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Blog aggregator for economics research

2020-01-17

• 38. Selected Readings on World Development in journal AEID: America, 2001-2020
  by MCG Blogs de Economía in Euro-American Association: World Development, 2020-01-17 20:24:00 UTC

  We include lists and links to some selected articles published in the period 2001-2020. Table 1 includes articles of the period 2001-2005 and table 2 corresponds to the period 2006-2020. Table 2. Articles on economic development of America, 2006-2020 Autores Título Banerjee, S., Chatterjee, B. 2020 Cities Versus Suburbs: The Post 2000 Dynamics Of Population And Employment In U.S. Metro Areas,   Banerjee, S., Chatterjee, B.  New* Husein, J., Pier, C. (2019) Long-Run Sustainability of Current Account Balance: Evidence from Twenty North and Latin American Economies,  Huse [...]

2020-01-16

• 37. Selected Readings on World Development in journal AEID 2001-2020: Europe and Eurasia
  by MCG Blogs de Economía in Euro-American Association: World Development, 2020-01-16 19:11:00 UTC

  Here we include the lists and links (to the abstract and full text of the article) to some selected articles related with economic development of Europe and Eurasia, publised in AIED. Table 1 includes some articles of the period 2006-2020 and table 2 some articles of the period 2001-2005. Table 2: Some selected articles on Europe and Eurasia, published for the period 2001-2005 Authors Title Ogloblin, C. The Gender Earnings Differential in Russia After a Decade of Economic Transition. Abstract     Cosar, N., Bildirici, M. (2005) Some Comparisons Between Turkey and OECD C [...]

• Great economics, bad politics
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2020-01-16 13:47:59 UTC

  Non-economists (and quite a few trained economists too) often claim that mainstream economics is a simple-minded defence of free markets and inequality. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s Good Economics for Hard Times is a superb refutation of this. They argue that: It is unreasonable to expect markets to always deliver outcomes that are just, acceptable or even efficient. A big reason for this is that the economy is “sticky” and that “resources do not always flow to their best use. Workers who are laid off because of international trade or technical change do not quickly move to decent job [...]

• Thesis Thursday: Koh Jun Ong
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2020-01-16 07:00:00 UTC

  On the third Thursday of every month, we speak to a recent graduate about their thesis and their studies. This month’s guest is Dr Koh Jun Ong who has a PhD from the University of Groningen . If you would like to suggest a candidate for an upcoming Thesis Thursday, get in touch. Title Economic aspects of public health programmes for infectious disease control: studies on human immunodeficiency virus & human papillomavirus Supervisors Maarten Postma , Mark Jit Repository link http://hdl.handle.net/11370/0edbcfae-2a0c-4103-9722-fb8086d75cff Which public health programmes did you consider [...]

2020-01-15

• Minimum wages and employment
  by Eric Crampton in Offsetting Behaviour, 2020-01-15 02:32:00 UTC

  Stuff's Susan Edmunds asked me for comment on the employment effects of the latest round of minimum wage hikes. She chose the right quotes out of this more verbose missive I'd sent through, copied below.  “Minimum wage hikes always bring argument about the effects of those increases on jobs. MBIE regularly provides estimates of the number of job losses likely to be caused by different levels of increase; this time, MBIE expected that the increase to $18.90 would reduce employment by about 6,500 jobs, with some 242,400 workers overall being affected by the minimum wage increase. The employment [...]

2020-01-14

• No Vacancy? Why Housing Prices in New York City are So High
  by Jason Barr in Skynomics Blog, 2020-01-14 13:41:46 UTC

  Jason M. Barr            January 14, 2020 Note: This post is one of several about New York City. More posts can be read here . Costanza versus the Andria Doria In Season 8, Episode 10 of Seinfeld (“ The Andrea Doria ),” George Costanza, the neurotic buddy of Jerry Seinfeld, has found a fantastic Manhattan two-bedroom apartment with a huge bathroom and walk-in closet. The only rub—there’s competition for the unit. An older man who lives upstairs also wants it. He was a survivor on the ocean liner, The Andria Doria, which, in 1956, was struck by another vessel and sank off the coast of Nantucket [...]

2020-01-13

• The Unintended Consequences of Meritocratic Government Hiring
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2020-01-13 20:42:41 UTC

  By Athanasios Geromichalos and Ioannis Kospentaris http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cda:wpaper:335&r=dge In an attempt to mitigate the negative effects of clientelism, many governments around the world have adopted meritocratic hiring of public employees. This paper challenges the effectiveness of this common practice by showing that meritocratic government hiring can have unintended negative consequences on macroeconomic aggregates. In many countries, public employees enjoy considerable job security and generous compensation schemes; as a result, many talented workers choose to work for the publi [...]

2020-01-12

• The Urban Economics of Pre-K for All
  by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2020-01-12 15:03:00 UTC

  This 2019 report describes which U.S cities now offer pre-K and the quality and attributes of their respective programs.� �The local public finance of these early human capital investment programs has not been sufficiently studied.� Both States and cities share the financing responsibilities.� Back in 2013,� Alan Krueger wrote (see page 188) �that the most interesting issue regarding Pre-K is the political economy of "who pays for it". In 2015, I wrote a NBER paper on the Political Economy of Pre-K.� The typical beneficiary of this program lives in the center city and is poor.� The typical tax [...]

2020-01-10

• PÃ¥verkar robotiseringen hur människor röstar?
  by Niclas Berggren in Nonicoclolasos, 2020-01-10 05:37:28 UTC

  Enligt den nya studien ”We Were The Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe” är svaret ja i 14 västeuropeiska länder 1993–2016: Higher exposure to robot adoption is found to increase support for nationalist and radicalright parties. Unveiling some potential transmission channels, higher robot exposure at the individual level leads to poorer perceived economic conditions and well-being, lower satisfaction with the government and democracy, and a reduction in perceived political self-efficacy. Är det inte invandringen så är det robotarna. [...]

