|
on Urban and Real Estate Economics |
| By: | Francisco Amaral; Martin Dohmen; Sebastian Kohl; Moritz Schularick |
| Abstract: | Houses are the largest asset for most households in the United States, as is the case in many other countries as well. Within countries, there is substantial regional variation in house prices—compare real estate values in Manhattan, New York City, with those in Manhattan, Kansas, for example. But what about returns on investment? Are long-run returns on real estate investment—the sum of price appreciation and rental income flows—higher in superstar cities like New York than in the rest of the country? In this blog post, we present new and potentially surprising insights from research comparing long-run returns on residential real estate in a nation’s largest cities to those experienced in the rest of the country (Amaral et al., 2021), covering the U.S. and fourteen other advanced economies over the past century. |
| Keywords: | housing returns; spatial economics; household finance |
| JEL: | E2 R31 |
| Date: | 2022–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:93656&r= |
| By: | Radicati, Alessandra |
| Abstract: | This paper explores how the aspirational urban form of the ‘world-class city’ is produced from within the city itself. Rather than focusing on global competition between cities, the analysis considers how local actors in key industries discursively and materially produce the world-class city through their labor. The analytic of connection is introduced as central to understanding how world-class city-making projects are achieved. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Colombo’s high-end real estate sector, the article examines how a successful broker creates and manages connections across different scales and registers. It focuses on three key areas: (1) the rhetorical connections drawn between luxury real estate and national development; (2) the connections created between wealthy foreign clients and local property owners and (3) the work of connecting disparate narratives about supply and demand for luxury housing. I highlight that against the backdrop of considerable economic and political uncertainty, connections are valuable even if they do not result in immediate profit. Offering a glimpse into the world of white-collar professionals in the luxury real estate industry, this paper underscores that world-class city-making projects are embedded in local realities even as they reflect generalized patterns of urban development. |
| Keywords: | real estate; connection; world-class city; aspiration; labor; Colombo; Sri Lanka; PhD award; Sage |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2021–12–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:112566&r= |
| By: | Ning Jia; Raven S. Molloy; Christopher L. Smith; Abigail Wozniak |
| Abstract: | We review developments in research on within-country migration, focusing on internal migration in the U.S. We begin by describing approaches to modelling individuals' migration decisions and equilibrium outcomes across local areas. Next, we summarize evidence regarding the impact of migration on individuals' outcomes, implications of migration for local labor market adjustment, and interactions between migration and housing markets. Finally, we discuss evidence on the efficacy of policies aimed at encouraging migration and conclude by highlighting important unanswered questions that are critical for informing migration-related policy. |
| Keywords: | Internal migration; Migration; Mobility |
| JEL: | J60 J61 J68 R10 |
| Date: | 2022–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2022-03&r= |
| By: | Michael Bates (Department of Economics, University of California Riverside); Michael Dinerstein; Andrew Johnston; Isaac Sorkin Sorkin |
| Abstract: | We study whether reallocating existing teachers across schools within a district can increase student achievement, and what policies would help achieve these gains. Using a model of multi-dimensional value-added, we find meaningful achievement gains from reallocating teachers within a district. Using an estimated equilibrium model of the teacher labor market, we find that achieving most of these gains requires directly affecting teachers' preferences over schools. In contrast, directly affecting principals' selection of teachers can lower student achievement. Our analysis highlights the importance of equilibrium and second-best reasoning in analyzing teacher labor market policies. |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucr:wpaper:202205&r= |
| By: | David Lagakos; Mushfiq Mobarak; Michael E. Waugh |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the welfare effects of encouraging rural-urban migration in the developing world. To do so, we build and analyze a dynamic general-equilibrium model of migration that features a rich set of migration motives. We estimate the model to replicate the results of a field experiment that subsidized seasonal migration in rural Bangladesh, leading to significant increases in migration and consumption. We show that the welfare gains from migration subsidies come from providing better insurance for vulnerable rural households rather than correcting spatial misallocation by relaxing credit constraints for those with high productivity in urban areas that are stuck in rural areas. |
| Keywords: | Risk; Insurance; Rural-urban gaps; Field experiment; Rural-urban migration; Spatial misallocation |
| JEL: | J61 R23 O11 O15 |
| Date: | 2022–01–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmsr:93606&r= |
| By: | Andreas Fuster; David O. Lucca; James Vickery |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market, with a particular emphasis on agency residential MBS in the United States. We discuss the institutional environment, security design, MBS risks and asset pricing, and the economic effects of mortgage securitization. We also assemble descriptive statistics about market size, growth, security characteristics, prepayment, and trading activity. Throughout, we highlight insights from the expanding body of academic research on the MBS market and mortgage securitization. |
| Keywords: | mortgage finance; securitization; agency mortgage-backed securities; TBA; option-adjusted spreads; covered bonds |
| JEL: | G10 G12 G21 |
| Date: | 2022–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:93695&r= |
| By: | Simon Chang (The University of Western Australia); Deborah A. Cobb-Clark (The University of Sydney); Nicolás Salamanca (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)) |
| Abstract: | We identify the causal effect of teacher qualifications on parents’ investments in their children. Exploiting a unique, high-stakes educational setting in which teachers are randomly assigned to classes, we show that parents react to more qualified teachers by increasing their financial investments in their children. The key mechanism is an increase in parents’ belief that academic achievement is driven by student effort—for which financial investment is instrumental. However, higher teacher qualifications do not improve student test scores. This is likely due to a negative effect of teacher qualifications on students’ belief in the importance of effort for academic achievement. Our findings uncover various family-wide behavioral reactions to teacher qualifications and highlight the intricacies in educational production within households. |
| Keywords: | Teacher quality; Student achievement; Parental investment; Beliefs; School effort |
| JEL: | D10 I21 I24 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2020n01&r= |
| By: | van Vuuren, Aico (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether the Covid-19 pandemic decreased the willingness to pay for urban amenities such as restaurants, cinemas and theaters. We do this by using a hedonic pricing model in combination with a time-gradient difference-in-difference approach. We use a data set that contains virtually all apartments for sale in the larger Stockholm area. We use a very detailed and exible definition of density of urban amenities based on the exact location of these amenities and the walking distance from the apartments to these amenities. We find a decrease of 1.9 percent of apartments that we label as amenity rich. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19; urban economics; amenities |
| JEL: | R00 R23 R30 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0818&r= |
| By: | Stefanie Huber (University of Amsterdam); Tobias Schmidt (Deutsche Bundesbank, Research Department) |
| Abstract: | Cross-country differences in homeownership rates are large and persistent over time, with homeownership rates ranging from 44% in Switzerland to 83% in Spain. This paper inves- tigates whether cultures—defined as behavioral attitudes passed across generations—may value homeownership differently, and could thus be a driving demand factor of the home- ownership decision. To isolate the effect of cultural preferences regarding homeownership from the impact of other economic factors, we investigate second-generation immigrants’ homeownership decisions in the United States between 1994 and 2017. Our findings in- dicate that cultural preferences for homeownership are persistent, transmitted between generations, and substantially influence the rent-versus-buy decision. |
| Keywords: | Housing Markets, Homeownership Rates, Cross-Country Heterogeneity, Cultural Transmission, Household Housing decisions |
| JEL: | G11 G40 R21 Z10 |
| Date: | 2022–01–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20220090&r= |
