| 1. |
- Aghion, Philippe, et al.
(författare)
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Regulation and Distrust
- 2010
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : MIT Press. - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 125:3, s. 1015-1049
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 2. |
- Almond, Douglas, et al.
(författare)
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Chernobyl's subclinical legacy : prenatal exposure to radioactive fallout and school outcomes in sweden
- 2009
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 124:4, s. 1729-1772
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use prenatal exposure to Chernobyl fallout in Sweden as a natural experiment inducing variation in cognitive ability. Students born in regions of Sweden with higher fallout performed worse in secondary school, in mathematics in particular. Damage is accentuated within families (i.e., siblings comparison) and among children born to parents with low education. In contrast, we detect no corresponding damage to health outcomes. To the extent that parents responded to the cognitive endowment, we infer that parental investments reinforced the initial Chernobyl damage. From a public health perspective, our findings suggest that cognitive ability is compromised at radiation doses currently considered harmless.
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| 3. |
- Altmejd, Adam, et al.
(författare)
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O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries
- 2021
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press. - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 136:3, s. 1831-1886
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Family and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions, but causal identification of those effects is notoriously challenging. Using data from Chile, Croatia, Sweden, and the United States, we study within-family spillovers in college and major choice across a variety of national contexts. Exploiting college-specific admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings’ college options, we show that in all four countries a meaningful portion of younger siblings follow their older sibling to the same college or college-major combination. Older siblings are followed regardless of whether their target and counterfactual options have large, small, or even negative differences in quality. Spillover effects disappear, however, if the older sibling drops out of college, suggesting that older siblings’ college experiences matter. That siblings influence important human capital investment decisions across such varied contexts suggests that our findings are not an artifact of particular institutional detail but a more generalizable description of human behavior. Causal links between the postsecondary paths of close peers may partly explain persistent college enrollment inequalities between social groups, and this suggests that interventions to improve college access may have multiplier effects.
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| 4. |
- Besley, Timothy J., et al.
(författare)
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Incentives and the De Soto Effect
- 2012
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 127:1, s. 237-282
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the consequences of improving property rights to facilitate the use of fixed assets as collateral, popularly attributed to the influential policy advocate Hernando de Soto. We use an equilibrium model of a credit market with moral hazard to characterize the theoretical effects and also develop a quantitative analysis using data from Sri Lanka. We show that the effects are likely to be nonlinear and heterogeneous by wealth group. They also depend on the extent of competition between lenders. There can be significant increases in profits and reductions in interest rates when credit markets are competitive. However, since these are due to reductions in moral hazard, that is, increased effort, the welfare gains tend to be modest when cost of effort is taken into account. Allowing for an extensive margin where borrowers gain access to the credit market can make these effects larger depending on the underlying wealth distribution.
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| 5. |
- Besley, Timothy, et al.
(författare)
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The Logic of Political Violence
- 2011
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 126:3, s. 1411-1445
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article offers a unified approach for studying political violence whether it emerges as repression or civil war. We formulate a model where an incumbent or opposition can use violence to maintain or acquire power to study which political and economic factors drive one-sided or two-sided violence (repression or civil war). The model predicts a hierarchy of violence states from peace via repression to civil war; and suggests a natural empirical approach. Exploiting only within-country variation in the data, we show that violence is associated with shocks that can affect wages and aid. As in the theory, these effects are only present where political institutions are noncohesive.
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| 6. |
- Besley, Timothy, et al.
(författare)
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The Political Economics of Green Transitions
- 2023
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 138:3, s. 1863-1906
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases may be almost impossible without a green transition-a substantial transformation of consumption and production patterns. To study such transitions, we propose a dynamic model, which differs from the common approach in economics in two ways. First, consumption patterns reflect not just changing prices and taxes, but changing values. Transitions of values and technologies create a dynamic complementarity that can help or hinder a green transition. Second, and unlike fictitious social planners, policy makers in democratic societies cannot commit to future policy paths, as they are subject to regular elections. We show that market failures and government failures can interact to prevent a welfare-increasing green transition from materializing or make an ongoing green transition too slow.
