AbstractWe investigate the impact of peer interaction on the quality of financial decision making in a laboratory experiment. Face-to-face communication with a randomly assigned peer significantly improves the quality of subsequent private decisions ev…
AbstractWe estimate the impact of firm-level automation on individual worker outcomes by combining Dutch microdata with a direct measure of automation expenditures covering all private nonfinancial sector firms. Using a novel difference-in-differences …
AbstractFirms’ success in international markets depends on their product’s quality, prices, markups, and marginal cost. However, causally identified empirical evidence for the effect of trade policies that address nontariff barriers on these mechanisms…
AbstractWe examine the impact of government funding for R&D—and defense-related R&D in particular—on privately conducted R&D and its ultimate effect on productivity growth. We estimate longitudinal models that relate privately funded R&…
AbstractThis paper analyzes gender differences in working patterns and wages on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a popular online labor platform. Using information on 2 million tasks, we find no gender differences in task selection nor experience. Nonetheless, …
AbstractWe analyze the impact of Covid-19 on productivity using data from an innovative monthly firm survey that asks for quantitative impacts of Covid-19 on inputs and outputs. We find that total factor productivity (TFP) fell by up to 6% during 2020–…
AbstractExport promotion at the extensive margin is a key concern of governments. We develop measures of how far firms in origin sectors are from break-even entry in destination markets. The measure is based on Almost Ideal gravity featuring heterogene…
AbstractParticipation payments are used in many transactions about which people know little but can learn more: incentives for medical trial participation, signing bonuses for job applicants, or price rebates on consumer durables. Who opts into the tra…
AbstractUsing over 11,000 unlicensed loans to over 1,000 borrowers in Singapore, we provide basic information about an understudied market: illegal moneylending. Borrowers and lenders interact frequently and rely primarily on relational contracts to en…
AbstractWe study Medicare’s competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment. We use Medicare claims data to examine the effect on prices and utilization, focusing on continuous positive airway pressure devices for sleep apnea. We find that sp…