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作者：Benjamin, Daniel J.; Rabin, Matthew; Raymond, Collin
作者单位：Cornell University; University of Southern California; Harvard University; University of Oxford
摘要：People believe that, even in very large samples, proportions of binary signals might depart significantly from the population mean. We model this nonbelief in the Law of Large Numbers by assuming that a person believes that proportions in any given sample might be determined by a rate different than the true rate. In prediction, a nonbeliever expects the distribution of signals will have fat tails. In inference, a nonbeliever remains uncertain and influenced by priors even after observing an a...
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作者：Andersson, Ola; Holm, Hakan J.; Tyran, Jean-Robert; Wengstrom, Erik
作者单位：Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN); Lund University; University of Copenhagen; University of Vienna
摘要：Recent experimental studies suggest that risk aversion is negatively related to cognitive ability. In this paper we report evidence that this relation may be spurious. We recruit a large subject pool drawn from the general Danish population for our experiment. By presenting subjects with choice tasks that vary the bias induced by random choices, we are able to generate both negative and positive correlations between risk aversion and cognitive ability. Our results suggest that cognitive abilit...
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作者：Martin, Alberto; Ventura, Jaume
作者单位：Pompeu Fabra University; Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI); Barcelona School of Economics
摘要：We study a dynamic economy where credit is limited by insufficient collateral and, as a result, investment and output are too low. In this environment, changes in investor sentiment or market expectations can give rise to credit bubbles, that is, expansions in credit that are backed not by expectations of future profits (i.e., fundamental collateral), but instead by expectations of future credit (i.e., bubbly collateral). Credit bubbles raise the availability of credit for entrepreneurs: this ...
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作者：Sun, Stephen (Teng); Yannelis, Constantine
作者单位：Peking University; Stanford University
摘要：In insurance markets, the uninsured can generate a negative externality on the insured, leading insurance companies to charge higher premia. Using a novel panel data set and a staggered policy change that introduces exogenous variation in the rate of uninsured drivers at the county level in California, we find that uninsured drivers lead to higher insurance premia: a 1 percentage point increase in the rate of uninsured drivers raises premia by roughly1%. We calculate the monetary fine on the u...
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作者：Brandt, Loren; Siow, Aloysius; Vogel, Carl
作者单位：University of Toronto
摘要：Between 1958 and 1961, China experienced a drastic famine. The famine substantially reduced birth rates and also adversely affected the health of these famine-born cohorts. This paper provides nonparametric estimates of the total effects of the famine on the marital behavior of famine-affected cohorts in rural Sichuan and Anhui. These reduced-form estimates incorporate general equilibrium and heterogeneous treatment effects. The paper uses the Choo-Siow model to decompose observed marital outc...
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作者：Guiso, Luigi; Sapienza, Paola; Zingales, Luigi
作者单位：Northwestern University; University of Chicago
摘要：We study whether a positive historical shock can generate long-term persistence in development. We show that Italian cities that achieved self-government in the Middle Ages have a higher level of civic capital today than similar cities in the same area that did not. The size of this effect increases with the length of the period of independence and its intensity. This effect persists even after accounting for the fact that cities did not become independent randomly. We conjecture that the Midd...
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作者：Burda, Michael C.; Weder, Mark
作者单位：Humboldt University of Berlin; University of Adelaide
摘要：Payroll taxes represent a major distortionary influence of governments on labor markets. This paper examines the role of time-varying payroll taxes and the social safety net for cyclical fluctuations in a nonmonetary economy with labor market frictions and unemployment insurance, when the latter is only imperfectly related to search effort. A balanced social insurance budget induces countercyclical payroll taxation, renders gross wages more rigid over the cycle and strengthens the model's endo...
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作者：Kaminsky, Graciela Laura; Vega-Garcia, Pablo
作者单位：George Washington University
摘要：The theoretical literature on sovereign defaults has focused on adverse shocks to debtors' economies, suggesting that defaults are of an idiosyncratic nature. Still, sovereign debt crises are also of a systemic nature, clustered around panics in the financial center, such as the European Sovereign Debt Crisis in the aftermath of the US Subprime Crisis in 2008. Crises in the financial centers are rare disasters and, thus, their effects on the periphery can only be captured by examining long epi...
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作者：Barth, Erling; Moene, Karl Ove
作者单位：University of Oslo
摘要：We explore how more wage equality fuels the generosity of the welfare state via political competition in elections, and how a more generous welfare state fuels wage equality via empowerment of weak groups in the labor market. Together the two mechanisms may generate a cumulative process that explains how equality multiplies, and why countries with more equal distributions of market outcomes also have stronger welfare states. The complementarity between wage setting and welfare spending can exp...
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作者：Azmat, Ghazala; Calsamiglia, Caterina; Iriberri, Nagore
作者单位：University of London; Queen Mary University London; University of Basque Country
摘要：It is commonly perceived that increasing incentives improves performance. However, the reaction to increased incentives might differ between men and women, leading to gender differences in performance. In a natural experiment, we study the gender difference in performance resulting from changes in stakes. We use detailed information on the performance of high-school students and exploit the variation in the stakes of tests, which range from 5% to 27% of the final grade. We find that female stu...
