Greater political autonomy yielded lasting economic gains in Brazilian communities.Source: luiz rochaBetween 1988 and 1996, Brazil added more than 1,300 new municipalities, a 34 percent increase in the smallest governmental units with decision-making authority. The 1988 constitution had handed states the authority to set their own rules for creating munici...
Lukasz Rachel and Catherine Wolfram discuss the G7 price cap on Russian oil and why it defied textbook predictions.Source: ROMAN DZIUBALOIn response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the G7 imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on all Russian oil carried by tankers owned, insured, or serviced by Western companies. Many analysts expected the policy to ...
Danish data reveal how viruses brought home by older siblings influence lifetime income.Source: famveldmanRespiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of infant hospitalization in the United States, with most children getting the infection by the age of two. For typical preschoolers, the virus produces little more than cold-like symptoms, but in ...
Extreme temperatures in El Salvador destroy farm jobs and push workers abroad.Source: zenpixDuring the Great Recession, migration from Mexico to the United States began to fall, a pattern economists attributed to weaker job prospects and tightening immigration enforcement. Migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, however, did not follow suit. E...
A natural experiment in Louisiana shows private plans can cut drug costs without reducing observed quality.Source: diego cervoWhen governments transfer public health programs to private firms, the promise is to lower costs while providing the same quality of healthcare. Whether privatization actually delivers on that promise has been hard to measure becaus...
A rise in work from home explains most of the postpandemic gain in full-time employment among people with physical disabilities.Source: YacobchukEmployment among people with disabilities has remained well below that of the broader population, with an average disability employment gap of 27 percentage points across OECD countries. In the United States, this...
Limiting the cannibalization of existing patented productsSource: l i g h t p o e tWhen firms develop new products, conventional economic theory holds that the decision involving whether to perform in-house R&D or to outsource comes down to a standard set of considerations: relative competence, the cost of negotiating contracts, and the incentive probl...
The impact of unionization on the salaries of faculty at Canadian universities.Source: Joe PietteThe decline of organized labor is frequently linked to widening income gaps, yet credible evidence on how unions affect the full distribution of wages remains scarce. It has been difficult for studies to distinguish compositional effects (the systematic differe...
Will Rafey discusses how contracts to remediate or restore Florida’s wetlands generated billions in gains from trade, but also increased total regional flood damage.Source: kvd designSince the 1990s, developers in Florida who want to build on wetlands have been required to buy offset credits from "wetland mitigation banks," private restoration p...
Higher tax revenue in developing countries may depend as much on organizational reforms as on structural economic change.Protesters against a proposed tax bill gather in front of the gate of the House of Representatives in Manila, Philippines.Source: Herman R. LumanogFor decades, economists have sought to understand why developing countries collect so litt...
