-
作者:Tabellini, Guido
作者单位:Bocconi University
摘要:How and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions? This paper argues that individual values and convictions about the scope of application of norms of good conduct provide the missing link. Evidence from a variety of sources points to two main findings. First, individual values consistent with generalized (as opposed to limited) morality are widespread in societies that were ruled by non-despotic political institutions in the distant past. Se...
-
作者:Elliott, Graham; Timmermann, Allan; Komunjer, Ivana
作者单位:University of California System; University of California San Diego
摘要:Empirical studies using survey data on expectations have frequently observed that forecasts are biased and have concluded that agents are not rational. We establish that existing rationality tests are not robust to even small deviations from symmetric loss and hence have little ability to tell whether the forecaster is irrational or the loss function is asymmetric. We quantify the trade-off between forecast inefficiency and asymmetric loss leading to identical outcomes of standard rationality ...
-
作者:Corsetti, Giancarlo; Mueller, Gernot J.
作者单位:European University Institute; Roma Tre University; Goethe University Frankfurt
摘要:In this article, we study. the co-movement of the government budget balance and the trade balance at business-cycle frequencies. In a sample of 10 OECD countries we find that the correlation of the two time series is negative, but less so in more open economies. Moreover, for the U.S. the cross-correlation function is S-shaped. We analyze these regularities taking the perspective of international business cycle theory. First, we show that a standard model delivers predictions broadly in line w...
-
作者:Guiso, Luigi; Sapienza, Paola; Zingales, Luigi
作者单位:European University Institute; University of Chicago; Northwestern University
摘要:To explain the extremely long-term persistence (more than 500 years) of positive historical experiences of cooperation (Putnam 1993), we model the intergenerational transmission of priors about the trustworthiness of others. We show that this transmission tends to be biased toward excessively conservative priors. As a result, societies can be trapped in a low-trust equilibrium. In this context, a temporary shock to the return to trusting can have a permanent effect on the level of trust. We va...
-
作者:Kocherlakota, Narayana; Pistaferri, Luigi
作者单位:University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis; Stanford University
摘要:Kocherlakota and Pistaferri (2007) describe two different. models (Private Information Pareto Optimal and Incomplete Markets) of how households partially insure themselves against idiosyncratic shocks. They demonstrate that the models differ in terms of their implications for real exchange rates. In this paper, we use data from a wide range of countries, and document that there is a statististically significant relationship between real exchange rate growth and between-country differences in t...
-
作者:Alesina, Alberto; Campante, Filipe R.; Tabellini, Guido
作者单位:Harvard University
摘要:Fiscal policy is procyclical in many developing countries. We explain this policy failure with a political agency problem. Procyclicality is driven by voters who seek to starve the Leviathan to reduce political rents. Voters observe the state of the economy but not the rents appropriated by corrupt governments. When they observe a boom, voters optimally demand more public goods or lower taxes, and this induces a procyclical bias in fiscal policy. The empirical evidence is consistent with this ...
-
作者:Goyal, Sanjeev; Moraga-Gonzalez, Jose Luis; Konovalov, Alexander
作者单位:University of Cambridge; University of Groningen; University of Innsbruck
摘要:We develop a model of R&D collaboration in which individual firms carry out in-house research on core activities and undertake bilateral joint projects on non-core activities with other firms. We develop conditions on the profit functions of the firm under which R&D investments in different projects of a firm are complementary. We show that this condition is met by standard price and quantity setting oligopoly models. We then study the relation between the number of joint projects and investme...
-
作者:Ortega, Javier; Tangeras, Thomas P.
作者单位:Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
摘要:We consider an economy with two language groups, where only agents who share a language can produce together. Schooling enhances the productivity of students. Individuals attending a unilingual school end up speaking the language of instruction only, whereas bilingual schools render individuals bilingual at the same cost. The politically dominant group ( not necessarily the majority) chooses the type(s) of schools accessible to each language group, and then individuals decide whether to attend...
-
作者:Monacelli, Tommaso; Perotti, Roberto
作者单位:Bocconi University; Bocconi University
摘要:Based on structural VAR evidence for the U.S., we document that arise in government spending generates three facts: (1) an appreciation of the terms of trade; (2) a fall in the price of traded vs. non-traded goods (proxied by the price of goods relative to services), and (3) a positive co-movement between the manufacturing and the service sector, both in consumption and production. We show that, even if government spending is assumed to be as intensive in goods and services as households' cons...
-
作者:Acemoglu, Daron
作者单位:Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要:This paper develops a model to analyze economic performance under different political regimes. An oligarchic society, where political power is in the hands of major producers, protects their property rights but also tends to erect significant entry barriers against new entrepreneurs. Democracy, where political power is more widely diffused, imposes redistributive taxes on producers, but tends to avoid entry barriers. When taxes in democracy are high and the distortions caused by entry barriers...