Working Papers

This paper presents a new approach to modeling transitional dynamics in dynamic models of imperfect competition, a crucial yet often neglected aspect of empirical models in industrial organization that seek to understand market responses to…

Since the 19th century, political reformers have proposed broadening civic and corporate governance by allowing voters to delegate to any other voter — sometimes known as liquid democracy. Today, systems like liquid democracy have become an…

One thread of empirical work in social science focuses on decomposing group differences in outcomes into unexplained components and components explained by observable factors. In this paper, we study gender wage decompositions, which require…

We develop a theoretical and empirical framework to estimate bank franchise value. In contrast to regulatory guidance and some existing models, we show that sticky deposits combined with low deposit rate betas do not imply a negative duration for…

Recent decades have seen major changes to the local media environment in the United States, with the absorption of many formerly independent local TV stations into conglomerates. Using a comprehensive dataset of acquisitions, we examine the…

Manual code reviews are an essential but time-consuming part of software development, often leading reviewers to prioritize technical issues while skipping valuable assessments. This paper presents an algorithmic model that automates aspects of…

The rise of marketplaces for goods and services has led to changes in the mechanisms used to ensure high quality. We analyze this phenomenon in the Uber market, where the system of pre-screening that prevailed in the taxi industry has been…

U.S. partnerships control more than $40 trillion in assets, vastly outnumber U.S. public firms, and contribute significantly to the U.S. tax non-compliance of pass-through entities, which is larger than the non-compliance of publicly traded…

Companies in various industries are under growing pressure to assess the costs of decarbonizing their operations. This paper develops a generic abatement cost concept to identify the cost-efficient combination of technological and operational…

The CBO cost releases of legislative proposals contain valuable news about surpluses priced in by Treasury investors. Using daily event windows, we find that cost releases with large negative cash flows lowered Treasury valuations by more than 20…

The rapidly growing number of lithium-ion battery packs deployed in electric vehicles (EVs) entails enormous economic potential for used EV batteries to be redeployed in a second life application, e.g., for behind-the-meter stationary energy…

Unfunded fiscal shocks are a significant source of risk premia in Treasury markets when central banks and governments decide to insulate taxpayers and expose bondholders’ wealth to government funding needs. We illustrate this bond risk premium…

The growing popularity of generative AI tools presents new challenges for data quality in online surveys and experiments. This study examines participants’ use of large language models to answer open-ended survey questions and describes empirical…

Governments and central banks can protect either taxpayers or bondholders from government spending shocks. When they choose to insulate taxpayers, government bond yields need to increase in response to unfunded fiscal expansions as the government…

We study how international agreements can take advantage of domestic time-inconsistency problems in the context of environmental policies. For example, policymakers will prefer future policies to be sustainable, but find it tempting to raise…

Why are there few debates in low-information elections where they have the greatest potential to inform vote choices? Consistent with weak incentives to reveal qualifications or make policy commitments, we find only a quarter of Parliamentary…

Has the United States economy become less competitive in recent decades? One might think so based on a body of research that has rapidly become influential for antitrust policy. We explain that the empirical evidence relating to concentration…

Using rich data on hourly physical productivity and thousands of ownership changes from U.S. power plants, we study the effects of acquisitions on efficiency and underlying mechanisms. We find a 2% average increase in efficiency for acquired…

We develop a theoretical model and conduct field experiments to distinguish the impact of identity on shaping beliefs from its direct effect on preferences in individual investment choices. Our model suggests that identity distorts individuals’…

We study the tax payment and innovation consequences of limiting the tax deductibility of research and development (“R&D”) expenditures. Beginning in 2022, U.S. companies are required to capitalize and amortize R&D rather than immediately…