2020-01-09

• Ekonomia behawioralna wzmocni emerytalne oszczędności
  by Dariusz Rostkowski in Obserwator Finansowy, 2020-01-09 02:00:57 UTC

  Narastanie tego problemu obserwujemy nie tylko w Polsce, ale również i w wielu rozwiniętych gospodarkach. Widok zbliżającego się „kryzysu emerytalnego” wywołuje wśród ekonomistów i polityków reakcje obronne. Powszechnie panuje zgoda, że należy podejmować działania w kierunku wpływania na wzrost świadomości społeczeństwa odnośnie sytuacji jaka będzie miała miejsce w systemie emerytalnym za kilka i kilkadziesiąt lat. Nie tylko zachęty finansowe Czy rząd może w efektywny sposób wpływać na wysokość oszczędności emerytalnych obywateli? Jednym z najczęściej stosowanych instrumentów są różne formy su [...]

2020-01-08

• Flexibility or certainty? The aggregate effects of casual jobs on labour markets
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2020-01-08 17:40:20 UTC

  By Rachel Scarfe http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:edn:esedps:294&r=dge There is much debate about the extent to which governments should regulate labour markets. One discussion concerns casual jobs, where firms do not need to guarantee workers certain, fixed, hours of work and instead “call-up” workers as and when needed. These jobs, sometimes known as “zero-hours”, “contingent” or “on-demand, provide flexibility for firms to change the size of their workforce cheaply and quickly and for workers to choose whether to supply labour in every period. This flexibility comes at the expense of certainty [...]

• Education versus anti-vaxxers: evidence from Europe
  by Fa'izah Aishah Muhammad, Harold M Hastings in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2020-01-08 07:00:00 UTC

  Vaccine skepticism and hesitancy – the distrust and skepticism that some members of the public feel for vaccines, as well as for institutions that deliver and encourage vaccination – has emerged as a major threat to world health. Vaccine skepticism is not limited to any particular place; it has been observed across a range of countries, cultures, and levels of prosperity. Vaccine skeptics have made themselves known in Hollywood , led protests in Washington D.C. , and lashed out violently against vaccination in Pakistan and Northern Nigeria . Vaccine skepticism has truly gone global. Vaccin [...]

2020-01-06

• Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 6th January 2020
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2020-01-06 12:00:00 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes . Journal of Health Economics [ PubMed ] [ RePEc ] Published January 2020 It’s pretty clear that sleep is important to almost all aspects of our lives and our [...]

2020-01-02

• Looking for a Faculty Position? Agricultural Economics vs Economics
  by Jayson Lusk in Jason Lusk, 2020-01-02 22:17:10 UTC

  ‘Tis the season for economics job hunters.  The annual ASSA meetings kick off tomorrow, brining together, for a few days, what is probably the largest collection of economists in the world (scary, I know!).  The meeting also marks the start of the job market for academic economists.  For a variety reasons, agricultural economics departments have increasingly moved hiring to coordinate with the ASSA meetings, and agricultural economics departments appear to be more apt these days to hire new faculty from general economics programs. There is ample advice for prospective job market candidates onl [...]

2020-01-01

• Wages vs social value
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2020-01-01 15:24:31 UTC

  Today is the 23 rd anniversary of the death of Townes Van Zandt, who is now universally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever . And yet during his lifetime he made very little money. Even in his best years he got less than $100,000 from song-writing royalties, and for much of his life he might well have earned more from the oil drilling rights bequeathed by his rich family than from his music. Which vindicates a recent tweet from Cameron Murray: Actions that have social value only rarely coincide with actions that are monetarily compensated. In Van Zandt’s case, this was partly be [...]

2019-12-30

• Rita Faria’s journal round-up for 30th December 2019
  by Rita Faria in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-12-30 12:00:00 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Value in hepatitis C virus treatment: a patient-centered cost-effectiveness analysis . PharmacoEconomics [ PubMed ] Published 2nd December 2019 There have been many economic evaluations of treatments for [...]

2019-12-27

• China’s incomplete financial reform
  by Meijun Qian in East Asia Forum, 2019-12-27 23:00:05 UTC

  Author: Meijun Qian, ANU China has experienced phenomenal economic growth since 1978 when it opened up to the outside world. Fundamental changes have occurred in China’s economy, institutions and markets. Financial reforms have also been profound and have a unique relationship with China’s economic growth. The conventional finance–growth nexus suggests that a well-functioning financial system is necessary to finance investments and support economic growth. This pattern is seen in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. The United States and the United Kingdom showcase a market- [...]

2019-12-25

• Annual Review 2019
  by noreply@blogger.com (David Stern) in Stochastic Trend, 2019-12-25 00:24:00 UTC

  I've been doing these annual reviews since 2011. They're mainly an exercise for me to see what I accomplished and what I didn't in the previous year. This year continued to feel lke a struggle at times, so it's a good idea to remind myself of what I did manage to accomplish. It felt like I was just trying to finish things this year and not succeeding but we actually started new things too. The big personal news of the year is that our second child Isaac Daniel was born: As a result I didn't travel much. I gave seminars at Monash and Macquarie Universities and went to the Future of Electricity [...]

2019-12-23

• One EMU Fiscal Policy for the EURO
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-12-23 18:47:15 UTC

  By Alexandre Lucas Cole, Chiara Guerello and Guido Traficante http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:97380&r=dge We build a two-country New-Keynesian DSGE model of a Currency Union to study the effects of fiscal policy coordination, by evaluating the stabilization properties and welfare implications of different fiscal policy scenarios. Our main findings are that a government spending rule which targets the net exports gap rather than the domestic output gap produces more stable dynamics and that consolidating government budget constraints across countries with symmetric tax rate movements pr [...]

