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作者:Michelacci, Claudio; Ruffo, Hernan
作者单位:Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
摘要:We argue that US welfare would rise if unemployment insurance were increased for younger and decreased for older workers. This is because the young tend to lack the means to smooth consumption during unemployment and want jobs to accumulate high-return human capital. So unemployment insurance is most valuable to them, while moral hazard is mild. By calibrating a life cycle model with unemployment risk and endogenous search effort, we find that allowing unemployment replacement rates to decline...
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作者:Koijen, Ralph S. J.; Yogo, Motohiro
作者单位:University of London; London Business School; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis
摘要:During the financial crisis, life insurers sold long-term policies at deep discounts relative to actuarial value. The average markup was as low as -19 percent for annuities and -57 percent for life insurance. This extraordinary pricing behavior was due to financial and product market frictions, interacting with statutory reserve regulation that allowed life insurers to record far less than a dollar of reserve per dollar of future insurance liability. We identify the shadow cost of capital thro...
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作者:McRae, Shaun
作者单位:University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要:Electricity and water are often subsidized in developing countries to increase their affordability for low-income households. Ideally, such subsidies would create sufficient demand in poor neighborhoods to encourage private investment in their infrastructure. Instead, many regions receiving large subsidies have precarious distribution networks supplying users who never pay. Using a structural model of household electricity demand in Colombia, I predict the change in consumption and profits fro...
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作者:Feenstra, Robert C.; Inklaar, Robert; Timmer, Marcel P.
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Davis; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Groningen
摘要:We describe the theory and practice of real GDP comparisons across countries and over time. Version 8 of the Penn World Table expands on previous versions in three respects. First, in addition to comparisons of living standards using components of real GDP on the expenditure side, we provide a measure of productive capacity, called real GDP on the output side. Second, growth rates are benchmarked to multiple years of cross-country price data so they are less sensitive to new benchmark data. Th...
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作者:Acemoglu, Daron; Garcia-Jimeno, Camilo; Robinson, James A.
作者单位:Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); University of Pennsylvania; Harvard University
摘要:We study the direct and spillover effects of local state capacity in Colombia. We model the determination of state capacity as a network game between municipalities and the national government. We estimate this model exploiting the municipality network and the roots of local state capacity related to the presence of the colonial state and royal roads. Our estimates indicate that local state capacity decisions are strategic complements. Spillover effects are sizable, accounting for about 50 per...
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作者:Bleakley, Hoyt; Lin, Jeffrey
作者单位:University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Philadelphia
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作者:Chernozhukov, Victor; Hansen, Christian; Spindler, Martin
作者单位:Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); University of Chicago
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作者:O'Donoghue, Ted; Rabin, Matthew
作者单位:Cornell University; Harvard University
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作者:Pritchett, Lant; Sandefur, Justin
作者单位:Harvard University
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作者:Decarolis, Francesco
作者单位:Boston University
摘要:This paper shows how in Medicare Part D insurers' gaming of the subsidy paid to low-income enrollees distorts premiums and raises the program cost. Using plan-level data from the first five years of the program, I find multiple instances of pricing strategy distortions for the largest insurers. Instrumental variable estimates indicate that the changes in a concentration index measuring the manipulability of the subsidy can explain a large share of the premium growth observed between 2006 and 2...