Publication Showcase

Francisca Antman

"Demographic Diversity and Economic Research: Fields of Specialization and Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality," (with Kirk B. Doran, Xuechao Qian, and Bruce A. Weinberg), AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024.
"Examining the Long-Run Impacts of Racial Terror with Data on Historical Lynchings of Mexicans in Texas," (with Brian Duncan), AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024.
"Half Empty and Half Full? Women in Economics and the Rise in Gender-Related Research," (with Kirk B. Doran, Xuechao Qian, and Bruce A. Weinberg), AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024.
"Hispanic Americans in the Labor Market: Patterns over Time and across Generations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Feb. 2023.
Abstract: This article reviews evidence on the labor market performance of Hispanics in the United States, with a particular focus on the US-born segment of this population. After discussing critical issues that arise in the US data sources commonly used to study Hispanics, we document how Hispanics currently compare with other Americans in terms of education, earnings, and labor supply, and then we discuss long-term trends in these outcomes. Relative to non-Hispanic Whites, US-born Hispanics from most national origin groups possess sizeable deficits in earnings, which in large part reflect corresponding educational deficits. Over time, rates of high school completion by US-born Hispanics have almost converged to those of non-Hispanic Whites, but the large Hispanic deficits in college completion have instead widened. Finally, from the perspective of immigrant generations, Hispanics experience substantial improvements in education and earnings between first-generation immigrants and the second-generation consisting of the US-born children of immigrants. Continued progress beyond the second generation is obscured by measurement issues arising from high rates of Hispanic intermarriage and the fact that later-generation descendants of Hispanic immigrants often do not self-identify as Hispanic when they come from families with mixed ethnic origins.
"American Indian Casinos and Native American Self-Identification," (with Brian Duncan), Journal of the European Economic Association, Mar. 2023.
Abstract: This paper links Native American racial self-identification with the rise in tribal gaming across the United States. We find that state policy changes allowing tribes to open casinos are associated with an increase in the probability that individuals with American Indian ancestors will self-identify as Native American and a decrease in the probability that individuals with no American Indian ancestry will self-identify as Native American. Moreover, we find that the magnitudes of the impacts are increasing in the strength of American Indian ancestral ties. Similar results hold when causal identification comes from American Indian casino openings across states over time and suggestive evidence shows stronger impacts if casinos are likely to pay per capita dividend payments to their members. These results are consistent with a conceptual framework in which we tie racial identification to economic motivations as well as social stigma associated with affiliating with a racial group for those without documented ancestral ties. Our results underscore the importance of economic incentives and social factors underlying the individual choice of racial identity.
"The Long-Run Impacts of Mexican-American School Desegregation," (with Kalena E. Cortes), Journal of Economic Literature, Sept. 2023.
Abstract: We present the first quantitative analysis of the impact of ending de jure segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren in the United States by examining the effects of the 1947 Mendez v. Westminster court decision on long-run educational attainment for Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites in California. Our identification strategy relies on comparing individuals across California counties that vary in their likelihood of segregating and across birth cohorts that vary in their exposure to the Mendez court ruling based on school start age. Results point to a significant increase in educational attainment for Hispanics who were fully exposed to school desegregation.
"When Beer is Safer than Water: Beer Availability and Mortality from Waterborne Illnesses," (with James Flynn) Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming.
Abstract: We investigate the impact of beer on mortality during the Industrial Revolution. Due to the brewing process, beer represented an improvement over available water sources during this period prior to the widespread understanding of the link between water quality and human health. Using a wide range of identication strategies to derive measures of beer scarcity driven by tax increases, weather events, and soil quality, we show that beer scarcity was associated with higher mortality, especially in the summer months where mortality was more likely to be driven by water-borne illnesses. We also leverage variation in inherent water quality across parishes using two proxies for water quality to show that beer scarcity resulted in greater deaths in areas with worse water quality. Together, the evidence supports the hypothesis that beer had a major impact on human health during this important period in economic development.
"For Want of a Cup: The Rise of Tea in England and the Impact of Water Quality on Mortality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, November 2023.
Abstract: We investigate the impact of beer on mortality during the Industrial Revolution. Due to the brewing process, beer represented an improvement over available water sources during this period prior to the widespread understanding of the link between water quality and human health. Using a wide range of identication strategies to derive measures of beer scarcity driven by tax increases, weather events, and soil quality, we show that beer scarcity was associated with higher mortality, especially in the summer months where mortality was more likely to be driven by water-borne illnesses. We also leverage variation in inherent water quality across parishes using two proxies for water quality to show that beer scarcity resulted in greater deaths in areas with worse water quality. Together, the evidence supports the hypothesis that beer had a major impact on human health during this important period in economic development.

