, I develop a model of housing and default that includes relevant dimensions of credit-market policy and captures rich heterogeneity in household balance sheets. The model also explains the observed cross-state variation in consumer default rates. I find that BAPCPA significantly reduced b...
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作者：Atkin, David
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper presents empirical evidence that the growth of export manufacturing in Mexico during a period of major trade reforms (the years 1986 to 2000) altered the distribution of education. I use variation in the timing of factory openings across commuting zones to show that school drop-out increased with local expansions in export-manufacturing industries. The magnitudes I find suggest that for every 25 jobs created, one student dropped out of school at grade 9 rather than continuing throug...
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作者：Abaluck, Jason; Gruber, Jonathan
作者单位：National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：We study choice over prescription insurance plans by the elderly using government administrative data to evaluate how these choices evolve over time. We find large foregone savings from not choosing the lowest cost plan that has grown over time. We develop a structural framework to decompose the changes in foregone welfare from inconsistent choices into choice set changes and choice function changes from a fixed choice set. We find that foregone welfare increases over time due primarily to cha...
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作者：Ajello, Andrea
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
摘要：I use micro data to quantify key features of US firm financing. In particular, I establish that a substantial 35 percent of firms' investment is funded using financial markets. I then construct a dynamic equilibrium model that matches these features and fit the model to business cycle data using Bayesian methods. In the model, financial intermediaries enable trades of financial assets, directing funds toward investment opportunities, and charge an intermediation spread to cover their costs. Ac...
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作者：Scheuer, Florian; Wolitzky, Alexander
作者单位：Stanford University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：This paper studies optimal dynamic tax policy under the threat of political reform. A policy will be reformed ex post if a large enough coalition of citizens supports reform; thus, sustainable policies are those that will continue to attract enough political support in the future. We find that optimal marginal capital taxes are either progressive or U-shaped, so that savings are subsidized for the poor and/or the middle class but are taxed for the rich. U-shaped capital taxes always emerge whe...
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作者：Guo, Yingni
作者单位：Northwestern University
摘要：I study a dynamic relationship where a principal delegates experimentation to an agent. Experimentation is modeled as a one-armed bandit that yields successes following a Poisson process. Its unknown intensity is high or low. The agent has private information, his type being his prior belief that the intensity is high. The agent values successes more than the principal does, so prefers more experimentation. The optimal mechanism is a cutoff rule in the belief space: the cutoff gives pessimisti...
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作者：Bobonis, Gustavo J.; Fuertes, Luis R. Camara; Schwabe, Rainer
作者单位：University of Toronto; University of Puerto Rico; University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras; Cornerstone Research
摘要：Does monitoring corrupt activities induce a sustained reduction in corruption? Using longitudinal data on audits of municipal governments in Puerto Rico, we show corruption is considerably lower in municipalities with timely audits-before elections. However, these municipalities do not exhibit decreased levels of corruption in subsequent audits, even while mayors in these benefit from higher reelection rates. Our results suggest that audits enable voters to select responsive but corruptible po...
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作者：Ali, S. Nageeb; Miller, David A.
作者单位：Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要：Many communities rely upon ostracism to enforce cooperation: if an individual shirks in one relationship, her innocent neighbors share information about her guilt in order to shun her, while continuing to cooperate among themselves. However, a strategic victim may herself prefer to shirk, rather than report her victimization truthfully. If guilty players are to be permanently ostracized, then such deviations are so tempting that cooperation in any relationship is bounded by what the partners c...
