The goal of this paper is to examine the implied penalty policies underlying the remedies created by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in terms of the policies' impact on employer and union behaviors. We present a simple model of deterrence as a means of evaluating workplace penalty...

Recent assessments of occupational licensing have shown varying effects of the institution on labor market outcomes. This study revisits the relationship between occupational licensing and labor market outcomes by analyzing a new topical module to the Survey of Income and Program Participation...

Motivated by widely publicized concerns that there are "too many" plans, we structurally estimate (and validate) an equilibrium model of the Medicare Part D market to study the welfare impacts of two feasible, similar-sized approaches for reducing choice. One reduces the maximum number of firm...

The combinatorial clock auction is becoming increasingly popular for large-scale spectrum awards and other uses, replacing more traditional ascending or clock auctions. We describe some surprising properties of the auction, including a wide range of ex post equilibria with demand expansion,...

An important part of the literature on regulatory economics is based on the US experience, where a well-established regulator faces a privately owned monopoly. It is sometimes forgotten that this model does not apply in many places where a newly established regulator faces a government owned, or...

Standard Medicare Part D drug insurance provides limited coverage in a ``donut hole'' region, making the purchase problem dynamic. We develop a discontinuity-based test for myopia using enrollees who arrived near the coverage gap early in the year. We find that there are fewer and cheaper...

We seek to determine the causes and magnitudes of network externalities for the automated clearinghouse (ACH) electronic payments system. We construct an equilibrium model of customer and bank adoption of ACH. We structurally estimate the parameters of the model using an indirect inference...

Classic Big Push industrialization envisions state planners coordinating economic activity to internalize a range of externalities that otherwise lock in a low-income equilibrium, but runs afoul of well-known government failure problems. Successful Big Push coordination may occur instead when a...

During Britain's industrialization, Parliament operated a forum where rights to land and resources could be reorganized. This venue enabled landholders and communities to exploit economic opportunities that could not be accommodated by the inflexible rights regime inherited from the past. In...

This paper analyzes determinants of ex-manufacturer prices for originator and generic drugs across a large sample of countries. We focus on drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in middle and low income countries (MLICs), with robustness checks to other therapeutic categories and other...