Sara Avila Forcada

"Messages That Foster a Sense of Belonging Improve Learning and Satisfaction: An Experiment in an Online Environment," American Economics Association Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 113, pp. 514-18, May 2023.
Abstract: The literature in pedagogy has shown that having a sense of belonging affects learning. This paper shows the result of a communication experiment in an online environment. For six consecutive terms, the instructor taught Introduction to Statistics. The instructor added a more direct communication strategy during two of those five terms. She used weekly communications that linked course material with events discussed by students previously and a personal message to each student. The intervention resulted in improved learning, measured by better grades, and more enjoyment of the course, measured using student comments in teaching evaluations.

Tania Barham

"Experimental Evidence from a Conditional Cash Transfer Program: Schooling, Learning, Fertility, and Labor Market Outcomes After 10 Years," (with Karen Macours and John Maluccio) Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming.
Abstract: Conditional cash transfer programs are the anti-poverty program of choice in many developing countries, aiming to improve human capital and break the intergenerational transmission of poverty. A decade after a randomized 3-year CCT program began, earlier exposure during primary school ages when children were at risk of dropout led to higher labor market participation for young men and women and higher earnings for men. Results highlight the roles of the different program components with variation in timing of access to nutrition, health and education investments translating into substantial differential effects on learning for men and reproductive health outcomes for women.
"No Place Like Home: Long-Run Impacts of Early Child Health and Family Planning on Economic and Migration Outcomes," (with Randall Kuhn and Patrick Turner) Journal of Human Resources, forthcoming.
Abstract: This paper examines the long-term effects of early childhood health interventions, such as vaccination and family planning, on adult labor market and migration outcomes in Bangladesh. Intent-to-treat effects show men born when intensive child health services and family planning were available worked in more professional/semi-professional and entrepreneurial occupations that required more academic skills but migrated less domestically leaving average annual income unaffected. Similarly aged eligible women also engaged more in entrepreneurial paid work. Spillover effects on an older cohort born when only family planning was available show these men migrated less internationally leading to lower annual earning.

Brian Cadena

"The International Transmission of Local Economic Shocks Through Migrant Networks," (with Brian K. Kovak and Maria Esther Caballero) Journal of International Economics, Aug. 2023.
Abstract: Using newly validated data on geographic migration networks, we study how labor demand shocks in the United States propagate across the border with Mexico. We show that the large exogenous decline in US employment brought about by the Great Recession affected demographic and economic outcomes in Mexican communities that were highly connected to the most affected markets in the US. In the Mexican locations with strong initial ties to the hardest hit US migrant destinations, return migration increased, emigration decreased, and remittance receipt declined. These changes significantly increased local employment and hours worked, but wages were unaffected. Investment in children’s education also slowed in these communities. These findings document the effects in Mexico when potential migrants lose access to a strong US labor market, providing insight for the potential impacts of stricter US migration restrictions.

Jeronimo Carballo

"The Effect of Transit Systems on International Trade," (with Alejandro Graziano, Georg Schaur and Christian Volpe Martincus) Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming.
Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the trade effects of a transit system upgrading that streamlines border processing in developing countries. Our empirical approach combines transaction level export data from El Salvador with unique data that distinguishes export flows that were processed on the transit system. Our results indicate that the new transit system lowered regulatory border costs and raised exports. At the low end, our back-of-the-envelope estimate of the return to investment is US$ 3-to-1. The estimation results also suggest that existing frameworks that emphasize shipping frequency and the formation of new trade relationships are important to interpret trade facilitation policy. This evidence informs an important policy covered by the 2013 WTO Agreement of Trade Facilitation.
"Economic and Policy Uncertainty: Export Dynamics and Value of Agreements," (with Kyle Handley and Nuno Limao) Journal of International Economics, forthcoming.
Abstract: We examine the interaction of economic and policy uncertainty in a dynamic, heterogeneous firms model. Uncertainty about foreign income, trade protection and their interaction dampens export investment. This can be mitigated by trade agreements, which are particularly valuable in periods of increased demand volatility. We use firm data to establish new facts about U.S. export dynamics in 2003-2011 and estimate the model. We find a significant role for uncertainty in explaining the trade collapse in the 2008 crisis and partial recovery in its aftermath. Consistent with the model predictions, we find that the negative effects worked (1) through the extensive margin, (2) in destinations without preferential agreements with the U.S. (accounting for over half its trade) and (3) in industries with higher potential protection. U.S. exports to non- preferential markets would have been 6.5% higher under an agreement—equivalent to an 8% foreign GDP increase. These findings highlight and quantify the value of international policy commitments through agreements that mitigate uncertainty, particularly during downturns.

