The Economic Journal 2025年 2月刊 目录与摘要

刊发卷期：Volume 135, Issue 666

刊发时间：February 2025

期刊等级：ABS 4

出版厂商：Wiley-Blackwell

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目录

1.Productivity Growth and Workers’ Job Transitions: Evidence from Census Microdata

Elías Albagli, Mario Canales, Chad Syverson, Matías Tapia, Juan Wlasiuk

2.Returns to Labour Mobility

Isaac Baley, Lars Ljungqvist, Thomas J Sargent

3.Measuring Social Benefits of Media Coverage: How Coverage of Climate Change Affects Behaviour

Graham Beattie

4.Lobbying for Globalisation

Michael Blanga-Gubbay, Paola Conconi, Mathieu Parenti

5.Score Disclosure

Levent Celik, Mikhail Drugov

6.Who's Afraid of Policy Experiments?

Robert Dur, Arjan Non, Paul Prottung, Benedetta Ricci

7.Strategic Conformity or Anti-Conformity to Avoid Punishment and Attract Reward

Fabian Dvorak, Urs Fischbacher, Katrin Schmelz

8.Technology Adoption, Mortality and Population Dynamics

John Hejkal, B Ravikumar, Guillaume Vandenbroucke

9.Television and Academic Achievement: Evidence from the Digital Television Transition in the UK

Adrián Nieto Castro

Short Papers

10.How do Workers Adjust to Robots? Evidence from China

Osea Giuntella, Yi Lu, Tianyi Wang

摘要

1.Productivity Growth and Workers’ Job Transitions: Evidence from Census Microdata

Elías Albagli, Mario Canales, Chad Syverson, Matías Tapia, Juan Wlasiuk

We use administrative data for Chile to provide novel insights on the relationship between job transitions and productivity differentials and quantify how different groups contribute to aggregate reallocation. While on average workers move to more productive firms, almost half of transitions are ‘down the productivity ladder’. Reallocation gains are mostly explained by a narrow subset of transitions: young, high-skilled workers generate the lion’s share of aggregate productivity gains. Workers with high turnover contribute proportionally the least. Therefore, while job reallocation yields a net benefit, it hides massive and heterogeneous gross flows, with many appearing to add little to aggregate efficiency.

2.Returns to Labour Mobility

Isaac Baley, Lars Ljungqvist, Thomas J Sargent

Returns to labour mobility have too often escaped the attention they deserve as conduits of important forces in macro-labour models. These returns are shaped by calibrations of productivity processes that use theoretical perspectives and data sources from (i) labour economics and (ii) industrial organisation. By investigating earlier prominent studies, we conclude that the focus on firm size dynamics and shocks intermediated through neo-classical production functions in (ii) yields large returns to labour mobility that are robust to parameter perturbations. In contrast, the reliance on statistics in labour economics to calibrate per-worker productivity processes in (i) can give rise to fragilities in the sense that parameter perturbations that generate similar targeted statistics can have very different implications for returns to labour mobility.

3.Measuring Social Benefits of Media Coverage: How Coverage of Climate Change Affects Behaviour

Graham Beattie

It has been well documented that beliefs and actions can be affected by media coverage. In this paper, I study the effect of newspaper coverage of climate change on individual driving behaviour. I construct a measure of the tone of coverage based on comparisons between environmental and sceptical texts. I then use this measure, along with detailed information about driving patterns, to test whether households’ travel decisions are affected by the coverage that they have recently received. I find that coverage of climate change that uses an environmental tone causes households to make environmentally friendly travel decisions, particularly when good substitutes are available. Since driving is a major source of carbon emissions, these results illustrate a potential externality of media coverage.

4.Lobbying for Globalisation

Michael Blanga-Gubbay, Paola Conconi, Mathieu Parenti

Using detailed information from lobbying reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, we construct a unique dataset that allows us to identify which firms lobby on free trade agreements negotiated by the United States, their positions (in favour or against) and their lobbying efforts on the ratification of each trade agreement. Using this dataset, we show that lobbying on free trade agreements is dominated by large multinational firms, which are in favour of these agreements. On the intensive margin, we exploit exogenous variation across free trade agreements to show that individual firms put more effort into supporting agreements that generate larger potential gains—larger improvements in their access to foreign consumers and suppliers and smaller increases in domestic competition—and that are more likely to be opposed by politicians. To rationalise these findings, we develop a new model of endogenous lobbying on trade agreements. In this model, heterogeneous firms select into trade and choose whether and how much to spend lobbying on the ratification of a free trade agreement, and politicians may be biased in favour of or against the agreement.

