Creating High-Opportunity Neighborhoods: Evidence from the HOPE VI Program -- by Raj Chetty, Rebecca Diamond, Thomas B. Foster, Lawrence F. Katz, Sonya Porter, Matthew Staiger, Laura Tach
We study whether low-economic-mobility neighborhoods can be transformed into high-mobility areas by analyzing the HOPE VI program, which invested $17 billion to revitalize 262 distressed public housing developments. We estimate the program’s impacts using a matched difference-in-differences design, comparing outcomes in revitalized developments to observably similar control developments using anonymized tax records. HOPE VI reduced neighborhood poverty rates by attracting higher-income families to revitalized neighborhoods, but had no causal impact on the earnings of adults living in public housing units. Children raised in revitalized public housing units earned more, were more likely to ..
NBER > Working PapersIs the Environmental Exposure Gap Shrinking? Evidence from an Extreme Multi-exposure Index -- by Glenn Sheriff, Danae Hernandez-Cortes, TC Chakraborty, Theresa DeConcini
Demographic disparities in exposure to various sources of environmental stress are well documented. While specific stressors are linked to adverse health outcomes, there is uncertainty about how they interact. A first step towards evaluating these joint impacts is to understand the degree to which the same individuals are exposed to extreme simultaneous exposure to each stressor. Here, we adapt the Alkire-Foster multi-dimensional poverty measure to rank exposures to multi-dimensional environmental harm in a way that accounts for the frequency, breadth, and severity of exposure among the extremely exposed. This measure can be used to normatively compare distributions of extreme simultaneous e..
NBER > Working PapersThe Macroeconomic Effects of Neighborhood Policies: a Dynamic Analysis -- by Alessandra Fogli, Veronica Guerrieri, Mark Ponder, Marta Prato
We study the macroeconomic effects of neighborhood-specific policies in a general equilibrium model of a city with endogenous residential sorting and educational investment. A key feature of the model is the presence of endogenous local spillovers that depend on the distribution of families across neighborhoods. We analyze three policies: a housing-voucher policy inspired by the MTO program, which enables poor families to relocate to low-poverty neighborhoods; a place-based transfer (PBT) policy that provides monetary transfers to families in poor neighborhoods; and a place-based investment (PBI) policy that invests resources in local institutions, such as public schools, to directly enhance..
NBER > Working PapersEstimating Demand Systems with Bidding Data -- by Jason Allen, Jakub Kastl, Milena Wittwer
We introduce a framework for estimating demand across multiple assets with bidding data. Unlike existing methods, our approach does not rely on price instruments, which are often difficult to obtain. We describe the data requirements for implementation and illustrate its versatility using two applications: message-level data from Nasdaq and bidder-level data from Canadian Treasury bill auctions. We argue that understanding demand systems is a crucial factor in assessing the impact of market design on price stability and liquidity.
NBER > Working PapersLearning to Quit? A Multi-Year, Multi-Site Field Experiment with Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurs -- by Esther Bailey, Daniel Fehder, Eric Floyd, Yael Hochberg, Daniel J. Lee
We use a randomized experiment with 553 science- and technology-based startups in 12 co-working spaces across the US to evaluate the effects of intensive, short-term entrepreneurial training programs on survival and performance for innovation-driven startups. Treated startups are more likely to shut down their businesses and do so sooner than control startups. Conditional on survival, however, treated startups are more likely to raise external funding for their ventures, raise funding faster, and raise more funding than the control group; they also exhibit higher employment and revenue. Treated founders are less likely to found a new startup after shutdown. Our findings are consistent with p..
NBER > Working PapersWedges: A Microeconomic Perspective on Misallocation -- by Lauren F. Bergquist, Danial Lashkari, Eric Verhoogen
This chapter takes stock of what has been learned from the recent micro-development literature about wedges—mechanisms generating dispersion in marginal revenue products of factors across firms, which are commonly interpreted as indicators of misallocation. We present a general theoretical framework that allows us to consider several different types of wedges simultaneously. We argue that it is important to distinguish between between technological wedges, which are present even in the efficient allocation that would be chosen by the social planner, and distortionary wedges, which are present in market equilibrium but not the social planner's allocation. Not all wedges, as we have defined ..
