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作者：Golosov, Mikhail; Tsyvinski, Aleh
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University
摘要：We study optimal taxation in an economy where the skills of agents evolve stochastically over time and are private information and in which agents can trade unobservably in competitive markets. We show that competitive equilibria are constrained inefficient. The government can improve welfare by distorting capital accumulation with the sign of the distortion depending on the nature of the skill process. Finally, we show that private insurance provision responds endogenously to policy, that gov...
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作者：Di Tella, Rafael; Galiani, Sebastian; Schargrodsky, Ernesto
作者单位：Harvard University; Washington University (WUSTL); Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
摘要：We study the formation of beliefs in a squatter settlement in the outskirts of Buenos Aires exploiting a natural experiment that induced an allocation of property rights that is exogenous to the characteristics of the squatters. There are significant differences in the beliefs that squatters with and without land titles declare to hold. Lucky squatters who end up with legal titles report beliefs closer to those that favor the workings of a free market. Examples include materialist and individu...
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作者：Kremer, Michael; Miguel, Edward
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：We use a randomized evaluation of a Kenyan deworming program to estimate peer effects in technology adoption and to shed light on foreign aid donors' movement towards sustainable community provision of public goods. Deworming is a public good since much of its social benefit comes through reduced disease transmission. People were less likely to take deworming if their direct first-order or indirect second-order social contacts were exposed to deworming. Efforts to replace subsidies with sustai...
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作者：Hall, Robert E.; Jones, Charles I.
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：Over the past half century, Americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: Is the growth of health spending a rational response to changing economic conditions-notably the growth of income per person? We develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the ca...
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作者：Alessandria, George; Choi, Horag
作者单位：University of Auckland; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Philadelphia
摘要：Firms start and stop exporting. Previous research suggests that these export participation decisions alter the comovement of net exports with the real exchange rate. We evaluate these predictions in a general equilibrium environment. Specifically, assuming firms face an up-front, sunk cost of entering foreign markets, and a smaller period-by-period continuation cost, we derive the discrete entry and exit decisions yielding exporter dynamics in an open economy business cycle model. The model's ...
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作者：Cremer, Jacques; Garicano, Luis; Prat, Andrea
作者单位：Universite PSL; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS); Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); University of Chicago; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：We characterize efficient technical languages and study their interaction with the scope and structure of organizations. Efficient languages use precise words for frequent events and vague words for unusual ones. A broader organizational scope allows for more synergies to be captured, but reduces within-unit efficiency, since it requires a more generic language. A manager working as specialized translator may also be used to achieve between-unit coordination while maintaining separate language...
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作者：Weil, David N.
作者单位：Brown University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：I use microeconomic estimates of the effect of health on individual outcomes to construct macroeconomic estimates of the proximate effect of health on GDP per capita. I employ a variety of methods to construct estimates of the return to health, which I combine with cross-country and historical data on height, adult survival rates, and age at menarche. Using my preferred estimate, eliminating health differences among countries would reduce the variance of log GDP per worker by 9.9 percent and r...
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作者：Chetty, Raj; Szeidl, Adam
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Many households devote a large fraction of their budgets to consumption commitments-goods that involve transaction costs and are infrequently adjusted. This paper characterizes risk preferences in an expected utility model with commitments. We show that commitments affect risk preferences in two ways: (1) they amplify risk aversion with respect to moderate-stake shocks, and (2) they create a motive to take large-payoff gambles. The model thus helps resolve two basic puzzles in expected utility...
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作者：Echenique, Federico; Fryer, Roland G., Jr.
作者单位：California Institute of Technology; Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We develop an index of segregation based on two premises: (1) a measure of segregation should disaggregate to the level of individuals, and (2) an individual is more segregated the more segregated are the agents with whom she interacts. We present an index that satisfies (1) and (2) and that is based on agents' social interactions: the extent to which blacks interact with blacks, whites with whites, etc. We use the index to measure school and residential segregation. Using detailed data on fri...
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作者：Besley, Timothy; Preston, Ian
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of London; University College London
摘要：This paper develops an approach to studying how bias in favor of one party due to the pattern of electoral districting affects policy choice. We tie a commonly used measure of electoral bias to the theory of party competition and show how this affects party strategy in theory. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated using data on local government in England. The results suggest that reducing electoral bias leads parties to moderate their policies.
