A Fast Literature Search Engine based on top-quality journals, by Dr. Mingze Gao.

• Mazzonna, F., & Peracchi, F. (2024). Are Older People Aware of Their Cognitive Decline? Misperception and Financial Decision-Making. Journal of Political Economy, 132, 1793–1830.

  We investigate whether older people correctly perceive their cognitive decline and the potential financial consequences of misperception. First, we show that older people tend to underestimate their cognitive decline. We then show that those experiencing a severe decline but unaware of it are more likely to suffer wealth losses. These losses largely reflect decreases in financial wealth and are mainly experienced by wealthier people who were previously active on the stock market. Our findings support the view that financial losses among older people unaware of their cognitive decline are the result of bad financial decisions, not of rational disinvestment strategies.

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• Mityakov, S., & Mroz, T. A. (2024). Unobserved Inputs in Household Production. Journal of Political Economy, 132, 1876–1896.

  Most household production studies ignore unobserved inputs. Without additional assumptions, however, estimated impacts of the observed inputs cannot provide informative estimates of marginal products because of contaminating variations in unobserved inputs. Not even the signs of marginal impacts can be ascertained. One can establish the direction of these biases and significantly reduce them by including detailed information about nonproductive (pure consumption) goods in the analysis. Estimates from prior demand studies can also help determine the direction of the bias. We describe the stringent assumptions one must invoke in the absence of such additional information to be able to relate estimated effects to the true marginal products.

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• Pankratz, N. M. C., & Schiller, C. M. (2024). Climate Change and Adaptation in Global Supply-Chain Networks. The Review of Financial Studies, 37, 1729–1777.

  This paper examines how physical climate exposure affects firm performance and global supply chains. We document that heat at supplier locations reduces the operating income of suppliers and their customers. Further, customers respond to perceived changes in suppliers’ exposure: when suppliers’ realized exposure exceeds ex ante expectations, customers are 7% more likely to terminate supplier relationships. Consistent with experience-based learning, this effect increases with signal strength and repetition and decreases with country-level climate adaptation. Subsequent replacement suppliers show a lower expected and realized but similar projected heat exposure. We find similar results for suppliers’ exposure to floods.

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• Papadia, A., & Schioppa, C. A. (2024). Foreign Debt, Capital Controls, and Secondary Markets: Theory and Evidence from Nazi Germany. Journal of Political Economy, 132, 2074–2112.

  We investigate how internal distribution motives can affect the implementation of an important macroeconomic policy: capital controls. To do this, we study one of history?s largest debt repatriations, which took place under strict capital controls in 1930s Germany, providing a wealth of quantitative and historical evidence. We show that the authorities kept private repatriations under strict control, thus avoiding detrimental macroeconomic effects, while allowing discretionary repatriations in order to reap internal political benefits. We formalize this mechanism in a model in which elite capture can affect optimal debt repatriations and the management of official reserves under capital controls.

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• Pastorino, E. (2024). Careers in Firms: The Role of Learning about Ability and Human Capital Acquisition. Journal of Political Economy, 132, 1994–2073.

  Job and wage mobility can arise from firms and workers learning about workers? ability and from workers acquiring human capital with experience. To date, the relative importance of these two mechanisms is debated. Using administrative data from one firm, I estimate a structural model that integrates them. I find the direct effect of beliefs about ability on wages, which existing work has focused on, to be small. However, by improving the sorting of workers to the firm?s jobs, learning about ability is indirectly a crucial determinant of wage growth and dispersion.

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• Adams-Prassl, A., Huttunen, K., Nix, E., & Zhang, N. (2024). Violence against Women at Work*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 139, 937–991.

