-
作者：Beach, Brian; Jones, Daniel B.
作者单位：William & Mary; University of South Carolina System; University of South Carolina Columbia
摘要：How does ethnic diversity in government impact public good provision? We construct a novel dataset linking the ethnicity of California city council candidates to election outcomes and expenditure decisions. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find that increased diversity on the council leads to less spending on public goods. This is especially true in cities with high segregation and economic inequality. Those serving on councils that experience an increase in diversity also receive...
-
作者：Bauernschuster, Stefan; Hener, Timo; Rainer, Helmut
作者单位：University of Passau; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; University of Munich
摘要：Many governments have banned strikes in public transportation. Whether this can be justified depends on whether strikes endanger public safety or health. We use time-series and cross-sectional variation in powerful registry data to quantify the effects of public transit strikes on urban populations in Germany. Due to higher traffic volumes and longer travel times, total car hours operated increase by 11 to 13 percent during strikes. This effect is accompanied by a 14 percent increase in vehicl...
-
作者：DeFusco, Anthony A.; Paciorek, Andrew
作者单位：Northwestern University; Federal Reserve System - USA
摘要：This paper provides novel estimates of the interest rate elasticity of mortgage demand by measuring the degree of bunching in response to a discrete jump in interest rates at the conforming loan limit-the maximum loan size eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The estimates indicate that a 1 percentage point increase in the rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage reduces first mortgage demand by between 2 and 3 percent. One-third of this response is driven by borrowers who take ou...
-
作者：Kan, Kamhon; Peng, Shin-Kun; Wang, Ping
作者单位：Academia Sinica - Taiwan; National Central University; National Taiwan University; Washington University (WUSTL); Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - St. Louis; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper advances our understanding of consumption behavior using the 2009 Taiwan Shopping Voucher Program. This program was universal and well publicized, and its payment to each individual was medium-sized. Based on survey data, it is found that the marginal propensity to consume is about one quarter, which is comparable to findings obtained by previous studies on consumers' response to fiscal stimulus payments. Further, vendors' discounts for voucher users played a significant role in boo...
-
作者：Seira, Enrique; Elizondo, Alan; Laguna-Muggenburg, Eduardo
作者单位：Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico; Bank of Mexico; Stanford University
摘要：Consumer protection in financial markets in the form of information disclosure is high on government agendas, even though there is little evidence of its effectiveness. We implement a randomized control trial in the credit card market for a large population of indebted cardholders and measure the impact of Truth-in-Lending-Act-type disclosures, de-biasing warning messages and social comparison information on default, indebtedness, account closings, and credit scores. We conduct extensive exter...
-
作者：Diamond, Rebecca
作者单位：Stanford University
摘要：Governments may extract rent from private citizens by inflating taxes and spending on projects benefiting special interests. Using a spatial equilibrium model, I show that less elastic housing supplies increase governments' abilities to extract rents. Inelastic housing supply, driven by exogenous variation in local topography, raises local governments' tax revenues and causes citizens to combat rent seeking by enacting laws limiting the power of elected officials. I find that public sector wor...
-
作者：Pei, Zhuan
作者单位：Cornell University
摘要：Conventional labor supply studies assume constant eligibility monitoring of income-tested program participants, but the time between two consecutive eligibility certifications (the recertification period) can be as long as a year for Medicaid /CHIP recipients. In this paper, I study the optimal recertification period for this population. A long recertification period, while reducing monitoring costs, is predicted to induce program participation via temporary income adjustments. However, I find...
-
作者：Borcan, Oana; Lindahl, Mikael; Mitrut, Andreea
作者单位：University of East Anglia; University of Gothenburg; University of Gothenburg
摘要：We investigate the efficiency and distributional consequences of a corruptionfighting initiative in Romania targeting the endemic fraud in a high-stakes high school exit exam, which introduced CCTV monitoring of the exam and credible punishment threats. We find that punishment coupled with monitoring was effective in reducing corruption. Estimating the heterogeneous impact for students of different ability, poverty status, and gender, we show that fighting corruption led to efficiency gains (a...
-
作者：Spinnewijn, Johannes
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：Recent evidence underlines the importance of demand frictions distorting insurance choices. Heterogeneous frictions cause the willingness to pay for insurance to be biased upward (relative to value) for those purchasing insurance, but downward for those who remain uninsured. The paper integrates this finding with standard methods for evaluating welfare in insurance markets and demonstrates how welfare conclusions regarding adversely selected markets are affected. The demand frictions framework...
-
作者：Lieber, Ethan M. J.
作者单位：University of Notre Dame
摘要：Consumers rarely know the price of medical care before they consume it. I use variation in the timing of access to a new source of price information to show how access to and search for price information leads consumers to pay significantly less for care. I provide suggestive evidence that insurance coverage inhibits the use of price information, rationalizing the relatively low rates of search. The results indicate that availability of price information could have large impacts on prices even...
