-
作者：Qian, Nancy; Yanagizawa-Drott, David
作者单位：Yale University; University of Zurich
摘要：This study provides evidence of government distortion of news coverage among independently owned media outlets in a democratic regime. It uses data from 1946 to 2010 and documents that U.S. news coverage of human rights abuses committed by foreign governments was associated with membership on the United Nations Security Council and the degree of political alliance with the United States. For countries that were not allied with the United States, coverage increased with membership; for countrie...
-
作者：Englmaier, Florian; Stowasser, Till
作者单位：University of Munich
摘要：We provide evidence that German savings banks, which are controlled by county-level politicians, systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timings of county elections across states and the existence of a comparable group of cooperative banks-that are very similar to savings banks but lack their political connectedness-allow for identification of the effects of county elections on savings bank lending. These effects are economically meaningful a...
-
作者：Campaniello, Nadia; Diasakos, Theodoros M.; Mastrobuoni, Giovanni
作者单位：University of Essex; University of Stirling; Collegio Carlo Alberto
摘要：Is there a rational component in the decision to commit suicide? Economists have been trying to shed light on this question by studying whether suicide rates are related to contemporaneous socioeconomic conditions. This paper goes one step further: we test whether suicides are linked to forward-looking behavior. In Italy, collective sentence reductions (pardons) often lead to massive releases of prisoners. More importantly, they are usually preceded by prolonged parliamentary activity (legisla...
-
作者：Brown, Jeffrey R.; Kapteyn, Arie; Luttmer, Erzo F. P.; Mitchell, Olivia S.
作者单位：University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Illinois Chicago Hospital; University of Southern California; Dartmouth College; University of Pennsylvania
摘要：This paper documents consumers' difficulty valuing life annuities. Using a purpose-built experiment in the American Life Panel, we show that the prices at which people are willing to buy annuities are substantially below the prices at which they are willing to sell them. We also find that buy values are negatively correlated with sell values and that the sell-buy valuation spread is negatively correlated with cognition. This spread is larger for those with less education, weaker numerical abil...
-
作者：Feyrer, James; Politi, Dimitra; Weil, David N.
作者单位：Dartmouth College; University of Edinburgh; Brown University
摘要：Iodine deficiency is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation in the world today. The condition, which was common in the developed world until the introduction of iodized salt in the 1920s, is connected to low iodine levels in the soil and water. We examine the impact of salt iodization on cognitive outcomes in the United States by taking advantage of this natural geographic variation. Salt was iodized over a short period of time beginning in 1924. We use military data collected dur...
-
作者：Acemoglu, Daron; Jackson, Matthew O.
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Stanford University; The Santa Fe Institute
摘要：We examine the interplay between social norms and the enforcement of laws. Agents choose a behavior (e.g., tax evasion, production of low-quality products, corruption, harassing behavior, substance abuse, etc.) and then are randomly matched with another agent. There are complementarities in behaviors so that an agent's payoff decreases with the mismatch between her behavior and her partner's, and with overall negative externalities created by the behavior of others. A law is an upper bound (ca...
