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作者:Einav, Liran; Finkelstein, Amy; Cullen, Mark R.
作者单位:Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要:We provide a graphical illustration of how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to quantify the welfare loss associated with inefficient pricing in insurance markets with selection. We then show how this welfare loss can be estimated empirically using identifying variation in the price of insurance. Such variation, together with quantity data, allows us to estimate the demand for insurance. The same variation, together with cost data, allows us to estimate how insurers' costs vary...
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作者:Caplin, Andrew; Dean, Mark; Glimcher, Paul W.; Rutledge, Robb B.
作者单位:New York University; Brown University; New York University
摘要:The neurotransmitter dopamine is central to the emerging discipline of neuroeconomics; it is hypothesized to encode the difference between expected and realized rewards and thereby to mediate belief formation and choice. We develop the first formal tests of this theory of dopaminergic function, based on a recent axiomatization by Caplin and Dean (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123 (2008), 663-702). These tests are satisfied by neural activity in the nucleus accumbens, an area rich in dopamine...
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作者:Nakamura, Emi; Steinsson, Jon
作者单位:Columbia University
摘要:Empirical evidence suggests that as much as one-third of the U. S. business cycle is due to nominal shocks. We calibrate a multisector menu cost model using new evidence on the cross-sectional distribution of the frequency and size of price changes in the U. S. economy. We augment the model to incorporate intermediate inputs. We show that the introduction of heterogeneity in the frequency of price change triples the degree of monetary non-neutrality generated by the model. We furthermore show ...
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作者:Almond, Douglas; Doyle, Joseph J., Jr.; Kowalski, Amanda E.; Williams, Heidi
作者单位:Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Yale University; Harvard University
摘要:A key policy question is whether the benefits of additional medical expenditures exceed their costs. We propose a new approach for estimating marginal returns to medical spending based on variation in medical inputs generated by diagnostic thresholds. Specifically, we combine regression discontinuity estimates that compare health outcomes and medical treatment provision for newborns on either side of the very low birth weight threshold at 1,500 grams. First, using data on the census of U. S. b...
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作者:Duarte, Margarida; Restuccia, Diego
作者单位:University of Toronto
摘要:We investigate the role of sectoral labor productivity in explaining the process of structural transformation-the secular reallocation of labor across sectors-and the time path of aggregate productivity across countries. We measure sectoral labor productivity across countries using a model of the structural transformation. Productivity differences across countries are large in agriculture and services and smaller in manufacturing. Over time, productivity gaps have been substantially reduced in...
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作者:Chen, Shaohua; Ravallion, Martin
作者单位:The World Bank
摘要:A new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world. We find that 25% of the population lived in poverty in 2005, as judged by what poverty typically means in the world's poorest countries. This is higher than past estimates. Substantial overall progress is still indicated-the corresponding poverty rate was 52% in 1981-but progress was very uneven across regions. The trends over...
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作者:Price, Joseph; Wolfers, Justin
作者单位:Brigham Young University; University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:The NBA provides an intriguing place to assess discrimination: referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high-pressure setting, with referees making split-second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to become evident. We find that more personal fouls are awarded against players when they are officiated by an opposite-race officiating crew than when they are officiated by an own-race refereeing crew. These biases are sufficiently large so that they affect the ...
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作者:Putterman, Louis; Weil, David N.
作者单位:Brown University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:We construct a matrix showing the share of the year 2000 population in every country that is descended from people in different source countries in the year 1500. Using the matrix to adjust indicators of early development so that they reflect the history of a population's ancestors rather than the history of the place they live today greatly improves the ability of those indicators to predict current GDP. The variance of the early development history of a country's inhabitants is a good predic...
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作者:Antras, Pol; Desai, Mihir A.; Foley, C. Fritz
作者单位:Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:This paper examines how costly financial contracting and weak investor protection influence the cross-border operational, financing, and investment decisions of firms. We develop a model in which product developers can play a useful role in monitoring the deployment of their technology abroad. The analysis demonstrates that when firms want to exploit technologies abroad, multinational firm (MNC) activity and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows arise endogenously when monitoring is nonverifia...
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作者:Marshall, Robert C.; Marx, Leslie M.
作者单位:Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; Duke University
摘要:Previous work has addressed the relative vulnerability of different auction schemes to collusive bidding. The common wisdom is that ascending-bid and second-price auctions are highly susceptible to collusion. We show that the details of ascending-bid and second-price auctions, including bidder registration procedures and procedures for information revelation during the auction, can be designed to completely inhibit, or unintentionally facilitate, certain types of collusion. If auctions are des...