AEJ: Economic Policy 2024年 11月刊 目录与摘要

刊发卷期：Vol. 16, Issue 4

刊发时间：November 2024

期刊等级：ABS 3

出版厂商：American Economic Association

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目录

1. Information Frictions and Skill Signaling in the Youth Labor Market

Sara B. Heller and Judd B. Kessler

2. High Schools Tailored to Adults Can Help Them Complete a Traditional Diploma and Excel in the Labor Market

Rebecca Brough, David C. Phillips, and Patrick S. Turner

3. Pricing Carbon: Evidence from Expert Recommendations

Moritz A. Drupp, Frikk Nesje, and Robert C. Schmidt

4. Real-Time Pricing and the Cost of Clean Power

Imelda, Matthias Fripp, and Michael J. Roberts

5. Identity in Court Decision-Making

Ulrika Ahrsjö, Susan Niknami, and Mårten Palme

6. The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime

Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Stephen B. Billings, and David J. Deming

7. Downward Revision of Investment Decisions after Corporate Tax Hikes

Sebastian Link, Manuel Menkhoff, Andreas Peichl, and Paul Schüle

8. Managers' Productivity and Recruitment in the Public Sector

Pablo Muñoz and Mounu Prem

9. How Do You Say Your Name? Difficult-to-Pronounce Names and Labor Market Outcomes

Qi Ge and Stephen Wu

10. Achieving Air Pollution Control Targets with Technology-Aided Monitoring: Better Enforcement or Localized Efforts?

Lin Yang, Yatang Lin, Jin Wang, and Fangyuan Peng

11. Administrative Burden and Procedural Denials: Experimental Evidence from SNAP

Eric Giannella, Tatiana Homonoff, Gwen Rino, and Jason Somerville

12. Education and Geographical Mobility: The Role of the Job Surplus

Michael Amior

13. Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans

Megan T. Stevenson and Jennifer L. Doleac

14. The Carrot and the Stick: Bank Bailouts and the Disciplining Role of Board Appointments

Christian Mücke, Loriana Pelizzon, Vincenzo Pezone, and Anjan Thakor

15. Price Sensitivity and Information Barriers to the Take-up of Naloxone

Mireille Jacobson and David Powell

16. Remote Instruction and Student Mental Health: Swedish Evidence from the Pandemic

Evelina Björkegren, Helena Svaleryd, and Jonas Vlachos

摘要

1. Information Frictions and Skill Signaling in the Youth Labor Market

Sara B. Heller and Judd B. Kessler

This paper provides evidence that information frictions limit the labor market trajectories of US youth. We provide credible skill signals—recommendation letters based on supervisor feedback—to a random subset of 43,409 participants in New York's summer jobs program. Letters increase employment the following year by 3 percentage points (4.5 percent). Earnings effects grow over four years to a cumulative 1,349 (4.9 percent). We find little evidence of increased job search or confidence; instead, signals may help employers better identify successful matches with high-productivity workers. Pulling youth into the labor market can, however, hamper on-time graduation, especially among low-achieving students.

2. High Schools Tailored to Adults Can Help Them Complete a Traditional Diploma and Excel in the Labor Market

Rebecca Brough, David C. Phillips, and Patrick S. Turner

Over 18 million adults in the United States lack a high school credential. While some go on to attain the GED, diplomas are potentially more valuable. A network of high schools helps adults graduate by providing tailored curricula, nonacademic coaching, onsite child care, and transportation. After five years, earnings increase by 38 percent more for graduates than nonenrolling applicants. We address selection by conditioning on preapplication earnings and comparing to students who exit after positive shocks. Much of the wage gains can be accounted for by sectoral switching and evidence on credential completions is consistent with a human capital mechanism.

3. Pricing Carbon: Evidence from Expert Recommendations

Moritz A. Drupp, Frikk Nesje, and Robert C. Schmidt

We study the variation of carbon price recommendations and their determinants using survey evidence from more than 400 experts across almost 40 countries. We quantify the extent of disagreement and reveal that a majority of experts can agree on short- and medium-term global carbon price levels, and on unilateral carbon price levels in most countries. The majority of recommendations do not exhibit a "free riding" pattern of lower unilateral than global carbon prices. Furthermore, border carbon adjustment facilitates higher unilateral price recommendations. We show how recommendations vary with additional survey responses, and with country and expert characteristics.

