Testing the Production Approach to Markup Estimation 4 January 2023 Devesh RavalUnder the production approach to markup estimation, any flexible input should recover the markup. I test this implication using manufacturing datasets from Chile, Colombia, India, Indonesia, the US, and Southern Europe, as well as store-level data from a major US retailer, and overwhelmingly reject that markups estimated using labor and materials have the same distribution.
Board Members, Directors and Foreign Editors stepping down in 2022 31 December 2022 We thank Mike Elsby, Fabian Waldinger, Stephan Lauermann, Manuel Amador, Patrick Kline and Johannes Stroebel who stepped down from the Editorial Board. We welcome Daniel Gottlieb and Séverine Toussaert to join as Editorial Board Members from 1st January 2023. Congratulations to Swati Dhingra and Florian Scheuer on their appointment as Directors from January 2023.
A Welfare Analysis of Occupational Licensing in U.S. States 21 December 2022 Morris M. Kleiner and Evan J. SoltasWe assess the welfare consequences of occupational licensing for workers and consumers. We estimate a model of labor market equilibrium in which licensing restricts labor supply but also affects labor demand via worker quality and selection.
A Network Solution to Robust Implementation: the Case of Identical but Unknown Distributions 19 December 2022 Mariann Ollár and Antonio PentaWe study robust mechanism design in environments in which agents commonly believe that others’ types are identically distributed, but we do not assume that the actual distribution is common knowledge, nor that it is known to the designer.
More than a Penny’s Worth: Left-Digit Bias and Firm Pricing 13 December 2022 Avner Strulov-Shlain, University of Chicago, Booth School of BusinessFirms arguably price at 99-ending prices because of left-digit bias—the tendency of consumers to perceive a $4.99 as much lower than a $5.00. Analysis of retail scanner data on 3500 products sold by 25 US chains provides robust support for this explanation.
Unemployment Insurance in Macroeconomic Stabilization 12 December 2022 Rohan Kekre, Chicago Booth and NBERI study unemployment insurance (UI) in general equilibrium with incomplete markets, search frictions, and nominal rigidities.
Stratification Trees for Adaptive Randomization in Randomized Controlled Trials 12 December 2022 Max Tabord-Meehan, University of ChicagoThis paper proposes an adaptive randomization procedure for two-stage randomized controlled trials. The method uses data from a first-wave experiment in order to determine how to stratify in a second wave of the experiment, where the objective is to minimize the variance of an estimator for the average treatment effect (ATE).
Save, Spend or Give? A Model of Housing, Family Insurance, and Savings in Old Age 12 December 2022 Daniel Barczyk, Sean Fahle, and Matthias KredlerHow do housing and family shape the savings, spending, and inter-generational transfer behavior of the elderly?
