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作者：Comin, Diego; Hobijn, Bart
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York
摘要：This paper explores whether lobbies slow down technology diffusion. To answer this question, we exploit the differential effect of various institutional attributes that should affect the costs of erecting barriers when the new technology has a technologically close predecessor but not otherwise. We implement this test using a data set that covers the diffusion of twenty technologies for 23 countries over the past two centuries. We find that each of the relevant institutional variables that aff...
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作者：Ananat, Elizabeth Oltmans; Gruber, Jonathan; Levine, Phillip B.; Staiger, Douglas
作者单位：Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Wellesley College; Dartmouth College
摘要：Abortion legalization in the early 1970s led to dramatic changes in fertility. Some research has suggested that it altered cohort outcomes, but this literature has been limited and controversial. In this paper, we provide a framework for understanding selection mechanisms and use that framework to both address inconsistent past methodological approaches and provide evidence on the long-run impact on cohort characteristics. Our results indicate that lower-cost abortion brought about by legaliza...
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作者：di Giovanni, Julian; Levchenko, Andrei A.
作者单位：International Monetary Fund; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要：This paper examines the mechanisms through which output volatility is related to trade openness using an industry-level panel data set of manufacturing production and trade. The main results are threefold. First, sectors more open to international trade are more volatile. Second, trade is accompanied by increased specialization. These two forces imply increased aggregate volatility. Third, sectors that are more open to trade are less correlated with the rest of the economy, an effect that acts...
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作者：Donni, Olivier
作者单位：CY Cergy Paris Universite
摘要：We adopt the collective approach to consumer behavior with egoistic agents and assume that household consumption is either private or public. We then show that (1) household demand functions have to satisfy testable constraints and (2) some elements of the decision process can be retrieved from observed behavior. These results are based on a conditional demand (m-demand) framework in which household demand functions are directly derived from the individual marginal rates of substitution. Final...
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作者：Deschenes, Olivier; Moretti, Enrico
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：We estimate the effect of extreme weather on life expectancy in the United States. Using high-frequency data, we find that both extreme heat and cold result in immediate increases in mortality. The increase in mortality following extreme heat appears mostly driven by near-term displacement, while the increase in mortality following extreme cold is long lasting. We estimate that the number of annual deaths attributable to cold temperature is 0.8% of average annual deaths in our sample. The long...
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作者：Mahajan, Aprajit
作者单位：Stanford University
摘要：This paper estimates a price elasticity using a flexible demand specification on survey data where prices are observed with errors and are correlated with household characteristics. The demand function is modeled as a polynomial/trigonometric in the unobserved true prices, and the form of the dependency between the observed prices and household characteristics is modeled parametrically. I identify and estimate the model by adapting the approach of Hausmann et al. (1991) and Schennach (2004). T...
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作者：Cole, Shawn
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：In 1980, India nationalized its large private banks. This induced different bank ownership patterns across different towns, allowing credible identification of the effects of bank ownership on financial development, lending rates, and the quality of intermediation, as well as employment and investment. Credit markets with nationalized banks experienced faster credit growth during a period of financial repression. Nationalization led to lower interest rates and lower-quality intermediation, and...
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作者：Gibson, John; Stillman, Steven
作者单位：University of Waikato
摘要：Bigger firms pay higher wages. This note reports tests of the hypothesis that this big-firm premium (BFP) occurs because workers in big firms are more skilled. We use the International Adult Literacy Survey, which gives richer skill measures than those typically available in labor market surveys, to measure the BFP in nine countries with and without controls for worker skill. The results show that the BFP is not as universal as is often suggested, but in countries where it exists controlling f...
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作者：Woo, Jaejoon
作者单位：Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD); DePaul University
摘要：We study the cyclical behavior of fiscal policy to explain why some countries exhibit procyclical fiscal policy stances-being expansionary in good times and contractionary in bad times. We develop a model that links the polarization of preferences over fiscal spending to the procyclicality bias. We then present evidence that social polarization as measured by income inequality and educational inequality is consistently and positively associated with fiscal procyclicality, even after controllin...
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作者：Currie, Janet; Hanushek, Eric A.; Kahn, E. Megan; Neidell, Matthew; Rivkin, Steven G.
作者单位：Columbia University; Stanford University; Amherst College
摘要：We examine the effect of air pollution on school absences using administrative data for elementary and middle school children in 39 of the largest school districts in Texas merged with air quality information maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency. We address potentially confounding factors with a difference-in-difference-in-differences strategy that controls for persistent characteristics of schools, years, and attendance periods. Of the pollutants considered, we find that high car...
