Commodity Trade Matters -- by Thibault Fally, James Sayre
Primary commodities are used as inputs into all production processes, yet they account for approximately 16 percent of world trade. Despite their share in trade, we show that the aggregate gains from...
View ArticleMachine Learning for Regularized Survey Forecast Combination:...
Despite the clear success of forecast combination in many economic environments, several important issues remain incompletely resolved. The issues relate to selection of the set of forecasts to...
View ArticleThe Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring -- by Steven...
As the American college student population has become more diverse, the goal of hiring a more diverse faculty has received increased attention in higher education. A signal of institutional commitment...
View ArticleTarget setting and Allocative Inefficiency in Lending: Evidence from Two...
We study the consequences of month-end lending incentives for Chinese bank managers. Using data from two banks, one state-owned and the other partially privatized, we show a clear increase in lending...
View ArticleMarket Effects of Adverse Regulatory Events: Evidence from Drug Relabeling --...
The FDA maintains post-approval safety surveillance programs to monitor the safety of drugs. As adverse events are reported, the FDA may choose to intervene and change the safety labeling associated...
View ArticleFrictional Intermediation in Over-the-counter Markets -- by Julien Hugonnier,...
We extend Duffie, Garleanu, and Pedersen's (2005) search-theoretic model of over-the-counter asset markets, allowing for a decentralized inter-dealer market with arbitrary heterogeneity in dealers'...
View ArticleMismatch and Assimilation -- by Ping Wang, Tsz-Nga Wong, Chong K. Yip
Income disparity across countries has been large and widening over time. We develop a tractable model where factor requirements in production technology do not necessarily match a country's factor...
View ArticleSchooling, Wealth, Risky Sexual Behavior, and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa...
Economic growth and development have improved human health in many regions, while sub-Saharan Africa continues to lag behind. Economic theory and the existing empirical evidence suggest that...
View ArticleThe Limits of Simple Implementation Intentions: Evidence from a Field...
Recent large-scale randomized experiments find that helping people form implementation intentions by asking when and where they plan to act increases one-time actions, such as vaccinations,...
View ArticleTop of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank -- by Richard Murphy, Felix...
This paper establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability. Using data on the universe...
View ArticleEstimating the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution Using Mortgage...
Using a novel source of quasi-experimental variation in interest rates, we develop a new approach to estimating the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution (EIS). In the UK, the mortgage interest rate...
View ArticleMeasuring Bias in Consumer Lending -- by Will Dobbie, Andres Liberman, Daniel...
This paper tests for bias in consumer lending decisions using administrative data from a high-cost lender in the United Kingdom. We motivate our analysis using a simple model of bias in lending, which...
View ArticleDiscouraging Deviant Behavior in Monetary Economics -- by Lawrence...
We consider a model in which monetary policy is governed by a Taylor rule. The model has a unique equilibrium near the steady state, but also has other equilibria. The introduction of a particular...
View ArticleMeasuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change --...
We demonstrate that data from digital platforms such as Yelp have the potential to improve our understanding of gentrification, both by providing data in close to real time (i.e. nowcasting and...
View ArticleOccupational Classifications: A Machine Learning Approach -- by Akina Ikudo,...
Characterizing the work that people do on their jobs is a longstanding and core issue in labor economics. Traditionally, classification has been done manually. If it were possible to combine new...
View ArticleDeath, Trauma and God: The Effect of Military Deployments on Religiosity --...
Learning to cope with man's mortality is central to the teachings of the world's major religions. However, very little is known about the impact of life-and-death trauma on religiosity. This study...
View ArticleMeasuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues -- by Katharine...
The rise of the "gig economy" has attracted wide attention from both scholars and the popular media. Much of this attention has been devoted to jobs mediated through various online platforms. While...
View ArticleUnderstanding Physician Decision Making: The Case of Depression -- by Janet...
Faulty physician decision making has been blamed for everything from medical errors to excessive procedure use and wasteful spending. Yet medical treatment is often complex, requiring a sequence of...
View ArticleThe Problem of Data Quality in Analyses of Opioid Regulation: The Case of...
States, which have the primary legal role in regulating the prescribing and dispensing of prescription medications, have created Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP) to try to reduce...
View ArticleWhy Have Negative Nominal Interest Rates Had Such a Small Effect on Bank...
We examine the effect of negative nominal interest rates on bank profitability and behavior using a cross-country panel of over 5,100 banks in 27 countries. Our data set includes annual observations...
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