编者按:美国全国经济研究所(NBER)是美国最大的经济学研究组织,其发布的工作论文代表着经济学研究最新的成果,每周一发布新论文。本周(12.30-1.4)共发布 17 篇新工作论文,本期将会推送前 6 篇论文的题目与摘要,供读者学习。
学术财经研究团队翻译。
婴儿与宏观经济
Claudia Goldin #33311
Abstract: Fertility levels have greatly decreased in virtually every nation in the world, but the timing of the decline has differed even among developed countries. In Europe, Asia, and North America, total fertility rates of some nations dipped below the magic replacement figure of 2.1 as early as the 1970s. But in other nations, fertility rates remained substantial until the 1990s but plummeted subsequently. This paper addresses why some countries in Europe and Asia with moderate fertility levels in 1980s, have become the “lowest-low” nations today (total fertility rates of less than 1.3), whereas those that decreased earlier have not. Also addressed is why the crossover point for the two groups of nations was around the 1980s and 1990s. An important factor that distinguishes the two groups is their economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. Countries with “lowest low” fertility rates today experienced rapid growth in GNP per capita after a long period of stagnation or decline. They were catapulted into modernity, but the beliefs, values, and traditions of their citizens changed more slowly. Thus, swift economic change may lead to both generational and gendered conflicts that result in a rapid decrease in the total fertility rate.
摘要:世界上几乎每个国家的生育率都大幅下降,但即使在发达国家之间,这一下降的时间点也有所不同。在欧洲、亚洲和北美,一些国家的总生育率早在20世纪70年代就已低于象征性的人口更替水平2.1。然而,在其他国家,生育率在1990年代之前仍然保持较高水平,但随后急剧下降。本文探讨了为什么欧洲和亚洲一些在20世纪80年代生育水平中等的国家,如今成为了“最低”生育率国家(总生育率低于1.3),而那些较早出现生育率下降的国家却没有;同时还探讨了为什么两组国家的生育率交叉点出现在20世纪80年代和90年代。一个重要的区分因素是这些国家在20世纪60年代和70年代的经济增长情况。如今总生育率“最低低”的国家在经历了长期的经济停滞或衰退后,国民生产总值(GNP)人均水平在这一时期迅速增长。这些国家被迅速推入现代化,但其公民的信仰、价值观和传统却变化较慢。因此,快速的经济变化可能导致代际冲突和性别冲突,从而导致总生育率的急剧下降。
全局平均处理效应的线性估计
Stefan Faridani and Paul Niehaus #33319
Abstract: We study the problem of estimating the average causal effect of treating every member of a population, as opposed to none, using an experiment that treats only some. We consider settings where spillovers have global support and decay slowly with (a generalized notion of) distance. We derive the minimax rate over both estimators and designs, and show that it increases with the spatial rate of spillover decay. Estimators based on OLS regressions like those used to analyze recent large-scale experiments are consistent (though only after de-weighting), achieve the minimax rate when the DGP is linear, and converge faster than IPW-based alternatives when treatment clusters are small, providing one justification for OLS's ubiquity. When the DGP is nonlinear they remain consistent but converge slowly. We further address inference and bandwidth selection. Applied to the cash transfer experiment studied by Egger et al (2022) these methods yield a 20\% larger estimated effect on consumption.
摘要:我们研究了在一个实验中仅对部分人进行处理的情况下,估计对整个群体中的每个人进行处理(而不是完全不处理)的平均因果效应的问题。我们考虑了溢出效应具有全局支持并且随着(广义的)距离缓慢衰减的情形。在此背景下,我们推导了估计和实验设计的最小最大速率(minimax rate),并表明其随溢出效应衰减的空间速率而增加。基于普通最小二乘(OLS)回归的估计(如分析近期大规模实验时所用的那些估计)是一致的(尽管需要经过去权重处理),在数据生成过程(DGP)为线性时能够达到最小最大速率,并且当处理集群较小时,其收敛速度快于基于反倾向权重(IPW)的替代方法,这为OLS的广泛应用提供了一种合理解释。而当数据生成过程是非线性时,这些估计仍然一致,但收敛速度较慢。此外,我们还研究了推断问题和带宽选择。在应用于Egger等(2022)研究的现金转移实验时,这些方法对消费的估计效应提高了20%。
员工持股、就业和居家办公:新冠疫情对美国就业市场的冲击
Huanan Xu, Joseph R. Blasi, Douglas L. Kruse, and Richard B. Freeman #33310
Abstract: To what extent, if at all, did employee-owned (EO) firms maintain jobs for workers compared to non-EO firms in the spring 2020 Covid-19 shock to the US economy? Did EO firms shift jobs from workplaces to work-from-home locations in the pandemic more or less than other firms? This paper uses a unique survey of nearly 750 firms that differ in the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) mode of employee ownership to answer these questions. The analysis finds that in the Covid crisis ESOPs with majority ownership of their firm maintained proportionately more jobs and shifted work to workers’ homes more than other firms and that these differences scale with the ESOP percentage of firm ownership. The findings are consistent with a model of firm decision-making in which ESOP firms weigh the well-being of employee-owners as workers in the firm in a job crisis while non-ESOP firms view workers solely as a costly input in production in maximizing the income of their (non-employee) owners.
