We consider settings in which skilled experts have private, heterogeneous types. Contracts that evaluate experts based on outcomes are used to differentiate between types. However, experts can take unobservable actions to manipulate their outcomes, which may harm consumers. For example, surgeons...

It is well known that the neoclassical model does not generate comovement among macroeconomic aggregates in response to news about future total factor productivity. We show that this problem is generally more severe in open economy versions of the neoclassical model. We present an open economy...

There is increasing concern that the difficulty of obtaining firm operation licences in developing countries may decrease firm creation and increase informality. We estimate the effect on new firm creation/registration of a program that speeds up firm registration procedures and makes them more...

We propose a simple summary statistic for a nation’s flow of welfare, measured as a consumption equivalent, and compute its level and growth rate for a broad set of countries. This welfare metric combines data on consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality. Although it is highly correlated...

While Internet usage blossomed during the entire 1995 – 2001 time period, there was a large change in the nature of the high-speed Internet access business. Initially, connection, routing and content were three separate parts of high-speed Internet service. Cable companies initially teamed...

A standard state-dependent pricing model generates little monetary non-neutrality. Two ways of generating more meaningful real effects are time-dependent pricing and strategic complementarities. These mechanisms have telltale implications for the persistence and volatility of “reset price...

In an attempt to increase the placement of medical residents to rural hospitals, the Japanese government recently introduced "regional caps" which restrict the total number of residents matched within each region of the country. The government modified the deferred acceptance mechanism...

By observing the large negative exogenous shock to the French male population from to WWI casualties, we study the effect of a change in the sex ratio on marital assortative matching by social class. First, we analyzed a novel data set that links marriage-level to French population and military...

On July 21, 2005, China gave in to concerted foreign pressure—some of it no doubt well meant—to give up the fixed exchange rate it had held and grown into over the course of a decade. The U.S. Congress had threatened, and still threatens, to pass a bill that would impose an import tariff of...