Knowledge that Transforms

During recessions, the focus on male job losses may overshadow other important outcome variables. We examine the effects of economic downturns on occupational segregation by gender, using staffing data from over 6 million private-sector US establishments from 1966-2010. Consistent with the literature, we find a downward trend in occupational segregation that is diminishing over time. Drawing upon Rubery's (1988) work on women and recessions, we find support for both the buffer and the segmentation hypotheses. On net, however, the buffer hypothesis appears to dominate providing evidence that in periods of economic decline the trend of decreasing economic dissimilarity is interrupted.

Experimentally elicited discount rates are frequently higher than what seems reasonable for economic decision-making. Such high rates are often attributed to present-biased discounting. A well-known bias of standard measurements is the assumption of linear consumption utility. Attempting to correct this bias using measures of risk aversion to identify concavity, researchers find reasonable discounting but at the cost of exceptionally high utility function curvature. We present a new methodology for identifying time preferences, both discounting and curvature, from simple allocation decisions. We find reasonable levels of both discounting and curvature and, surprisingly, dynamically consistent time preferences. (JEL C91, D12, D81)

Two players choose hawkish or dovish actions in a conflict game with incomplete information. An “extremist,” who can either be a hawk or a dove, attempts to manipulate decision making. If actions are strategic complements, a hawkish extremist increases the likelihood of conflict, and reduces welfare, by sending a public message which triggers hawkish behavior from both players. If actions are strategic substitutes, a dovish extremist instead sends a public message which causes one player to become more dovish and the other more hawkish. A hawkish (dovish) extremist is unable to manipulate decision making if actions are strategic substitutes (complements). (JEL D74, D82)

Foreign banks pulled significant funding from their US branches during the Great Recession. We estimate that the average-sized branch experienced a twelve percent net internal fund “withdrawal,” with the fund transfer disproportionately bigger for larger branches. This internal shock to the balance sheet of US branches of foreign banks had sizable effects on their lending. On average, for each dollar of funds transferred internally to the parent, branches decreased lending supply by about forty to fifty cents. However, the extent of the lending effects was very different across branches depending on their pre-crisis modes of operation in the United States.

Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson's (2001) seminal article argues property-rights institutions powerfully affect national income, using estimated mortality rates of early European settlers to instrument capital expropriation risk. However, 36 of the 64 countries in the sample are assigned mortality rates from other countries, often based on mistaken or conflicting evidence. Also, incomparable mortality rates from populations of laborers, bishops, and soldiers—often on campaign—are combined in a manner that favors the hypothesis. When these data issues are controlled for, the relationship between mortality and expropriation risk lacks robustness, and instrumental-variable estimates become unreliable, often with infinite confidence intervals. (JEL D02, E23, F54, I12, N40, O43, P14)

Theories based on information costs or frictions have become increasing popular in macroeconomics and macro-finance. The literature has used various types of information choices, such as rational inattention, inattentiveness, information markets and costly precision. Using a unified framework, we compare these different information choice technologies and explain why some generate increasing returns and others, particularly those where agents choose how much public information to observe, generate multiple equilibria. The results can help applied theorists to choose the appropriate information choice technology for their application and to understand the consequences of that modeling choice.

The empirical evidence on rational inattention lags the theoretical developments: micro evidence on one of the most immediate consequences of observation costs––the infrequent observation of state variables––is not available in standard datasets. We contribute to filling the gap using new household surveys. To match these data we modify existing models, shifting the focus from nondurable to durable consumption. The model features both observation and transaction costs and implies a mixture of time-dependent and state-dependent rules. Numerical simulations explain the frequencies of trading and observation of the median investor with small observation costs and larger transaction costs. (JEL D12, D14, E21, G11)

The paper provides a first analysis of market jump starting and its two-way interaction between mechanism design and participation constraints. The government optimally overpays for the legacy assets and cleans up the market of its weakest assets, through a mixture of buybacks and equity injections, and leaves the firms with the strongest legacy assets to the market. The government reduces adverse selection enough to let the market rebound, but not too much, so as to limit the cost of intervention. The existence of a market imposes no welfare cost. (JEL D82, D83, G01, G31, H81)

In markets for retail financial products and health services, consumers often rely on the advice of intermediaries to decide which specialized offering best fits their needs. Product providers, in turn, compete to influence the intermediaries' advice through hidden kickbacks or disclosed commissions. Motivated by the controversial role of these widespread practices, we formulate a model to analyze competition through commissions from a positive and normative standpoint. The model highlights the role of commissions in making the advisor responsive to supply-side incentives. We characterize situations when commonly adopted policies such as mandatory disclosure and caps on commissions have unintended welfare consequences. (JEL D21, D82, D83, G21, L15, L25)

The cost-effectiveness of cap-and-trade emissions regulations has become widely accepted. A 2009 proposal by Muller and Mendelsohn would replace conventional ton-for-ton trading with trading based on estimates of marginal damages by pollutant and by source. This proposal faces difficulties arising from the negative marginal damage estimates—neglected in Muller and Mendelsohn (2009)—for nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from many urban counties. Such estimates imply nonconvexities in air chemistry that complicate trading and could result in trades that increase emissions by both buyer and seller. Uncertainty in source-specific damages also creates rent-seeking opportunities and the potential for costly litigation. JEL: H53, Q53, Q58