|
on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Joseph Tracy; Andrew F. Haughwout; Richard Peach |
| Abstract: | The homeownership rate peaked at 69 percent in late 2004. By the summer of 2016, it had dropped below 63 percent?exactly where it was when the government started reporting these data back in 1965. The housing bust played a central role in this decline. We capture this effect through what we call the homeownership gap?the difference between the official homeownership rate and the ?effective? rate where only homeowners with positive equity in their house are counted. The effective rate takes into account that a borrower does not in an economic sense own the house if the mortgage debt is greater than the house?s value. In this post, we show that between 2005 and 2012, the effective rate fell well below, and put downward pressure on, the official rate. We also demonstrate that the increase in house prices and the exit of millions of homeowners through foreclosure has largely eliminated the gap between the official and effective homeownership rates. |
| Keywords: | homeownership; negative equity; Mortgages |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87176&r=all |
| By: | Benjamin K. Couillard; Christopher L. Foote |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a comprehensive source of yearly data to study private-sector labor demand across US counties during the past five decades. Our focus is on how employment levels and earnings relate to population density—that is, how labor markets in rural areas, suburbs, and cities have fared relative to one another. Three broad lessons emerge. First, the longstanding suburbanization of employment and population in cities with very dense urban cores essentially stopped in the first decade of the 21st century. For cities with less dense cores, however, the decentralization of employment continues, even as population patterns mimic those of denser areas. Second, a dataset that begins in 1964 clearly shows the decentralization of manufacturing employment away from inner cities, a trend that has long been a focus of the urban sociological literature. Starting in the 1990s, however, manufacturing employment fell sharply, not just in cities but also in rural areas, which had experienced less-intense deindustrialization before then. Finally, average earnings dispersion across counties with similar density levels fell during most of our sample period. But after the 1990s, this dispersion rose, probably because of an increase in earnings dispersion among very dense counties (“superstar cities”). We also note that our results are consistent with explanations of rising individual-level earnings inequality within cities that rest on fundamental changes in how basic job tasks are performed, rather than where particular jobs are located. |
| Keywords: | demographics; labor economics; economic geography; location economics; real estate economics; regional economics; spatial econometrics |
| JEL: | J2 J3 J6 R1 R3 |
| Date: | 2019–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedbwp:87417&r=all |
| By: | Peralta Quiros,Tatiana; Kerzhner,Tamara; Avner,Paolo |
| Abstract: | This paper presents an analysis of transit accessibility to employment for 11 African cities. The use of identical methodologies and similar data sets allows for the creation of the first benchmark to compare accessibility across urban areas in Africa through different metrics and visuals. The study shows how the spatial pattern of land use and transport systems perform in connecting people to employment opportunities in these various settings. This first comparable benchmark is achieved by overcoming two significant data hurdles that are common in many developing country cities and in Africa in particular: (i) the scarcity of information on the distribution of employment and (ii) the lack of information on transit routes and travel times. These data gaps are filled through a novel methodology to estimate the distribution of employment in urban areas (Employment Opportunity Areas) as well as a comprehensive mapping of informal transit networks. The analysis developed here can be replicated in different cities in the future. The computation of these baseline accessibility studies also opens up the possibility to assess the impacts of future transport investments and/or land use changes, through the use of counterfactual scenarios, which could assist decision makers in these cities. Finally, this analysis can serve as a demonstration that the computation of accessibility metrics is achievable, including in data scarce environments, and should be considered as a progress indicator for Sustainable Development Goal 11.2, which focuses on safe and affordable transport for all, including public transport. |
| Date: | 2019–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8971&r=all |
| By: | Iimi,Atsushi |
| Abstract: | Understanding how land prices are determined is of particular importance for policy makers; however, there is little evidence in African countries, which are currently experiencing rapid urbanization. The paper examines the relationship between land prices and locational characteristics using data from Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. It is found that the land value gradients are relatively steep, indicating that the land and housing prices tend to overshoot in the middle of the city, pushing the poor away from the city to suburban areas. It is also found that access to transport infrastructure and services, such as minibuses, is an important determinant of land value. Not only transport connectivity, but also other factors, such as proximity to amenities and administrative centers, are found to be important. Better land management and urban transport policies are called for to promote these aspects in the city. |
| Keywords: | Transport Services,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,Urban Housing,Urban Governance and Management,Municipal Management and Reform,Natural Disasters |
| Date: | 2019–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8958&r=all |
| By: | Eilidh Geddes (Research and Statistics Group); Andrew F. Haughwout; Andreas Fuster (Schweizerische Nationalbank; Federal Reserve Bank of New York; National Bureau of Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | Housing equity is the primary form of collateral that households use for borrowing. This makes it a potentially important source of consumption funding, especially for younger households. In a previous post we showed that owner?s equity in residential real estate has finally, thanks to increasing home prices, rebounded to and essentially re-attained its 2005 peak level. Yet in spite of a gain of more than $7 trillion in housing equity since 2012, so far homeowners haven?t been tapping this equity at anything like the pace we witnessed during the housing boom that ended in 2006. In this post, we analyze the changes in equity withdrawal. |
| Keywords: | equity; Mortgages; leverage |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87175&r=all |
| By: | James Conklin; W. Scott Frame; Kristopher S. Gerardi; Haoyang Liu |
| Abstract: | The role of subprime mortgage lending in the U.S. housing boom of the 2000s is hotly debated in academic literature. One prevailing narrative ascribes the unprecedented home price growth during the mid-2000s to an expansion in mortgage lending to subprime borrowers. This post, based on our recent working paper, “Villains or Scapegoats? The Role of Subprime Borrowers in Driving the U.S. Housing Boom,” presents evidence that is inconsistent with conventional wisdom. In particular, we show that the housing boom and the subprime boom occurred in different places. |
| Keywords: | Subprime Expansion; Financial Crisis |
| JEL: | G21 |
| Date: | 2020–02–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87518&r=all |
| By: | Semih Tumen (TED University, IZA, and ERF) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of Syrian refugees on high school enrollment rates of native youth in Turkey. Syrian refugees are, on average, less skilled and more willing to work in low-pay informal jobs than Turkish natives. Refugees can influence native youth’s school enrollment likelihood negatively through educational ex- perience. But, at the same time, they can affect enrollment rates positively as they escalate competition for jobs with low-skill requirements. Using micro data from 2006 to 2016 and employing quasi-experimental methods, I find that high- school enrollment rates increased 2.7-3.6 percentage points among native youth in refugee- receiving regions. Furthermore, a one-percentage point increase in the refugee-to-population ratio in a region generates around 0.4 percentage point increase in native’s high school enrollment rates. Most of the increase in high school enrollment comes from young males with lower parental backgrounds, which is consistent with the hypothesis that the main mechanism operates through the low-skill labor market. The regressions control for (i) variables proxying parental investment in human capital such as parental education, being in an intact family, and household size, (ii) regional economic activity, and (iii) regional availability of high schools and high school teachers. |
| Keywords: | Low-skill Syrian refugees; youth education; high school enrollment JEL Classification: I25; J61 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:283&r=all |
| By: | Kamada, Takuma |
| Abstract: | Violence often induces white flight to the suburbs and traps blacks in high-crime cities, shaping black-white suburbanization inequality. This study examines the emergence of the crack epidemic in the mid-1980s and city-to-suburb mobility between and within ethno-racial groups. Using the 1980 and 1990 IPUMS data, I compare the mean and dispersion of city-to-suburban mobility before and during the period of the crack epidemic in cities with high intensity of the epidemic relative to cities with low intensity. The results suggest that the crack epidemic increased black and Hispanic flight to the suburbs, but it did not increase white flight. Furthermore, the crack epidemic increased disparity in city-to-suburb mobility among blacks. I find that the source of this heterogeneity is middle-class black migrants who fled to the suburbs. Supporting evidence is consistent with the idea that the crack epidemic changed the location of business establishments from the inner-city to the suburbs, which results in greater economic returns to city-to-suburb migration among selective demographic groups who were heavily affected by the crack epidemic but had resources to migrate. Given the historically lower rates of suburbanization among blacks and Hispanics, the results suggest that the crack epidemic decreased suburbanization inequality between minorities and whites but increased suburbanization inequality among blacks. |
| Date: | 2020–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:wkxqv&r=all |
| By: | Donghoon Lee; Joseph Tracy |
| Abstract: | Much of the concern about affordable homeownership has focused on first-time buyers. These buyers, who are often making the transition from renting to owning, can find it difficult to save to meet down-payment requirements; this is particularly true in those areas where rent takes up a significant portion of a household's monthly income. In contrast to first-time buyers, repeat buyers can typically rely on the equity in their current house to help fund the down payment on a trade-up purchase; they also have an easier time qualifying for a new mortgage if they've successfully made payments on a prior mortgage, thereby improving their credit score. Despite the policy focus on first-time buyers, reliable data on these buyers do not exist. In this first of three posts, we introduce a better measure of first-time buyers and examine the dynamics of this group over the past seventeen years. In our next post, we will describe the characteristics of first-time buyers. We will conclude this part of the housing series by examining the sustainability of homeownership for first-time buyers. |
| Keywords: | Consumer Credit Panel; household finance; mortgages; first time home buyer |
| JEL: | D1 R3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87324&r=all |
| By: | C. Kirabo Jackson; Shanette C. Porter; John Q. Easton; Alyssa Blanchard; Sebastián Kiguel |
| Abstract: | Using value-added models, we find that high schools impact students’ self-reported socioemotional development (SED) by enhancing social well-being and promoting hard work. Conditional on schools’ test score impacts, schools that improve SED reduce school-based arrests, and increase high-school completion, college-going, and college persistence. Schools that improve social well-being have larger effects on attendance and behavioral infractions in high school, while those that promote hard work have larger effects on GPA. Importantly, school SED value-added is more predictive of school impacts on longer-run outcomes than school test-score value-added. As such, for the longer-run outcomes, using both SED and test score value-added more than doubles the variance of the explained school effect relative to using test score value-added alone. Results suggest that adolescence can be a formative period for socioemotional growth, high-school impacts on SED can be captured using self-report surveys, and SED can be fostered by schools to improve longer-run outcomes. These findings are robust to tests for plausible forms of selection. |
| JEL: | I20 J0 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26759&r=all |
| By: | Michael Fritsch; Michael Wyrwich |
| Abstract: | Popular theories claim that innovation activities should be located in large cities because of more favorable environmental conditions that are absent in smaller cities or remote and rural areas. Germany provides a clear counterexample to such theories. We argue that a main force behind the geography of innovation in Germany is the country’s federal tradition that has shaped the settlement structure, the geographic distribution of universities and public research institutions, as well as local access to finance. Additional factors that may play a role in this respect are the system of education and the tax treatment of inheriting a business. We demonstrate the long-lasting effect of the historical political structure and distribution of knowledge sources on innovation activities today. We conclude that historical factors that shape the settlement structure and location of knowledge sources are of key importance for the geographic location of innovation activities. |
| Keywords: | innovation, patents, agglomeration economies, cities, Germany |
| JEL: | O31 R11 L26 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2009&r=all |
| By: | Rebecca Landau (Research and Statistics Group); Sonia Gilbukh (Baruch College); Joseph Tracy; Andrew F. Haughwout |
| Abstract: | The 2018 slowdown in the housing market has been a subject of intense interest to the press and policymakers, including articles reporting a slowing in house price growth and a decline in home construction. Today we follow up on our colleagues' research on whether the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) has contributed to a slowdown in the housing market, looking closely at what price signals tell us about the trade-off between owning and renting. |
| Keywords: | Housing; taxes; prices |
| JEL: | D1 R3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87328&r=all |
| By: | Kazuo Ogawa (Kansaigaidai University) |
| Abstract: | This study is an empirical investigation into the relationship between the real estate market and consumption in Japan. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, we investigate the channel through which the performance of the real estate market affects consumption. Using the quarterly time series data, we estimate the VAR model to pin down the transmission mechanism of land price to consumption. We find that collateral channel played an important role in propagating a shock in land price to consumption in the bubble period and the lost decades. Second, we estimate the effect of housing wealth on consumption, using the panel data of the Japan Household Panel Survey from 2009 to 2017. We find that collateral channel is still at work for young households. Our estimates of marginal propensity to consume out of housing wealth is 0.0097 to 0.0146, comparable with the estimates in the previous studies. |
| Keywords: | land price, consumption, VAR model, wealth effect channel, collateral channel |
| JEL: | E21 R14 R21 |
| Date: | 2020–01–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cth:wpaper:gru_2020_001&r=all |
| By: | Iimi,Atsushi |
| Abstract: | In recent years, there has been renewed interest in access to jobs in relation to transport connectivity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 14 million working age people are added to the labor market every year. Ensuring sustained access to jobs seems to be a prerequisite for inclusive and robust economic growth. The paper examines the impact of public transit connectivity on access to jobs, especially focusing on wages. Using data from Antananarivo, Madagascar, it is shown that the wages earned by commuters are systematically higher than the wages earned by those who decided not to commute and are self-employed or engaged with family businesses around their neighborhood. Proximity to public transport, especially taxi-be, is important to promote people's access to jobs. It is also found that there is a substantial gender inequality in wages in the country: Women are more likely to use buses to commute, and yet, they earn less than men. In addition, the poor tend to benefit less from public transportation. Public bus services are affordable, however, the quality of the services may remain low. |
| Keywords: | Transport Services,Labor Markets,Urban Transport,Transport in Urban Areas,Urban Housing,Urban Governance and Management,Municipal Management and Reform,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,Transport Economics Policy&Planning |
| Date: | 2019–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8959&r=all |
| By: | Ceriani,Lidia; Olivieri,Sergio Daniel; Ranzani,Marco |
| Abstract: | Attributing a rental value to homeowners'dwellings is essential in different contexts, including poverty and inequality analysis, the compilation of national accounts, consumer price indexes, and estimation of purchasing power parity indexes. The proposed solution is often to use homeowners'estimates of the market rent they would pay for their dwelling if they were renting it, which is usually referred to as homeowners'self-assessed rent. Lack of alternative surveys and up-to-date and complete administrative data about dwellings'market values typically bounds researchers to test the accuracy of homeowners'self-assessed rent using only information from household budget surveys. Using 13 years of the Peruvian household budget survey, this paper compares two methods to assess the accuracy of homeowners'self-assessed rent and finds that the average homeowner in Lima overestimates the market rent of her dwelling by between 8 and 15 percent. However, homeowners'self-assessment inaccuracy fades away in most years when homeowners are compared with their most observationally similar tenants. |
| Keywords: | Inequality,Hydrology,Educational Sciences,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,Urban Governance and Management,Urban Housing,Municipal Management and Reform |
| Date: | 2019–08–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8983&r=all |
| By: | Anna-Theresa Renner; Dieter Pennerstorfer |
| Abstract: | Gravity models are extremely popular to investigate economic interactions across space. Bilateral flows are usually available as regionally aggregated data only, while information on demand and supply is often available at a finer spatial scale. We suggest using this information to calculate a measure of spatial accessibility based on the two-step floating catchment area method to augment the gravity equation. We apply this idea to analyze patient mobility by using easily available and spatially explicit information on physicians' locations (supply) and grid-level population data (demand). Our approach improves the model’s fit and allows conducting a rich set of simulation experiments. |
| Keywords: | gravity model, patient mobility, spatial accessibility, two-step floating catchment areas (2SFCA) |
| JEL: | F10 R12 I11 I18 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jku:econwp:2020-04&r=all |
| By: | David N. Figlio; Cassandra M.D. Hart; Krzysztof Karbownik |
| Abstract: | Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and a student fixed effect design, we explore how the massive scale-up of a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes. Expansion of the program produced modestly larger benefits for students attending public schools that had a larger initial degree of private school options, measured prior to the introduction of the voucher program. These benefits include higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well. |
| JEL: | H75 I21 I22 I28 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26758&r=all |
| By: | Rafael Barbosa; Simon Skipka |
| Abstract: | Despite its theoretical merits, Land Value Taxation (LVT) is not a common policy instrument in most countries. One of the main reasons is uncertainty regarding its distributional impacts. This uncertainty has not been settled by the literature, due to a lack of appropriate data at the household level. We overcome this obstacle by the construction of a unique household level dataset for a sample of German homeowners in 2017. The data collected allows us to study the differences in distributions of land and property values and the resulting distributional effects of implementing a LVT compared to a standard property tax. Our results are as follows. First, we find revenue neutral LVT rates to be around 0.6% in our sample. Second, we find the share of land value in property value on average to be 33% with considerable household heterogeneity, both within and between regions. Third, we find a LVT to be equally progressive if implemented at the federal level, but less progressive if implemented at the regional level, since, although land values are more concentrated than property values, they are not as strongly correlated with income. Quantitatively a revenue-neutral reform from a standard property tax to a LVT at the regional level would increase the average tax burden of the lowest income quintile of homeowners by 25%. |
| Keywords: | land, housing, land value taxation, property taxation, distributional assessment |
| JEL: | H20 H71 R20 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8039&r=all |
| By: | Bäckman, Claes; Khorunzhina, Natalia |
| Abstract: | We use detailed household-level data from Denmark to analyze how the introduction of interest-only mortgages affected consumption expenditure and borrowing. Four years after the reform interest-only mortgages constituted 40 percent of outstanding mortgage debt. Using an ex-ante measure of exposure motivated by financial constraints, we show households who are more likely to use an IO mortgage, increased consumption substantially following the reform. The increase in consumption is driven by borrowing at the time of refinancing and by borrowers with lower pre-reform leverage ratios. Our results show changes in the mortgage contract can have large impacts on consumption expenditure. |
| Keywords: | Consumption, Mortgage Market |
| JEL: | D14 E21 G21 |
| Date: | 2020–02–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98524&r=all |
| By: | Avner,Paolo; Hallegatte,Stephane |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the costs and benefits of three ex ante flood management strategies -- risk-based insurance, zoning, and subsidized insurance -- in an urban economics framework that takes land scarcity into account. In a theoretical setting and in the absence of market failures, risk-based insurance perfectly internalizes flood risks and maximizes social welfare. However, risk-based insurance faces major technical, social, and political challenges and is not always realistic. Flood zoning and subsidized insurance are two second-best options that are easier to implement and less technically demanding. The paper explores analytically and with numerical simulations the welfare losses and distributional impacts with these second-best options, and demonstrates that total losses often remain small. Flood zoning is close to optimal when flood-prone areas are small, floods are frequent, and housing quality is low. Zoning keeps total land value unchanged but transfers wealth from landowners in flood-prone areas to landowners in safe locations. Subsidized insurance is close to optimal when a large fraction of a city is flood prone, floods are rare, and housing quality is high. And although it increases flood losses through the moral hazard effect, subsidized insurance encourages more construction, which reduces housing rents and benefits tenants regardless of where they live. Subsidized insurance transfers wealth from landowners in safe locations to landowners in flood-prone areas. When the implementation of risk-based insurance is unrealistic, as is often the case in developing countries, a combination of zoning in high-risk areas and subsidized insurance for low-risk areas might be a good alternative. |
