Pre-production Papers

We present a unified framework to study interconnections between business cycle and international trade models. This unified framework is built upon the standard competitive, representative-firm international real business cycle model and features production externalities in the intermediate and final goods sectors. Our main theoretical result is that this unified framework is equivalent in aggregate implications to dynamic international trade models featuring monopolistic competition, endogenous entry and exit, and heterogeneous firms.

This paper studies consumers’ choice between two different water tariffs. We document a large inaction in a novel setting where customers face a binary decision and receive simple, detailed and personalized information about the financial savings they would obtain if they were to switch water tariff. Our empirical framework separates two sources of inertia: inattention and switching costs. The model estimates that half of the customers that would benefit from changing tariff are not aware of the opportunity they are offered. Conditional on paying attention, we estimate median switching costs to be around £100.

We study the tradeoff between fundamental risk and time. A time-constrained agent has to solve a problem. She dynamically allocates effort between implementing a risky initial idea and exploring alternatives. Discovering an alternative implies progress that has to be converted to a solution. As time runs out, the chances of converting it in time shrink.

We study competition for the market in a setting where incumbents (and, to a lesser extent, neighbouring incumbents) benefit from a cost or information advantage. We first compare the outcome of staggered and synchronous tenders, before drawing the implications for market design. We find the timing of tenders interrelates with the likelihood of monopolisation.

We study a model of time preference in which both current consumption and the memory of past consumption enter “experienced utility" — or the felicity — of an individual. An individual derives overall utility from her own felicity and the anticipated felicities of future selves.

We use detailed administrative data to study the adjustment of local labor markets to industrial robots in Germany. Robot exposure, as predicted by a shift-share variable, is associated with displacement effects in manufacturing, but those are fully offset by new jobs in services.

We estimate the impact of increased access to telemedicine following widespread adoption during the March–April 2020 COVID-19 lockdown period. We focus on the post-lockdown period, which was characterized by near-complete reopening. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we compare primary care episodes before and after the lockdown between patients with high and low access to telemedicine, as defined by their primary care physician adoption.

This paper evaluates the effect on crime of creating a fundamental modern-day institution: centralized professional police forces tasked with preventing crime. We study the 1829 formation of the London Metropolitan Police – the first professional force worldwide.

We investigate women’s fertility, labor and marriage market responses to a health innovation that led to reductions in mortality from treatable causes, and especially large declines in child mortality. We find delayed childbearing, with lower intensive and extensive margin fertility, a decline in the chances of ever having married, increased labor force participation and an improvement in occupational status.