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作者：Martinez, Luis R.
作者单位：Emory University
摘要：I compare the impact of local tax revenue and royalties from the extraction of natural resources on governance in Colombian municipalities, leveraging plausibly exogenous variation from cadastral updates and fluctuations in the world price of oil. Higher tax revenue has a larger effect on local public goods in the areas of education, health, and water than a same-sized increase in oil royalties, despite earmarking of royalties for spending in these areas. Higher tax revenue also reduces the pr...
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作者：Ferreira, Leonardo N.; Miranda-Agrippino, Silvia; Ricco, Giovanni
作者单位：Central Bank of Brazil; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique; University of Warwick
摘要：We propose a Bayesian approach to Local Projections (LPs) that optimally addresses the empirical bias-variance trade-off intrinsic in the choice between direct and iterative methods. Bayesian Local Projections (BLPs) regularize LP regressions via informative priors and estimate impulse response functions that capture the properties of the data more accurately than iterative VARs. BLPs preserve the flexibility of LPs while retaining a degree of estimation uncertainty comparable to Bayesian VARs...
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作者：Rockenbach, Bettina; Tonke, Sebastian; Weiss, Arne R.
作者单位：University of Cologne; Max Planck Society; Universitat d'Alacant; University of Mannheim; University of Bern
摘要：In a field experiment among 9,823 customers of the Namibian water utility, we implement interventions to reduce nonpayments. The interventions are based on diagnostic surveys to identify key obstacles to payments. They address informational frictions and apply psychological commitment techniques to narrow the gap between customers' willingness to pay and actual payments. Initially, payments increase by 29% to 55%, making the interventions highly cost-effective. Removing informational frictions...
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作者：Bundick, Brent; Smith, A. Lee
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Kansas City
摘要：In a macroeconomic model with drifting long-run inflation expectations, the anchoring of inflation expectations manifests in two testable predictions. First, expectations about inflation far in the future should no longer respond to news about current inflation. Second, better anchored inflation expectations weaken the relationship between unemployment and inflation, flattening the reduced-form Phillips curve. We evaluate both predictions and find that the Federal Reserve's communication of a ...
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作者：Leder-Luis, Jetson
作者单位：Boston University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper analyzes private antifraud enforcement under the False Claims Act, which compensates whistleblowers for litigating against health care providers who overbill the US government. I conduct several case studies of successful whistleblower lawsuits concerning Medicare fraud, pairing new legal data with large samples of Medicare claims. I estimate that deterrence from $1.9 billion in whistleblower settlements generated Medicare cost savings of nearly $19 billion, while imposing low costs...
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作者：McDevitt, Ryan C.; Sojourner, Aaron
作者单位：Duke University; W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research
摘要：We use a nonlinear reduction in a bank's check-cashing fees and variation in regulated check-clearing times to identify the elasticity of demand for cashing checks rather than depositing them. We find that an extra day of check-clearing time makes account holders 65.5% more likely to cash a check than deposit it, which implies they are willing to pay $11.17 per day for faster access to their funds-an effective annualized discount rate of 11,054% for the average check. We use this elasticity to...
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作者：Candian, Giacomo; De Leo, Pierre
作者单位：Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park
摘要：Using survey data, we document that predictable exchange rate forecast errors are responsible for the uncovered interest parity (UIP) puzzle and its reversal at longer horizons. We develop a general-equilibrium model based on shock misperception and overextrapolative beliefs that reconciles these and other major exchange rate puzzles. These beliefs distortions generate both under- and over-reaction of expectations that account for the predictability of forecast errors about interest rates, exc...
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作者：Ma, Xiao; Muendler, Marc-Andreas; Nakab, Alejandro
作者单位：Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School (PKU Shenzhen); Peking University; University of California System; University of California San Diego; National Bureau of Economic Research; Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
摘要：Export activity shapes workers' experience-wage profiles. Using employer-employee and customs data for Brazilian manufacturing, we document that workers' experience-wage profiles are steeper at exporters than at non-exporters and, among exporters, steeper at exporters shipping to high-income destinations. We develop and quantify a model featuring worker-firm wage bargaining, export-market entry by multi-worker firms, and human capital accumulation by workers to interpret the data. Human capita...
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作者：Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna; Terskaya, Anastasia
作者单位：Universitat d'Alacant; IZA Institute Labor Economics; University of Barcelona
摘要：We take advantage of recent advances in genomics to revisit a classic question in economics: how do parents respond to children's endowments and to sibling differences in endowments? We use an index based on DNA, which is fixed at conception and assigned randomly across siblings, as a proxy for educational endowments. We find that parents of nontwins display inequality aversion: given the absolute endowment level of one child, they invest less in him/her if his/her sibling has a lower genetic ...
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作者：Veiga, Andre
作者单位：Imperial College London
摘要：Should insurance prices vary with age? I consider competitive markets for lemons where a signal (e.g., age) partitions consumers (e.g., young and old). I study the continuum of policies from zero price discrimination (zero PD, equal prices) to full PD (no restrictions). Restricting PD can increase welfare if high-cost markets exhibit greater adverse selection, or when the high-cost market unravels. I characterize optimal PD and show how it is affected by changes in cost. In a calibration, opti...
