Pub Date : 2018-08-01Epub Date: 2018-01-17DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjy001
Isaac Sorkin
This article estimates workers' preferences for firms by studying the structure of employer-to-employer transitions in U.S. administrative data. The article uses a tool from numerical linear algebra to measure the central tendency of worker flows, which is closely related to the ranking of firms revealed by workers' choices. There is evidence for compensating differentials when workers systematically move to lower-paying firms in a way that cannot be accounted for by layoffs or differences in recruiting intensity. The estimates suggest that compensating differentials account for over half of the firm component of the variance of earnings.
{"title":"RANKING FIRMS USING REVEALED PREFERENCE.","authors":"Isaac Sorkin","doi":"10.1093/qje/qjy001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article estimates workers' preferences for firms by studying the structure of employer-to-employer transitions in U.S. administrative data. The article uses a tool from numerical linear algebra to measure the central tendency of worker flows, which is closely related to the ranking of firms revealed by workers' choices. There is evidence for compensating differentials when workers systematically move to lower-paying firms in a way that cannot be accounted for by layoffs or differences in recruiting intensity. The estimates suggest that compensating differentials account for over half of the firm component of the variance of earnings.</p>","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"133 3","pages":"1331-1393"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2018-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/qje/qjy001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36370904","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}
This article studies how a recommender system may incentivize users to learn about a product collaboratively. To improve the incentives for early exploration, the optimal design trades off fully transparent disclosure by selectively overrecommending the product (or “spamming”) to a fraction of users. Under the optimal scheme, the designer spams very little on a product immediately after its release but gradually increases its frequency; she stops it altogether when she becomes sufficiently pessimistic about the product. The recommender’s product research and intrinsic/naive users “seed” incentives for user exploration and determine the speed and trajectory of social learning. Potential applications for various Internet recommendation platforms and implications for review/ratings inflation are discussed.
{"title":"Recommender Systems as Mechanisms for Social Learning","authors":"Yeon-Koo Che, Johannes Hörner","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJX044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJX044","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies how a recommender system may incentivize users to learn about a product collaboratively. To improve the incentives for early exploration, the optimal design trades off fully transparent disclosure by selectively overrecommending the product (or “spamming”) to a fraction of users. Under the optimal scheme, the designer spams very little on a product immediately after its release but gradually increases its frequency; she stops it altogether when she becomes sufficiently pessimistic about the product. The recommender’s product research and intrinsic/naive users “seed” incentives for user exploration and determine the speed and trajectory of social learning. Potential applications for various Internet recommendation platforms and implications for review/ratings inflation are discussed.","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"5 2","pages":"871-925"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJX044","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41289395","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}
This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with macroeconomic growth. We estimate the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income, making it possible to provide a comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects inequality. Average pre-tax national income per adult has increased 60% since 1980, but we find that it has stagnated for the bottom 50% of the distribution at about $16,000 a year. The pre-tax income of the middle class—adults between the median and the 90th percentile—has grown 40% since 1980, faster than what tax and survey data suggest, due in particular to the rise of tax-exempt fringe benefits. Income has boomed at the top: in 1980, top 1% adults earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% adults, while they earn 81 times more today. The upsurge of top incomes was first a labor income phenomenon but has mostly been a capital income phenomenon since 2000. The government has offset only a small fraction of the increase in inequality. The reduction of the gender gap in earnings has mitigated the increase in inequality among adults. The share of women, however, falls steeply as one moves up the labor income distribution, and is only 11% in the top 0.1% today.
{"title":"Distributional,National,Accounts: Methods,and,Estimates,for,the,United,States","authors":"T. Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, G. Zucman","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJX043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJX043","url":null,"abstract":"This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with macroeconomic growth. We estimate the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income, making it possible to provide a comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects inequality. Average pre-tax national income per adult has increased 60% since 1980, but we find that it has stagnated for the bottom 50% of the distribution at about $16,000 a year. The pre-tax income of the middle class—adults between the median and the 90th percentile—has grown 40% since 1980, faster than what tax and survey data suggest, due in particular to the rise of tax-exempt fringe benefits. Income has boomed at the top: in 1980, top 1% adults earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% adults, while they earn 81 times more today. The upsurge of top incomes was first a labor income phenomenon but has mostly been a capital income phenomenon since 2000. The government has offset only a small fraction of the increase in inequality. The reduction of the gender gap in earnings has mitigated the increase in inequality among adults. The share of women, however, falls steeply as one moves up the labor income distribution, and is only 11% in the top 0.1% today.","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"133 1","pages":"553-609"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJX043","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47820339","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}
Pub Date : 2018-02-01Epub Date: 2017-08-26DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjx035
Matthew Wiswall, Basit Zafar
We use a hypothetical choice methodology to estimate preferences for workplace attributes from a sample of high-ability undergraduates attending a highly selective university. We estimate that women on average have a higher willingness to pay (WTP) for jobs with greater work flexibility and job stability, and men have a higher WTP for jobs with higher earnings growth. These job preferences relate to college major choices and to actual job choices reported in a follow-up survey four years after graduation. The gender differences in preferences explain at least a quarter of the early career gender wage gap.
