A rapidly growing body of research applies panel methods to examine how temperature, precipitation, and windstorms influence economic outcomes. These studies focus on changes in weather realizations over time within a given spatial area and demonstrate impacts on agricultural output, industrial output, labor productivity, energy demand, health, conflict, and economic growth, among other outcomes. By harnessing exogenous variation over time within a given spatial unit, these studies help credibly identify (i) the breadth of channels linking weather and the economy, (ii) heterogeneous treatment effects across different types of locations, and (iii) nonlinear effects of weather variables. This paper reviews the new literature with two purposes. First, we summarize recent work, providing a guide to its methodologies, datasets, and findings. Second, we consider applications of the new literature, including insights for the “damage function” within models that seek to assess the potential economic effects of future climate change.

This paper uses the information contained in the joint dynamics of individuals' labor earnings and consumption-choice decisions to quantify both the amount of income risk that individuals face and the extent to which they have access to informal insurance against this risk. We accomplish this task by using indirect inference to estimate a structural consumption–savings model, in which individuals both learn about the nature of their income process and partly insure shocks via informal mechanisms. In this framework, we estimate (i) the degree of partial insurance, (ii) the extent of systematic differences in income growth rates, (iii) the precision with which individuals know their own income growth rates when they begin their working lives, (iv) the persistence of typical labor income shocks, (v) the tightness of borrowing constraints, and (vi) the amount of measurement error in the data. In implementing indirect inference, we find that an auxiliary model that approximates the true structural equations of the model (which are not estimable) works very well, with negligible small sample bias. The main substantive findings are that income shocks are moderately persistent, systematic differences in income growth rates are large, individuals have substantial amounts of information about their income growth rates, and about one-half of income shocks are smoothed via partial insurance. Putting these findings together, the amount of uninsurable lifetime income risk that individuals perceive is substantially smaller than what is typically assumed in calibrated macroeconomic models with incomplete markets.

This paper presents a new framework for human capital measurement. The generalized framework can (i) substantially amplify the role of human capital in accounting for cross-country income differences and (ii) reconcile the existing conflict between regression and accounting evidence in assessing the wealth and poverty of nations. One natural interpretation emphasizes differences across economies in the acquisition of advanced knowledge by skilled workers.

The volume of new issuances in secondary loan markets fluctuates over time and falls when collateral values fall. We develop a model with adverse selection and reputation that is consistent with such fluctuations. Adverse selection ensures that the volume of trade falls when collateral values fall. Without reputation, the equilibrium has separation, adverse selection is quickly resolved, and trade volume is independent of collateral value. With reputation, the equilibrium has pooling and adverse selection persists over time. The equilibrium is efficient unless collateral values are low and originators' reputational levels are low. We describe policies that can implement efficient outcomes.

We conduct the first empirical investigation of common-pool resource users' dynamic and strategic behavior at the micro level using real-world data. Fishermen's strategies in a fully dynamic game account for latent resource dynamics and other players' actions, revealing the profit structure of the fishery. We compare the fishermen's actual and socially optimal exploitation paths under a time-specific vessel allocation policy and find a sizable dynamic externality. Individual fishermen respond to other users by exerting effort above the optimal level early in the season. Congestion is costly instantaneously but is beneficial in the long run because it partially offsets dynamic inefficiencies.

We survey 561 students from US medical schools shortly after they submit choice rankings over residencies to the National Resident Matching Program. We elicit (i) these choice rankings, (ii) anticipated subjective well-being (SWB) rankings, and (iii) expected features of the residencies (such as prestige). We find substantial differences between choice and anticipated-SWB rankings in the implied trade-offs between residency features. In our data, evaluative SWB measures (life satisfaction and Cantril's Ladder) imply trade-offs closer to choice than does affective happiness (even time-integrated), and as close as do multimeasure SWB indices. We discuss implications for using SWB data in applied work.