01.Polity Size and Local Government Performance: Evidence from India
Veda Narasimhan
Jeffrey Weaver
摘要
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.
发展中国家的权力越来越多地下放给地方政府。本文使用基于人口的不连续性来研究权力下放的核心要素（政体规模）的影响，这些不连续性决定了超过 100,000 个印度村庄的地方政府边界。从短期和长期来看，分配到人口较少的地方政府的个人更容易获得公共产品。我们提供了暗示性的证据，表明这些结果与公民参与度的提高和更强的政治激励有关，但与精英俘获等其他机制无关。
02.Institution Building without Commitment
Marco Bassetto
Zhen Huo
José-Víctor Ríos-Rull
摘要
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.
我们提出了一种在实施良好政策时的渐进主义理论，适用于具有时间一致性的环境。我们淡化了初始阶段的作用，允许代理者等待未来的代理开始均衡游戏，并通过忽略过去的历史来重新启动均衡。分配逐渐过渡到兼顾短期和长期关注的分配，没有达到 Ramsey 结果，但大大改善了马尔可夫均衡。我们用这个理论来解释气候政策的缓慢出现和全球关税税率的降低。
03.Financial Technology Adoption: Network Externalities of Cashless Payments in Mexico
Sean Higgins
摘要
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.
协调失败是否会限制金融技术的采用？利用墨西哥政府从 2009 年到 2012 年向贫困家庭推出 100 万张借记卡的情况，我研究了市场双方的反应，并发现了重要的溢出效应和分配影响。在供应方面，小型零售公司采用销售点终端来接受卡支付。在需求方面，这导致其他消费者的卡采用率增加了 21%。供应侧技术采用的反应对较富裕的消费者和小型零售公司都产生了积极影响：较富裕的消费者将 13% 的超市消费转移到了小型零售商，这些零售商的销售额和利润都有所增加。
04.Sticky Spending, Sequestration, and Government Debt
Facundo Piguillem
Alessandro Riboni
摘要
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.
一旦建立，政府支出计划往往会继续进行。一个普遍持有的观点是，支出惯性会导致不可持续的债务，最终需要“封存”等财政调整。我们表明，通过为政治更替提供保险，惰性可能会降低政客积累债务的动机。然而，先前存在的巨额承诺和未来稳定的前景可能导致超支，从而稀释过去政府的承诺。最后，我们表明，政治两极分化放大了优先考虑惯性计划的动机，这可能解释了强制性支出在美国预算中份额的增加。
05.Generalized Social Marginal Welfare Weights Imply Inconsistent Comparisons of Tax Policies
Itai Sher
摘要
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.
本文涉及 Saez 和 Stantcheva （2016） 的广义社会边际福利权重，该权重汇总了税收政策造成的损失和收益，同时纳入了非功利主义的道德考虑。该方法评估地方税收变化，但没有全球社会目标。我表明，地方税收政策比较隐含着全球比较。此外，每当福利权重没有功利主义结构时，这些隐含的全球比较就是不一致的。我认为，更广泛的道德价值观通常不能简单地通过修改对不同人的利益的权重来表示，需要对功利主义方法进行更彻底的修改。
06.The Dynamic Consequences of State Building: Evidence from the French Revolution
Cédric Chambru
Emeric Henry
Benjamin Marx
摘要
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.
随着时间的推移，激进的改革如何影响经济发展？1790 年，法国制宪会议对王国的组织进行了全面改革，以建立新的地方首都。在一些省份，选择地方首都而不是竞争对手的候选城市似乎是外生的。我们研究了行政存在的变化如何影响随后几十年的国家能力和发展。从短期来看，行政接近会增加税收和对执法的投资。从长远来看，资本获得更多的公共产品，增长得更快。我们的研究结果揭示了历史上最雄心勃勃的行政改革之一之后国家建设的动态影响。
07.Merchants of Death: The Effect of Credit Supply Shocks on Hospital Outcomes
Cyrus Aghamolla
Pinar Karaca-Mandic
Xuelin Li
Richard T. Thakor
摘要
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.
本研究考察了信贷供应与医院健康结果之间的联系。我们使用银行压力测试作为外生冲击，为与受试银行有贷款关系的医院提供信贷准入。我们发现，在负面信用冲击后，受影响的医院会改变运营方式以提高资源利用率，但通过各种措施降低了对患者的护理质量，包括风险调整后的再入院率和死亡率的显着增加。结果表明，获得信贷会影响医院提供的医疗保健质量，并指出信贷市场摩擦对健康结果的重要溢出效应。
08.Micro Risks and (Robust) Pareto-Improving Policies
Mark Aguiar
Manuel Amador
Cristina Arellano
摘要
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.
我们为在市场不完整且利率低于增长率时实施稳健的帕累托改进 （RPI） 政策的可行性提供了条件。我们允许偏好和收入风险的任意异质性，以及资本回报率和债券回报率之间的楔子。RPI 改善了风险分担，并可以诱导更有效的资本水平。总储蓄对利率变化的弹性是 RPI 可行性的关键因素。政府债务可以补充而不是替代 RPI 中的资本。我们的分析强调了政府债券与显式再分配的福利改善特性。
09.A Technology-Gap Model of 'Premature' Deindustrialization
Ippei Fujiwara
Kiminori Matsuyama
摘要
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.
我们提出了一种产生过早去工业化 （PD） 的简洁机制。在基线模型中，Baumol 效应驱动制造份额的驼峰形路径。由于特定行业的采用滞后性不同，各国遵循不同的路径。PD 的条件是各国仅在技术差距上存在差异，这意味着农业的跨国生产率差异最大。此外，当校准以匹配 Rodrik （2016） 的发现时，它是制造业中最小的。在三个扩展中，我们添加了恩格尔效应、国际贸易和后工业化者赶上，以证明该机制的稳健性。
10.Quality Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Taste Projection in Markets with Observational Learning
Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch
Antonio Rosato
摘要
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.
我们通过观察性学习研究对他人口味的误解如何影响市场的信念、需求和价格。消费者从他人的需求数量和支付的价格来推断商品的质量。当消费者夸大自己和他人口味之间的相似性时，这种 “口味投射 ”会产生不同的质量感知，这种感知在投影仪的品味中会降低，而在观察到的价格中会上升。这些有偏差的推论产生了过度弹性的市场需求。我们还分析了短命口味投射消费者的动态垄断定价。最佳定价遵循下降路径：高初始价格会夸大未来买家的看法，而较低的后续价格会导致过度采用。
来源：《American Economic Review》
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