| Date: | 2019–09–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9012&r=all |
| By: | Michael Fritsch; Michael Wyrwich |
| Abstract: | We investigate the geographic concentration of patenting in large cities using a sample of 14 developed countries. There is wide dispersion of the share of patented inventions in large metropolitan areas. South Korea and the US are two extreme outliers where patenting is highly concentrated in large cities. We do not find any general trend that there is a geographic concentration of patents for the period 2000-2014. There is also no general trend that inventors in large cities have more patents than in rural areas (scaling). Hence, while agglomeration economies of large cities may offer advantages for innovation activities, the extent of these advantages is not very large. We conclude that popular theories over-emphasize the importance of large cities for innovation activities. |
| Keywords: | innovation, patents, cities, urban scaling, creativity |
| JEL: | O31 R12 O57 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2010&r=all |
| By: | Mossay, Pascal; Shin, Jong Kook; Smrkolj, Grega |
| Abstract: | To explore the relationship between spatial location and quality differentiation, we build a dataset of over 30,000 restaurants rated by TripAdvisor, across large UK cities. Whereas top-rated restaurants tend to locate closer to other top restaurants, bottom-rated restaurants tend to locate away from each other and closer to top ones. Our theoretical model can explain the main features of the observed spatial patterns. We find that an increase in the population density in the city center reduces the spatial dispersion of both top and bottom restaurants but the reduction is larger in magnitude for top restaurants. A larger quality difference between top and bottom restaurants increases both the absolute and relative dispersion of top restaurants. |
| Keywords: | Spatial competition, Quality differentiation, Hotelling, Restaurant industry |
| JEL: | L13 L83 R32 |
| Date: | 2020–02–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98707&r=all |
| By: | Donghoon Lee; Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Joelle Scally; Andrew F. Haughwout |
| Abstract: | The New York Fed's Center for Microeconomic Data today released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the first quarter of 2019. Total household debt grew by $124 billion over the quarter, boosted by increases in mortgage, auto, and student loan balances. Over the past twenty years, the prevalence of each type of credit has waxed and waned, shifts linked to the housing boom, the Great Recession, and the subsequent economic recovery. In this blog post, we draw on the New York Fed's Consumer Credit Panel a nationally representative sample of Equifax credit report data and the basis of our Quarterly Report to explore those longer-term trends in credit market participation. |
| Keywords: | consumer credit panel; household credit; CCP |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87332&r=all |
| By: | Dennis Gaus; Heike Link |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze the impact of transportation infrastructure quantity and quality on regional economic production. We exploit an extensive panel dataset on the German county level (N=401), expressing the capital value and condition of highways between 2007 and 2016, to estimate a spatially extended translog production function. The spatial specification uses SLX and SDEM models, with various linear and nonlinear variants estimated using FGLS and GMM estimators accounting for endogeneity. We find, in line with existing research, a positive impact of the quantity of transport infrastructure both locally and supra-regionally. We furthermore provide evidence for the claim that insufficient maintenance and low infrastructure conditions significantly slow economic growth through a negative correlation between GDP and the quality grade of highways. A more detailed analysis, distinguishing different types of highways and constructions, confirms these findings and underlines the importance of the Bundesstraßen network as compared to the Autobahn system. The estimated impact of the quality of bridges is rather ambiguous and requires further research to achieve a better understanding. |
| Keywords: | Transport; Infrastructure; Public Capital; Economic Growth; Regional Development |
| JEL: | O18 R12 R42 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1848&r=all |
| By: | Ceriani,Lidia; Olivieri,Sergio Daniel; Ranzani,Marco |
| Abstract: | Housing is the largest durable good consumed by households. As such, any consumption-based measure of welfare, to be comprehensive, must include the value of the flow of services households derive from their dwellings, the so-called imputed rent. However, estimating imputed rents is a daunting task, which researchers and practitioners tend to overlook. This paper is the first attempt to assess the distributional impact of including housing in the welfare aggregate; the paper tests two estimation methods and analyzes four developing countries. The distributional impact cannot be predicted a priori, and evidence suggests it is context and method specific. Although changes in poverty and inequality are always statistically significant, they are only occasionally larger than one percentage point. By contrast, shared prosperity exhibits sizable changes, which might also determine international re-rankings. Albeit the inclusion of imputed rents reshuffles the set of poor households, observed changes in the socioeconomic profiling of the poor are unlikely to affect pro-poor policy design. |
| Keywords: | Inequality,Urban Governance and Management,Municipal Management and Reform,Urban Housing,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,Poverty Diagnostics,Poverty Lines,Poverty Assessment,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Global Environment,Labor&Employment Law |
| Date: | 2019–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8955&r=all |
| By: | Marco Fregoni (University of Milan); Marco Leonardi (University of Milan); Sauro Mocetti (Banca d'Italia) |
| Abstract: | We provide quasi-experimental evidence of the effects of a relaxation of land use constraints on local economic activity. We exploit the fact that in 1999 the central government imposed fiscal rules on municipal governments and in 2001 it relaxed them for municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants. First, we show that municipalities rely on the urbanization revenues that they collect from issuing building permits to avoid fiscal distress and to finance current expenditure. The rise of building permits is concentrated in the non-residential market and is stronger after 2003, when urban revenues were allowed to pay for municipalities’ current expenditures. Second, we exploit this de facto reduction of firms’ entry barriers to examine downstream effects. We find a positive impact on employment growth and firms’ entry that is concentrated in non-tradable sectors. |
| Keywords: | fiscal rules, urbanization revenues, land use regulation, building permits, firms’ entry, employment. |
| JEL: | D73 H72 R52 R31 R33 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1261_20&r=all |
| By: | Stefan Bauernschuster; Ramona Rekers |
| Abstract: | We study the impact on road safety of one-day massive speed limit monitoring operations (SLMO) accompanied by media campaigns that announce the SLMO and provide information on the dangers of speeding. Using register data on the universe of police reported accidents in a generalized difference-in-differences approach, we find that SLMO reduce traffic accidents and casualties by eight percent. Yet, immediately after the SLMO day, all effects vanish. Further evidence suggests that people drive more slowly and responsibly on SLMO days to avoid fines; providing information on the dangers of speeding does not alter driving behavior in a more sustainable way. |
| Keywords: | traffic, law enforcement, safety, accidents |
| JEL: | H76 K42 R41 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8024&r=all |
| By: | Diego Aragon; Joseph Tracy; Richard Peach |
| Abstract: | On October 5, 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Rockefeller Institute of Government co-hosted the conference ?Distressed Residential Real Estate: Dimensions, Impacts, and Remedies.? This post not only makes available a compendium of the findings of the conference, but also updates and extends some of the analysis presented. In particular, we look across states to assess the differential impacts of judicial and non-judicial processes to resolve the foreclosure crisis. Controlling for the peak percentage of loans that were seriously delinquent, we find that non-judicial states are much further along in reducing the backlog of loans in foreclosure. In addition, controlling for the magnitude of the decline in home prices from peak to trough, we observe that home prices have recovered considerably more in the non-judicial states. |
| Keywords: | judicial; foreclosure; non-judicial |
| JEL: | R3 R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86880&r=all |
| By: | Le Blanc, Julia (Deutsche Bundesbank); Lydon, Reamonn (Central Bank of Ireland) |
| Abstract: | We analyse the effect of shocks to housing wealth and income before and after the Great Recession. We combine datasets containing information on expenditure, income, wealth and debt in a synthetic panel to understand how household indebtedness affects the response to income and wealth shocks.We find evidence for both a housing wealth effect and income shocks depressing household consumption during the crisis in Ireland. The long recovery of consumption is also related to high levels of indebtedness at the onset of the crisis. Households who entered the crisis with more debt are significantly more sensitive to changes in their income. In this way, household balance sheets can be an important amplification mechanism for aggregate shocks. |
| Keywords: | Real estate markets, income, wealth, expenditure, debt, recessions. |
| JEL: | D14 D31 E21 H31 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbi:wpaper:14/rt/19&r=all |
| By: | Banick,Robert Steven; Kawasoe,Yasuhiro |
| Abstract: | Simple linear distances between origin and destination poorly describe travel in Nepal, where rugged terrain, underdeveloped transportation infrastructure, and diverse vegetation heavily influence favorable travel routes. In this context, expected travel times explain more about the remoteness of starting locations than geographic distance. Applied to service facilities, these time?based measures of remoteness amount to measures of physical accessibility to services. However, traditional survey?based measures of time suffer from problems of inaccurate reporting and standard survey error. Instead, this study built a geographic information system?based cost time model of travel that enables more accurate and generalizable assessment of accessibility. Having validated the generic model and compared it with other popular metrics, the study demonstrates its value by inputting a variety of services into it. This paper provides descriptive analyses of accessibility trends to these services at national, provincial, municipal, and geographic scales and suggests research possibilities unlocked by such a general purpose model. The paper concludes with thoughts for how the data and analysis, both freely available public goods, can enable additional research and better policy making. |
| Keywords: | ICT Policy and Strategies,Transport Services,Inequality,Health Care Services Industry,Educational Sciences |