| By: | Bekaert, Els (UNU-CRIS, Ghent University, Department of Economics); Constant, Amelie F. (UNU-MERIT, GLO, CESifo and Princeton University); Foubert, Killian (UNU-CRIS, Ghent University, Department of Economics); Ruyssen, Ilse (UNU-CRIS, Ghent University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Aspirations provide the underlying dynamics of the behavior of individuals whether they are realized or not. Knowledge about the characteristics and motives of those who aspire to leave the host country is key for both host and home countries to formulate appropriate and effective policies in order to keep their valued immigrants or citizens and foster their (re-)integration. Based on unique individual-level Gallup World Polls data, a random utility model, and a multinomial logit we model the aspirations or stated preferences of immigrants across 138 countries worldwide. Our analysis reveals selection in characteristics, a strong role for soft factors like social ties and sociocultural integration, and a faint role for economic factors. Changes in circumstances in the home and host countries are also important determinants of aspirations. Results differ by the host countries’ level of economic development. |
| Keywords: | Economics of Immigrants, Geographic Labor Mobility, Public Policy, Micro-economic Behavior, International Migration, Large Data Sets, Modeling and Analysis |
| JEL: | J15 J61 J68 D01 F22 C55 O15 |
| Date: | 2021–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2021035&r= |
| By: | Cosmin Butura (Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University of Bucharest, Romania) |
| Abstract: | In a growing world of population, the world economy and air pollution, urban and rural agglomeration by motor vehicles is caused by the factors stated. Numerous road safety studies have been carried out worldwide, showing that the only means of transport with the lowest mortality rate remain airplanes, ships and trains. Even if the issue of aggressive pollution by driver overcrowding has been asked at the level of international institutions, we cannot talk about a restriction of the human right to enjoy his personal property. This overpopulation has led to the decimation of regulations, conduct and laws governing urban and rural traffic by encouraging citizens to use vehicles with CO2 emissions as low as possible or even electric, bicycles, mopeds, and electric scooters, etc. However, the environment is not the only problem facing large cities, but rather another major problem being the lack of road infrastructure, but exactly the original streets and boulevards are no longer coping with car surpluses. This aspect has forced, in economic developed cities, acceleration of inventions in the field by: bridges, suspended variants or underground passages, motorways and unique boulevards (for example 6 strips per one). Even if there were numerous efforts to reduce the number of cars, it continues to grow daily, the factors being multiple, and traffic accidents in traffic are exceeded. Are we asking why there are still road accidents, given that we are in the century of speed, state-of-the-art technology? Well, if the computers itself produce system errors, then we understand that the human being is the only computer that produces errors that are impossible to prevented. Although there are numerous appearances in the showrooms of large motor vehicles that promise their endowment with advanced artificial intelligence, the social status of each country in the world differs, which makes it impossible to acquire all drivers. So, road accidents cannot be eliminated, they will only be in a continuous prevention, in order to reduce their number and at the same time increasing the safety of pedestrians and drivers. That is why in this paper I will talk about how a forensic expertise is achieved in the case of road accidents. |
| Keywords: | accident, infrastructure, forensics, expertise, technology, safety |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:lpaper:0057&r= |
| By: | Bluhm, Richard (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, and Leibniz University Hannover, Institute of Macroeconomics); Lessmann, Christian (Technische Universität Dresden, Ifo Institute for Economic Research, and CESifo Munich); Schaudt, Paul (University of St. Gallen, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We study the link between subnational capital cities and urban development using a global data set of hundreds of first-order administrative and capital city reforms from 1987 until 2018. We show that gaining subnational capital status has a sizable effect on city growth in the medium run. We provide new evidence that the effect of these reforms depends on locational fundamentals, such as market access, and that the effect is greater in countries where urbanization and industrialization occurred later. Consistent with both an influx of public investments and a private response of individuals and firms, we document that urban built-up, population, foreign aid, infrastructure, and foreign direct investment in several sectors increase once cities become subnational capitals. |
| Keywords: | capital cities, administrative reforms, economic geography, urban primacy |
| JEL: | H10 R11 R12 O1 |
| Date: | 2021–10–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2021039&r= |
| By: | Bowers, Rebecca |
| Abstract: | The migrant families who build India’s cities do so to meet practical and ritual aspirations rooted in the village, undergoing spatial and temporal fragmentation to maintain rural longevity and the possibilities of ritual time. This article contributes an alternative position to linear-framed presumptions of migration and urbanity, illustrating instead how everyday experiences of dislocation can be productive through labor, timespace, and imagination; bridging the gulf between residence on urban construction sites in Bengaluru, southern India, and desired village homes. However, lived experiences of dislocation remain stratified by gender and class, leading to highly conjugated experiences of precarity, mobility, and possibility. Despite the urban ambivalence felt by women and girls as a result, a shared experience of dislocation enables entire families to undertake the grueling yet regenerative work of circular migration, ensuring the continuation and renewal of village life and ritual time through its incompleteness. |
| JEL: | R14 J01 N0 |
| Date: | 2021–11–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113446&r= |
| By: | Sarah Cattan (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Christine Farquharson (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Sonya Krutikova (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Angus Phimister (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Adam Salisbury (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Almudena Sevilla (Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | On 20 March 2020, in response to rapidly escalating case numbers of COVID-19, English schools closed their gates to all but the children of essential workers and those children deemed most vulnerable. This decision was largely without precedent, and ushered in a period of home learning that schools, parents and pupils had little time to prepare for. This situation of nationwide closures continued until 1 June 2020, when schools began a phased reopening that prioritised children in Reception, Year 1, Year 6, Year 10 and Year 12. However, most reopening decisions were left to the discretion of the schools themselves, which created substantial variation in the school reopening experiences of different children. This report analyses how these differences in school reopenings affected the learning experiences of English school children. To examine this, we leverage a unique panel of data, allowing us to observe how learning changed between April/May and June/July for around 650 school-aged children in England.[1] Crucially, the panel means that we observe children at two important points: first during the full national closure phase (29 April to 18 May) and then again during the phase of partial reopenings (26 June to 20 July). This allows us to examine how learning experiences changed for the same individual children, as they faced markedly different school reopening policies and changes in school provisions. In particular, we examine how the learning experiences changed for children who were offered the chance to go to back school versus those who were not, and whether any benefits were confined to the children who actually took up the offer to return to the classroom. We also examine to what extent changes in learning time varied between children from different backgrounds, and whether these changes increased or offset previous inequalities. Finally, we examine how school learning provisions changed in response to school reopenings, to probe the extent to which there is a trade-off between in-school and remote provisions. These questions are all particularly relevant now, given the UK is going through another phase of nationwide school closures. Our answers to them reveal important lessons for how the school reopening process should be managed this time around, and which groups of children government should be particularly mindful of. Video Key findings There is little evidence that pupils ‘settled in’ to home learning. Between wave 1 (April/May) and wave 2 (June/July), total learning time fell from 4 hours 10 minutes a day to 4 hours a day for primary school students and from 4 hours 35 minutes a day to 4 hours 15 minutes a day for secondary school pupils. Both of these are significantly below pre-pandemic levels, when primary school children spent around 6 hours a day on learning and secondary school children around 6½ hours a day. School reopenings helped to protect total learning time. Pupils who returned to school, at least part-time, in June/July saw their learning time rise. Primary school children who returned to school spent around 3 hours and 15 minutes at school on average, but cut back their other learning activities by much less than this. The overall result was that the children who returned to school benefited not just from a higher quality of learning time, but also a higher quantity: their daily learning time rose by over an hour compared with April/May. Pupils who were not prioritised for school reopenings saw their learning time fall further. At primary school, children who were not offered the chance to go back to school saw their learning time fall by around 40 minutes compared with their own learning time in April/May. At