Knowledge that Transforms

We study the impact of a personalized technology-aided after-school instruction program in middle-school grades in urban India using a lottery that provided winners with free access to the program. Lottery winners scored 0.37 σ higher in math and 0.23 σ higher in Hindi over just a 4.5-month period. IV estimates suggest that attending the program for 90 days would increase math and Hindi test scores by 0.6 σ and 0.39 σ respectively. We find similar absolute test score gains for all students, but much greater relative gains for academically-weaker students. Our results suggest that well-designed, technology-aided instruction programs can sharply improve productivity in delivering education. (JEL I21, I26, I28, J24, O15)

A principal specifies time paths of effort provision, task allocation, and knowledge transfer for a cash-constrained apprentice, who is free to walk away at any time. In the optimal contract the apprentice pays for training by working for low or no wages and by working inefficiently hard. The apprentice can work on both knowledge-complementary and knowledge-independent tasks. We study the optimal time path of effort distortions and their impact on the knowledge transfer, and analyze the effect of regulatory limits on the length of apprenticeships and on how much effort apprentices are allowed to provide. (JEL D82, D86, J24, J41, M53)

This paper examines the long-run causal effects of management on firm performance. Under the United States Technical Assistance and Productivity Program (1952–1958), the United States organized management training trips for Italian managers to US firms and granted technologically advanced machines to Italian companies. I exploit an unexpected budget cut that reduced the number of participating firms and find that, compared to businesses excluded by the budget cut: performance of Italian firms that sent their managers to the United States increased for at least fifteen years after the program; performance of companies that received new machines increased, but flattened out over time; management and new machines were complementary. (JEL F23, L25, M16, M54, N34, N64, O33)

In this paper, I use confidential UK corporate tax returns data to explore whether there are systematic differences in the amount of taxable profits that multinational and domestic companies report. I find that the ratio of taxable profits to total assets reported by foreign multinational subsidiaries is one-half that of comparable domestic standalones. The majority of the difference is attributable to the fact that a higher proportion of foreign multinational subsidiaries report zero taxable profits. I document how the estimated difference is related to profit shifting and show that using accounting data leads to much smaller estimates of the difference. (JEL F23, H25, H32, L25)

Despite extensive evidence that preferences are often time-inconsistent, there is only scarce evidence of willingness to pay for commitment. Infrequent payments for frequently provided goods and services are a common feature of many markets and they may naturally provide commitment to save for lumpy expenses. Multiple experiments in the Kenyan dairy sector show that: (i) farmers are willing to incur sizable costs to receive infrequent payments as a commitment device, (ii) poor contract enforcement, however, limits competition among buyers in the supply of infrequent payments. We then present a model of demand and supply of infrequent payments and test its additional predictions. (JEL K12, L66, O13, O17, Q12, Q13)

In this reply to a comment by Jentsch and Lunsford, we show that the evidence for economic and statistically significant macroeconomic effects of tax changes in Mertens and Ravn (2013) remains present for a range of asymptotically valid inference methods. (JEL E23, E62, H24, H25, H31, H32)

Using confidential establishment-level data from the US Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Business Database, this paper documents how local shocks propagate across US regions through firms’ internal networks of establishments. Consistent with a model of optimal within-firm resource allocation, we find that establishment-level employment is sensitive to shocks in distant regions in which the establishment’s parent firm is operating, and that the elasticity with respect to such shocks increases with the firm’s financial constraint. At the aggregate regional level, we find that aggregate county-level employment is sensitive to shocks in distant counties linked through firms’ internal networks. (JEL D22, G32, L14, L22, R23, R32)

We use a novel experimental design to reliably elicit subjects’ strategies in an infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma experiment with perfect monitoring. We find that three simple strategies repre‑ sent the majority of the chosen strategies: Always Defect, Tit‑for‑Tat, and Grim. In addition, we identify how the strategies systematically vary with the parameters of the game. Finally, we use the elicited strategies to test the ability to recover strategies using statistical methods based on observed round‑by‑round cooperation choices and find that this can be done fairly well, but only under certain conditions. (JEL C72, C73, C92)

This paper evaluates the role of redistribution in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy to consumption. Three channels affect aggregate spending when winners and losers have different marginal propensities to consume: an earnings heterogeneity channel from unequal income gains, a Fisher channel from unexpected inflation, and an interest rate exposure channel from real interest rate changes. Sufficient statistics from Italian and US data suggest that all three channels are likely to amplify the effects of monetary policy. (JEL E21, E31, E43, E52)

We study the conditional distribution of GDP growth as a function of economic and financial conditions. Deteriorating financial conditions are associated with an increase in the conditional volatility and a decline in the conditional mean of GDP growth, leading the lower quantiles of GDP growth to vary with financial conditions and the upper quantiles to be stable over time. Upside risks to GDP growth are low in most periods while downside risks increase as financial conditions become tighter. We argue that amplification mechanisms in the financial sector generate the observed growth vulnerability dynamics. (JEL C53, E23, E27, E32, E44)