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作者:Shearer, B
作者单位:Laval University
摘要:Data from a field experiment are used to estimate the gain in productivity that is realized when workers are paid piece rates rather than fixed wages. The experiment was conducted within a tree-planting firm and provides daily observations on individual worker productivity under both compensation systems. Unrestricted statistical methods estimate the productivity gain to be 20%. Since planting conditions potentially affect incentives, structural econometric methods are used to generalize the e...
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作者:Rai, AS; Sjöström, T
作者单位:Williams College; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
摘要:Many believe that a key innovation by the Grameen Bank is to encourage borrowers to help each other in hard times. To analyse this, we study a mechanism design problem where borrowers share information about each other, but their limited side contracting ability prevents them from writing complete insurance contracts. We derive a lending mechanism which efficiently induces mutual insurance. It is necessary for borrowers to submit reports about each other to achieve efficiency. Such cross-repor...
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作者:Corsetti, G; Dasgupta, A; Morris, S; Shin, HS
作者单位:Yale University; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Yale University
摘要:Do large investors increase the vulnerability of a country to speculative attacks in the foreign exchange markets? To address this issue, we build a model of currency crises where a single large investor and a continuum of small investors independently decide whether to attack a currency based on their private information about fundamentals. Even abstracting from signalling, the presence of the large investor does make all other traders more aggressive in their selling. Relative to the case in...
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作者:Smith, H
作者单位:University of Oxford
摘要:Multi-store firms are common in the retailing industry. Theory suggests that cross-elasticities between stores of the same firm enhance market power. To evaluate the importance of this effect in the U.K. supermarket industry, we estimate a model of consumer choice and expenditure using three data sources: profit margins for each chain, a survey of consumer choices and a data-set of store characteristics. To permit plausible substitution patterns, the utility model interacts consumer and store ...
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作者:Galor, O; Moav, O
作者单位:Brown University; Hebrew University of Jerusalem
摘要:This paper develops a growth theory that captures the replacement of physical capital accumulation by human capital accumulation as a prime engine of growth along the process of development. It argues that the positive impact of inequality on the growth process was reversed in this process. In early stages of the Industrial Revolution, when physical capital accumulation was the prime source of growth, inequality stimulated development by channelling resources towards individuals with a higher ...
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作者:Hollifield, B; Miller, RA; Sandås, P
作者单位:Carnegie Mellon University; University of Pennsylvania
摘要:We provide empirical restrictions of a model of optimal order submissions in a limit order market. A trader's optimal order submission depends on the trader's valuation for the asset and the trade-offs between order prices, execution probabilities and picking off risks. The optimal order submission strategy is a monotone function of a trader's valuation for the asset. We test the monotonicity restriction in a sample of order submissions and their realized outcomes from the Stockholm Stock Exch...
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作者:De Nardi, M
作者单位:University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis
摘要:Previous work has had difficulty generating household saving behaviour that makes the distribution of wealth much more concentrated than that of tabour earnings, and that makes the richest households hold onto large amounts of wealth, even during very old age. I construct a quantitative, general equilibrium, overlapping-generations model in which parents and children are linked by accidental and voluntary bequests and by earnings ability. I show that voluntary bequests can explain the emergenc...
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作者:Manski, CF
作者单位:Northwestern University
摘要:I analyse social interactions that stem from the successive endeavours of new cohorts of heterogeneous decision makers to learn from the experiences of past cohorts. A dynamic process of information accumulation and decision making occurs as the members of each cohort observe the experiences of earlier ones, and then make choices that yield experiences observable by future cohorts. Decision makers face the selection problem as they seek to learn from observation of past actions and outcomes, w...
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作者:Teulings, CN; Gautier, PA
作者单位:Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; Erasmus University Rotterdam
摘要:This paper describes a search model with a continuum of worker and job types, free entry and transferable utility. We apply a second-order Taylor expansion to characterize the equilibrium, derive the cost of search and show that it is decreasing in the substitutability of worker types. This cost of search is then decomposed into three components: unemployment, vacancy costs and mismatch. Our contact technology rules out congestion effects between different worker types and therefore exhibits i...
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作者:Bénabou, R; Tirole, J
作者单位:Princeton University; Institute for Advanced Study - USA; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要:A central tenet of economics is that individuals respond to incentives. For psychologists and sociologists, in contrast, rewards and punishments are often counterproductive, because they undermine intrinsic motivation. We reconcile these two views, showing how performance incentives offered by an informed principal (manager, teacher, parent) can adversely impact an agent's (worker, child) perception of the task, or of his own abilities. Incentives are then only weak reinforcers in the short ru...