secondary school, the falls were even larger, at around 50 minutes a day. So in June/July, secondary school pupils who were not given the chance to return to school were spending around 20% less time on learning than in April/May and almost 50% less time than before the pandemic. Pupils who were not given the chance to go back to school at all saw their learning time fall by much more than their peers who chose to remain at home. This suggests that pupils benefited from being prioritised to return to school, even when they did not take up the offer. These pupils did not receive substantially better learning resources, but parents and children might have been encouraged to focus on home learning to keep up with peers in the classroom. School reopenings We find no evidence that schools attended by better-off pupils were more likely to reopen. Around three-quarters of those in ‘priority’ years (in our sample, Reception and Years 1 and 10) were offered the chance to return to in-person schooling in June/July. Among other year groups, a quarter of pupils had the chance to go back to school. Schools were more likely to be open as time passed. But, encouragingly, we find that schools attended by less well-off children were no less likely to open last June/July. However, better-off parents were more likely to take up their school’s offer and send their children back. We find that only around half of primary school pupils who were given the opportunity to return to school (and three-quarters of Year 10s) had at least some in-person schooling in June/July. These decisions seem likely to reinforce existing inequalities: a child whose family was near the top of the pre-COVID equivalised earnings distribution (at the 90th percentile) was 22 percentage points more likely to take up the offer than a child whose family was near the bottom of the earnings distribution (10th percentile); most of this gap remains even when controlling for a wide range of other characteristics. We find that the primary reasons for parents’ caution relate to the health impacts of returning to school; however, disadvantaged families also cited a reluctance for their children to be the first ones to return to school as well as practical issues with transport. Schools seemed to be able to manage a concurrent programme of in-person and remote learning. In classes that reopened, schools did not pull back on their provision of active resources such as online classes. Some of these schools also increased their passive home learning provisions (e.g. home learning packs). Inequalities School reopenings supported overall learning time. But the reluctance of some poorer families to send their children to school led to increased inequalities between poorer and richer children. Pupils from less well-off families were just as likely as their more advantaged peers to be offered the chance to return to school. However, they were substantially less likely to take up this offer. Even among those who returned to the classroom, richer children increased their learning time by more than their more disadvantaged peers. Since pupils from disadvantaged families were also less likely to have the home and school resources to make home learning effective, there is a real risk that an optional return to school would widen inequalities within a school year. By contrast, richer pupils who were not prioritised to return to school saw their learning time fall to levels similar to those of their poorer peers – reducing overall inequalities, but at the considerable cost of a worse learning experience for all. Policy implications Central government had quite a bit of control over the return to school. While press coverage at the time highlighted the schools and local authorities going against the Department for Education’s guidance on reopening, in practice the partial reopening in June/July 2020 closely followed the national guidance, with prioritised year groups much more likely to be offered the chance to return. A phased programme of reopenings, with certain year groups prioritised, is likely to increase the inequalities between children of different ages. This is true even if not all pupils choose to return, since we find evidence that school reopenings protected learning time even among pupils who chose not to return to the classroom. Among students whose class reopened, allowing families to opt out of attending likely increased inequalities between poorer and richer students in the same year group. In June/July, fines for unexcused absences were suspended so that parents could choose whether or not to send their children back. If policymakers want to go down a similar route when reopening schools this spring, they should be aware of the undesirable consequences for inequalities. At a minimum, policymakers should engage consistently and proactively with local authorities, schools and families themselves to address concerns about the return to school. Among poorer families, the primary concerns are health risks to the child, health risks to the wider family and a reluctance to be the first to go back. Public health messaging about the risks of COVID-19 for children should be carefully communicated. Careful thought also needs to be given to provision for children living with high-risk family members. The fact that the vaccination roll-out is prioritising many of the most vulnerable should help mitigate some of these concerns. [1] We focus on children in Reception and Years 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. |
| Date: | 2021–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:21/4&r= |
| By: | Aline Bütikofer (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Rita Ginja (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Bergen); Fanny Landaud (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Katrine Loken (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Bergen) |
| Abstract: | Although many students suffer from anxiety and depression, and often identify school pressure and concerns about their futures as the main reasons for their worries, little is known about the consequences of a selective school environment on students’ mental health. Using a regression discontinuity analysis in the largest Norwegian cities, we show that eligibility to enroll in a more selective high school increases the probability of enrollment in higher education and decreases the probability of diagnosis or treatment of psychological problems. We provide suggestive evidence that changes in both teacher and peers’ characteristics are likely drivers of these effects. |
| Date: | 2021–10–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:21/34&r= |
| By: | Greif, Gavin |
| Abstract: | The role of merchants in shaping the German industrialization is often acknowledged, yet scarcely researched. A small number of case-studies of merchant families and individual towns have shown the significance of merchants as capital providers, industrial entrepreneurs, and political actors, yet no supra-local study into the wider significance of this social group for the German economy exists. This dissertation introduces a new source, a business directory from 1798, to construct micro-data on 6099 individual merchant and manufacturing enterprises across 56 towns in Germany. The resulting dataset is the earliest supraregional evidence on the spatial variation of urban merchant communities in Germany to date. Furthermore, this paper provides a detailed overview of the types of eighteenth-century merchants and analyses under what exact circumstances merchants became industrial entrepreneurs. Using multivariate OLS regressions, it finds a strong association between a greater share of proto-firms in a town in 1798 and its growth rates across the nineteenth century. The findings point to a hitherto overlooked link between the qualitative structure of late eighteenth century merchant activity, the elasticity of supply of early industrial entrepreneurship, and the spatial variation of urban growth experiences in nineteenth century Germany |
| JEL: | N14 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113346&r= |
| By: | George Agwu (TREE - Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AE-FUNAI - Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo); Oussama Ben Atta (TREE - Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre de recherche de l'ESC Pau - ESC Pau) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of geographical proximity to universities on educational attainment in Nigeria. We relate individuals level of schooling obtained from three rounds of the Nigeria's Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) to spatial distance to university measured by pairing residential and university campuses GPS coordinates. To identify the effect of the distance to university, we exploit the theory of residential sorting to instrument residential proximity to university. Specifically, we instrument distance to university drawing on variations in households' proximity to state boundary posts and neighbourhood population density. The instrumental variable estimates show a negative and significant effect of distance revealing that geographical constraints during teenage years represent a barrier to the subsequent human capital acquisition. Additional results from a difference-indifference estimation strategy indicate that a large scale establishment of universities had beneficial trickle-down effects by decreasing the intention to drop out of secondary school, supporting evidence of the role of geographical constraints in the accumulation of human capital in Nigeria. |
| Keywords: | Educational attainment,Distance to university,University attendance,School dropout,Nigeria |
| Date: | 2021–12–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03492963&r= |
