-
作者：Bleemer, Zachary; Mehta, Aashish
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara
摘要：We investigate the wage return to studying economics by leveraging a policy that prevented students with low introductory grades from declaring a major. Students who barely met the grade point average threshold to major in economics earned $22,000 (46 percent) higher annual early-career wages than they would have with their second-choice majors. Access to the economics major shifts students' preferences toward business/finance careers, and about half of the wage return is explained by economic...
-
作者：Geruso, Michael; Spears, Dean; Talesara, Ishaana
作者单位：University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; National Bureau of Economic Research; Indian Statistical Institute; Indian Statistical Institute Delhi; IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要：Inversions-in which the popular vote winner loses the election-have occurred in four US presidential races. We show that rather than being statistical flukes, inversions have been ex ante likely since the early 1800s. In elections yielding a popular vote margin within 1 point (one-eighth of presidential elections), about 40 percent will be inversions in expectation. We show this conditional probability is remarkably stable across historical periods-despite differences in which groups voted, wh...
-
作者：Esposito, Elena
作者单位：University of Lausanne
摘要：This paper documents the role of malaria in the diffusion of African slavery in the United States. The novel empirical evidence reveals that the introduction of malaria triggered a demand for malaria-resistant labor, which led to a massive expansion of African enslaved workers in the more malaria-infested areas. Further results document that among African slaves, more malaria-resistant individuals-i.e., those born in the most malaria-ridden regions of Africa-commanded significantly higher pric...
-
作者：Lopez, Carolina; Sautmann, Anja; Schaner, Simone
作者单位：Brown University; The World Bank; University of Southern California; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：In an experiment in Mali, we tested whether patients pressure providers to prescribe unnecessary medical treatment. We varied patients' information about a discount for antimalarial tablets and measure demand for both tablets and costlier antimalarial injections. We find evidence of patient-driven demand: informing patients about the discount, instead of letting providers decide to share this information, increased discount use by 35 percent and overall malaria treatment by 10 percent. These m...
-
作者：Hussam, Reshmaan; Rabbani, Atonu; Reggiani, Giovanni; Rigol, Natalia
作者单位：Harvard University; Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee BRAC; BRAC University
摘要：We test the predictions of the rational addiction model, reconceptualized as rational habit formation, in the context of handwashing in rural India. To track handwashing, we design soap dispensers with timed sensors. We test for rational habit formation by informing some households about a future change in the returns to daily hand washing. Monitoring and incentives raise handwashing contemporaneously, and effects persist well after they end. In addition, people are rational about this habit f...
-
作者：Mehmood, S. U. L. T. A. N.
作者单位：New Economic School
摘要：A central question in development economics is whether there are adequate checks and balances on the executive. This paper provides causal evidence of how increasing constraints on the executive-via removal of presidential discretion in judicial appointments-pro-motes the rule of law. The age structure of judges at the time of the reform and the mandatory retirement age law provide us with an exogenous source of variation in the termination of presidential dis-cretion in judicial appointments....
-
作者：Lafortune, Julien; Schonholzer, David
作者单位：Stockholm University
摘要：We study school facility investments using administrative records from Los Angeles. Exploiting quasi-random variation in the timing of new facility openings and using a residential assignment instrument, we find positive impacts on test scores, attendance, and house prices. Effects are not driven by changes in class size, peers, teachers, or principals, but some evidence points toward increased facility quality. We evaluate program efficiency using implied future earnings and housing capitaliz...
-
作者：Meier, Armando N.
作者单位：University of Lausanne; University of Basel
摘要：Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people's emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large-panel data-set, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as significant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness checks indicate a limited role for alternative explanations. An event study around the death of a parent ...
-
作者：Silliman, Mikko; Virtanen, Hanna
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：We study labor market returns to vocational versus general secondary education using a regression discontinuity design created by the centralized admissions process in Finland. Admission to the vocational track increases initial annual income, and this benefit persists at least through the mid-thirties, and present discount value calculations suggest that it is unlikely that life cycle returns will turn negative through retirement. Moreover, admission to the vocational track does not increase ...
-
作者：Cutler, David M.; Miller, Grant
作者单位：Harvard University; Stanford University
摘要：We address points raised by Anderson, Charles, and Rees (2022b), which comments on our prior work. After correcting unambiguous data mistakes, our revised estimates suggest that municipal water disinfection (filtration) explains 38 percent of the total mortality rate decline in our sample cities and years-a result not very different from our original estimate of 43 percent. However, effects on infant mortality rates are smaller than in our original analysis. Much of the difference between thei...