2019-12-20

• Revisiting the P-star model
  by Lars Christensen in The Market Monetarist, 2019-12-20 17:27:57 UTC

  I read Milton Friedman’s book “Free to Choose” at an age of 16 years old and ever since then I have been more or less obsessed with monetary theory and particularly the equation of exchange: M•V=P•V My view of the world obviously has developed over the 32 years since I read “Free to Choose”, but I am still fully convinced that monetary policy failure historically has been the main cause of macroeconomic problems – whether it is inflation or recessions and depressions. In fact I am more so than ever. When I started studying economics at the University of Copenhagen in the early 1990s my obsessi [...]

• Waiting for the Prince Charming: Fixed-Term Contracts as Stopgaps
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-12-20 16:09:00 UTC

  By Normann Rion http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02331887&r=dge In this paper, I build a simple Mortensen-Pissarides model embedding a dual labor market. I derive conditions for the existence of an equilibrium with coexisting strongly protected open-ended contracts and exogeneously short fixed-term contracts. I also study dynamics after a reform on employment protection legislation. Temporary contracts play the role of fillers while permanent contracts are used to lock up high-productivity matches. High firing costs favor the emergence of a dual equilibrium. Employment protection [...]

2019-12-19

• Mining the Wind? The Economics of Wind Turbines on Skyscrapers
  by Jason Barr in Skynomics Blog, 2019-12-19 13:24:01 UTC

  Jason M. Barr             December 19, 2019 Swaying in the Wind In the early-1990s, my wife worked for WH Freeman and Co., a publisher of scientific and academic textbooks. Her office was on the 35 th floor at 41 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. The building, opened in 1974, is a 41-story modernist glass box designed by Emory Roth & Sons. On extremely windy days, she and her co-workers could feel the building sway—so much so that junior employees would claim motion sickness and request permission to go home. Doors and drawers would sometimes close on their own. Regarding the elevators, my wife rec [...]

• Thesis Thursday: Caroline Chuard
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-12-19 07:00:00 UTC

  On the third Thursday of every month, we speak to a recent graduate about their thesis and their studies. This month’s guest is Dr Caroline Chuard who has a PhD from the University of Zurich . If you would like to suggest a candidate for an upcoming Thesis Thursday, get in touch. Title Three essays on the health effects of family policies Supervisors Hannes Schwandt , Josef Zweimüller Repository link https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/172853/ Is there a strong health economics evidence base on family policies? The literature on parental leave and family health is relatively young. Thi [...]

2019-12-18

• Tax, cost of capital, and investment
  by Gulnara Nolan in TVHE, 2019-12-18 19:00:40 UTC

  Last time I discussed the relationship between the cost of capital and investment. Given that motivation, the goal of this post is to understand whether investment is responsive to changes in the UCC due to changes in tax settings. This does two things: Provides evidence regarding whether the capital stock will ultimately be influenced by corporate tax policy changes. Helps us understand how changes in the cost of capital can “shift” investment through time, thereby helping economic stabilisation. Note : The cost of capital varies with both taxes and interest rates, so this relates a [...]

• Are Estimates of Early Education Programs Too Pessimistic? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment that Causally Measures Neighbor Effects
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-12-18 13:44:34 UTC

  By: List, John ;  Momeni, Fatemeh ;  Zenou, Yves Abstract: We estimate the direct and spillover effects of a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We show that failing to account for spillover effects results in a severe underestimation of the impact. The intervention induced positive direct effects on test scores of children assigned to the treatment groups. We document large spillover effects on both treatment and control children who live near treated children. On average, spillover effects inc [...]

• What might explain today’s conflicting narratives on global inequality?
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-12-18 13:43:44 UTC

  By: Ravallion Martin Abstract: How unequal is the world today? Is global income inequality falling, as many economists claim, or is it rising, as one often hears?This paper reviews the arguments and evidence. A number of concerns about the underlying data are identified, with biases going in both directions. Conceptual issues further cloud the picture. The claim that global inequality has been falling since 1990 can be defended for a subset of the admissible parameter values, but only a subset.Global inequality is found to be rising if one or more of the following conditions holds: (i) o [...]

• Comparing global inequality of income and wealth
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-12-18 13:42:32 UTC

  By: Shorrocks Anthony ;  Davies James Abstract: This paper is the first to compare global trends in income and wealth inequality this century. It is based on large income and wealth microdata samples designed to be representative of all countries in the world.Measured by the Gini coefficient, inequality between countries accounts for about two-thirds of global income inequality, but noticeably less— around one half—of wealth inequality. Broadly similar results are found for different years and different inequality indices, bar the share of the top 1 per cent. Over time, changes in co [...]

• Crisis at Home: Mancession-induced Change in Intrahousehold Distribution
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-12-18 13:22:46 UTC

  By: Olivier Bargain  (GREQAM – Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d’Aix-Marseille – ECM – Ecole Centrale de Marseille – CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – AMU – Aix Marseille Université – EHESS – École des hautes études en sciences sociales);  Laurine Martinoty  (CES – Centre d’économie de la Sorbonne – UP1 – Université Panthéon-Sorbonne – CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) Abstract: The Great Recessions was essentially a ‘mancession’ in countries like Spain, the UK or the US, i.e. it hit men harder than women for they were disproportion [...]

