New Evidence on Earnings Volatility in Survey and Administrative Data

By Michael D. Carr and Emily E. Wiemers

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Despite the rise in cross-sectional inequality since the late 1990s, there is little consensus on trends in earnings volatility during this period. Using consistent samples and methods in administrative earnings data matched to the Survey of Income and Pr...

On the Heterogeneity in Family Earnings and Income Dynamics in the PSID

By Dmytro Hryshko and Iourii Manovskii

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

A large body of knowledge on income dynamics in the United States is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We find two sets of households in the PSID that differ dramatically in the dynamics of their income. Households headed by th...

Beyond the Flipped Class: The Impact of Research-Based Teaching Methods in a Macroeconomics Principles Class

By Austin Boyle and William L. Goffe

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Cognitive scientists have identified fundamental principles influencing learning: deliberate practice, interleaving, retrieval practice, spacing, metacognition, desirable difficulties, limited working memory, curse of knowledge, schema generation, and con...

From "Traditional" to Research-Based Instructional Strategies: An Assessment of Learning Gains

By Sarah B. Cosgrove and Neal H. Olitsky

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

The cognitive science literature provides several research based instructional strategies (RBIS) proven to be effective in student learning. Given the prevalence of lecture-based classes and instructor-led discussions, understanding the effects of switchi...

Low-Cost Randomized Controlled Trials in Education

By Nathan Wozny, Cary Balser, and Drew Ives

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely accepted as the gold standard in program evaluation but are uncommon in educational research. A likely explanation is that experiments designed with sufficient statistical precision to detect meaningful impac...

A New Look at Lake Wobegone: Who's in Your Canoe?

By Chris Bollinger, Tisha L. N. Emerson, Linda English, and Gail M. Hoyt

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

We re-examine the Lake Wobegon effect for reported GPA using data from students enrolled in principles of economics courses. Students are well known to over-report their GPA on surveys. In addition to standard measures of the mean difference, we extend th...

The Disappearing Large-Firm Wage Premium

By Nicholas Bloom, Fatih Guvenen, Benjamin S. Smith, Jae Song, and Till von Wachter

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Large firms have paid significantly higher wages for over a century. Based on administrative data we document that the large-firm wage premium (LFWP) has declined steadily over the last 30 years. Decomposing pay into worker and firm fixed effects, we then...

A Cross-Country Comparison of Dynamics in the Large Firm Wage Premium

By Emanuele Colonnelli, Joacim TÃ¥g, Michael Webb, and Stefanie Wolter

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

We provide stylized facts on the existence and dynamics over time of the large firm wage premium for four countries. We examine matched employer-employee micro-data from Brazil, Germany, Sweden, and the UK, and find that the large firm premium exists in a...

The Productivity-Wage Premium: Does Size Still Matter in a Service Economy?

By Giuseppe Berlingieri, Sara Calligaris, and Chiara Criscuolo

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

The literature has established two robust stylized facts: (i) the existence of a firm size-wage premium and (ii) a positive relationship between firm size and productivity. However, the existing evidence is mainly based on manufacturing, which nowadays ac...

What Matters for the Productivity of Kidney Exchange?

By Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherstone, and Ömer Karaduman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Kidney exchange platforms serve patients who need a kidney transplant and who have a willing, but incompatible, donor. These platforms match patients and donors to produce transplants. This paper documents operational details of the three largest platform...

Dynamic Incentives in Wait List Mechanisms

By Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Paulo Somaini, and Daniel Waldinger

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Many scarce public resources are allocated through wait lists that use priorities for individual agents. A new priority system for allocating deceased donor kidneys was adopted in 2014. This redesign was guided by simulations that held decision-rules fixe...

Dynamics of Child Mortality Inequality

By Tom S. Vogl

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Half a century of economic research asks how economic inequality evolves during aggregate economic progress. I extend this literature to quantify inequality in the incidence of child death across mothers and study its evolution during aggregate mortality ...

Cousin Marriage Is Not Choice: Muslim Marriage and Underdevelopment

By Lena Edlund

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

According to classical Muslim marriage law, a woman needs her guardian's (viz. father's) consent to marry. However, the resulting marriage payment, the mahr, is hers. This split bill may lie behind the high rates of consanguineous marriage in the Muslim w...

Women's Empowerment, the Gender Gap in Desired Fertility, and Fertility Outcomes in Developing Countries

By Matthias Doepke and Michèle Tertilt

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

We document evidence on preferences for childbearing in developing countries. Across countries, men usually desire larger families than women do. Within countries, we find wide dispersion in spouses' desired fertility: there are many couples whose ideal f...

Male Social Status and Women's Work

By Arielle Bernhardt, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, and Charity Troyer-Moore

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Female labor force participation varies significantly even among countries with similar levels of economic development. Recent studies have shown that gender norms can help explain these differences in women's work, but the channels through which norms im...

Split Families and the Future of Children: Immigration Enforcement and Foster Care Placements

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes and Esther Arenas-Arroyo

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Tougher immigration enforcement has been responsible for approximately 1.8 million deportations between 2009 and 2013 alone. Children enter the foster care system when their parents are apprehended, deported, and unable to care for them. We find that the ...

The Effect of Parental Education on Children's Drug and Alcohol Use

By Aaron Chalfin and Monica Deza

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

This research is the first to uncover evidence of an intergenerational effect of education on substance use in the United States. Using data from the NLSY79 and variation in education induced by changes in compulsory schooling laws, we study the effect of...

The Differential Incidence and Severity of Food Insecurity by Racial, Ethnic, and Immigrant Groups over the Great Recession in the United States

By Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Hugo B. Jales, Judith Liu, and Norbert L. Wilson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

We document the differences in food insecurity incidence and severity by race/ethnicity and immigrant status over the Great Recession. We show that the disadvantaged groups with a higher incidence of food insecurity do not necessarily have a higher severi...

Elasticity of Medicaid Access with Respect to State Financial Distress

By Victoria Perez, Joseph Benitez, and Eric Seiber

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

In 2016, total Medicaid spending, $574.2 billion, represented one-third of state budgets. Descriptive studies indicate that state policymakers adjust social welfare programs during times of financial distress, particularly Medicaid. The challenge of forma...

Trends and Disparities in Leave Use under California's Paid Family Leave Program: New Evidence from Administrative Data

By Sarah Bana, Kelly Bedard, and Maya Rossin-Slater

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

We use novel administrative data to study trends and disparities in usage of California's first-in-the-nation paid family leave (PFL) program. We show that take-up for both bonding with a new child and caring for an ill family member increased over 2005â€...