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作者：Brown, Jeffrey R.; Kapteyn, Arie; Luttmer, Erzo F. P.; Mitchell, Olivia S.; Samek, Anya
作者单位：University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Illinois Chicago Hospital; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Southern California; Dartmouth College; University of Pennsylvania; University of California System; University of California San Diego
摘要：This paper examines two behavioral factors that diminish people's ability to value a lifetime income stream or annuity, drawing on a randomized experiment with about 4,000 adults in a U.S. nationally representative sample. We find that increasing the complexity of the annuity choice reduces respondents' ability to value the annuity, measured by the difference between the sell and buy values they assign to the annuity. When we limit narrow choice bracketing by inducing people to think first abo...
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作者：Fabbri, Marco; Dari-Mattiacci, Giuseppe
作者单位：Pompeu Fabra University; Barcelona School of Economics; Columbia University
摘要：This paper shows that formalizing private property rights has a positive effect on the propensity to respect the property of others. We study a recent large-scale land tenure reform in West Africa that was the first of its kind to be implemented as a randomized control trial. Results of a modified dictator game show that the formalization of private property rights reduced an individual's willingness to take from others' endowment. We used additional experimental measures and postexperimental ...
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作者：Menkhoff, Lukas; Rieth, Malte; Stohr, Tobias
作者单位：Humboldt University of Berlin; Leibniz Association; DIW Berlin - Deutsches Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung; Leibniz Association; Institut fur Weltwirtschaft an der Universitat Kiel (IFW)
摘要：Evidence on the effectiveness of foreign exchange (FX) interventions is either limited to short horizons or hampered by debatable identification. We address these limitations by identifying a structural vector autoregressive model for the daily frequency with an external instrument. Generally we find, for freely floating currencies, that FX intervention shocks significantly affect exchange rates and that this impact persists for months. The signaling channel dominates the portfolio channel. Mo...
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作者：Erten, Bilge; Leight, Jessica
作者单位：Northeastern University; CGIAR; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
摘要：This paper analyzes the effect of China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 on structural transformation at the local level, exploiting cross-sectional variation in tariff uncertainty faced by county economies pre-2001. Using a new panel of 1,800 Chinese counties from 1996 to 2013, we find that counties more exposed to the reduction in tariff uncertainty postaccession are characterized by increased exports and foreign direct investment, shrinking agricultural sectors, expanding...
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作者：Bai, Liang; Handel, Benjamin; Miguel, Edward; Rao, Gautam
作者单位：University of London; King's College London; University of Edinburgh; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University
摘要：Self-control problems constitute a potential explanation for the underinvestment in preventive health in low-income countries. Behavioral economics offers a tool to solve such problems: commitment devices. We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of theoretically motivated commitment contracts in increasing preventive doctor visits by hypertensive patients in rural India. Despite achieving high take-up of such contracts in some treatment arms, we find no e...
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作者：Bilbiie, Florin O.
作者单位：University of Lausanne; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要：Monetary policy is neutral even with fixed prices if free entry determines product variety optimally, as in Dixit and Stiglitz (1977). Entry substitutes for price flexibility in the welfare-based price index when individual prices are sticky. In response to aggregate demand expansions, the intensive (quantity produced of each good) and ex tensive (number of goods being produced) margins move in offsetting ways, leaving aggregate production unchanged. Price stickiness thus generates deviations ...
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作者：Cohen, Jon; Hachem, Kinda; Richardson, Gary
作者单位：University of Toronto; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Irvine
摘要：The collapse of long-term lending relationships amplified the Great Depression. We demonstrate this by developing a new measure of lending relationships that can be calculated from widely available data at any level of aggregation. Our approach exploits differences in the responsiveness of loan rates to bank funding costs and is supported by historical evidence and theoretical arguments. The new measure reveals that the marginal impact of bank suspensions on economic activity was higher in mor...
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作者：Kurmann, Andre; Sims, Eric
作者单位：Drexel University; University of Notre Dame; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper documents large revisions in a widely used series of utilization-adjusted total factor productivity (TFP) by Fernald (2014) and shows that these revisions can materially affect empirical results about the effects of news shocks. We trace these revisions to changes in estimated factor utilization that are evocative of cyclical measurement issues with productivity. We propose an alternative identification that is robust to these measurement issues. Applied to U.S. data, the shock pred...
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作者：Carranza, Eliana; Meeks, Robyn
作者单位：The World Bank; Duke University
摘要：Overloaded electrical systems are a major source of unreliable power. Using a randomized saturation design, we estimate the impact of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) on electricity reliability and household electricity consumption in the Kyrgyz Republic. Greater saturation of CFLs within a transformer leads to fewer outages, a technological externality benefiting all households, regardless of individual adoption. Spillovers in CFL adoption further reduce electricity consumption, contributing ...
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作者：Daniele, Gianmarco; Mookerjee, Sulagna; Tommasi, Denni
作者单位：Bocconi University; State University of New York (SUNY) System; Binghamton University, SUNY; Monash University
摘要：We investigate whether improvements in street-food safety can be achieved by providing information to vendors in the form of a training. Among randomly assigned vendors in Kolkata, India, we find large improvements in knowledge and awareness but little change in observed behavior. We provide two main explanations for these findings. First, information acquisition by itself does not make it significantly easier for vendors to provide customers with safer food options. Second, although consumers...
