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作者:Chemin, Matthieu
作者单位:Universite de Montreal; McGill University; McGill University; Universite de Montreal
摘要:I assemble and classify a database of judicial reforms funded by foreign aid agencies as either comprehensive (targeting all characteristics of quality, speed, access) or limited reform. A triple difference is used to compare firms in countries with or without judicial reforms, before and after reforms, and in sectors more or less reliant on contract enforcement mechanisms, due to their need for relationship-specific investments. I find that externally financed comprehensive judicial reforms i...
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作者:Clark, Todd E.; McCracken, Michael W.; Mertens, Elmar
作者单位:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Cleveland; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - St. Louis; Deutsche Bundesbank
摘要:We estimate uncertainty measures for point forecasts obtained from survey data, pooling information embedded in observed forecast errors for different forecast horizons. To track time-varying uncertainty in the associated forecast errors, we derive a multiple-horizon specification of stochastic volatility. We apply our method to forecasts for various macroeconomic variables from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. Compared to simple variance approaches, our stochastic volatility model impr...
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作者:Rosokha, Yaroslav; Younge, Kenneth
作者单位:Purdue University System; Purdue University; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
摘要:We investigate the willingness of individuals to persist at exploration when confronted by prolonged periods of negative feedback. We design a two-dimensional maze game and run a series of randomized experiments with human subjects in the game. Our results suggest individuals explore more when they are reminded of the incremental cost of their actions, a result that extends prior research on loss aversion and prospect theory to environments characterized by model uncertainty. In addition, we r...
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作者:Amirapu, Amrit; Gechter, Michael
作者单位:University of Kent; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
摘要:In this paper, we estimate the costs associated with an important suite of labor regulations in India by taking advantage of the fact that these regulations apply only to firms above a size threshold. Using distortions in the firm size distribution together with a structural model of firm size choice, we estimate that the regulations increase firms' unit labor costs by 35%. This estimate is robust to potential misreporting on the part of firms and enumerators. We also document a robust positiv...
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作者:Powell, David
作者单位:RAND Corporation; Rand Health
摘要:This paper proposes a method to estimate unconditional quantile treatment effects (QTEs) given one or more treatment variables, which may be discrete or continuous, even when it is necessary to condition on covariates. The estimator, generalized quantile regression (GQR), is developed in an instrumental variable framework for generality to permit estimation of unconditional QTEs for endogenous policy variables, but it is also applicable in the conditionally exogenous case. The framework includ...
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作者:Bibler, Andrew; Billings, Stephen B.
作者单位:Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE); University of Nevada Las Vegas; University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder
摘要:We examine residential relocation and opting out of the public school system in response to school choice lottery outcomes. We show that rising kindergartners and sixth graders who lose a school choice lottery are 6 percentage points more likely to exit the district or change neighborhood schools (20% to 30% increase) and make up 0.14 to 0.35 standard deviations in average school test scores between lottery assignment and attendance the following year. Using hedonic-based estimates of land pri...
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作者:Adhvaryu, Achyuta; Bednar, Steven; Molina, Teresa; Nguyen, Quynh; Nyshadham, Anant
作者单位:University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research; Elon University; University of Hawaii System; University of Hawaii Manoa; The World Bank; Boston College
摘要:In 1924, the Morton Salt Company began nationwide distribution of iodine-fortified salt. Access to iodine, a key determinant of cognitive ability, rose sharply. We compare outcomes for cohorts exposed in utero with those of slightly older, unexposed cohorts, across states with high versus low baseline iodine deficiency. Income increased by 11%, labor force participation rose 0.68 percentage points, and full-time work went up 0.9 percentage points due to increased iodine availability. These imp...
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作者:Gu, Grace Weishi; Prasad, Eswar; Moehrle, Thomas
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz; Cornell University; Brookings Institution; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:We provide new evidence on the cyclicality of employers' real labor costs using BLS establishment job data for the 1982-2018 period. Average straight-time wages have become countercyclical since the financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession. So have benefit expenditures and overall labor costs, as well as major benefit expenditures, including health insurance and Social Security. Consistent with prior literature, we find that total earnings-the sum of straight-time wages, bonuses, an...
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作者:Ager, Philipp; Herz, Benedikt; Brueckner, Markus
作者单位:University of Southern Denmark; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Australian National University
摘要:This paper provides new insights into the relationship between structural change and the fertility transition. We exploit the spread of an agricultural pest in the American South in the 1890s as plausibly exogenous variation in agricultural production to establish a causal link between earnings opportunities in agriculture and fertility. Households staying in agriculture reduced fertility because children are a normal good, while households switching to manufacturing reduced fertility because ...
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作者:Baum-Snow, Nathaniel
作者单位:University of Toronto
摘要:Each new radial highway serving large U.S. metropolitan areas decentralized 14% to 16% of central city working residents and 4% to 6% of jobs in the 1960-2000 period. Model calibrations yield implied elasticities of central city total factor productivity to central city employment relative to suburban employment of 0.04 to 0.09, meaning a large fraction of agglomeration economies operates at submetropolitan-area spatial scales. Each additional highway causes central city income net of commutin...