1. Gustavo Leyva, Carlos Urrutia. "Informal labor markets in times of pandemic". Review of Economic Dynamics Volume 47, January 2023, Pages 158-185.
Abstract:
We document the evolution of labor markets of five Latin American countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, with emphasis on informal employment. We show, for most countries, a slump in aggregate employment, mirrored by a fall in labor participation, and a decline in the informality rate. The latter is unprecedented since informality had cushioned the decline in overall employment in previous recessions. Using a business cycle model with a rich labor market structure, we recover the shocks that rationalize the pandemic recession, showing that labor supply shocks and informal productivity shocks are essential to account for the employment and output loss and the decline in the share of informal workers.
2. Andrei Gomberg, Romans Pancs and Tridib Sharma, "Electoral Maldistricting", International Economic Review. Volume64, Issue3,August 2023, Pages 1223-1264.
Abstract
We introduce a framework to examine, both theoretically and empirically, electoral maldistricting. Maldistricting is defined as districting in pursuit of a policy at the expense of social welfare. Analysis is performed on the set of implementable (via some district map) legislatures, which are characterized geometrically (via majorization) and in information theoretic terms. The index of maldistricting that we propose aligns with courts' purported motivations for requesting redistricting in the three states that form our case study. The maldistricting we document favors Republicans over Democrats.
3.. Isaac Mbiti, Mauricio Romero and youdi Schipper "Designing Effective Teacher Performance Pay Programs: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania", The Economic Journal, Volume 133, Issue 653, July 2023, Pages 1968–200.
Abstract:
We use a nationally representative field experiment in Tanzania to compare two teacher performance pay systems in public primary schools: a Pay for Percentile system (a rank-order tournament) and a “Levels” system that features multiple proficiency thresholds. Pay for Percentile can (under certain conditions) induce socially optimal effort among teachers, while Levels systems can encourage teachers to focus on certain students. Despite the theoretical advantage of the tournament system, we find that both systems
improved student test scores across the distribution of initial learning levels after two years. However, the Levels system is easier to implement and is more cost-effective.
4. Jose Maria Da-Rocha, Diego Restuccia, Marina M. Tavarez, "Policy distortions and aggregate productivity with endogenous establishment-level productivity", European Economic Review. Volume 155, June 2023,
Abstract:
What accounts for income per capita and total factor productivity (TFP) differences across countries? We study resource misallocation across heterogeneous production units in a general equilibrium model where establishment productivity and size are affected by policy distortions. We solve the model in closed form and show that policy distortions have a substantial negative effect on establishment productivity growth, average establishment size, and aggregate productivity. Calibrating a distorted benchmark economy to U.S. data, we find that empirically reasonable variations in distortions generate reductions in aggregate TFP of more than 24 percent while slightly increasing concentration in the establishment size distribution. If distortions in addition lower the exit rate of incumbent establishments, as supported by some empirical evidence, the aggregate TFP loss doubles to 48 percent.
7. Johansson, Christian, Anders Kärnä, and Jaakko Meriläinen. "Vox Populi, Vox Dei? Tacit Collusion in Politics." Economics & Politics. Volume35, Issue3, November 2023. Pages 752-772
Abstract:
We study competition between political parties in repeated elections with probabilistic voting. This model entails multiple equilibria, and we focus on cases where political collusion occurs. When parties hold different opinions on some policy, they may take different policy positions that do not coincide with the median voter's preferred policy platform. In contrast, when parties have a mutual understanding on a particular policy, their policy positions may converge (on some dimension) but not to the median voter's preferred policy. That is to say, parties can tacitly collude with one another, despite political competition. Collusion may collapse, for instance, after the entry of a new political party. This model rationalizes patterns in survey data from Sweden, where politicians on different sides of the political spectrum take different positions on economic policy but similar positions on refugee intake---diverging from the average voter's position, but only until the entry of a populist party.
8. Emilio Gutiérrez, David Jaume and Martin Tobal. "Do Credit Supply Shocks Affect Employment in Middle-Income Countries?" American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Vol. 15,No. 4. November, 2023.
Abstract:
This paper studies the extent to which increases in bank credit supply available for small and medium firms can foster formal employment in Mexico. We use a detailed dataset containing loan-level information for all loans extended by commercial banks to private firms in Mexico during the 2010-2016 period, when the economy was relatively stable. To obtain exogenous variation in credit supply, we exploit differences in the regional presence of Mexican banks across local labor markets by combining pre-existing market shares with national-level changes in banks’ credit supply, after accounting for local credit demand shocks. Then, we use employment registry data to compare changes in the number of formal workers registered by small and medium firms in local labor markets differently exposed to these shocks. We find that credit supply shocks have a large impact on formal employment: a positive credit shock of one standard deviation increases yearly employment growth by 0.45 percentage points (13 percent of the mean). Our results differ from the null to small effects identified by previous literature for developed countries, suggesting that credit supply shocks play a more prominent role for employment creation (and destruction) in low and middle-income countries.