Yongmin Chen

"Efficient Liability in Expert Markets," (with Jianpei Li and Jin Zhang), International Economic Review, forthcoming.
Abstract: When providing professional services, an expert may misbehave by either prescribing “wrong” treatment for consumer's problem or failing to exert proper effort to diagnose it. We show that under a range of liabilities the expert will recommend the appropriate treatment based on his private information if markups for alternative treatments are close enough; however, a well-designed liability rule is essential for also motivating efficient diagnosis effort. We further demonstrate that unfettered price competition between experts may undermine the efficient role of liability, whereas either a minimum-price constraint or an obligation-to-serve requirement can restore it.

Jonathan Hughes

"The Value of Rarity: Evidence from a Collectible Good," Journal of Industrial Economics, 70(1), pp. 147-167, Mar. 2022.
Markets for art, coins and other collectibles, culinary delicacies and eco-tourism suggest consumers value the rarity of many goods. While empirical evidence supports higher prices for rare goods, isolating the value of rarity has proven difficult. I analyze prices for a collectible card game and show goods that are designated as rare trade at higher prices than functionally-equivalent substitutes. Importantly, I use novel features of this market to account for scarcity, observed and unobserved product characteristics and separately identify rarity effects. These results have important implications for markets ranging from luxury goods to conservation of endangered species.

Murat Iyigun

"Putting the Husband Through: Role of Credit Constraints in Timing of Marriage and Spousal Education," (with Jeanne Lafortune) Journal of Labor Economics, Jan. 2023.
Abstract: In the United States, age at first marriage was lowest and the education gap between hus- bands and wives was highest during the 1950s. The conventional explanation for such a negative correlation between age at first marriage and educational gap is that early marriage leads to ear- lier and higher fertility, which in turn prevents women from acquiring education. In this paper, we propose a complementary but novel explanation: early marriages enabled couples to over- come some of the credit constraints that could have bound husbands from acquiring education. We show that a model that includes this motive and mechanism, in combination with declining startup costs of marriage, can replicate not only the marriage and education patterns observed in the middle of the century in the United States, but also the trends in both variables over the 20th century. We then use micro-level data to argue that this explanation matches patterns seen in the data, including how changes in minimum marriage age laws impacted differences in spousal educational attainment.
"Resource Shocks and Conflict, 1400–1900 C," (with Joris Muller and Nancy Qian) American Economic Review, May 2024.
Abstract: This paper provides evidence of the long-run effects of a permanent increase in agricultural productivity on conflict. We construct a newly digitized and geo-referenced dataset of battles in Europe, the Near East and North Africa covering the period between 1400 and 1900 CE. For variation in permanent improvements in agricultural productivity, we exploit the introduction of potatoes from the Americas to the Old World after the Columbian Exchange. We find that the introduction of potatoes permanently reduced conflict for roughly two centuries. The results are driven by a reduction in civil conflicts.

Taylor Jaworski

"Highways and Globalization," (with Carl Kitchens and Sergey Nigai) International Economic Review, accepted.
Abstract: This paper quantifies the value of US highways. We develop a multisector general equilibrium model with many locations in the United States (i.e., counties) and many countries. In the model, producers choose shipping routes subject to domestic and international trade costs, endogenous congestion, and port efficiency at international transshipment points. We find that removing the Interstate Highway System reduces real GDP by $601.6 billion (or 3.8 percent). We also show how to quantify the value of individual segments using our framework. The results highlight the role of domestic transportation infrastructure in shaping regional comparative advantage as well as the gains from intersectoral and international trade.
"Economic Geography and Air Pollution Regulation in the United States," (with Alex Hollingsworth, Carl Kitchens, and Ivan Rudik) Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics, Conditionally Accepted.
Abstract: We develop a quantitative economic geography model with endogenous emissions, amenities, trade, and labor reallocation to evaluate the spatial impacts of the leading air quality regulation in the United States: the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). We find that the NAAQS generate over $50 billion in annual welfare gains. The gains are spatially concentrated in a small set of cities targeted by the NAAQS, and the improved amenities attract large numbers of nonmanufacturing workers into these areas. Despite the concentration of the benefits in cities, over $10 billion in benefits spill over into counties indirectly affected by the regulation. We use our model to analyze counterfactual policies and find that making the NAAQS more stringent could have increased welfare by another $13 billion annually, and that using emissions pricing could increase welfare by another $70 billion per year.