{"title":"PREFERENCE FOR THE WORKPLACE, INVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL, AND GENDER.","authors":"Matthew Wiswall, Basit Zafar","doi":"10.1093/qje/qjx035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We use a hypothetical choice methodology to estimate preferences for workplace attributes from a sample of high-ability undergraduates attending a highly selective university. We estimate that women on average have a higher willingness to pay (WTP) for jobs with greater work flexibility and job stability, and men have a higher WTP for jobs with higher earnings growth. These job preferences relate to college major choices and to actual job choices reported in a follow-up survey four years after graduation. The gender differences in preferences explain at least a quarter of the early career gender wage gap.</p>","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"133 1","pages":"457-507"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2018-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/qje/qjx035","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36510812","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}
J. Angrist, Peter Hull, Parag A. Pathak, Christopher R. Walters
{"title":"Erratum to “Leveraging Lotteries for School Value-Added: Testing and Estimation”","authors":"J. Angrist, Peter Hull, Parag A. Pathak, Christopher R. Walters","doi":"10.1093/qje/qjx036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"132 1","pages":"2061-2062"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2017-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/qje/qjx036","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46437361","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}
{"title":"Erratum to “Field of Study, Earnings, and Self-Selection”","authors":"L. Kirkebøen, E. Leuven, M. Mogstad","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJX025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJX025","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"132 1","pages":"1551-1552"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2017-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJX025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46876122","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}
We develop a theory of legislative competition in which voters care about local candidate valence and national party positions that are determined by the parties’ median legislators. As long as election outcomes are sufficiently predictable, the only stable equilibria exhibit policy divergence between the parties. If the degree of uncertainty about election outcomes decreases, and if voters place less weight on local candidates’ valence, polarization between the parties increases. Furthermore, a systematic electoral shock makes the party favored by the shock more moderate, while the disadvantaged party becomes more extreme. Finally, we examine data on state elections and the ideological positions of state legislatures and find patterns that are consistent with key predictions of our model.
{"title":"Party Polarization in Legislatures with Office-Motivated Candidates","authors":"Mattias Polborn, J. Snyder","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJX012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJX012","url":null,"abstract":"We develop a theory of legislative competition in which voters care about local candidate valence and national party positions that are determined by the parties’ median legislators. As long as election outcomes are sufficiently predictable, the only stable equilibria exhibit policy divergence between the parties. If the degree of uncertainty about election outcomes decreases, and if voters place less weight on local candidates’ valence, polarization between the parties increases. Furthermore, a systematic electoral shock makes the party favored by the shock more moderate, while the disadvantaged party becomes more extreme. Finally, we examine data on state elections and the ideological positions of state legislatures and find patterns that are consistent with key predictions of our model.","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"132 1","pages":"1509-1550"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2017-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJX012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47520444","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}
Saurabh Bhargava, G. Loewenstein, Justin R. Sydnor
We examine the health plan choices that 23,894 employees at a U.S. firm made from a large menu of options that differed only in financial cost-sharing and premium. These decisions provide a clear test of the predictions of the standard economic model of insurance choice in the absence of choice frictions because plans were priced so that nearly every plan with a lower deductible was financially dominated by an otherwise identical plan with a high deductible. We document that the majority of employees chose dominated plans, which resulted in excess spending equivalent to 24% of chosen plan premiums. Low-income employees were significantly more likely to choose dominated plans, and most employees did not switch into more financially efficient plans in the subsequent year. We show that the choice of dominated plans cannot be rationalized by standard risk preference or any expectations about health risk. Testing alternative explanations with a series of hypothetical-choice experiments, we find that the popularity of dominated plans was not primarily driven by the size and complexity of the plan menu, nor informed preferences for avoiding high deductibles, but by employees’ lack of understanding of health insurance. Our findings challenge the standard practice of inferring risk preferences from insurance choices and raise doubts about the welfare benefits of health reforms that expand consumer choice.
