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作者：Garcia-Jimeno, Camilo; Iglesias, Angel; Yildirim, Pinar
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Chicago; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pennsylvania
摘要：How do social interactions shape collective action, and how are they mediated by networked information technologies? We answer these questions studying the Temperance Crusade, a wave of anti-liquor protest activity spreading across 29 states between 1873 and 1874. Relying on exogenous variation in network links generated by rail -road accidents, we provide causal evidence of social interactions driving the diffusion of the movement, mediated by rail and telegraph information about neighboring ...
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作者：Ambuehl, Sandro; Bernheim, B. Douglas; Lusardi, Annamaria
作者单位：University of Zurich; George Washington University
摘要：We examine methods for evaluating interventions designed to improve decision-making quality when people misunderstand the consequences of their choices. In an experiment involving financial education, conventional outcome metrics ( financial literacy and directional behavioral responses) imply that two interventions are equally beneficial even though only one reduces the average severity of errors. We trace these failures to violations of the assumptions embedded in the conventional metrics. W...
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作者：Denti, Tommaso; Marinacci, Massimo; Rustichini, Aldo
作者单位：Cornell University; Bocconi University; Bocconi University; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities
摘要：We relate two main representations of the cost of acquiring information: a cost that depends on the experiment performed, as in statistical decision theory, and a cost that depends on the distribution of posterior beliefs, as in applications of rational inattention. We show that in many cases of interest, posterior-based costs are inconsistent with a primitive model of costly experimentation. The inconsistency is at the core of known limits to the application of rational inattention in games a...
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作者：Wang, Olivier; Werning, Ivan
作者单位：New York University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：How does market concentration affect the potency of monetary policy? To address this question we embed a dynamic oligopolistic game into a general-equilibrium macroeconomic model. We provide a sufficient-statistic formula for the response to monetary shocks involving demand elasticities, concentration and markups. We discipline our model with evidence on pass-through and find that higher concentration amplifies nonneutrality and stickiness. We isolate strategic effects from oligopoly by compar...
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作者：Lamadon, Thibaut; Mogstad, Magne; Setzler, Bradley
作者单位：University of Chicago; Statistics Norway; National Bureau of Economic Research; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
摘要：We quantify the importance of imperfect competition in the US labor market by estimating the size of labor market rents earned by American firms and workers. We construct a matched employer-employee panel dataset by combining the universe of US business and worker tax records for the period 2001-2015. Using this panel data, we identify and estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market with two-sided heterogeneity where workers view firms as imperfect substitutes because of heterogeneous pr...
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作者：Jones, Charles I.
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Stanford University
摘要：In many models, economic growth is driven by people discovering new ideas. These models typically assume either a constant or grow-ing population. However, in high income countries today, fertility is already below its replacement rate: women are having fewer than two children on average. It is a distinct possibility that global pop-ulation will decline rather than stabilize in the long run. In stan-dard models, this has profound implications: rather than continued exponential growth, living s...
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作者：Martin, Ian W. R.; Papadimitriou, Dimitris
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of London; King's College London
摘要：We present a model featuring risk-averse investors with heterogeneous beliefs. Individuals who are correct in hindsight-whether through luck or judgment-get rich, so sentiment is bullish following good news and bearish following bad news. Sentiment makes extreme outcomes far more important for pricing and has asymmetric effects on left- and right-skewed assets. Investors take speculative positions that can conflict with their fundamental views. Moderate investors are contrarian: they trade aga...
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作者：Nocke, Volker; Whinston, Michael D.
作者单位：University of Mannheim; University of Surrey; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：Concentration-based thresholds for horizontal mergers, such as those in the US Horizontal Merger Guidelines, play a central role in merger analysis but their basis remains unclear. We show that there is both a theoretical and an empirical basis for focusing solely on the change in concentration, and ignoring its level, in screening mergers for whether their unilateral price effects will harm consumers. We also argue that current threshold levels likely are too lax, unless one expects efficienc...
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作者：Huckfeldt, Christopher
作者单位：Cornell University
摘要：This paper documents that the earnings cost of job loss is concentrated among workers who find reemployment in lower-skill occupations, and that the cost and incidence of such occupation displacement is higher for workers who lose their job during a recession. I propose a model where hiring is endogenously more selective during recessions, leading some unemployed workers to optimally search for reemployment in lower-skill jobs. The model accounts for existing estimates of the size and cyclical...
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作者：Madsen, Erik
作者单位：New York University
摘要：I study how an organization should manage a project of uncertain scope, when it is advised by a privately informed expert who prefers to prolong his employment. The optimal long-term contract combines a deadline for project completion and incentive payments which decline as the deadline approaches. When the firm can additionally learn about the project's state from output, the optimal deadline exhibits variable sensitivity to output, with a hard deadline at the outset of the project and increa...
