Vol. 114, Issue 11 目录
1.Polity Size and Local Government Performance: Evidence from India
2.Institution Building without Commitment
3.Financial Technology Adoption: Network Externalities of Cashless Payments in Mexico
4.Sticky Spending, Sequestration, and Government Debt
5.Generalized Social Marginal Welfare Weights Imply Inconsistent Comparisons of Tax Policies
6.The Dynamic Consequences of State Building: Evidence from the French Revolution
7.Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes
8.Micro Risks and (Robust) Pareto-Improving Policies
9.A Technology-Gap Model of 'Premature' Deindustrialization
10.Quality Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Taste Projection in Markets with Observational Learning
内容与摘要
1
Polity Size and Local Government Performance: Evidence from India
Authors
Veda Narasimhan and Jeffrey Weaver
Abstract
Developing countries have increasingly decentralized power to local governments. This paper studies the implications of a central element of decentralization (polity size) using population-based discontinuities that determine local government boundaries for over 100,000 Indian villages. Over the short and long run, individuals allocated into local governments with smaller populations have better access to public goods. We provide suggestive evidence that these results are related to heightened civic engagement and stronger political incentives, but not to other mechanisms such as elite capture.
2
Institution Building without Commitment
Authors
Marco Bassetto, Zhen Huo, and José-Víctor Ríos-Rull
Abstract
We propose a theory of gradualism in the implementation of good policies, suitable for environments featuring time consistency. We downplay the role of the initial period by allowing agents both to wait for future agents to start equilibrium play and to restart the equilibrium by ignoring past history. The allocation gradually transits toward one that weighs both short- and long-term concerns, stopping short of the Ramsey outcome but greatly improving upon Markovian equilibria. We use the theory to account for the slow emergence of both climate policies and the reduction of global tariff rates.
3
Financial Technology Adoption: Network Externalities of Cashless Payments in Mexico
Authors
Sean Higgins
Abstract
Do coordination failures constrain financial technology adoption? Exploiting the Mexican government's rollout of 1 million debit cards to poor households from 2009 to 2012, I examine responses on both sides of the market and find important spillovers and distributional impacts. On the supply side, small retail firms adopted point-of-sale terminals to accept card payments. On the demand side, this led to a 21 percent increase in other consumers' card adoption. The supply-side technology adoption response had positive effects on both richer consumers and small retail firms: richer consumers shifted 13 percent of their supermarket consumption to small retailers, whose sales and profits increased.
4
Sticky Spending, Sequestration, and Government Debt
Authors
Facundo Piguillem and Alessandro Riboni
Abstract
Once established, government spending programs tend to continue. A commonly held view is that spending inertia leads to unsustainable debt, ultimately requiring fiscal adjustments such as "sequestration." We show that by insuring against political turnover, inertia may reduce politicians' incentives to accumulate debt. However, large preexisting commitments and the prospect of future stabilization can lead to overspending to dilute past administrations' commitments. Finally, we show that political polarization amplifies incentives to prioritize inertial programs, potentially explaining the increased share of mandatory spending in the US budget.
5
Generalized Social Marginal Welfare Weights Imply Inconsistent Comparisons of Tax Policies
Authors
Itai Sher
Abstract
This paper concerns Saez and Stantcheva's (2016) generalized social marginal welfare weights, which aggregate losses and gains due to tax policies while incorporating nonutilitarian ethical considerations. The approach evaluates local tax changes without a global social objective. I show that local tax policy comparisons implicitly entail global comparisons. Moreover, whenever welfare weights do not have a utilitarian structure, these implied global comparisons are inconsistent. I argue that broader ethical values cannot in general be represented simply by modifying the weights placed on benefits to different people, and a more thoroughgoing modification of the utilitarian approach is required.
6
The Dynamic Consequences of State Building: Evidence from the French Revolution
Authors
Cédric Chambru, Emeric Henry, and Benjamin Marx
Abstract
How do radical reforms shape economic development over time? In 1790, the French Constituent Assembly overhauled the kingdom's organization to establish new local capitals. In some departments, the choice of local capitals over rival candidate cities was plausibly exogenous. We study how changes in administrative presence affect state capacity and development in the ensuing decades. In the short run, administrative proximity increases taxation and investments in law enforcement. In the long run, capitals obtain more public goods and grow faster. Our results shed light on the dynamic impacts of state building following one of history's most ambitious administrative reforms.
7
Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes
Authors
Cyrus Aghamolla, Pinar Karaca-Mandic, Xuelin Li, and Richard T. Thakor
Abstract
This study examines the link between credit supply and hospital health outcomes. We use bank stress tests as exogenous shocks to credit access for hospitals that have lending relationships with tested banks. We find that affected hospitals shift their operations to increase resource utilization following a negative credit shock but reduce the quality of their care to patients across a variety of measures, including a significant increase in risk-adjusted readmission and mortality rates. The results indicate that access to credit can affect the quality of health care hospitals deliver, pointing to important spillover effects of credit market frictions on health outcomes.
8
Micro Risks and (Robust) Pareto-Improving Policies
Authors
Mark Aguiar, Manuel Amador, and Cristina Arellano
Abstract
We provide conditions for the feasibility of robust Pareto-improving (RPI) policies when markets are incomplete and the interest rate is below the growth rate. We allow for arbitrary heterogeneity in preferences and income risk and a wedge between the return to capital and bonds. An RPI improves risk sharing and can induce a more efficient level of capital. Elasticities of aggregate savings to changes in interest rates are the crucial ingredients to the feasibility of RPIs. Government debt may complement rather than substitute for capital in an RPI. Our analysis emphasizes the welfare-improving qualities of government bonds versus explicit redistribution.
9
A Technology-Gap Model of 'Premature' Deindustrialization
Authors
Ippei Fujiwara and Kiminori Matsuyama
Abstract
We propose a parsimonious mechanism for generating premature deindustrialization (PD). In the baseline model, the Baumol effect drives the hump-shaped path of the manufacturing share. Countries follow different paths due to the difference in the sector-specific adoption lags. The condition for PD under which countries differ only in technology gap implies that the cross-country productivity dispersion is the largest in agriculture. Moreover, when calibrated to match Rodrik's (2016) findings, it is the smallest in manufacturing. In three extensions, we add the Engel effect, international trade, and catching up by late industrializers, to demonstrate the robustness of the mechanism.
10
Quality Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Taste Projection in Markets with Observational Learning
Authors
Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch and Antonio Rosato
Abstract
We study how misperceptions of others' tastes influence beliefs, demand, and prices in markets with observational learning. Consumers infer a good's quality from the quantity demanded and price paid by others. When consumers exaggerate the similarity between their and others' tastes, such "taste projection" generates discrepant quality perceptions, which are decreasing in a projector's taste and increasing in the observed price. These biased inferences produce an excessively elastic market demand. We also analyze dynamic monopoly pricing with short-lived taste-projecting consumers. Optimal pricing follows a declining path: a high initial price inflates future buyers' perceptions, and lower subsequent prices induce overadoption.
编辑 葛秋江
来源《AER》
监制 安然
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黄达教授是新中国“大金融”思想体系的首倡者和设计者。世纪之交，他针对经济金融全球化对中国金融学科建设提出的新挑战与新要求，重构基于中国实际的金融学科框架，首倡并系统设计“大金融”学科体系；几代学人在此基础上不断传承发扬，主张金融与实体经济相结合、宏观金融与微观金融相结合，具有鲜明“人大学派”特色的重大理论创新体系日渐形成。
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