• Understanding Trends in Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-12-18 13:21:18 UTC

  By: Lawrence F. Katz ;  Alan B. Krueger Abstract: This paper describes and tries to reconcile trends in alternative work arrangements in the United States using data from the Contingent Worker Survey supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS) for 1995 to 2017, the 2015 RAND-Princeton Contingent Work Survey (CWS), and administrative tax data from the Internal Revenue Service for 2000 to 2016. We conclude that there likely has been a modest upward trend in the share of the U.S. workforce in alternative work arrangements during the 2000s based on the cyclically-adjusted comparisons [...]

• The Impact of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program on Households’ Well-Being
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-12-18 13:18:52 UTC

  By: Daniela Del Boca  (University of Turin and Collegio Carlo Alberto);  Chiara Pronzato  (University of Turin, CHILD and Collegio Carlo Alberto);  Giuseppe Sorrenti  (University of Zurich) Abstract: We evaluate the impact of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program that we designed on family well-being among low-income families with young children. Although most CCTs have been implemented in low-income countries, our research is in the context of a high-income country, Italy, where the recent economic crises have worsened the conditions of families with children, especially among immig [...]

2019-12-17

• Attention to the tail(s): global financial conditions and exchange rate risks
  by BankUnderground in Bank Underground, 2019-12-17 09:00:00 UTC

  Fernando Eguren-Martin and Andrej Sokol Asset prices tend to co-move internationally, in what is often described as the ‘global financial cycle’. However, one such asset class, exchange rates, cannot by definition all move in the same direction. In this post we show how the ‘global financial cycle’ is associated with markedly different dynamics across currencies. We enrich traditional labels such as ‘safe haven’ and ‘risky’ currencies with an explicit quantification of exchange rate tail risks. We also find that several popular ‘risk factors’, such as current account balances and inter [...]

2019-12-16

• Foreign Exchange Trading: 2019 Edition
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-12-16 14:10:10 UTC

  Every so often, new data provide us a glimpse of parts of the world that few people ever see. Last week, the BIS’s Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Over-the-counter (OTC) Derivatives Markets in 2019 provided just such a view. The headline is that average daily foreign exchange (FX) turnover, adjusted for double counting, is $6.6 trillion per day. That is, nearly 8% of global GDP changes hands in FX markets every day! (For a summary, you can listen here .) Numbers of this magnitude raise a host of questions. In this post, we explore three: First, who is shifting such large [...]

• Ciclos Inmobiliarios y Desigualdad de la Riqueza
  by admin in Nada Es Gratis, 2019-12-16 14:00:30 UTC

  Por Clara Martínez-Toledano La evolución y los determinantes de la desigualdad de la riqueza están en el centro del debate académico y político en la actualidad. Este interés se debe, en primer lugar, al incremento del peso de la riqueza en relación a la renta nacional en los países avanzados en las últimas cuatro décadas ( Piketty y Zucman [2014] ). En segundo lugar, los niveles de concentración de la riqueza han divergido en el mismo periodo, creciendo por ejemplo mucho más rápido en EE.UU. que en Europa continental ( World Inequality Report [2018] ). Las interacciones entre la evolución de [...]

2019-12-13

• Financial well-being: Measuring financial perceptions and experiences in low- and moderate-income households
  by Stephen Roll, Olga Kondratjeva, Michal Grinstein-Weiss in Up Front, 2019-12-13 18:08:23 UTC

  By Stephen Roll, Olga Kondratjeva, Michal Grinstein-Weiss Thirty-nine percent of U.S. adults reported lacking sufficient liquidity to cover even a modest $400 emergency without borrowing or selling an asset, and 60 percent reported experiencing a financial shock (e.g., loss of income or car repair) in the prior year. While facing precarious financial situations may leave households unable to manage essential expenses and plan for the future, the research also suggests that U.S. households report feeling optimistic about their finances. These disparate findings suggest a complex interplay betwe [...]

2019-12-12

• Risk-sensitive preferences and age-dependent risk aversion
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-12-12 16:50:20 UTC

  By Phitawat Poonpolkul http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2019-86&r=dge People in different age groups have shown to differ in their degrees of risk aversion. This study investigates the macroeconomic implications of population aging when households are assumed to be increasingly risk-averse in future utility when they age. The model incorporates risk-sensitive preferences used in Hansen & Sargent (1995), which is the only recursive preferences that can separate risk aversion and intertemporal elasticity of substitution while being monotonic, into a 16-generation discrete-time OLG model [...]

2019-12-11

• Spuds still not got it, has he?
  by Tim Worstall in Tim Worstall, 2019-12-11 09:28:22 UTC

  Andrew says: December 10 2019 at 11:35 am This issue is a matter of substantial economic research, so with due deference to Prof Weeks, we don’t have to just take his word for it. What does the literature say? Certainly, when taxes on companies rise, then in the first instance, companies will just pay more tax on their profits, and the shareholders will suffer lower returns. But over time, shareholders will attempt to maintain a level of post-tax return on their capital, which will create pressures to decrease costs including wages paid to employees, and to increase prices charged to customers [...]

• Agent relationships and information asymmetries in public health
  by Bren Collins in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-12-11 07:00:00 UTC

  The agent relationship and information asymmetry are two features of healthcare economics – but how do they apply to public health policy around processed foods? Why is health different to other goods? Arrow’s 1963 seminal paper helped lay the foundations for health economics as a discipline. The Nobel-winning economist talks about what makes healthcare different to other types of market goods. Two of the principal things are agent relationship – that a clinician often makes choices on behalf of a patient (Arrow calls them a “controlling agent”); and information asymmetry – that a clini [...]

