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作者：Bergstresser, D; Desai, M; Rauh, J
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Chicago
摘要：Managers appear to manipulate firm earnings through their characterizations of pension assets to capital markets and alter investment decisions to justify, and capitalize on, these manipulations. Managers are more aggressive with assumed long-term rates of return when their assumptions have a greater impact on reported earnings. Firms use higher assumed rates of return when they prepare to acquire other firms, when they are near critical earnings thresholds, and when their managers exercise st...
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作者：Duflo, Esther; Gale, William; Liebman, Jeffrey; Orszag, Peter; Saez, Emmanuel
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; Brookings Institution; Harvard University; Harvard University
摘要：We analyze a randomized experiment in which 14,000 tax filers in H&R Block offices in St. Louis received matches of zero, 20 percent, or 50 percent of IRA contributions. Take-up rates were 3 percent, 8 percent, and 14 percent, respectively. Among contributors, contributions, excluding the match, averaged $765 in the control group and $1100 in the match groups. Taxpayer responses to similar incentives in the Saver's Credit are much smaller. Taxpayers did not game the experiment by receiving a m...
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作者：Falk, Armin; Fehr, Ernst; Zehnder, Christian
作者单位：University of Bonn; University of Zurich
摘要：bIn a laboratory experiment we show that minimum wages have significant and lasting effects on subjects' reservation wages. The temporary introduction of a minimum wage leads to a rise in subjects' reservation wages which persists even after the minimum wage has been removed. Firms are therefore forced to pay higher wages after the removal of the minimum wage than before its introduction. As a consequence, the employment effects of removing the minimum wage are significantly smaller than are t...
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作者：Lazear, Edward P.
作者单位：Stanford University; Stanford University
摘要：Educators worry that high-stakes testing will induce teachers and their students to focus only on the test and ignore other, untested aspects of knowledge. Some counter that although this may be true, knowing something is better than knowing nothing and many students would benefit even by learning the material that is to be tested. Using the metaphor of deterring drivers from speeding, it is shown that the optimal rules for high-stakes testing depend on the costs of learning and of monitoring....
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作者：Branstetter, LG; Fisman, R; Foley, CF
作者单位：Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University
摘要：This paper examines how technology transfer within U. S. multinational firms changes in response to a series of IPR reforms undertaken by sixteen countries over the 1982-1999 period. Analysis of detailed firm-level data reveals that royalty payments for technology transferred to affiliates increase at the time of reforms, as do affiliate R&D expenditures and total levels of foreign patent applications. Increases in royalty payments and R&D expenditures are concentrated among affiliates of pare...
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作者：Hsieh, Chang-Tai; Moretti, Enrico
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：From 1997 through 2003, the UN Oil for Food Program allowed Iraq to export oil for humanitarian supplies. We hypothesize that Iraq deliberately set the price of its oil below market prices to solicit bribes from oil buyers. By comparing the price gap between Iraqi oil and its close substitutes during the Program to the gap prior to the Program, we find evidence of significant underpricing. Our central estimate suggests that Iraq collected $1.3 billion in bribes from underpricing its oil, or 2 ...
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作者：Garicano, Luis; Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban
作者单位：University of Chicago; Princeton University
摘要：We present an equilibrium theory of the organization of work in an economy where knowledge is an essential input in production and agents are heterogeneous in skill. Agents organize production by matching with others in knowledge hierarchies designed to use and communicate their knowledge efficiently. Relative to autarky, organization leads to larger cross-sectional differences in knowledge and wages: low skill workers learn and earn relatively less. We show that improvements in the technology...
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作者：Benabou, Roland; Tirole, Jean
作者单位：Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：International surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate. At the same time, social ethnographies and experiments by psychologists demonstrate individuals' recurrent struggle with cognitive dissonance as they seek to maintain, and pass on to their children, a view of the world where effort ultimately pays off and everyone gets their just desserts. This ...
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作者：Bedard, Kelly; Dhuey, Elizabeth
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara
摘要：A continuum of ages exists at school entry due to the use of a single school cutoff date-making the oldest children approximately 20 percent older than the youngest children. We provide substantial evidence that these initial maturity differences have long-lasting effects on student performance across OECD countries. In particular, the youngest members of each cohort score 4-12 percentiles lower than the oldest members in grade four and 2-9 percentiles lower in grade eight. In fact, data from ...
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作者：Fisman, Raymond; Iyengar, Sheena S.; Kamenica, Emir; Simonson, Itamar
作者单位：Columbia University; Harvard University; Stanford University
摘要：We study dating behavior using data from a Speed Dating experiment where we generate random matching of subjects and create random variation in the number of potential partners. Our design allows us to directly observe individual decisions rather than just final matches. Women put greater weight on the intelligence and the race of partner, while men respond more to physical attractiveness. Moreover, men do not value women's intelligence or ambition when it exceeds their own. Also, we find that...