{"title":"Choose to Lose: Health Plan Choices from a Menu with Dominated Option","authors":"Saurabh Bhargava, G. Loewenstein, Justin R. Sydnor","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJX011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJX011","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the health plan choices that 23,894 employees at a U.S. firm made from a large menu of options that differed only in financial cost-sharing and premium. These decisions provide a clear test of the predictions of the standard economic model of insurance choice in the absence of choice frictions because plans were priced so that nearly every plan with a lower deductible was financially dominated by an otherwise identical plan with a high deductible. We document that the majority of employees chose dominated plans, which resulted in excess spending equivalent to 24% of chosen plan premiums. Low-income employees were significantly more likely to choose dominated plans, and most employees did not switch into more financially efficient plans in the subsequent year. We show that the choice of dominated plans cannot be rationalized by standard risk preference or any expectations about health risk. Testing alternative explanations with a series of hypothetical-choice experiments, we find that the popularity of dominated plans was not primarily driven by the size and complexity of the plan menu, nor informed preferences for avoiding high deductibles, but by employees’ lack of understanding of health insurance. Our findings challenge the standard practice of inferring risk preferences from insurance choices and raise doubts about the welfare benefits of health reforms that expand consumer choice.","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"132 1","pages":"1319-1372"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2017-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJX011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45018713","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}
Tessa Bold, K. Kaizzi, J. Svensson, David Yanagizawa-Drott
To reduce poverty and food insecurity in Africa requires raising productivity in agriculture. Systematic use of fertilizer and hybrid seed is a pathway to increased productivity, but adoption of these technologies remains low. We investigate whether the quality of agricultural inputs can help explain low take-up. Testing modern products purchased in local markets, we find that 30% of nutrient is missing in fertilizer, and hybrid maize seed is estimated to contain less than 50% authentic seeds. We document that such low quality results in low average returns. If authentic technologies replaced these low-quality products, however, average returns are high. To rationalize the findings, we calibrate a learning model using data from our agricultural trials. Because agricultural yields are noisy, farmers’ ability to learn about quality is limited and this can help explain the low quality equilibrium we observe, but also why the market has not fully collapsed.
{"title":"Lemon technologies and adoption: measurement, theory and evidence from agricultural markets in Uganda","authors":"Tessa Bold, K. Kaizzi, J. Svensson, David Yanagizawa-Drott","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJX009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJX009","url":null,"abstract":"To reduce poverty and food insecurity in Africa requires raising productivity in agriculture. Systematic use of fertilizer and hybrid seed is a pathway to increased productivity, but adoption of these technologies remains low. We investigate whether the quality of agricultural inputs can help explain low take-up. Testing modern products purchased in local markets, we find that 30% of nutrient is missing in fertilizer, and hybrid maize seed is estimated to contain less than 50% authentic seeds. We document that such low quality results in low average returns. If authentic technologies replaced these low-quality products, however, average returns are high. To rationalize the findings, we calibrate a learning model using data from our agricultural trials. Because agricultural yields are noisy, farmers’ ability to learn about quality is limited and this can help explain the low quality equilibrium we observe, but also why the market has not fully collapsed.","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"132 1","pages":"1055-1100"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2017-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJX009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43813619","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}
A Ramsey planner chooses a distorting tax on labor and manages a portfolio of securities in an economy with incomplete markets. We develop a method that uses second order approximations of Ramsey policies to obtain formulas for conditional and unconditional moments of government debt and taxes that include means and variances of the invariant distribution as well as speeds of mean reversion. The asymptotic mean of the planner's portfolio minimizes a measure of fiscal risk. We obtain analytic expressions that approximate moments of the invariant distribution and apply them to data on a primary government deficit, aggregate consumption, and returns on traded securities. For U.S. data, we find that the optimal target debt level is negative but close to zero, the invariant distribution of debt is very dispersed, and mean reversion is slow.
{"title":"Fiscal Policy and Debt Management with Incomplete Markets","authors":"A. Bhandari, David Evans, M. Golosov, T. Sargent","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJW041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJW041","url":null,"abstract":"A Ramsey planner chooses a distorting tax on labor and manages a portfolio of securities in an economy with incomplete markets. We develop a method that uses second order approximations of Ramsey policies to obtain formulas for conditional and unconditional moments of government debt and taxes that include means and variances of the invariant distribution as well as speeds of mean reversion. The asymptotic mean of the planner's portfolio minimizes a measure of fiscal risk. We obtain analytic expressions that approximate moments of the invariant distribution and apply them to data on a primary government deficit, aggregate consumption, and returns on traded securities. For U.S. data, we find that the optimal target debt level is negative but close to zero, the invariant distribution of debt is very dispersed, and mean reversion is slow.","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":"132 1","pages":"617-663"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2017-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJW041","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45098956","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}
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