5.Score Disclosure

Levent Celik, Mikhail Drugov

We study verifiable disclosure by a seller when the product has multiple quality attributes. We identify an equilibrium in which, for some qualities, the seller discloses its score—the average of the qualities—and does not reveal anything else. This occurs when its score is sufficiently high or when the qualities are sufficiently similar and the score is not too low. Otherwise, the seller fully discloses. While full unravelling is still an equilibrium, it is dominated by this partial score disclosure equilibrium in terms of ex ante as well as ex post profits.

6.Who's Afraid of Policy Experiments?

Robert Dur, Arjan Non, Paul Prottung, Benedetta Ricci

In many public policy areas, randomised policy experiments can greatly contribute to our knowledge of the effects of policies and can thus help to improve public policy. However, policy experiments are not very common. This paper studies whether a lack of appreciation for policy experiments among voters may be the reason for this. Collecting survey data representative of the Dutch electorate, we find clear evidence contradicting this view. Voters strongly support policy experimentation and particularly so when they do not hold a strong opinion about the policy. In a subsequent survey experiment among a selected group of Dutch politicians, we find that politicians conform their expressed opinion about policy experiments to what we tell them the actual opinion of voters is.

7.Strategic Conformity or Anti-Conformity to Avoid Punishment and Attract Reward

Fabian Dvorak, Urs Fischbacher, Katrin Schmelz

We provide systematic insights on strategic conformist—as well as anti-conformist—behaviour in situations where people are evaluated, i.e., where an individual has to be selected for reward (e.g., promotion) or punishment (e.g., layoffs). To affect the probability of being selected, people may attempt to fit in or stand out in order to affect the chances of being noticed or liked by the evaluator. We investigate such strategic incentives for conformity or anti-conformity experimentally in three different domains: facts, taste and creativity. To distinguish conformity and anti-conformity from independence, we introduce a new experimental design that allows us to predict participants’ independent choices based on transitivity. We find that the prospect of punishment increases conformity, while the prospect of reward reduces it. Anti-conformity emerges in the prospect of reward, but only under specific circumstances. Similarity-based selection (i.e., homophily) is much more important for the evaluators’ decisions than salience. We also employ a theoretical approach to illustrate strategic key mechanisms of our experimental setting.

8.Technology Adoption, Mortality and Population Dynamics

John Hejkal, B Ravikumar, Guillaume Vandenbroucke

We develop a quantitative theory of mortality and population dynamics, emphasising individuals’ decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting better health technology. Expanded use of this technology reduces the cost of adoption and confers a dynamic externality by increasing the future number of individuals who use the technology. Our model generates a diffusion curve whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction. The model explains historical trends in mortality rates and life expectancies at various ages and population dynamics in Western Europe. Unlike Malthusian theories based solely on income, ours is consistent with the observed disconnect between mortality and income. Unlike Beckerian theories of fertility, ours accounts for the observed acceleration in population.

9.Television and Academic Achievement: Evidence from the Digital Television Transition in the UK

Adrián Nieto Castro

This paper exploits exogenous variation in the transition date from an analogue to digital television signal in the UK across more than 32,000 geographical units to examine the causal impact of television on academic performance and potential mechanisms. Using a large administrative dataset on the universe of students in public education in England, I show that the switchover increased pupil test scores and that the effect is driven by economically disadvantaged students. Using TV market data and a child survey dataset, I investigate possible mechanisms. I show that the digital transition considerably increased TV viewing time and displaced forms of socialisation associated with risky behaviour for disadvantaged children.

Short Papers

10.How do Workers Adjust to Robots? Evidence from China

Osea Giuntella, Yi Lu, Tianyi Wang

We analyse the effects of exposure to industrial robots on labour market adjustments, exploring longitudinal household data from China. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in robot exposure led to a decline in labour force participation (−1%), employment (−7%) and hourly earnings (−8%) of Chinese workers. At the same time, among those who kept working, robot exposure increased the number of hours worked by 8%. These effects were concentrated among the less educated and larger among male, prime-age and older workers. We also find that more exposed workers increased their participation in technical training and were significantly more likely to retire earlier.