We study how cost-benefit considerations shape the public acceptance of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). In an online experiment conducted on a representative sample from the US during the early COVID-19 pandemic, we provide half of our respondents with research evidence pointing to low...

Since campaign contributions reveal the actor’s party leanings, they take place in a domain of social observation and are likely to be subject to social effects. We conducted a field experiment to identify some of these social effects. We sent letters to 92,000 contributors from all U.S....

This paper estimates whether learning-by-doing effects or cleansing effects of recessions drive the endogenous component of productivity in the United States. Using Bayesian estimation techniques we find that external and internal learning-by-doing effects dominate. We find no evidence for...

We develop and estimate a general equilibrium model in which monetary policy can deviate from active in.ation stabilization and agents face uncertainty about the nature of these deviations. When observing a deviation, agents conduct Bayesian learning to infer its likely duration. Under...

In this paper we analyze changes in the Federal Reserve behavior and objectives since the1960s justified by potentially evolving beliefs—through a real-time learning process—aboutthe structure of the economy and shifts in policymakers' preferences in the late 1970s. In addition, we allow for...

We develop and estimate a general equilibrium model in which monetary policy can deviate from active in.ation stabilization and agents face uncertainty about the nature of these deviations. When observing a deviation, agents conduct Bayesian learning to infer its likely duration. Under...

Two ubiquitous empirical regularities in pay distributions are that the variance of wages increases with experience, and innovations in wage residuals have a large, unpredictable component. The leading explanations for these patterns are that over time, either firms learn about worker...

We ask whether the role of employer learning in the wage-setting process depends on skill type and skill importance to productivity. Combining data from the NLSY79 with O*NET data, we use Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery scores to measure seven distinct types of pre-market skills that...

This paper analyzes the main uncertainty of college saving - the child’s ability - in the context of the saving with learning model. The first section develops a dynamic model combining asset accumulation and learning to explain the parents’ forward-looking saving behavior when they are...

Using the panel component of the Michigan Survey of Consumers, we show that individuals, in particular women and ethnic minorities, are highly heterogeneous in their expectations of inflation. We estimate a model of inflation expectations based on learning from experience that also allows for...