Search

How might the visibility of an author's name and/or institutional affiliation allow bias to enter the evaluation of economics papers? We ask highly qualified journal editors to review abstracts of solo‐authored papers which differ along the dimensions of gender and institution of the author. We exogenously vary whether editors observe the name and/or institution of the author. We identify positive name visibility effects for female economists and positive institution visibility effects for economists at the top institutions. Our results suggest that male economists at top institutions benefit the most from non‐blind evaluations, followed by female economists (regardless of their institution). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated reasoning can serve to help resolve emotional discomfort, which suggests emotion as a likely moderator of such reasoning. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by examining emotion and confirmation bias in the political domain. Results from two preregistered studies, which involved over 900 unique participants, document a confirmation bias across distinct dimensions of belief and preference formation. Also, ideologically dissonant information significantly worsens self‐reported emotion. With some exceptions, the evidence generally supports the hypothesis that negative emotion moderates the strength of the bias, which highlights the importance of emotion response in understanding and potentially counteracting confirmation bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the accumulation and distribution of retirement wealth in a dynastic model with earnings risks, longevity uncertainties, and borrowing constraints. It resolves the wealth indeterminacy problem across generations in dynastic families by introducing a transaction cost for intergenerational transfers. It captures the pattern of inter vivos transfers, the relationship between wealth and earnings, and wealth inequality in the US data. Social security lowers precautionary savings by redistributing income from families with high earnings or short‐lived parents to others, thus reducing investment, the growth rate in income per capita, inequality in retirees' consumption, and the wealth‐earnings correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When social pressure leads to favoritism, policies might aim to reduce the bias by affecting its source. This paper shows that multiple sources may be present and telling them apart is important. We build a novel and granular dataset on European football games and revisit the view that supporting crowds make referees help the host team. We find this bias to remain unchanged even in stadiums closed due to Covid‐19. Instead, influential host organizations emerge as the source of social pressure. This has an adverse effect on maintaining the ranking of influential teams and hindering the progress of smaller teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit disbursement on intramonthly household level purchases made from a supermarket retailer. We find that spending, the likelihood of shopping, the bulk expenditure share and the national brand expenditure share increase by $2, 1.5, 2, and 0.6% points, respectively, on the day that SNAP benefits are disbursed. We also compare and contrast estimates that use variation in the indicator for benefit receipt to estimates that utilize variation in the probability of SNAP benefit receipt. We find substantial differences between the two approaches for the outcome of spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical researchers often consider a single determinant of labor productivity: speed. This paper asks whether they are neglecting spillovers on output quality. Using high‐frequency data on the speed and quality of strawberry harvesters' work, we offer novel evidence that two distinct workplace policies associated with increases in worker speed lead to similar decreases in the quality of their work. We find that both peer speed and wage changes boost worker speed and lower output quality; 10 percent increases in speed are associated with reductions in quality on the order of 1.5–1.7 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rottenberg argued that the reassignment of negotiating rights from owners to players, that would accompany free agency in professional sports, would have little impact on locational or market outcomes. Empirical investigations into such reassignment have produced mixed results. The present paper examines the impact such reassignment had on professional sports athletes' career length. By examining the univariate time series and panel data behavior of Major League Baseball players' average tenure and retention rates, we find that the increased negotiating power associated with the advent of free agency had the impact of shortening average player career length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the impact of replications published as comments in the American Economic Review between 2010 and 2020. We examine their citations and influence on the original papers' (OPs) subsequent citations. Our results show that comments are barely cited, and they do not affect the OP's citations—even if the comment diagnoses substantive problems. Furthermore, we conduct an opinion survey among replicators and authors and find that there often is no consensus on whether the OP's contribution sustains. We conclude that the economics literature does not self‐correct, and that robustness and replicability are hard to define in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resurgence of inflation has been accompanied by a reversal of prospects of growth, with a prominent role assigned to the fall of households' purchasing power. Yet