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作者:Atalay, Enghin; Hortacsu, Ali; Syverson, Chad
作者单位:University of Chicago; University of Chicago
摘要:We use broad-based yet detailed data from the economy's goods-producing sectors to investigate firms' ownership of production chains. It does not appear that vertical ownership is primarily used to facilitate transfers of goods along the production chain, as is often presumed: roughly one-half of upstream establishments report no shipments to downstream establishments within the same firm. We propose an alternative explanation for vertical ownership, namely that it promotes efficient intrafirm...
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作者:Jessoe, Katrina; Rapson, David
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Davis; University of California System; University of California Davis
摘要:Imperfect information about product attributes inhibits efficiency in many choice settings, but can be overcome by providing simple, low-cost information. We use a randomized control trial to test the effect of high-frequency information about residential electricity usage on the price elasticity of demand. Informed households are three standard deviations more responsive to temporary price increases, an effect that is not attributable to price salience. Conservation extends beyond pricing eve...
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作者:Goldin, Claudia
作者单位:Harvard University
摘要:The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in society and the economy in the last century. These aspects of the grand gender convergence are figurative chapters in a history of gender roles. But what must the last chapter contain for there to be equality in the labor market? The answer may come as a surprise. The solution does not (necessarily) have to involve government intervention and it need not make men more responsible in the home (although that wouldn't hurt)....
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作者:Desmet, Klaus; Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban
作者单位:Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Princeton University
摘要:We present a theory of spatial development. Manufacturing and services firms located in a continuous geographic area choose each period how much to innovate. Firms trade subject to transport costs and technology diffuses spatially. We apply the model to study the evolution of the US economy in the last half-century and find that it can generate the reduction in the manufacturing employment share, the increased spatial concentration of services, the growth in service productivity starting in th...
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作者:Takahashi, Shuhei
作者单位:Kyoto University
摘要:Chang and Kim (2007) develop an incomplete asset markets model incorporating discrete labor supply and idiosyncratic labor productivity. Their results resolve long-standing puzzles for business cycle models. Specifically, they produce a low correlation between aggregate hours worked and labor productivity (0.23) and a labor wedge with 76 percent the volatility of output. I show that these results arise from errors in their computational method. I resolve their model using a corrected method an...
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作者:Chang, Yongsung; Kim, Sun-Bin
作者单位:University of Rochester; Yonsei University; Yonsei University
摘要:Takahashi (2014) has uncovered coding errors in our paper, Chang and Kim (2007)-henceforth, CK. We acknowledge and are embarrassed by these mistakes. We are grateful to Takahashi for uncovering them. While the correction decreases the volatility of the labor market wedge, we find that the main message of CK remains valid: the measured labor market wedge arises endogenously in an economy with incomplete capital markets and indivisible labor supply. For example, our model accounts for 18 percent...
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作者:Jovanovic, Boyan
作者单位:New York University
摘要:This paper models growth via on-the-job learning when firms and workers are heterogeneous. It is an overlapping generations model in which young agents match with the old. More efficient assignments lead to faster long-run growth, more inequality, and less turnover in the distribution of human capital. Constant-growth paths are characterized for general functional forms and then, for the Cobb-Douglas case, the transition dynamics are solved analytically when the skill of the young is log-norma...
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作者:Acemoglu, Daron; Wolitzky, Alexander
作者单位:Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Stanford University
摘要:We propose a model of cycles of conflict and distrust. Overlapping generations of agents from two groups sequentially play coordination games under incomplete information about whether the other side consists of bad types who always take bad actions. Good actions may be misperceived as bad and information about past actions is limited. Conflict spirals start as a result of misperceptions but also contain the seeds of their own dissolution: Bayesian agents eventually conclude that the spiral li...
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作者:Bachmann, Ruediger; Bayer, Christian
作者单位:RWTH Aachen University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; University of Bonn
摘要:The cross-sectional dispersion of firm-level investment rates is procyclical. This makes investment rates different from productivity, output, and employment growth, which have countercyclical dispersions. A calibrated heterogeneous-firm business cycle model with nonconvex capital adjustment costs and countercyclical dispersion of firm-level productivity shocks replicates these facts and produces a correlation between investment dispersion and aggregate output of 0.53, close to 0.45 in the dat...
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作者:Kurmann, Andre; Mertens, Elmar
作者单位:Drexel University; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
摘要:Beaudry and Portier (2006) propose an identification scheme to study the effects of news shocks about future productivity in vector error correction models (VECMs). This comment shows that, when applied to their VECMs with more than two variables, the identification scheme does not have a unique solution. The problem arises from a particular interplay of cointegration assumptions and long-run restrictions.