The Rising Value of Time and the Origin of Urban Gentrification

By Yichen Su

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

In recent decades, gentrification has transformed American central city neighborhoods. I estimate a spatial equilibrium model to show that the rising value of high-skilled workers' time contributes to the gentrification of American central cities. I show ...

Reducing Frictions in College Admissions: Evidence from the Common Application

By Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

College admissions in the United States are decentralized, creating frictions that limit student choice. We study the Common Application (CA) platform, under which students submit a single application to member schools, potentially reducing frictions and ...

Issuance and Incidence: SNAP Benefit Cycles and Grocery Prices

By Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, and Katherine Meckel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Many safety net programs issue benefits as monthly lump-sum payments. We investigate how the timing of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit issuance affects food purchases and the incidence of the transfer. Using scanner data from a la...

Increasing Hours Worked: Moonlighting Responses to a Large Tax Reform

By Alisa Tazhitdinova

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Moonlighting is increasingly popular in OECD countries, with 5 to 10 percent of workers holding two or more jobs. However, little is known about the responsiveness of moonlighting to financial incentives due to the lack of identifying variation. This pape...

Yellow Vests, Pessimistic Beliefs, and Carbon Tax Aversion

By Thomas Douenne and Adrien Fabre

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Using a representative survey, we find that after the Yellow Vests movement, French people would largely reject a tax and dividend policy, i.e., a carbon tax whose revenues are redistributed uniformly to each adult. They overestimate their net monetary lo...

Removing Welfare Traps: Employment Responses in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment

By Jouko Verho, Kari Hämäläinen, and Ohto Kanninen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

This paper provides evidence that replacing minimum unemployment benefits with a basic income of equal size has minor employment effects at best. We examine an experiment in Finland in which 2,000 benefit recipients were randomized to receive a monthly ba...

Improving Preferential Market Access through Rules of Origin: Firm-Level Evidence from Bangladesh

By Tobias Sytsma

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

In countries where there exist limited opportunities to source inputs locally, rules of origin undermine access to preferential trade agreements for final goods exporters. I analyze the 2011 revision to the rules of origin associated with the European Uni...

How Do Households Value the Future? Evidence from Property Taxes

By Hans R.A. Koster and Edward W. Pinchbeck

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Despite the near ubiquity of intertemporal choice, there is little consensus on the rate at which individuals trade present and future costs and benefits. We contribute to this debate by estimating discount rates from extensive data on housing transaction...

Call for Papers: Applied Economics Teaching Resources

[News]

February 04, 2022

This is a general call for papers for innovations in teaching.

Call for Papers: 2022 Annual Congress of the IIPF "Public Finance in Emerging Economies"

[News]

February 04, 2022

The submission deadline is February 18, 2022.

Information Networks and Collective Action: Evidence from the Women's Temperance Crusade

By Camilo García-Jimeno, Angel Iglesias, and Pinar Yildirim

American Economic Review, January 2022

How do social interactions shape collective action, and how are they mediated by networked information technologies? We answer these questions studying the Temperance Crusade, a wave of anti-liquor protest activity spreading across 29 states between 1873 ...

Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal (RSDR) Fellowship of the Social Science Research Council

[News]

February 07, 2022

Applications are due by April 14, 2022.

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

Political Distortions, State Capture, and Economic Development in Africa

[Symposium: Economies of Africa]

By Nathan Canen and Leonard Wantchekon

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

This article studies the role of political distortions in driving economic growth and development in Africa. We first discuss how existing theories based on long-run structural factors (e.g., pre-colonial and colonial institutions, or ethnic diversity) ma...

The Price of Nails since 1695: A Window into Economic Change

By Daniel E. Sichel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

This paper focuses on the price of nails since 1695 and the proximate source of changes in those prices. Why nails? They are a basic manufactured product whose form and quality have changed relatively little over the last three centuries, yet the proces...

The Puzzle of Falling US Birth Rates since the Great Recession

By Melissa S. Kearney, Phillip B. Levine, and Luke Pardue

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

This paper documents a set of facts about the dramatic decline in birth rates in the United States between 2007 and 2020 and explores possible explanations. The overall reduction in the birth rate reflects declines across many groups of women, including...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

Labor Productivity Growth and Industrialization in Africa

[Symposium: Economies of Africa]

By Margaret McMillan and Albert Zeufack

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

Manufacturing has made an important contribution to raising living standards in many parts of the world. Concerns about premature deindustrialization have made some observers skeptical about the potential for manufacturing to play this role in Africa. B...

Agricultural Technology in Africa

[Symposium: Economies of Africa]

By Tavneet Suri and Christopher Udry

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

We discuss recent trends in agricultural productivity in Africa and highlight how technological progress in agriculture has stagnated on the continent. We briefly review the literature that tries to explain this stagnation through the lens of particular c...

Time Use and Gender in Africa in Times of Structural Transformation

[Symposium: Economies of Africa]

By Taryn Dinkelman and L. Rachel Ngai

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2022

Many African countries are still in the early stages of structural transformation. Typically, as economies move through the structural transformation, activities once conducted within the household are outsourced to the market. This has particular impli...