Wolfgang Keller

"International Joint Ventures and Internal vs. External Technology Transfer: Evidence from China," (with Kun Jiang, Larry Qiu, and William Ridley), Journal of International Economics, forthcoming.
Abstract: We study the economics of international joint ventures using administrative data for China. We first show that foreign investors choose Chinese partners that are relatively large, productive, and more innovative to set up their joint venture. Using a difference-in-differences framework and accounting for these selection effects, we then provide evidence that joint ventures lead to domestic benefits in the form of productivity and technological spillovers to both the Chinese partners in joint ventures as well as other domestic Chinese firms. Exploiting the easing of joint venture requirements as China entered the WTO in the year 2001, we further show that intra-industry spillovers from joint ventures to other domestic firms increased in the wake of China’s WTO accession, consistent with gains from foreign technology rising due to enhanced commitment through the rules-based WTO system. Our results shed new light on the efficacy of FDI performance requirements as well as on claims regarding international technology transfer that underpinned the China-US trade war.
"International Trade and Job Polarization: Evidence at the Worker Level," (with Hale Utar), Journal of International Economics, November 2023.
Abstract: This paper examines the role of international trade in job polarization. With employer-employee matched data on virtually all workers and firms in Denmark between 1999 and 2009, we show that import competition leads to a reduction in mid-wage employment, and pushes mid-wage workers toward either tail of the occupational hierarchy depending on workers’ education and skill. We show that the specific tasks performed by a worker are central in determining the impact, and workers performing manual tasks are the ones most affected regardless of the routineness of these tasks. Only trade-exposed workers are pushed into low-wage employment, in contrast to workers susceptible to computer-related technological change. Quantitatively, we find that job polarization through import competition-induced occupational movements is at least as strong as through technological change and offshoring.
"The Gender Gap Among Top Business Executives," (with Teresa Molina and William W. Olney), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, July 2023.
Abstract: This paper examines gender differences among top US business executives using a large executive-employer matched data set spanning the last quarter century. Female executives make up 6% of the sample and exhibit more labor market churning – both higher entry and higher exit rates. Unconditionally, women earn 26% less than men, which decreases to 8% once executive characteristics, firm characteristics, and in particular job title are accounted for. We find that female executives are disproportionately represented in firms with more temporal flexibility and female-friendly corporate cultures, but this does not explain the gender pay gap. Rather, corporate culture is correlated with gender pay gaps within firms; specifically the within-firm gender pay gap is significantly smaller at female-friendly firms.

Miles Kimball

"From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions," (with Daniel J. Benjamin, Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz), Annual Review of Economics, Forthcoming.
Abstract: Happiness data—survey respondents’ self-reported well-being (SWB)—have become increasingly common in economics research, with recent calls to use them in policymaking. Researchers have used SWB data in novel ways, for example to learn about welfare or preferences when choice data are unavailable or difficult to interpret. Focusing on leading examples of this pioneering research, the first part of this review uses a simple theoretical framework to reverse-engineer some of the crucial assumptions that underlie existing applications. The second part discusses evidence bearing on these assumptions and provides practical advice to the agencies and institutions that generate SWB data, the researchers who use them, and the policymakers who may use the resulting research. While we advocate creative uses of SWB data in economics, we caution that their use in policy will likely require both additional data collection and further research to better understand the data.
"What Do Happiness Data Mean? Theory and Survey Evidence," (with Daniel J. Benjamin, Jakina Debnam Guzman, Marc Fleurbaey, Ori Heffetz), Journal of the European Economic Association, Forthcoming.
Abstract: What utility notion—e.g. flow/lifetime, self/family-centered—do self-reported well-being (SWB) questions measure? Existing applications make different assumptions regarding the (i) life domains, (ii) time horizons, and (iii) other-regarding preferences captured by SWB data. To obtain relevant evidence, we ask survey respondents what they had in mind regarding (i)–(iii) when answering commonly used—life satisfaction, happiness, ladder—and new SWB questions. We find that respondents’ self-reports differ from researchers’ assumptions and differ across SWB questions and sociodemographic groups. At the same time, simple SWB-question wording tweaks are effective in moving self-reports toward desired interpretations. We outline actionable suggestions for SWB researchers.

