EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA19350
Jonathan I. Dingel, Felix Tintelnot
{"title":"Spatial Economics for Granular Settings","authors":"Jonathan I. Dingel, Felix Tintelnot","doi":"10.3982/ECTA19350","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA19350","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the application of quantitative spatial models to the growing body of fine spatial data used to study local economic outcomes. In granular settings in which people choose from a large set of potential residence-workplace pairs, observed outcomes in part reflect idiosyncratic choices. Using analytical examples, Monte Carlo simulations, and event studies of neighborhood employment booms, we demonstrate that calibration procedures that equate observed shares and modeled probabilities perform very poorly in these high-dimensional settings. Parsimonious specifications of spatial linkages deliver better counterfactual predictions. To quantify the uncertainty about counterfactual outcomes induced by the idiosyncratic component of individuals' decisions, we introduce a quantitative spatial model with a finite number of individuals. Applying this model to Amazon's proposed second headquarters in New York City reveals that its predicted consequences for most neighborhoods vary substantially across realizations of the individual idiosyncrasies.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"407-464"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147683047","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}
EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA23125
Allan Hsiao, Jacob Moscona, Karthik A. Sastry
{"title":"Food Policy in a Warming World","authors":"Allan Hsiao, Jacob Moscona, Karthik A. Sastry","doi":"10.3982/ECTA23125","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA23125","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper studies how governments intervene in agricultural markets to reshape the economic consequences of climate extremes. We construct a global dataset of agricultural policies and extreme heat exposure by country and crop since 1980. Extreme heat shocks to domestic production lead to policies that assist consumers by lowering domestic food prices. This effect is persistent, primarily implemented via border policies, and stronger during election years. Shocks to foreign production induce the opposite response: policies that assist producers by raising prices. These findings can be rationalized by a model in which governments use agricultural policy to redistribute among domestic interest groups. Our estimates imply that policy responses shield domestic consumers, while exacerbating losses for domestic producers and foreign consumers. Policy responses have regressive consequences globally, disproportionately harming poor and heat-exposed countries.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"537-572"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.3982/ECTA23125","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA22160
Jonathan M.V. Davis, Kyle Greenberg, Damon Jones
{"title":"An Experimental Evaluation of Deferred Acceptance: Evidence From Over 100 Army Officer Labor Markets","authors":"Jonathan M.V. Davis, Kyle Greenberg, Damon Jones","doi":"10.3982/ECTA22160","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA22160","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Internal labor markets are increasingly important for matching workers to jobs within organizations. We present evidence from a randomized trial that compares matching workers to jobs using the deferred acceptance (DA) algorithm to the traditional manager-directed matching process. Our setting is the U.S. Army's internal labor market, which matches over 14,000 officers to units annually. We find that DA reduces administrative burden and increases match quality as measured by reduced justified envy, increased truthful preference reporting, and officers' and units' preferences over their matches. The overall impact of DA on officer retention and performance in the two years after officers started their new jobs is limited by strategic preference coordination between officers and units. However, DA leads to significant improvements in officer retention and promotions in markets with inexperienced managers. Our findings suggest that cross-market communication between agents in internal labor markets can attenuate the benefits of strategyproof matching algorithms.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"641-662"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.3982/ECTA22160","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147683044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA22935
Jiafeng Chen
{"title":"Empirical Bayes When Estimation Precision Predicts Parameters","authors":"Jiafeng Chen","doi":"10.3982/ECTA22935","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA22935","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Gaussian empirical Bayes methods usually maintain a <i>precision independence</i> assumption: The unknown parameters of interest are independent from the known standard errors of the estimates. This assumption is often theoretically questionable and empirically rejected. This paper proposes to model the conditional distribution of the parameter given the standard errors as a flexibly parameterized location-scale family of distributions, leading to a family of methods that we call <span>close</span>. The <span>close</span> framework unifies and generalizes several proposals under precision dependence. We argue that the most flexible member of the <span>close</span> family is a minimalist and computationally efficient default for accounting for precision dependence. We analyze this method and show that it is competitive in terms of the regret of subsequent decision rules. Empirically, using <span>close</span> leads to sizable gains for selecting high-mobility Census tracts.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"305-340"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682955","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}
EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA23709
Pierpaolo Battigalli, Emiliano Catonini
{"title":"Monotonicity and Robust Implementation Under Forward-Induction Reasoning","authors":"Pierpaolo Battigalli, Emiliano Catonini","doi":"10.3982/ECTA23709","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA23709","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In sequential games, the set of paths consistent with rationality and forward-induction reasoning may change nonmonotonically when adding transparent restrictions on players' beliefs. Yet, we prove that—in an incomplete-information environment—predictions become sharper when the restrictions only concern initial beliefs about types. Thus, strong rationalizability for games with payoff uncertainty characterizes the path predictions of forward-induction reasoning across all possible restrictions on players' hierarchies of exogenous beliefs. With this, we can solve an open problem: the implementation of social choice functions through sequential mechanisms under forward-induction reasoning—which considerably expands the realm of implementable functions compared with simultaneous mechanisms (Müller (2016))—is indeed robust in the sense of Bergemann and Morris (2009).</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"505-536"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.3982/ECTA23709","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA22386
Soonwoo Kwon
{"title":"Optimal Shrinkage Estimation of Fixed Effects in Linear Panel Data Models","authors":"Soonwoo Kwon","doi":"10.3982/ECTA22386","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA22386","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Shrinkage methods are frequently used to improve the precision of least squares estimators of fixed effects. However, widely used shrinkage estimators guarantee improved precision only under strong distributional assumptions. I develop an estimator for the fixed effects that obtains the best possible mean squared error within a class of shrinkage estimators. This class includes conventional shrinkage estimators and the optimality does not require distributional assumptions. The estimator has an intuitive form and is easy to implement. Moreover, the fixed effects are allowed to vary with time and to be serially correlated, in which case the shrinkage optimally incorporates the underlying correlation structure. I also provide a method to forecast fixed effects one period ahead in this setting.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"663-677"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682960","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}
EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA23373
Gabriel Carroll
{"title":"Dynamic Incentives in Incompletely Specified Environments","authors":"Gabriel Carroll","doi":"10.3982/ECTA23373","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA23373","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Consider a repeated interaction where it is unknown which of various stage games will be played each period. This framework separates the basic logic of intertemporal incentives from the requirement that any given strategy profile yields a well-defined payoff vector. A natural solution concept is ex post perfect equilibrium: strategies must form a subgame-perfect equilibrium for any realization of the sequence of stage games. When there is one long-run player and others are short-run, and public randomization is available, we can adapt the standard recursive approach to determine the maximum feasible gap between reward and punishment for the long-run player. This allows us to identify which actions can be played in equilibrium and, assuming perfect monitoring, to fully characterize what outcome paths can arise. With multiple long-run players or no public randomization, the approach fails; a diagnostic of this failure is that optimal penal codes may no longer exist.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"375-406"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.3982/ECTA23373","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EconometricaPub Date : 2026-04-01DOI: 10.3982/ECTA22486
Susanne Schennach, Vincent Starck
{"title":"Optimally-Transported Generalized Method of Moments","authors":"Susanne Schennach, Vincent Starck","doi":"10.3982/ECTA22486","DOIUrl":"10.3982/ECTA22486","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We propose a novel optimal transport-based version of the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM). Instead of handling overidentification by reweighting the data to satisfy the moment conditions (as in Generalized Empirical Likelihood methods), this method proceeds by allowing for errors in the variables of the least mean-square magnitude necessary to simultaneously satisfy all moment conditions. This approach, based on the notions of optimal transport and Wasserstein metric, aims to address the problem of assigning a logical interpretation to GMM results even when overidentification tests reject the null, a situation that cannot always be avoided in applications. We illustrate the method by revisiting Duranton, Morrow and Turner's (2014) study of the relationship between a city's exports and the extent of its transportation infrastructure. Our results corroborate theirs under weaker assumptions and provide insight into the error structure of the variables.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"94 2","pages":"619-640"},"PeriodicalIF":7.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682959","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}