The Association between Wealth Inequality and Socioeconomic Outcomes

By Omer Ali, William A. Darity Jr., Avra Janz, and Marta Sánchez

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We investigate whether inequality in wealth distribution is broadly associated with adverse socioeconomic outcomes across countries. There are few studies that investigate these relationships, likely due to data limitations. On the other hand, a substanti...

The Distributional Impacts of Active Labor Market Programs for Indigenous Populations

By Donna Feir, Kelly Foley, and Maggie E. C. Jones

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We evaluate the distributional impacts of active labor market programming for indigenous peoples in Canada. Using administrative data and an empirical strategy that compares participants in high-intensity programs—skills interventions, job-creation part...

Gaming Opportunities: American Indian Casinos, Cash Transfers, and Income Mobility on the Reservation

By Emilia Simeonova, Randall Akee, and Maggie R. Jones

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We examine the impact of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act on the income rank of American Indian (AI) reservation residents. We assemble a panel dataset at the individual level for tax filers residing on AI reservations in 1989. We examine the effect of ca...

Ownership and Trust in Banks: Evidence from the First Bank in an American Indian Nation

By Donna Feir, Rachel L. Wellhausen, and Calvin Thrall

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

In collaboration with an American Indian nation, we conducted a survey that is the first of its kind in Indian Country. The survey explored tribal members' financial experiences in the months before the first bank opened on their reservation. In this arti...

Indigenous Self-Governance and Development on American Indian Reservations

By Dustin Frye and Dominic P. Parker

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People promotes self-governance as a matter of justice rather than economics. How will self-governance affect the incomes of indigenous people? To gain insight, we compare long-run income growth on American I...

Custom Elections and Local Policies: The Case of Canada's First Nations

By Fernando M. Aragón and Anke S. Kessler

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We examine the effect of community-designed electoral codes on Canadian First Nation communities. Adopting a custom code for local elections allows for changes such as increasing term duration, creating appeal and supervisory bodies, and incorporating tra...

Media, Education and Anti-Americanism in the Muslim World

[Symposium: Middle East]

By Matthew A. Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2004

Recent surveys in the United States and the Muslim world show widespread misinformation about the events of September 11, 2001. Using data from 9 predominantly Muslim countries, we study how such beliefs depend on exposure to news media and levels of educ...

Appropriate Institutions? Traditional Governance and Public Goods Provision in Oaxaca, Mexico

By Gustavo J. Bobonis, Juan C. Chaparro, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, and Marta Rubio-Codina

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

What are the consequences of the adoption of traditional governance institutions among indigenous groups for local government affairs? We study the 1995 Usos y Costumbres traditional governance reform in the state of Oaxaca, which legitimized these struct...

Secured Transactions Laws and Economic Development on American Indian Reservations

By Christian Dippel, Donna Feir, Bryan Leonard, and Marc Roark

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Harmonized commercial laws are considered an essential ingredient to commerce and trade and have been called the backbone of American commerce. Key components of these laws are those governing secured transactions. In recent years, Native American tribal ...

Business Formation: A Tale of Two Recessions

By Emin Dinlersoz, Timothy Dunne, John Haltiwanger, and Veronika Penciakova

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The trajectory of new business applications and transitions to employer businesses differs markedly during the Great Recession and the COVID-19 recession. Both applications and transitions to employer start-ups decreased slowly but persistently in the pos...

Nominal Wage Adjustments during the Pandemic Recession

By John Grigsby, Erik Hurst, Ahu Yildirmaz, and Yulia Zhestkova

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

In this paper, we show that the pandemic recession has led to frequent cuts in nominal wages. Within three months in 2020, as many wage cuts had occurred as occurred throughout the Great Recession. Unlike employment declines, wage cuts were concentrated a...

COVID-19 Shifted Patent Applications toward Technologies That Support Working from Home

By Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, and Yulia Zhestkova

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We examine the text content of US patent applications, identifying those that advance technologies in support of video conferencing, telecommuting, remote interactivity, and working from home (collectively, WFH). The share of new patent applications that ...

Across the Universe: Policy Support for Employment and Revenue in the Pandemic Recession

By Ryan A. Decker, Robert J. Kurtzman, Byron F. Lutz, and Christopher J. Nekarda

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Using data from 14 government sources, we develop comprehensive estimates of US economic activity by sector, legal form of organization, and firm size to characterize how four government direct-lending programs—the Paycheck Protection Program, Main Stre...

Keynesian Production Networks and the COVID-19 Crisis: A Simple Benchmark

By David Baqaee and Emmanuel Farhi

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The COVID-19 crisis is a seemingly all-encompassing shock to supply and demand. These negative shocks affected industries differently: some switched to remote work, maintaining employment and production, while others reduced capacity and shed workers. We ...

Sectoral Effects of Social Distancing

By Jean-Noël Barrot, Basile Grassi, and Julien Sauvagnat

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has led many states to take the drastic measures of social distancing. Using US executive order, occupation, and survey data, we measure the fall in labor supply due to these measures. Starting from a model of production...

COVID-19 and Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A 2021 "Time Bomb"?

By Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan, Veronika Penciakova, and Nick Sander

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

This paper assesses the prospects of a 2021 "time bomb" in small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) failures triggered by the generous support policies enacted during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. Policies implemented in 2020 do not on their own create a 2021...

COVID-19 Is a Persistent Reallocation Shock

By Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, and Brent H. Meyer

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Drawing on data from the firm-level Survey of Business Uncertainty, we present three pieces of evidence that COVID-19 is a persistent reallocation shock. First, rates of excess job and sales reallocation over 24-month periods (looking back 12 months and a...

Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization

By Paul A. Samuelson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2004

Autarky real per capita well being, does not deny that new technical Chinese progress in goods that America previously had competitive advantage in can, ceteris paribus, lower permanently measurable per capita U.S. real income. Nor does it deny that techn...

Financial Fragility during the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Robert L. Clark, Annamaria Lusardi, and Olivia S. Mitchell

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the US economy was closed to limit the virus's spread, and several emergency interventions were implemented. Our analysis of older (45–75) respondents fielded in April–May of 2020 indicates that about 1 in 5 res...

Longevity Perceptions and Saving Decisions during the COVID-19 Outbreak: An Experimental Investigation

By Abigail Hurwitz, Olivia S. Mitchell, and Orly Sade

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We experimentally study individuals' perceptions about and advice to others regarding retirement savings and annuitization during the pandemic. Many people recommend that others save more for retirement, but those most affected by the pandemic tell others...