Knowledge that Transforms

Resale price maintenance (RPM), slotting fees, loyalty rebates, and other related vertical practices can allow an incumbent manufacturer to transfer profits to retailers. If these retailers were to accommodate entry, upstream competition could lead to lower industry profits and the breakdown of these profit transfers. Thus, in equilibrium, retailers can internalize the effect of accommodating entry on the incumbent’s profits. Consequently, if entry requires downstream accommodation, entry can be deterred. We discuss policy implications of this aspect of vertical contracting practices. (JEL L14, L22, L25, L42, L81)

This article develops a Bayesian framework for estimating multivariate treatment effect models in the presence of sample selection. The methodology is applied to a banking study that evaluates the effectiveness of lender of last resort (LOLR) policies and their ability to resuscitate the financial system. This paper employs a novel bank-level dataset from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and jointly models a bank's decision to apply for a loan, the LOLR's decision to approve the loan, and the bank's performance a few years after the disbursements. This framework offers practical estimation tools to unveil new answers to important regulatory questions.

A carbon tax is a promising tool for discouraging the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. In principle, a well-designed tax could reduce the risk of climate change, minimize the cost of emissions reductions, encourage innovation in low-carbon technologies, and raise new public revenue. But designing a real-world carbon tax poses significant challenges. We analyze those challenges from a public finance perspective, emphasizing three tax policy design issues: setting the tax rate, collecting the tax, and using the resulting revenue. The benefits of a carbon tax will depend on how policymakers address those issues.

The newsworthiness of an event is partly determined by how unusual it is and this paper investigates the business cycle implications of this fact. Signals that are more likely to be observed after unusual events may increase both uncertainty and disagreement among agents. In a simple business cycle model, such signals can explain why we observe (i) occasional large changes in macroeconomic aggregate variables without a correspondingly large change in underlying fundamentals, (ii) persistent periods of high macroeconomic volatility and, (iii) a positive correlation between absolute changes in macrovariables and the cross-sectional dispersion of survey expectations. (JEL D81, D82, D84, E23, E31, E32)

We use the confidential files of the Canadian Census 1991-2006, combined with information from O*NET on the skill requirements of jobs, to show that the labor market patterns of female immigrants do not fit the profile of secondary workers, but rather conform to the recent experience of married native women with rising participation (and wage assimilation). At best, only relatively uneducated immigrant women in unskilled occupations may fit the profile of secondary workers. Educated immigrant women experience skill assimilation over time: a reduction in physical strength and a gradual increase in analytical skills required in their jobs relative to natives.

Causal estimates of the benefits of increased schooling using US state schooling laws as instruments typically rely on specifications which assume common trends across states in the factors affecting different birth cohorts. Differential changes across states during this period, such as relative school quality improvements, suggest that this assumption may fail to hold. Across a number of outcomes including wages, unemployment, and divorce, we find that statistically significant causal estimates become insignificant and, in many instances, wrong-signed when allowing year of birth effects to vary across regions. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J24, N31, N32)

Imperfect information about product attributes inhibits efficiency in many choice settings, but can be overcome by providing simple, low-cost information. We use a randomized control trial to test the effect of high-frequency information about residential electricity usage on the price elasticity of demand. Informed households are three standard deviations more responsive to temporary price increases, an effect that is not attributable to price salience. Conservation extends beyond pricing events in the short and medium run, providing evidence of habit formation and implying that the intervention leads to greenhouse gas abatement. Survey evidence suggests that information facilitates learning. (JEL D12, D83, L11, L94, Q41, Q54)

We measure the pass-through of emissions costs to electricity prices. We perform both reduced-form and structural estimations based on optimal bidding in this market. Using rich micro-level data, we estimate the channels affecting pass-through in a flexible manner, with minimal functional form assumptions. Contrary to many studies in the general pass-through literature, we find that emissions costs are almost fully passed through to electricity prices. Since electricity is traded through high-frequency auctions for highly inelastic demand, firms have weak incentives to adjust markups after the cost shock. Furthermore, the costs of price adjustment are small. (JEL D44, L11, L94, L98, Q52, Q54)

This paper estimates the response of investment to changes in uncertainty using data on oil drilling in Texas and the expected volatility of the future price of oil. Using a dynamic model of firms' investment problem, I find that: (i) the response of drilling activity to changes in price volatility has a magnitude consistent with the optimal response prescribed by theory, (ii) the cost of failing to respond to volatility shocks is economically significant, and (iii) implied volatility data derived from futures options prices yields a better fit to firms' investment behavior than backward-looking volatility measures such as GARCH. (JEL C58, D92, G13, G31, L71, Q31)

The Nobel Foundation asks that the Nobel lecture cover the work for which the Prize is awarded. The announcement of this year's Prize cites empirical work in asset pricing. I interpret this to include work on efficient capital markets and work on developing and testing asset pricing models—the two pillars, or perhaps more descriptive, the Siamese twins of asset pricing. I start with efficient markets and then move on to asset pricing models.