Journal of Economic Literature 2024年 12月刊 目录与摘要

刊发卷期：Vol. 62, No.4

刊发时间：December 2024

期刊等级：ABS 4

出版厂商：American Economic Association

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目录

1. Social Protection in the Developing World

Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, and Diana Sverdlin Lisker

2. The Economics of Social Media

Guy Aridor, Rafael Jiménez-Durán, Ro'ee Levy, and Lena Song

3. The Origins of Enduring Economic Inequality

Samuel Bowles and Mattia Fochesato

4. The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers

Jeanne Lafortune, Laura Salisbury, and Aloysius Siow

5. Should They Compete or Should They Cooperate? The View of Agency Theory

Pierre Fleckinger, David Martimort, and Nicolas Roux

6. Soviet Mathematics and Economic Theory in the Past Century: A Historical Reappraisal

Ivan Boldyrev

7. Can Massive Technological Progress Hurt Workers? A Review of Power and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

Fiona Scott Morton

摘要

1. Social Protection in the Developing World

Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, and Diana Sverdlin Lisker

Social protection programs have become increasingly widespread in low- and middle-income countries, with their own distinct characteristics to match the environments in which they are operating. This paper reviews the growing literature on the design and impact of these programs. We review how to identify potential beneficiaries given the large informal sector, the design and implementation of redistribution and income support programs, and the challenges and potential of social insurance. We use our frameworks as a guide for consolidating and organizing the existing literature and also to highlight areas and questions for future research.

2. The Economics of Social Media

Guy Aridor, Rafael Jiménez-Durán, Ro'ee Levy, and Lena Song

We provide a guide to the burgeoning literature on the economics of social media. We first define social media platforms and highlight their unique features. We then synthesize the main lessons from the empirical economics literature and organize them around the three stages of the life cycle of content: (i) production, (ii) distribution, and (iii) consumption. Under production, we discuss how incentives affect content produced on and off social media and how harmful content is moderated. Under distribution, we discuss the social network structure, algorithms, and targeted advertisements. Under consumption, we discuss how social media affects individuals who consume its content and society at large, and explore consumer substitution patterns across platforms. Throughout the guide, we examine case studies on the deterrence of misinformation, segregation, political advertisements, and the effects of social media on political outcomes. We conclude with a brief discussion of the future of social media.

3. The Origins of Enduring Economic Inequality

Samuel Bowles and Mattia Fochesato

We survey archaeological evidence suggesting that among hunter-gatherers and farmers in Neolithic western Eurasia (11,700 to 5,300 years ago) elevated levels of wealth inequality occurred but were ephemeral and rare compared to the substantial enduring inequalities of the past five millennia. In response, we seek to understand not the de novo "creation of inequality" but instead the processes by which substantial wealth differences could persist over long periods and why this occurred only at the end of the Neolithic, at least four millennia after the agricultural revolution. Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that a culture of aggressive egalitarianism may have thwarted the emergence of enduring wealth inequality until the Late Neolithic, when new farming technologies raised the value of material wealth relative to labor and a concentration of elite power in early proto-states (and eventually the exploitation of enslaved labor) provided the political and economic conditions for heightened wealth inequalities to endure.

4. The Changing Identities of American Wives and Mothers

Jeanne Lafortune, Laura Salisbury, and Aloysius Siow

Over the last century, resource allocations within families changed significantly, as did marriage matching patterns. College-educated women became more likely to marry (and, to a lesser extent, have children) than less educated women. A large literature documents these patterns and proposes a variety of explanations. We review this literature. Then, we provide a unified empirical framework, which can integrate these mechanisms. We demonstrate the usefulness of that framework by employing it in decennial US censuses and showing that a combination of technological changes that increased the value of children's education and enabled more educated women to devote more time to child-rearing are consistent with multiple behavioral changes within marriage, on the marriage market, and before marriage.

5. Should They Compete or Should They Cooperate? The View of Agency Theory

Pierre Fleckinger, David Martimort, and Nicolas Roux

What is the most efficient way of designing incentives in an organization? Over the past five decades, agency theory has provided various answers to this crucial question. This line of research suggests that, depending on the organizational context, the optimal approach to providing incentives may involve either relying on collective compensations or, conversely, employing relative performance evaluations. In the first scenario, cooperation among agents is the key aspect of the organization. In the second, competition prevails. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of this extensive literature with the aim of understanding the conditions under which one or the other type of incentive schemes is more desirable for the principal of the organization. To this end, we use a flexible and versatile model capable of addressing a wide range of scenarios characterized by different technologies, information constraints, and behavioral norms.

6. Soviet Mathematics and Economic Theory in the Past Century: A Historical Reappraisal

Ivan Boldyrev

What are the effects of authoritarian regimes on scholarly research in economics? And how might economic theory survive ideological pressures? This article addresses these questions by focusing on the mathematization of economics over the past century and drawing on the history of Soviet science. Mathematics in the USSR remained internationally competitive and generated many ideas that were taken up and played important roles in economic theory. These same ideas, however, were disregarded or adopted only in piecemeal fashion by Soviet economists, despite the efforts of influential scholars to change the economic research agenda. The article draws this contrast into sharper focus by exploring the work of Soviet mathematicians in optimization, game theory, and probability theory that was used in Western economics. While the intellectual exchange across the Iron Curtain did help advance the formal modeling apparatus, economics could only thrive in an intellectually open environment absent under Soviet rule.

7. Can Massive Technological Progress Hurt Workers? A Review of Power and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

Fiona Scott Morton

This book offers a radical thesis: Technological innovation often benefits elites while worsening conditions for workers, challenging the common view that technology always improves living standards. Through historical transitions like the Industrial Revolution, the authors illustrate how innovations have frequently led to worker exploitation. They argue that governance, rather than competition, determines whether technological advances benefit society. In the digital age, platforms exploit user data without fair compensation, causing harm through addictive services and poor regulation. The book calls for stronger regulations to protect consumers and ensure that innovation aligns with societal well-being, especially as artificial intelligence spreads.