2019-12-10

• Mississippi improves — by failing students?
  by Joanne in Linking and Thinking on Education by Joanne Jacobs, 2019-12-10 18:45:12 UTC

  Mississippi made more progress than any other state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress . When it comes to reading, the state’s fourth graders “are now on par with the national average, reading as well or better than pupils in California, Texas, Michigan and 18 other states,” writes Emily Hanford in a New York Times op-ed. As part of Mississippi’s literacy push, the state is “making sure all of its teachers understand the science of reading, ” she writes. Mississippi is the fastest improving state in fourth-grade reading. Photo: Kim Palmer/Hechinger Report The Urban Institute’s [...]

• The Green Paradox
  by sense.sustainability@gmail.com (Jisung Park) in Sense and Sustainability, 2019-12-10 13:00:56 UTC

  When economists discuss climate change policies such as carbon taxes, cap-and-trade systems, and carbon intensity standards, effectiveness is a key question. Will these policies lead to the reductions in greenhouse gasses that we would like? The worst case scenario is usually thought of as an expensive policy that has zero effect on the global stock of gases, such as a tax that induces businesses to displace all the emissions they are “getting rid of” to other, untaxed regions. (The shifting of emissions across space like this is called carbon leakage ). So, we’re often considering whether cli [...]

2019-12-07

• Labor Market Frictions and Lowest Low Fertility
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-12-07 04:18:07 UTC

  By Nezih Guner, Ezgi Kaya and Virginia S�nchez Marcos http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12771&r=dge The total fertility rate is well below its replacement level of 2.1 children in high- income countries. Why do women choose such low fertility levels? We study how labor market frictions affect the fertility of college-educated women. We focus on two frictions: uncertainty created by dual labor markets (the coexistence of jobs with temporary and open-ended contracts) and inflexibility of work schedules. Using rich administrative data from the Spanish Social Security records, we show that [...]

2019-12-05

• Science Demands a Sacrifice!
  by Vulgar Economics in Vulgar Economics, 2019-12-05 18:42:00 UTC

  So I've been pretty focused on the literature about fascists that I almost feel like I'm not an economist anymore. To combat that, I've decided to read more of the economic literature. Obviously, I'm still going to read what I'm interested in, but my research interests have gotten...weird. I combed through the American Economic Review until I found a title that interested me. It's about scientists dying. I picked the one about scientists dying. In Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? economists Pierre Azoulay, Christian Fons-Rosen, and Joshua S. Graff Zivin seek to answer the question [...]

2019-12-02

• Negative Nominal Interest Rates: A Primer
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-12-02 13:10:33 UTC

  Many people find negative interest rates confusing. Why should anyone pay a bank to make a deposit? Why should a bank pay someone to borrow? How can we value an asset with a future cash flow when the interest rate is negative? Policymakers also wonder whether the effects of negative interest rates on the economy are favorable or unfavorable. Do negative interest rates help central banks achieve price stability by stimulating economic activity? Do negative rates spur banks to make more good loans or to evergreen bad ones? Will borrowers and banks take on too much risk because they can fund inve [...]

2019-11-30

• We cannot build our way out of inequality
  by ? in USAPP, 2019-11-30 12:30:54 UTC

  A dominant view in urban economics suggests that the solution to the housing crisis of major cities is to relax zoning and other planning regulations. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Michael Storper challenge this position, arguing that there is no clear and unc [...]

2019-11-29

• The UK’s housing crisis: what should the next government do?
  by Artemis Photiadou in British Politics and Policy at LSE, 2019-11-29 00:00:21 UTC

  The real problem behind the ongoing housing crisis is unresponsive supply, write Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber . They explain that the solution is not hard to fathom: to build more houses, there first has to be land, and then an incentive to build on that land. This straightforward solution nevertheless requires radical change in the inertia of UK housing policy. Since 2015, neither the government nor any opposition party has had any effective policy to tackle our housing crisis symbolised most starkly by Starter Homes . To the extent there has been action, it is largely ineffective at be [...]

2019-11-28

• A Theory of Cultural Revivals
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-11-28 12:44:52 UTC

  By: Murat Iyigun  (University of Colorado, Boulder);  Jared Rubin  (Chapman University);  Avner Seror  (Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, EHESS, Ecole Centrale, AMSE, Marseille, France) Abstract: Why do some societies fail to adopt more efficient institutions? And why do such failures often coincide with cultural movements that glorify the past? We propose a model highlighting the interplay—or lack thereof—between institutional change and cultural beliefs. The main insight is that institutional change by itself will not lead to a more efficient economy unless culture evolves in tandem. This is b [...]

• Is There a Link Between Air Pollution and Impaired Memory? Evidence on 34,000 English Citizens
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-11-28 12:43:59 UTC

  By: Oswald, Andrew J.  (Economics and CAGE, University of Warwick);  Powdthavee, Nattavudh  (WBS, University of Warwick) Abstract: It is known that people feel less happy in areas with higher levels of nitrogen dioxide NO2 (MacKerron and Mourato, 2009). What else might air pollution do to human wellbeing? This paper uses data on a standardized word-recall test that was done in the year 2011 by 34,000 randomly sampled English citizens across 318 geographical areas. We find that human memory is worse in areas where NO2 and PM10 levels are greater. The paper provides both (i) OLS results an [...]

• Is There Still Son Preference in the United States?
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-11-28 12:42:33 UTC

  By: Francine D. Blau ;  Lawrence M. Kahn ;  Peter Brummund ;  Jason Cook ;  Miriam Larson-Koester Abstract: In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe evidence on son preference in the United States. In light of the substantial increase in immigration, we examine this question separately for natives and immigrants. Dahl and Moretti (2008) found earlier evidence consistent with son preference in that having a female first child raised fertility and increased the probability that the family was living without a father. We find that for our mo [...]

