Knowledge that Transforms

Current Editorial Board:Pierre Azoulay, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyOlivier Coibion, University of Texas, AustinWill Dobbie (Co-Chair), Harvard UniversityRaymond Fisman (Co-Chair), Boston UniversityBenjamin R. Handel, University of California, BerkeleyPeter Hull, Brown UniversityBrian A. Jacob, University of MichiganScott Kominers, Harvard UniversityTavneet Suri, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDaniel Xu, Duke UniversityRecently Retired from the Editorial Board:Kareen Rozen, Brown UniversityXiaoxia Shi, University of Wisconsin-MadisonTable 1—Manuscripts Submitted and Published, 2018–2022This table shows the trends in papers submitted and published over the past five years. The journal saw increased growth in submissions of papers from 2018 to 2020. Submission numbers remained steady from 2020 to 2021, then declined by 10% in 2022. The number of published papers increased by 25 due to the publication of three larger issues (July, September, and November 2022).Table 2—Status of Manuscripts by Year of Submission, 2018–2022This table shows the status of manuscripts submitted over the past five years. The number of papers summarily rejected remains steady, ranging from 54% to 61% of papers submitted. The percent of papers sent out for review but ultimately rejected has remained steady, ranging from 31% to 35% of papers. Acceptance rates range from 7% to 10% of papers submitted. Papers submitted in 2022 have not had enough time to reflect the final acceptance rate.Table 3—Decision Time for Manuscripts Sent to Referees for ReviewThis table reports the decision time for manuscripts sent to referees for review over the past five years. The average decision time remained steady, ranging from 82 to 95 days.Table 4—Distribution of First Decision Times by Submission YearThis table shows the distribution of decision times for all first-round paper submissions in monthly increments for the past five years. The table also reflects the improvement in the journal's decision turnaround times. In 2022, 80% of manuscripts received a decision within three months and 99% within six months.Table 5—Subject Matter of Published Manuscripts, 2022This table shows the distribution of the subject matter of papers published in 2022. Published papers covered a variety of subjects, but the most common published topics were microeconomics and macro and monetary economics. Table 1.Manuscripts Submitted and PublishedYearSubmittedPublished20181,2007020191,3306620201,6666520211,6746520221,48090Table 2.Status of Manuscripts by Year of SubmissionSubmission YearAcceptedPendingRejectedSummary RejectRevise and ResubmitWithdrawnTotal20188903737154191,2007%0%31%60%0%2%2019982410808951,3327%0%31%61%1%0%2020126255758993721,6648%2%35%54%2%0%202121634671,009104101,6741%4%28%60%6%1%2022251652483966101,4802%1%35%57%4%1%Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer. Pending manuscripts include submissions and revisions that were undergoing review as of June 5, 2023, and Revise and Resubmit manuscripts have been returned and are in the hands of the authors on that date. Summary rejections are manuscripts rejected without referee review.Table 3.Decision Time in Days for Manuscripts Sent to Referees for ReviewFractionAverageMedian75%90thNumber of PapersYearSummarily RejectedDecision TimeDecision TimePercentilePercentileSent to Referees201860%9586112149466201961%827797118517202068%8684102122765202160%8684100118657202257%9591109137649Decision times are for papers sent out for review. Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer. Data for one paper submitted in 2022 that did not have a decision when this report was compiled have been included.Table 4.Distribution of First Decision Times by Submission Year20182019202020212022Months toMonthlyCumulativeMonthlyCumulativeMonthlyCumulativeMonthlyCumulativeMonthlyCumulativeResponsePercentPercentPercentPercentPercentPercentPercentPercentPercentPercent16565606055556262585827721171762466462313851889228420861880489389712961197149454972993992994986299<199<199<1991997199<199<199<199<1998<199<199<1100<1100<11009<199<110001000100010010<199010001000100010011<110001000100010001001201000100010001000100Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer. Data for one paper submitted in 2022 that did not have a decision when this report was compiled have been included.Table 5.Subject Matter of Published Manuscripts, 2022JELSubject CategoryNumberAGeneral Economics and Teaching0BMethodology/History of Thought0CMathematical and Quantitative Methods9DMicroeconomics18EMacro and Monetary Economics12FInternational Economics6GFinancial Economics1HPublic Economics4IHealth, Education, and Welfare9JLabor and Demographic Economics7KLaw and Economics5LIndustrial Organization4MBusiness Economics0NEconomic History0OEconomic Development8PEconomic Systems0QAgricultural/Natural Resources4RUrban, Rural, and Regional Economics1ZMisc. and Special Topics1Derived from JEL codes reported for each manuscript for the 2022 publication year.