NBER > Working PapersWhat Happens When Dating Goes Online? Evidence from U.S. Marriage Markets and Health Outcomes -- by Daniel Ershov, Jessica Fong, Pinar Yildirim
This paper studies how online dating platforms have impacted marital outcomes, assortative matching, and sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates in the United States. We construct county-level measures of online dating usage using data from website-based platforms (2002–2013) and mobile app-based platforms (2017–2023). Leveraging county-level variation and an instrumental variable strategy, we show in the desktop era, a 1% increase in online dating sessions raises divorce rates by 0.50%, while in the mobile era, a 1% increase in online dating activity lowers marriage and divorce rates by 0.40% and 0.33%, respectively. We also document shifts in assortative matching. Desktop sites reduce..
NBER > Working PapersThe Redistributive Effects of Federal Medicaid Outlays Across Counties: Evidence from the ACA -- by Laura Montenovo, Kosali I. Simon, Coady Wing
We examine how Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act reshaped federal transfer inflows to counties using state Medicaid expansions between 2014 and 2017. We show that the ACA expansion increased federal Medicaid transfers by $361 per capita in expansion counties. Using our estimates, we forecast that non-expansion counties would gain $554 per capita if they expanded Medicaid. These transfers flow to counties with lower tax capacity and lower gross income. Our findings suggest that Medicaid expansion was a health policy intervention that also functioned as a budgetary mechanism reshaping federal to local transfers and fiscal smoothing across U.S. counties.
NBER > Working PapersPoverty and Dependency in the United States, 1939–2023 -- by Richard V. Burkhauser, Kevin Corinth
We compare trends in absolute poverty before (1939–1963) and after (1963–2023) the War on Poverty was declared. Our primary methodological contribution is to create a post-tax post-transfer income measure using the 1940, 1950 and 1960 Decennial Censuses through imputations of taxes and transfers as well as certain forms of market income including perquisites (Collins and Wanamaker 2022), consistent with the full income measures developed by Burkhauser et al. (2024) for subsequent years. From 1939–1963, poverty fell by 29 percentage points, with even larger declines for Black people and all children. While absolute poverty continued to fall following the War on Poverty’s declaration, ..
NBER > Working PapersMapping Technological Trajectories: Evidence from Two Centuries of Patent Data -- by Antonin Bergeaud, Ruveyda Nur Gozen, John Van Reenen
We introduce a methodology to measure cross-country trends in innovation capability - “technological trajectories” and implement this on a new rich dataset covering patents between 1836 and 2016 across multiple countries. Intuitively, trajectories are revealed by a country’s sustained increases in patenting across multiple patent offices. We first describe the data patterns, showing the relative decline of the UK, and the rise first of the US and Germany, and then later of Japan and China. We then econometrically estimate trajectories on (i) the post-1902 period for France, Germany, Japan, the UK and US, and (ii) the post-1960 period for a wider sample of 40 countries. Our trajectories..
NBER > Working PapersClientelism: How It Works, Why It Persists and How to Break It -- by Jimmy Graham, Horacio Larreguy, Pablo Querubín
This chapter surveys the economics and political science literature on clientelism. We define clientelism as the exchange of votes or electoral participation for targeted material benefits and argue that it undermines electoral accountability, fostering rent-seeking and the underprovision of public goods. We document the prevalence of clientelism across countries and over time and examine how economic underdevelopment both facilitates clientelistic practices and may be perpetuated by them. We then analyze the agency problems that characterize clientelistic exchanges, focusing on broker–voter and politician–broker relationships, and review evidence on the roles of monitoring, selection, a..
NBER > Working PapersThe Macroeconomic Effects of Climate Policy Uncertainty -- by Konstantinos Gavriilidis, Diego R. Känzig, Ramya Raghavan, James H. Stock
We develop a novel measure of climate policy uncertainty based on newspaper coverage. Our index spikes during key U.S. climate policy events—including presidential announcements on international agreements, congressional debates, and regulatory disputes—and shows a recent upward trend. Using an instrument for plausibly exogenous uncertainty shifts, we find that higher climate policy uncertainty decreases output and emissions while raising commodity and consumer prices, acting as supply rather than demand shocks. Faced with this trade-off, monetary policy does not accommodate climate policy uncertainty shocks, shaping their transmission. Firm-level analyses show stronger declines in inves..
