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作者:Marcus, Michelle
作者单位:Vanderbilt University
摘要:This paper quantifies the health impacts of petroleum leaks from underground storage tanks, the effectiveness of tank regulation, and the role of information as a policy tool in the same setting. Exposure to a leaking underground storage tank during gestation increases both the probability of low birthweight and preterm birth by 7-8 percent. Compliance with regulations requiring the adoption of preventative technologies mitigated the entire effect of leak exposure on low birthweight, and infor...
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作者:Herrnstadt, Evan; Heyes, Anthony; Muehlegger, Erich; Saberian, Soodeh
作者单位:Congressional Budget Office; University of Ottawa; University of Exeter; University of California System; University of California Davis; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Manitoba
摘要:A growing literature documents that air pollution adversely impacts health, productivity, and cognition. This paper provides the first evidence of a causal link between air pollution and aggressive behavior, as documented by violent crime. Using the geolocation of crimes in Chicago from 2001-2012, we compare crime upwind and downwind of major highways on days when wind blows orthogonally to the road. Consistent with research linking pollution to aggression, we find that air pollution increases...
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作者:Herskowitz, Sylvan
作者单位:CGIAR; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
摘要:I present evidence that unmet liquidity needs for indivisible, lumpy, expenditures increase demand for betting as a second-best method of liquidity generation in the presence of financial constraints. With a sample of 1,708 sports bettors in Kampala, Uganda, I show that participants' targeted payouts are linked to anticipated expenditures, while winnings increase lumpy expenditures disproportionately. I show that a randomized savings treatment decreases demand for betting. And I use two lab-in...
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作者:Benzell, Seth G.; Cooke, Kevin
作者单位:Chapman University System; Chapman University
摘要:We construct a database linking European royal kinship networks, monarchies, and wars to study the effect of family ties on conflict. To establish causality, we exploit decreases in connection caused by apolitical deaths of rulers' mutual relatives. These deaths are associated with substantial increases in the frequency and duration of war. We provide evidence that these deaths affect conflict only through changing the kinship network. Over our period of interest, the percentage of European mo...
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作者:Muralidharan, Karthik; Niehaus, Paul; Sukhtankar, Sandip; Weaver, Jeffrey
作者单位:National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California San Diego; University of Virginia; University of Southern California
摘要:Improving last-mile public service delivery is a recurring challenge in developing countries. Could the widespread adoption of mobile phones provide a scalable, cost-effective means for improvement? We use a large-scale experiment to evaluate the impact of phone-based monitoring on a program that transferred nearly a billion dollars to 5.7 million Indian farmers. In randomly selected jurisdictions, officials were informed that program implementation would be measured via calls with beneficiari...
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作者:Gonzalez, Robert M.
作者单位:University of South Carolina System; University of South Carolina Columbia
摘要:This paper examines the impact of cell phone access on election fraud. I combine cell phone coverage maps with the location of polling centers during the 2009 Afghan presidential election to pinpoint which centers were exposed to coverage. Results from a spatial regression discontinuity design along the two-dimensional coverage boundary suggest that coverage deters corrupt behavior. Polling centers just inside coverage report a drop in the share of fraudulent votes of 4 percentage points, whil...
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作者:Hausman, Naomi; Lavetti, Kurt
作者单位:Hebrew University of Jerusalem; University System of Ohio; Ohio State University
摘要:We study the relationship between physician organizational structures and prices negotiated with private insurers. Using variation caused by state-level judicial law changes, we show that a 10 percent increase in the enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs) causes 4.3 percent higher physician prices, and declines in practice sizes and concentration. Using two databases containing every physician establishment and firm between 1996 and 2007, linked to negotiated prices, we show that large...
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作者:Fadlon, Itzik; Nielsen, Torben Heien
作者单位:University of California System; University of California San Diego; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Copenhagen
摘要:We provide new evidence on households' labor supply responses to fatal and severe nonfatal health shocks in the short run and medium run. To identify causal effects, we leverage administrative data on Danish families and construct counterfactuals using households that experience the same event a few years apart. Fatal events lead to considerable increases in surviving spouses' labor supply, which the evidence suggests is driven by families who experience significant income losses. Nonfatal sho...
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作者:Gao, Pei; Lei, Yu-Hsiang
作者单位:New York University; NYU Shanghai; Yale NUS College
摘要:This paper exploits a unique historical setting-the expansion of the telegraph network in nineteenth-century China when railroads were limited-to examine whether the reduction of information frictions stabilizes grain prices. Employing a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy, we find that the telegraph access (i) reduced both the magnitude and the incidence of extreme prices; (ii) mitigated price responses to local weather shocks but increased the responsiveness to shocks in other telegraph-...
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作者:Huang, Wei; Zhang, Chuanchuan
作者单位:National University of Singapore; Emory University; National Bureau of Economic Research; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Zhejiang University; Central University of Finance & Economics
摘要:This paper utilizes the county-by-county rollout of China's New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) and finds that, among age-eligible people, the pension scheme leads to higher household income and food expenditure, less farmwork, better health, and lower mortality. In addition, the NRPS shifts age-ineligible adults from farmwork to nonfarmwork but does not significantly affect their income, expenditure, or health. No significant evidence shows that the NRPS affects private transfers or health behavi...