2019-11-27

• How Sticky Wages In Existing Jobs Can Affect Hiring
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-11-27 18:53:46 UTC

  By Mark Bils, Yongsung Chang and Sun-Bin Kim http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:snu:ioerwp:no118&r=dge We consider a matching model of employment with flexible wages for new hires, but sticky wages within matches. Unlike most models of sticky wages, we allow effort to respond if wages are too high or too low. In the Mortensen-Pissarides model, employment is not affected by wage stickiness in existing matches. But it is in our model. If wages of matched workers are stuck too high, firms require more effort, lowering the value of additional labor and reducing hiring. We find that effort’s response can [...]

• ¿Es buena la diversidad genética para la economía?
  by David Cuberes in Nada Es Gratis, 2019-11-27 06:07:23 UTC

  Depende. Una sociedad con poca diversidad genética resulta ser poco creativa, con poca capacidad de innovar y con poca división del trabajo. Por otro lado, demasiada diversidad genética hará que sea más probable que las gentes se peleen entre ellos. Así pues, existe un nivel óptimo de diversidad genética, al menos si queremos maximizar el crecimiento económico. Esta es la tesis de un atrevido y, por qué no decirlo, controvertido trabajo de los economistas Quamrul Ashraf y Oded Galor (ver el trabajo aquí y un excelente resumen (narrado por el mismísimo Morgan Freeman (!!) aquí ). El trabajo de [...]

2019-11-26

• Bancos Centrales y Distribución de Ingreso
  by Marc Hofstetter Gascon in Foco Económico, 2019-11-26 21:00:14 UTC

  Por Marc Hofstetter , Universidad de los Andes. twitter: @mahofste En 1980 la mediana de la inflación mundial rondaba el 14%. Dos décadas después, cuando cambiábamos de siglo, la estadística global había caído a 4%, una cifra que algunos han defendido como una meta de inflación apropiada. Sin embargo, no nos detuvimos ahí: a partir de 2013, la mitad de los países del mundo ha reportado inflaciones por debajo de 3% y un tercio cifras menores a 2%. En esta nota discutiremos una arista de las consecuencias que tiene el proceso de reducción de la inflación, una que solo recientemente ha recibido l [...]

2019-11-25

• Economic Insecurity and the Rise of the Right
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-11-25 22:30:16 UTC

  By: Walter Bossert  (CIREQ – Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, University of Montreal – University of Montreal);  Andrew E. Clark  (PSE – Paris School of Economics, PJSE – Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques – UP1 – Université Panthéon-Sorbonne – ENS Paris – École normale supérieure – Paris – INRA – Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique – EHESS – École des hautes études en sciences sociales – ENPC – École des Ponts ParisTech – CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique);  Conchita d’Ambrosio  (INSIDE – INtegrative research unit on Social and I [...]

• Time Discounting and Wealth Inequality
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-11-25 22:29:11 UTC

  By: Epper, Thomas ;  Fehr, Ernst ;  Fehr-Duda, Helga ;  Thustrup Kreiner, Claus ;  Dreyer Lassen, David ;  Leth-Petersen, Søren ;  Nytoft Rasmussen, Gregers Abstract: This paper documents a large association between individuals’ time discounting in incentivized experiments and their positions in the real-life wealth distribution derived from Danish highquality administrative data for a large sample of middle-aged individuals. The association is stable over time, exists through the wealth distribution and remains large after controlling for education, income profile, school grades, initia [...]

• Equality of opportunity in four measures of well-being
  by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog, 2019-11-25 22:27:53 UTC

  By: Xavier Ramos Morilla  (Departament d’Economia Aplicada, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona);  Daniel Gerszon Mahler  (World Bank) Abstract: A growing literature has tried to measure the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to acquire income. At the same time, policymakers have doubled down on e orts to go beyond income when designing policies to enhance well-being. We attempt to bridge these two areas by measuring the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to achieve a high level of well-being. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure well-being [...]

• Don Husereau’s journal round-up for 25th November 2019
  by Don Husereau in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2019-11-25 12:00:55 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Development and validation of the TRansparent Uncertainty ASsessmenT (TRUST) tool for assessing uncertainties in health economic decision models . PharmacoEconomics [ PubMed ] Published 11th November 2019 [...]

2019-11-24

• Labour's corporate tax plans: a half-defence
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-11-24 12:40:01 UTC

  Who really pays corporate taxes? This is the question posed by Labour’s plan to raise £30bn (pdf) from extra taxes on companies. These plans run into the problem that several studies have found that, ultimately, it is workers who pay a hefty chunk of such taxes. Michael Devereaux and colleagues have found that, in European countries, workers pay 92% of extra corporate taxes. A study of Germany alone has found that they pay around half (pdf) of them. And a US study (pdf) has found that they pay around one-third. A literature survey (pdf) by Ben Southwood finds that, on average, workers pay more [...]

• How “The Limits to Growth” Broke Australia’s Bipartisan Carbon Tax
  by ? in Iowa Climate, 2019-11-24 06:21:12 UTC

  Guest essay by Eric Worrall Australia’s famously climate skeptic former Prime Minister Tony Abbott won leadership by a single vote, because a senior member of parliament had learned the hard way to be skeptical of defective computer models and exa [...]

• How “The Limits to Growth” Broke Australia’s Bipartisan Carbon Tax
  by ? in Whatts Up With That, 2019-11-24 06:00:00 UTC

  Guest essay by Eric Worrall Australia’s famously climate skeptic former Prime Minister Tony Abbott won leadership by a single vote, because a senior member of parliament had learned the hard way to be skeptical of defective computer models and exagge [...]

• How “The Limits to Growth” Broke Australia’s Bipartisan Carbon Tax
  by ? in Noozilla Top, 2019-11-24 03:04:11 UTC

  Guest essay by Eric Worrall Australia’s famously climate skeptic former Prime Minister Tony Abbott won leadership by a single vote, because a senior member of parliament had learned the hard way to be skeptical of defective computer models and... To [...]

