Knowledge that Transforms

We present a model in which investment in schooling generates two kinds of returns: the labor-market return, resulting from higher wages, and a marriage-market return, defined as the impact of schooling on the marital surplus share one can extract. Men and women may have different incentives to invest in schooling because of different market wages or household roles. This asymmetry can yield a mixed equilibrium with some educated individuals marrying uneducated spouses. When the labor-market return to schooling rises, home production demands less time, and the traditional spousal labor division norms weaken, more women may invest in schooling than men.

Stem cell transplants save lives of many patients with blood diseases. Donation is painful, but rarely has lasting adverse effects. Patients can accept transplants only from donors with compatible immune systems. Those lacking a sibling match must seek donations from the general population. The probability that two unrelated persons are compatible is less than 1/10,000. Health authorities maintain a registry of several million genetically tested potential donors who agree to donate if asked. We find that the benefits of adding registrants of every race exceed costs. We also explore the peculiar structure of voluntary public good provision that faces potential donors.

Although the median time-to-degree for economics PhDs was near 5.5 years in 2002, and appears to be rising (Stock and Siegfried 2006), some students can and do earn the degree in under five years. Of 586 individuals who began PhD study in economics in 2002, 27 percent had a diploma they could display on their office wall by fall 2007. Many economics PhD programs advertise that it normally takes five years to earn the degree. Some programs encourage completion by limiting financial aid to five years. Students who take more than five years incur high opportunity costs of remaining in school, as their Completing an eConomiCs pHD in Five Years: let tHe Data (literallY) speak For tHemselves †

We survey the evidence on whether racial attitudes negatively affected Barack Obama’s vote share in the 2008 presidential election. There is some evidence pointing toward this possibility. First, the increase in the Democratic vote share in the presidential election between 2004 and 2008 was relatively smaller in Appalachia and some Southern states. Second, there was a significantly smaller 2004–2008 growth in votes for the Democratic presidential candidate than Democratic House of Representatives candidates. While these patterns are consistent with the possibility that racial attitudes lowered the number of votes for Obama, a more complete examination of available data casts doubt on this interpretation. We examine whether Barack Obama underperformed in parts of the country where voters are more racially biased, on average. Specifically, we test whether the loss of votes experienced by Obama (compared to John Kerry) relative to the votes that one may have predicted based on the general increase in the number of Democratic votes in House elections between 2004 and 2008 was larger in states where the white population is more racially biased, on average. We measure racial attitudes using data from the General Social Survey on the fraction of white voters who support anti-interracial-marriage laws. We find little evidence that Obama underperformed relative to congressional Democrats in states that have a white electorate with stronger racial bias. We also find little evidence that turnout was higher among segments of the

The tax burden on equity securities has varied substantially over time and remains a source of continuing policy debate. This paper investigates whether investors were compensated for the tax burden of equity securities over the period between 1913 and 2006. Taxes on equity securities vary over time due to changes in dividend and capital gains tax rates and due to changes in corporate payout policies. Equity taxes also vary across firms due to persistent differences in propensities to pay dividends. The results indicate an economically plausible and statistically significant tax capitalization over time and cross-sectionally.

In the centipede game, all standard equilibrium concepts dictate that the player who decides first must stop the game immediately. There is vast experimental evidence, however, that this rarely occurs. We first conduct a field experiment in which highly ranked chess players play this game. Contrary to previous evidence, our results show that 69 percent of chess players stop immediately. When we restrict attention to Grandmasters, this percentage escalates to 100 percent. We then conduct a laboratory experiment in which chess players and students are matched in different treatments. When students play against chess players, the outcome approaches the subgame-perfect equilibrium.

We report results from a randomized natural field experiment conducted in a restaurant dining setting to distinguish the observational learning effect from the saliency effect. We find that, when customers are given ranking information of the five most popular dishes, the demand for those dishes increases by 13 to 20 percent. We do not find a significant saliency effect. We also find modest evidence that the observational learning effects are stronger among infrequent customers, and that dining satisfaction is increased when customers are presented with the information of the top five dishes, but not when presented with only names of some sample dishes.

the great inventions of the 20th century. He was right. It is difficult to imagine modern economics and even public discourse on the economy without them. The NIPAs (and related accounts) provide the basic set of estimates on a wide range of economic variables of interest to economists, citizens, policy makers, firms, investors, workers and consumers. They enforce important economic and statistical properties and reveal many of the most important features of the evolution of the economy. In short, it would be difficult to imagine where our understanding of recent economic events and economic history would be without the NIPAs. Even a short list of some of the major improvements of recent decades, of important historical changes, is impressive. That list includes: 1. The development and implementation of chained Fisher ideal indexes – with their superlative properties (W. Erwin Diewert 1976). 2. The highlighting of the difference between government consumption and investment; 3. The reclassification of software as investment; 4. Computer price hedonics. Add to these an array of improvements in source data and the changes are impressive indeed1. However, the economy evolves very rapidly, so our statisticians are constantly playing catch-up. Thus, it is potentially quite important when a major new architecture (NA) is developed and implemented for such a

This Job Is "Getting Old": Measuring Changes in Job Opportunities Using Occupational Age Structure by David Autor and David Dorn. Published in volume 99, issue 2, pages 45-51 of American Economic Review, May 2009

There is a growing consensus that in all cases of successful and unsuccessful economic growth, institutions mattered (Elhanan Helpman