Using a novel regional database covering over 200 elections in several European countries, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the political consequences of fiscal consolidations. To identify exogenous reductions in regional public spending, we use a Bartik-type instrument that combines regional sensitivities to changes in national government expenditures with narrative national consolidation episodes. Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties' vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation. We highlight the close relationship between detrimental economic developments and voters' support for extreme parties by showing that austerity induces severe economic costs through lowering GDP, employment, private investment, and wages. Austerity-driven recessions amplify the political costs of economic downturns considerably by increasing distrust in the political environment.

This paper investigates the extent to which state-level differences in business taxes influence the location decisions of multiestablishment firms. Each state in the United States administers their own unemployment insurance program, and cross-state variation leads to significant tax differences across state lines. This decentralized administration creates opposing employment incentives on the intensive and extensive margins depending on the economic conditions. Studying the locations of multistate manufacturing firms, I find that firms are more likely to exit from high-tax states during economic downturns, but high-tax plants experience more stable employment during nonrecession years.

Global terrorist organizations attract radicalized individuals across borders and constitute a threat for both sending and receiving countries. We use unique personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) to show that unemployment in sending countries is associated with the number of transnational terrorist recruits from these countries. The relationship is spatially heterogeneous, which is most plausibly attributable to travel costs. We argue that poor labor market opportunities generally push more individuals to join terrorist organizations, but at the same time, limit their ability to do so when longer travel distances imply higher travel costs.

We examine the effect of attending stand-alone technical high schools in Connecticut using regression discontinuity. Male students are 10 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school and have half a semester less time enrolled in college. Male students have 32% higher average quarterly earnings. Earnings effects may in part reflect general skills: male students have higher attendance rates and test scores, industry fixed effects explain less than one-third of earnings gains, and large earnings gains persist past traditional college going years. Attending a technical high school does not affect the outcomes of female students.

Public procurement bodies increasingly resort to pay-for-performance contracts to promote efficient spending. We show that firm responses to pay-for-performance can widen the inequality in accessing social services. Focusing on the quality bonus payment initiative in Medicare Advantage, we find that higher quality-rated insurers responded to bonus payments by selecting healthier enrollees with premium differences across counties. Selection is profitable because the quality rating fails to adjust for differences in enrollee health. Selection inflated the bonus payments and shifted the supply of high-rated insurance to the healthiest counties, reducing access to lower-priced, higher-rated insurance in the riskiest counties.

Do firms respond to cost shocks by reducing the quality of their products? Using microdata from a large Russian retailer that refreshes its product line twice-yearly, we document that higher quality products are more profitable than lower quality ones, but that the number of high-quality products experiences a relative decrease after a large ruble devaluation in 2014. We show that rising firm costs—and not shrinking consumer incomes—explains the reallocation, and rationalize the data with a model that features consumer expenditure switching between high and low qualities. The reallocation to lower quality products reduces average pass-through by 26%.

This paper tests costly attention models of consumers' misreaction to opaque taxes. We report an online shopping experiment that involves shrouded sales taxes that are exogenously varied within consumers over time. Some consumers systematically underreact to sales taxes whereas others systematically overreact, but higher stakes decrease both under- and overreaction. This is consistent with consumers using heterogeneous rules of thumb to compute the opaque tax when the stakes are low, but using costly mental effort at higher stakes. The results allow us to differentiate between various theories of limited attention. We also develop novel econometric techniques for quantifying individual differences.

Policies based on prohibition and repression to fight the war on drugs have largely failed in a variety of contexts. However, incentive-based policies may also fail and have unintended negative consequences if policymakers do not properly anticipate behavioral reactions. This is an particularly important concern in the case of policies announced prior to their implementation. In this paper, we show that a naive and untimely policy announcement generated an unprecedented escalation in cocaine production in Colombia, offsetting almost 20 years and billions of dollars of U.S.-backed efforts to stop drug production and cartel action.

More than 98 million adolescent girls are not in school. Can girls influence their schooling without changes in their family's economic environment? In Rajasthan, India, we examine the impact of a school-based life skills program that seeks to address low aspirations, narrow societal roles for girls and women, restricted networks of social support, and limited decision-making power. We find the intervention causes a 25% decline in school dropout that persists from seventh grade through the transition to high school. Improvements in socioemotional support among girls exposed to the intervention seem especially important in their decision to stay in school.