The Review of Economics and Statistics 2024年 11月刊 目录与摘要

刊发卷期：Volume 106, Issue 6

刊发时间：November 2024

期刊等级：ABS 4

出版厂商：MIT Press

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目录

1.Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence from Secure Communities

Marcella Alsan; Crystal S. Yang

2.The Local Economic Impacts of Prisons

Janjala Chirakijja

3.The Political Economy of Immigration Enforcement: Conflict and Cooperation under Federalism

Alberto Ciancio; Camilo García-Jimeno

4.Worker Earnings, Service Quality, and Firm Profitability: Evidence from Nursing Homes and Minimum Wage Reforms

Krista Ruffini

5.The Causal Effects of R&D Grants: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity

Pietro Santoleri; Andrea Mina ; Alberto Di Minin; Irene Martelli

6.Market Access, Trade Costs, and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Northern Tanzania

Shilpa Aggarwal; Brian Giera; Dahyeon Jeong; Jonathan Robinson; Alan Spearot

7.Licensing Life-Saving Drugs for Developing Countries: Evidence from the Medicines Patent Pool

Alberto Galasso; Mark Schankerman

8.Measuring Preferences for Income Equality and Income Mobility

Bernardo Lara E.; Kenneth A. Shores

9.Air Pollution and the Labor Market: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke

Mark Borgschulte; David Molitor ; Eric Yongchen Zou

10.The Impacts of the U.S. Trade War on Chinese Exporters

Yang Jiao ; Zhikuo Liu; Zhiwei Tian; Xiaxin Wang

11.The Price of Inclusion: Evidence from Housing Developer Behavior

Evan J. Soltas

12.A Cold Shower for the Hot Hand Fallacy: Robust Evidence from Controlled Settings

Joshua B. Miller ; Adam Sanjurjo

13.Measuring Under- and Overreaction in Expectation Formation

Simas Kučinskas ; Florian S. Peters

14.Endogenous Firm Competition and the Cyclicality of Markups

Hassan Afrouzi ; Luigi Caloi

15.Endogenous Treatment Effect Estimation with a Large and Mixed Set of Instruments and Control Variables

Qingliang Fan ; Yaqian Wu

16.The Impact of Retail E-Commerce on Relative Prices and Consumer Welfare

Yoon Jo ; Misaki Matsumura; David E. Weinstein

17.NGOs and the Effectiveness of Interventions

Faraz Usmani; Marc Jeuland; Subhrendu K. Pattanayak

18.Regulated Revenues and Hospital Behavior: Evidence from a Medicare Overhaul

Tal Gross; Adam Sacarny; Maggie Shi; David Silver

19.Who Pays Sin Taxes? Understanding the Overlapping Burdens of Corrective Taxes

Christopher Conlon; Nirupama Rao; Yinan Wang

摘要

1.Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence from Secure Communities

Marcella Alsan; Crystal S. Yang

We study the effects of Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement program that dramatically increased interior removals of Hispanic noncitizens from the United States, on participation in means-tested social insurance programs among co-ethnic citizens. Exploiting county-level variation in the roll-out of enforcement together with its ethnic specificity, we find that Hispanic-headed citizen households significantly reduced their participation in two large federal safety net programs. Our results are most consistent with network effects that propagate fear through minority communities rather than stigma or lack of benefit information.

2.The Local Economic Impacts of Prisons

Janjala Chirakijja

I examine the economic consequences of prisons on local communities using two complementary approaches. The first uses prison openings during the 1990s across the United States, and the second exploits the results of the prison site-selection competitions in Texas. Prisons bring substantial and persistent gains in public employment. However, additional jobs at the prisons generate little spillover effects on private sector employment and fail to provide a major boost to local economic activity—overall resulting in approximately a one-for-one increase in local employment. Neighborhoods closest to prisons also experience declines in housing values and demographic shifts toward low-socioeconomic status households.

3.The Political Economy of Immigration Enforcement: Conflict and Cooperation under Federalism

Alberto Ciancio; Camilo García-Jimeno

Selection forces often confound the effects of policy changes. In the immigration enforcement context, we tackle this challenge tracking arrested immigrants along the deportation pipeline, isolating local and federal efforts. 80% of counties exhibit strategic substitutabilities in responding to federal enforcement, while the federal level is very effective at directing its efforts toward cooperative counties. We estimate that changes in the profile of immigration cases, and not weakened federal efforts, drove the reduction in deportations following a 2011 shift in federal priorities. Reducing immigration-court discretion and removing their dependence from the executive would have a significant impact on deportations.

4.Worker Earnings, Service Quality, and Firm Profitability: Evidence from Nursing Homes and Minimum Wage Reforms

Krista Ruffini     This paper examines whether higher earnings for frontline workers affects the quality of employees’ output. I leverage increases in the statutory minimum wage, combined with worker, consumer, and firm outcomes in the nursing home sector. I find that higher minimum wages increase income and retention among low-wage employees and improve consumer outcomes, measured by fewer inspection violations; lower rates of adverse, preventable health conditions; and lower resident mortality. Firms maintain profitability by attracting consumers with a greater ability to pay and increasing prices for these individuals.

