Browsing MIT Dept. of Economics Working Papers Series by Issue Date
Now showing items 21-40 of 1293
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Innovation, Reallocation and Growth
(2013-06-05)The standard approach to policy-making and advice in economics implicitly or explicitly ignores politics and political economy, and maintains that if possible, any market failure should be rapidly removed. This essay ... -
Economics versus Politics: Pitfalls of Policy Advice
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-06-05)The standard approach to policy-making and advice in economics implicitly or explicitly ignores politics and political economy, and maintains that if possible, any market failure should be rapidly removed. This essay ... -
History, Expectations, and Leadership in the Evolution of Social Norms
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-05-12)We study the evolution of a social norm of “cooperation” in a dynamic environment. Each agent lives for two periods and interacts with agents from the previous and next generations via a coordination game. Social norms ... -
Statistics in Ancient History
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-02-13)This paper uses new data to extend the argument that there was an integrated wheat market in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. I explore the meaning of randomness when data are scarce, and I investigate how ... -
Currency Crises from Andrew Jackson to Angela Merkel
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-02-13)This paper presents a narrative of currency crises for the past two centuries. I use the Swan Diagram as a theoretical framework for this narrative and conclude that many so-called banking crises are in fact currency ... -
Optimal Public Debt Management and Liquidity Provision
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-02-05)We study the Ramsey policy problem in an economy in which firms face a collateral constraint. Issuing more public debt alleviates this friction by increasing the aggregate quantity of collateral. In so doing, however, the ... -
The "Task Approach" to Labor Markets: An Overview
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-01-30)An emerging literature argues that changes in the allocation of workplace “tasks” between capital and labor, and between domestic and foreign workers, has altered the structure of labor demand in industrialized countries ... -
The "Task Approach" to Labor Markets" An Overview
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-01-24)An emerging literature argues that changes in the allocation of workplace “tasks” between capital and labor, and between domestic and foreign workers, has altered the structure of labor demand in industrialized countries ... -
Cyclical Unemployment Structural Unemployment
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013-01-15)Whenever unemployment stays high for an extended period, it is common to see analyses, statements, and rebuttals about the extent to which the high unemployment is structural, not cyclical. This essay views the Beveridge ... -
Chiefs: Elite Control of Civil Society and Economic Development in Sierra Leone
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-12-29)The lowest level of government in sub-Saharan Africa is often a cadre of chiefs who raise taxes, control the judicial system and allocate the most important scarce resource - land. Chiefs, empowered by colonial indirect ... -
Do Housing Prices Reflect Environmental Health Risks? Evidence from More than 1600 Toxic Plant Openings and Closings
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-12-21)A ubiquitous and largely unquestioned assumption in studies of housing markets is that there is perfect information about local amenities. This paper measures the housing market and health impacts of 1,600 openings and ... -
Adapting the Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship Over the 20th Century
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-12-20)Adaptation is the only strategy that is guaranteed to be part of the world's climate strategy. Using the most comprehensive set of data files ever compiled on mortality and its determinants over the course of the 20th ... -
Carry Trade and Systemic Risk: Why are FX Options so Cheap?
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-12-05)In this paper we document first that, in contrast with their widely perceived excess returns, popular carry trade strategies yield low systemic-risk-adjusted returns. In particular, we show that carry trade returns are ... -
Do Credit Market Shocks Affect the Real Economy? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Great Recession and 'Normal' Economic Times
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-11-30)We estimate the effect of the sharp reduction in credit supply following the 2008 financial crisis on the real economy. The identification strategy relies on the substantial heterogeneity in the degree to which banks cut ... -
Offshoring and Directed Technical Change
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-11-24)To study the short-run and long-run implications on wage inequality, we introduce directed technical change into a Ricardian model of offshoring. A unique final good is produced by combining a skilled and an unskilled ... -
Do labor market policies have displacement effects? Evidence from a clustered randomized experiment
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-11-10)This paper reports the results from a randomized experiment designed to evaluate the direct and indirect (displacement) impacts of job placement assistance on the labor market outcomes of young, educated job seekers in ... -
The Effects of Environmental Regulation on the Competitiveness of U.S. Manufacturing
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-09-10)The economic costs of environmental regulations have been widely debated since the U.S. began to restrict pollution emissions more than four decades ago. Using detailed production data from nearly 1.2 million plant ... -
Fiscal Multipliers: Liquidity Traps and Currency Unions
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-08-31)We provide explicit solutions for government spending multipliers during a liquidity trap and within a fixed exchange regime using standard closed and open-economy models. We confirm the potential for large multipliers ... -
Opinion Dynamics and Learning in Social Networks
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-08-30)We provide an overview of recent research on belief and opinion dynamics in social networks. We discuss both Bayesian and non-Bayesian models of social learning and focus on the implications of the form of learning (e.g., ... -
Can't We All Be More Like Scandinavians? Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdepent World?
(Cambridge, MA: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012-08-20)Because of their more limited inequality and more comprehensive social welfare systems, many perceive average welfare to be higher in Scandinavian societies than in the United States. Why then does the United States not ...
