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作者：Schoefer, Benjamin; Ziv, Oren
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Michigan State University
摘要：Why do cities differ so much in productivity? A long literature has sought out systematic sources, such as inherent productivity advantages, market access, agglomeration forces, or sorting. We document that up to three-quarters of the measured regional productivity dispersion is spurious, reflecting the luck of the draw of finite counts of idiosyncratically heterogeneous plants that happen to operate in a given location. The patterns are even more pronounced for new plants, hold for alternativ...
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作者：Medina, Pamela
作者单位：University of Toronto
摘要：This paper studies quality upgrading to escape competition from low-wage countries and proposes a new channel that does not rely on access to new inputs or markets. Informed by Peruvian apparel firms' response to China's WTO accession, I introduce factor specificity in a multi-product-firm model. Profitability losses due to competition in low-quality segments induce firms to reallocate specific factors to produce high-quality varieties for high-income countries. Gains from this channel are lar...
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作者：Broer, Tobias; Kohlhas, Alexandre N.
作者单位：Paris School of Economics; University of Oxford
摘要：We document two stylized facts in expectational survey data. First, professional forecasters overrevise their macroeconomic expectations. Second, such overrevisions mask evidence of both over- and underreactions to public signals. We show that the first fact is inconsistent with standard models of noisy rational expectations, but consistent with behavioral and strategic models. The second fact, in contrast, presents a puzzle for existing theories. We propose an extension of noisy rational expe...
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作者：Caria, Stefano A.; Falco, Paolo
作者单位：University of Warwick; University of Copenhagen
摘要：Does low trust in workers discourage firms from hiring? We conduct an experiment in Ghana with real entrepreneurs who have the option to hire anonymous workers for a trivial but tedious task. Shirking attracts no penalty and completion of the task is an indicator of trustworthiness. We elicit employers' expectations and study how they change with random signals of workers' previous behavior. We find that employers underestimate workers' trustworthiness, which reduces hiring and profits. Negati...
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作者：Carneiro, Pedro; Das, Jishnu; Reis, Hugo
作者单位：University of London; University College London; Georgetown University; Banco de Portugal; Universidade Catolica Portuguesa
摘要：Using unique data from Pakistan, we estimate a model of demand for differentiated products in 112 rural education markets with significant choice among public and private schools. Families are willing to pay substantially for reductions in distance to school, but, in contrast, price elasticities are low. Using the demand estimates, we show that the existence of a low-fee private school market is of great value for households in our sample, reaching 2% to 7% of annual per capita expenditure for...
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作者：Johnson, Matthew S.; Schwab, Daniel; Koval, Patrick
作者单位：Duke University; College of the Holy Cross; Boston University
摘要：Workplace safety policies are designed to ensure that employers internalize the costs of injuries, but employers can undermine these policies with threats of dismissal. We show that states' adoption of the public policy exception to at-will employment-an exception forbidding employers from firing workers for filing workers' compensation claims or for whistleblowing-led to a substantial reduction in injuries. The widespread adoption of the public policy exception explains 14% of the decline in ...
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作者：Breinlich, Holger; Novy, Dennis; Santos Silva, J. M. C.
作者单位：University of Surrey; University of Warwick
摘要：Gravity equations are an important tool in empirical international trade research. We study to what extent sector-level parameters can be recovered from aggregate gravity equations estimated via Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood. We show that in the leading case where trade cost regressors do not vary at the sector level, estimates obtained with aggregate data have a clear interpretation as a weighted average of sectoral elasticities. Otherwise the estimates are biased, but researchers may pos...
