Interesting Sounding Papers

I get the NBER updates two or three times a week, which is always a highlight (seriously). We live in a day and age where working papers are what I spend most of my time reading, when it comes to academic papers. I suspect this was not the case 30 years ago, though. Thirty years, the only way you could get access to someone's work in progress was (a) if they sent it to you via snail mail (and you alone) and (b) if they presented it in a workshop in which you were in attendance. For (a), that would only happen with close colleagues or if you had some information ex ante and though to request the paper. For (b), you might see this at a conference, or at a seminar series, but even then, the paper circulates with the person.

Fast forward to now, and you have working papers sites, like NBER, or SSRN, or simple academic webpages. With Google, these papers can be found without even knowing that the person was working on it. You simply punch in a topic on scholar.google, and viola. Being on the listservs also exposes you to papers you would have never read at all - for me, that means things on the Palestinian violence and the second Intifada, or macroeconomics (ugh!). Well, it's all quite strange, and I wish I could sit down with an extremely active researcher in her late 60s and ask her to explain to me what it's like now versus then. Because I'm guessing she spends most of her time reading working papers, too. I'm not exactly sure what effect this has on the kinds of publications we see, but it does mean things can live in working paper for a long time, and maybe never even get published, but still have a significant lasting influence. That said, here are some working papers that look really interesting.

1. "Resolving the Global Imbalance: The Dollar and the U.S. Saving Rate," by MARTIN S. FELDSTEIN

The large trade and current account deficits of the United States cannot continue indefinitely because doing so would constitute a permanent gift to the U.S. economy. The process that will cause this gift to shrink and that will eventually cause it to reverse is a fall in the dollar. The dollar will fall as private investors and governments become unwilling to accept the risk of increasing amounts of dollars in their portfolios, especially in a context in which they realize that the dollar must fall to reduce the trade imbalance. Although a more competitive dollar is the mechanism that will cause the U.S. trade deficit to decline, the fundamental requirement for a lower trade deficit is an increase in the U.S. national saving rate. So a rise will be driven by higher household savings of the coming years as the two primary forces that depressed savings in recent years are reversed: the exceptionally rapid rise in household wealth and the high level of mortgage refinancing with equity withdrawal.

2. "Did Wages Reflect Growth in Productivity?" by MARTIN S. FELDSTEIN

The level of productivity doubled in the U.S. nonfarm business sector between 1970 and 2006. Wages, or more accurately total compensation per hour, increased at approximately the same annual rate during that period if nominal compensation is adjusted for inflation in the same way as the nominal output measure that is used to calculate productivity. Total employee compensation as a share of national income was 66 percent of national income in 1970 and 64 percent in 2006. This measure of the labor compensation share has been remarkably stable since the 1970s. It rose from an average of 62 percent in the decade of the 1960s to 66 percent in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s and then declined to 65 percent in the decade of the 1990s where it has again been from 2000 until the most recent quarter.

3. "Neuroeconomics: A Sober (But Hopeful) Appraisal" by B. DOUGLAS BERNHEIM

This paper evaluates the prospects for the emerging field of neuroeconomics to shed light on traditional positive and normative economic questions. It argues that the potential for meaningful contributions, though often misunderstood and frequently overstated, is nevertheless present.

4. "The Struggle for Palestinian Hearts and Minds: Violence and Public Opinion in the Second Intifada" by DAVID A. JAEGER, ESTEBAN F. KLOR, SAMI H. MIAARI, and DANIELE PASERMAN

This paper examines how violence in the Second Intifada influences Palestinian public opinion. Using micro data from a series of opinion polls linked to data on fatalities, we find that Israeli violence against Palestinians leads them to support more radical factions and more radical attitudes towards the conflict. This effect is temporary, however, and vanishes completely within 90 days. We also find some evidence that Palestinian fatalities lead to the polarization of the population and to increased disaffection and a lack of support for any faction. Geographically proximate Palestinian fatalities have a larger effect than those that are distant, while Palestinian fatalities in targeted killings have a smaller effect relative to other fatalities. Although overall Israeli fatalities do not seem to affect Palestinian public opinion, when we divide those fatalities by the different factions claiming responsibility for them, we find some evidence that increased Israeli fatalities are effective in increasing support for the faction that claimed them.

5. "The Inside Scoop: Acceptance and Rejection at the Journal of International Economics" by IVAN CHERKASHIN, SVETLANA A. DEMIDOVA, SUSUMU IMAI, and KALA KRISHNA

There is little work on the inner workings of journals. What factors seem to affect the ability to publish in a journal? Could simple rules (which are already used by some journals) like the immediate rejection of a significant minority of papers, help to streamline the process? At what cost? How well do journals seem to do in choosing papers? What can we say about the extent of type 1 and type 2 errors? Do editors seem to have uniform standards or are some harsher than others? We use data on submissions to the Journal of International Economics to help answer these questions.