4. Real-Time Pricing and the Cost of Clean Power

Imelda, Matthias Fripp, and Michael J. Roberts

Solar and wind power are now cheaper than fossil fuels but are intermittent. The extra supply-side variability implies growing benefits of using real-time retail pricing (RTP). We evaluate the potential gains of RTP using a model that jointly solves investment, supply, storage, and demand to obtain a chronologically detailed dynamic equilibrium for the island of Oahu, Hawai'i. We find that, holding demand assumptions fixed, RTP reduces costs in high-renewable systems by roughly 6 to 12 times as much as in fossil systems, markedly lowering the cost of clean energy integration.

5. Identity in Court Decision-Making

Ulrika Ahrsjö, Susan Niknami, and Mårten Palme

We explore the role of identity along multiple dimensions in high-stakes decision-making. Our data contain information about demographic and socioeconomic indicators for defendants and randomly assigned jurors in a Swedish court. Our results show that defendants are 4 to 6 percent less likely to get a prison sentence if judged by one more juror belonging to the same identity-forming group. Moreover, they are given 10 percent shorter prison sentences. Socioeconomic background and demographic attributes are equally important for identity effects, and these effects stem from trials of longer duration and where the defendant is present in the courtroom.

6. The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime

Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Stephen B. Billings, and David J. Deming

Schools must balance student behavior management with the potential negatives of strict discipline. These policies can deter misbehavior but may stigmatize students and expose them to the criminal justice system early. We assess the impact of attending a strict discipline school on achievement, educational attainment, and adult criminal activity. Using data from a boundary change and principal switches, we find that higher suspension rates have significant negative long-term effects. Students at such schools are 15–20 percent more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults. Negative impacts on educational attainment are particularly pronounced for males and students of color.

7. Downward Revision of Investment Decisions after Corporate Tax Hikes

Sebastian Link, Manuel Menkhoff, Andreas Peichl, and Paul Schüle

This paper estimates the causal effect of corporate tax hikes on firm investment based on more than 1,400 local tax changes. By observing planned and realized investment volumes in a representative sample of German manufacturing firms, we can study how tax hikes induce firms to revise their investment decisions. On average, the share of firms that invest less than previously planned increases by 3 percentage points after a tax hike. This effect is twice as large during recessions.

8. Managers' Productivity and Recruitment in the Public Sector

Pablo Muñoz and Mounu Prem

Governments face many constraints in attracting talented managers to the public sector, which often lacks high-powered incentives. In this paper, we study how a civil service reform in Chile changed the effectiveness of a vital group of public sector managers: school principals. First, we estimate principal effectiveness by using an extension of the canonical teacher value-added model. Then we evaluate the effect of the reform on principal effectiveness using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that public schools appointed more effective managers and improved their students' outcomes after increasing the competitiveness and transparency of their selection process.

9. How Do You Say Your Name? Difficult-to-Pronounce Names and Labor Market Outcomes

Qi Ge and Stephen Wu

We test for labor market discrimination based on an understudied characteristic: name fluency. Analysis of recent economics PhD job candidates indicates that name difficulty is negatively related to the probability of landing an academic or tenure-track position and research productivity of initial institutional placement. Discrimination due to name fluency is also found using experimental data from prior audit studies. Within samples of African Americans (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004) and ethnic immigrants (Oreopoulos 2011), job applicants with less fluent names experience lower callback rates, and name complexity explains roughly between 10 and 50 percent of ethnic name penalties. The results are primarily driven by candidates with weaker résumés, suggesting that cognitive biases may contribute to the penalty of having a difficult-to-pronounce name.

