Certified Random: A New Order for Co-Authorship -- by Debraj Ray, Arthur Robson
In economics, alphabetical name order is the baseline norm for joint publications. A growing literature suggests, however, that alphabetical order confers uneven benefits on the first author. This...
View ArticleMigration as a Test of the Happiness Set Point Hypothesis: Evidence from...
Strong versions of the set point hypothesis argue that subjective well-being measures reflect each individual's own personality and that deviations from that set point will tend to be short-lived,...
View ArticleHospital Network Competition and Adverse Selection: Evidence from the...
Health insurers increasingly compete on their covered networks of medical providers. Using data from Massachusetts' pioneer insurance exchange, I find substantial adverse selection against plans...
View ArticleOptimal Monetary Policy in a Collateralized Economy -- by Gary Gorton, Ping He
In the last forty or so years the U.S. financial system has morphed from a mostly insured retail deposit-based system into a system with significant amounts of wholesale short-term debt that relies on...
View ArticleStrategic Patient Discharge: The Case of Long-Term Care Hospitals -- by Paul...
Medicare's prospective payment system for long-term acute-care hospitals (LTCHs) gives providers modest reimbursements for short patient stays before jumping discontinuously to a large lump-sum payment...
View ArticleExecutive Lawyers: Gatekeepers or Strategic Officers? -- by Adair Morse, Wei...
Lawyers now serve as executives in 44% of corporations. Although endowed with gatekeeping responsibilities, executive lawyers face increasing pressure to use time on strategic efforts. In a lawyer...
View ArticleSeeding the S-Curve? The Role of Early Adopters in Diffusion -- by Christian...
In October 2014, all 4,494 undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were given access to Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency. As a unique feature of the experiment, students...
View ArticleUnderstanding and Misunderstanding Randomized Controlled Trials -- by Angus...
The use of RCTs is spreading in economics. They are seen as desirable for discovery and for generating evidence for policy. Yet some of the enthusiasm for RCTs comes from misunderstandings: that...
View ArticleFinancial Safety Nets -- by Julien Bengui, Javier Bianchi, Louphou Coulibaly
In this paper, we study the optimal design of financial safety nets under limited private credit. We ask when it is optimal to restrict ex ante the set of investors that can receive public liquidity...
View ArticleMisreporting Trade: Tariff Evasion, Corruption, and Auditing Standards -- by...
In official international trade statistics, annual commerce between every pair of countries is reported twice: once by the importing country and once by the exporter. These double reports provide an...
View ArticleSovereign Debt Portfolios, Bond Risks, and the Credibility of Monetary Policy...
Nominal debt provides consumption-smoothing benefits if it can be inflated away during recessions. However, we document empirically that countries with more countercyclical inflation, where nominal...
View ArticleMigration Responses to Conflict: Evidence from the Border of the American...
The American Civil War fractured communities in border states where families who would eventually support the Union or the Confederacy lived together prior to the conflict. We study the subsequent...
View ArticleThe U.S. Economy in WWII as a Model for Coping with Climate Change -- by Hugh...
During World War II the United States rapidly transformed its economy to cope with a wide range of scarcities, such as shortfalls in the amounts of ocean shipping, aluminum, rubber, and other raw...
View ArticleThe Efficiency of Race-Neutral Alternatives to Race-Based Affirmative Action:...
Several public K-12 and university systems have recently shifted from race-based affirmative action plans to race-neutral alternatives. This paper explores the degree to which race-neutral alternatives...
View ArticleElectoral reciprocity in programmatic redistribution: Experimental Evidence...
We analyzed two conditional cash transfers experiments that preceded Honduran presidential elections in 2001 and 2013. In the first, smaller transfers had no effects on voter turnout or incumbent vote...
View ArticleHow Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions? -- by Paul Gompers, William...
We survey 889 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing; investment selection; valuation; deal structure; post investment...
View ArticleLove, Money, and Parental Goods: Does Parental Matchmaking Matter? -- by Fali...
While parental matchmaking has been widespread throughout history and across countries, we know little about the relationship between parental matchmaking and marriage outcomes. Does parental...
View ArticleSocial Experiments in the Labor Market -- by Jesse Rothstein, Till von Wachter
Large-scale social experiments were pioneered in labor economics, and are the basis for much of what we know about topics ranging from the effect of job training to incentives for job search to labor...
View ArticleBuying Reputation as a Signal of Quality: Evidence from an Online Marketplace...
Reputation is critical to foster trust in online marketplaces, yet leaving feedback is a public good that can be under-provided unless buyers are rewarded for it. Signaling theory implies that only...
View ArticleA Lesson from the Great Depression that the Fed Might have Learned: A...
We examine the first QE program through the lens of an open-market operation under taken by the Federal Reserve in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. This program entailed large purchases of...
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