Since 1932, when Justice Louis Brandeis remarked that in a federal system states can serve as "laboratories" of democracy, political decentralization has been thought to stimulate policy experimentation. We reexamine the political economy behind this belief, using a simple model of voting in...

This paper introduces an innovative test of search and matching models using the exogenous variation available in experimental data. We take an off-the-shelf Pissarides matching model and calibrate it to data on the control group from a randomized social experiment. We then simulate a program...

This paper deals with identification in Markov dynamic discrete decision processes. It shows the nonparametric identification of the behavioral responses to counterfactual policy interventions that modify the one- period utility function.

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the outcome of experiments carried out on forward-looking subjects. Natural experiments, unexpected policy changes, and true experiments are all included in the framework as special cases. These concepts are defined in conjunction with explicit...