| By: | Signe A. Abrahamsen (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Rita Ginja (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Bergen); Julie Riise (Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence that preventive health care services delivered at schools and provided at a relatively low cost have positive and lasting impacts. We use variation from a 1999-reform in Norway that induced substantial differences in the avail-ability of health professionals across municipalities and cohorts. In municipalities with one fewer school nurse per 1,000 school-age children before the reform there was an increase in the availability of nurses of 35% from the pre- to the post-reform period, attributed to the policy change. The reform reduced teenage pregnancies and increased college attendance for girls. It also reduced the take-up of welfare benefits by ages 26 and 30 and increased the planned use of primary and specialist health care services at ages 25-35, without impacts on emergency room admissions. The reform also improved the health of newborns of affected new mothers and reduced the likelihood of miscarriages. |
| Date: | 2021–07–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:21/20&r= |
| By: | Rowena Crawford (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Polly Simpson (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we estimate the effect of house prices on whether or not young adults actively save in a private pension. We use job-level data from a survey of employers, matched to average house prices at the level of an individuals’ location of employment, exploiting geographical variation in local house price movements in England over the decade 1997 to 2007. We find that after controlling for individual and job characteristics there is no statistically significant effect, on average, across all employees. There is a negative effect for public-sector workers and those in the middle of the earnings distribution. However, the effects are small – for example, among public-sector workers, if house prices are £100,000 higher, then this is associated with a 3 percentage point lower probability of contributing to a pension. The effect is larger among employees in the NHS, education and non-uniformed services, who face a higher employee contribution than employees in the civil service. |
| Date: | 2020–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:20/38&r= |
| By: | Julian Thomas B. Alvarez (Asian Development Bank); Jahm Mae E. Guinto (Asian Development Bank and University of the Philip[pines); Joseph J. Capuno (School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman) |
| Abstract: | Unlike in previous crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a crisis affecting all population groups, all economic sectors and all jurisdictions in the Philippines, as elsewhere. The impact of the COVID-19 vary across localities, however, partly due to differences in local government responses to the pandemic. Our objective is to examine the patterns in the types and timing of local responses among neighboring local government units (cities) for evidence of oneupmanship among their incumbent leaders (mayors). We assembled data for 25 selected cities and then grouped them into 28 neighborhood clusters. Using three indicators, we measure the immediacy, primacy and distinctiveness of the local responses within each cluster over the period March 2020-March 2021. Of the 28 clusters, we find in 19 (67.9 percent) evidence of oneupmanship consistent with the view that the type and timing of local responses are driven by mayors who wish to signal their talents and abilities. Further, mayors who face greater election competition pressures (low vote margin, many rivals) tend to implement responses ahead or uniquely of others. Thus, some leaders are able to turn the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity to demonstrate their competence to their constituents, presumably to improve their popularity and re-election prospects. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19 pandemic; local responses; one-upmanship; yardstick competition; Philippines |
| JEL: | D72 H73 I18 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:phs:dpaper:202102&r= |
| By: | Badi H. Baltagi (Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244); Yusuf Soner Başkaya (Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ, Glasgow, UK) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates spatial wage curves for formal and informal workers in Turkey using individual level data from the Turkish Household Labor Force Survey (THLFS) provided by TURKSTAT for the period 2008-2014. Unlike previous studies on wage curves for formal and informal workers, we extend the analysis to allow for spatial effects. We also consider household characteristics that would affect the selection into formal employment, informal employment, and non-employment. We find that the spatial wage curve relation holds both for formal and informal workers in Turkey for a variety of specifications. In general, the wages of informal workers are more sensitive to the unemployment rates of the same region and other regions than formal workers. We find that accounting for the selection into formal and informal employment affects the magnitudes but not the significance of the spatial wage curves for the formal and informal workers with the latter always being larger in absolute value than that for formal workers. |
| Keywords: | Spatial Wage Curve, Spatial Weights, Regional Labor Markets, Informal Labor Markets |
| JEL: | C21 J30 J60 |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:max:cprwps:246&r= |
| By: | Sarah Cattan (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Gabriella Conti (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London); Christine Farquharson (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Rita Ginja (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Bergen); Maud Pecher (Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the short- and medium-term heath impacts of Sure Start, a large-scale and univer-sal early childhood program in England. We exploit the rollout of the program and implement a difference-in-difference approach, combining data on the exact location and opening date of Sure Start centers with administrative data on the universe of admissions to public-sector hospitals. Exposure to an additional Sure Start center per thousand age-eligible children increases hospitalization by 10% at age 1 (around 6,700 hospitalizations per year), but reduces them by 8-9% across ages 11 to 15 (around 13,150 hospitalizations per year). These findings show that early childhood programs that are less intensive than small-scale ‘model programs’ can deliver significant health benefits, even in contexts with universal healthcare. Impacts are driven by hospitalizations for preventable conditions and are concentrated in disadvantaged areas, suggesting that enriching early childhood environments might be a successful strategy to reduce inequalities in health. |
| Date: | 2021–08–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:21/25&r= |
| By: | Fuchsman, Dillon (Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research, Saint Louis University); McGee, Josh (University of Arkansas); Zamarro, Gema (University of Arkansas) |
| Abstract: | Adequately saving for retirement requires both planning and knowledge about available retirement savings options. Teachers participate in a complex set of different plan designs and benefit tiers, and many do not participate in Social Security. While teachers represent a large part of the public workforce, relatively little is known regarding their knowledge about and preparation for retirement. We administered a survey to a nationally representative sample of teachers through RAND’s American Teacher Panel and asked teachers about their retirement planning and their employer sponsored retirement plans. We find that while most teachers are taking steps to prepare for retirement, many teachers lack the basic retirement knowledge necessary to plan effectively. Teachers struggled to identify their plan type, how much they are contributing to their plans, retirement eligibility ages, and who contributes to Social Security. These results suggest that teacher retirement reform may not be disruptive for teachers and that better, simpler, and clearer information about teacher retirement plans would be beneficial. |
| Keywords: | teacher pensions; retirement knowledge; retirement planning |
| JEL: | I20 J33 |
| Date: | 2022–01–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sluecr:2021_005&r= |
| By: | CRUCITTI Francesca (European Commission - JRC); LAZAROU Nicholas (European Commission - JRC); MONFORT Philippe; SALOTTI Simone (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | We assess the macroeconomic impact of the EU cohesion policy investments deployed during the 2014-2020 programming period, employing updated data on planned expenditures, which in most Member States will take place until 2023. We use the spatial dynamic general equilibrium RHOMOLO in order to quantify the direct and indirect effects of the policy investments in the NUTS 2 regions of the EU within a 20-year time frame. The results suggest that the impact of the policy is sizeable, especially in the less developed regions of the EU. Accordingly, regional disparities are shown to decrease thanks to the policy intervention. The policy also has a positive impact at the EU level, GDP in the EU being 0.4% higher in 2021 compared to a scenario without cohesion policy. |
| Keywords: | rhomolo, region, growth, Cohesion policy, regional growth, regional development, general equilibrium modelling |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:termod:202201&r= |
