Knowledge that Transforms

When seeking to trade in over-the-counter markets, institutional investors typically restrict both the number of potential counterparties they contact and the information they disclose (e.g., by requesting two-sided rather than one-sided quotes). We rationalize these important facts in a model featuring endogenous front-running. Although an additional contact intensifies competition and aids in finding a natural counterparty, it also intensifies information leakage—which can be costly if it helps a losing dealer to front-run. We also address information design: the client optimally provides no information about her trading direction when requesting quotes. We conclude with implications for market design and regulation.

We study the welfare and human capital impacts of colleges’ (non)participation in Chile’s centralized higher-education platform, leveraging administrative data and two policy changes: the introduction of a large scholarship program and the inclusion of additional institutions, which raised the number of on-platform slots by approximately 40%. We first show that the expansion of the platform raised on-time graduation rates. We then develop and estimate a model of college applications, offers, wait lists, matriculation, and graduation. When the platform expands, welfare increases, and welfare, enrollment, and graduation rates are less sensitive to off-platform frictions. Gains are larger for students from lower-socioeconomic-status backgrounds.

We extend Garicano’s model of optimal organizations by allowing problems to be screened. We show that when screening is as costly as solving problems, optimal organizations are hierarchies as in Garicano’s model, but when the cost of screening is small, workers screen all problems that they and the top managers cannot solve, those problems that they screen are sent directly to those who can solve them, and those problems that they neither solve nor screen are passed to the top managers. For intermediate values of the screening cost, the optimal organization is a hybrid of the above forms.

The effects of uncertainty shocks are superadditive. On the basis of local projections, we find that the combination of nearby positive shocks can be multiple times more powerful than the sum of their stand-alone effects. In a standard New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, uncertainty shocks are proven to be superadditive only when the model is solved under fourth- (or higher-)order perturbation. The fourth-order solution unlocks the fourth derivative of marginal utility, “edginess,” which is key to generating stronger reactions to multiple risks and superadditivity. Intuitively, an agent already bearing one risk is less willing to bear another in the presence of edginess.

We present a menu-cost pricing model with a large but finite number n of firms. A firm’s nominal price increase lowers other firms’ relative prices, thereby inducing further nominal price increases. The distribution of these “repricing avalanches” converges as n→∞ to a mixture of generalized Poisson distributions with an indexofdispersion=1/(1−θ)2, where θ is determined by the equilibrium of the continuous limit. We calibrate the model to the US experience during 1988–2005 and obtain a θ surprisingly close to unity. Our model accounts for the positive relationship between inflation level and volatility observed in the data.

We study entry restrictions in a private monopoly: the Latin notary system. Under this widespread system, the state grants notaries exclusive rights to certify important economic transactions, including real estate. To uncover the current policy goals behind the geographic entry restrictions, we develop an empirical entry model that incorporates a spatial demand model and a multioutput production model. We find that the entry restrictions serve primarily producer interests and give only a small weight to consumer surplus. We show how reform would generate considerable welfare improvements and imply a substantial redistribution toward consumers without threatening geographic coverage.

We use a large-scale randomized experiment to study the impact of augmenting staffing in the world’s largest public early-childhood program: India’s Integrated Child Development Services. Adding a worker doubled net preschool instructional time and led to increases of 0.28σ and 0.46σ in math and language test scores after 18 months for children who remained enrolled in the program and 0.13σ and 0.10σ for all children enrolled at baseline. Rates of stunting and severe malnutrition were also lower in the treatment group for children who remained enrolled. A cost-benefit analysis suggests that the benefits of augmenting staffing significantly exceed its costs. These effects are likely to replicate even at larger scales of program implementation.

We study agents who are more likely to remember some experiences than others but update beliefs as if the experiences they remember are the only ones that occurred. To understand the long-run effects of selective memory, we propose selective-memory equilibrium. We show that if the agent’s behavior converges, their limit strategy is a selective-memory equilibrium, and we provide a sufficient condition for behavior to converge. We use this equilibrium concept to explore the consequences of several well-documented biases. We also show that there is a close connection between selective-memory equilibria and the outcomes of misspecified learning.

This paper studies the social value of closing price differentials in financial markets. We show that arbitrage gaps exactly correspond to the marginal social value of executing an arbitrage trade. Moreover, arbitrage gaps and price impact measures are sufficient to compute the total social value from closing an arbitrage gap, which may emerge for different reasons, including nonpecuniary benefits of holding particular assets. Theoretically, we show that, for a given arbitrage gap, the total social value of arbitrage is higher in more liquid markets. We compute the welfare gains from closing arbitrage gaps for covered interest parity violations.

Previous articleNext article Open AccessStill Flying. Reply to "Not a flying start after all?" by Lillebo, Markussen, Roed, ZhaoPedro Carneiro, Katrine Loken, and Kjell G. SalvanesPedro Carneiro, Katrine Loken, and Kjell G. SalvanesPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookxLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Just Accepted Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/732220 PermissionsRequest permissions HistoryAccepted July 12, 2024 © 2024 The University of Chicago. All Rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.