| Date: | 2019–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8966&r=all |
| By: | Lara Cockx; Elfriede Lecossois |
| Abstract: | Do the returns to migration extend beyond migrants themselves and accrue to the children of migrants? Drawing upon data from a unique 19-year longitudinal survey from Tanzania, this paper empirically investigates this question by exploiting the variation in the outcomes of the children of migrants and the children of the migrants' siblings who stayed behind conditional upon a range of individual characteristics of their parents. I show that parental migration has important implications for child development. This relation depends on the destination and the timing of the move. More specifically, children whose parents migrated from rural areas to cities are heavier, taller and more educated for their age. The effects on height and schooling are strongest for children who were exposed to the city environment during their early childhood. In contrast, children whose parents moved to a different rural village do not appear to experience any health advantage and those moving alongside their parents even start schooling at a later age. In addition to conferring a broader view of the returns to physical mobility, this analysis contributes to the debate on the origin of spatial inequalities in developing countries. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ete:licosp:648684&r=all |
| By: | Nicolás Ajzenman; Ruben Durante |
| Abstract: | Can seemingly unimportant factors influence voting decisions by making certain issues salient? We study this question in the context of Argentina 2015 presidential elections by examining how the quality of the infrastructure of the school where citizens were assigned to vote influenced their voting choice. Exploiting the quasi-random assignment of voters to ballot stations located in different public schools in the city of Buenos Aires, we find that individuals assigned to schools with poorer infrastructure were significantly less likely to vote for Mauricio Macri, the incumbent mayor then running for president. The effect is larger in low-income areas - where fewer people can afford private substitutes to public education - and in places where more households have children in school age. The effect is unlikely to be driven by information scarcity, since information on public school infrastructure was readily available to parents before elections. Rather, direct exposure to poor school infrastructure at the time of voting is likely to make public education - and the poor performance of the incumbent – more salient. |
| Keywords: | Elections, Salience, Electoral Punishment, Public Infrastructure, Education. |
| JEL: | D72 D83 I25 D90 |
| Date: | 2020–02–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000518:017909&r=all |
| By: | Tilman Brück (ISDC – International Security and Development Center); Kai M. Dunker (ISDC – International Security and Development Center); Neil T. N. Ferguson (ISDC – International Security and Development Center); Aline Meysonnat (UNU-MERIT); Eleonora Nillesen (UNU-MERIT) |
| Abstract: | Violent conflict is a well-recognised driver of forced migration but literature does not usually consider the pull factors that might also cause irregular movements. In turn, the decision to leave and of where to go are rarely considered separately. This is in contrast to literature on regular international migration, which considers both push and pull factors. We contribute to these literatures by studying bilateral forced migration from multiple countries of origin to 28 European countries in the years either side of two “migration crises†– the wars in the Balkans and the Arab Spring. We pay attention to dynamics by analysing lagged flows and stocks of forced migrants and modelling their spatial distribution. We find that these partial adjustment and network effects are key pull factors, with employment rate in the destination country the only significant economic variable. In addition, we demonstrate that it is episodes of escalating conflict, rather than accumulated violence, that drives decisions to leave. Out-of-sample predictions indicate that if conflict in origin countries were to cease, forced migration would continue, albeit at a significantly reduced rate. Our findings suggest that past patterns of forced migration help shape future flows, that forced migration flows cannot easily be stopped by destination country policies, and that preventing conflict escalation is important for preventing forced migration. |
| Keywords: | Forced migration; refugees; displacement; conflict; Arab Spring; MENA; Balkans; dynamic panel data; gravity model JEL Classification: J61; J68; F22; O15; F51 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:277&r=all |
| By: | Rajashri Chakrabarti; Max Livingston |
| Abstract: | A key institution that was significantly affected by the Great Recession is the school system, which plays a crucial role in building human capital and shaping the country?s economic future. To prevent major cuts to education, the federal government allocated $100 billion to schools as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), commonly known as the stimulus package. However, the stimulus has wound down while many sectors of the economy are still struggling, leaving state and local governments with budget squeezes. In this post, we present some key findings on how school finances in New York State fared during this period, drawing on our recent study and a series of interactive graphics. As the stimulus ended, school district funding fell dramatically and districts across the state enacted significant cuts across the board, affecting not only noninstructional spending but also instructional spending?the category most closely related to student learning. |
| Keywords: | School Finance; Recession; ARRA |
| JEL: | Q1 R1 J00 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86894&r=all |
| By: | Conefrey, Thomas (Central Bank of Ireland); Staunton, David (Central Bank of Ireland) |
| Abstract: | Changes in population and household formation have important implications for the demand for housing, but their precise future paths are uncertain. Using the most up-to-date population projections from the CSO, this Economic Letter estimates scenarios for long-run housing demand in Ireland. We find that – assuming no change in household formation rates (headship) from current levels – an average of around 34,000 new dwellings would be required each year out to 2030 to keep pace with the projected growth in the population. Recent observed levels of residential completions are well below both current and future estimated demand, implying a need for further expansion in the supply of new dwellings. |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbi:ecolet:14/el/19&r=all |
| By: | Allen-Coghlan, Matthew; McQuinn, Kieran; O'Toole, Conor |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:resnot:rn20190401&r=all |
| By: | Allen-Coghlan, Matthew; Judge, Conor; O'Toole, Conor; Slaymaker, Rachel |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:resnot:rn20190402&r=all |
| By: | Ozturk, Orgul; Frongillo, Edward; Blake, Christine; Turner-McGrievy, Gabrielle |
| Abstract: | In this study, we intervened in elementary schools on lunch entrée selection using some of the behavioral economic methods shown to be effective in earlier food choice studies. Unlike many earlier behavioral interventions, which were mostly done in controlled environments and smaller café type settings for one-off interactions, we conducted our interventions in a real-world environment in twelve elementary schools in one school district in South Carolina over nine school weeks. By increasing salience and prominence of the healthy entrée of the day through visual and verbal tools, we nudged students towards selecting healthier options in treatment schools. We estimated the treatment effects using a difference-in-differences setup, comparing changes in the share of students selecting nudged entrées during the treatment period relative to the shares before the treatment period in treatment and comparison schools. Our estimates show that the nudges are effective when present. They increase selection of the healthy option by thirteen to thirty-five percent on the days the entrée is treated. Effects disappear when the nudge is removed, however, and there is evidence for reduced effectiveness of nudges in repeat instances. There is no evidence of habit formation. |
| Keywords: | Nudge, behavioral economics, healthy eating, school lunch, salience, prominence, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | C91 C93 I12 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98633&r=all |
| By: | International Monetary Fund |
| Abstract: | Housing finance is broadly resilient, but pockets of vulnerabilities exist. Mortgage finance is dominated by domestic systemically important financial institutions (D-SIFIs) and supported by the government via mortgage insurance, securitization guarantees, and other policies. With a market share of about 70 percent, D-SIFIs focus on prime borrowers, and their lending is backed by their strong balance sheets. The smaller (uninsured) non-prime lending segment is largely served by smaller banks and prudentially unregulated lenders, which are comparatively less resilient. Some of these lenders rely on less stable, higher-cost funding such as brokered deposits or redeemable equity, and their lending is concentrated in regions with large housing market imbalances. Market concerns about the business model of non-prime lending were manifested by the liquidity crisis at a mid-sized deposit-taking institution in 2017. |
| Date: | 2020–01–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfscr:20/17&r=all |
| By: | Antonescu, Daniela |
| Abstract: | The subject proposed in the present research paper is frequently debated and analysed, both at political level and at theoretical and practical level, the opinions and beliefs of the experts being sometimes contrary, but mostly reaching a common denominator: the cohesion and regional development represents for the Member States and for Romania an opportunity for supporting national economy re-launch, diminishing development inequalities and achieving economic and social convergence at territorial level. Therefore, the presentation of theories, techniques and methods for evaluating and interpreting the convergence process can be a useful approach, both for the academic environment and for the stakeholders. |
| Keywords: | territorial convergence, regional development, economic and social inequalities |
| JEL: | R1 R10 R12 R15 |
| Date: | 2020–02–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98505&r=all |
| By: | Pedro Bessone; Gautam Rao; Frank Schilbach; Heather Schofield; Mattie Toma |
| Abstract: | This paper measures sleep among the urban poor in India and estimates the economic returns to increased sleep. Adults in Chennai have strikingly low quantity and quality of sleep relative to typical guidelines: despite spending 8 hours in bed, they achieve only 5.6 hours per night of sleep, with 32 awakenings per night. A three-week treatment providing information, encouragement, and sleep-related items increased sleep quantity by 27 minutes per night without improving sleep quality. Increased night sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or psychological and physical well-being, and led to small decreases in labor supply and thus earnings. In contrast, offering high-quality naps at the workplace increased productivity, cognition, psychological well-being, and patience. Taken together, the returns to increased night sleep are low, at least at the low-quality levels typically available in home environments in Chennai. We find suggestive evidence that higher-quality sleep improves important economic and psychological outcomes. |
| JEL: | C93 D9 I1 I12 I15 O1 O12 O18 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26746&r=all |
| By: | Dalton,Patricio S.; Ruschenpohler,Julius; Uras,Burak; Zia,Bilal Husnain |
