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作者：Raz, Itzchak Tzachi
作者单位：Hebrew University of Jerusalem
摘要：This paper examines how environmental heterogeneity influences the formation of close-knit communities. I provide support for the social learning hypothesis, which posits that diverse environmental conditions limited American farmers' ability to learn from neighbors, weakening communal ties. I document a negative county-level association between soil heterogeneity and close-knit communities. Using individual-level data on nineteenth-century domestic migrants, I show that this association is no...
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作者：Angeletos, George-Marios; Sastry, Karthik A.
作者单位：Northwestern University; Princeton University
摘要：We study the efficiency of inattentive but otherwise frictionless economies by augmenting the Arrow-Debreu framework with a flexible form of rational inattention. If attention costs satisfy an invariance condition embedded in Sims's mutual information specification, a version of the first welfare theorem holds no matter the degree of inattention. More generally, however, a cognitive externality may emerge, and welfare may be improved by regulating and simplifying markets. We discuss how these ...
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作者：Matouschek, Niko; Powell, Michael; Reich, Bryony
作者单位：Northwestern University; University of Cambridge
摘要：Products are increasingly made by assembling separately produced modules. Motivated by the notion that a firm's production function drives its organization, we explore how modular production shapes a firm's communication structure. Decisions are partitioned into modules and require closer coordination within modules than across. Each agent knows the state his decision must be adapted to. The principal decides whom each agent tells about his state, given that each communication link comes at a ...
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作者：Boerma, Job; Tsyvinski, Aleh; Zimin, Alexander P.
作者单位：University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; Yale University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：We fully solve a sorting problem with heterogeneous firms and multiple heterogeneous workers whose skills are imperfect substitutes. We show that optimal sorting, which we call mixed and countermonotonic, is comprised of two regions. In the first region, mediocre firms sort with mediocre workers and coworkers such that the output losses are equal across all these teams (mixing). In the second region, a high-skill worker sorts with low-skill coworkers and a high-productivity firm (countermonoto...
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作者：Urgun, Can; Yariv, Leeat
作者单位：Princeton University; Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We provide a framework for analyzing search across correlated samples. The agent-a mineral prospecting team, a drug company, a politician-tracks observations over a Brownian path. The agent chooses the search speed and retrospectively picks the best observation when deciding to complete the search. We show that the optimal search speed is U-shaped: it is highest when approaching a breakthrough or when nearing search termination. Unlike search across independent samples, search optimally stops ...
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作者：Che, Yeon-Koo; Tercieux, Olivier
作者单位：Columbia University; Paris School of Economics; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
摘要：We study optimal service allocation through queues when agents have homogeneous preferences and must be incentivized to enter and remain in the queue. The designer controls entry, exit, service priority, and information about queue priorities. Under a mild regularity condition, the optimal mechanism admits agents only up to a cutoff queue length, never removes admitted agents, serves them according to a first-come, first-served (FCFS) rule, and provides no information beyond recommendations. F...
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作者：Harrison, Glenn W.; Ross, Don; Swarthout, J. Todd
作者单位：University System of Georgia; Georgia State University; University of Cape Town; University College Cork
摘要：The measurement of intelligence should identify and measure an individual's subjective confidence that a response to a test question is correct. Existing measures do not do that, nor do they use extrinsic financial incentive for truthful responses. We rectify both issues and show that each matters for the measurement of intelligence, particularly for women. Our results on gender and confidence in the face of risk have wider applications in terms of the measurement of competitiveness and financ...
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作者：Del Boca, Daniela; Flinn, Christopher; Verriest, Ewout; Wiswall, Matthew
作者单位：University of Turin; Collegio Carlo Alberto; New York University; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; Johns Hopkins University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We construct a dynamic model of child development where forward-looking parents and children jointly take actions to increase the child's cognitive and noncognitive skills within a Markov perfect equilibrium framework. In addition to time and money investments in their child, parents also choose whether to use explicit incentives to increase the child's self-investment, which may reduce the child's future intrinsic motivation to invest by reducing the child's discount factor. We use the estima...
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作者：Adusumilli, Karun
作者单位：University of Pennsylvania
摘要：We develop methods for inference following sequential experiments by studying the asymptotic properties of tests. We find that the large-sample power of any test can be matched by a test in a suitable limit experiment involving Gaussian diffusions. This establishes that a fixed set of statistics are asymptotically sufficient for testing; these are the number of times each treatment has been sampled and the final value of the score/efficient influence function process for each treatment. We als...
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作者：Menzio, Guido
作者单位：New York University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：I characterize markups in the search-theoretic model of imperfect competition of Burdett and Judd. A formula for the equilibrium distribution of markups is derived, showing how fundamentals affect the level of markups and their relationship to sellers' size. Anything goes theorems are derived, showing that any relationship between sellers' size and markups can be obtained in equilibrium. When competition is exogenous, equilibrium is efficient despite positive and heterogeneous markups. When co...
