This paper quantitatively assesses time inconsistency, moral hazard, and political ideology in monopoly regulation of electricity distribution. We specify and estimate a dynamic model of utility regulation featuring investment and moral hazard. We find underinvestment in electricity distribution capital aiming to reduce power outages and use the estimated model to quantify the value of regulatory commitment in inducing greater investment. Furthermore, more conservative political environments grant higher regulated returns but have higher rates of electricity loss. Using the estimated model, we quantify how conservative regulators thus mitigate welfare losses due to time inconsistency but worsen losses from moral hazard

This paper proposes a new methodology for analyzing nonlinear pricing data. We establish identification of the model primitives with a known tariff and characterize the model restrictions on observables. We propose a quantile-based nonparametric estimator that achieves consistency at the parametric rate. We introduce unobserved product heterogeneity with an unknown tariff and show how our identification and estimation results extend. A Monte Carlo study analyzes the robustness of our methodology to menus of two-part tariffs. Analysis of cellular service data assesses the performance of various pricing strategies. We discuss extensions to network effects, multiproduct firms, bundling, differentiated products, and oligopolies

We explore how television broadcasting of unrelated criminal justice events affects sentencing. Exploiting as-good-as-random variation in news content before a verdict, we find that sentences are 3 months longer when the verdict is reached after coverage of crime. Sentences increase with media exposure to crime, not crime itself, and the effect tapers off quickly. Our results suggest that professional experience and expertise mitigate the effect of irrelevant external information. This paper highlights the influence of noise in the news cycle: media can temporarily influence decisions by changing what is top of the mind rather than signaling deeper changes in offending or societal concerns

We propose an original model of human capital investments after leaving school in which individuals differ in their initial human capital obtained at school, their rates of return and costs of human capital investments, and their terminal values of human capital at an arbitrary date in the future. We derive a tractable reduced-form Mincerian model of log earnings profiles along the life cycle that is written as a linear factor model in which levels, growth, and curvature of earnings profiles are individual specific. This provides a structural interpretation of results obtained in the empirical literature on the dynamics of earnings and acknowledges its limitations.

We analyze how insurance arrangements, labor supply, moral hazard, and outright cheating are affected by social norms. One question is under what conditions norms may improve social welfare. Another is under what conditions people should be allowed to opt out of social insurance. We introduce an informal production sector to analyze the consequences of alternative assumptions about the information available to norm enforcers. This highlights one important aspect of norms, namely, that they may compensate for the insurer’s limited information.

Blacks and whites in the United States adopt widely different parental behaviors, but the underlying causes of these differences are not well understood. This paper documents large-scale increases in cognitively stimulating parenting among southern black mothers who came of age in the period immediately following the civil rights movement. The total magnitude of these improvements was approximately 0.5 standard deviations between the 1957 and 1964 birth cohorts, while no significant trends occurred among blacks outside of the South or among whites from any region

We consider collective decisions made by agents whose preferences and power depend on past events and decisions. Faced with an inefficient equilibrium and an opportunity to commit to a policy, can the agents reach an agreement on such a policy? We provide a consistency condition linking power structures in the dynamic setting and at the commitment stage. When the condition holds, commitment has no value: any agreement that may be reached at the outset coincides with the equilibrium without commitment. When the condition fails, as in the case of time-inconsistent preferences, commitment can improve outcomes. We discuss several applications.

This paper models decisions to apply to and attend charter schools in Boston using a generalized Roy selection framework linking preferences to the achievement gains generated by charter attendance. The model is estimated with instruments based on randomized admission lotteries and distance to charter schools. Charter schools generate larger gains for disadvantaged students, but demand for charters is stronger among more advantaged students. Similarly, gains are inversely related to unobserved preferences for charters. As a result, counterfactual simulations indicate that charter expansion is likely to be most effective when accompanied by efforts to target students who are unlikely to apply

Gary Becker was an intellectual giant. No one had a greater impact on broadening economics and making its impact felt throughout the social sciences thanBecker. Indeed,MiltonFriedmanoncedescribedGaryBecker as the most important social scientist of the second half of the twentieth century. For those of us who knew him, he was themost creative thinker we ever encountered. It was his astounding imagination that made many of his early critics think of him as a heretic. They were correct: he was a heretic much like Luther, Copernicus, and Galileo, who transformed their worlds, just ashe transformedeconomics.Hebrought a rigorous and insightful approach to issues that were viewed as inherently noneconomic. Eventually, he won over the economics profession, detractors and all, who eventually became converts. Becker was a scientist in the true sense of the word.He believed that economics was useful only if it explained andhelped to improve theworld.He practiced what he preached and carefully analyzed all of the social problems he addressed. He was innovative yet rigorous, open to new thought yet disciplined in sticking to the established rules of analysis. Most importantly, he extended the boundaries of economics tomuch of social science.