摘要:在2020年春季新冠疫情冲击美国经济期间,员工持股(EO)企业在维持员工就业方面与非EO企业相比表现如何?EO企业在疫情期间将工作岗位从办公室转移到居家办公的比例是否高于或低于其他企业?本文通过对近750家企业的独特调查数据来回答这些问题,这些企业在员工持股计划(ESOP)的模式上存在差异。分析发现,在新冠危机中,ESOP企业中具有多数股权的企业相较于其他企业,维持了更多的就业岗位,并且将更多工作转移到员工居家办公。同时,这些差异与企业中ESOP持股比例的大小呈正相关。研究结果支持了一种企业决策模型,即ESOP企业在就业危机中更倾向于权衡员工作为企业股东的福祉,而非ESOP企业则更倾向于将员工视为一种生产成本投入,优先追求非员工所有者的收入最大化。
协调……还有什么?国际监管协议的作用
Giovanni Maggi and Monika Mrázová #33318
Abstract: We examine the potential role of international agreements on product standards through a stylized model where countries have different regulatory preferences and firms incur fixed costs of regulatory diversity. Overall, our analysis suggests that the common perception of regulatory agreements as playing a key role in promoting harmonization may have been overstated. We show that regulatory harmony can arise even in the absence of an agreement, and that “spontaneous” harmonization may be inefficient, suggesting that the role of regulatory agreements could be to promote regulatory diversity rather than harmonization. Moreover, the role of regulatory cooperation depends in important ways on the pattern of trade: in the presence of intra-industry trade, the potential role of an agreement tends to be more limited, and under some conditions it can only play a coordination role. Finally, through the lens of our model, we examine the “Pop Critique” of regulatory agreements, according to which lobbying by corporate interests may lead to welfare-reducing harmonization. Our analysis lends only limited support to this critique.
摘要:我们通过一个简化模型研究了国际协议在产品标准中的潜在作用,该模型假设各国有不同的监管偏好,而企业需要承担因监管差异带来的固定成本。总体来看,我们的分析表明,通常认为监管协议在促进协调方面具有关键作用的观点可能被夸大了。我们发现,即使没有协议,监管协调也可能自然出现,但这种“自发”的协调可能效率低下,因此,监管协议的作用或许在于促进监管多样性,而非协调。此外,监管合作的作用在很大程度上取决于贸易模式:在存在产业内贸易的情况下,协议的潜在作用往往更为有限,在某些条件下,其作用可能仅限于协调。最后,通过我们的模型,我们分析了关于监管协议的“Pop批评”,即企业利益集团的游说可能导致降低福利的协调。我们的分析对这一批评的支持仅是有限的。
外国硕士研究生对美国初创企业的贡献
Michel Beine, Giovanni Peri, and Morgan Raux #33314
Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the effect of increasing the share of foreign-born Master graduates on the creation of innovative start-ups in the US. We combine information on international students graduating from Master's programs by university cohort with data on start-ups created in the US between 1999 and 2020 by graduates of those cohorts. To establish a causal link, we use idiosyncratic variation in out-of-state relative to in-state fees charged by universities across Master's cohorts, resulting in differential foreign students' enrollment. We also use changes in the share of foreign students predicted by a shift-share instrument, based on university-level past networks, as an additional identification strategy. For each additional ten percentage points of foreign students graduating in a Master's cohort, we find 0.4 additional start-ups in that cohort. Then, using a name-based attribution of the origin of creators of start-ups, we find that between 30 and 45% of the total start-up creation effect is attributable to a positive spillover of foreign-born on start-up founders of US origin.
摘要:本文估计了增加外国出生的硕士毕业生比例对美国创新型初创企业创立的影响。我们将按大学毕业年份分组的国际硕士毕业生数据,与1999年至2020年间这些毕业生创立的初创企业数据相结合。为了建立因果关系,我们利用了各硕士毕业班中州内与州外学费差异所导致的外国学生入学比例变化。此外,我们还基于大学层面的历史网络,使用“偏离份额”工具变量预测外国学生比例变化,作为额外的识别策略。研究发现,每增加10个百分点的外国学生毕业比例,就会对应增加0.4家初创企业。通过基于名字的初创企业创始人来源分析,我们发现,总初创企业创立效应中约30%至45%可以归因于外国出生学生对美国本土创始人的积极溢出效应。
国际贸易的未知领域
Pol Antràs #33312
Abstract: The field of international trade has undergone significant theoretical and empirical advancements over the last twenty-five years. A key breakthrough has been the emergence of firm-level approaches to studying exporting, importing, and global value chains. The field has also experienced a quantitative revolution, driven by medium-scale models that rapidly assess the implications of trade cost shocks on real income. Additionally, a branch of the empirical literature has unshackled itself from the discipline of theoretical frameworks and from traditional data sources. Yet, several underexplored areas, or `uncharted waters,' remain in international trade research. I outline new potential areas for theoretical research, including incorporating oligopolistic (strategic) behavior into core models, and fostering greater cross-disciplinary collaboration with other fields in economics and social sciences, such as behavioral economics or political science. I also discuss potential uncharted waters for empirical trade economists, while identifying potential new sources of data and ways in which official trade statistics could be improved. Finally, I explore how big data and artificial intelligence could reshape the design of international trade policy in coming years.
摘要:过去25年间,国际贸易领域在理论和实证研究方面取得了显著进展。其中一个关键突破是以企业为单元的方法兴起,用于研究出口、进口以及全球价值链。此外,受中等规模模型推动的“定量革命”使研究者能够快速评估贸易成本冲击对实际收入的影响。此外,实证研究的一部分已经突破了理论框架和传统数据来源的限制。然而,国际贸易研究中仍然存在一些尚未深入探讨的领域,即所谓的“未知领域”。本文提出了几个潜在的理论研究方向,包括将寡头垄断(战略性)行为纳入核心模型,以及加强与经济学和社会科学其他领域(如行为经济学或政治学)的跨学科合作。我还探讨了实证贸易经济学家可能面临的“未知领域”,并指出潜在的新数据来源以及改进官方贸易统计的方法。最后,我分析了大数据和人工智能如何在未来几年重塑国际贸易政策的设计。
往期精选: