Economic Journal最新文献

We experimentally study the effect of auction format (sealed-bid versus closed clock versus open clock) and auction sequence (simultaneous versus sequential) on bidding behaviour and auction outcomes in auctions of multiple related multi-unit items. Prominent field applications are the sale of emission permits, fishing rights, and electricity. We find that, when auctioning simultaneously, clock auctions outperform sealed-bid auctions in terms of efficiency and revenues. This advantage disappears when the items are auctioned sequentially. In addition, auctioning sequentially has positive effects on total revenues across all auction formats, resulting from fiercer competition on the item auctioned first.

We explore whether differences in intergenerational income mobility between the UK and Sweden show up early in life, finding stronger associations between parental income and birthweight, height and school performance in the UK. We investigate whether these differentials can account for the country difference in income mobility. While differences in the associations in birthweight and height are too weak to matter, school performance does account for a substantial part of this difference. However, country differences in the earnings returns to these skills are at least as important as the differences in the link between parental income and skills.

We exploit close elections in Swedish municipalities to test whether relatives of politicians who become mayors obtain economic benefits. We find no benefits for the siblings of new mayors, but the average earnings of children of newly appointed mayors rise by about 15%. Administrative information on occupational and residence status show that the higher earnings are unlikely reflect an illegitimate allocation of jobs. But the evidence suggests that children of election-winning mayors are more likely to postpone tertiary education and remain in their parents' municipality to work.

We present an auction design to be used in the area of procurement that allows the length of the regulatory funding period to be determined via an auction. It allows bidders to submit bids against a payment for periods of varying lengths, say 25 and 30 years, instead of a fixed 20-year contract. This can be desirable for securing more favourable terms in financial markets. It yields efficiency and delivers the optimal length of contract, defined as where social value is maximised. The auction is applicable to any infrastructure investment such as energy, transportation or any area that uses contracts.

The sciences are in an era of an alleged ‘credibility crisis’. In this study, we discuss the reproducibility of empirical results, focusing on economics research. By combining theory and empirical evidence, we discuss the import of replication studies and whether they improve our confidence in novel findings. The theory sheds light on the importance of replications, even when replications are subject to bias. We then present a pilot meta-study of replication in experimental economics, a subfield serving as a positive benchmark for investigating the credibility of economics. Our meta-study highlights certain difficulties when applying meta-research to systematise the economics literature.

We document that households in the UK with extremely low measured income tend to spend much more than those with merely moderately low income. This phenomenon is evident throughout three decades worth of microdata and across different employment states, levels of education and marital statuses. Of the likely explanations, we provide several arguments that discount over-reporting of expenditure and argue that under-reporting of income plays the major role. In particular, by using a dynamic model of consumption and saving, and paying special attention to poverty dynamics, we show that consumption smoothing cannot explain all the apparent dissaving.

We investigate two critical dimensions of the credibility of empirical economics research: statistical power and bias. We survey 159 empirical economics literatures that draw upon 64,076 estimates of economic parameters reported in more than 6,700 empirical studies. Half of the research areas have nearly 90% of their results under-powered. The median statistical power is 18%, or less. A simple weighted average of those reported results that are adequately powered (power ≥ 80%) reveals that nearly 80% of the reported effects in these empirical economics literatures are exaggerated; typically, by a factor of two and with one-third inflated by a factor of four or more.

This article investigates how risk attitudes change over the life course. We study the age trajectory of risk attitudes all the way from early adulthood until old age, in large representative panel data sets from the Netherlands and Germany. Age patterns are generally difficult to identify separately from cohort or calendar period effects. We achieve identification by replacing calendar period indicators with controls for the specific underlying factors that may change risk attitudes across periods. The main result is that willingness to take risks decreases over the life course, linearly until approximately age 65 after which the slope becomes flatter.

This experiment compares the price dynamics and bubble formation in an asset market with a price adjustment rule in three treatments where subjects: (1) submit a price forecast only; (2) choose quantity to buy/sell and (3) perform both tasks. We find deviation of the market price from the fundamental price in all treatments, but to a larger degree in treatments (2) and (3). Mispricing is therefore a robust finding in markets with positive expectation feedback. Some very large, recurring bubbles arise, where the price is three times larger than the fundamental value, which were not seen in former experiments.

This article focuses on political dynasties’ potential consequences, and particularly investigates whether and when they lead to the selection of dynastic politicians with relatively lower education levels. I exploit the different electoral constraints faced by distinct subsets of Italian local politicians to identify whether weaker constraints on political selection processes induce the selection of dynastic politicians with lower education levels relative to their non-dynastic peers. The analysis – which covers almost 540,000 Italian local politicians active during the period 1985–2012 – indicates that a political selection process controlled by politicians rather than the electorate favours dynastic individuals with relatively lower levels of education.