| By: | Dang, Hai-Anh H.; Glewwe, Paul; Lee, Jongwook; Vu, Khoa |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates how Vietnam's Escuela Nueva (VNEN) program, an educational reform for primary schools supported by the World Bank, affected the cognitive (mathematics and Vietnamese) and non-cognitive (socioemotional) skills of students in that country. We use propensity score matching to estimate both short-term (1-3 years) and long-term (5-7 years) average treatment effects on the treated (ATT). We find that the impacts of VNEN on students' cognitive skills are relatively small in the short-term, and that they are larger for boys, ethnic minorities, and students in Northern Vietnam. The VNEN program modestly increased primary school students' non-cognitive skills in the short-term; these impacts on non-cognitive skills are sizable and significant for ethnic minority students, although there seems to be little gender difference. The long-term impacts are less precisely estimated, but they appear to fade away, showing little or no impact of the VNEN program on cognitive skills. There is little variation of long-term impacts by gender or geographical region, although the imprecision of the estimates for ethnic minority students does not allow us to rule out large long-term impacts on cognitive skills for those students. The program's impacts on non-cognitive skills also seem to have dissipated in the long-term. |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1017&r= |
| By: | Maria De Paola (Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF, Università della Calabria); Francesca Gioia (Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche "Cesare Beccaria", Università di Milano); Vincenzo Scoppa (Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF, Università della Calabria) |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools and universities to transit from traditional class-based teaching to online learning. This paper investigates the impact produced by this shift on students’ performance. We use administrative data of four cohorts of students enrolled in an Italian University and adopt a difference-in-differences strategy exploiting the fact that the transition to online teaching has taken place at the beginning of the second semester, while classes were face-to-face in the first semester. We compare students’ performance in the second semester of 2020 with their performance in the first semester and contrast this difference with the difference between second and first semester in the previous academic years. Controlling for a number of variables proxying for COVID-19 incidence and internet connections' quality, we find that online teaching has reduced students’ performance of about 1.4 credits per semester (0.11 Standard Deviations). Freshmen are those who suffer more, while almost no negative effect is found for Master’s Degree students. Since the need for self-discipline in an online environment could cause students’ low achievements, we study the role of procrastination and show that online teaching has been particularly detrimental for students affected by present-bias problems. |
| Keywords: | Team, Online Teaching, Students’ Performance, COVID-19, Procrastination |
| JEL: | I21 I23 I28 D90 L86 |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clb:wpaper:202202&r= |
| By: | Kenji Fujiwara (School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University) |
| Abstract: | Comparison among Cournot, Bertrand and (Chamberlin) monopolistic competition receives recent attention in industrial organization, but not in New Economic Geography (NEG). To fulfill this gap, we examine how the difference in market structures affects industry location in a footloose capital (FC) model of NEG. We find that the home market effect is strongest in Cournot competition, second strongest in Bertrand competition, and weakest in monopolistic competition. |
| Keywords: | Cournot competition, Bertrand competition, monopolistic competition, Home market effect |
| JEL: | D43 F12 F21 L13 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kgu:wpaper:235&r= |
| By: | Casilda Lasso de la Vega; Oscar Volij; Federico Weinschelbaum |
| Abstract: | We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the equilibrium of a Walrasian economy for an increase in police expenditure to induce an increase in crime. This perverse effect is consistent with any appropriation technology and could arise even if the level of police protection is the socially optimal one. |
| Keywords: | Theft, Crime, Police, General Equilibrium, Laffer. |
| JEL: | D72 D74 H23 K42 |
| Date: | 2022–02–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000518:019943&r= |
| By: | Valentina Suarez (Columbia University); Jason McGrath (OECD) |
| Abstract: | Promoting and supporting the development of strong professional identities in teachers is relevant to teachers, policy makers and the research community. The benefits of examining Teacher Professional Identity (TPI) relate to success for students in their learning, long-term empowerment of teachers in their professional work, and support for effective policy development. This paper provides a scan and examination of the research and the OECD international data sets to propose a TPI Development and Outcome model and consider implications for practice, policy and research. Increased attention to understanding and developing individual and collective TPI provides a positive and feasible approach in a time of change . |
| Date: | 2022–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:eduaab:267-en&r= |
| By: | Leonardo Costa Ribeiro (Cedeplar/UFMG); Jorge Nogueira de Paiva Britto (Universidade Federal Fluminense); Eduardo da Motta e Albuquerque (Cedeplar/UFMG) |
| Abstract: | The unit of analysis of this paper is an international knowledge link (IKL), a knowledge flow that leaves a trace and connects two nodes – different institutions, firms and universities, in different countries. We present and analyze 17,240,834 international knowledge links (data from 2017). These international knowledge links form three basic networks. These three international layers overlap and interweave, forming a network of networks. The contribution of this paper is the identification and preliminary analysis of this overlapping and intertwinement. These networks are robust and their properties suggest a hierarchical structure of a multilayer network that is asymmetric. These networks are interpreted as new layers of innovation systems, with implications for the dynamic of innovation – a reorganization of different levels of innovation systems, now a more complicated structure with interaction between local, sectoral and national levels, as well as these overlapping international networks. |
| Keywords: | International Knowledge flows; Innovation Systems; Networks of networks |
| JEL: | O32 O34 O39 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td640&r= |
| By: | Yasuharu Shimamura (Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University); Satoshi Shimizutani (JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development); Eiji Yamada (JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development); Hiroyuki Yamada (Faculty of Economics, Keio University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of a rural road improvement project on schooling decisions and youth employment in Morocco. Paved rural roads are expected to reduce travel time and costs, allowing additional school choices and increasing the motivation for youth to enter higher education in response to higher returns. On the other hand, immediate earnings opportunities created by new connections may encourage youth to seek paid employment. Thus, the impact of rural road improvement on schooling and youth employment warrants empirical investigation. We employ a difference-indifferences estimation using a household-level dataset with a five-year interval collected under a quasi-experimental setting. First, we do not observe any positive effect on primary school completion for either sex, but we find a positive and significant effect on secondary school attainment or above only for females. Moreover, the higher educational attainment of females is associated with a lower proportion of early marriage. Second, we do not observe any significant effects on self-employment for either sex, but we find a positive and significant effect on wage employment only for males, which is pronounced among the better educated. Our findings reveal sharp gendered differences in the impact of the rural road improvement project, with increased motivation toward better education for females and paid work for males. |
| Keywords: | rural road improvement, schooling outcomes, youth employment, market integration, Morocco, gender. |
| JEL: | I25 O18 J24 |
| Date: | 2022–01–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:2022-001&r= |
| By: | Cirera, Laia; Castelló, Judit Vall; Brew, Joe; Saúte, Francisco; Sicuri, Elisa |
| Abstract: | Despite the significant improvements achieved over the last ten years, primary education attainment in Mozambique is still low. Potential reasons acting from the demand perspective include ill health, among other factors. In Mozambique, ill health is still largely linked to malaria, which is a leading cause of outpatient contacts, hospital admissions and death, particularly among under-five and school-aged children. Despite this, in Mozambique and more generally, in malaria endemic countries, the identification and measurement of how improved malaria indicators may contribute to better school outcomes remains largely unknown. In particular, there is a low understanding of the extent to which better health translates immediately into school indicators, such as absenteeism and grades. In this study, we exploit the first year of a malaria elimination initiative implemented in Magude district (Southern Mozambique) that started in 2015, as a quasi-experiment to estimate the impact of malaria on selected primary school outcomes. While malaria was not eliminated, its incidence drastically dropped. We use as control a neighbouring district (Manhiça) with similar socio-economic and epidemiological characteristics. By employing a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach, we examine whether the positive health shock translated into improved school outcomes. Using information from school registers, we generated a dataset on school attendance and grades for 9,848 primary-school students from 9 schools (4 in the treated district and 5 in the control district). In our main specification, a repeated cross-section analysis, we find that the elimination initiative led to a 28% decrease in school absenteeism and a 2% increase in students’ grades. Our results are robust across different specifications, including a panel DiD individual fixed effects estimate on a sub-sample of students. These findings provide evidence on the negative impact of malaria on primary education attainment and suggest remarkable economic benefits consequent to its elimination. |