NBER > Working PapersDriving Innovation: The Policy Tools Powering Electric Vehicle Technological Inventions -- by Jingni Zhang, David Popp
Electric vehicles (EVs) are crucial for cutting transportation emissions, yet the policy drivers of EV innovation remain underexplored. This study analyzes firm-level panel data on EV and battery patents, covering more than 4,000 firms across 19 countries from 2010 to 2021, to assess how these policy tools and their interactions in different time horizons influence innovative activity. We test the effects of individual policy instruments that either raise demand for EVs or support the development of EV technologies. Stringent fuel-economy standards, financial incentives, adoption targets, and public R&D investments each significantly increase patenting in EV and battery technologies. Moreove..
NBER > Working PapersThe Future of Monetarism after Milton Friedman -- by Michael D. Bordo
On the fiftieth anniversary of Milton Friedman receiving the Nobel Prize in economics, I reflect on the legacy of monetarism – his revolutionary idea. Friedman developed the modern quantity of money in 1956 as a challenge to the prevailing Keynesian view that “money did not matter.” Friedman’s empirical and historical research made a strong case that changes in the money supply, largely instituted by the monetary authorities, account for much of the macro instability in the twentieth century including the Great Recession 1929-1933 and the Great Inflation 1965 -1982. Friedman’s ideas were at the base of the creation of modern macroeconomics, and of the adoption by many central banks..
NBER > Working PapersCompetition, Procurement and Learning-By-Doing in the Space Launch Industry -- by Ruibing Su, Chenyu Yang, Andrew Sweeting
We estimate a dynamic model of the U.S. space launch industry. The model allows past launches to improve rocket reliability and lower launch costs. It also allows the government to make forward-looking procurement choices. We use the model to analyze policy-relevant issues in the recent history of the industry: the 2006 United Launch Alliance “merger-to-monopoly” and the effects of efficiencies in the form of learning synergies; innovations, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 and ULA's recent introduction of Vulcan Centaur; the costs and benefits of forward-looking procurements; and, the trade-offs between the advantages of centralized control and possible inefficiencies.
NBER > Working PapersLife-Cycle Effects of Women's Education on their Careers and Children -- by Na'ama Shenhav, Danielle H. Sandler
We study the causal effect of women's education on their wages, non-wage job amenities, and spillovers to children. Using a regression discontinuity at the school entry birthdate cutoff, we find that women born just before the cutoff are more likely to complete some college, and experience multi-dimensional career gains that grow over the life cycle: greater employment and earnings, as well as more professional and higher-status jobs, more socially meaningful work, and better working conditions. Children’s early-life health and prenatal inputs improve in tandem with career improvements, consistent with professional advances spurring—not hindering—infant investments. Career gains are co..
NBER > Working PapersWelfare Added? Optimal Teacher Assignment with Value-Added Measures -- by Tanner S. Eastmond, Michael Ricks, Julian Betts, Nathan Mather
We study how teacher "value added" should inform optimal teacher-assignment policy. Our welfare-theoretic framework illustrates (1) how theoretically optimal assignments leverage variation in teachers' impacts both across student types and across different outcomes, and (2) how empirically optimal assignments trade off improved targeting from estimating richer student heterogeneity against increasing misallocation risk. In practice, optimal assignments use limited student types (only lagged achievement) and multiple outcomes (not just math). Even after correcting for policy overfitting, assignments raise average present-value earnings by $2,800 and increase lower-achieving students' earnings..
NBER > Working PapersWhy Does Height Pay? Evidence from the Kenya Life Panel Survey -- by Wilson King, Edward Miguel, Michael W. Walker
Taller people earn more, especially in low- and middle-income countries. We present among the first evidence of this phenomenon in Africa, using longitudinal microdata on a cohort of middle-aged Kenyan adults. We document a substantial height/earnings premium: controlling for gender, age, and other socio-demographics, monthly earnings increase by 1.07% per centimeter (or 2.72% per inch). Nearly half this effect can be explained by differences in cognition, measured from an unusually rich battery containing 27 modules. Additional shares of the premium can be attributed to measures of physical strength and non-cognitive ability. In contrast to prior work, we find little role for occupational s..
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