Public Economics.

• Position: Bureau News - Panel Discussion

The NBER's Program on Public Economics met at the Bureau's California office on April 8-9. This meeting was organized by Alan J. Auerbach, NBER and University of California, Berkeley; Roger H. Gordon, NBER and University of California, San Diego; and Antonio Rangel, NBER and Stanford University. The program was:

Mikhail Golosov, University of Minnesota, and Aleh Tsyvinski, NBER and University of California, Los Angeles, "Optimal Taxation with Endogenous Insurance Markets"

Discussant: Amy Finkelstein, NBER and Harvard University

Brian Knight, NBER and Brown University, "Are Policy Platforms Capitalized into Equity Prizes? Evidence from the Bush/Gore 2000 Presidential Election" (NBER Working Paper No. 10333)

Discussant: James M. Poterba, NBER and MIT

Eric A. Hanushek, NBER and Stanford University; Charles Ka Yui Leung, Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Kuzey Yilmaz, Koc University; "Borrowing Constraints, College Aid, and Intergenerational Mobility"

Discussant: Dennis Epple, NBER and Carnegie Mellon University

Mark Duggan, NBER and University of Maryland, "Do New Prescription Drugs Pay for Themselves? The Case of Second-Generation Antipsychotics"

Discussant: Joshua Graft Zivin, NBER and Columbia University

John Karl Scholz, NBER and University of Wisconsin; Ananth Seshadri, University of Wisconsin; and Surachai Khitatrakun, ERS Group, "Are Americans Saving Optimally for Retirement?" (NBER Working Paper No. 10260)

Discussant: Emmanuel Saez, NBER and University of California, Berkeley

Austan Goolshee, NBER and University of Chicago, and Joel Slemrod, NBER and University of Michigan, "Playing with Fire: Cigarettes, Taxes and Competition from the Internet"

Discussant: Hal Varian, University of California, Berkeley

Richard Carson, Theodore Groves, and Mark Machina, University of California, San Diego; and John List, University of Maryland, "Probabilistic Influence and Supplemental Benefits: A Field Test of the Two Key Assumptions Underlying Stated Preferences"

Discussant: William Harbaugh, NBER and University of Oregon

Julie B. Cullen and Catherine Wolfram, NBER and University of California, Berkeley; and Leora Friedberg, NBER and University of Virginia, "Consumption and Changes in Home Energy Costs: How Prevalent is the 'Heat or Eat' Decision?"

Discussant: Raj Cherty, NBER and University of California, Berkeley

Marianne P. Bitler, RAND; Jonah B. Gelbach, University of Maryland; and Hilary W. Hoynes, NBER and University of California, Davis, "What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments"

Discussant: Thomas MaCurdy, NBER and Stanford University

Golosov and Tsyvinski study optimal tax policy in a dynamic private information economy. They...