this real income effect of inflation surprises, independent of restrictive monetary policy, is not present in the standard New Keynesian models for monetary policy. The reason lies in the formulation of the consumption‐based "IS equation". The paper shows how the income effect can be introduced by reformulating the consumption function, with the consequence that it exerts an autonomus stabilization effect on inflation. The main monetary policy implications are examined by means of simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of religious fasting on truth‐telling using a laboratory experiment in Egypt. While fasting‐induced religiosity may promote truth‐telling, the physiological and psychological changes during fasting, due to alimentary abstention and self‐control exertion, may reduce honesty, especially when fasting is augmented with effort. We examine this question by tracing individual truth‐telling decisions, in the absence and presence of additional effort, both before and during Ramadan. We find that neither effort nor fasting alone affects honesty, but exerting effort while fasting reduces honesty. We provide suggestive evidence on the mechanisms potentially driving this negative effect on honesty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an oligopolistic model with consumption externalities to study (i) the policy interaction between tariffs and product standards; (ii) how such interaction may affect the welfare justification of national treatment (NT) in product standards. Absent NT, tariff reductions can lead to more discriminatory standards against foreign firms. Imposing NT eliminates discrimination but can induce higher tariffs which tend to undermine efficiency. As a result, the welfare justification of NT is stronger when tariffs are constrained. These findings suggest that the World Trade Organization's success in tariff liberalization can strengthen the case for its NT‐based approach to product standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, nearly all states have adopted Perinatal Quality Collaboratives (PQCs), which set guidelines for hospitals to provide higher standards of prenatal care. In this paper, I use individual‐level natality data from 1989 to 2019 and a stacked difference in differences design comparing maternal and infant health outcomes in US states that have recently established a PQC to those that have not yet established one. Estimates indicate that PQCs decrease eclampsia, with the effect driven by Black mothers. Evidence also shows that PQCs reduce intensive care unit admissions for mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how recreational marijuana legalization (RML) affects first‐time college enrollment in the US using a unique college‐level dataset and various estimation methods such as difference‐in‐differences and event study. I find that RML increases enrollments by approximately up to 9%, without compromising degree completion or graduation rate, and it boosts college competitiveness by offering a positive amenity, as evidenced by the rise in out‐of‐state enrollments relative to neighboring states. In addition, I find no evidence that RML affects college prices, quality, or in‐state enrollment. This effect is stronger for non‐selective public colleges in early‐adopting RML states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We design an experiment to study gender differences in reactions to editorial decisions on submissions to top economics journals. Respondents read a hypothetical editor's letter where the decision (e.g., revise and resubmit) is randomized across participants. Relative to an R&R, female assistant professors who receive a rejection perceive a significantly lower likelihood of subsequently publishing the paper in any leading journal than comparable male assistant professors. We do not find this gender difference among tenured professors. We consider several mechanisms, pointing to gender differences in attribution of negative feedback to ability and confidence under time constraints as likely explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit will have implications on financial stability and the implementation of macroprudential policies. The United Kingdom (UK) will no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Systemic Risk Board. This paper studies the welfare implications of this change of regime. By means of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, I compare the pre‐Brexit scenario with the new one, in which the UK sets macroprudential policy independently. I find that, after Brexit, the UK is better off by setting its own macroprudential policy without taking into account Europe's welfare as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how privacy regulation shaped firm performance. Controlling for firm and country‐industry‐year unobserved characteristics, we compare the outcomes of firms at different levels of exposure to EU markets, before and after the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018. We find that the GDPR had the unintended consequence of harming the profitability of companies targeting European consumers through the cost channel. Technology firms experienced a 2.1% decline in profits, but not in sales. The GDPR increased extra expenses, added to firms wage bills, and accelerated patenting in GDPR‐related technology fields. The main burdens have been borne by smaller companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a social network adjacency matrix constructed from the Facebook Social Connectedness Index (SCI), this paper examines whether social learning facilitates climate risk perception updates to inform climate adaptation. We find that Hurricanes Harvey and Irma‐induced regional flooding