Economics

Epigenetics is the study of how people's behavior and environments influence the way their genes are expressed, even though their DNA sequence is itself unchanged. By aggregating age-related epigenetic markers, epigenetic 'clocks' have…

AI systems have the potential to improve decision-making, but decision makers face the risk that the AI may be misaligned with their objectives. We study this problem in the context of a treatment decision, where a designer decides which…

We propose a framework that uses majorization to model diversity and representativeness in school admissions. We generalize the standard notion of majorization to accommodate arbitrary distributional targets, such as a student body that…

Reforming alcohol price regulations in wine-producing countries is challenging, as current price regulations reflect the alignment of cultural preferences with economic interests rather than public health concerns. We evaluate and compare…

We study how a platform should design early exposure and rewards when creators strategically choose quality before release. A short testing window with a pass/fail bar induces a pass probability, the slope of which is the key sufficient…

This paper examines the identification and estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects in event studies, emphasizing the importance of both lagged dependent variables and treatment effect heterogeneity. We show that omitting lagged…

This paper studies the spillovers of European Central Bank (ECB) interest rate shocks into the Canadian economy and compares them with those of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed). We combine a VAR model and local projection regressions with…

This paper investigates the properties of the Generalized Covariance (GCov) estimator under misspecification and constraints with application to processes with local explosive patterns, such as causal-noncausal and double autoregressive…

Since McCallum (1987), it is well known that in an overlapping generations (OLG) economy with land, the equilibrium is Pareto efficient because with balanced growth, the interest rate exceeds the economic growth rate ($R>G$), which rules…

The "free trial" followed by automatic renewal is a dominant business model in the digital economy. Standard models explain trials as a mechanism for consumers to learn their valuation for a product. We propose a complementary theory based…

Many real matching markets encounter distributional and fairness constraints. Motivated by the Chinese Major Transition Program (CMT), this paper studies the design of exchange mechanisms within a fresh framework of both distributional and…

This paper proposes a novel approach for semiparametric inference on the number $s$ of common trends and their loading matrix $\psi$ in $I(1)/I(0)$ systems. It combines functional approximation of limits of random walks and canonical…

How can we extract theoretical insights from machine learning algorithms? We take a familiar lesson: researchers often turn their intuitions into theoretical insights by constructing "anomalies" -- specific examples highlighting…

Treatment effect heterogeneity is of a great concern when evaluating policy impact: "is the treatment Pareto-improving?", "what is the proportion of people who are better off under the treatment?", etc. However, even in the simple case of a…

Hjort and Poulsen (2019) frames the staggered arrival of submarine Internet cables on the shores of Africa circa 2010 as a difference-in-differences natural experiment. The paper finds positive impacts of broadband on individual- and…

This paper aims to explore the impact of tournament design on the incentives of the contestants. We develop a simulation framework to quantify the potential gain and loss from attacking based on changes in the probability of reaching the…

This paper discusses identification, estimation, and inference on dynamic local average treatment effects (LATEs) in instrumental variables (IVs) settings. First, we show that compliers--observations whose treatment status is affected by…

Many policy evaluations using instrumental variable (IV) methods include individuals who interact with each other, potentially violating the standard IV assumptions. This paper defines and partially identifies direct and spillover effects…

We study a noncooperative $n$-player game of slack allocation in which each player $j$ has entitlement $L_j>0$ and chooses a claim $C_j\ge0$. Let $v_j=(C_j-L_j)_+$ (overage) and $s_j=(L_j-C_j)_+$ (slack); set $X=\sum_j v_j$ and $I=\sum_j…

A principal contracts with an agent who sequentially searches over projects to generate a prize. The principal initially knows only one of the agent's available projects and evaluates a contract by its worst-case performance. We…