经济学顶刊Journal of Political Economy 2023年第2期

Journal of Political Economy 2023年第2期

Volume 131, Issue 2

——更多动态，请持续关注gzh：理想主义的百年孤独

Consumption and Income Inequality in the United States since the 1960s

20世纪60年代以来美国的消费与收入不平等
Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan

Recent research concludes that the rise in consumption inequality mirrors, or even exceeds, the rise in income inequality. We revisit this finding, constructing improved measures of consumption, focusing on its well-measured components that are reported at a high and stable rate relative to national accounts. While overall income inequality rose over the past 5 decades, the rise in overall consumption inequality was small. The declining quality of income data likely contributes to these differences for the bottom of the distribution. Asset price changes likely account for some of the differences in recent years for the top of the distribution.

最近的研究得出结论，消费不平等的加剧反映了，甚至超过了收入不平等的加剧。我们将重新审视这一发现，构建改进的消费衡量指标，重点关注相对于国民核算以高而稳定的比率报告的、测量良好的组成部分。尽管在过去50年里，总体收入不平等程度有所上升，但总体消费不平等程度的上升幅度很小。收入数据质量的下降可能导致了这些分布底层的差异。资产价格的变化可能是近年来分布顶部的一些差异的原因。

Getting Dynamic Implementation to Work

让动态实现工作
Yi-Chun Chen & Richard Holden & Takashi Kunimoto & Yifei Sun & Tom Wilkening

We develop a new class of two-stage mechanisms, which fully implement any social choice function under initial rationalizability in complete information environments. We show theoretically that our simultaneous report (SR) mechanisms are robust to small amounts of incomplete information about the state of nature. We also highlight the robustness of the mechanisms to a wide variety of reasoning processes and behavioral assumptions. We show experimentally that an SR mechanism performs well in inducing truth telling in both complete and incomplete information environments and that it can induce efficient investment in a two-sided holdup problem with ex ante investment.

我们开发了一类新的两阶段机制，在完全信息环境下，充分实现初始合理化下的任何社会选择功能。我们从理论上表明，我们的同步报告(SR)机制对有关自然状态的少量不完整信息是稳健的。我们还强调了该机制对各种各样的推理过程和行为假设的稳健性。实验表明，SR机制在完全信息环境和不完全信息环境中都能很好地诱导说实话，并能在具有事前投资的双边停滞问题中诱导有效投资。

 The Performance of School Assignment Mechanisms in Practice

学校指派机制在实践中的表现
Monique De Haan & Pieter A. Gautier & Hessel Oosterbeek & Bas van der Klaauw

We use a unique combination of register and survey data from Amsterdam to investigate the performance of school assignment mechanisms in practice. We find that deferred acceptance (DA) results in higher mean welfare than the adaptive Boston mechanism. This is due to students making strategic mistakes. The welfare gain of a switch from actual Boston to DA is over 90% of the welfare difference between actual Boston and optimal (proxy) Boston. Disadvantaged and lower-ability students would benefit most from such a switch.

我们使用阿姆斯特丹的注册和调查数据的独特组合来调查学校分配机制在实践中的表现。我们发现，延迟接受(DA)比适应性波士顿机制带来更高的平均福利。这是因为学生们犯了战略性错误。从实际波士顿到DA转换的福利收益超过了实际波士顿与最优(代理)波士顿之间福利差异的90%。弱势和能力较低的学生将从这种转变中受益最大。

 Sources of Wage Growth

工资增长来源
Jérôme Adda & Christian Dustmann

This paper investigates the sources of wage growth over the life cycle, determined by sectoral and firm mobility, unobserved ability, the accumulation of cognitive-abstract or routine-manual skills, and whether workers enroll in vocational training at the start of their career. Our analysis uses longitudinal administrative data over three decades and shows that routine-manual skills drive early wage growth, while cognitive-abstract skills become more important later. Moreover, job amenities are an important determinant of mobility decisions. Vocational training has long-term effects on career outcomes through various channels and generates returns for both the individual and society.

本文调查了整个生命周期中工资增长的来源，由部门和企业流动性、不可观察的能力、认知-抽象或常规-手工技能的积累，以及工人在职业生涯开始时是否参加职业培训决定。我们的分析使用了30年的纵向行政数据，结果表明，常规手工技能推动了早期的工资增长，而认知抽象技能在之后变得更加重要。此外，工作便利设施是流动性决策的重要决定因素。职业培训通过各种渠道对职业结果产生长期影响，并为个人和社会带来回报。

Costless Information and Costly Verification: A Case for Transparency 

免费的信息和昂贵的验证:透明度的理由

Deniz Kattwinkel & Jan Knoepfle

A principal has to take a binary decision. She relies on information privately held by an agent who prefers the same action regardless of his type. The principal cannot incentivize with transfers but can learn the agent’s type at a cost. Additionally, the principal privately observes a signal correlated with the agent’s type. Transparent mechanisms are optimal: the principal’s payoff is the same as if her signal was public. A simple cutoff form is optimal: favorable signals ensure the agent’s preferred action. Signals below this cutoff lead to the nonpreferred action unless the agent appeals. An appeal always triggers type verification.

委托人必须做出一个二元的决定。她依靠的是一个代理人私下掌握的信息，而这个代理人不管他的类型如何，都喜欢采取同样的行动。委托人不能通过转让进行激励，但可以在一定成本下了解代理人的类型。此外，委托人私下观察与代理人类型相关的信号。透明机制是最优的:如果她的信号是公开的，委托人的回报是一样的。一个简单的截止形式是最优的:有利的信号确保代理的首选行动。低于此截止点的信号将导致非优先行动，除非代理人上诉。申诉总是触发类型验证。

Large-Scale Education Reform in General Equilibrium: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from India

一般均衡下的大规模教育改革:来自印度的回归间断证据
Gaurav Khanna

The economic consequences of large-scale government investments in education depend on general equilibrium effects in both the labor market and the education sector. I develop a general equilibrium model capturing the consequences of massive countrywide schooling initiatives. I provide unbiased estimates of the model’s elasticities, using a regression discontinuity derived from Indian government policy. The earnings returns to a year of education are 13.4%, and the general equilibrium labor market effects substantially depress returns, by 6.6 percentage points. These general equilibrium effects have distributional consequences across cohorts and skill groups, whereby unskilled workers are better off and skilled workers worse off.

政府大规模教育投资的经济后果取决于劳动力市场和教育部门的一般均衡效应。我开发了一个一般均衡模型，捕捉了大规模全国教育举措的后果。我利用从印度政府政策中得出的回归不连续，对模型的弹性进行了无偏倚的估计。受教育一年的收益回报率为13.4%，而一般均衡劳动力市场效应大大降低了回报，降低了6.6个百分点。这些一般均衡效应在不同群体和技能群体中产生了分配后果，即非技术工人的境况更好，而技术工人的境况更差。