Xiaodong Liu

"Endogenous Technology Spillovers in R&D Collaboration Networks," (with Chih-Sheng Hsieh and Michael Kӧnig) The RAND Journal of Economics, Accepted.
Abstract: We introduce a stochastic R&D network formation model where firms choose both R&D efforts and collaboration partners. Neighbors in the network benefit from each other’s R&D efforts through local technology spillovers, and there exists a global competition effect reflecting strategic substitutability in R&D efforts. We provide a complete equilibrium characterization of the network formation model and show that the model is consistent with empirically observed R&D networks. Based on the equilibrium characterization, we propose an estimation method that is computationally feasible even for large networks. With the estimated model we then conduct an analysis of R&D collaboration subsidies to demonstrate the policy relevance of this model. We find that a subsidy scheme targeting specific R&D collaborations in the network can be much more effective than a uniform subsidy, with a welfare gain up to five times larger than the cost of the subsidy.
"A Structural Model for the Coevolution of Networks and Behavior," (with Chih-Sheng Hsieh and Michael Kӧnig) The Review of Economics and Statistics, 104, 355-367, 2022.
Abstract: This paper introduces a structural model for the coevolution of networks and behavior. We characterize the equilibrium of the underlying game and adopt the Bayesian Double Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to estimate the model. We further extend the model to incorporate unobserved heterogeneity and show that ignoring this heterogeneity can lead to biased estimates in simulation experiments. We apply the model to study R&D investment and collaboration decisions in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry and find a positive knowledge spillover effect. Our model also provides a tractable framework for a long-run key player analysis.

Richard Mansfield

"Who Benefits from a Smaller Honors Track," (with Zachary Szlendak) Journal of Human Resources, accepted.
Abstract: Most U.S. high school courses separate classrooms into standard and honors tracks. This paper characterizes the efficiency and distributional impact of changing the share of students enrolling in honors classrooms. Using a sorting model where students choose tracks by course but schools influence the share choosing honors, we show that administrators' optimal choices of honors track size require knowledge of treatment effect functions capturing the impact of alternative honors enrollment shares on different parts of the student predicted performance distribution. Using administrative data from North Carolina public high schools, we estimate these treatment effect functions by predicted performance quintile. Across various specifications, we find that smaller honors tracks (20%-30% of students) yield moderate performance gains for the top quintile (~.05-.07 test score SDs relative to no tracking) that decline monotonically across quintiles toward zero for the bottom quintile. However, expanding the honors share beyond 30-35% generates further (small) achievement increases only for the middle quintile, while reducing top quintile gains and causing substantial bottom quintile losses. Since many courses feature honors shares above 35% or do not track, we predict that enrolling ~25% of students in honors in each high school course would improve all quintiles’ statewide performance.