| Keywords: | difference-in-differences; human capital; Malaria; Mozambique; primary education |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113334&r= |
| By: | Claudia Cerrone (Middlesex University); Yoan Hermstrüwer (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn); Onur Kesten (School of Economics, The University of Sydney) |
| Abstract: | Public school choice often yields student placements that are neither fair nor efficient. Kesten (2010) proposed an efficiency-adjusted deferred acceptance algorithm (EADAM) that allows students to consent to waive priorities that have no effect on their assignment. In this article, we provide first experimental evidence on the performance of EADAM. We compare EADAM with the deferred acceptance mechanism (DA) and with two variants of EADAM. In the first variant, we vary the default option: students can object – rather than consent – to the priority waiver. In the second variant, the priority waiver is enforced. We find that both efficiency and truth-telling rates are substantially higher under EADAM than under DA, even though EADAM is not strategy-proof. When the priority waiver is enforced, we observe that efficiency further increases, while truth-telling rates decrease relative to the EADAM variants where students can dodge the waiver. Our results challenge the importance of strategy-proofness as a condition of truth-telling and point to a trade-off between efficiency and vulnerability to preference manipulation. |
| Keywords: | efficiency-adjusted deferred acceptance algorithm, school choice, consent, default rules, law |
| JEL: | C78 C92 D47 I20 K10 |
| Date: | 2022–02–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2022_02&r= |
| By: | Mark Regan (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Barra Roantree (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Economic and Social Research Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides evidence that finishing school when labour markets are weak leads to poor subsequent labour market prospects, particularly those leaving school at younger ages. Using administrative register data from Denmark, we find that these scarring effects are larger and more persistent for young adults from the lowest-income backgrounds. |
| Date: | 2021–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:21/28&r= |
| By: | Fullard, Joshua |
| Abstract: | Using new survey data of teachers in England we investigate the propensity for teachers to consent to data linkage, differences by observable characteristics and the effect of a randomly assigned information intervention. We find that consent rates are high (75 percent), possibly due to the relationship between participating schools and the research team, but observe differences by ethnicity, sex, and sector - teachers from a non-white background, male teachers and those who work in the independent sector are significantly less likely to consent. While we find that the provision of additional information does not increase consent to data linkage our heterogeneity analysis shows that the information treatment has a large, positive, effect on teachers who work in the independent sector – a subgroup of teachers who have a significantly lower rate of consent. |
| Date: | 2022–01–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2022-01&r= |
| By: | Lorenzo Cherubini (Brock University, Ontario, Canada) |
| Abstract: | This presentation discusses the third and final component of a multi-dimensional study using a distinct learner-centred Problem-Based Learning (PBL) model that invites prospective teachers to collaborate in small groups on inquiry-driven projects that deepen their appreciation of critical literacy. The literature attests to the success of PBL environments where student participation in peer-to-peer discussions furthers more sophisticated capacities to actively process new information. The PBL model is a core component of a mandatory third-year undergraduate concurrent Education course of study for all students enrolled in the Intermediate/Senior program (qualifications to teach grades 7 to 12). Each peer-group, consisting of four to five students, scripts and records a video presentation that accounts for the implications of a case-based dilemma. The PBL model is meant to promote prospective teachers’ proficiency to meaningfully translate their understanding of the inquiry-problem as it applies to a broad range of topics and competencies. Consistent with the first two components of the larger study, the PBL instructional approach aims to scaffold prospective teachers’ awareness of certain concepts in the broader context of critical literacy. Consequently, the critical literacy framework represents the theoretical basis that positions prospective teachers to be increasingly aware of the implications of ethnic, religious, and socio-economic diversity on case-based teachers and students. |
| Keywords: | critical literacy, prospective teacher development |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:lpaper:0083&r= |
| By: | Michael Kilumelume; Bruno Morando; Carol Newman; John Rand |
| Abstract: | Extractive industries form an important part of the economy for many developing countries, but their impact on growth and welfare remains understudied. With global efforts to transition to net-zero carbon emissions in the coming decades, understanding the local impacts of the extractives sector is crucially important for regional economic development policy in the management of this transition. In this paper we use tax administrative data from South Africa to examine the local spillovers from mining activities, focusing on wages, firm profitability, and job creation. |
| Keywords: | Mining, South Africa, Spillovers, Firms, Profitability |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2022-10&r= |
| By: | Gabriella Conti (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London); Stavros Poupakis (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Essex); Peter Ekamper (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Govert E. Bijwaard (Institute for Fiscal Studies); L.H. Lumey (Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates impacts, mechanisms and selection e?ects of prenatal exposure to multiple shocks, by exploiting the unique natural experiment of the Dutch Hunger Winter. At the end of World War II, a famine occurred abruptly in the Western Netherlands (November 1944 - May 1945), pushing the previously and subsequently well-nourished Dutch population to the brink of starvation. We link high-quality military recruits data with objective health measurements for the cohorts born in the years surrounding WWII with newly digitised historical records on calories and nutrient composition of the war rations, daily temperature, and warfare deaths. Using di?erence-in-di?erences and triple di?erences research designs, we show that the cohorts exposed to the Dutch Hunger Winter since early gestation have a higher Body Mass Index and an increased probability of being overweight at age 18, and that this e?ect is partly accounted for by warfare exposure and a reduction in energy-adjusted protein intake. Moreover, we account for selective mortality using a copula-based approach and newly-digitised data on survival rates, and ?nd evidence of both selection and scarring e?ects. These results emphasise the complexity of the mechanisms at play in studying the consequences of early conditions. |
| Date: | 2021–10–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:21/36&r= |
| By: | Stern, Samuel; Livan, Giacomo |
| Abstract: | We investigate the impact of noise and topology on opinion diversity in social networks. We do so by extending well-established models of opinion dynamics to a stochastic setting where agents are subject both to assimilative forces by their local social interactions, as well as to idiosyncratic factors preventing their population from reaching consensus. We model the latter to account for both scenarios where noise is entirely exogenous to peer influence and cases where it is instead endogenous, arising from the agents' desire to maintain some uniqueness in their opinions. We derive a general analytical expression for opinion diversity, which holds for any network and depends on the network's topology through its spectral properties alone. Using this expression, we find that opinion diversity decreases as communities and clusters are broken down. We test our predictions against data describing empirical influence networks between major news outlets and find that incorporating our measure in linear models for the sentiment expressed by such sources on a variety of topics yields a notable improvement in terms of explanatory power. |
| Keywords: | network science; opinion dynamics; social networks; PSRC Early Career Fellowship in Digital Economy (grant no. EP/ N006062/1 |
| JEL: | C1 |
| Date: | 2021–04–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113424&r= |
| By: | Konda, Bruhan (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University); González‐Sauri, Mario (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University); Cowan, Robin (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University); Yashodha, Yashodha (International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), India); Chellattan Veettil, Prakashan (International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), India) |
