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作者：Garicano, Luis; Hubbard, Thomas N.
作者单位：National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：A large theoretical literature focuses on the question: What determines firms' boundaries? Recently, Garicano and Santos and Holmstrom and Milgrom have proposed theories in which firms' boundaries reflect the division of labor across individuals. This paper discusses strategies for generating and testing empirical propositions from this emerging class of theories. We propose that variation in the returns to specialization is extremely useful to test and quantify the effect of the division of l...
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作者：Castanheira, Micael
摘要：This paper contrasts direct election with political appointment of regulators. When regulators are appointed, regulatory policy becomes bundled with other policy issues the appointing politicians are responsible for. Because voters have only one vote to cast and regulatory issues are not salient for most voters, there are electoral incentives to respond to stakeholder interests. If regulators are elected, their stance on regulation is the only salient issue so that the electoral incentive is t...
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作者：Persson, Torsten; Tabellini, Guido; Trebbi, Francesco
作者单位：Stockholm University; Bocconi University; Harvard University
摘要：Is corruption systematically related to electoral rules? Recent theoretical work suggests a positive answer. But little is known about the data. We try to address this lacuna by relating corruption to different features of the electoral system in a sample of about eighty democracies in the 1990s. We exploit the cross-country variation in the data, as well as the time variation arising from recent episodes of electoral reform. The evidence is consistent with the theoretical priors. Larger votin...
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作者：Barrett, Scott
作者单位：Johns Hopkins University
摘要：An infectious disease can only be eradicated globally if it is eliminated in every country. But does this require only international coordination, or does it require cooperation? Using a model that blends epidemiology, economics, and game theory, this paper shows that coordination will not always suffice, even when the global benefits of eradication exceed the costs. In general, eradication will require strong international institutions. (JEL: H41, I18, K33, O19)
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作者：Cubeddu, Luis; Rios-Rull, Jose-Victor
作者单位：International Monetary Fund; University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：In this paper we show the quantitative importance of the process that determines changes in family composition to determine the main macroeconomic magnitudes. We do so by modelling family type as a stochastic process that affects households in a way similar to shocks to earnings. Agents respond to these process by optimally choosing savings. We show that the size of savings differs dramatically depending on the details of the stochastic process. The model is quantitative: its fundamental param...
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作者：Mankiw, N. Gregory; Reis, Ricardo
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：This paper proposes a new approach to identifying the effects of monetary policy shocks in an international vector autoregression. Using high-frequency data on the prices of Fed Funds futures contracts, we measure the impact of the surprise component of the FOMC-day Federal Reserve policy decision on financial variables, such as the exchange rate and the foreign interest rate. We show how this information can be used to achieve identification without having to make the usual strong assumption ...
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作者：Frankel, Jeffrey; Giavazzi, Francesco
摘要：Voting theory generally concludes that, in first-past-the-post elections, all votes should go to effective candidates (Duverger's Law), and parties should adopt a similar platform (median voter theorem). However, such predictions are not always met in practice. We show why divergence and vote dispersion is a natural outcome when (a) parties are opportunistic, (b) there is uncertainty on the position of the median voter and (c) elections are repeated. Voting for losers increases the information...
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作者：Bacchetta, Philippe; van Wincoop, Eric
作者单位：University of Lausanne; University of Virginia; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：It is well known that the extent of pass-through of exchange rate changes to consumer prices is much lower than to import prices. One explanation is local distribution costs. Here we consider an alternative, complementary explanation based on the optimal pricing strategies of firms. We consider a model where foreign exporting firms sell intermediate goods to domestic firms. Domestic firms assemble the imported intermediate goods and sell final goods to consumers. When domestic firms face signi...
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作者：Imbs, Jean; Mumtaz, Haroon; Ravn, Morten O.; Rey, Helene
作者单位：University of London; London Business School; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We confirm the presence of substantial nonlinearities in real exchange rate dynamics at the sectoral level. There exists zones where arbitrage is not profitable because of transaction costs, and thus mean reversion is inexistent. We compute the speed of mean reversion of sector specific real exchange rates, conditional on the existence of arbitrage as implied by our nonlinear estimations, and relate them to plausible economic determinants such as tradability and exchange rate volatility. (JEL:...
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作者：Aghion, Philippe; Bolton, Patrick
作者单位：Harvard University; University of London; University College London; Princeton University
摘要：There is a long normative 'Social Contract' tradition that attempts to characterize ex-post income inequalities that are agreeable to all 'behind a veil of ignorance.' This paper takes a similar normative approach to characterize social decision-making procedures. It is shown that quite generally some form of majority-voting is preferred to unanimity 'behind a veil of ignorance' whenever society faces deadweight costs in making compensating transfers. Deviations from unanimity (or ex-post Pare...
