Front Matter

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Undisclosed Debt Sustainability

By Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Over the past decade, non-Paris Club creditors, notably China, have become an important source of financing for low- and middle-income countries. In contrast with typical sovereign debt, these lending arrangements are not public, and other creditors have ...

Sovereign Debt Auctions in Turbulent Times

By Harold Cole, Daniel Neuhann, and Guillermo Ordoñez

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We use a model of multiunit discriminatory auctions with asymmetrically informed risk-averse bidders to analyze Mexican sovereign bond auctions during periods of macroeconomic stress. We argue that the discriminatory protocol provides insurance benefits t...

Hidden Defaults

By Sebastian Horn, Carmen M. Reinhart, and Christoph Trebesch

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

China's lending boom to developing countries is morphing into defaults and debt distress. Given the secrecy surrounding China's loans, the associated defaults remain "hidden," as missed payments and restructuring details are not disclosed. We construct an...

Hidden Debt

By Bulent Guler, Yasin Kürşat Önder, and Temel Taskin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We study the role of transparency in debt and default dynamics in a quantitative sovereign default model augmented with asymmetric information. We assume that the sovereign debt portfolio is not transparent and part of the debt is not observable to lender...

Immigration and Labor Market (Mis)perceptions

By Nicolás Ajzenman, Patricio Dominguez, and Raimundo Undurraga

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Exposure to immigrants often triggers sentiments of hostility and backlash among native-born populations. Among the main concerns identified by surveys, labor market conditions typically rank at the top. We combine a two-way fixed effects model with a Bar...

Implicit Stereotypes in Teachers' Track Recommendations

By Michela Carlana, Eliana La Ferrara, and Paolo Pinotti

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We study the relationship between teachers' stereotypes and students' high school choice in a setting where students can enroll in more or less demanding high school tracks. We show that teachers with negative stereotypes toward immigrants, as measured by...

Estimating the Disparate Cumulative Impact of the Pandemic in Administrative Unemployment Insurance Data

By Alex Bell, T. J. Hedin, Peter Mannino, Roozbeh Moghadam, Carl Romer, Geoffrey C. Schnorr, and Till von Wachter

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

To better measure the full extent of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on workers and the labor market, this paper estimates three measures of the cumulative impact of the pandemic on workers across intensive and extensive margins using longitudinal admin...

Early Withdrawal of Pandemic Unemployment Insurance: Effects on Employment and Earnings

By Kyle Coombs, Arindrajit Dube, Calvin Jahnke, Raymond Kluender, Suresh Naidu, and Michael Stepner

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We examine the effects of the sudden withdrawal of expanded pandemic unemployment benefits in June 2021 using anonymized bank transaction data for 16,253 individuals receiving unemployment insurance (UI) in April 2021. Comparing the difference-in-differen...

Equity in Unemployment Insurance Benefit Access

By Christopher J. O'Leary, William E. Spriggs, and Stephen A. Wandner

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We investigate the uneven pattern of access to unemployment insurance (UI) by age, gender, race, and ethnicity across the United States. We present results from a descriptive analysis using publicly available data reported by states over time on rates of ...

Social Distancing, Stimulus Payments, and Domestic Violence: Evidence from the US during COVID-19

By Bilge Erten, Pinar Keskin, and Silvia Prina

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We examine the effects of social distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the reporting of domestic violence to the police in the United States. Using daily domestic violence calls from 31 police departments from January to September 2020 (compa...

Public School Access or Stay-at-Home Partner: Factors Mitigating the Adverse Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Academic Parents

By Tatyana Deryugina, Olga Shurchkov, and Jenna Stearns

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic created unexpected and prolonged disruptions to childcare access. Using survey evidence on time use by academic researchers before and after the pandemic, we analyze the extent to which greater access to either school-based or partne...

Gendered Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries

By Titan Alon, Matthias Doepke, Kristina Manysheva, and Michèle Tertilt

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

In many high-income economies, the COVID-19 recession has resulted in unprecedented declines in women's employment. We examine how the forces that underlie this observation play out in developing countries. A force affecting high- and low-income countries...

Is Remote Sensing Data Useful for Studying the Association between Pandemic-Related Changes in Economic Activity and Intimate Partner Violence?

By Jorge M. Agüero, Erica Field, Ignacio Rodriguez Hurtado, and Javier Romero

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Using a survey conducted in Peru, we explore the use of remote sensing data in predicting income and intimate partner violence (IPV). We find that remote sensing measures correctly predict short-run changes in income during the COVID-19 pandemic. However,...

Black Land Loss: 1920−1997

By Dania V. Francis, Darrick Hamilton, Thomas W. Mitchell, Nathan A. Rosenberg, and Bryce Wilson Stucki

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Black agricultural land ownership was at a peak just after the turn of the twentieth century; however, there was a nearly 90 percent decline in ownership from 1910 to 1997. In this paper, we use US Census of Agriculture data to estimate that the present, ...

Intersectionality and Financial Inclusion in the United States

By Vicki L. Bogan and Sarah E. Wolfolds

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Recent estimates indicate approximately 8.4 million US households are unbanked with an additional 24.2 million US households classified as underbanked. We focus on intersectionality, specifically the intersection of race and gender, to better understand t...

At the Intersection of Race, Occupational Status, and Middle-Class Attainment in Young Adulthood

By Fenaba R. Addo

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 cohort, the study explores the intersection of labor force attachment and economic inequality. Using a wealth-based definition of middle-class status, changes in wealth inequality among the wor...

Child-to-Parent Intergenerational Transfers, Social Security, and Child Wealth Building

By Andria Smythe

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

I study the relationship among child-to-parent transfers, parents' social security eligibility, and child wealth building. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and a regression discontinuity approach, I find that the wealth of adult children...

A General Solution to the Problem of Setting Optimal Default Options

By B. Douglas Bernheim and Jonas Mueller-Gastell

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We examine the problem of setting optimal default options such as passively selected contribution rates in employee-directed pension plans. Existing results suggest that a simple rule of thumb, opt-out minimization, is optimal under special conditions, bu...

Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects

By John Beshears, James Choi, David Laibson, and Peter Maxted

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

Present bias causes procrastination, which leads households to stick with auto-enrollment defaults. However, present bias also engenders overconsumption. Separation from each employer generates a rollover of 401(k) balances to an individual retirement acc...