Children, Time Allocation and Consumption Insurance -- by Richard Blundell,...
We consider the life cycle choices of a household that in each period decides how much to consume and how to allocate spouses' time to work, leisure, and childcare. In an environment with uncertainty,...
View ArticleThe Rise, the Fall, and the Resurrection of Iceland -- by Sigridur...
This paper documents how the Icelandic banking system grew from 100 percent of GDP in 1998 to 9 times GDP in 2008 when it failed. We base the analysis on data from the banks that was made public when...
View ArticleMeasuring Success in Education: The Role of Effort on the Test Itself -- by...
Tests measuring and comparing educational achievement are an important policy tool. We experimentally show that offering students extrinsic incentives to put forth effort on such achievement tests has...
View ArticleWhen Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering? -- by Alberto Abadie,...
In empirical work in economics it is common to report standard errors that account for clustering of units. Typically, the motivation given for the clustering adjustments is that unobserved components...
View ArticleCoCo Issuance and Bank Fragility -- by Stefan Avdjiev, Bilyana Bogdanova,...
The promise of contingent convertible capital securities (CoCos) as a "bail-in" solution has been the subject of considerable theoretical analysis and debate, but little is known about their effects in...
View ArticleWhat Rule for the Federal Reserve? Forecast Targeting -- by Lars E.O. Svensson
How would the policy rule of forecast targeting work for the Federal Reserve? To what extent is the Federal Reserve already practicing forecast targeting? Forecast targeting means selecting a policy...
View ArticleMore on ETFs -- A Little Craziness in High Yield Bond ETFs
I wrote a post a month or so ago on the risks from ETFs, in particular how ETFs on less liquid markets -- with high yield bonds being my poster child -- could cause problems for the market generally....
View ArticleWeekly Top 5 Papers – November 13th, 2017
1. Private Benefits in Public Offerings: Tax Receivable Agreements in IPOs by Gladriel Shobe (Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School)read more...
View ArticleFederal Court Orders Arizona Resident Derek Springfield and His Company,...
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced that Judge David G. Campbell of U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona entered a Consent Order against Defendants Derek...
View ArticleService-level Selection: Strategic Risk Selection in Medicare Advantage in...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has phased in the Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCC) risk adjustment model during 2004-2006 to more accurately estimate capitated payments to...
View ArticleThe Employer Penalty, Voluntary Compliance, and the Size Distribution of...
A new survey of 745 small businesses shows little change in the size distribution of businesses between 2012 and 2016, except among businesses with 40-74 employees, in a way that is closely related to...
View ArticleThe Effect of Air Pollution on Migration: Evidence from China -- by Shuai...
This paper looks at the effects of air pollution on migration in China using changes in the average strength of thermal inversions over five-year periods as a source of exogenous variation for...
View ArticleIdentifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care -- by Amitabh Chandra,...
In medicine, the reasons for variation in treatment rates across hospitals serving similar patients are not well understood. Some interpret this variation as unwarranted, and push standardization of...
View ArticleThe Effects of Land Markets on Resource Allocation and Agricultural...
We assess the role of land markets on factor misallocation in Ethiopia--where land is owned by the state--by exploiting policy-driven variation in land rentals across time and space arising from a...
View ArticleEquity Effects in Energy Regulation -- by Carolyn Fischer, William A. Pizer
Some choices in energy regulation, particularly those that price emissions, raise household energy prices more than others. Those choices can lead to a large variation in burden both across and within...
View ArticleThe Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China: Theory and Empirical Evidence...
We propose a simple informational theory to explain why autocratic regimes introduce local elections. Because citizens have better information on local officials than the distant central government,...
View ArticleSovereign Risk Contagion -- by Cristina Arellano, Yan Bai, Sandra Lizarazo
We develop a theory of sovereign risk contagion based on financial links. In our multi-country model, sovereign bond spreads comove because default in one country can trigger default in other...
View ArticleProbabilistic States versus Multiple Certainties: The Obstacle of Uncertainty...
We propose a new hypothesis, the Power of Certainty, to help explain agents' difficulties in making choices when there are multiple possible payoff-relevant states. In the probabilistic...
View ArticleFirm-Level Political Risk: Measurement and Effects -- by Tarek A. Hassan,...
We adapt simple tools from computational linguistics to construct a new measure of political risk faced by individual US firms: the share of their quarterly earnings conference calls that they devote...
View ArticleManagement Quality in Public Education: Superintendent Value-Added, Student...
We present evidence about the ways that school superintendents add value in Israel's primary and middle schools. Superintendents are the CEOs of a cluster of schools with powers to affect the quality...
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