2019-11-23

• China Threatens America's Inventive Genius (Just Not How You Think)
  by ? in Noozilla Top, 2019-11-23 18:31:06 UTC

  James Pethokoukis Technology, Asia Innovation is more important than fearing what China is doing. Key point: America should be concerned about China’s intellectual property theft and more about how to keep beating Beijing in inventing new... Topics: Chi [...]

2019-11-22

• The vagaries of the sea: evidence on the real effects of money from maritime disasters in the Spanish Empire
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-11-22 17:14:55 UTC

  By Adam Brzezinski, Yao Chen, Nuno Palma and Felix Ward http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0170&r=dge We exploit a recurring natural experiment to identify the effects of money supply shocks: maritime disasters in the Spanish Empire (1531-1810) that resulted in the loss of substantial amounts of monetary silver. A one percentage point reduction in the money growth rate caused a 1.3% drop in real output that persisted for several years. The empirical evidence highlights nominal rigidities and credit frictions as the primary monetary transmission channels. Our model of the Spanish economy c [...]

2019-11-20

• Ownership and productivity
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-11-20 14:12:03 UTC

  In last night’s leaders’ debate, the audience laughed when Jeremy Corbyn said that productivity gains could pay for a four-day week. This is an example of what I said recently – that we cannot have nice things because voters have resigned themselves to the inadequacy of British capitalism. And inadequate it is. The ONS estimates that UK productivity is one-fifth lower than that of the US, Germany or France and one-tenth lower than Italy’s. Closing some of this gap would allow for a cut in the working week with no loss of pay. In this context, Labour’s plans (pdf) to reform corporate governanc [...]

2019-11-19

• Measuring “OK Boomer”
  by Andrew Coleman in TVHE, 2019-11-19 19:00:47 UTC

  In a sense OK Boomer has as long history, as long as the lives of Baby Boomers themselves – at least if we relate such things to the overlapping generations models in economics. The literature on OK Boomer/intergenerational transfers The first “OK Boomer” paper was written by the Nobel prize winning economist Franco Modigliani and his co-author Richard Brumberg in 1954 . To analyse the process of saving and wealth transmission, they developed the overlapping generations model of an economy – simply a model in which people of different ages and incomes and wealth all live together, j [...]

• L’Italia che gioca d’azzardo
  by Elisa Benedetti, Raffaele Lagravinese, Sabrina Molinaro e Giuliano Resce in La Voce, 2019-11-19 10:53:11 UTC

  Nel 2018 in Italia si sono giocati quasi 107 miliardi di euro. Ma se i più ricchi restano sui giochi tradizionali, sono i più poveri a dedicarsi a scommesse e slot-machine. I risultati di uno studio sugli effetti distributivi del gioco d’azzardo. Il boom dell’azzardo Secondo gli ultimi dati dell’Agenza delle dogane e dei monopoli, nel 2018 in Italia si sono giocati 106,7 miliardi di euro ( Adm, 2019 ). Una cifra quasi assimilabile al fondo sanitario nazionale per il 2018 (che vale circa 113 miliardi) è stata investita nel gioco d’azzardo. Tra il 2000 e il 2018 si è passati da una raccolta di 1 [...]

2019-11-18

• Is Gentrification Good or Bad?
  by Jason Barr in Skynomics Blog, 2019-11-18 13:06:24 UTC

  Jason M. Barr         November 18, 2019 Across U.S. cities, perhaps nothing is more controversial than the issue of gentrification—the process of wealthier residents moving into lower-income, central city communities. Those who are against it claim it destroys cities and harms residents, while proponents say it helps neighborhoods grow and become livelier. So, which is it? Is gentrification good or bad? To answer this, we need to move beyond feelings and rhetoric and try to get a sense of what’s really going on. One of the best ways to do this is to employ rigorous social science methods with [...]

2019-11-17

• Why we can't have nice things
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-11-17 13:32:23 UTC

  We can’t have nice things. That’s the message of Ed Davey’s speech yesterday, in which he called for a structural current budget surplus and denounced Labour’s spending plans as “fantasy economics”. Voters seem to agree. Although many individual Labour policies are popular, the majority think Labour’s plans are unaffordable, and very few trust Corbyn on the economy. From one perspective, all this is wrong. Over the last 25 years, two big things have changed. One is that real risk-free interest rates have slumped. This means government borrowing and investment is much more affordable than it u [...]

2019-11-15

• On the Heterogeneous Welfare Gains and Losses from Trade
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-11-15 02:09:41 UTC

  By Daniel Carroll and Sewon Hur http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:190602&r=dge How are the gains and losses from trade distributed across individuals within a country? First, we document that tradable goods and services constitute a larger fraction of expenditures for low-wealth and low-income households. Second, we build a trade model with nonhomothetic preferences—to generate the documented relationship between tradable expenditure shares, income, and wealth—and uninsurable earnings risk—to generate heterogeneity in income and wealth. Third, we use the calibrated model to quantify the [...]

2019-11-14

• Contraintes financières et productivité : une relation en U inversé
  by Emeline in Bloc-Notes Eco, 2019-11-14 14:25:37 UTC

  Publié le 15/11/2019 Par Philippe Aghion (LSE, Collège de France et CEPR), Antonin Bergeaud , Gilbert Cette , Rémy Lecat , Helene Maghin (KU Leuven). Note : ce billet a été d’abord publié en anglais sur vox.eu Quel est l’impact sur la productivité des contraintes de crédit ? Un durcissement de ces contraintes rend plus difficile le financement de l’innovation, avec à long terme des effets néfastes sur la productivité. Mais cela pousse également les entreprises en place les moins performantes à sortir du marché, facilitant l’arrivée d’entreprises plus performantes. La combinaison de ces deux e [...]

