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作者：Fisman, Raymond; Harmon, Nikolaj A.; Kamenica, Emir; Munk, Inger
作者单位：Boston University; University of Copenhagen; University of Chicago
摘要：Using data on Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), we examine the impact of salaries on the composition and the behavior of legislators. Employing a differences-in-differences approach, we exploit the introduction of a law that equalized MEPs' salaries which had previously differed by as much as a factor of 10. Increasing salaries raises the fraction of MEPs who run for re-election but decreases the quality of elected MEPs (proxied by college quality). Salary has no discernible impact on...
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作者：Cantoni, Davide
作者单位：University of Munich
摘要：Following Max Weber, many theories have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development. With its religious heterogeneity, the Holy Roman Empire presents an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis. Using population figures of 272 cities in the years 1300-1900, I find no effects of Protestantism on economic growth. The finding is precisely estimated, robust to the inclusion of various controls, and does not depend on data selection or small sample size. Denominational ...
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作者：Alesina, Alberto; Algan, Yann; Cahuc, Pierre; Giuliano, Paola
作者单位：Harvard University; Bocconi University; Institut d'Etudes Politiques Paris (Sciences Po); Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique; ENSAE Paris; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
摘要：To be efficient, flexible labor markets require geographically mobile workers. Otherwise firms can take advantage of workers' immobility and extract rents at their expense. In cultures with strong family ties, moving away from home is costly. Thus, to limit the rents of firms and to avoid moving, individuals with strong family ties rationally choose regulated labor markets, even though regulation generates higher unemployment and lower incomes. Empirically, we find that individuals who inherit...
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作者：Besley, Timothy; Fetzer, Thiemo; Mueller, Hannes
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR); University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Institut d'Analisi Economica (IAE); Barcelona School of Economics
摘要：In spite of general agreement that establishing the rule of law is central to properly functioning economies, little is known about the cost of law and order breakdowns. This paper studies a specific context of this by estimating the effect of Somali piracy attacks on shipping costs using data on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market. To estimate the effect of piracy, we look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy and find that the increase in attacks in 2008 led to ...
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作者：Marinacci, Massimo
作者单位：Bocconi University; Bocconi University
摘要：We study decision problems inwhich consequences of the various alternative actions depend on states determined by a generative mechanism representing some natural or social phenomenon. Model uncertainty arises because decision makers may not know this mechanism. Two types of uncertainty result, a state uncertainty within models and a model uncertainty across them. We discuss some two-stage static decision criteria proposed in the literature that address state uncertainty in the first stage and...
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作者：Bartling, Bjoern; Schmidt, Klaus M.
作者单位：University of Zurich; University of Munich
摘要：How does an ex-ante contract affect behavior in an ex-post renegotiation game? We address this question in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and economically important impact on renegotiation behavior that goes beyond the effect of contracts on bargaining threat points. We compare situations in which an initial contract is renegotiated to strategically equivalent bargaining...
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作者：Havranek, Tomas
作者单位：Czech National Bank; Charles University Prague
摘要：I examine 2,735 estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption (EIS) reported in 169 published studies. The literature shows strong selective reporting: researchers discard negative and insignificant estimates too often, which pulls the mean estimate up by about 0.5. The reporting bias dwarfs the effects of methods, with the exception of the choice between micro and macro data. When I correct the mean for the bias, for macro estimates I get zero, even though the repor...
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作者：Ewers, Mara; Zimmermann, Florian
作者单位：University of Zurich
摘要：In this paper we analyze how image utility can lead to misreporting of private information in contexts where truthful reports maximize monetary outcomes. In a controlled experiment, subjects go through a series of quiz questions and subsequently report a performance measure. We vary whether reports are made to an audience or not. In an additional feedback treatment, reports are also stated to an audience and afterwards the experimenter publicly verifies whether reports were correct. We find th...
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作者：Collard, Fabrice; Habib, Michel; Rochet, Jean-Charles
作者单位：University of Bern; University of Zurich; University of Geneva; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics
摘要：We develop a measure of maximum sustainable government debt for advanced economies. How much investors are willing to lend to a country's government depends on the country's expected primary surplus, the level and volatility of its rate of growth, and how much debt the government expects to be able to raise in the future for the purpose of servicing the debt it seeks to raise today. We provide a simple formula that computes a country's maximum sustainable debt (MSD) as a function of four easy-...
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作者：Fehr, Ernst; Hart, Oliver; Zehnder, Christian
作者单位：University of Zurich; Harvard University; University of Lausanne
摘要：The notion of contracts as reference points provides the basis for a deeper understanding of important phenomena such as the employment contract, vertical integration, firm scope, authority, and delegation. Previous experiments lend support to this notion but they ignore realistic aspects of trading relationships such as informal agreements and ex-post renegotiation or revision. Here we show that the central behavioral mechanism underlying contractual reference points is robust to such conside...
