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作者：Gagnon-Bartsch, Tristan; Rosato, Antonio
作者单位：University of Iowa; University of Queensland; University of Naples Federico II
摘要：We study how misperceptions of others' tastes influence beliefs, demand, and prices in markets with observational learning. Consumers infer a good's quality from the quantity demanded and price paid by others. When consumers exaggerate the similarity between their and others' tastes, such taste projection generates discrepant quality perceptions, which are decreasing in a projector's taste and increasing in the observed price. These biased inferences produce an excessively elastic market deman...
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作者：Ellis, Andrew; Freeman, David J.
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Simon Fraser University
摘要：Experiments suggest that people fail to take into account interdependencies between their choices-they do not broadly bracket. Researchers often instead assume people narrowly bracket, , but existing designs do not test it. We design a novel experiment and revealed preference tests for how someone brackets their choices. In portfolio allocation under risk, , social allocation, , and induced-value shopping experiments, , 40-43 percent of subjects are consistent with narrow bracketing, and 0-16 ...
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作者：Aneja, Abhay; Xu, Guo
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：We use newly digitized records from the post office to study the effects of strengthened state capacity between 1875 and 1901. Exploiting the implementation of the Pendleton Act-a landmark statute that shielded bureaucrats from political interference-across US cities over two waves, , we find that civil service reform reduced postal delivery errors and increased productivity. These improvements were most pronounced during election years when the reform dampened bureaucratic turnover. We provid...
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作者：da Silveira, Rava Azeredo; Sung, Yeji; Woodford, Michael
作者单位：Universite Paris Cite; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite PSL; Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS); Sorbonne Universite; University of Basel; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - San Francisco; Columbia University
摘要：We propose a model of optimal decision-making subject to a memory constraint in the spirit of models of rational inattention. Our theory differs from that of Sims ( 2003 ) in not assuming costless memory of past cognitive states. The model implies that both forecasts and actions will exhibit idiosyncratic random variation; that average beliefs will exhibit a bias that fluctuates forever; and that more recent news will be given disproportionate weight in forecasts. The model provides a simple e...
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作者：Moscona, Jacob; Seck, Awa Ambra
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Harvard University
摘要：We study how social organization shapes patterns of economic interaction and the effects of national policy , , focusing on the distinction between age-based and kin-based groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Motivated by ethnographic accounts suggesting that this distinction affects redistribution , , we analyze a cash transfer program in Kenya and find that in age-based societies there are consumption spillovers within the age cohort , , but not the extended family , , while in kin-based societies ...
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作者：Barnwal, Prabhat
作者单位：Michigan State University
摘要：Targeted price subsidies create a gap between subsidized and unsub- sidized prices. The resulting dual pricing can lead to arbitrage oppor- tunities where intermediaries divert subsidized goods to unintended beneficiaries via the black market. I study India's Direct Benefit Transfer policy for cooking fuel subsidies, , which altered the existing subsidy program by transferring subsidies directly to beneficiaries' bank accounts. The policy decreased subsidized fuel purchases, , indi- cating a r...
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作者：Cabral, Marika; Dillender, Marcus
作者单位：University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; National Bureau of Economic Research; Vanderbilt University
摘要：Little is known about what drives gender disparities in health care and related social insurance benefits. Using data and variation from the Texas workers' compensation program, we study the impact of gender match between doctors and patients on medical evaluations and associated disability benefits. Compared to differences among their male patient counterparts, female patients randomly assigned a female doctor rather than a male doctor are 5.2 percent more likely to be evaluated as disabled a...
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作者：Allen, Robert C.; Bertazzini, Mattia C.; Heldring, Leander
作者单位：New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; University of Oxford; University of Oxford; Northwestern University
摘要：We test between cooperative and extractive theories of the origins of government. We use river shifts in southern Iraq as a natural experiment, in a new archeological panel dataset. A shift away creates a local demand for a government to coordinate because private river irrigation needs to be replaced with public canals. It disincentivizes local extraction as land is no longer productive without irrigation. Consistent with a cooperative theory of government, a river shift away led to state for...
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作者：Abadi, Joseph; Brunnermeier, Markus; Koby, Yann
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Philadelphia; Princeton University; Brown University
摘要：The reversal interest rate is the rate at which accommodative mon-etary policy reverses and becomes contractionary for lending. We theoretically demonstrate its existence in a macroeconomic model featuring imperfectly competitive banks that face financial frictions. When interest rates are cut too low, further monetary stimulus cuts into banks' profit margins, depressing their net worth and curtail-ing their credit supply. Similarly, when interest rates are low for too long, the persistent dra...
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作者：Oh, Suanna
作者单位：Paris School of Economics
摘要：How does identity influence economic behavior in the labor market? I investigate this question in rural India, focusing on the effect of caste identity on job-specific labor supply. In a field experiment, laborers choose whether to take up various job offers, which differ in associa-tions with specific castes. Workers are less willing to accept offers that are linked to castes other than their own, especially when those castes rank lower in the social hierarchy. Workers forgo large payments to...
