Suchergebnisse

I develop a method to measure and separate the production misallocation caused by failures in factor markets versus financial markets. When I apply the method to rice farming villages in Thailand I find surprisingly little misallocation. Optimal reallocation would increase output in most villages by less than 15 percent. By 2006 most misallocation comes from factor market failures. I derive a decomposition of aggregate growth that accounts for misallocation. Declining misallocation contributes little to growth compared to factor accumulation and rising farm productivity. I use a government credit intervention to test my measures. I confirm that credit causes a statistically significant decrease in only financial market misallocation.

I develop a method to measure and separate the production misallocation caused by failures in factor markets versus financial markets. When I apply the method to rice farming villages in Thailand I find surprisingly little misallocation. Optimal reallocation would increase output in most villages by less than 15 percent. By 2006 most misallocation comes from factor market failures. I derive a decomposition of aggregate growth that accounts for misallocation. Declining misallocation contributes little to growth compared to factor accumulation and rising farm productivity. I use a government credit intervention to test my measures. I confirm that credit causes a statistically significant decrease in only financial market misallocation.

We measure where and to what end parties take control of Congressional redistricting, which lets them redraw districts to favor their own candidates. We exploit the discontinuous change in a party's control of redistricting triggered when its share of seats in the state legislature exceeds 50 percent. Parties capture redistricting in states where they have suffered recent losses, which are temporarily reversed by redistricting. Opposition candidates are 11 percentage points less likely to win House elections just after redistricting. Consistent with recent Supreme Court rulings, African Americans are more likely to be segregated into overwhelmingly black districts under Republican redistricting.

We study whether political parties exert precise control over the outcomes of legislative elections. We test for discontinuities in two outcomes that, in the absence of precise control, should be smooth at the threshold that determines control of the legislature: the identity of the party that previously held a majority, and the probability density of the election outcome. We apply these tests to high-stakes state elections that determine which party controls Congressional redistricting. We find overwhelming evidence of precise control, suggesting the majority party can - through legal means - ensure it retains just enough seats to stay in power.