10. Achieving Air Pollution Control Targets with Technology-Aided Monitoring: Better Enforcement or Localized Efforts?

Lin Yang, Yatang Lin, Jin Wang, and Fangyuan Peng

Weak enforcement of environmental regulations remains a global issue due to inadequate monitoring and misaligned incentives. This paper examines the effects of automated monitoring on achieving air pollution control targets amidst China's war on pollution. Utilizing the staggered rollout process and remote-sensing data, we find local governments respond to the advanced monitoring system by strategically targeting areas near monitors, resulting in a 3.2 percent decrease in pollution adjacent to automated monitors compared to areas farther away. Furthermore, we observe heterogeneity in response across cities with varying degrees of preexisting data manipulation and among officials facing different incentives and public pressure.

11. Administrative Burden and Procedural Denials: Experimental Evidence from SNAP

Eric Giannella, Tatiana Homonoff, Gwen Rino, and Jason Somerville

Many government program applications result in procedural denials due to administrative burdens associated with applying. We identify the intake interview as a key barrier to take-up of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and study the effect of an alternative application process designed to reduce burdens. Using a field experiment involving 65,000 Los Angeles applicants, we find that access to flexible interviews initiated by the applicant increases approvals by 6 percentage points, doubles early approvals, and increases long-term participation by over 2 percentage points. Our findings highlight the importance of incorporating flexibility when designing program integrity policies to minimize procedural denials.

12. Education and Geographical Mobility: The Role of the Job Surplus

Michael Amior

Better educated workers accept many more long-distance job offers, and relocate quicker following local shocks. I attribute this to a fundamental feature of their labor market experience, unrelated to geography: large returns to job match quality. If a good offer happens to originate from far away, the match surplus is then more likely to justify the cost of moving. This "lubricates" labor markets spatially. Using wage transition data (and a jobs ladder model), I show this can explain the bulk of mobility differentials. These differentials can be closed by subsidizing long-distance matches, and I quantify the cost of doing so.

13. Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans

Megan T. Stevenson and Jennifer L. Doleac

We evaluate the impacts of adopting algorithmic risk assessments in sentencing. We find that judges changed sentencing practices in response to the risk assessment, but that discretion played a large role in mediating its impact. Judges deviated from the recommendations associated with the algorithm in systematic ways, suggestive of alternative objectives. As a result, risk assessment did not lead to detectable gains in terms of public safety or reduced incarceration rates. Using simulations, we show that strict adherence to the sentencing recommendations associated with the algorithm would have had benefits (less incarceration) but also some costs (increased sentences for youth).

14. The Carrot and the Stick: Bank Bailouts and the Disciplining Role of Board Appointments

Christian Mücke, Loriana Pelizzon, Vincenzo Pezone, and Anjan Thakor

We empirically examine the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) used by the US government to bail out distressed banks and its implications for regulatory policy. We find strong evidence that a feature of the CPP—the government's ability to appoint independent directors on the board of an assisted bank that missed six dividend payments to the Treasury—had a significant effect on bank behavior. Banks were averse to these appointments—the empirical distribution of missed payments exhibits a sharp discontinuity at five. Director appointments by the Treasury were associated with improved bank performance and lower CEO pay.

15. Price Sensitivity and Information Barriers to the Take-up of Naloxone

Mireille Jacobson and David Powell

We conducted a field experiment that randomized advertisements, advertisement content, and prices across 2,204 counties in the United States to study the impacts on online purchases of naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug. Advertising increased website users but only impacted purchases when combined with a price reduction. Messages emphasizing the discreet nature of online sales had no additional impact on purchases. Comparing counties with advertisements featuring a highly discounted price to those featuring the full price, we estimate a price elasticity of demand for online naloxone of −1.3. Price is a significant barrier to online purchases of this lifesaving medication.

16. Remote Instruction and Student Mental Health: Swedish Evidence from the Pandemic

Evelina Björkegren, Helena Svaleryd, and Jonas Vlachos

When COVID-19 reached Sweden, upper-secondary students (ages 17–19) transitioned to remote instruction, while lower-secondary schools (ages 14–16) remained open. We use this setting as a natural experiment to analyze how modes of instruction affect student mental health. We find a 4.4 percent decrease in mental health care use from remote instruction, primarily due to fewer diagnoses and prescriptions for depression and anxiety. The reduction persists throughout the study period; 21 months after the initial closure and 9 months after schools resumed usual operations. This suggests potential mental health benefits from remote instruction, at least in the medium term.