What Can UWE Do for Economics? -- by Tatyana Avilova, Claudia Goldin
Men outnumber women as undergraduate economics majors by three to one nationwide. Even at the best research universities and liberal arts colleges men outnumber women by two to one or more. The...
View ArticleDeaths of Despair or Drug Problems? -- by Christopher J. Ruhm
The United States is in the midst of a fatal drug epidemic. This study uses data from the Multiple Cause of Death Files to examine the extent to which increases in county-level drug mortality rates...
View ArticleDistrust and Political Turnover -- by Nathan Nunn, Nancy Qian, Jaya Wen
We present findings that document one way in which a society's culture can affect political outcomes. Examining an annual panel of democratic countries over six decades, we show that severe economic...
View ArticleOn the Measurement of Upstreamness and Downstreamness in Global Value Chains...
This paper offers four contributions to the empirical literature on global value chains (GVCs). First, we provide a succinct overview of several measures developed to capture the upstreamness or...
View ArticleQuality of Public Governance and the Capital Structure of Nations and Firms...
This paper examines the role of public governance quality in determining the composition of a country's external liabilities and the capital structure of firms. In our theory, better institutional...
View ArticleSubways and Urban Air Pollution -- by Nicolas Gendron-Carrier, Marco...
We investigate the relationship between the opening of a city's subway network and its air quality. We find that particulate concentrations drop by 4% in a 10km radius disk surrounding a city center...
View ArticleThe Fragility of Market Risk Insurance -- by Ralph Koijen, Motohiro Yogo
Insurers sell retail financial products called variable annuities that package mutual funds with minimum return guarantees over long horizons. Variable annuities accounted for $1.5 trillion or 34...
View ArticleThe Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality:...
We exploit quasi-experimental variation in assignment of rent control to study its impacts on tenants, landlords, and the overall rental market. Leveraging new data tracking individuals' migration, we...
View ArticleAre Lemons Sold First? Dynamic Signaling in the Mortgage Market -- by Manuel...
A central result in the theory of adverse selection in asset markets is that informed sellers can signal quality and obtain higher prices by delaying trade. This paper provides some of the first...
View ArticleImpact Evaluation in Matching Markets with General Tie-Breaking -- by Atila...
Many centralized matching schemes incorporate a mix of random lottery and non-lottery tie-breaking. A leading example is the New York City public school district, which uses criteria like test scores...
View ArticleSocial Structure and Conflict: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa -- by Jacob...
We test the long-standing hypothesis that ethnic groups that are organized around `segmentary lineages' are more prone to conflict and civil war. Ethnographic accounts suggest that in segmentary...
View ArticleA Sufficient Statistics Approach for Aggregating Firm-Level Experiments -- by...
We consider a dynamic economy populated by heterogeneous firms subject to generic capital frictions: adjustment costs, taxes and financing constraints. A random subset of firms in this economy receives...
View ArticleThe Impact of International Patent Systems: Evidence from Accession to the...
We analyze the impact of accession to the regional patent system established by the European Patent Convention (EPC) on 14 countries that acceded between 2000 and 2008. We look at changes in patenting...
View ArticlePreventives Versus Treatments Redux: Tighter Bounds on Distortions in...
Kremer and Snyder (2015) show that demand curves for a preventive and treatment may have different shapes though they target the same disease, biasing the pharmaceutical manufacturer toward developing...
View ArticleA Neoclassical Theory of Liquidity Traps -- by Sebastian Di Tella
This paper provides an equilibrium theory of liquidity traps and the real effects of money. Money provides a safe store of value that prevents interest rates from falling enough during downturns, and...
View ArticleInternational Tax Reforms with Flexible Prices -- by Assaf Razin, Efraim Sadka
The growing spread of globalization creates a genuine need for international tax reforms. In this we establish the neutrality of border-tax adjustments of the income tax; the welfare dominance of...
View ArticleDo School Spending Cuts Matter? Evidence from the Great Recession -- by C....
Audits of public school budgets routinely find evidence of waste. Also, recent evidence finds that when school budgets are strained, public schools can employ cost-saving measures with no ill-effect on...
View ArticleThe Introduction of Tasers and Police Use of Force: Evidence from the Chicago...
In March 2010, the Chicago Police Department changed its Taser policy, issuing the weapons to patrol officers instead of largely restricting their use to sergeants. We used that policy change to obtain...
View ArticleBureaucratic Competence and Procurement Outcomes -- by Francesco Decarolis,...
To what extent does a more competent public workforce contribute to better economic outcomes? We analyze this question in the context of the US federal procurement by combining data on office-level...
View ArticleStatistical Discrimination and Duration Dependence in the Job Finding Rate --...
This paper models a frictional labor market where employers endogenously discriminate against the long term unemployed. The estimated model replicates recent experimental evidence which documents that...
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