2019-11-11

• Monitoring the Monitors
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2019-11-11 12:47:22 UTC

  “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” Louis Brandeis, Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It , 1914. Disclosure is a fundamental pillar of our market-based financial system. When information is accurate and complete, asset prices can reflect both expected return and risk. Without effective disclosure, how could anyone make good savings and investment decisions? Having information is one thing; using it appropriately is something else entirely. To eva [...]

2019-11-08

• Resilience and selection
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2019-11-08 13:38:55 UTC

  If truth is the first casualty of war, social science is the first casualty of election campaigns. So it was with Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday. He claimed that Labour will tax everybody more, “saddle the next generation with debt”, “ruin your finances” and would be “letting prices run wild in the shops.” All this is silly hyperbole. I say so not just because, as Simon says . Labour’s spending plans are more sustainable than the Tories because it will not inflict a damaging Brexit upon the economy. Instead, there are two other reasons why Javid is wrong. One is that developed economies are r [...]

• Call to readers: let's talk about patent quality
  by noreply@blogger.com (Léon Dijkman) in The IPKat, 2019-11-08 11:35:00 UTC

  Last week, the Intellectual Property subcommittee to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing to inquiry how the U.S. Congress can prevent the issuance of poor quality patents [video recording and testimony transcripts here ]. The hearing was part of a series to educate the subcommittee on the current state of U.S. patent law in light of the proposed STRONGER Patents Act of 2019 . Several interesting comments and suggestions for improvement were made during the hearing, which are briefly summarized below. The hearing is also a good opportunity to reflect on the quality of Euro [...]

2019-11-06

• Why your research project needs build automation
  by jdingel in Trade Diversion, 2019-11-06 19:45:25 UTC

  Software build tools automate compiling source code into executable binaries. (For example, if you’ve installed Linux packages, you’ve likely used Make.) Like software packages, research projects are large collections of code that are executed in sequence to produce output. Your research code has a first step (download raw data) and a last step (generate paper PDF). Its input-output structure is a directed graph ( dependency graph ). The simplest build approach for a Stata user is a “master” do file. If a project involves A through Z, this master file executes A, B, …, Y, and Z in order. But t [...]

• 38. Economía y Difusión Social (EDS): Asepelt y América
  by MCG Blogs de Economía in Asociación de Estudios Euro-Americanos: Desarrollo internacional de América, Europa y otras áreas, 2019-11-06 18:13:00 UTC

  Congreso celebrado en Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). Año 201 8. Además de los Anales Iberoamericanos de Economía Aplicada, l a asociación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada ASEPELT ha celebrado congresos anuales  en España y Portugal desde el año 1978 hasta el año 2019, cuyas comunicaciones están gratuitamente disponibles en la Web de la revista: https://www.asepelt.org/anales/anales-de-economia-aplicada.html Las comunicaciones abordan una variedad de temas, con interés investigador, docente y de difusión social. En general se refieren a la economía española pero hay también algunas comunicacio [...]

• Imagine Riding the Ceteris Pari-bus into the Sunset ... in Argentina
  by Anna Gelpern in Credit Slips, 2019-11-06 01:36:18 UTC

  Imagine sovereign debt without Argentina -- no Paris Club , no pari passu , no CACs, no SDRM ... even sovereign immunity might look totally different. History teaches that whatever happens in Argentina's imminent bond restructuring ( revisiting, reprofiling, rejiggering, revamping --the difference is overblown) is likely to have consequences beyond the long-suffering Republic. The fact that Argentina has an actual government with authority over the economy and some capacity to execute a restructuring (unlike, say, Venezuela) justifies wading into the small print of its bond disclosure--as Mark [...]

2019-11-05

• The Cyclical Behavior of the Beveridge Curve in the Housing Market
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2019-11-05 21:08:01 UTC

  By Miroslav Gabrovski and Victor Ortego-Marti http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucr:wpaper:201911&r=dge This paper develops a business cycle model of the housing market with search frictions and entry of both buyers and sellers. The housing market exhibits a well-established cyclical component, which features three stylized facts: prices move in the same direction as sales and the number of houses for sale, but opposite to the time it takes to sell a house. These stylized facts imply that in the data housing vacancies and the number of buyers are positively correlated, i.e. that the Beveridge Curve [...]

• "Plan B" for a Global Climate Mitigation Treaty
  by Matthew E. Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2019-11-05 06:58:00 UTC

  As the U.S enters an election year, it should not surprise people that President Trump's team will not be l eading the low carbon coalition.   Read this quote released by his team; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo  announced the notification on Twitter  and issued a statement saying the accord would impose intolerable burdens on the American economy. “The U.S. approach incorporates the reality of the global energy mix and uses all energy sources and technologies cleanly and efficiently, including fossils fuels, nuclear energy, and renewable energy,” Mr. Pompeo said. I do not agree that this acco [...]

2019-11-04

• Job quality, FDI and institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa
  by Sotiris Blanas, Adnan Seric and Christian Viegelahn in Development Policy Blog, 2019-11-04 19:00:23 UTC

  Although Africa still lags other developing regions in terms of FDI inflows, its capacity to attract FDI has increased remarkably in recent decades. UNCTAD data show that annual FDI flows into Africa increased from US$2.8 billion to US$41.7 billion between 1990 and 2017, resulting in an increase in the FDI stock from 10.9% to 38.8% of GDP over the same period. Sub-Saharan Africa has also been among the regions with the fastest growth in working-age population worldwide. According to projections of the United Nations Population Division, this trend is expected to continue over the next decades, [...]

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