Knowledge that Transforms

To what extent does crime follow the pattern of potential gains to illegal activity? This article presents evidence on how criminals respond to this key incentive by reporting crime–price elasticities estimated from a comprehensive crime dataset containing detailed information on stolen items for London between 2002 and 2012. Evidence of significant positive crime–price elasticities are shown, for a panel of 44 consumer goods and for commodity related goods (jewellery, fuel, and metal crimes). The reported evidence indicates that potential gains are a major empirical driver of criminal activity and a crucial part of the economic model of crime. The changing structure of goods prices helps to explain over 10–15% of the observed fall in property crime across all goods categories, and the majority of the sharp increases in the commodity related goods observed between 2002 and 2012.

The standard Medicare Part D drug insurance contract is non-linear—with reduced subsidies in a coverage gap—resulting in a dynamic purchase problem. We consider enrolees who arrived near the gap early in the year and show that they should expect to enter the gap with high probability, implying that, under a benchmark model with neoclassical preferences, the gap should impact them very little. We find that these enrolees have flat spending in a period before the doughnut hole and a large spending drop in the gap, providing evidence against the benchmark model. We structurally estimate behavioural dynamic drug purchase models and find that a price salience model where enrolees do not incorporate future prices into their decision-making at all fits the data best. For a nationally representative sample, full price salience would decrease enrolee spending by 31%. Entirely eliminating the gap would increase insurer spending 27%, compared to 7% for generic-drug-only gap coverage.

We unite two basic approaches to modelling limited attention in choice by showing that the rational inattention model implies the formation of consideration sets—only a subset of the available alternatives will be considered for choice. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for rationally inattentive behaviour which allow the identification of consideration sets. In simple settings, chosen options are those that are best on a stand-alone basis. In richer settings, the consideration set can only be identified holistically. In addition to payoffs, prior beliefs impact consideration sets. Linear inequalities identify all priors consistent with each possible consideration set.

Abstract We introduce a dynamic noisy rational expectations model in which information diffuses through a general network of agents. In equilibrium, agents who are more closely connected have more similar period-by-period trades, and an agent’s profitability is determined by a centrality measure that is related to Katz centrality. Volatility after an information shock is more persistent in less central networks, and volatility and trading volume are also influenced by the network’s asymmetry and irregularity. Using account-level data of all portfolio holdings and trades on the Helsinki Stock Exchange between 1997 and 2003, we find support for the aggregate predictions, altogether suggesting that the market’s network structure is important for these dynamics.

We document the short- and long-run effects of male-biased sex ratios. We exploit a natural historical experiment where large numbers of male convicts and far fewer female convicts were sent to Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries. In areas with more male-biased sex ratios, women were historically more likely to get married and less likely to work outside the home. In these areas today, both men and women continue to have more conservative attitudes towards women working, and women work fewer hours outside the home. While these women enjoy more leisure, they are also less likely to work in high-ranking occupations. We demonstrate that the consequences of uneven sex ratios on cultural attitudes, labour supply decisions, and occupational choices can persist in the long run, well after sex ratios are back to the natural rate. We document the roles of vertical cultural transmission and marriage homogamy in sustaining this cultural persistence.

Abstract Exporting firms often enter foreign markets that are similar to their previous export destinations. We develop a dynamic model in which a firm’s exports in a market may depend on how similar the market is to the firm’s home country (gravity) and to its previous export destinations (extended gravity). Given the large number of export paths from which forward-looking firms may choose, we use a moment inequality approach to estimate our model. Our estimates indicate that sharing similarities with a prior export destination in terms of geographic location, language, and income per capita jointly reduces the cost of foreign market entry by 69–90%. Reductions due to geographic location (25–38%) and language (29–36%) have the largest effect. Extended gravity thus has a large impact on export entry costs.

Abstract This article models a frictional labour market where employers endogenously discriminate against the long-term unemployed. The estimated model replicates recent experimental evidence which documents that interview invitations for observationally equivalent workers fall sharply as unemployment duration progresses. We use the model to quantitatively assess the consequences of such employer behaviour for job finding rates and long-term unemployment and find only modest effects given the large decline in callbacks. Interviews lost to duration impact individual job finding rates solely if they would have led to jobs. We show that such instances are rare when firms discriminate in anticipation of an ultimately unsuccessful application. Discrimination in callbacks is thus largely a response to dynamic selection, with limited consequences for structural duration dependence and long-term unemployment.

This article examines the effect of cash versus in-kind transfers on local prices. Both types of transfers increase the demand for normal goods; in-kind transfers also increase supply in recipient communities, which could lead to lower prices than under cash transfers. We test and confirm this prediction using a programme in Mexico that randomly assigned villages to receive boxes of food (trucked into the village), equivalently-valued cash transfers, or no transfers. We find that prices are significantly lower under in-kind transfers compared to cash transfers; relative to the control group, in-kind transfers cause a 4% fall in prices while cash transfers cause a positive but negligible increase in prices. In the more economically developed villages in the sample, households’ purchasing power is only modestly affected by these price effects. In the less developed villages, the price effects are much larger in magnitude, which we show is due to these villages being less tied to the outside economy and having less competition among local suppliers.

We study complexity in the market for securitized products, a market at the heart of the financial crisis of 2007–9. The complexity of these products rose substantially in the years preceding the financial crisis. We find that securities in more complex deals default more and have lower realized returns. The worse performance is economically meaningful: a one standard deviation increase in complexity represents an 18% increase in default on AAA securities. However, yields of more complex securities are not higher indicating that investors did not perceive them as riskier. Our results are consistent with complexity obfuscating security quality.

Abstract Home price expectations are believed to play an important role in housing dynamics, yet we have limited understanding of how they are formed and how they affect behaviour. Using a unique “information experiment” embedded in an online survey, this article investigates how consumers’ home price expectations respond to past home price growth, and how they impact investment decisions. After eliciting respondents’ priors about past and future local home price changes, we present a random subset of them with factual information about past (one- or five-year) changes, and then re-elicit expectations. This unique “panel” data allows us to identify causal effects of the information, and provides insights on the expectation formation process. We find that, on average, year-ahead home price expectations are revised in a way consistent with short-term momentum in home price growth, though respondents tend to underpredict the strength of momentum. Revisions of longer-term expectations show that respondents do not expect the empirically-occurring mean reversion in home price growth. These patterns are in line with recent behavioural models of housing cycles. Finally, we show that home price expectations causally affect investment decisions in a portfolio choice experiment embedded in the survey.