| Abstract: | Business practices and performance vary widely among local peers. This paper identifies key determinants of such heterogeneity among a sample of small urban retail shops in Indonesia, and experimentally tests whether learning about the best practices of local peers is valuable for business growth. Through extensive baseline quantitative and qualitative fieldwork, the study develops a handbook that associates specific business practices with performance and provides detailed implementation guidance informed by exemplary local shop owners. Instead of offering formal training or in-depth counseling, this handbook is simply distributed to a randomly selected sample of shop owners and complemented with three experiential learning modules: one group is invited to watch a documentary video on experiences of highly successful peers, another is offered light in-shop assistance on the implementation of the handbook, and a third group is offered both. Eighteen months after the intervention, the study finds no effect of offering the handbook alone, but significant impact on practice adoption when the handbook is coupled with experiential learning. On business performance, the study finds sizable and significant improvements as well, up to an increase of 35 percent in profits and an increase of 16.7 percent in revenues. The types of practices adopted map these performance improvements to efficiency gains rather than other channels. The analysis suggests that these interventions are simple, scalable, and highly cost-effective. |
| Keywords: | Gender and Development,Educational Sciences,Transport Services,Hydrology,Private Sector Economics,Private Sector Development Law,Marketing |
| Date: | 2019–07–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8933&r=all |
| By: | Joelle Scally; Jason Bram |
| Abstract: | Puerto Rico recently observed the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria?the most destructive storm to hit the Commonwealth since the San Felipe Segundo hurricane in 1928. Maria, combined with Hurricane Irma, which had glanced the island about two weeks prior, is estimated to have caused nearly 3,000 deaths and tens of billions of dollars of physical damage. Millions went without power for weeks, in most cases months. Basic services?water, sewage, telecommunications, medical care, schools?suffered massive disruptions. While it is difficult to assign a cost to all the suffering endured by Puerto Rico?s population, we can now at least get a better read on the economic effect of the storms. In this blog post, we look at a few key economic indicators to gauge the negative effects of the storms and the extent of the subsequent rebound?not only for the Commonwealth as a whole, but for its various geographic areas and industry sectors. We also examine data from the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel to assess how well households held up financially and what effects the home mortgage foreclosure and payment moratoria had. |
| Keywords: | Puerto Rico; Disaster; Maria; Hurricane |
| JEL: | J00 R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87276&r=all |
| By: | Jason Appleson (Risk Group); Andrew F. Haughwout; Eric Parsons (Credit and Payments Risk Group) |
| Abstract: | In our recent post on the state and local sector, we argued that structural problems in state and local budgets were exacerbated by the recession and would likely restrain the sector?s growth for years to come. The last couple of years have witnessed threatened or actual defaults in a diversity of places, ranging from Jefferson County, Alabama, to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Stockton, California. But do these events point to a wave of future defaults by municipal borrowers? History?at least the history that most of us know?would seem to say no. But the municipal bond market is complex and defaults happen much more frequently than most casual observers are aware. This post describes the market and its risks. |
| Keywords: | municipal bonds; defaults |
| JEL: | D1 H00 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86825&r=all |
| By: | Dany Bahar (Center for International Development at Harvard University); Hillel Rapoport |
| Abstract: | We investigate the relationship between the presence of migrant inventors and the dynamics of innovation in the migrants’ receiving countries. We find that countries are 25 to 60 percent more likely to gain advantage in patenting in certain technologies given a twofold increase in the number of foreign inventors from other nations that specialize in those same technologies. For the average country in our sample, this number corresponds to only 25 inventors and a standard deviation of 135. We deal with endogeneity concerns by using historical migration networks to instrument for stocks of migrant inventors. Our results generalize the evidence of previous studies that show how migrant inventors "import" knowledge from their home countries, which translates into higher patenting in the receiving countries. We interpret these results as tangible evidence of migrants facilitating the technology-specific diffusion of knowledge across nations. |
| Keywords: | innovation, migration, patent, technology, knowledge |
| JEL: | O31 O33 F22 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cid:wpfacu:124a&r=all |
| By: | Johannes Buggle; Mathias Thoenig; Thierry Mayer; Seyhun Orcan Sakalli |
| Abstract: | In this paper we estimate the push and pull factors involved in the outmigration of Jews facing persecution in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1941 when migration was banned. Our empirical investigation makes use of a unique individual-level dataset that records the migration history of almost the entire universe of Jews living in Germany over the period. Our analysis highlights new channels, specific to violent contexts, through which social networks affect the decision to flee. We first estimate a structural model of migration where individuals base their own migration decision on the observation of persecution and migration among their peers. Identification rests on exogenous variations in push and pull factors across peers who live in different cities of residence. Then we perform various counterfactual policy experiments in order to quantify how migration restrictions in destination countries affected the fate of Jews. For example, removing work restrictions for refugees after the Nuremberg Laws (in 1935) would have led to 27% increase in Jewish migration out of Germany. |
| Keywords: | Refugees, Migration Policy, Antisemitism, Nazi Germany |
| JEL: | F22 N40 F50 D74 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lau:crdeep:20.01&r=all |
| By: | Andrew F. Haughwout; Nora Fitzpatrick (Communications and Outreach Group); Elizabeth Setren |
| Abstract: | With July just around the corner, most cities and states are preparing for the start of a new fiscal year. Since the start of the recent recession, some have worried that fiscal stress on the sector would result in massive municipal bond defaults. At the end of 2011, many breathed a sigh of relief as aggregate state government revenues finally re-attained the peak they had achieved before tumbling during and after the recession. Unfortunately, relief may be premature. When adjusted for inflation, 2011 state tax revenues were still below their levels of four years ago, and local tax revenue continues to decline. In this post, we explore how the state and local public sector functions as part of the broader economy, how it responded to the most recent downturn, and why it could potentially be a drag on economic activity for years to come. |
| Keywords: | deficits; local government; State government |
| JEL: | H00 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86812&r=all |
| By: | Mahieu, Jeroen |
| Abstract: | What drives job quality in startups? In this paper, I examine how fluctuations in local business conditions affect wages in startups and incumbent firms in the retail sector. I identify shocks to local business conditions using plausibly exogenous variation of hurricane strikes in U.S. coastal counties. I find that, on average, wages of startup employees increase in response to negative shocks to local business conditions. This effect does not appear to be driven by changes in supply or demand for labor. These findings are consistent with a “cleansing” effect of downturns, fostering the creation and retainment of more productive jobs, and driving out unproductive ones. |
| Keywords: | Startups; Employee Compensation; Local Business Conditions; Entrepreneurship |
| JEL: | J21 J31 L26 |
| Date: | 2020–02–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98557&r=all |
| By: | Manudeep Bhuller; Andreas R. Kostol; Trond C. Vigtel |
| Abstract: | How the internet affects job matching is not well understood due to a lack of data on job vacancies and quasi-experimental variation in internet use. This paper helps fill this gap using plausibly exogenous roll-out of broadband infrastructure in Norway, and comprehensive data on recruiters, vacancies and job seekers. We document that broadband expansions increased online vacancy-postings and lowered the average duration of a vacancy and the share of establishments with unfilled vacancies. These changes led to higher job-finding rates and starting wages and more stable employment relationships after an unemployment-spell. Consequently, our calculations suggest that the steady-state unemployment rate fell by as much as one-fifth. |
| Keywords: | unemployment, information, job search, matching |
| JEL: | D83 J63 J64 L86 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8022&r=all |
| By: | Joseph Flavian Gomes (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)) |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that children of mothers who are ethnically more distant from their neighbours have worse health outcomes. I combine individual-level micro data from DHS surveys for 14 sub-Saharan African countries with a novel high-resolution dataset on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups at the 1 km 1 km level. I measure ethnic distance using linguistic distance and construct the spatial distribution of ethnic groups using an iterative proportional fitting algorithm. Using a time-varying ethnicity fixed effects framework to curb unobserved heterogeneity across ethnic groups, I show that children whose mothers are linguistically more distant from their neighbours face higher mortality rates and are shorter in stature. The pernicious effects of linguistic distance are more pronounced in areas where malaria is endemic. I argue that higher linguistic distance impedes the transmission of information. Consistent with this interpretation, mothers who are linguistically more distant from their neighbours are less likely to receive health-related information. Linguistic distances driven by splits that occurred thousands of years ago are more relevant than more recent splits. |
| Keywords: | ethnic distance, ethnic diversity, ethnic networks, child mortality, African development |
| JEL: | I14 O10 O15 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2020–01–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2020005&r=all |
| By: | Tobias Adrian; Nina Boyarchenko |
| Abstract: | The financial crisis of 2007-09 highlighted the central role that financial intermediaries play in the propagation and amplification of shocks. Intermediaries increase leverage during the boom, which then makes them more vulnerable to adverse economic developments. In this post, we review evidence on the balance-sheet behavior of financial intermediaries and describe a channel that allows intermediaries to increase leverage during booms when asset market volatility tends to be low, which in turn forces them to dramatically reduce leverage once volatility increases. As shown during the financial crisis of 2007-08, the contraction of intermediary leverage is accompanied by increases in borrowing rates for households and a contraction of credit. The formal modeling of this amplification mechanism allows a welfare analysis of the tightness of regulatory capital requirements. We find that while loose capital constraints generate excessive risk-taking by intermediaries, tight funding constraints inhibit intermediaries? risk-sharing and investment functions, which then lowers welfare. |
| Keywords: | macroprudential policy; leverage cycle; Capital regulation; systemic risk |
| JEL: | G1 G2 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86906&r=all |
