Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States...
This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of...
View ArticleGlobalization and Wage Inequality -- by Elhanan Helpman
Globalization has been blamed for rising inequality in rich and poor countries. Yet the views of many protagonists in this debate are not based on evidence. To help form an evidence-based opinion, I...
View ArticleDominant Currency Paradigm -- by Camila Casas, Federico J. Diez, Gita...
Most trade is invoiced in very few currencies. Despite this, the Mundell-Fleming benchmark and its variants focus on pricing in the producer's currency or in local currency. We model instead a...
View ArticleOlder Peoples' Willingness to Delay Social Security Claiming -- by Raimond...
We have designed and fielded an experimental module in the 2014 HRS which seeks to measure older persons' willingness to voluntarily defer claiming of Social Security benefits. In addition, we evaluate...
View ArticleBusiness Cycles, Investment Shocks, and the "Barro-King" Curse --...
Recent empirical evidence identifies investment shocks as key driving forces behind business cycle fluctuations. However, existing New Keynesian models emphasizing these shocks counterfactually imply a...
View ArticleSanitation, Disease Externalities, and Anemia: Evidence From Nepal -- by...
Anemia impairs physical and cognitive development in children and reduces human capital accumulation. The prior economics literature has focused on the role of inadequate nutrition in causing anemia....
View ArticleAsymmetric Effects of Non-Pecuniary Signals on Search and Purchase Behavior...
We report the results of a field experiment where we exogenously vary the use of social comparisons "nudges" and subsidies for participation in an in-home energy audit program, and follow subjects...
View ArticleImproving the Measurement of Earnings Dynamics -- by Moira Daly, Dmytro...
The stochastic process for earnings is the key element of incomplete markets models in modern quantitative macroeconomics. We show that a simple modification of the canonical process used in the...
View ArticleCross-Sectional Patterns of Mortgage Debt during the Housing Boom: Evidence...
The reallocation of mortgage debt to low-income or marginally qualified borrowers plays a central role in many explanations of the early 2000s housing boom. We show that such a reallocation never...
View ArticleA Structural Analysis of the Effects of the Great Recession on Retirement and...
This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to estimate a structural model of household retirement and saving. It applies that model to analyze the effects of the Great Recession on the...
View ArticleFuel Consumption and Gasoline Prices: The Role of Assortative Matching...
Analyses of polities to reduce gasoline consumption have focused on two effects, a compositional effect on the fuel economy of the automotive fleet and a utilization effect on how much people drive....
View ArticleAsset Managers: Institutional Performance and Smart Betas -- by Joseph...
Using a dataset of $17 trillion of assets under management, we document that actively-managed institutional accounts outperformed strategy benchmarks by 86 (42) basis points gross (net) during...
View ArticleA Passage to America: University Funding and International Students -- by...
The pool of students in the global economy prepared for higher education and able to pay tuition at U.S. colleges and universities has expanded markedly in the last two decades, with a particularly...
View ArticleBlind Tigers and Red-Tape Cocktails: Liquor Control and Homicide in...
In 1893 South Carolina prohibited the private manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol and established a state monopoly in wholesale and retail alcohol distribution. The combination of a market...
View ArticleStepping on a Rake: Replication and Diagnosis -- by John H. Cochrane
This paper replicates Sims (2011) "stepping on a rake" model. It derives the model, shows how to solve it, offers some extensions, and boils the paper down to its central ingredient. Sims' article is...
View ArticleDiscrete Adjustment to a Changing Environment: Experimental Evidence -- by...
We conduct a laboratory experiment to shed light on the cognitive limitations that may affect the way decision makers respond to changes in their economic environment. The subjects solve a tracking...
View ArticleWho Benefits Most from SNAP? A Study of Food Security and Food Spending -- by...
We study the effects of SNAP participation on food insecurity and food spending using finite mixture models that allow for a priori unspecified heterogeneous effects. We identify a low food security...
View ArticleClassification Trees for Heterogeneous Moment-Based Models -- by Sam Asher,...
A basic problem in applied settings is that different parameters may apply to the same model in different populations. We address this problem by proposing a method using moment trees; leveraging the...
View ArticlePopulism and the Return of the "Paranoid Style": Some Evidence and...
We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of "disloyal" leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal...
View ArticleA Portrait of Trade in Value Added over Four Decades -- by Robert C. Johnson,...
We combine data on trade, production, and input use to document changes in the value added content of trade between 1970 and 2009. The ratio of value-added to gross exports fell by roughly 10...
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