EconometricaPub Date : 2025-02-03DOI: 10.3982/ECTA22474
S. Nageeb Ali, Maximilian Mihm, Lucas Siga
{"title":"The Political Economy of Zero-Sum Thinking","authors":"S. Nageeb Ali, Maximilian Mihm, Lucas Siga","doi":"10.3982/ECTA22474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA22474","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 <p>This paper offers a strategic rationale for zero-sum thinking in elections. We show that asymmetric information and distributional considerations together make voters wary of policies supported by others. This force impels a majority of voters to support policies contrary to their preferences and information. Our analysis identifies and interprets a form of “adverse correlation” that is necessary and sufficient for zero-sum thinking to prevail in equilibrium.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"93 1","pages":"41-70"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.3982/ECTA22474","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143111402","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 : 2025-02-03DOI: 10.3982/ECTA20830
Sebastian Ottinger, Nico Voigtländer
{"title":"History's Masters The Effect of European Monarchs on State Performance","authors":"Sebastian Ottinger, Nico Voigtländer","doi":"10.3982/ECTA20830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA20830","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 <p>We create a novel reign-level data set for European monarchs, covering all major European states between the 10th and 18th centuries. We first document a strong positive relationship between rulers' cognitive ability and state performance. To address endogeneity issues, we exploit the facts that (i) rulers were appointed according to hereditary succession, independent of their ability, and (ii) the widespread inbreeding among the ruling dynasties of Europe led over centuries to quasirandom variation in ruler ability. We code the degree of blood relationship between the parents of rulers, which also reflects “hidden” layers of inbreeding from previous generations. The coefficient of inbreeding is a strong predictor of ruler ability, and the corresponding instrumental variable results imply that ruler ability had a sizeable effect on the performance of states and their borders. This supports the view that “leaders made history,” shaping the European map until its consolidation into nation states. We also show that rulers mattered only where their power was largely unconstrained. In reigns where parliaments checked the power of monarchs, ruler ability no longer affected their state's performance.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"93 1","pages":"95-128"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.3982/ECTA20830","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143111405","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 : 2025-02-03DOI: 10.3982/ECTA931SUM
{"title":"Submission of Manuscripts to the Econometric Society Monograph Series","authors":"","doi":"10.3982/ECTA931SUM","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA931SUM","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"93 1","pages":"355"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143111397","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 : 2025-02-03DOI: 10.3982/ECTA931SEC
{"title":"The Econometric Society Annual Reports Report of the Secretary","authors":"","doi":"10.3982/ECTA931SEC","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA931SEC","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"93 1","pages":"303-318"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143111404","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 : 2025-02-03DOI: 10.3982/ECTA17051
Anton Kolotilin, Andriy Zapechelnyuk
{"title":"Persuasion Meets Delegation","authors":"Anton Kolotilin, Andriy Zapechelnyuk","doi":"10.3982/ECTA17051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17051","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 <p>A principal can restrict an agent's information (the persuasion problem) or discretion (the delegation problem). We study these two problems under standard single-crossing assumptions on the agent's marginal utility. We show that these problems are equivalent on the set of monotone stochastic mechanisms, implying, in particular, the equivalence of deterministic delegation and monotone partitional persuasion. We also show that the monotonicity restriction is superfluous for linear persuasion and linear delegation, implying their equivalence on the set of all stochastic mechanisms. Finally, using tools from the persuasion literature, we characterize optimal delegation mechanisms, thereby generalizing and extending existing results in the delegation literature.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"93 1","pages":"195-228"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.3982/ECTA17051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143111407","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 : 2025-02-03DOI: 10.3982/ECTA21466
David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, Simon Mongey
{"title":"Minimum Wages, Efficiency, and Welfare","authors":"David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, Simon Mongey","doi":"10.3982/ECTA21466","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA21466","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Many argue that minimum wages can prevent efficiency losses from monopsony power. We assess this argument in a general equilibrium model of oligopsonistic labor markets with heterogeneous workers and firms. We decompose welfare gains into an <i>efficiency</i> component that captures reductions in monopsony power and a <i>redistributive</i> component that captures the way minimum wages shift resources across people. The minimum wage that maximizes the efficiency component of welfare lies below $8.00 and yields gains worth less than 0.2% of lifetime consumption. When we add back in Utilitarian redistributive motives, the optimal minimum wage is $11 and redistribution accounts for 102.5% of the resulting welfare gains, implying offsetting efficiency losses of −2.5%. The reason a minimum wage struggles to deliver efficiency gains is that with realistic firm productivity dispersion, a minimum wage that eliminates monopsony power at one firm causes severe rationing at another. These results hold under an EITC and progressive labor income taxes calibrated to the U.S. economy.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"93 1","pages":"265-301"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143111194","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 : 2025-02-03DOI: 10.3982/ECTA931EDS
{"title":"The Econometric Society Annual Reports Report of the Editors 2023–2024","authors":"","doi":"10.3982/ECTA931EDS","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA931EDS","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"93 1","pages":"333-338"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143111396","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 : 2024-11-21DOI: 10.3982/ECTA22017
Philipp Strack, Kai Hao Yang
{"title":"Privacy-Preserving Signals","authors":"Philipp Strack, Kai Hao Yang","doi":"10.3982/ECTA22017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA22017","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A signal is <i>privacy-preserving</i> with respect to a collection of <i>privacy sets</i> if the posterior probability assigned to every privacy set remains unchanged conditional on any signal realization. We characterize the privacy-preserving signals for arbitrary state space and arbitrary privacy sets. A signal is privacy-preserving if and only if it is a garbling of a <i>reordered quantile signal</i>. Furthermore, distributions of posterior means induced by privacy-preserving signals are exactly mean-preserving contractions of that induced by the <i>quantile signal</i>. We discuss the economic implications of our characterization for statistical discrimination, the revelation of sensitive information in auctions and price discrimination.</p>","PeriodicalId":50556,"journal":{"name":"Econometrica","volume":"92 6","pages":"1907-1938"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142685352","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}