10. Shaun McRae, "Residential Electricity Consumption and Adaptation to Climate Change by Colombian Households". Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Vol. 7, July 2023, 253–279.
Abstract:
This paper provides the first empirical estimates of the relationship between temperatures and household electricity consumption in Colombia, using electricity billing and weather data from 2010 to 2019. I find that higher temperatures (or higher values of the heat index) increase electricity consumption, with the largest effects observed for high-income households in regions with hot climates. However, I show that there has been partial convergence between low- and high-income households, with the effect of temperature on electricity consumption in lower-income neighborhoods more than doubling between 2011 and 2019. These results align with survey evidence of increased air conditioning adoption. Nevertheless, further growth in air conditioning adoption and use is required to alleviate the health effects of more frequent and severe heatwaves due to climate change.
11. Romain Ferrali, Guy Grossman and Horacio Larreguy. “Can low-cost, scalable, online interventions increase youth informed political participation in electoral authoritarian contexts?” Science Advances, Vol. 9 No. 26. 28 Jun 2023.
Abstract:
Young citizens vote at relatively low rates, which contributes to political parties de-prioritizing youth preferences. We analyze the effects of low-cost online interventions in encouraging young Moroccans to cast an informed vote in the 2021 elections. These interventions aim to reduce participation costs by providing information about the registration process and by highlighting the election’s stakes and the distance between respondents’ preferences and party platforms. Contrary to preregistered expectations, the interventions did not increase average turnout, yet exploratory analysis shows that the interventions designed to increase benefits did increase the turnout intention of uncertain baseline voters. Moreover, information about parties’ platforms increased support for the party closest to the respondents’ preferences, leading to better-informed voting. Results are consistent with motivated reasoning, which is surprising in a context with weak party institutionalization.
12. Patrick Harless and Romans Pancs. "A social-status rationale for repugnant market transactions" Economics and Philosophy, Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 102 - 137
Abstract:
Individuals often deem market transactions in sex, human organs and surrogacy, among others, repugnant. Repugnance norms can be explained by appealing to social-status concerns. We study an exchange economy in which agents abhor consumption dominance: one ’ s social status is compromised if one consumes less of every good than someone else does. Dominance may be forestalled by partitioning goods into submarkets and then invoking the repugnance norms that proscribe trade across these submarkets. Dominance may also be forestalled if individuals strategically ‘ overconsume ’ some goods, interpreted as emergent status goods. When equilibria are multiple, there is scope for welfare-enhancing policies that coordinate on status goods.
13. Diego Aycinena, Alexander Elbittar, Andrei Gomberg and Lucas Rentschler, "Does free information provision crowd out costly information acquisition?". Games and Economic Behavior, Volume 141, September 2023, Pages 182-195
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom suggests that promising free information to an agent would crowd-out costly information acquisition. We theoretically demonstrate that this intuition only holds as a knife-edge case in which priors are symmetric. Indeed, when priors are asymmetric, a promise of free information in the future induces agents to increase information acquisition. In the lab, we test whether such crowding out occurs for both symmetric and asymmetric priors. Our results are qualitatively in line with the predictions: when priors are asymmetric, the promise of future free information induces subjects to acquire more costly information.
14. Abhit Bhandari, Horacio Larreguy, John Marshall, "Able and Mostly Willing: An Empirical Anatomy of Information's Effect on Voter-Driven Accountability in Senegal", American Journal of Political Science, Volume 67, Issue 4, October 2023, Pages 104-1066.
Abstract:
Political accountability may be constrained by the reach and relevance of information campaigns in developing democracies and—upon receiving information—voters' ability and will to hold politicians accountable. To illuminate voter-level constraints and information relevance absent dissemination constraints, we conducted a field experiment around Senegal's 2017 parliamentary elections to examine the core theoretical steps linking receiving different types of incumbent performance information to electoral and nonelectoral accountability. Voters immediately processed information as Bayesians, found temporally benchmarked local performance outcomes particularly informative, and updated their beliefs for at least a month. Learning that incumbents generally performed better than expected, voters durably requested greater politician contact after elections while incumbent vote choice increased among likely voters and voters prioritizing local projects when appraising incumbents. In contrast, information about incumbent duties did not systematically influence beliefs or accountability. These findings suggest voters were able and mostly willing to use relevant information to hold politicians to account.
15. Enrique Seira, Yoichi Sugita y Kensuke Teshima, "Assortative Matching of Exporters and Importers" , Review of Economics and Statistics, Volume 105, Issue 6, November 2023.
Abstract:
This paper studies how exporting and importing firms match based on their capability by investigating the change in such exporter-importer matching during trade liberalization. During the recent liberalization of the Mexico-U.S. textile and apparel trade, exporters and importers often switch their main partners as well as change trade volumes. We develop a many-to-many matching model of exporters and importers where partner switching is the principal margin of adjustment, featuring Beckerian positive assortative matching by capability. Trade liberalization achieves efficient global buyer-supplier matching and improves consumer welfare by inducing systematic partner switching. The data confirm the predicted partner-switching patterns.