| By: | Yang, Lin |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how inequality from the interaction of income and housing circumstances changes the relative position of households in the income distribution, and influences the incidence and socio-demographic profile of those in housing-induced poverty. Three measures of income are used – the standard Before Housing Costs (BHC) measure, and the After Housing Costs (AHC) and With Housing Income (WHI) measures which adjust for housing in two different ways – to analyse the net effect of housing costs and advantages on poverty and inequality, and the underlying distributional changes linking the two. |
| Keywords: | poverty; inequality; housing costs; imputed rent; measurement |
| JEL: | I30 I32 D31 D60 I38 |
| Date: | 2018–11–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:103462&r=all |
| By: | David O. Lucca (Federal Reserve Bank); Andreas Fuster (Schweizerische Nationalbank; Federal Reserve Bank of New York; National Bureau of Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | As of mid-December, the average thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage was near its historic low of about 3.3 percent, or half its level in August 2007 when financial turmoil began. However, yield declines in the mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) market, where bundles of mortgage loans are sold to investors, have been even more dramatic. In fact, all else equal, had these declines passed through to loan rates one-for-one, the average mortgage rate would now be around 2.6 percent. In this post, we summarize some of the findings from a workshop held at the New York Fed in early December aimed at better understanding the drivers behind the increased wedge between mortgage loan and MBS rates. |
| Keywords: | Primary-Secondary Spread; Mortgages; MBS |
| JEL: | G2 R3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86848&r=all |
| By: | Orrenius, Pia M. (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas); Zavodny, Madeline (University of North Florida) |
| Abstract: | Immigration reform is once again on Washington's policy agenda. Serious attention is being given to policies that would place more emphasis on merit than on family ties, which are favored by much of the current US immigration system. One way to determine merit is a point-based system. This paper argues that auctioning off visas would be preferable to a point-based system. Auctions would promote economic growth, increase government revenue, and lead to a more efficient allocation of visas while reducing discretionary decision making by government officials. This paper outlines several proposals for how to implement visa auctions that could serve as a starting point for designing a better immigration policy. We recommend replacing the current system of employment-based temporary and permanent visas with an employer-centered auction in order to increase the economic gains from immigration. |
| Keywords: | immigration, foreign workers, visa auction |
| JEL: | F22 J61 J15 D44 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izapps:pp151&r=all |
| By: | Andres Castro (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2020-008&r=all |
| By: | Angel-Urdinola,Diego; Burgos Davila,Sebastian Francisco |
| Abstract: | The development of pertinent and effective in-service teacher training remains a policy challenge for many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ecuador stands out as a country in the region that has made significant investments in teacher training in the past decade. However, most in-service training provision has been designed without enough elements to properly address teachers'skills gaps. This paper proposes a roadmap for improving the design of in-service teacher training in Ecuador using available data from student and teacher assessments. Although countries in the region have made important efforts to carry out periodic evaluations of student and teacher performance, the data resulting from these evaluations are rarely used to guide teacher development programs. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that doing so has the potential to raise program pertinence while allowing the prioritization of investments in teachers and students with the greatest needs. |
| Keywords: | Educational Sciences,Educational Institutions&Facilities,Effective Schools and Teachers,Skills Development and Labor Force Training |
| Date: | 2019–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8970&r=all |
| By: | Antonescu, Daniela |
| Abstract: | Cultural heritage is an important factor for people in a sensitive way, as they feel pride and ownership, which is not immediately and directly quantifiable. The value added of projects should therefore be sought in the impact that heritage sites have on the local, regional and national communities, and the opportunity to use the sites for education in heritage, culture, art, history. Preservation and promotion of cultural heritage is very specific and costly. The Structural Funds provided more than M€ 7.2 for territorial projects in Romania (period 2007-2013). The article aims to evaluate the impact of Structural and National Funds on cultural heritage, in Romania. |
| Keywords: | regional development, cultural heritage, Structural Funds, evaluation |
| JEL: | R0 R1 R12 R5 R53 R58 |
| Date: | 2019–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98636&r=all |
| By: | Eduardo Engel; Ronald D. Fischer; Alexander Galetovic |
| Abstract: | Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have emerged as a new organizational form to provide public infrastructure over the last 30 years. Governments find them attractive because PPPs can be used to avoid fiscal check-and-balances and increase spending. At the same time, PPPs can lead to important efficiency gains, especially for transportation infrastructure. These gains include better maintenance, reduced bureaucratic costs, and filtering white elephants. For these gains to materialize, it is necessary to deal with the governance of PPPs, which is more demanding than for the public provision of infrastructure. The governance can be improved by the use of contracts with appropriate risk allocation and by avoiding opportunistic renegotiations, which have been pervasive. The good news is that, based on the experience with PPPs over the last three decades, we have learnt how to address these challenges. |
| JEL: | H11 H42 H83 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26766&r=all |
| By: | Courtney Brell; Christian Dustmann; Ian Preston |
| Abstract: | We provide an overview of the integration of refugees into the labor markets of a number of high-income countries. Discussing the ways in which refugees and economic migrants are differently selected and so might be expected to perform differently in a host country’s labor market, we examine employment and wages for these groups over time after arrival. There is significant heterogeneity between host countries, but in general refugees experience persistently worse outcomes than other migrants. While the gaps between the groups can be seen to decrease on a timescale of a decade or two, this is more pronounced in employment rates than it is in wages. We also discuss how refugees are distinct in terms of other factors affecting integration, including health, language skills and social networks. We provide a discussion of insights for public policy in receiving countries, concluding that supporting refugees in early labor market attachment is crucial. |
| Keywords: | immigration, refugee migration, assimilation |
| JEL: | J01 J61 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8050&r=all |
| By: | Rajashri Chakrabarti; Sarah Sutherland |
| Abstract: | In the state of New Jersey, any child between the ages of five and eighteen has the constitutional right to a thorough and efficient education. The state also has one of the country?s most rigid policies regarding a balanced budget. When state and local revenues took a big hit in the most recent recession, officials had to make tough decisions about education spending. In this post, we analyze education financing and spending in two groups of high-poverty districts during the Great Recession and the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) federal stimulus period?the Abbott and Bacon districts. Analysis in our recent New York Fed staff report shows that the Abbott districts exhibited the sharpest declines?relative to trend?in both total funding and total spending per pupil during the post-recession era. Additionally, the Abbott districts were the only group of districts in New Jersey to present statistically significant negative shifts in instructional spending, even with the federal stimulus. |
| Keywords: | Educational Finance; Abbott; ARRA; Recession |
| JEL: | Q1 R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86855&r=all |
| By: | Edoardo FERRUCCI; Francesco LISSONI; Ernest MIGUELEZ |
| Abstract: | Based on an original dataset spanning over 20 years of patenting at the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), we identify the gender, residence, and nationality of inventors, based on which we also identify migrants and natives in the United States, as well as stayers (non-migrants) in the migrants’ countries of origin. We find that the share of women over the total number of US-resident inventors (or WIR: Women Inventor Rate) is generally higher for migrants than for US natives, so that the former have contributed significantly to the increase of WIR in the US over the past quarter century. At the same time, the WIR for migrants is higher than that of stayers, which suggests that migration to the US represents an opportunity for high-skilled women to undertake a career in R&D, notwithstanding the obstacles they may face, and irrespective of their country of origin. This intuition is reinforced by an analysis of women inventors’ technological specialization, which reveals that female migrants are better represented than natives and stayers in men-dominated fields. |
| Keywords: | STEM migrants; High-skilled migrants; Inventors; Gender |
| JEL: | J16 F22 O15 O30 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:bdxewp:2020-01&r=all |
| By: | Nitsch, Volker; Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M.; Wendland, Nicolai |
| Abstract: | For a complete cost‐benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non‐market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long‐run. We use difference‐in‐differences and spatial differencing to estimate the land price capitalization effects of metro rail in Berlin, Germany today and a century ago. Over this period, the negative implicit hedonic price of rail noise tripled. Our results imply income elasticities of the value of noise reduction and transport access of 2.2 and 1.4, substantially exceeding cross‐sectional contingent valuation estimates. |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:wpaper:117314&r=all |
| By: | Vandercasteelen, Joachim; Minten, Bart; Tamru, Seneshaw |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the spatial heterogeneity in dairy production in the highland production area around the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. We look at how urban proximity – defined as the travel time from the farm to the central market of Addis Ababa – affects the production decisions of Ethiopian dairy farmers. We sampled 870 households from the major rural production zones around Addis Ababa, where villages were stratified according to their distance to Addis Ababa. Using an instrumental variable approach, we find evidence of strong spatial heterogeneity in dairy milk productivity in Ethiopia. With each additional hour of travel time, the milk productivity per cow is reduced by almost 1 liter per day, a reduction by 26 percent on average. This spatial heterogeneity in milk productivity reflects a pronounced spatial variation in dairy production decisions (producing liquid milk or processed dairy products), the application of modern inputs, and marketing. When trying to disentangle the mechanisms through which urban proximity affects dairy productivity, we show that the effect of travel time mainly runs through farmers’ inclusion into ‘modern’ value chains and more specifically through their access to commercial milk buyers. This finding holds when we control for prices, indicating that access to commercial value chains are an important determinant of dairy productivity. However, as only a limited number of farmers now have access to such value chains in these settings, measures to make dairy value chains more inclusive to remote farmers can have important economic development benefits for them. |
