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作者：Dippel, Christian
作者单位：Western University (University of Western Ontario)
摘要：This paper studies public sector pension obligations, the biggest fiscal challenge currently facing many US cities. Employing a regression discontinuity design around close elections, benefit payments out of a city's public sector pensions are shown to grow faster under Democratic party mayors, while contributions into the pensions do not. Previous research showed that parties do not matter for a wide range of cities' fiscal expenditures and explained this with voters imposing fiscal disciplin...
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作者：Lee, Samuel; Persson, Petra
作者单位：Santa Clara University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Stanford University; Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
摘要：Certain markets are illicit because part of the supply is coerced, but little is known about the optimal regulation of such markets. We model a prostitution market with voluntary and coerced prostitutes and ask what regulation can restore the benchmark outcome that would arise under laissez-faire absent coercion. Whereas current policies-decriminalization, criminalization of the buy or sell sides, and licensing-are ineffective against trafficking or harm voluntary suppliers, we show that an al...
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作者：Wagner, Katherine R. H.
作者单位：Stanford University
摘要：This paper quantifies frictions in uptake, tests for adverse selection, and analyzes welfare effects of proposed reforms in natural disaster insurance markets. I find that willingness to pay is remarkably low. In high-risk flood zones, fewer than 60 percent of homeowners purchase flood insurance even though premiums are only two-thirds of own costs. Estimating flood insurance demand and cost elasticities using house-level variation in premiums from recent US congressional reforms reveals that ...
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作者：Bernstein, Asaf; Struyven, Daan
作者单位：University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper employs Dutch administrative population data to test the housing lock hypothesis: the conjecture that homeowners with negative home equity, low levels of financial assets, and restricted opportunities to borrow reduce their mobility. Variation in home equity driven by the timing of home purchase within a municipality and the harshness of Dutch recourse laws facilitates identification of housing lock effects. The 2SLS estimate for the effect of negative home equity is a 74-79 percent...
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作者：Mello, Ursula
作者单位：Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Institut d'Analisi Economica (IAE)
摘要：I analyze how two reforms, introduced to expand college access in Brazil, impacted enrollments of low-SES students. The first policy centralized applications in a nationwide platform (SISU), and the second expanded affirmative action quotas (AA) to a uniform share of 50 percent of vacancies offered by degree. Results show that SISU changes enrollment decisions of high-SES students, crowding out low-SES groups from the least competitive degrees disproportionately. In contrast, AA increases enro...
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作者：Weyl, E. Glen; Zhang, Anthony Lee
作者单位：Microsoft; University of Chicago
摘要：Many governments assign use licenses for natural resources, such as radio spectrum, fishing rights, and mineral extraction rights, through auctions or other market-like mechanisms. License design affects resource users' investment incentives as well as the efficiency of asset allocation. No existing license design achieves first-best outcomes on both dimensions. Long-term licenses give owners high investment incentives but impede reallocation to high-valued entrants. Short-term licenses improv...
