The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940 --...
We estimate rates of "absolute income mobility" - the fraction of children who earn more than their parents - by combining historical data from Census and CPS cross-sections with panel data for recent...
View ArticleBombs and Babies: US Navy Bombing Activity and Infant Health in Vieques,...
We study the relationship between in utero exposure to military exercises and children's early-life health outcomes in a no-war zone. This allows us to document non-economic impacts of military...
View ArticleOptimal Taxation and R&D Policies -- by Ufuk Akcigit, Douglas Hanley,...
We study the optimal design of R&D policies and corporate taxation when the outputs of innovation are not appropriable in the absence of intellectual property rights policies and there are...
View ArticleThe Effects of Computers on Children's Social Development and School...
Concerns over the perceived negative impacts of computers on social development among children are prevalent but largely uninformed by plausibly causal evidence. We provide the first test of this...
View ArticleHabits and Leverage -- by Tano Santos, Pietro Veronesi
Many stylized facts of leverage, trading, and asset prices follow from a frictionless general equilibrium model that features agents' heterogeneity in endowments and habit preferences. Our model...
View ArticleEstimating the Productivity of Community Colleges in Paving the Road to...
The distinct mission and open-access nature of community colleges and the diverse goals of the students they serve make it difficult to assess differences in quality across community college campuses....
View ArticleStimulating Housing Markets -- by David Berger, Nicholas Turner, Eric Zwick
This paper studies temporary policy incentives designed to address capital overhang by inducing asset demand from buyers in the private market. Using variation across local geographies in ex ante...
View ArticleEconomic Transformation in Africa from the Bottom Up: Evidence from Tanzania...
At roughly 4% per annum, labor productivity in Tanzania has grown more rapidly over the past 12 years than at any other time in recent history. Employment growth has also been strong keeping up with...
View ArticleEstimating market power Evidence from the US Brewing Industry -- by Jan De...
While inferring markups from demand data is common practice, estimation relies on difficult-to-test assumptions, including a specific model of how firms compete. Alternatively, markups can be inferred...
View ArticleEnergy Efficiency Standards Are More Regressive Than Energy Taxes: Theory and...
Economists promote energy taxes as cost-effective. But policymakers raise concerns about their regressivity, or disproportional burden on poorer families, preferring to set energy efficiency standards...
View ArticleAgricultural Fires and Infant Health -- by Marcos A. Rangel, Tom Vogl
Fire has long served as a tool in agriculture, but this practice's human capital consequences have proved difficult to study. Drawing on data from satellites, air monitors, and vital records, we study...
View ArticleA Behavioral New Keynesian Model -- by Xavier Gabaix
This paper presents a framework for analyzing how bounded rationality affects monetary and fiscal policy. The model is a tractable and parsimonious enrichment of the widely-used New Keynesian model -...
View ArticleHow Destructive is Innovation? -- by Daniel Garcia-Macia, Chang-Tai Hsieh,...
Entrants and incumbents can create new products and displace the products of competitors. Incumbents can also improve their existing products. How much of aggregate productivity growth occurs through...
View ArticleSome Simple Economics of the Blockchain -- by Christian Catalini, Joshua S. Gans
We rely on economic theory to discuss how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies will influence the rate and direction of innovation. We identify two key costs that are affected by distributed...
View ArticleInterfirm Relationships and Business Performance -- by Jing Cai, Adam Szeidl
We organized business associations for the owner-managers of randomly selected young Chinese firms to study the effect of business networks on firm performance. We randomized 2,800 firms into small...
View ArticleTargeting Policies: Multiple Testing and Distributional Treatment Effects --...
Economic theory often predicts that treatment responses may depend on individuals' characteristics and location on the outcome distribution. Policymakers need to account for such treatment effect...
View ArticleLeveling the Playing Field: How Campaign Advertising Can Help Non-Dominant...
Voters are often uncertain about and biased against non-dominant political parties. By reducing the information gap with dominant parties, political advertising may thus disproportionately benefit...
View ArticleUnderstanding Inflation in India -- by Laurence Ball, Anusha Chari, Prachi...
This paper examines the behavior of quarterly inflation in India since 1994, both headline inflation and core inflation as measured by the weighted median of price changes across industries. We explain...
View ArticleGrowth Policy, Agglomeration, and (the Lack of) Competition -- by Wyatt J....
Industrial clusters are promoted by policy and generally viewed as good for growth and development, but both clusters and policies may also enable non-competitive behavior. This paper studies the...
View ArticleHow Large Are the Gains from Economic Integration? Theory and Evidence from...
In this paper we develop a new approach to measuring the gains from economic integration based on a generalization of the Ricardian model in which heterogeneous factors of production are allocated to...
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