| Keywords: | ETHIOPIA; EAST AFRICA; AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA; AFRICA; supply chain; milk production; urban areas; towns; food prices; rural-urban food supply chain; urbanization; dairy industry; milk products; cities; dairy production |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:esspwp:137&r=all |
| By: | Fabien Leurent (LVMT - Laboratoire Ville, Mobilité, Transport - IFSTTAR - Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech, ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech); François Combes (LVMT - Laboratoire Ville, Mobilité, Transport - IFSTTAR - Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech); Rob van Nes (TU Delft - Delft University of Technology) |
| Abstract: | The paper provides a synthetic, "strategic" model of transit systems in urban areas that features out a set of modes, quality of service and terminal access, demand and network usage by users' trips, with some hints of spatial heterogeneity. The model encompasses technical relationships relating fleet size and design parameters such as infrastructure length and station spacing, to frequency, commercial speed and access distance, hence to wait time, running time and access/egress time. Economic features are modelled, too: generalized costs to individual users, demand elasticity, supply costs and system welfare. The model can be used for synthetic statistical description of real-world systems as well as for economic analysis and the assessment of given system states against theoretical references. After introducing the model elements and relationships, we put forward a causal diagram that synthesizes the system under study and constitutes the model architecture. We then turn to mathematical analysis to formalize (i) the determination of a system state on the basis of a supply plan, technical relationships and demand behaviour, (ii) the optimisation of system welfare with respect to the action levers on the supply side. Next, for an uncongested system we establish theoretical conditions for both an optimum system state under fixed demand and a second best optimum under variable demand and tariffs. Three "golden rules" for transit network design and management are established, namely (i) balancing the rolling stock costs and the users' costs of waiting time, (ii) balancing the station costs plus the value to users of the dwelling part of their in-network times, against the users' costs of "longitudinal" access times, (iii) balancing the full supply costs and the users' costs of "transversal" access times. Furthermore, the existence and uniqueness of a System Optimum state are proven and a solution scheme is provided. |
| Date: | 2020–01–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02462463&r=all |
| By: | Abhijit Chakraborty; Hiroyasu Inoue; Yoshi Fujiwara |
| Abstract: | Every nation prioritizes the inclusive economic growth and development of all regions. However, we observe that economic activities are clustered in space, which results in a disparity in per-capita income among different regions. A complexity-based method was proposed by Hidalgo and Hausmann [PNAS 106, 10570-10575 (2009)] to explain the large gaps in per-capita income across countries. Although there have been extensive studies on countries' economic complexity using international export data, studies on economic complexity at the regional level are lacking. Here, we study the industrial sector complexity of prefectures in Japan based on the basic information of more than one million firms. We aggregate the data as a bipartite network of prefectures and industrial sectors. We decompose the bipartite network as a prefecture-prefecture network and sector-sector network, which reveals the relationships among them. Similarities among the prefectures and among the sectors are measured using a metric. From these similarity matrices, we cluster the prefectures and sectors using the minimal spanning tree technique. The computed economic complexity index from the structure of the bipartite network shows a high correlation with macroeconomic indicators, such as per-capita gross prefectural product and prefectural income per person. We argue that this index reflects the present economic performance and hidden potential of the prefectures for future growth. |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2002.05785&r=all |
| By: | Donghoon Lee; Meta Brown; Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Andrew F. Haughwout |
| Abstract: | Since its peak in summer 2008, U.S. consumers? indebtedness has fallen by more than a trillion dollars. Over roughly the same period, charge-offs?the removal of obligations from consumers? credit reports because of defaults?have risen sharply, especially on loans secured by houses, which make up about 80 percent of consumer liabilities. An important question for gauging the behavior of U.S. consumers is how to interpret these two trends. Is the reduction in debts entirely attributable to defaults, or are consumers actively reducing their debts? In this post, we demonstrate that a significant part of the debt reduction was produced by consumers borrowing less and paying off debt more quickly?a process often called deleveraging. |
| Keywords: | Foreclosures; Defaults; Mortgages; Consumer debt; Deleveraging |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:86736&r=all |
| By: | Giambra,Samuele; Mckenzie,David J. |
| Abstract: | There is a widespread policy view that a lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend more on creating these opportunities to reduce migration. Self-employment is widespread in poor countries, and faced with a lack of existing jobs, providing more opportunities for people to start businesses is a key policy option. But empirical evidence to support this idea is slight, and economic theory offers several reasons why the self-employed may be more likely to migrate. This paper puts together panel surveys from eight countries to descriptively examine the relationship between migration and self-employment, finding that the self-employed are indeed less likely to migrate than wage workers or the unemployed. The paper then analyzes seven randomized experiments that increased self-employment, and finds that their causal impacts on migration are negative on average, but often small in magnitude. |
| Keywords: | Employment and Unemployment,Educational Sciences,Private Sector Economics,Private Sector Development Law,Marketing,Labor Markets |
| Date: | 2019–09–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9007&r=all |
| By: | Zareh Asatryan; Annika Havlik |
| Abstract: | We study the political economy of allocation decisions within a major state investment bank. Our focus is the European Investment Bank (EIB) - "The Bank of the EU" - which is the largest multilateral lending (and borrowing) institution in the world. We collect (and make available) information on the regions of origin of about 500 national representatives at the EIB's Board of Directors - the decisive body for loan approvals - since its foundation in 1959 and show that a representative's appointment increases the probability of her sub-national region receiving a loan by about 17 percentage points. This "home-bias" effect is driven by large loans financing infrastructure projects. We provide several pieces of evidence, which are consistent with the hypothesis that home-bias lending may lead to resource misallocation, however we cannot conclusively demonstrate this case of economic inefficiency. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:econwp:_35&r=all |
| By: | Pascha, Werner |
| Abstract: | The paper deals with the issue of how Japan is positioning itself in the emerging and contested field of international connectivity initiatives. It starts with surveying the emergence of the connectivity topic in recent years, paying attention to recent infrastructure initiatives in the Asia-Pacific and Eurasian regions. Although the current public debate on connectivity is dominated by an attention on China's 2013 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Japan has actually been engaged in international infrastructure schemes at least since the 1980s. This does not only hold for the Japanese state, but also for major multinational corporations of Japan. One is tempted to speak of a "Silk Subway": Japan has always been a very important, but not very visible player in international infrastructure connectivity. Several reasons for this low-key profile are pointed out. The recent upturn of Japan's engagement (PQI - Partnership for Quality Infrastructure, FOIP - Free and Open Indo-Pacific) is to some extent due to a shift of strategy: Whereas the country followed a rather unilateral approach in recent decades, the focus has shifted to strategic alliances embedded in a multilateral framework. Policy has become much more effective that way, while the role of Japan for international infrastructure connectivity still seems considerably underrated. |
| Keywords: | Japan,infrastructure initiative,connectivity,Partnership for Quality Infrastructure (PQI),Free and OpenIndo-Pacific (FOIP),Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) |
| JEL: | F53 F55 H87 L91 O19 P45 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:udedao:1262020&r=all |
| By: | Michele Di Maio (DISAE, University of Naples Parthenope, Naples, Italy); Roberto Nisticò (Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Naples Federico II and CSEF, Naples, Italy) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of parental job loss on child school dropout in developing countries. We focus on Palestinian households living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and having the household head employed in Israel during the Second Intifada (2000-2006). We exploit quarterly variation in conflict intensity across districts in the OPT to instrument for Palestinian workers’ job loss in Israel. Our 2SLS results show that parental job loss increases child school dropout probability by 9 percentage points. The effect varies with child and household characteristics. We provide evidence that the effect operates through the job loss-induced reduction in household income. |
| Keywords: | Job loss, school dropout, conflict, Second Intifada, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel JEL Classification: H56, I20, J63 |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:295&r=all |
| By: | Andrew F. Haughwout; Joelle Scally; Wilbert Van der Klaauw; Donghoon Lee |
| Abstract: | Today, the New York Fed?s Center for Microeconomic Data released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the first quarter of 2017. The report shows a rise in household debt balances in the quarter of $149 billion, the eleventh consecutive quarterly increase since the long period of deleveraging following the Great Recession. As of March 31, 2017, household debt balances stood at $12.73 trillion, surpassing the previous 2008 peak and hitting a level 14 percent above the trough seen in the second quarter of 2013. With this report?s release, we?re adding two new charts which show both early and severe delinquency trends by loan product type. The report and the analyses presented here are based on the New York Fed?s Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), which is sourced from Equifax credit report data. |
| Keywords: | consumer credit panel; household finance |
| JEL: | D1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87194&r=all |
| By: | Kolja Hesse; Dirk Fornahl |
| Abstract: | The role of radical innovations for the economy has received increasing attention by German policy makers. This paper investigates how (un-)related variety and external linkages influence these innovations in German labour market regions. Evidence is found that related and unrelated knowledge capabilities both support the emergence of radical innovations, although strong related capabilities are especially important. External linkages have an inverted u-shape relation to radically new ideas and can act as substitute for missing unrelated competences in a region. The results shed new light on the emergence of radical innovations and thus have interesting scientific and practical implications. |