| Abstract: | Most network studies in agriculture examine uni-dimensional connections between individuals to understand the effect of social networks on outcomes. However, in most real-world scenarios, network members' exchanges happen through multiple relationships and not accounting for such multi-dimensional interconnections may lead to biased estimate of social network effects. This study aims to unravel the consequences of not accounting such multidimensional networks by investigating the individual and joint effects of multiple connections (relationships) that exist among households on agricultural output. We use census data from three villages of Odisha, India that enables us to account for three types of relationships viz. information networks (knowledge sharing), credit networks (resource sharing) and friendship (social bonding) between households. We estimate the social network effect by combining both econometric (IV regression) and network (directed networks) techniques to address the problems of endogeneity. The joint effect of multiple networks is estimated using the multiplex network framework. We find that information flows are crucial to improve agricultural output when networks are accounted individually. However, the joint effect of all three networks using multiplex shows a significantly positive influence, indicating complementarity across relationships. In addition, we found evidence for the mediating role of interpersonal relationships (friendship network) in enhancing gains from the information flow. |
| Keywords: | Agriculture production, Social network, Multiplex networks, knowledge sharing, Resource sharing, Friendship |
| JEL: | C26 D83 O13 Q12 |
| Date: | 2021–07–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2021030&r= |
| By: | Christos Mavridis (Middlesex University London); Orestis Troumpounis (University of Padova and Lancaster University); Maurizio Zanardi (University of Surrey) |
| Abstract: | What is the role of the militarization of law enforcement agencies in the U.S. in the 2020 wave of protests? This paper shows that aggregate transfers of military equipment up to 2019 increased both the incidence and number of protests in a given county in 2020. However, militarization is not a significant determinant neither of violent protests nor of COVID-related protests. Hence, with our results mostly driven by protests related to the BLM movement, we argue that the 2020 wave of protests is directly linked to the hotly debated 1033 program, largely responsible for the excessive militarization of local law enforcement agencies in the past decades. |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sur:surrec:0122&r= |
| By: | Sarah Cattan (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies); Daniel A. Kamhöfer (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Martin Karlsson (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Therese Nilsson (Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal e?ect of school absence on long-run socio-economic outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish individuals born in the 1930s. We ?nd that absence signi?cantly reduces contemporaneous academic performance, ?nal educational attainment and labor income throughout the life-cycle. The ?ndings are consistent with a dynamic model of human capital formation, whereby absence causes small immediate learning losses which cumulate to larger human capital losses over time and lead to worse labor market performance. |
| Date: | 2021–02–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:21/06&r= |
| By: | Adri Du Toit (North-West University, South Africa) |
| Abstract: | Entrepreneurship education affords valuable learning to prepare learners for the world of work, including the potential to reduce youth unemployment. South Africa has one of the highest youth unemployment rates globally, making it imperative to develop and expand entrepreneurship education in its school curriculum. The problem that needed investigation, was how such entrepreneurship education needed to be constructed in projects to benefit learners optimally. Literature indicates that education through entrepreneurship — often scaffolded using project-based learning — is preferred above other approaches. Consumer Studies was identified as the only subject in the South African school curriculum that included significant entrepreneurship education, in the form of an entrepreneurship project. The purpose of the current study was therefore to analyze and evaluate that project for its inclusion of project-based learning principles, to determine its strengths and areas for improvement. The intended aim for the research was to develop recommendations to improve the scaffolding of the project to enhance its focus of education through entrepreneurship. The findings of this research contribute to a better understanding of how entrepreneurship education should be scaffolded and implemented into existing subjects. The significance of the research includes that these findings can be used to inform the development of similar projects in other South African school subjects, consequently contributing to expanding effective entrepreneurship education. In the long term, more learners will then be able to benefit from the valuable learning associated with entrepreneurship education, which includes the potential to reduce youth unemployment in this country. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship education, principles, project-based learning, school curriculum, youth unemployment |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:lpaper:0046&r= |
| By: | Nitin Kumar Bharti (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Sutanuka Roy |
| Abstract: | We estimate the causal effects of judges' exposure to communal violence during early childhood on pretrial detention rates by exploiting novel administrative data on judgments and detailed resumes of judicial officers born during 1955-1991. Our baseline result is that judges exposed to communal violence between ages 0 and 6 years are 16% more prone to deny bail than the average judge, with the impact being stronger for the experience of riots between ages 3 and 6 years. The observed judicial stringency is driven by childhood exposure to riots with a higher duration of state-imposed lockdowns and low riot casualties. |
| Keywords: | Early-childhood,Pretrial Detention,Judicial Bias,Communal Violence Early-childhood,Communal Violence |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-03537653&r= |
| By: | Klara Kantova (Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic) |
| Abstract: | With the goal to shed more light on the effectiveness of parental time spent with their children, I estimate the causal relationship between parental involvement and education outcomes of children. My research is the first which examines the effect of parental time in terms of the engagement in child´s everyday life. Moreover, I improve the existing literature by including the characteristics of children as well as parents. To estimate causal treatment effects, I use a simple logistic regression along with a subclassification on the propensity score. By subclassification, the systematic differences in baseline characteristics are eliminated. The education outcome is represented by a binary variable denoting whether the respondent completed high school or not. Completing high school improves person´s economic selfsufficiency and civic engagement. The results indicate higher probability of graduating from high school with higher parental involvement. Moreover, the probability decreases when child disobeys his or her parent. Most importantly, the results suggest that the expected probability of completing high school decreases with more strict parental behavior. |
| Keywords: | Education, Children, Family, Parental Involvement |
| JEL: | I21 J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2022_01&r= |
| By: | Cristian Dan (Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University of Bucharest, Romania) |
| Abstract: | In the early stages of the evolution of the human species, feelings and sensations played a particularly important role in adapting and sustaining existential activities and how to integrate man in relation to the surrounding nature. Of all the feelings, the predominant psychological characteristic was the feeling of anger, coming from the need to preserve, to defend life and things acquired, in front of the attackers who could be both fierce animals and other fellows of the same species. For millions of years, these mechanisms have contributed to the intrinsic and external development of society, being present in human interactions within tribes, cities, villages and cities. Being a sentimental trait developed over such a long period of time, the feeling of anger, inscribed in human DNA, is nowadays a dangerous factor, generating antisocial behaviors and actions that are subject to Criminal Law, which we often learn to control it. The article aims to analyze this mechanism, from a historical, psychological and cultural point of view in relation to Criminal Law and the facts determined by this feeling, highlighting, on the one hand, the crimes that can be committed under its rule, and on the other part, the methods of preventing and combating them identified in today’s society. |
| Keywords: | anger, morality, genetics, criminal law, crime, psychology, embezzlement, theft, violence, history, legal system, conduct, prevention, combat, rape |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:lpaper:0090&r= |
| By: | Joseph J. Capuno (School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman) |
