We use a survey of 452 Russian shops, most of which were privatized between 1992 and 1993, to measure the importance of alternative channels through which privatization promotes restructuring. Restructuring is measured as capital renovation, change in suppliers, increase in hours that stores...

This address considers the epidemiology of narratives relevant to economic fluctuations. The human brain has always been highly tuned towards narratives, whether factual or not, to justify ongoing actions, even such basic actions as spending and investing. Stories motivate and connect activities...

Concerns that technological progress degrades job opportunities have been expressed over much of the last two centuries by both professional economists and the general public. These concerns can be seen in narratives both in scholarly publications and in the news media. Part of the expressed...

The U.S. economic expansion since 2009 is the longest on record since 1854, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee. This paper seeks to understand this phenomenon better by looking at the time paths of popular narratives over this interval, of...

Social security system old age insurance systems are devices for the sharing of income risks of elderly people with others. Risks can be shared intergenerationally (with the young of the same country), intragenerationally (with other elderly of the same country), or internationally (with...

The financial press is a conduit for popular narratives that reflect collective memory about historical events. Some collective memories relate to major stock market crashes, and investors may rely on associated narratives, or "crash narratives," to inform current beliefs and choices. Using...

Over the past two decades, respondents to the Shiller Investor Confidence Surveys assess the probability of a catastrophic stock market crash to be much higher that the historical frequency of such events. We decompose these crash probabilities into fundamental and subjective components and use...

Random samples of the Moscow' and New York populations were compared in their attitudes towards free markets by administering identical telephone interviews in the two countries in May, 1990. Although the Soviet respondents were somewhat less likely to accept exchange of money as a solution to...

We repeat a survey we did in the waning days of the Soviet Union (Shiller, Boycko and Korobov, AER 1991) comparing attitudes towards free markets between Moscow and New York. Additional survey questions, from Gibson Duch and Tedin (J. Politics 1992) are added to compare attitudes towards...

The life-cycle accounts proposal for Social Security reform has been justified by its proponents using a number of different arguments, but these arguments generally involve the assumption of a high likelihood of good returns on the accounts. A simulation is undertaken to estimate the...