The Marginal Voter's Curse
AbstractThe swing voter’s curse is useful for explaining patterns of voter participation, but arises because voters restrict attention to the rare event of a pivotal vote. Recent empirical evidence...
View ArticleDiversity and Neighbourhood Satisfaction
AbstractThis article investigates the impact of ethnic diversity on individuals’ satisfaction with their neighbourhoods. It uses panel data and a variety of empirical methods to control for potential...
View ArticleCan Taxes Tame the Banks? Evidence from the European Bank Levies
AbstractFollowing the 2007–2008 financial crisis, a large number of countries introduced levies on bank borrowing intended to reduce risk in the financial sector. This article studies the behavioural...
View ArticleLame Ducks and Local Fiscal Policy: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Portugal
AbstractI use the introduction of mayoral term limits in Portugal to identify how an exogenous variation in eligibility for office affects policy decisions. Relying on a quasi-experimental...
View ArticleIterative Versus Standard Deferred Acceptance: Experimental Evidence
AbstractWe test experimentally the Gale–Shapley Deferred Acceptance mechanism versus two versions of the Iterative Deferred Acceptance Mechanism, in which students make applications one at a time. A...
View ArticleEfficiency in Decentralised Markets with Aggregate Uncertainty
AbstractWe study efficiency in non-stationary decentralised markets with common-value uncertainty and correlated asset values. There is an equal mass of buyers and sellers and payoffs from trade depend...
View ArticleFinancial Development, Default Rates and Credit Spreads
AbstractUS corporate default rates increased dramatically from an annual average of 0.32% between 1950 and 1984 up to 1.65% since 1985. Meanwhile, credit spreads rose by just 6 basis points. We argue...
View ArticleAre Policymakers Ambiguity Averse?
AbstractWe investigate the ambiguity preferences of a unique sample of real-life policymakers at the Paris UN climate conference (COP21). We find that policymakers are generally ambiguity averse. Using...
View ArticleUnderstanding Gender Differences in Leadership
AbstractUsing data from a large-scale field experiment, we show that while there is no gender difference in willingness to make risky decisions on behalf of a group in a sample of children, a large gap...
View ArticleOn the Pacific Salmon Treaty
AbstractThis article studies the optimal design of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, which was signed by the USA and Canada in 1999 to share salmon on the Pacific coast. Moral hazard exists because countries...
View ArticleCoal Smoke, City Growth, and the Costs of the Industrial Revolution
AbstractThis article provides the first rigorous estimates of how industrial air pollution from coal burning affects long-run city growth. I introduce a new theoretically grounded strategy for...
View ArticleMerger Policy in a Quantitative Model of International Trade
AbstractIn a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic...
View ArticleTaxation of Temporary Jobs: Good Intentions with Bad Outcomes?
AbstractThis article analyses the consequences of the taxation of temporary jobs of short duration recently introduced in several European countries to induce firms to create more open-ended contracts...
View ArticleThe Effect of Rural Credit on Deforestation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon
AbstractIn 2008, the Brazilian government made the concession of rural credit in the Amazon conditional upon stricter requirements as an attempt to curb forest clearings. This article studies the...
View ArticleClimbing the Rungs of the Quality Ladder: FDI and Domestic Exporters in Romania
AbstractThis article argues that inflows of foreign direct investment can facilitate export upgrading in host countries. Using customs data merged with firm-level information for 2005–11, it shows a...
View ArticleLabour Market Shocks and the Demand for Trade Protection: Evidence from...
AbstractWe study preferences for government action in response to layoffs resulting from different types of labour-market shocks. We consider: technological change, a demand shift, bad management and...
View ArticleSkill-Biased Management: Evidence from Manufacturing Firms
AbstractThis article investigates the link between management practices and workforce skills in manufacturing firms, exploiting geographical variation in the supply of human capital. Skills measures...
View ArticleOptimal Monetary Policy when Information is Market-Generated
AbstractThe nature of the private sector’s information changes the optimal conduct of monetary policy. When firms observe their individual demand and use it as a signal of real shocks, the optimal...
View ArticleHeterogeneous Consumers, Segmented Asset Markets and the Real Effects of...
AbstractThis article proposes a novel mechanism by which changes in the distribution of money holdings have real aggregate effects. I develop a flexible-price model of segmented asset markets in which...
View ArticleSignalling by Bayesian Persuasion and Pricing Strategy
AbstractThis article investigates how a privately informed seller could signal her type through Bayesian persuasion and pricing strategy. We find that it is generally impossible to achieve separation...
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