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作者:Abbring, Jaap H.; Heckman, James J.; Chiappori, Pierre-Andre; Pinquet, Jean
作者单位:Free University of Berlin; University of Chicago; Universite Paris Nanterre
摘要:A standard problem of applied contracts theory is to empirically distinguish between adverse selection and moral hazard. We show that dynamic insurance data allow to distinguish moral hazard from dynamic selection on unobservables. In the presence of moral hazard, experience rating implies negative occurrence dependence: individual claim intensities decrease with the number of past claims. We discuss econometric tests for the various types of data that are typically available. Finally, we argu...
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作者:Klemperer, Paul
作者单位:University of Oxford
摘要:Economic theory is often abused in practical policy-making. There is frequently excessive focus on sophisticated theory at the expense of elementary theory; too much economic knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing. Too little attention is paid to the wider economic context, and to the dangers posed by political pressures. Superficially trivial distinctions between policy proposals may be economically significant, while economically irrelevant distinctions may be politically important. I ...
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作者:Battaglini, Marco; Benabou, Roland
作者单位:Princeton University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:We study political activism by several interest groups with private signals. When their ideological distance to the policymaker is small, a low-trust regime prevails: agents frequently lobby even when it is unwarranted, taking advantage of the confirmation provided by others' activism; conversely, the policymaker responds only to generalized pressure. When ideological distance is large, a high-trust regime prevails: lobbying behavior is disciplined by the potential contradiction from abstainer...
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作者:Bosello, Francesco; Buchner, Barbara; Carraro, Carlo
作者单位:Universita Ca Foscari Venezia
摘要:The paper analyzes the effects of different equity principles on the decision of developing countries to join a world coalition whose aim is to control greenhouse gas emissions. A game-theoretic framework is proposed to assess the incentives for different countries to sign an international treaty on climate change control. Then, the effects of different equity rules on these incentives are evaluated by using a dynamic integrated growth and climate model. Policy proposals based on transfers fro...
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作者:Axarloglou, Kostas; Theoharakis, Vasilis
摘要:It is still debatable whether scientific diversity is a virtue or a disadvantage for the development of a discipline. Nonetheless, diversity among scientists with respect to their journal quality perceptions plays an important role in hiring and promotion decisions. In this article we examine the degree of diversity within economics based on the journal quality perceptions of 2,103 AEA economists worldwide. Specifically, we empirically test for factors that might explain differences in an econ...
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作者:Onatski, Alexei; Williams, Noah
作者单位:Columbia University; Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:This paper assumes that a central bank commits itself to maintaining an inflation target and then asks what measure of the inflation rate the central bank should use if it wants to maximize economic stability. The paper first formalizes this problem and examines its microeconomic foundations. It then shows how the weight of a sector in the stability price index depends on the sector's characteristics, including size, cyclical sensitivity, sluggishness of price adjustment, and magnitude of sect...
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作者:Attanasio, Orazio P.; Emmerson, Carl
作者单位:University of London; University College London; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要:In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/1989 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes. We find that, even after conditioning on the initial health status, wealth rankings are important determinants of mortality and the evolution of the health indicator in the survey. For men aged 65 moving from the 40th percentile to the 60th percentile in the wealth distribution increases the probability of survival by between 1....
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作者:Alesina, Alberto
作者单位:Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:Borders are a man-made institution, and as such their shape cannot be taken as part of the physical landscape. The size of countries is endogenous to politico-economic forces. This paper discusses recent efforts by economists to study three related questions: What determines the evolution of the size of countries? Does size matter for economic success? Given the trend toward decentralization and of creation of supernational unions such as the EU, is the meaning of national borders evolving? (J...
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作者:Shastry, Gauri Kartini; Weil, David N.
作者单位:Harvard University; Brown University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:We use development accounting techniques to assess the contribution of health to differences in income per capita among countries. Rather than rely on regressions in aggregate data, we build up estimates of the effect of health starting from microeconomic data. We examine both a particular condition, anemia, and a proxy for general health, the adult survival rate. We find that differences in anemia explain 1.3 percent of the log variance of income per capita, and that differences in adult surv...