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作者：de Pleijt, Alexandra; Nuvolari, Alessandro; Weisdorf, Jacob
作者单位：University of Oxford; Utrecht University; Queens University Belfast; Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna; University of Southern Denmark
摘要：We examine the effect of technical change on human capital formation during England's Industrial Revolution. Using the number of steam engines installed by 1800 as a synthetic indicator of technological change and occupational statistics to measure working skills (using HISCLASS), we establish a positive correlation between the use of steam engines and the share of skilled workers at the county level. We use exogenous variation in carboniferous rock strata (containing coal to fuel the engines)...
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作者：Acemoglu, Daron; Wolitzky, Alexander
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：We introduce the possibility of coercive punishment by specialized enforcers into a model of community enforcement. We assume that, just as regular agents need to be given incentives to cooperate with each other, specialized enforcers need to be given incentives to carry out costly punishments. We fully characterize optimal equilibria in the model. When the specialized enforcement technology is sufficiently effective, cooperation is best sustained by a one-time enforcer punishment equilibrium,...
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作者：Gagnon, Etienne; Lopez-Salido, David
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
摘要：We study the pricing response of U.S. supermarkets to large demand shocks triggered by labor conflicts, mass population displacement, and shopping sprees around major snowstorms and hurricanes. We find that these large swings in demand have, at best, modest effects on the level of retail prices, consistent with flat short- to medium-term supply curves. This finding holds even when shocks are highly persistent and despite the fact that stores adjust prices frequently. We also provide evidence t...
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作者：Baltrunaite, Audinga
作者单位：European Central Bank; Bank of Italy
摘要：This paper studies whether firms trade political contributions for public procurement contracts. Combining data on Lithuanian government tenders, corporate donors, and firm characteristics, I examine how a ban on corporate contributions affects the awarding of procurement contracts to companies that donated in the past. Consistent with political favoritism, donors' probability of winning falls by five percentage points as compared to that of nondonor firms after the ban. Evidence on bidding an...
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作者：Brollo, Fernanda; La Ferrara, Eliana; Kaufmann, Katja
作者单位：University of Warwick; Bocconi University; University of Mannheim
摘要：Do politicians manipulate the enforcement of conditional welfare programs to influence electoral outcomes? We study the Bolsa Familia Program (BFP) in Brazil, which provides a monthly stipend to poor families conditional on school attendance. Repeated failure to comply with this requirement results in increasing penalties. First, we exploit random variation in the timing when beneficiaries learn about penalties for noncompliance around the 2008 municipal elections. We find that the vote share ...
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作者：De Nardi, Mariacristina; Fella, Giulio; Paz-Pardo, Gonzalo
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis; University of London; University College London; University of London; Queen Mary University London
摘要：Earnings dynamics are much richer than typically assumed in macro models with heterogeneous agents. This holds for individual-pre-tax and household-post-tax earnings and across administrative and survey data. We estimate two alternative processes for household after-tax earnings and study their implications using a standard life-cycle model. Both processes feature a persistent and a transitory component, but although the first one is the canonical linear process with stationary shocks, the sec...
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作者：Spiegler, Ran
作者单位：Tel Aviv University; University of London; University College London
摘要：An agent forms estimates (or forecasts) of individual variables conditional on some observed signal. His estimates are based on fitting a subjective causal model-formalized as a directed acyclic graph, following the Bayesian networks literature-to objective long-run data. I show that the agent's average estimates coincide with the variables' true expected value (for any underlying objective distribution) if and only if the agent's graph is perfect-that is, it directly links every pair of varia...
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作者：van Leeuwen, Boris; Schram, Arthur; Offerman, Theo
作者单位：Tilburg University; University of Amsterdam; European University Institute
摘要：We investigate a mechanism that facilitates the provision of public goods in a network formation game. We show how competition for status encourages a core player to realize efficiency gains for the entire group. In a laboratory experiment we systematically examine the effects of group size and exogenously monetarized status rents. The experimental results provide very clear support for the concept of challenge-freeness, a refinement that predicts when a repeated game equilibrium will be playe...
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作者：Au, Pak Hung
作者单位：Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
摘要：This paper examines the optimal compensation scheme, job design, and severance policy for a team using a model of repeated moral hazard. In the optimal contract, the agent may be paid to quit after a poor performance. We show that a generous severance policy facilitates the adoption of team incentives and team-based production by making it cost-effective to implement peer monitoring and sanction among the agents.
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作者：Imbert, Clement; Papp, John
作者单位：University of Warwick
摘要：This paper studies the effect of India's rural public works program on rural-to-urban migration and urban labor markets. We find that seasonal migration from rural districts that implemented the program decreased relative to those that were selected to, but did not implement it. We use a gravity model and find that real wages rose faster in cities with higher predicted migration from program districts. Since most seasonal migrants work outside of their district, urban wage increases were not l...
