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No Free Lunch? Welfare Analysis of Firms Selling Through Expert Intermediaries

Matthew Grennan, Kyle R. Myers, Ashley Swanson, and Aaron Chatterji

We study how firms target and influence expert intermediaries. In our context, pharmaceutical manufacturers provide payments to physicians during promotional interactions. We develop an identification strategy based on plausibly exogenous variation in payments driven by differential exposure to spillovers from academic medical centers’ conflict-of-interest policies. Using a case study of an important class of cardiovascular drugs, we estimate heterogeneous effects of payments on prescribing, with firms targeting highly responsive physicians.

Regulating Carry Trades: Evidence from Foreign Currency Borrowing of Corporations in India

Viral V. Acharya and Siddharth Vij

We establish that macroprudential controls limiting capital flows can curb risks arising from foreign currency borrowing by corporates in emerging markets. Firm-level data show that Indian firms tend to issue more foreign currency debt when the interest rate differential between India and the United States is higher. This “carry trade” relationship, however, breaks down once regulators institute more stringent interest rate caps on borrowing; in response, riskier borrowers cut issuance most.

Identifying Network Ties from Panel Data: Theory and an Application to Tax Competition

Áureo de Paula, Imran Rasul, and Pedro Souza

Social interactions determine many economic behaviors, but information on social ties does not exist in most publicly available and widely used datasets. We present results on the identification of social networks from observational panel data that contains no information on social ties between agents. In the context of a canonical social interactions model, we provide sufficient conditions under which the social interactions matrix, endogenous and exogenous social effect parameters are globally identified if networks are constant over time. We also provide an extension of the method for time-varying networks.

What Drives Demand for State-Run Lotteries? Evidence and Welfare Implications

Benjamin B. Lockwood, Hunt Allcott, Dmitry Taubinsky, and Afras Sial

We use natural experiments embedded in state-run lotteries and a new nationally representative survey to provide reduced-form and structural estimates of risk preferences and behavioral biases in lottery demand, and to explore the implications for optimal lottery design. We find that sales respond more to the expected value of the jackpot than to price but are unresponsive to variation in the second prize—a pattern that is consistent with probability weighting but is inconsistent with standard parameterizations.

Gender Preferences in Job Vacancies and Workplace Gender Diversity

David Card, Fabrizio Colella, and Rafael Lalive

In spring 2005, the Ombud for Equal Treatment in Austria launched a campaign notifying employers and newspapers that gender preferences in job ads were illegal. At the time over 40% of vacancies on the nation’s largest job board stated a gender preference; within a year the rate fell below 5%. We merge job board vacancies and employer records to study how the campaign affected hiring choices and the gender diversity of occupations and workplaces. Using pre-campaign data, we predict the use of gender preferences, then conduct a difference-in-differences analysis of hiring outcomes for vacancies with predicted male or female preferences, relative to those with no predicted preferences.

On the Economic Origins of Concerns over Women’s Chastity

Anke Becker

This paper studies the origins and function of customs and norms that intend to keep women from being promiscuous. Using large-scale survey data from more than 100 countries, I test the anthropological theory that a particular form of preindustrial subsistence – pastoralism – favored the adoption of such customs and norms. Pastoralism was characterized by frequent and often extended periods of male absence from the settlement, implying difficulties in monitoring women’s behavior and larger incentives to imposing restrictions on women’s promiscuity. The paper shows that women from historically more pastoral societies (i) are subject to stronger anti-abortion attitudes; (ii) are more likely to have undergone infibulation, the most invasive form of female genital cutting; (iii) are more restricted in their freedom of mobility; and (iv) adhere to more restrictive norms about women’s promiscuity.

How Do Digital Advertising Auctions Impact Product Prices?

Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, and Nicholas Wu

We present a model of digital advertising with three key features: (i) advertisers can reach consumers on and off a platform, (ii) additional data enhances the value of advertiser-consumer matches, and (iii) the allocation of advertisements follows an auction-like mechanism. We contrast data-augmented auctions, which leverage the platform’s data advantage to improve match quality, with managed-campaign mechanisms that automate match formation and price-setting.

The Lifetime Costs of Bad Health

Mariacristina De Nardi, Svetlana Pashchenko, and Ponpoje Porapakkarm

What generates the observed differences in economic outcomes by health? How costly it is to be unhealthy? We show that health dynamics are largely driven by ex-ante fixed heterogeneity, or health types, even when controlling for one’s past health history. In fact, health types are the key driver of long spells of bad health. We incorporate these rich health dynamics in an estimated structural model and show that health types and their correlation with other fixed characteristics are important to account for the observed gap in economic outcomes by health.

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We are pleased to introduce Niels Gormsen (@NielsGormsen), Copenhagen Business School & University of Chicago, as a new member of the Editorial Board of REStud. His outstanding expertise will help us continue to publish pioneering economic research.
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Welcome aboard! Jose Vasquez (@jpvasq), London School of Economics, has joined the Editorial Board of The Review of Economic Studies. We are grateful to have his expertise supporting our mission.
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We are thrilled to announce that Ro’ee Levy (@RoeeLevyZ), Tel Aviv University School of Economics, is joining the Editorial Board of The Review of Economic Studies. We look forward to his valuable contributions to the journal’s future.
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Exciting news: Dávid Nagy, CREI, has joined the Editorial Board of The Review of Economic Studies. His deep knowledge will help guide the journal’s editorial process.
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