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

• Mian, A., Sufi, A., & Trebbi, F. (2010). The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis. American Economic Review, 100, 1967–1998.

  We examine the effects of constituents, special interests, and ideology on congressional voting on two of the most significant pieces of legislation in US economic history. Representatives whose constituents experience a sharp increase in mortgage defaults are more likely to support the Foreclosure Prevention Act, especially in competitive districts. Interestingly, representatives are more sensitive to defaults of their own-party constituents. Special interests in the form ofhigher campaign contributions from the financial industry increase the likelihood of supporting the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. However, ideologically conservative representatives are less responsive to both constituent and special interests. (JEL D72, G21, G28)

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• Siegel, R. (2010). Asymmetric Contests with Conditional Investments. American Economic Review, 100, 2230–2260.

  This paper studies equilibrium behavior in a class of games that models asymmetric competitions with unconditional and conditional investments. Such competitions include lobbying settings, labor-market tournaments, and R& races, among others. I provide an algorithm that constructs the unique equilibrium in these games and apply it to study competitions in which a fraction of each competitor's investment is sunk and the rest is paid only by the winners. Complete-information all-pay auctions are a special case. (JEL D44, D72, D82)

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• Waugh, M. E. (2010). International Trade and Income Differences. American Economic Review, 100, 2093–2124.

  I develop a novel view of the trade frictions between rich and poor countries by arguing that to reconcile bilateral trade volumes and price data within a standard gravity model, the trade frictions between rich and poor countries must be systematically asymmetric, with poor countries facing higher costs to export relative to rich countries. I provide a method to model these asymmetries and demonstrate the merits of my approach relative to alternatives in the trade literature. I then argue that these trade frictions are quantitatively important to understanding the large differences in standards of living and total factor productivity across countries. (JEL F11, F13, F14, O19 )

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• Weizsacker, G. (2010). Do We Follow Others When We Should? A Simple Test of Rational Expectations. American Economic Review, 100, 2340–2360.

  The paper presents a meta dataset covering 13 experiments on social learning games. It is found that in situations where it is empirically optimal to follow others and contradict one's own information, the players err in the majority of cases, forgoing substantial parts of earnings. The average player contradicts her own signal only if the empirical odds ratio of the own signal being wrong, conditional on all available information, is larger than 2:1, rather than 1:1 as would be implied by rational expectations. A regression analysis formulates a straightforward test of rational expectations which strongly rejects the null. (JEL D82, D83, D84)

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• Aguirre, I., Cowan, S., & Vickers, J. (2010). Monopoly Price Discrimination and Demand Curvature. American Economic Review, 100, 1601–1615.

  This paper presents a general analysis of the effects of monopolistic third-degreeprice discrimination on welfare and output when all markets are served. Sufficient conditions — involving straightforward comparisons of the curvatures of the direct and inverse demand functions in the different markets — are presented for discrimination to have negative or positive effects on social welfare and output. (JEL D42)

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• Aizer, A. (2010). The Gender Wage Gap and Domestic Violence. American Economic Review, 100, 1847–1859.

  Three quarters of all violence against women is perpetrated by domestic partners. This study exploits exogenous changes in the demand for labor in female-dominated industries to estimate the impact of the male-female wage gap on domestic violence. Decreases in the wage gap reduce violence against women, consistent with a household bargaining model. These findings shed new light on the health production process as well as observed income gradients in health and suggest that in addition to addressing concerns of equity and efficiency, pay parity can also improve the health of American women via reductions in violence. (JEL D13, I12, J16, J23, J31)

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• Alger, I., & Weibull, J. W. (2010). Kinship, Incentives, and Evolution. American Economic Review, 100, 1725–1758.

  We analyze how family ties affect incentives, with focus on the strategic interaction between two mutually altruistic siblings. The siblings exert effort to produce output under uncertainty, and they may transfer output to each other. With equally altruistic siblings, their equilibrium effort is nonmonotonic in the common degree of altruism, and it depends on the harshness of the environment. We define a notion of local evolutionary stability of degrees of sibling altruism and show that this degree is lower than the kinship-relatedness factor. Numerical simulations show how family ties vary with the environment, and how this affects economic outcomes. (JEL D13, D64, J12, Z13)

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• Anderson, S. T., Friedman, D., & Oprea, R. (2010). Preemption Games: Theory and Experiment. American Economic Review, 100, 1778–1803.

  Several impatient investors with private costs <em>C_i</em> face an indivisible irreversible investment opportunity whose value <em>V</em> is governed by geometric Brownian motion. The first investor <em>i</em> to seize the opportunity receives the entire payoff, <em>V-C_i</em>. We characterize the symmetric Bayesian Nash equilibrium for this game. A laboratory experiment confirms the model's main qualitative predictions: competition drastically lowers the value at which investment occurs; usually the lowest-cost investor preempts the other investors; observed investment patterns in competition (unlike monopoly) are quite insensitive to changes in the Brownian parameters. Support is more qualified for the prediction that markups decline with cost. (JEL C73, D44, D82, G31)

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• Bardhan, P., & Mookherjee, D. (2010). Determinants of Redistributive Politics: An Empirical Analysis of Land Reforms in West Bengal, India. American Economic Review, 100, 1572–1600.

  We investigate political determinants of land reform implementation in theIndian state of West Bengal. Using a village panel spanning 1974-1998, we donot find evidence supporting the hypothesis that land reforms were positively and monotonically related to control of local governments by a Left Front coalition vis-&agrave;-vis the right-centrist Congress party, combined with lack of commitment to policy platforms. Instead, the evidence is consistent with a quasi-Downsian theory stressing the role of opportunism (reelection concerns) and electoral competition. (JEL D72, O13, O17, Q15)

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• Baron, D. P. (2010). Morally Motivated Self-Regulation. American Economic Review, 100, 1299–1329.

  Self-regulation is the private provision of public goods and private redistribution. This paper examines the scope of self-regulation motivated by altruistic moral preferences that are reciprocal and stronger the closer are citizens in a socioeconomic distance. The focus is on the role of organizations in increasing self-regulation by mitigating free-rider problems. Social label and certification organizations can expand the scope of self-regulation but not beyond that with unconditional altruism. Enforcement organizations expand the scope of self-regulation farther, and for-profit enforcement is more aggressive than nonprofit enforcement. Enforcement through social pressure imposed by NGOs also expands the scope of self-regulation. (JEL D64, H41, L51)

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