| Abstract: | Does identification with dominant ethnic groups lead individuals to diverge in their preferences for redistribution? This paper contributes to the comparative analysis of the role of ethnic background in shaping attitudes towards government's role in reducing income inequalities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, where nearly half-abillion people live and belong to more than sixty ethnic groups. Using a pool of nationallyrepresentative survey data from the five Southeast Asian countries, we first classified the respondents by population dominance of the ethnic groups they claim to belong, and then examine for differences across members of dominant ethnic groups in their preferences for government redistribution. Relative to the biggest ethnic group, the second biggest ethnic group is found to have less preference for redistribution, after controlling for other factors. No systematic differences in their redistributive preferences are found, however, between the biggest ethnic group and other smaller groups. The results are fairly robust even after accounting for the possible moderating effects of income status, trust in government and in people, subjective social mobility, concerns about social fairness, and views on the importance of fate in one's life. Moreover, the results hold out even in the sub-sample of low-income people for whom economic considerations more than ethnicity are expected to determine their redistributive preferences. Notwithstanding the importance of shared norms or beliefs in aligning he social choices of people with same ethnic or racial background, our results suggest their population sizes, which possibly reflect their relative influence over domestic policies, also matter. |
| Keywords: | Government assistance; trust in officials; satisfaction with performance; treatment effects; Philippines |
| JEL: | H31 H49 D72 |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:phs:dpaper:202104&r= |
| By: | Rowena Crawford (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | We examine the extent to which owner-occupiers in their 50s and 60s change their private pension saving when they complete repayment of the mortgage on their primary residence. Using panel data from a household survey, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we identify those who completed repayment of their mortgage as anticipated two years prior. Despite mortgage expenditures falling by over £200 per person on average, there is little resulting change in average pension saving. This is because only a small minority of individuals react – the probability of an individual increasing their monthly pension saving by more than £150 increases by only 5 percentage points on completing repayment of a mortgage. This suggests that if policymakers wish to influence behaviour in order to increase private pension saving, interventions targeted at those completing their mortgage repayment could be a tractable approach. Such individuals would be able to increase pension saving while maintaining spending at recent levels. |
| Date: | 2020–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:20/39&r= |
| By: | Shin-ichi Fukuda (Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo); Mariko Tanaka (Musashino University) |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2022cf1184&r= |
| By: | Wang, J.; Alessi, R.; Angelini, V. |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effect of in utero exposure to adverse events on late life diabetes, cardiovascular disease risks and cognition deficiency. We merge data on the regional violence during the Cultural Revolution and the excessive death rates during the Chinese Great Famine with data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS)survey. Results show that female babies who were exposed in utero to the famine have higher diabetes risks, while male babies who were exposed to the Cultural Revolution are shown to have lower cognitive abilities. |
| Keywords: | early life conditions; chinese great famine; cultural revolution; diabetes; cardiovascular disease; cognition; |
| JEL: | I10 J11 J14 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:22/02&r= |
| By: | Daniel Goller; Andrea Diem; Stefan C. Wolter |
| Abstract: | Higher education brings together students from diverse educational backgrounds, including students, who after dropping out of a first course of study, transferred to an academically less demanding institution. While peers are important contributors to student success, the influence of those dropouts with a knowledge advantage on first-time students is largely unexplored. Using an administrative data set covering every individual in the Swiss higher education system, we study the impact of the presence of academically better prepared students on the study success of first-time students. Our identification strategy relies on conditional idiosyncratic variations in the proportion of returning dropouts in university of applied sciences cohorts. We find negative effects of university dropouts who re-enroll in the same subject on the success of first-time students. In contrast, dropouts who change subjects are positively associated to the success of their new peers. Using causal machine learning methods, we find that the effects (a) are non-linear and (b) vary for different proportions of dropouts in university of applied sciences cohorts. |
| Keywords: | University dropouts, peer effects, better prepared students, causal machine learning |
| JEL: | A23 C14 I23 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0190&r= |
| By: | Molly Paterson (Monash University); Jaai Parasnis (Department of Economics, Monash University); Michelle Rendall (Department of Economics, Monash University) |
| Abstract: | The performance of students in numeracy tests reveals gaps based on students’ gender and household income. In this paper, using longitudinal data on Australian children, we show the interrelationship between (i) socioeconomic gaps based on early-life household income, and (ii) the gender gap in numeracy. We find that between Grades 3 to 9, boys have a distinct advantage in numeracy scores over girls, which widens over time. We also find that, by Grade 9, poorer female students are doubly disadvantaged. This disadvantage does not arise because of differences in socioeconomic status between boys and girls but because the effect of a lower socioeconomic background on test scores is significant only for girls. We find that mother’s education and labor force status play an important role in the emergence of gender gaps, at both ends (top and bottom) of the income distribution. We confirm that early life circumstances continue to impact student’s achievement well into adolescence and these exacerbate gender gaps, thus demonstrating the importance of targeted early interventions to address gaps in key skills acquisition for the modern economy. |
| Keywords: | Australia, parental education, household income, numeracy, gender |
| JEL: | I20 I24 J16 |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:2022-02&r= |
| By: | Anders Dugstad; Kristine Grimsrud (Statistics Norway); Gorm Kipperberg; Henrik Lindhjem; Ståle Navrud |
| Abstract: | Economists have neglected place attachment as a potential explanation for people’s preferences for environmental goods. We conducted the first discrete choice experiment to assess the place attachment concept in the valuation of and response to the place-specific environmental impact from a proposed wind farm in Norway. Place attachment increases required compensation for accepting the wind farm, strengthens resistance, and leads to a higher propensity to systematically choose the status quo option of no wind farm in the discrete choice experiment. This finding suggests that the so-called “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) effect should be recognized as a rational response when people place a high value on local environmental amenities, including place identity and a sense of place. |
| Keywords: | Place attachment; sense of place; NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard); discrete choice experiment; cultural ecosystem services; wind energy |
| JEL: | Q40 Q51 Q57 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:974&r= |
| By: | Ioan-Gheorghe Rotaru (Timotheus Brethren Theological Institute of Bucharest, Romania) |
| Abstract: | Today's society is constantly evolving and it is not enough to learn just to become something for tomorrow, but it is necessary to be able to cope with the multiple demands of life. Humanity sees education as a practical, social, current and permanent issue, an indispensable tool for achieving the ideals of peace, freedom and social justice of a nation. If people aspire to a materially, socially and spiritually emancipated society, parents and teachers will find a way to make a common front together without excluding the child, helping him tactfully and gently to accumulate information, knowledge, but also to avoid many unpleasant events that can seriously mark him later in life. A properly educated child is a gain for society, and his education materializes both at home and in educational institutions. Education is and must be treated as a priority activity of society. High quality education is a necessity and that is why it must become a cornerstone of the society in which we live. |
| Keywords: | education, priority, educational system, formal education, non-formal education, informal education |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:lpaper:0109&r= |
| By: | Severin Reissl; Alessandro Caiani; Francesco Lamperti; Tommaso Ferraresi; Leonardo Ghezzi |
| Abstract: | We extend the regional input-output model for the economic impact assessment of Covid-19 lockdowns in Italy proposed in Reissl et al. (2021) by incorporating the effects of changes in mobility on the level and composition of consumption demand. We estimate the model on sectoral data for 2020 and perform an out-of-sample validation exercise for the first half of 2021, finding that the model performs well. We then evaluate the relative importance of demand- and supply-side factors in determining our simulation results. During the national lockdown of spring 2020 the impacts of supply-side (labor) shocks can account for the vast majority of output losses. In the following stages of the epidemic income and mobility-related effects on final demand play pivotal roles at the aggregate and regional levels, as well as for most sectors. While policies supporting demand may hence be appropriate, their effectiveness may be hampered when demand is chiefly restrained by the mobility-related effect, and not by income. |
| Keywords: | Input-output; Covid-19; Lockdown; Italy; Demand and Supply Shocks. |
| Date: | 2022–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2022/04&r= |