N. Meltem Daysal, Hui Ding, Maya Rossin-Slater, Hannes Schwandt
{"title":"Germs in the Family: The Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Intrahousehold Disease Spread","authors":"N. Meltem Daysal, Hui Ding, Maya Rossin-Slater, Hannes Schwandt","doi":"10.1257/aer.20231521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20231521","url":null,"abstract":"Preschool-aged children get sick frequently and spread disease to other family members. Despite the universality of this experience, there is limited causal evidence on the magnitudes and consequences of these externalities, especially for infant siblings with developing immune systems and brains. We show in Danish administrative data that during infancy, younger siblings have two to three times higher hospitalization rates for respiratory conditions than older siblings. We combine birth order and within-municipality variation in respiratory disease prevalence among young children, finding lasting differential impacts of early-life respiratory disease exposure on younger siblings' earnings, educational attainment, chronic respiratory health, and mental health-related outcomes.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors: Comment","authors":"Michael Wiebe","doi":"10.1257/aer.20231415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20231415","url":null,"abstract":"Moretti (2021) reports a positive elasticity between technology cluster size and patenting, and uses an event study and instrumental variables regressions to justify a causal interpretation. The event study does not use the variation generated by inventors moving across cities, and the instrument is constructed incorrectly due to a coding error. I run a corrected event study and fix the coding error, and find null effects. The reported elasticity may not be causal.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Robert W. Hahn, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert D. Metcalfe, Ben Sprung-Keyser
{"title":"A Welfare Analysis of Policies Impacting Climate Change","authors":"Robert W. Hahn, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert D. Metcalfe, Ben Sprung-Keyser","doi":"10.1257/aer.20250166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20250166","url":null,"abstract":"We study the welfare impacts of 96 climate-related tax and spending policies. We extend and apply the marginal value of public funds (MVPF) framework, most notably providing a new method for incorporating learning-by-doing spillovers. We find subsidies for the production of clean energy (such as wind production tax credits) have higher MVPFs than all other subsidies in our sample, including EV subsidies. Conservation nudges have large MVPFs when targeting regions with dirty grids. Fuel taxes and cap-and-trade policies are highly efficient means of raising revenue. We also construct traditional cost-per-ton estimates and compare and contrast the lessons they provide.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"580 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Aggregate Costs of Uninsurable Business Risk","authors":"Corina Boar, Denis Gorea, Virgiliu Midrigan","doi":"10.1257/aer.20230849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20230849","url":null,"abstract":"We use firm-level data to document that private businesses experience large fluctuations in their profit shares. These are due to large, fat-tailed, and transitory changes in output that are not fully accompanied by changes in their inputs. We interpret this evidence using a model of entrepreneurial dynamics. Because firms can limit their exposure to risk by operating at a smaller scale, our model predicts large macroeconomic losses from uninsurable business risk,much larger than those stemming from credit constraints. While self-financing allows entrepreneurs to quickly overcome credit constraints, even wealthy entrepreneurs remain considerably exposed to risk.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Fulfilling Fluctuations in HANK Economies","authors":"Sushant Acharya Jess Benhabib","doi":"10.1257/aer.20240642","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20240642","url":null,"abstract":"We show that in heterogeneous agent New Keynesian (HANK) economies with countercyclical risk, the natural interest rate is endogenous and co-moves with output, leaving the economy susceptible to self-fulfilling fluctuations. Unlike in representative agent New Keynesian models, the Taylor principle is not sufficient to guarantee uniqueness of equilibrium in HANK if risk is even mildly countercyclical: Multiple bounded equilibria exist, no matter how strongly monetary policy responds to changes in inflation. For an active monetary policy to eliminate self-fulfilling fluctuations, it must stabilize the endogenous natural rate fluctuations. Alternatively, a passive monetary and active fiscal regime can also eliminate equilibrium multiplicity.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hassan Afrouzi, Marina Halac, Kenneth Rogoff, Pierre Yared
{"title":"Monetary Policy without Commitment","authors":"Hassan Afrouzi, Marina Halac, Kenneth Rogoff, Pierre Yared","doi":"10.1257/aer.20241925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20241925","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the implications of central bank credibility for long-run inflation and inflation dynamics. We introduce central bank lack of commitment into a standard nonlinear New Keynesian economy with sticky-price monopolistically competitive firms. Inflation is driven by the interaction of lack of commitment and the economic environment. We show that long-run inflation increases following an unanticipated permanent increase in the labor wedge or decrease in the elasticity of substitution across varieties. In the transition, inflation overshoots and then gradually declines. Quantitatively, inflation overshooting is persistent, and the welfare loss from lack of commitment relative to inflation targeting is large.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"139 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding High-Wage Firms: Monopoly, Monopsony, and Bargaining Power","authors":"Horng Chern Wong","doi":"10.1257/aer.20230344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20230344","url":null,"abstract":"I study how firm market power and worker bargaining power shape wages and welfare. Using French micro-data, I document patterns linking wages and firm market power that existing models cannot explain. A model in which firms produce vertically differentiated goods and share profits with workers explains those patterns. The model (i) reveals new challenges in estimating monopsony and bargaining power, proposing an alternative approach; (ii) shows that the pass-through of firm-specific shocks to wages depends on the type of shock; (iii) explains how markups shape firm wage premia; and (iv) formalizes how strengthening worker bargaining power affects wages and welfare.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Market Opacity and Fragility: Why Liquidity Evaporates When It Is Most Needed","authors":"Giovanni Cespa Xavier Vives","doi":"10.1257/aer.20231613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20231613","url":null,"abstract":"Lack of market transparency can impair the liquidity provision of nonstandard liquidity suppliers and make liquidity demand increasing in illiquidity. This can yield strategic complementarities and induce multiple equilibria. Then an initial dearth of liquidity may degenerate into a liquidity rout (as in a \"flash crash\"), and traders faced with the largest cost of trading are those trading more intensely at equilibrium. An increase in order flow transparency and/or in the mass of dealers who are in the market at all times has a positive impact on total welfare.","PeriodicalId":48472,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Review","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":10.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148409192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}