increased flood insurance policies nationwide to the extent of each county's social network proximity to the flooded areas, with a corresponding update in climate risk perception. Social learning resulted in an additional 250,000 policies in flooded counties and 81,000 policies in unflooded counties over 3 years. We find evidence of the salience effect but no support for adverse selection or over‐insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do capital controls and banking concentration affect economic development? This paper develops a general equilibrium model to study these important issues. To do so, we construct a framework with heterogeneous agents and imperfectly competitive financial intermediaries who help depositors manage liquidity risk. Importantly, higher levels of concentration raise the cost of domestic borrowing which increase the reliance on international capital markets. Finally, once the rate of money growth is sufficiently high, capital controls bind and the effects of monetary policy on capital formation are more pronounced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the causal impact of immigration on outcomes commonly involves using a “shift‐share” or Bartik instrument, exploiting country‐specific immigration inflows (shifts) and location specific prior shares for the same countries. New findings suggest that identifying variation may come not from the shifts, as previously believed, but rather from the shares. In this paper, I first replicate Hunt and Gauthier‐Loiselle (HGL) who find skilled immigration increases innovation, and second employ new tests from the shift‐share literature. I find that the results of HGL replicate and hold up well to these new tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper replicates the study “A Model of Secular Stagnation: Theory and Quantitative Evaluation” by Eggertsson et al. using the Dynare toolkit. Replication is important as it confirms the results of the original article, provides a user‐friendly version using Dynare, and shows how to deal with large‐scale models with occasionally binding constraints. The results show that the original Matlab code was fully replicated, but minor discrepancies were found between the paper's equations and the code. The two models produce similar dynamics but with small differences, particularly at the beginning of the simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the impact of new stadiums on attendance and revenues of Major League Baseball teams between 1970 and 2019. Recent studies reveal that two‐way fixed effects (TWFE) models may produce biased estimates, proposing an "imputation" method instead. This paper uses the imputation method to generate a counterfactual estimate, based on untreated observations: the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) equals the difference between actual and counterfactual estimates. The analysis shows that there were significant anticipation effects associated with new stadiums, up to three seasons before opening. It suggests previous estimates may significantly understate new stadium revenue gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing the markets that allocate public school seats is a crucial policy consideration. This paper compares the design of school choice mechanisms in terms of economic efficiency, stability, and strategic behavior. We estimate demand for schools using data from a large US public school system with novel indicators of students' levels of strategic sophistication. We find important benefits of reserving a set of seats to be assigned by a pure lottery. In settings that share features in common with the school system we study, our findings suggest that non‐selective criteria such as lotteries induce a large increase in truth‐telling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the welfare impact of expanding the negotiation agenda of an international agreement between asymmetric countries (e.g., including specific negotiations over environmental regulations or labor standards in a conventional trade agreement) and demonstrates why such proposed expansions are contentious. A main result is that agenda expansions that provide more bargaining flexibility will increase the efficiency of the agreement but can result in a less equitable agreement that hurts the country that is at a bargaining disadvantage. Similarly, we demonstrate that decreases in bargaining game asymmetry can also make the disadvantaged country worse‐off even as it increases global welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in crude oil amid the "financialization of commodity markets" and the "fracking revolution". It applies the generalized spectral derivative test (Hong and Lee 2005) on both West Texas Intermediate and Brent spot and futures markets, alongside a stochastic dominance test (Linton et al., 2005) to investigate arbitrage opportunities across markets and benchmarks. The findings indicate that financialization has made each market more efficient but also created more arbitrage opportunities in spot‐futures markets at both benchmarks. The fracking revolution has fragmented oil markets but had little impact on EMH in individual markets or across markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large literature documents a positive correlation between parental income and child test scores. In this paper, we study whether this relationship, the dependence of the cognitive skills of children on the socioeconomic resources of their parents, varies across race. Using education data linked to tax records, we find that the income‐achievement gap is small for East Asian children while significantly larger for Indigenous children. School‐level factors explains a large portion of the