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| 7. |
- Björklund, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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The Origins of Intergenerational Associations: Lessons from Swedish Adoption Data
- 2006
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 121:3, s. 999-1028
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use unique Swedish data with information on adopted children's biological and adoptive parents to estimate intergenerational mobility associations in earnings and education. We argue that the impact from biological parents captures broad prebirth factors, including genes and prenatal environment, and the impact from adoptive parents represents broad postbirth factors, such as childhood environment. We find that both pre- and postbirth factors contribute to intergenerational earnings and education transmissions, and that prebirth factors are more important for mother's education and less important for father's income. We also find some evidence for a positive interaction effect between postbirth environment and prebirth factors.
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| 8. |
- Bold, Tessa, et al.
(författare)
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LEMON TECHNOLOGIES AND ADOPTION : MEASUREMENT, THEORY, AND EVIDENCE FROM AGRICULTURAL MARKETS IN UGANDA
- 2017
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 132:3, s. 1055-1100
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- To reduce poverty and food insecurity in Africa requires raising productivity in agriculture. Systematic use of fertilizer and hybrid seed is a pathway to increased productivity, but adoption of these technologies remains low. We investigate whether the quality of agricultural inputs can help explain low take-up. Testing modern products purchased in local markets, we find that 30% of nutrient is missing in fertilizer, and hybrid maize seed is estimated to contain less than 50% authentic seeds. We document that such low quality results in low average returns. If authentic technologies replaced these low-quality products, however, average returns are high. To rationalize the findings, we calibrate a learning model using data from our agricultural trials. Because agricultural yields are noisy, farmers' ability to learn about quality is limited and this can help explain the low quality equilibrium we observe, but also why the market has not fully collapsed.
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| 9. |
- Burchardi, Konrad B., et al.
(författare)
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Moral Hazard : Experimental Evidence from Tenancy Contracts
- 2019
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 134:1, s. 281-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agricultural productivity is particularly low in developing countries. Output-sharing rules that make farmers less-than-full residual claimants are seen as a potentially important driver of low agricultural productivity. We report results from a field experiment designed to estimate and understand the effects of sharecropping contracts on agricultural input choices, risk-taking, and output. The experiment induced variation in the terms of sharecropping contracts. After agreeing to pay 50% of their output to the landlord, tenants were randomized into three groups: (i) some kept 50% of their output; (ii) others kept 75%; (iii) others kept 50% of output and received a lump-sum payment at the end of their contract, either fixed or stochastic. We find that tenants with higher output shares used more inputs, cultivated riskier crops, and produced 60% more output relative to control. Income or risk exposure have at most a small effect on farm output; the increase in output should be interpreted as an incentive effect of the output-sharing rule. JEL Codes: O12, Q12, Q15.
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| 10. |
- Burchardi, Konrad B., et al.
(författare)
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The Economic Impact of Social Ties : Evidence from German Reunification
- 2013
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Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of Economics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0033-5533 .- 1531-4650. ; 128:3, s. 1219-1271
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to show that personal relationships which individuals maintain for noneconomic reasons can be an important determinant of regional economic growth. We show that West German households who had social ties to East Germany in 1989 experienced a persistent rise in their personal incomes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, the presence of these households significantly affects economic performance at the regional level: it increases the returns to entrepreneurial activity, the share of households who become entrepreneurs, and the likelihood that firms based within a given West German region invest in East Germany. As a result, West German regions that (for idiosyncratic reasons) have a high concentration of households with social ties to the East exhibit substantially higher growth in income per capita in the early 1990s. A one standard deviation rise in the share of households with social ties to East Germany in 1989 is associated with a 4.7 percentage point rise in income per capita over six years. We interpret our findings as evidence of a causal link between social ties and regional economic development. JEL Codes: O10, O43, J61, L14, F20.
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