| Keywords: | Radical innovations, related variety, unrelated variety, external linkages, labour market regions |
| JEL: | O31 O33 R11 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2007&r=all |
| By: | Andrea Deghi; Mitsuru Katagiri; Sohaib Shahid; Nico Valckx |
| Abstract: | This paper predicts downside risks to future real house price growth (house-prices-at-risk or HaR) in 32 advanced and emerging market economies. Through a macro-model and predictive quantile regressions, we show that current house price overvaluation, excessive credit growth, and tighter financial conditions jointly forecast higher house-prices-at-risk up to three years ahead. House-prices-at-risk help predict future growth at-risk and financial crises. We also investigate and propose policy solutions for preventing the identified risks. We find that overall, a tightening of macroprudential policy is the most effective at curbing downside risks to house prices, whereas a loosening of conventional monetary policy reduces downside risks only in advanced economies and only in the short-term. |
| Date: | 2020–01–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:20/11&r=all |
| By: | Federico Barra (Social, Urban, Rural & Resilience Global Practice, World Bank); Claudia Berg (Research Department, Development Macro Unit, International Monetary Fund); Philip Verwimp (ECARES and Centre Emile Bernheim at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management) |
| Abstract: | The nexus of conflict, transportation costs, and poverty is one which has received scant attention in the literature. This paper explores the effect of conflict on poverty in Nigeria, taking accessibility into account. The analysis relies on household data from the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) and on conflict data from Armed Conflict Location Events Dataset (ACLED). To account for methodological challenges in the conflict data, we implement a ‘hot spot’ strategy whereby incidents within a limited geographic area over time are grouped. To address the potential endogeneity of conflict, we use past incidences of violence to instrument for more recent conflict. Transport costs are instrumented using the natural path, the time it takes to reach the market absent any roads. We find that decreasing transportation costs decreases multidimensional poverty and that its impact is stronger in areas of low conflict. We also find suggestive evidence that conflict and poverty are negatively correlated in Nigeria. |
| Keywords: | Multi-dimensional poverty, conflict, Nigeria, geospatial JEL Classification: O1, I3, L9 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:278&r=all |
| By: | Jean Bertrand Gauthier (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz); Stefan Irnich (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) |
| Abstract: | Radius search is an effective neighborhood exploration technique for standard edge-exchange neighborhoods such as 2-opt, 2-opt*, swap, relocation, Or-opt, string exchange, etc. Up to now, it has only been used for vehicle routing problems with a homogeneous fleet and in the single-depot context. In this work, we extend dynamic-radius search to the multi-depot vehicle routing problem, in which 2-opt and 2-opt* moves may involve routes from different depots. To this end, we equip dynamic-radius search with a modified pruning criterion that still guarantees identifying a best-improving move, either intra-depot or inter-depot, with little additional computational effort. We experimentally confirm that substantial speedups of factors of 100 and more are observed compared to an also optimized implementation of lexicographic search, another effective neighborhood exploration technique using a feasibility-based pruning criterion. Moreover, the computational results show that depot swapping strongly favors heuristic solution quality, especially for multi-depot configurations where depots are not located close to each other. |
| Keywords: | Vehicle routing, Local search, Sequential search, Dynamic-radius search, Inter-depot |
| Date: | 2020–02–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2004&r=all |
| By: | Ponte Barbosa,Marcelo; Oliveira Costa,Leandro |
| Abstract: | Policy makers in Brazil attempted to improve human capital through changes in the legislated requirements for teacher education in 1996. They passed a national Law of Guidelines and Standards of Education that established 2007 as the deadline for all Brazilian basic education teachers to have tertiary education?level qualifications. This implied a significant change in the profile of teachers in basic education and in the provision of pre-service training. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the increase in the share of public upper secondary school teachers with higher education on students? performance in math and Portuguese and analyze the role of the pre-service training framework in the quality of teachers in recent years. The study carried out an empirical analysis to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated on public upper secondary students through the combination of difference-in-difference and propensity score matching methods. The analysis found no evidence of positive effects on Portuguese scores, and despite the statistically significant positive effect of the rise in teachers with higher education on math scores, there was no effect from specific math training. Finally, the paper discusses the possible reason for the ineffectiveness of teacher pre-service training, such as the quality of the training delivered by distance learning modalities and the low performance of the secondary students who enter the teacher schools. |
| Date: | 2019–09–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9006&r=all |
| By: | Jaison R. Abel (National Regulatory Research Institute (Ohio State University); Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Ohio State University; Research and Statistics Group; University of Maine); Richard Deitz |
| Abstract: | In 2015, upstate New York looked to be having its strongest job growth in years. Employment was estimated to be growing at around one percent?below the national pace, but twice the region?s trend growth rate since the end of the Great Recession. Buffalo, in particular, looked to be gaining significant numbers of construction and manufacturing jobs for the first time in decades, pushing it to its highest job growth since the late 1990s. Unfortunately, the good news was wrong. Annual benchmark revisions to New York State?s employment data released in early March cut upstate?s growth rate in half, indicating that the pickup in the pace of the region?s job growth never really happened. |
| Keywords: | Employment; Upstate New York; Regional |
| JEL: | R1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:87110&r=all |
| By: | James Gaboardi |
| Abstract: | This paper furthers a research agenda for modeling populations along spatial networks and expands upon an empirical analysis to a full U.S. county (Gaboardi, 2019, Ch. 1,2). Specific foci are the necessity of, and methods for, validating and benchmarking spatial data when conducting social science research with aggregated and ambiguous population representations. In order to promote the validation of publicly-available data, access to highly-restricted census microdata was requested, and granted, in order to determine the levels of accuracy and error associated with a network-based population modeling framework. Primary findings reinforce the utility of a novel network allocation method—populated polygons to networks (pp2n) in terms of accuracy, computational complexity, and real runtime (Gaboardi, 2019, Ch. 2). Also, a pseudo-benchmark dataset’s performance against the true census microdata shows promise in modeling populations along networks. |
| Keywords: | network allocation, Master Address File, population representation |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:20-5&r=all |
| By: | Mathias Dolls; Clemens Fuest; Andreas Peichl; Christian Wittneben |
| Abstract: | We analyze how the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and discretionary changes in tax-benefit systems have affected the cushioning of income shocks in the Euro zone and the EU-27 in the period 2007–2014. We propose a new summary measure of the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and discretionary policy changes based on micro data and counter-factual simulation. Discretionary fiscal policy supported the effects of automatic stabilizers in the years 2008 and 2009 but then became much more restrictive. For the Euro zone as a whole, the share of income shocks absorbed by the tax and transfer system declined from 48 percent in 2008 to 24 percent in 2011. For some of the countries most affected by the crisis, the stabilization effect was even negative in some years of the crisis, implying that the tax and transfer system amplified income shocks. We also compare our measure of stabilization to estimates based on macro data. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:econwp:_39&r=all |
| By: | Fischer, Thomas; Rode, Johannes |
| Date: | 2019–09–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:wpaper:119281&r=all |
| By: | Francesco Giavazzi; Felix Iglhaut; Giacomo Lemoli; Gaia Rubera |
| Abstract: | We study the role of perceived threats from cultural diversity induced by terrorist attacks and a salient criminal event on public discourse and voters’ support for far-right parties. We first develop a rule which allocates Twitter users in Germany to electoral districts and then use a machine learning method to compute measures of textual similarity between the tweets they produce and tweets by accounts of the main German parties. Using the dates of the aforementioned exogenous events we estimate constituency-level shifts in similarity to party language. We find that following these events Twitter text becomes on average more similar to that of the main far-right party, AfD, while the opposite happens for some of the other parties. Regressing estimated shifts in similarity on changes in vote shares between federal elections we find a significant association. Our results point to the role of perceived threats on the success of nationalist parties. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:igi:igierp:659&r=all |
| By: | Ore Koren (Department of Political Science, Indiana University Bloomington and the Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College); Bumba Mukherjee (Department of Political Science, Penn State University) |
| Abstract: | Authoritarian regimes frequently commit systematic killings of their own subjects, yet the mechanisms governing this behavioral shift remain unclear. We address this puzzle by developing a formal model that shows authoritarian elites perpetrate systematic killing campaigns preemptively in response to an exogenous shock where urban development levels are sufficiently high. In these contexts, the civilians cannot commit not to mobilize and pose a credible threat to the regime, which often preempts these efforts using systematic killings. Statistical analyses of a global high-resolution sample within all authoritarian states between 1996 and 2008 confirm the model’s predictions. This study thus explicates when elites would resort to systematic killing as a rationalist strategy, and identifies an important dynamic that explains geographical and temporal variations in systematic killings within authoritarian states. |
| Keywords: | Mass killing; development; drought; geospatial analysis JEL Classification: D74, Q11, Q18 |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:296&r=all |
| By: | Christopher Ball; Nicolas Groshenny; Özer Karagedikli; Murat Özbilgin; Finn Robinson |
| Abstract: | By using administrative data from New Zealand, we assess the relative importance of job-finding, and job-to-job transition rates for wage dynamics. We exploit the regional variation and find that wages are closely linked to job-to-job transitions and less so to the job- finding rate. Further, the impact of the job-to-job transition rate is stronger at the lower half of the wage distribution. Overall, our findings are similar to Karahan et al. (2017) for the US, which support the prominence of on-the-job search for cyclical wage dynamics. |
| JEL: | J31 J64 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2020-15&r=all |