The Quarterly Journal of Economics

Gennaioli, Nicola; Shleifer, Andrei

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1399pmid: N/A

We present a model of intuitive inference, called “local thinking,” in which an agent combines data received from the external world with information retrieved from memory to evaluate a hypothesis. In this model, selected and limited recall of information follows a version of the representativeness heuristic. The model can account for some of the evidence on judgment biases, including conjunction and disjunction fallacies, but also for several anomalies related to demand for insurance.

Foster, Dean P.; Young, H. Peyton

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1435pmid: N/A

We show that it is very difficult to devise performance-based compensation contracts that reward portfolio managers who generate excess returns while screening out managers who cannot generate such returns. Theoretical bounds are derived on the amount of fee manipulation that is possible under various performance contracts.We show that recent proposals to reform compensation practices, such as postponing bonuses and instituting clawback provisions, will not eliminate opportunities to game the system unless accompanied by transparency in managers' positions and strategies. Indeed, there exists no compensation mechanism that separates skilled from unskilled managers solely on the basis of their returns histories.

Gould, Eric D.; Klor, Esteban F.

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1459pmid: N/A

This paper examines whether terrorism is an effective tool for achieving political goals. By exploiting geographic variation in terror attacks in Israel from 1988 to 2006, we show that local terror attacks cause Israelis to be more willing to grant territorial concessions to the Palestinians. These effects are stronger for demographic groups that are traditionally right-wing in their political views. However, terror attacks beyond a certain threshold cause Israelis to adopt a less accommodating position. In addition, terror induces Israelis to vote increasingly for right-wing parties, as the right-wing parties move to the left in response to terror. Hence, terrorism appears to be an effective strategy in terms of shifting the entire political landscape to the left, although we do not assess whether it is more effective than non-violent means.

Acemoglu, Daron; Egorov, Georgy; Sonin, Konstantin

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1511pmid: N/A

We study dynamic selection of governments under different political institutions, with a special focus on institutional “flexibility.” A government consists of a subset of the individuals in the society. The competence level of the government in office determines collective utilities (e.g., by determining the amount and quality of public goods), and each individual derives additional utility from being part of the government (e.g., rents from holding office). We characterize the dynamic evolution of governments and determine the structure of stable governments, which arise and persist in equilibrium. In our model, perfect democracy, where current members of the government do not have veto power over changes in governments, always leads to the emergence of the most competent government. However, any deviation from perfect democracy, to any regime with incumbency veto power, destroys this result. There is always at least one other, less competent government that is also stable and can persist forever, and even the least competent government can persist forever in office. We also show that there is a nonmonotonic relationship between the degree of incumbency veto power and the quality of government. In contrast, in the presence of stochastic shocks or changes in the environment, a regime with less incumbency veto power has greater flexibility and greater probability that high-competence governments will come to power. This result suggests that a particular advantage of “democratic regimes” (with a limited number of veto players) may be their greater adaptability to changes rather than their performance under given conditions. Finally, we show that “royalty-like” dictatorships may be more successful than “junta-like” dictatorships because in these regimes veto players are less afraid of change.

Chen, Shaohua; Ravallion, Martin

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1577pmid: N/A

A new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world. We find that 25% of the population lived in poverty in 2005, as judged by what “poverty” typically means in the world's poorest countries. This is higher than past estimates. Substantial overall progress is still indicated—the corresponding poverty rate was 52% in 1981—but progress was very uneven across regions. The trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology, though precise counts are more sensitive.

Putterman, Louis; Weil, David N.

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1627pmid: 24478530

We construct a matrix showing the share of the year 2000 population in every country that is descended from people in different source countries in the year 1500. Using the matrix to adjust indicators of early development so that they reflect the history of a population's ancestors rather than the history of the place they live today greatly improves the ability of those indicators to predict current GDP. The variance of the early development history of a country's inhabitants is a good predictor for current inequality, with ethnic groups originating in regions having longer histories of organized states tending to be at the upper end of a country's income distribution.

Hong, Harrison; Kacperczyk, Marcin

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1683pmid: N/A

We attempt to measure the effect of competition on bias in the context of analyst earnings forecasts, which are known to be excessively optimistic because of conflicts of interest. Our natural experiment for competition is mergers of brokerage houses, which result in the firing of analysts because of redundancy (e.g., one of the two oil stock analysts is let go) and other reasons such as culture clash. We use this decrease in analyst coverage for stocks covered by both merging houses before the merger (the treatment sample) to measure the causal effect of competition on bias. We find that the treatment sample simultaneously experiences a decrease in analyst coverage and an increase in optimism bias the year after the merger relative to a control group of stocks, consistent with competition reducing bias. The implied economic effect from our natural experiment is significantly larger than estimates from OLS regressions that do not correct for the endogeneity of coverage. This effect is much more significant for stocks with little initial analyst coverage or competition.

Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou; Khandelwal, Amit Kumar; Pavcnik, Nina; Topalova, Petia

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1727pmid: N/A

New goods play a central role in many trade and growth models. We use detailed trade and firm-level data from India to investigate the relationship between declines in trade costs, imports of intermediate inputs, and domestic firm product scope. We estimate substantial gains from trade through access to new imported inputs. Moreover, we find that lower input tariffs account on average for 31% of the new products introduced by domestic firms. This effect is driven to a large extent by increased firm access to new input varieties that were unavailable prior to the trade liberalization.

Benmelech, Efraim; Kandel, Eugene; Veronesi, Pietro

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1769pmid: N/A

The use of stock-based compensation as a solution to agency problems between shareholders and managers has increased dramatically since the early 1990s. We show that in a dynamic rational expectations model with asymmetric information, stock-based compensation not only induces managers to exert costly effort, but also induces them to conceal bad news about future growth options and to choose suboptimal investment policies to support the pretense. This leads to a severe overvaluation and a subsequent crash in the stock price. Our model produces many predictions that are consistent with the empirical evidence and are relevant to understanding the current crisis.

Chassang, Sylvain; Miquel, Gerard Padró I

doi: 10.1162/qjec.2010.125.4.1821pmid: N/A

We examine the determinants of cooperation and the effectiveness of deterrence when fear is a motive for conflict.We contrast results obtained in a complete information setting with those obtained in a setting with strategic risk, where players have different information about their environment. These two strategic settings allow us to identify and distinguish the role of predatory and preemptive incentives as determinants of cooperation and conflict. In our model, weapons unambiguously facilitate peace under complete information. In contrast, under strategic risk, we show that increases in weapon stocks can have a nonmonotonic effect on the sustainability of cooperation. We also show that under strategic risk, asymmetry in military strength can facilitate peace, and that anticipated peacekeeping interventions may improve incentives for peaceful behavior.