Pre-production Papers

An increase in uncertainty is not contractionary per se. What is contractionary is a widening of the left tail of the GDP growth forecast distribution, the downside uncertainty. On the contrary, an increase of the right tail, the upside uncertainty, is mildly expansionary.

We estimate the effects of health information technology designed to improve access to medication while limiting overuse through easier prescription renewal and improved information provision. We focus on benzodiazepines, a commonly prescribed class of mental health and insomnia medications, which are highly effective but potentially addictive. We study the staggered rollout of a nationwide electronic prescribing system over four years in Finland and use population-wide, individual-level administrative data sets.

This paper analyzes how changes in the concentration of political power affect long-run development. We study Brazil’s military dictatorship whose rise to power dramatically altered the distribution of power of local political elites. We document that municipalities that were more politically concentrated prior to the dictatorship in the 1960s are relatively richer in 2000, despite being poorer initially.

We consider the canonical trade model with heterogeneous firms, love for variety and trade costs, and integrate it in the consumption CAPM model. This yields a structural gravity equation that includes an additional factor related to risk premia. Empirical evidence based on firm-level data confirms the importance of cross-sectional heterogeneity in risk and time-varying risk premia to shape bilateral trade flows.

Policymakers’ imperfect knowledge about firms’ abatement costs leads to inefficient regulation, reducing the welfare gains from carbon markets around the world. We introduce a “smart” cap and trade system that eliminates these costs. This cap responds endogenously to technology or macroeconomic shocks, relying on the market price of certificates to aggregate information.

Fertility becomes a strategic choice for minorities when having a larger share of the population helps to increase power. If parents invest resources to educate their children, raising fertility for strategic reasons might be at the cost of future human capital. We dispel this view using census data from several developing countries. We show that religious and ethnic minorities in Indonesia, China and Malaysia tend to invest more in both education and fertility compared to larger groups.

This paper investigates whether NGO-provided basic healthcare crowds out or crowds in similar services provided by the government in rural Uganda. We find that NGO entry reduces the number of government workers, which leads to a reduction in government-provided health services.

I examine the macroeconomic effects of two EU regional structural funds. The European regional development fund (ERDF) has positive short term average consequences, but gains typically dissipate within three years. The European Social Fund (ESF) has insignificant average short term effects, but the medium term effect is positive and economically important.

This paper examines the comparative properties of voting rules based on the richness of their ballot spaces, assuming a given distribution of voting rights. We focus on how well voting rules aggregate the information dispersed among voters. We consider how different voting rules affect both voters’ decisions at the voting stage and the incentives of the agenda-setter who decides whether to put the proposal to a vote.

This paper estimates the welfare effects of TV advertising regulation. I develop a structural model of demand and supply in which both the broadcast content and the amount of advertising are endogenously determined. My results suggest that more varied content, and, in particular, more educational content, can be offered in a laissez-faire equilibrium.