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作者：Kuhn, Jeffrey; Younge, Kenneth; Marco, Alan
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne; University System of Georgia; Georgia Institute of Technology
摘要：The United States patent system is unique in that it requires applicants to cite documents they know to be relevant to the examination of their patent applications. Lampe (2012) presents evidence that applicants strategically withhold 21%-33% of relevant citations from patent examiners, suggesting that many patents are fraudulently obtained. We challenge this view. We first show that Lampe's empirical design is inconsistent with both legal standards and standard operating procedures, including...
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作者：Downey, Mitch
作者单位：Stockholm University
摘要：Politicizing the investigation of politically active groups is harmful for both the justice system and democratic accountability. I test whether members of the U.S. Congress affect the investigation and prosecution of politically active labor unions. Union officers are 1.5 percentage points more likely to be prosecuted when their supported candidate barely loses instead of barely wins (compared to the 3% base rate). Anecdotal evidence and a novel decomposition suggest a role for both union-sup...
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作者：Crawford, Ian; Neary, J. Peter
作者单位：University of Oxford; University of Oxford; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut
摘要：Changes in product characteristics on the extensive margin (the addition of new features and the removal of old ones) are an important and hitherto neglected dimension of quality change. Standard techniques for adjusting price indices for new goods cannot handle such changes satisfactorily, and this leads to an economically and statistically significant bias in the measurement of prices and real output. We combine insights from the theories of exact index numbers and demand for characteristics...
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作者：Lazuka, Volha
作者单位：University of Southern Denmark; Lund University; IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要：Being born in a hospital versus having a traditional birth attendant at home represents the most common early life policy change worldwide. By applying a difference-in-differences approach to register-based individual-level data on the total population, this paper explores the long-term economic effects of the opening of new maternity wards as an early life quasi-experiment. It first finds that the reform substantially increased the share of hospital births and reduced early neonatal mortality...
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作者：Einav, Liran; Finkelstein, Amy; Mahoney, Neale
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：There is substantial waste in U.S. healthcare but little consensus on how to combat it. We identify one source of waste: long-term care hospitals (LTCHs). Using the entry of LTCHs into hospital markets in an event study design, we find that most LTCH patients would have counterfactually received care at Skilled Nursing Facilities-facilities that provide medically similar care but are paid significantly less-and that substitution to LTCHs leaves patients unaffected or worse off on all dimension...
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作者：Heins, Gunnar
作者单位：State University System of Florida; University of Florida
摘要：How unequal are the gains from trade? This paper develops a structural framework to quantify the consequences of international trade on welfare of consumers across the income distribution, allowing for nonhomothetic demand and endogenous quality choices by firms. Using random coefficients demand estimation techniques, I infer demand and supply parameters, as well as household-specific price indexes for more than 3,000 distinct industries and find the gains from trade to be moderately unequal e...
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作者：Kondylis, Florence; Stein, Mattea
作者单位：The World Bank; University of Naples Federico II
摘要：Can procedural reforms improve judicial efficiency? And do improvements in judicial efficiency benefit firms? We combine the staggered rollout of a reform that required judges in Senegal to complete pretrials within four months with high-frequency caseload data and firm tax filings. The reform improved judicial efficiency, with no effect on quality. Firm monthly revenues drop by 8-11% upon entering pretrial and decline by on average 3.2-5.0% for every hundred days a case spends in pretrial. Su...
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作者：Zeltzer, Dan; Einav, Liran; Finkelstein, Amy; Shir, Tzvi; Stemmer, Salomon M.; Balicer, Ran D.
作者单位：Tel Aviv University; Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Clalit Health Services; Rabin Medical Center; Tel Aviv University; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
摘要：We study the sources of high end-of-life spending for cancer patients. Even among patients with similar initial prognoses, spending in the year postdiagnosis is over twice as high for those who die within the year than those who survive. Elevated spending on decedents is predominantly driven by higher inpatient spending, particularly low-intensity admissions. However, most such admissions do not result in death, making it difficult to target spending reductions. Furthermore, end-of-life spendi...