Adam McCloskey

"Critical Values Robust to P-hacking", (with Pascal Michaillat) Review of Economics and Statistics, Forthcoming. Abstract: P-hacking is prevalent in reality but absent from classical hypothesis testing theory. As a consequence, significant results are much more common than they are supposed to be when the null hypothesis is in fact true. In this paper, we build a model of hypothesis testing with p-hacking. From the model, we construct critical values such that, if the values are used to determine significance, and if scientists’ p-hacking behavior adjusts to the new significance standards, significant results occur with the desired frequency. Such robust critical values allow for p-hacking so they are larger than classical critical values. To illustrate the amount of correction that p-hacking might require, we calibrate the model using evidence from the medical sciences. In the calibrated model the robust critical value for any test statistic is the classical critical value for the same test statistic with one fifth of the significance level.
"Short and Simple Confidence Intervals when the Directions of Some Effects are Known," (with Philipp Ketz) Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming.
Abstract: We introduce adaptive confidence intervals on a parameter of interest in the presence of nuisance parameters, such as coefficients on control variables, with known signs. Our confidence intervals are trivial to compute and can provide significant length reductions relative to standard ones when the nuisance parameters are small. At the same time, they entail minimal length increases at any parameter values. We apply our confidence intervals to the linear regression model, prove their uniform validity and illustrate their length properties in an empirical application to a factorial design field experiment and a Monte Carlo study calibrated to the empirical application.
"Inference on Winners", (with Isaiah Andrews and Toru Kitagawa) Quarterly Journal of Economics, Feb. 2024.
Abstract: Policymakers, firms, and researchers often choose among multiple options based on estimates. Sampling error in the estimates used to guide choice leads to a winner’s curse, since we are more likely to select a given option precisely when we overestimate its effectiveness. This winner’s curse biases our estimates for our selected options upwards and can invalidate conventional confidence intervals. This paper develops estimators and confidence intervals that eliminate this winner’s curse. We illustrate our results by studying selection of job training programs based on estimated earnings effects and selection of neighborhoods based on estimated economic opportunity. We find that our winner’s curse corrections can make an economically significant difference to conclusions, but still allow informative inference
"Hybrid Confidence Intervals for Informative Uniform Asymptotic Inference After Model Selection," Biometrika, Mar. 2023.
Abstract: I propose a new type of confidence interval for correct asymptotic inference after using data to select a model of interest without assuming any model is correctly specified. This hybrid confidence interval is constructed by combining techniques from the selective inference and post-selection inference literatures to yield a short confidence interval across a wide range of data realizations. I show that hybrid confidence intervals have correct asymptotic coverage, uniformly over a large class of probability distributions that do not bound scaled model parameters. I illustrate the use of these confidence intervals in the problem of inference after using the lasso objective function to select a regression model of interest and provide evidence of their desirable length and coverage properties in small samples via a set of Monte Carlo experiments that entail a variety of different data distributions as well as an empirical application to the predictors of diabetes disease progression.

Sergey Nigai

"Selection Effects, Inequality, and Aggregate Gains from Trade," Journal of International Economics, May 2023.
Abstract: This paper argues that the cost of trade-induced inequality in terms of aggregate gains from trade is decreasing with globalization. I use a general equilibrium model of trade and show that at low levels of trade openness, a 1% point increase in real per capita income due to higher trade is associated with percentage point increases of 0.5, 0.85, and 0.92 in the Gini, Atkinson and Theil indices, respectively. These trade-offs, however, quickly decline upon opening up to trade and converge toward zero as trade barriers disappear. I find that at high levels of openness, more firms are exporters such that the elasticity of income inequality to reductions in trade costs converges to a constant, whereas the elasticity of average real income keeps increasing. Trade liberalization has positive marginal welfare effects for a wide range of social welfare function parameters. Existing taxation and redistributive policies can reinforce this relationship.
"Highways and Globalization," (with Taylor Jaworski and Carl Kitchens) International Economic Review, accepted.
Abstract: This paper quantifies the value of US highways. We develop a multisector general equilibrium model with many locations in the United States (i.e., counties) and many countries. In the model, producers choose shipping routes subject to domestic and international trade costs, endogenous congestion, and port efficiency at international transshipment points. We find that removing the Interstate Highway System reduces real GDP by $601.6 billion (or 3.8 percent). We also show how to quantify the value of individual segments using our framework. The results highlight the role of domestic transportation infrastructure in shaping regional comparative advantage as well as the gains from intersectoral and international trade.

Alessandro Peri

"Public Investment in a Production Network: Aggregate and Sectoral Implications," (with Omar Rachedi and Iacopo Varotto) The Review of Economics and Statistics, Forthcoming.
Abstract: Aggregate and sectoral effects of public investment crucially depend on the inter- action between the output elasticity to public capital and intermediate inputs. We uncover this fact through the lens of a New Keynesian production network. This setting doubles the socially optimal amount of public capital relative to the one-sector model without intermediate inputs, leading to a substantial am- plification of the public-investment multiplier. We also document novel sectoral implications of public investment. Although public investment is concentrated in far fewer sectors than public consumption, its effects are relatively more evenly distributed across industries. We validate this model implication in the data.
"Selfish incentives for climate policy: Empower the young!," (with Larry Karp and Armon Rezai) Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Forthcoming.
Abstract: Currently living agents might have selfish reasons to undertake climate policy, because young agents benefit in the future from an improved climate, and policy affects the asset price. Previous models down played the first factor and assumed away the second. Self-interested incentives induce meaningful climate policy over a period of several generations, if the young have substantial policy-making influence. Policy is largely driven by the young generation’s concern about its future consumption, not from endogenous asset prices. For small climate policy, the old and young generations’ incentives are aligned if and only if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution exceeds 1.
"Forum Shopping and Legal Labor Markets: Evidence from the Court Competition Era," (with Chad Brown and Jeronimo Carballo) Journal of Law and Economics, Forthcoming.
Abstract: We study how Chapter 11 bankruptcies affect local legal labor markets. We document that bankruptcy shocks increase county legal employment and corroborate this finding by exploiting a stipulation of the law known as Forum Shopping during the Court Competition Era (1991-1996). We quantify losses to local communities from firms forum shopping away from their local area as follows. First, we calculate the unrealized potential employment gains implied by our reduced-form results. Second, we structurally estimate a model of legal labor markets and quantify welfare losses. We uncover meaningful costs to local communities from lax bankruptcy venue laws.

