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作者：de Leon, Fernanda Leite Lopez; Rizzi, Renata
作者单位：University of East Anglia
摘要：This paper tests the rational ignorance hypothesis by Downs (1957). This theory predicts that people do not acquire costly information to educate their votes. We provide new estimates for the effect of voting participation by exploring the Brazilian dual voting system-voluntary and compulsory-whose exposure is determined by citizens' date of birth. Using a fuzzy RD approach and data from a self-collected survey, we find no impact of voting on individuals' political knowledge or information con...
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作者：Tanaka, Shinsuke
作者单位：Tufts University
摘要：Whether user fees for health services should be charged or abolished for the poor has recently been debated. This study examines the impact on child health status of removing user fees in South Africa. Our main innovation is to exploit plausibly exogenous variation in access to free health care, due to the fact that black Africans under apartheid could exercise little political power and residential choice. We find substantial improvements in weight-for-age z-scores among ex ante similar child...
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作者：Kerr, William R.; Lincoln, William F.; Mishra, Prachi
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Johns Hopkins University; International Monetary Fund
摘要：How is economic policy made? In this paper we study a key determinant of the answer to the question: lobbying by firms. Estimating a binary choice model of firm behavior, we find significant evidence for the idea that barriers to entry induce persistence in lobbying. The existence of these costs is further confirmed in studying how firms responded to a particular policy change: the expiration of legislation relating to the H-1B visa. Due to its influence on firm behavior, we argue that this pe...
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作者：Devereux, Michael P.; Liu, Li; Loretz, Simon
作者单位：University of Oxford; University of Bayreuth
摘要：We estimate the elasticity of corporate taxable income with respect to the statutory corporation tax rate using the population of UK corporation tax returns. We analyze bunching in the distribution of taxable income at kinks in the marginal rate schedule. We decompose this elasticity into an elasticity of total income with respect to the corporation tax rate, and an elasticity of the share of income taken as profit with respect to the difference between the personal and corporate tax rates. Th...
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作者：Coile, Courtney C.; Levine, Phillip B.; McKnight, Robin
作者单位：Wellesley College; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Although past research has found that recessions reduce contemporaneous mortality, workers nearing retirement age may experience reduced longevity attributable to lengthy unemployment spells and lost health insurance at a particularly vulnerable time. To test this hypothesis, we generate age-specific cohort survival probabilities using 1965-2008 Vital Statistics mortality data and link them to labor market conditions at earlier ages. Our results indicate that experiencing a recession in one's ...
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作者：Cohen, Lauren; Malloy, Christopher J.
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：We demonstrate that personal connections amongst US politicians have a significant impact on Senate voting behavior. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians are consistent predictors of voting behavior. We estimate sharp measures that control for common characteristics of the network, as well as heterogeneous impacts of a common network characteristic across votes. We find that the effect of alumni networks is close to 60 percent as large as the effect of state-level considera...
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作者：Bosch, Mariano; Campos-Vazquez, Raymundo M.
作者单位：Inter-American Development Bank; Colegio de Mexico
摘要：In 2002, the Mexican government began an effort to improve health access to the 50 million uninsured in Mexico, a program known as Seguro Popular (SP). The SP offered virtually free health insurance to informal workers, altering the incentives to operate in the formal economy. We find that the SP program had a negative effect on the number of employers and employees formally registered in small and medium firms (up to 50 employees). Our results suggest that the positive gains of expanding heal...
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作者：Davis, Lucas W.; Fuchs, Alan; Gertler, Paul
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; The World Bank
摘要：This paper evaluates a large-scale appliance replacement program in Mexico that from 2009 to 2012 helped 1.9 million households replace their old refrigerators and air conditioners with energy-efficient models. Using household-level billing records from the universe of Mexican residential customers, we find that refrigerator replacement reduces electricity consumption by 8 percent, about one-quarter of what was predicted by ex ante analyses. Moreover, we find that air conditioning replacement ...
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作者：Kawano, Laura
作者单位：United States Department of the Treasury
摘要：This paper provides evidence that dividend and capital gains tax rates importantly influence household portfolio choices. Using data from the Surveys of Consumer Finances around the 2003 dividend tax reductions, I estimate the relationship between taxes and household portfolio dividend yields. I find that a one percentage point decrease in the dividend tax rate relative to the long-term capital gains tax rate causes household portfolio dividend yields to increase by 0.04 percentage points. The...
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作者：Reback, Randall; Rockoff, Jonah; Schwartz, Heather L.
作者单位：Columbia University; Columbia University; RAND Corporation
摘要：We conduct the first nationwide study of incentives under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which requires states to punish schools failing to meet target passing rates on students' standardized exams. States' idiosyncratic policies created variation in the risk of failure among very similar schools in different states, which we use to identify effects of accountability pressure. We find NCLB lowers teachers' perceptions of job security, shifts time towards specialist teachers in high-stake...
