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作者：Fessler, Pirmin; Kasy, Maximilian
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：We propose to use economic theories to construct shrinkage estimators that perform well when the theories' empirical implications are approximately correct but perform no worse than unrestricted estimators when the theories' implications do not hold. We implement this construction in various settings, including labor demand and wage inequality, and estimation of consumer demand. We provide asymptotic and finite sample characterizations of the behavior of the proposed estimators. Our approach i...
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作者：Stinebrickner, Ralph; Stinebrickner, Todd; Sullivan, Paul
作者单位：Western University (University of Western Ontario); National Bureau of Economic Research; American University
摘要：Using novel data from the Berea Panel Study, we show that the beauty wage premium for college graduates exists only in jobs where attractiveness is plausibly a productive characteristic. A large premium exists in jobs with substantial amounts of interpersonal interaction but not in jobs that require working with information. This finding is inconsistent with employer taste-based discrimination, which would favor attractive workers in all jobs. Unique task data address concerns that measurement...
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作者：Demyanyk, Yuliya; Loutskina, Elena; Murphy, Daniel
作者单位：University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Illinois Chicago Hospital; University of Virginia; University of Virginia
摘要：In the aftermath of the consumer debt-induced recession, policymakers have questioned whether fiscal stimulus is effective during periods of high consumer indebtedness. This study empirically investigates this question. Using detailed data on Department of Defense spending for the 2007-2009 period, we document that the open-economy relative fiscal multiplier is higher in geographies with higher consumer debt. The results suggest that in the short term (2007-2009), fiscal policy can mitigate th...
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作者：Gauriot, Romain; Page, Lionel
作者单位：New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; University of Technology Sydney
摘要：We provide evidence of a violation of the informativeness principle whereby lucky successes are overly rewarded. We isolate a quasi-experimental situation where the success of an agent is as good as random. To do so, we use high-quality data on football (soccer) matches and select shots on goal that landed on the goal posts. Using nonscoring shots, taken from a similar location on the pitch, as counterfactuals to scoring shots, we estimate the causal effect of a lucky success (goal) on the eva...
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作者：Hungerman, Daniel M.; Rinz, Kevin; Frymark, Jay
作者单位：University of Notre Dame; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Governments have used vouchers to spend billions of dollars on private education; much of this has gone to religiously affiliated schools. We explore the possibility that vouchers could alter the financial outcomes of religious organizations that are operating schools and thus have an impact on the spiritual, moral, and social fabric of communities. Using a data set of Catholic parish finances from Milwaukee, we show that vouchers are a dominant source of funding for many churches. Vouchers ap...
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作者：Rangel, Marcos A.; Vogl, Tom S.
作者单位：Duke University; University of California System; University of California San Diego; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Fire has long served as a tool in agriculture, but the practice's link with economic activity has made its health consequences difficult to study. Drawing on data from satellite-based fire detection systems, air monitors, and vital records in Brazil, we study how in utero exposure to smoke from sugarcane harvest fires affects health at birth. Exploiting daily changes in fire location and wind direction for identification, we find that late-pregnancy smoke exposure decreases birthweight, gestat...
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作者：Nicolau, Joao; Rodrigues, Paulo M. M.
作者单位：Universidade de Lisboa; Universidade de Lisboa; Banco de Portugal; Universidade Nova de Lisboa
摘要：A new regression-based approach for the estimation of the tail index of heavy-tailed distributions with several important properties is introduced. First, it provides a bias reduction when compared to available regression-based methods; second, it is resilient to the choice of the tail length used for the estimation of the tail index; third, when the effect of the slowly varying function at infinity of the Pareto distribution vanishes slowly, it continues to perform satisfactorily; and fourth,...
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作者：Aizer, Anna; Currie, Janet
作者单位：Brown University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Princeton University
摘要：Using a unique data set linking preschool blood lead levels, birth, school, and detention records for 125,000 children born between 1990 and 2004 in Rhode Island, we estimate the impact of lead on school suspension and juvenile detention. Sibling fixed-effect models suggest that omitted variables related to family disadvantage do not bias OLS estimates. However, measurement error does. We use IV methods that exploit local (within-neighborhood), variation in lead exposure deriving from road pro...
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作者：Bratsberg, Bernt; Hernaes, Oystein; Markussen, Simen; Raaum, Oddbjorn; Roed, Knut
摘要：We evaluate the impact on youth crime of a welfare reform that tightened activation requirements for social assistance clients. The evaluation strategy exploits administrative individual data in combination with geographically differentiated implementation of the reform. We find that the reform reduced crime among teenage boys from economically disadvantaged families. Stronger reform effects on weekday versus weekend crime, reduced school dropout, and favorable long-run outcomes in terms of cr...
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作者：Antman, Francisca; Duncan, Brian
作者单位：University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; IZA Institute Labor Economics; University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Denver