variation in the gap across race. Our results suggest that the large income‐achievement gap for Indigenous students stems partially from inequality in special needs diagnoses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how pre‐play communication between players with partial credibility affects the ensuing strategic interaction. We consider an environment where players are uncertain about the economic and psychological costs of reneging on promises but learn these at the time of their implementation. We demonstrate that in the equilibrium both players make promises. The latter are partially effective in terms of achieving collusive outcomes and improving the players' payoffs under strategic complementarity, where promises are used to signal future collusive behavior. In contrast, under strategic substitutability the ability to make a promise can be used to signal future aggressive behavior and one of the players may even get a lower expected (before the type is revealed) payoff than in the game without communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impacts of a government‐led e‐commerce expansion project on household income. We find that the project has led to increases in rural household income. The positive impacts are more prominent for lower‐income rural households. The income‐increasing effects are driven by the reduction in information search costs and transportation costs. The provision of complementary interventions for e‐commerce, such as promoting the internet‐related skills of farmers and the expansion of formal financial credit support is also important for the program's success. The results provide policy implications for the design and implementation of government‐led e‐commerce policies in developing economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of social pensions on old‐age poverty. To achieve causal identification, we leverage the reduction in the minimum eligibility age of Mexico's flagship non‐means‐tested social pension program. We find that the program's expansion significantly reduced extreme poverty, mainly among indigenous seniors and in rural areas. However, it had negligible effects on labor force participation, suggesting that social pensions were not effective in ensuring minimum economic well‐being and simultaneously inducing retirement among seniors at early stages of old age. The program's small cash transfer and mistargeting are among the main explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to meet climate goals, but these emissions are not the only harmful bi‐products of fossil‐fuel combustion. This paper shows how a regional cap‐and‐trade program designed to regulate CO2 emissions affects the release of federally‐regulated toxins in the Toxics Release Inventory. We find that the program reduces toxic releases from coal‐fired electric plants by 78%, and that harmful metal releases (e.g., lead, mercury) have fallen by 54%. There is no evidence of spillovers into non‐adopting areas. This unintended beneficial effect of the carbon dioxide cap‐and‐trade policy provides compelling evidence of the co‐abatement of harmful compounds alongside greenhouse gas emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how individuals resolve an exploration versus exploitation trade‐off in a laboratory experiment. The experiment implements the single‐agent exponential bandit model. We analyze how subjects respond to changes in the prior belief, safe action, and discount factor. We find that subjects respond in the predicted direction to these changes. However, we find that subjects under‐respond to the prior belief, under‐respond to the safe action, and typically explore less than predicted. Our results suggest that neither risk aversion nor the random termination probability are driving under‐experimentation. Our results are consistent with subjects having incorrect beliefs about exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the differential effect of trade agreements on income per capita of subnational regions with international borders. We construct an extensive panel dataset covering 1350 regions in 86 countries worldwide between 1950 and 2017. Our results show that trade agreements are positively associated with income per capita of regions sharing contiguous borders with trading partners, relative to regions sharing borders with countries with whom no trade agreements exist. For border regions, the positive relationship of trade agreements and regional income roughly compensates potential income disadvantages of having international borders. These insights help in explaining and mitigating regional inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature evaluating the performance of local governments by analyzing the effect of local public expenditures on sports facilities on sports participation in Germany. To this end, we use a new data base containing public expenditures at the municipality level and link this information with individual level data. We form locally weighted averages of expenditures based on geographic distances and analyze how effects of sports facility expenditures change with different expenditures levels ("dose‐response relationship"). We find no effect of sports facility expenditures on individual sports participation. These findings are robust across age groups and municipality sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though antitrust authorities have historically focused on prices in merger analyses, there is now growing interest in the impact of mergers on non‐price outcomes. In this paper, we examine the effect of horizontal mergers on product variety in the U.S. beer industry. Our difference‐in‐differences analyses provide evidence that acquired firms increase variety available to consumers by expanding into new markets, while reducing the variety of products sold in their existing markets. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that in aggregate, these acquisitions have a net positive effect on product variety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who knows the underlying productivity distribution function? Interestingly, this ambiguous function is often referenced to make decisions including job creations, wage determinations, contract formulations, etc. To investigate how ambiguity shapes labor markets, we integrate ambiguity preferences into the Diamond‐Mortensen‐Pissarides (DMP) model. We find that ambiguity‐averse job‐ and talent‐hunters are conservative. Our quantitative analysis indicates that but for the ambiguity, the American unemployment rate would have increased in the postwar era. This paper generalizes the DMP model, enhances our understanding of the labor market, and calls for policies concerning labor market information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of experience in determining the deterrent effect of criminal punishment. Economic models of crime typically assume potential offenders know the probability of apprehension. Thus, neither the individual's personal experience of being caught and punished nor the observation of someone else's punishment experience affects that individual's future behavior. This paper incorporates a role for experience in determining criminal activity, distinguishing between (1) how individuals form perceptions of the probability of punishment, including how those perceptions are influenced by what they experience or observe, and (2) how those perceptions, once formed, influence their decisions about criminal activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the optimal policy to deal with unemployment features important roles for monitoring of search and job search assistance, with the optimal combined policy also incorporating more generous unemployment insurance (UI). These results are significantly different from the previous literature, which has overwhelmingly focused on UI on its own. I incorporate two empirically relevant phenomena that have often been ignored: private consumption smoothing and fiscal externalities from income taxes. I estimate a job search model using indirect inference on data from the March Current Population Survey, and simulate the model to evaluate a variety of policy reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vast number of empirical studies have found that monopsony power is pervasive in labor markets. In some circumstances, the exercise of monopsony results in wage discrimination that is not taste‐based. Instead, it results from profit maximization in the presence of different labor supply functions of two distinct groups of workers. This paper examines the profit maximizing employment decisions of a monopsonist under these conditions, as well as the public policy regarding wage discrimination. The economic effects of the current statutes are also examined, as well as some policy recommendations to strengthen the prohibition of wage discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the preferences of a foreign firm and a host country government over two modes of FDI in two‐sided markets: de novo entry (through the establishment of a new platform) and acquisition of the domestic incumbent platform. Technology transfer, cross‐side network externalities and platform service differentiation determine the ranking of the host country welfare gains and the entrant's profits under the two entry modes. In the case where the foreign entrant and the host government disagree over the entry modes ranking, asymmetric foreign equity restrictions can induce the welfare‐optimal choice of the entry mode by the foreign firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of daylight saving time (DST) on fatal road crashes in Australia. I exploit within year transitions to and from DST in a regression discontinuity in time framework. To examine the long run effect of the policy, I use trials of DST implemented in various states, and a DST extension due to the Sydney Olympics. Neither the transition to or out of DST, nor the long run effects of DST have an impact on fatalities on the road. However, there is evidence of reallocation of accidents over the day due to ambient light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of source‐country culture on the labor supply of female immigrants in Europe. We find that the labor supply of immigrant women is positively associated with the female‐to‐male labor force participation ratio in their source country, which serves as a proxy for the country's preferences and beliefs regarding women's roles. This suggests that the culture and norms of their source country play an important role for immigrant women's labor supply. However, contradicting previous evidence for the US, we do not find evidence that the cultural effect persists through the second generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common in empirical analysis to facilitate inference by transforming the dependent variable to follow a standard normal distribution. In this paper, I show that using this transformation results in the estimated treatment effects being systematically attenuated toward zero and bounded in magnitude. The level of attenuation can be empirically relevant. I propose an alternative normalization wherein the dependent variable is divided by the square root of its within variation, which corrects these issues. I show that, in a simple linear regression, the method produces an estimated treatment effect that is numerically identical to Cohen's d. