Increasing the Retirement Age: Policy Effects and Underlying Mechanisms

By Simon Rabaté, Egbert Jongen, and Tilbe Atav

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

We study the effects of increasing the statutory retirement age (SRA) in the Netherlands, using regression discontinuity design and administrative data on the universe of the population. We find clear and large employment effects of the reform. A simple m...

State Taxation of Nonresident Income and the Location of Work

By David R. Agrawal and Kenneth Tester

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

Prior studies show that taxes matter for the residential locations of high-income earners. But states raise a significant share of revenue from nonresidents. Using variation in state tax rates, we provide causal evidence on the effect of the net-of-tax ra...

Job Training and Job Search Assistance Policies in Developing Countries

By Eliana Carranza and David McKenzie

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Governments around the developing world face pressure to intervene actively to help jobseekers find employment. Two of the most common policies used are job training, based on the idea that many of those seeking jobs lack the skills employers want, and ...

America, Jump-Started: World War II R&D and the Takeoff of the US Innovation System

By Daniel P. Gross and Bhaven N. Sampat

American Economic Review, December 2023

During World War II, the US government's Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) supported one of the largest public investments in applied R&D in US history. Using data on all OSRD-funded invention, we show this shock had a formative impact ...

Geographic Dispersion of Economic Shocks: Evidence from the Fracking Revolution: Comment

By Alexander G. James and Brock Smith

American Economic Review, June 2020

Feyrer, Mansur, and Sacerdote (2017) estimates the spatial dispersion of the effects of the recent shale-energy boom by unconditionally regressing income and employment on energy production at various levels of geographic aggregation. However, producing c...

Geographic Dispersion of Economic Shocks: Evidence from the Fracking Revolution

By James Feyrer, Erin T. Mansur, and Bruce Sacerdote

American Economic Review, April 2017

We track the geographic and temporal propagation of local economic shocks from new oil and gas production generated by hydrofracturing. Each million dollars of new production produces $80,000 in wage income and $132,000 in royalty and business income with...

Can Financial Incentives to Firms Improve Apprenticeship Training? Experimental Evidence from Ghana

By Gabriel Brown, Morgan Hardy, Isaac Mbiti, Jamie McCasland, and Isabelle Salcher

American Economic Review: Insights, March 2024

We use a field experiment to test whether financial incentives can improve the quality of apprenticeship training. Trainers (firm owners) in the treatment group participated in a tournament incentive scheme where they received a payment based on their app...

The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications

By Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Gee Hee Hong

American Economic Review, March 2015

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes, and average prices paid by consumers ("effective" prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many US metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective price...

SongYi Paik on agricultural minimum wages

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How do minimum wages affect agricultural labor markets?

What's behind Her Smile? Health, Looks, and Self-Esteem

By Francisco A. Gallego, Cristian Larroulet Philippi, and Andrea Repetto

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2024

This paper examines how improving dental health affects economic, social, and psychological outcomes. In a randomized experiment, we provide a low-income group free dental care, including prostheses, and find significant and persistent impacts on men's an...

The Employment Effects of Ethnic Politics

By Francesco Amodio, Giorgio Chiovelli, and Sebastian Hohmann

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2024

We study the labor market consequences of ethnic politics in African democracies. Using subnational georeferenced data from 15 countries from 1996 to 2017, we compare individuals from ethnicities linked to parties at the margin of electing a representativ...

Dynamism Diminished: The Role of Housing Markets and Credit Conditions

By Steven J. Davis and John Haltiwanger

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2024

We estimate the effects of house price changes on young-firm employment shares and industry-level employment growth in local economies. A novel test shows that house price effects on local economies work through wealth, liquidity, and collateral effects o...

The Heterogeneous Effects of Social Assistance and Unemployment Insurance: Evidence from a Life Cycle Model of Family Labor Supply and Savings

By Peter Haan and Victoria Prowse

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2024

We empirically analyze the heterogeneous welfare effects of unemployment insurance and social assistance. We estimate a structural life cycle model of singles' and married couples' labor supply and savings decisions. The model includes heterogeneity by ag...

The Gender Application Gap: Do Men and Women Apply for the Same Jobs?

By Jonas Fluchtmann, Anita M. Glenny, Nikolaj A. Harmon, and Jonas Maibom

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

Men and women tend to hold different jobs. Are these differences present already in the types of jobs men and women apply for? Using administrative data on job applications made by the universe of Danish unemployment insurance recipients, we provide evide...

Opposing Firm-Level Responses to the China Shock: Output Competition versus Input Supply

By Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Matthieu Lequien, Marc J. Melitz, and Thomas Zuber

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

We decompose the "China shock" into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: an output shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, and an input supply shock affecting ...

Public Pensions and Private Savings

By Esteban García-Miralles and Jonathan M. Leganza

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

How does the provision of public pension benefits impact private savings? We answer this question in the context of a Danish reform that increased social security eligibility ages. Using administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, we identi...

Refugee Benefit Cuts

By Christian Dustmann, Rasmus Landersø, and Lars Højsgaard Andersen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

This paper analyzes the effects of Denmark's Start Aid welfare reform that targets refugees. Implemented in 2002, it enables us to study not only the reform's immediate effects but also its longer-term consequences and its repeal a decade later. The refor...

How Cyclical Is the User Cost of Labor?

[Symposium: Labor Market and Macroeconomics]

By Marianna Kudlyak

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2024

In employment relationships, a wage is an installment payment on an implicit long-term agreement between a worker and a firm. The price of labor that impacts firm's hiring decisions, instead, reflects the hiring wage as well as the impact of economic cond...

The Shifting Reasons for Beveridge Curve Shifts

[Symposium: Labor Market and Macroeconomics]

By Gadi Barlevy, R. Jason Faberman, Bart Hobijn, and Ayşegül Şahin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2024

We discuss how the relative importance of factors that contribute to movements of the US Beveridge curve has changed from 1959 to 2023. We review these factors in the context of a simple flow analogy used to capture the main insights of search and match...

Urban Public Works in Spatial Equilibrium: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

By Simon Franklin, Clément Imbert, Girum Abebe, and Carolina Mejia-Mantilla

American Economic Review, May 2024

This paper evaluates a large urban public works program randomly rolled out across neighborhoods of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We find the program increased public employment and reduced private labor supply among beneficiaries and improved local amenities in...