Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> There is widespread dissatisfaction with existing antitrust enforcement. The European Union has enacted comprehensive legislation to address perceived antitrust limitations, and several proposals to amend US antitrust laws have followed its lead. Most of the actual and proposed laws target firms that dominate the digital economy, while others have measures to tighten antitrust enforcement more generally. Market power has increased in the United States and most advanced economies, but it has not been uniformly associated with higher prices or lower productivity. Nonetheless, antitrust reforms can benefit consumers and address concerns about the concentration and exercise of economic power. In the United States, legislation would be desirable to amend rulings that are excessively deferential to antitrust defendants. However, most enacted and proposed reforms include prohibitions or obligations that depart from traditional antitrust principles and create potential risks for consumer welfare. </jats:p><jats:p> Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 15 is August 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Growing interest in the role of business entities in addressing social problems highlights the potential of social enterprises—organizations that cover all or most of their costs through revenue-generating business and have an objective to address a societal problem. A social enterprise can be an efficient and effective way to create social value by internalizing externalities, exploiting complementarities with commercial activities, providing better prices or quality to disadvantaged customers, and reducing the need for scarce philanthropic support. The challenges of managing an organization for financial success and social impact may limit their potential. Social enterprises can be for-profit or nonprofit organizations. The legal and institutional structure of for-profit and nonprofit governance and financing makes it challenging for a social entrepreneur to find a business model and organization structure to succeed. </jats:p><jats:p> Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 15 is August 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The COVID-19 crisis was a stress test for unemployment insurance schemes as it involved a sudden and unexpected shutdown of a very large set of activities. This forced countries to introduce, often from scratch, income support schemes for workers under new forms of employment and for the self-employed. There was also a considerable expansion of short-time work schemes. As we move past this crisis, labor markets are likely to be characterized by substantial labor reallocation, and major innovations in labor market policy will be required to smooth consumption of workers involved in this reallocation. We survey the large body of research on schemes complementary to unemployment insurance to reduce the costs of reallocation. We focus on short-time work, partial unemployment insurance, and wage insurance and compare their properties to those of standard unemployment benefits. Next we present the main empirical results on the effects of wage insurance, partial unemployment insurance, and short-time work. In the final section we discuss directions for further research. </jats:p><jats:p> Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 15 is August 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Big data is changing every corner of economics and finance. The largest firms in the US economy are valued chiefly for their data. Yet, these data are largely excluded from macroeconomic and finance research. We review work and relevant tools for measuring economic activity, market power, data markets, and the role of data in financial markets. We also highlight areas where future work is needed. </jats:p><jats:p> Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 15 is August 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. </jats:p>

<jats:p> In this article we survey recent advances in the economic theory of cultural transmission. We highlight three main themes on which the literature has made great progress in the last 10 years: the domain of traits subject to cultural transmission; the microfoundations for the technology of transmission; and feedback effects between culture, institutions, and various socioeconomic environments. We conclude by suggesting interesting areas for future research. </jats:p><jats:p> Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 15 is August 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. </jats:p>

<jats:p>We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long nineteenth century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. States deployed a vast variety of different policies aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at fostering industrialization. A thin but growing literature has started to evaluate the economic effects of these policies, but many questions remain open for study.</jats:p>

<jats:p>High-income countries have generally experienced falling fertility in recent decades. In most of these countries, the total fertility rate is now below the level that implies a stable population in the long run. This has led to concerns among economists, policymakers, and the wider public about the economic consequences of low fertility and population decline. In this contribution, we aim to (<jats:italic>a</jats:italic>) describe the main determinants of low fertility in high-income countries, (<jats:italic>b</jats:italic>) assess its potential economic consequences, (<jats:italic>c</jats:italic>) discuss adjustment mechanisms for individuals and economies, (<jats:italic>d</jats:italic>) propose a simple economic framework to analyze the long-run economic impact of low fertility, and (<jats:italic>e</jats:italic>) draw lessons for economic policymakers to react appropriately. While the economic challenges of low fertility are substantial, a thoughtful and consistent policy response can mitigate most of the adverse consequences.</jats:p>

<jats:p>This article reviews the literature on automation and its impact on labor markets, wages, factor shares, and productivity. I first introduce the task model and explain why this framework offers a compelling way to think about recent labor market trends and the effects of automation technologies. The task model clarifies that automation technologies operate by substituting capital for labor in a widening range of tasks. This substitution reduces costs, creating a positive productivity effect, but it also reduces employment opportunities for workers displaced from automated tasks, creating a negative displacement effect. I survey the empirical literature and conclude that there is wide qualitative support for the implications of task models and the displacement effects of automation. I conclude by discussing shortcomings of the existing literature and avenues for future research.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Institutions are a key determinant of economic growth, but the critical junctures in which institutions can change are not precisely defined. For example, such junctures are often identified ex post, raising several methodological problems: a selection on the outcome of institutional change; an inability to study beliefs, which are central to coordination and thus the process of institutional change; and an inability to conduct experiments to identify causal effects. We argue that critical junctures are identifiable in real time as moments of deep uncertainty about future institutions. Consistent with this conception, the papers reviewed (<jats:italic>a</jats:italic>) examine changes to institutions, i.e., the fundamental rules of the game; (<jats:italic>b</jats:italic>) are real-time studies of plausible critical junctures; and (<jats:italic>c</jats:italic>) use field experiments to achieve causal identification. We also advocate for more systematic measurement of beliefs about future institutions to identify critical junctures as they happen and provide an empirical proof of concept. Such work is urgent given contemporary critical junctures arising from democratic backsliding, state fragility, climate change, and conflicts over the rights of the marginalized.</jats:p>

<jats:p>We survey the weak instrumental variables (IV) literature with the aim of giving simple advice to applied researchers. This literature focuses heavily on the problem of size inflation in two-stage least squares (2SLS) two-tailed <jats:italic>t</jats:italic>-tests that arises if instruments are weak. A common standard for acceptable instrument strength is a first-stage <jats:italic>F</jats:italic> of 10, which renders this size inflation modest. However, 2SLS suffers from other important problems that exist at much higher levels of instrument strength. In particular, 2SLS standard errors tend to be artificially small in samples where the 2SLS estimate is close to ordinary least squares (OLS). This power asymmetry means the <jats:italic>t</jats:italic>-test has inflated power to detect false positive effects when the OLS bias is positive. The Anderson-Rubin (AR) test avoids this problem and should be used in lieu of the <jats:italic>t</jats:italic>-test even with strong instruments. We illustrate the practical importance of this issue in IV papers published in the <jats:italic>American Economic Review</jats:italic> from 2011 to 2023. Use of the AR test often reverses <jats:italic>t</jats:italic>-test results. In particular, IV estimates that are close to OLS and significant according to the <jats:italic>t</jats:italic>-test are often insignificant according to AR. We also show that for first-stage <jats:italic>F</jats:italic> in the 10–20 range there is a high probability that OLS estimates will be closer to the truth than 2SLS. Hence we advocate a higher standard of instrument strength in applied work.</jats:p>