5.The Causal Effects of R&D Grants: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity

Pietro Santoleri; Andrea Mina ; Alberto Di Minin; Irene Martelli

We leverage the discontinuity in the assignment mechanism of the Small and Medium Enterprise Instrument—the first European research and development (R&D) subsidy targeting small firms—to provide the broadest quasi-experimental evidence on R&D grants over both geographical and sectoral scopes. Grants trigger sizable impacts on a wide range of firm-level outcomes. Heterogeneous effects are consistent with grants reducing financial frictions. This reduction is due to funding rather than certification. We also provide direct causal evidence on pure certification—signaling not attached to funding—and show that firms that only receive “quality stamps” do not improve their performance. Finally, our estimates suggest that the scheme produces private returns that are positive and comparable to those of the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research program, while also generating geographical and sectoral spillovers in the form of increased rates of entrepreneurial entry.

6.Market Access, Trade Costs, and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Northern Tanzania

Shilpa Aggarwal; Brian Giera; Dahyeon Jeong; Jonathan Robinson; Alan Spearot     We collect data on prices, travel costs, and farmer decisions to quantify market access for chemical fertilizer and its impact on agricultural productivity in 1,180 villages in Northern Tanzania. Villages at the bottom of the travel cost-adjusted input price distribution face 40%–55% less favorable prices than those at the top. A standard deviation increase in village-level remoteness is associated with 20%–25% lower input adoption. A spatial model of input adoption conservatively estimates that total trade costs are 4 times pecuniary travel costs. Counterfactuals suggest that halving travel costs would more than double adoption and reduce the adoption-remoteness gradient by 63%.

7.Licensing Life-Saving Drugs for Developing Countries: Evidence from the Medicines Patent Pool

Alberto Galasso; Mark Schankerman     

We study the effects of the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP)—an institution that pools patents across geographical markets—on the licensing and adoption of life-saving drugs in low- and middle-income countries. We show the presence of an immediate and large increase in licensing when a patent is included in the MPP. We also show evidence that the pool increases actual entry and volume of sales, but these impacts are much smaller than on licensing, which is due to the geographic bundling of licenses. The paper highlights the potential of pools in promoting diffusion of biomedical innovation in developing countries.

8.Measuring Preferences for Income Equality and Income Mobility

Bernardo Lara E.; Kenneth A. Shores

This paper quantifies preferences for income equality and mobility by generating statistics that are uncorrelated with beliefs and can be interpreted as marginal rates of substitution (MRS). All things being equal, U.S. residents are willing to reduce average income by 2,744 to reduce the 90/10 income inequality ratio one unit, and 1,228 to increase income mobility from the bottom quintile one percentage point. Democrats and Independents have similar preferences for both social variables, while Republicans have an MRS that is about two-thirds that of Democrats and Independents for both income inequality and mobility.

9.Air Pollution and the Labor Market: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke

Mark Borgschulte; David Molitor ; Eric Yongchen Zou

We study how air pollution impacts the U.S. labor market by analyzing the effects of drifting wildfire smoke. We link satellite-based smoke plume data with labor market outcomes to estimate that an additional day of smoke exposure reduces quarterly earnings by about 0.1%. Extensive margin responses, including employment reductions and labor force exits, explain 13% of the overall earnings losses. The implied welfare costs from lost earnings due to air pollution exposure is on par with standard valuations of the mortality burden. The findings highlight the importance of labor market channels in air pollution policy responses.

10.The Impacts of the U.S. Trade War on Chinese Exporters

Yang Jiao ; Zhikuo Liu; Zhiwei Tian; Xiaxin Wang

This paper studies the impacts of the 2018 U.S. tariff surges on export prices and adjustments of sales across different markets of Chinese exporters. The finding that U.S. tariffs did not affect the free-on-board price of Chinese exports is robust to controlling for firm-related fixed effects. While firms’ exports to the United States dropped significantly, exports to the EU increased moderately and domestic sales or exports to other foreign markets were barely affected. Finally, by surveying managers of exporting firms, we shed light on potential impediments to firms’ adjustments of export prices and sales.

11.The Price of Inclusion: Evidence from Housing Developer Behavior

Evan J. Soltas

In many cities, incentives and regulations lead developers to integrate low-income housing into market-rate buildings. How cost-effective are these policies? I study take-up of a tax incentive in New York City using a model in which developers trade off between tax savings and pretax income. Estimating the model using policy variation and microdata on development from 2003 to 2015, I find a citywide marginal fiscal cost of $1.6 million per low-income unit. Differences in neighborhoods, not developer incidence, explain the cost premium over other housing programs. Weighing costs against estimates of neighborhood effects, I conclude middle-class neighborhoods offer “opportunity bargains.”