Carol Shiue

"Social Mobility in the Long Run: An Analysis of Tongcheng, China, 1300 to 1900,", Journal of Economic History, Forthcoming.
Abstract: This paper studies intergenerational mobility with a population of families in central China over twenty generations. Employing genealogical data on individual lifetime achievements, I first find that while mobility was low initially there was a striking increase in mobility starting in the late 17th century. Through the lens of a Becker-Tomes (1979) model I explain this through a falling human capital earnings elasticity because the return to passing the civil service examinations, China's most important pathway to office and income at the time, declined over time. Second, as predicted by the model times of high human capital earnings elasticity are times of high cross-sectional inequality. Third, parent human capital affects child income for any given nonhuman parental investment and is estimated to have 2/3 of the effect of nonhuman investments on child income. Moreover, educational inequality is even more strongly correlated with social persistence than income inequality. Finally, much of the observed increase in mobility is accounted for by lower differences in average clan income, consistent with the hypothesis that part of the earnings elasticity of human capital is group-specific.

Yangwei Song

"Approximate Bayesian implementation and exact maxmin implementation: An equivalence," Games and Economic Behavior, May 2023.
Abstract: This paper provides a micro-foundation for approximate incentive compatibility using ambiguity aversion. In particular, we propose a novel notion of approximate interim incentive compatibility, approximate local incentive compatibility, and establish an equivalence between approximate local incentive compatibility in a Bayesian environment and exact interim incentive compatibility in the presence of a small degree of ambiguity. We then apply our result to the implementation of efficient allocations. In particular, we identify two economic settings—including ones in which approximately efficient allocations are implementable and ones in which agents are informationally small—in which efficient allocations are approximately locally implementable when agents are Bayesian. Applying our result to those settings, we conclude that efficient allocations are exactly implementable when agents perceive a small degree of ambiguity.
"Intertemporal Hedging and Trade in Repeated Games with Recursive Utility," (with Asen Kochov), Econometrica, accepted.
Abstract: Two key features distinguish the general class of recursive preferences from the standard model of dynamic choice: (i) agents may care about the intertemporal distribution of risk, and (ii) their rates of time preference, rather than being fixed, may vary with the level of consumption. We investigate what these features imply in the context of a repeated strategic interaction. First, we show that opportunities for intertemporal trade may expand the set of feasible payoffs relative to that in a static interaction. Two dis-tinct sources for such trade are identified: endogenous heterogeneity in the players’ rates of time preference and a hedging motive pertaining to the intertemporal distribution of risk.The set of equilibrium payoffs may on the other hand shrink drastically as many efficient outcomes become unsustainable no matter the level of patience. This “anti-folk” result occurs when the players prefer stage outcomes to be positively correlated rather than independent across time. Intuitively, such preferences make it inefficient to offset short-term losses with future gains, while this is needed to ensure that security levels are met on path. We also establish a folk theorem: if security levels are met on path, such play canbe sustained in a subgame perfect equilibrium provided that the players are sufficiently patient.

Stephanie Weber

"Has Consumer Acceptance of Electric Vehicles Been Increasing? Evidence from Microdata on Every New Vehicle Sale in the United States," American Economic Association: Papers & Proceedings, 2023.
Abstract: Electric vehicle (EV) sales have been rapidly growing around the world, spurred by technology advances and policy actions. This study leverages rich data on all individual new light-duty vehicles sold in the United States from 2014 to 2020. We examine how EV attributes, prices, and sales have evolved, exploring substantial heterogeneity across geography, vehicle class, price range, and demographics. We use a matching analysis to compare EVs to similar conventional vehicles to find that EVs have been surprisingly competitive in very recent years. This suggests that constrained supply is an important determinant of the low overall EV market share.

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