-
作者：Casey, Katherine
作者单位：Stanford University
摘要：Many lament that weak accountability and poor governance impede economic development in Africa. Politicians rely on ethnic allegiances that deliver the vote irrespective of performance, dampening electoral incentives. Giving voters information about candidate competence counters ethnic loyalty and strengthens accountability. I extend a canonical electoral model to show how information provision flows through voter behavior and ultimately impacts the distribution of political spending. I test t...
-
作者：Coibion, Olivier; Gorodnichenko, Yuriy
作者单位：University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：We propose a new approach to test the full-information rational expectations hypothesis which can identify whether rejections of the null arise from information rigidities. This approach quantifies the economic significance of departures from the null and the underlying degree of information rigidity. Applying this approach to US and international data of professional forecasters and other agents yields pervasive evidence consistent with the presence of information rigidities. These results th...
-
作者：Allcott, Hunt; Taubinsky, Dmitry
作者单位：New York University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：Imperfect information and inattention to energy costs are important potential motivations for energy efficiency standards and subsidies. We evaluate these motivations in the lightbulb market using a theoretical model and two randomized experiments. We derive welfare effects as functions of reduced-form sufficient statistics capturing economic and psychological parameters, which we estimate using a novel within-subject information disclosure experiment. The main results suggest that moderate su...
-
作者：Jehiel, Philippe; Lamy, Laurent
作者单位：University of London; University College London
摘要：When entry is exogenous, strong buyers should be discriminated against weak buyers to maximize revenues (Myerson 1981). When entry is endogenous so that entrants' expected payoffs do not depend on the proposed mechanism, optimal discrimination takes a completely different form. The revenue-maximizing equilibrium requires that there should be no discrimination with respect to entrants irrespective of their ex ante characteristics. Besides, those buyers who always participate should be discrimin...
-
作者：Handel, Benjamin R.; Kolstad, Jonathan T.
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：Traditional models of insurance choice are predicated on fully informed and rational consumers protecting themselves from exposure to financial risk. In practice, choosing an insurance plan is a complicated decision often made without full information. In this paper we combine new administrative data on health plan choices and claims with unique survey data on consumer information to identify risk preferences, information frictions, and hassle costs. Our additional friction measures are import...
-
作者：Olivetti, Claudia; Paserman, M. Daniele
作者单位：Boston College; Boston University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Boston University
摘要：This paper estimates historical intergenerational elasticities between fathers and children of both sexes in the United States using a novel empirical strategy. The key insight of our approach is that the information about socioeconomic status conveyed by first names can be used to create pseudo-links across generations. We find that both father-son and father-daughter elasticities were flat during the nineteenth century, increased sharply between 1900 and 1920, and declined slightly thereafte...
-
作者：Richter, Michael; Rubinstein, Ariel
作者单位：Yeshiva University; Tel Aviv University; New York University
摘要：We propose a new abstract definition of equilibrium in the spirit of competitive equilibrium: a profile of alternatives and a public ordering (expressing prestige, price, or a social norm) such that each agent prefers his assigned alternative to all lower-ranked ones. The equilibrium operates in an abstract setting built upon a concept of convexity borrowed from convex geometry. We apply the concept to a variety of convex economies and relate it to Pareto optimality. The magic of linear equili...
-
作者：Echenique, Federico; Yenmez, M. Bumin
作者单位：California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University
摘要：We characterize choice rules for schools that regard students as substitutes while expressing preferences for a diverse student body. The stable (or fair) assignment of students to schools requires the latter to regard the former as substitutes. Such a requirement is in conflict with the reality of schools' preferences for diversity. We show that the conflict can be useful, in the sense that certain unique rules emerge from imposing both considerations. We also provide welfare comparisons for ...
-
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...
-
作者：Pomeranz, Dina
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Claims that the VAT facilitates tax enforcement by generating paper trails on transactions between firms contributed to widespread VAT adoption worldwide, but there is surprisingly little evidence. This paper analyzes the role of third-party information for VAT enforcement through two randomized experiments among over 400,000 Chilean firms. Announcing additional monitoring has less impact on transactions that are subject to a paper trail, indicating the paper trail's preventive deterrence effe...