12.A Cold Shower for the Hot Hand Fallacy: Robust Evidence from Controlled Settings

Joshua B. Miller ; Adam Sanjurjo

The canonical hot hand fallacy result was recently reversed, based largely on a single statistic, and a data set that was underpowered for individual-level testing. Here we perform a more robust analysis, testing whether hot hand performance exists across (i) data sets: four different controlled shooting experiments, (ii) time: multiple sessions per individual spread across a six month gap, and (iii) various (improved) approaches to statistical testing. We find strong evidence of hot hand performance, both across data sets and within individuals across time. Moreover, in a study of beliefs, we find that expert observers can successfully predict which shooters get the hottest.

13.Measuring Under- and Overreaction in Expectation Formation

Simas Kučinskas ; Florian S. Peters

We develop a framework for measuring under- and overreaction in expectation formation. The basic insight is that under- and overreaction to new information is identified (up to sign) by the impulse response function of forecast errors. Our measurement procedure yields estimates of under- and overreaction to different shocks at various horizons. In an application to inflation expectations, we find that forecasters underreact to aggregate shocks but overreact to idiosyncratic shocks. We illustrate how our approach can be used to (i) quantify the importance of different biases, (ii) estimate theoretical models, and (iii) shed light on existing empirical approaches and puzzles.

14.Endogenous Firm Competition and the Cyclicality of Markups

Hassan Afrouzi ; Luigi Caloi

We show that the cyclicality of output growth is a sufficient predictor for the cyclicality of markups in models that micro-found variable markups through dynamic trade-offs. We use data on markups from the U.S. as well as survey data on firms’ expectations from New Zealand to test the predictions of these models and find evidence in favor of their mechanisms. Finally, we study the implications of these mechanisms for cyclicality of markups in a calibrated general equilibrium model. In particular, we find that the degree of hump-shaped response in output is crucial for the direction of aggregate markup cyclicality.

15.Endogenous Treatment Effect Estimation with a Large and Mixed Set of Instruments and Control Variables

Qingliang Fan ; Yaqian Wu

Instrumental variables (IVs) and control variables are frequently used to assist researchers in investigating endogenous treatment effects. When used together, their identities are typically assumed to be known. However, in many practical situations, one is faced with a large and mixed set of covariates, some of which can serve as excluded IVs, some can serve as control variables, whereas others should be discarded from the model. It is often not possible to classify them based on economic theory alone. This paper proposes a data-driven method to classify a large (increasing with sample size) set of covariates into excluded IVs, controls, and noise to be discarded. The resulting IV estimator is shown to have the oracle property (to have the same first-order asymptotic distribution as the IV estimator, assuming the true classification is known).

16.The Impact of Retail E-Commerce on Relative Prices and Consumer Welfare

Yoon Jo ; Misaki Matsumura; David E. Weinstein

This paper examines the impact of retail e-commerce on pricing behavior and welfare. Using Japanese data, we find that e-commerce lowered relative inflation rates for goods sold intensively online. We use long time series and historical catalog sales as an instrument for e-commerce sales intensity. The entry of e-commerce firms raised the rate of intercity price convergence in physical stores for goods sold intensively online, but not for other goods, which suggests e-commerce enhances price arbitrage. We estimate that e-commerce lowered variety-adjusted prices on average by 0.9% between 1996 and 2014, and more in cities with highly educated populations.

17.NGOs and the Effectiveness of Interventions

Faraz Usmani; Marc Jeuland; Subhrendu K. Pattanayak

Programs implemented by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are often more effective than comparable efforts by other actors, yet relatively little is known about how implementer identity drives final outcomes. By combining a stratified field experiment in India with a triple-difference estimation strategy, we show that a local development NGO’s prior engagement with target communities increases the effectiveness of a technology promotion program implemented in these areas by at least 30%. This “NGO reputation effect” has implications for the generalizability and scalability of evidence from experimental research conducted with local implementation partners.

18.Regulated Revenues and Hospital Behavior: Evidence from a Medicare Overhaul

Tal Gross; Adam Sacarny; Maggie Shi; David Silver

We study a 2008 policy reform in which Medicare revised its hospital payment system to better reflect patients’ severity of illness. We construct a simulated instrument that predicts a hospital’s policy-induced change in reimbursement using pre-reform patients and postreform rules. The reform led to large persistent changes in Medicare payment rates across hospitals. Hospitals that faced larger gains in Medicare reimbursement increased the volume of Medicare patients they treated. The estimates imply a volume elasticity of 1.2. To accommodate greater volume, hospitals increased nurse employment, but also lowered length of stay.

19.Who Pays Sin Taxes? Understanding the Overlapping Burdens of Corrective Taxes

Christopher Conlon; Nirupama Rao; Yinan Wang

We find that sin-good purchases are highly concentrated, with 10% of households paying more than 80% of taxes on alcohol and cigarettes. Total sin-tax burdens are poorly explained by demographics (including income) but are well explained by eight household clusters defined by purchasing patterns. The two most taxed clusters comprise 8% of households, pay 63% of sin taxes, and are older, less educated, and lower income. Taxes on sugary beverages broaden the tax base but add to the burdens of heavily taxed households. Efforts to increase sin taxes should consider the heavy burdens borne by few households.