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1974 trade act substantially increased the executive branch's authority in trade negotiations through the granting of fast‐track and Section 301 authority. This paper evaluates the effect on U.S. voting behavior resulting from trade with Japan over 1976–1992 time period. To capture U.S. trade exposures to Japan, we develop the Bartik index from Autor et al. (2013) for import competition with Japan and show that local exposure to import competition had statistically significant negative impacts on Republican presidential candidates over the 1976–1984 period. Although the second Reagan administration used Section 301 to open Japan's markets and Japanese firms shifted production to the United States, job‐creation effects of exports and foreign direct investment did not have any influence on voting outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses how democracy can affect public finance and state capacity investment. We show that the effect of democracy on public policy can take two forms: direct and indirect. The direct effect transpires when increasing democracy leads to an increase in public expenditure which results in increased public goods provision and reduced political rent. The indirect effect emerges when increased democracy leads to a reduction in state capacity investment and, subsequently, to a reduction in public goods provision. Paradoxically, lower political rents deteriorate the incumbent's incentive to invest in state capacity, at the expense of public goods provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the transmission mechanisms that underlie China's house price fluctuations using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. The model is estimated with Bayesian methods, which accounts well for business cycle properties of the housing market. Results show that shocks to housing productivity and the government land supply to housing developers are the primary contributors to house price volatility, accounting for 37% of house price volatility in the short run and 32% in the long run. The importance of housing valuation shocks and shocks to migration only increases in models without the supply side of the housing market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the standard location‐then‐pricing Hotelling duopoly with a catalog competition game in which firms simultaneously decide locations and prices. We consider a three‐location space and continuous pricing and fully characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium. In both games, firms employ mixed strategies, producing a mainstream product more often than a specialized one. In the catalog game, prices are always above the marginal cost of production, whereas in the sequential model, prices converge to the marginal cost when firms produce the same variety. We experimentally test our theoretical predictions in the laboratory, finding strong evidence in favor of most of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To mitigate sequencing effects in decision‐making, many situations require a set of items to be considered in a random order. When such orderings are repeated, one can test whether randomization indeed obtains, or whether some orderings have been manipulated in order to achieve a favorable result. This paper articulates the key features of this problem and presents three general tests for randomness. These methods are used to analyze the order in which lottery numbers are drawn in Powerball, contestants perform on American Idol, and candidates are placed on election ballots. This last application features frequent manipulation, with potentially serious consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the association between the informal economy and the adoption of central bank digital currency (CBDC) by end users, namely households and businesses. Our findings suggest that CBDC may not be widely accepted by end users in the presence of a sizable informal economy in which cash is the primary method of payment. CBDC can decrease informality, but this effect becomes weaker in countries with larger informal economies. Tax reduction and CBDC interest rates can be useful tools to promote the adoption and effectiveness of CBDC, leading to a reallocation effect between formal and informal sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging is widely assumed to have detrimental effects on economic development, especially through an increased social security burden. This paper starts with the potential problems of the pension system in China. We investigate how local governments respond to population aging and the impact of population aging on the firm pension contributions using administrative data from the period 2008–2015. We present three findings. First, population aging increases the pension contributions of firms. Second, fiscal pressure is the channel through which population aging affects pension enforcement. Last, the pension administration system could affect the net impact of population aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, several economies have experienced changes in the level of aggregate and idiosyncratic volatility. This paper investigates the appropriate labor market policy response to such changes. We introduce unemployment benefits financed by a proportional earnings tax within a model of directed search on the job. The optimal benefit level is hump‐shaped as a function of the level of idiosyncratic risk, and the welfare costs of deviating from the optimum are substantial. In contrast, while the optimal generosity of unemployment insurance—which is pro‐cyclical—declines with the amount of aggregate risk, the welfare costs of deviating are small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]