  We link every police report in Finland to administrative data to identify violence between colleagues and the economic consequences for victims, perpetrators, and firms. This new approach to observe when one colleague attacks another overcomes previous data constraints limiting evidence on this phenomenon to self-reported surveys that do not identify perpetrators. We document large, persistent labor market effects of between-colleague violence on victims and perpetrators. Male perpetrators experience substantially weaker consequences after attacking female colleagues. Perpetrators’ relative economic power in male-female violence partly explains this asymmetry. Turning to broader implications for firm recruitment and retention, we find that male-female violence causes a decline in the proportion of women at the firm, both because fewer new women are hired and current female employees leave. Management plays a key role in mediating the effects on the wider workforce. Only male-managed firms lose women. Female-managed firms exhibit a key difference relative to male-managed firms: male perpetrators are less likely to remain employed after attacking their female colleagues.

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• Adda, J., & Ottaviani, M. (2024). Grantmaking, Grading on a Curve, and the Paradox of Relative Evaluation in Nonmarkets*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 139, 1255–1319.

  The article develops a model of nonmarket allocation of resources such as the awarding of grants to meritorious projects, honors to outstanding students, or journal slots to quality publications. On the supply side, the available budget of grants is awarded to applicants who are evaluated most favorably according to the noisy information available to reviewers. On the demand side, stronger candidates are more likely to obtain grants and thus self-select into applying, given that applications are costly. We establish that if evaluation is perfect, grading on a curve inefficiently discourages even the very best candidates from applying. More generally, when the budget is insufficient to award grants to all applicants, the equilibrium unravels if information is symmetric enough—the paradox of relative evaluation. Leveraging a technique based on the quantile function pioneered by Lehmann, we characterize a broad set of nonmarket allocation rules under which an increase in evaluation noise in a field (or course) raises equilibrium applications in that field, and reduces applications in all other fields. We empirically confirm these comparative statics by exploiting a change in the rule for apportioning the total budget to applications in different fields at the European Research Council, showing that a 1 standard deviation increase in own evaluation noise leads to a 0.4 standard deviation increase in the number of applications and budget share. Moreover, we derive insights for the design of evaluation institutions, particularly regarding the endogenous choice of noise by fields or courses and the optimal aggregation of fields into panels.

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• Appel, I., & Fos, V. (2024). Short Campaigns by Hedge Funds. The Review of Financial Studies, 37, 1460–1493.

  The number of short campaigns by hedge funds has dramatically increased over the last two decades. Nearly 80% of campaigns are undertaken by activist hedge funds, particularly those that employ hostile tactics in their long campaigns. Short campaigns are associated with negative abnormal returns of –7%, with aggregate valuation effects similar in magnitude to the gains from long activism campaigns. In contrast to long campaigns, public communication is a critical component of short campaigns. We do not find evidence that such communication is manipulative. Overall, our analysis highlights the importance of short campaigns for understanding the economic impact of activist hedge funds.

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• Baldauf, M., & Mollner, J. (2024). Competition and Information Leakage. Journal of Political Economy, 132, 1603–1641.

  When seeking to trade in over-the-counter markets, institutional investors typically restrict both the number of potential counterparties they contact and the information they disclose (e.g., by requesting two-sided rather than one-sided quotes). We rationalize these important facts in a model featuring endogenous front-running. Although an additional contact intensifies competition and aids in finding a natural counterparty, it also intensifies information leakage?which can be costly if it helps a losing dealer to front-run. We also address information design: the client optimally provides no information about her trading direction when requesting quotes. We conclude with implications for market design and regulation.

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• Best, J., & Quigley, D. (2024). Persuasion for the Long Run. Journal of Political Economy, 132, 1740–1791.

  We examine persuasion when the sole source of credibility today is a desire to maintain a public record for accuracy. A long-run sender plays a cheap talk game with a sequence of short-run receivers, who observe some record of feedback about past accuracy. When all feedback is public (as is standard in repeated games), persuasion frequently requires inefficient on-path punishment?even if accuracy is monitored perfectly. If instead the record publishes coarse summary statistics (as is common online), any communication equilibrium the sender prefers to one-shot cheap talk?including Bayesian persuasion?can be supported without cost.

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