-
作者：Frankel, Alexander
作者单位：University of Chicago
摘要：A principal delegates multiple decisions to an agent, who has private information relevant to each decision. The principal is uncertain about the agent's preferences. I solve for max-min optimal mechanisms those which maximize the principal's payoff against the worst case agent preference types. These mechanisms are characterized by a property I call aligned delegation: all agent types play identically, as if they shared the principal's preferences. Max-min optimal mechanisms may take the simp...
-
作者：Ambrus, Attila; Mobius, Markus; Szeidl, Adam
作者单位：Duke University; Microsoft; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research; Central European University
摘要：We develop a model in which connections between individuals serve as social collateral to enforce informal insurance payments. We show that: (i) The degree of insurance is governed by the expansiveness of the network, measured with the per capita number of connections that groups have with the rest of the community. Two-dimensional networks-like real-world networks in Peruvian villages-are sufficiently expansive to allow very good risk-sharing. (ii) In - second-best arrangements, insurance is ...
-
作者：Callen, Michael; Isaqzadeh, Mohammad; Long, James D.; Sprenger, Charles
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; Stanford University
摘要：We investigate the relationship between violence and economic risk preferences in Afghanistan combining: (i) a two-part experimental procedure identifying risk preferences, violations of Expected Utility, and specific preferences for certainty; (ii) controlled recollection of fear based on established methods from psychology; and (iii) administrative violence data from precisely geocoded military records. We document a specific preference for certainty in violation of Expected Utility. The pre...
-
作者：Einav, Liran; Knoepfle, Dan; Levin, Jonathan; Sundaresan, Neel
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; eBay Inc.
摘要：We estimate the sensitivity of Internet retail purchasing to sales taxes using eBay data. Our first approach exploits the fact that a seller's location-and therefore the applicable tax rate-is revealed only after a buyer has expressed interest in an item. We document how adverse tax surprises reduce the likelihood of purchase and shift subsequent purchases toward out-of-state sellers. We then use more aggregated data to estimate that every one percentage point increase in a state's sales tax i...
-
作者：Goux, Dominique; Maurin, Eric; Petrongolo, Barbara
作者单位：Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris; Paris School of Economics; University of London; Queen Mary University London; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：We study interdependencies in spousal labor supply by exploiting the design of the French workweek reduction, which introduced exogenous variation in one's spouse's labor supply, at constant earnings. Treated employees work on average two hours less per week. Husbands of treated women respond by reducing their labor supply by about half an hour, consistent with substantial leisure complementarity, and specifically cut the nonusual component of their workweek, leaving usual hours unchanged. Wom...
-
作者：Maniadis, Zacharias; Tufano, Fabio; List, John A.
作者单位：University of Southampton; University of Nottingham; University of Chicago
摘要：Some researchers have argued that anchoring in economic valuations casts doubt on the assumption of consistent and stable preferences. We present new evidence that explores the strength of certain anchoring results. We then present a theoretical framework that provides insights into why we should be cautious of initial empirical findings in general. The model importantly highlights that the rate of false positives depends not only on the observed significance level, but also on statistical pow...
-
作者：Kaya, Aya; Vereshchagina, Galina
作者单位：University of Iowa; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
摘要：Team production takes advantage of technological complementarities but comes with the cost of free-ridership. When workers differ in skills, the choice of sorting pattern may be associated with a nontrivial trade-off between exploiting the technological complementarities and minimizing the cost of free-ridership. This paper demonstrates that whether such a trade-off arises depends (i) on how the power of incentives required for effort provision varies with workers' types, and (ii) on whether t...
-
作者：Krasa, Stefan; Polborn, Mattias
作者单位：University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
摘要：Many observers argue that political polarization, particularly on social and cultural issues, has increased in the United States. How does this influence the political competition on economic issues? We analyze this question using a framework in which two-office-motivated candidates differ in their fixed ideological position and choose a level of government spending to maximize their vote share. In equilibrium, candidates cater to a set of swing voters who contain socially conservative and eco...
-
作者：Bauer, Michael D.; Rudebusch, Glenn D.; Wu, Jing Cynthia
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - San Francisco; University of Chicago
摘要：Term premia implied by maximum likelihood estimates of affine term structure models are misleading because of small-sample bias. We show that accounting for this bias alters the conclusions about the trend, cycle, and macroeconomic determinants of the term premia estimated in Wright (2011). His term premium estimates are essentially acyclical, and often just parallel the secular trend in long-term interest rates. In contrast, bias-corrected term premia show pronounced countercyclical behavior,...
-
作者：Christiano, Lawrence J.; Motto, Roberto; Rostagno, Massimo
作者单位：Northwestern University; European Central Bank
摘要：We augment a standard monetary dynamic general equilibrium model to include a Bernanke-Gertler-Gilchrist financial accelerator mechanism. We fit the model to US data, allowing the volatility of cross-sectional idiosyncratic uncertainty to fluctuate over time. We refer to this measure of volatility as risk. We find that fluctuations in risk are the most important shock driving the business cycle.
