This paper studies agents who consider the experiences of their neighbors in deciding which of two technologies to use. The authors analyze two learning environments, one in which the same technology is optimal for all players and another in which each technology is better for some of them. In...

This paper discusses the prevalence of Silicon Valley-style localizations of individual manufacturing industries in the United States. A model in which localized industry-specific spillovers, natural advantages, and random chance contribute to geographic concentration motivates new indices of...

Over the last three decades there has been a dramatic slowdown of the publication process at top economics journals. A substantial part is due to journals' requiring more extensive revisions. Various explanations are considered: democratization of the review process, increases in the complexity...

This paper develops models of quality standards to examine two trends: academic journals increasingly require extensive revisions of submissions, and articles are becoming longer and changing in other ways. Papers are modeled as varying along two quality dimensions: q reflects the importance of...

This paper examines a potential agency conflict between mutual fund investors and mutual fund companies. Investors would like the fund company to use its judgment to maximize risk-adjusted fund returns, the fund company has an incentive to increase the inflow of investments. The authors estimate...

The authors examine the rational expectations equilibrium paths of the model of search and barter in Peter A. Diamond's "Aggregate Demand Management in Search Equilibrium" (1982). For some initial positions, there are two equilibrium paths converging to different steady states, with the...

Income smoothing is the process of manipulating the time profile of earnings or earnings reports to make the reported income stream less variable. This paper builds a theory of income smoothing based on the managers' concern about keeping their position or avoiding interference, and on the idea...