Social Positions and Fairness Views on Inequality 5 January 2023 Kristoffer B. Hvidberg, Claus T. Kreiner, and Stefanie StantchevaWe link survey data on Danish people’s perceived income positions and fairness views on inequality within various reference groups to administrative records on their reference groups, income histories, and life events. People are, on average, well-informed about the income levels of their reference groups.
A More Credible Approach to Parallel Trends 5 January 2023 Ashesh Rambachan and Jonathan RothThis paper proposes tools for robust inference in difference-in-differences and event- study designs where the parallel trends assumption may be violated.
Bond Premium Cyclicality and Liquidity Traps 4 January 2023 Nicolas Caramp and Sanjay R. SinghSafe asset shortages can expose an economy to liquidity traps. The nature of these traps is determined by the cyclicality of the bond premium. A counter-cyclical bond premium opens the possibility of expectations-driven liquidity traps in which small issuances of government debt crowd out private debt and reduce output.
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.
