Contemporary Economic Policy最新文献

We examine the impact of laws that allow breweries to bypass distributors. We construct a model of heterogeneous firms where some states require pairing with distributors who charge fixed and marginal costs in return for additional market share. The model predicts that states without such requirements have higher output and employment due to greater entry and firm-level production. To test this model, we exploit the adoption of self-distribution laws from 2008 to 2019. We find that states that do not require a distributor have higher brewery output and employment, and that this is primarily driven by a greater entry of breweries.

In December 2022, Cristiano Ronaldo, five-time Ballon d’Or winner and the most-followed person on Instagram, signed for Al-Nassr in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This marked one of several expensive, recent interventions by the kingdom in global sports markets. We exploit the timing of this event to estimate superstar effects. Ronaldo alone increased stadium attendance demand, even before the influx of further stars in the summer of 2023. On average, Ronaldo filled an additional 20% of the seats in his home team's stadium when he played, 15% in the stadiums he visited, and 3% where he did not even play.

The gravity model is the workhorse model of trade. Yet, many economists still view gravity as a reduced-form estimating equation and apply it without guidance from theory, while others are skeptical about its usefulness for counterfactual projections. This paper offers a historical overview of the evolution of gravity, from an a-theoretical application to an estimating computable general equilibrium model, which can be nested in more complex frameworks. Along the way, I address some misconceptions about gravity, summarize the current recommendations for gravity estimations, highlight properties that have made gravity so successful, and review the latest contributions to the related literature.

This study looks at the relationship between the prevalence of state-level shadow economies and the extent of labor regulations specific to occupational licensing. Occupational licensing leads to higher prices in the formal sector and barriers to entry into formal sector employment, therefore incentivizing individuals to migrate their demand and supply to the underground sector. Using state-level panel data for the 50 U.S. states from 2001 to 2019 and two-stage least squares estimation, we find a positive relationship between occupational licensing in a state and the size of its shadow economy. These results are robust to various considerations.

I evaluate whether nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) change how they practice when states relax the scope-of-practice laws governing these professions. I find little evidence that NPs or PAs begin providing specialty services following relaxation. Some evidence suggests that NPs specialize more in rural areas following the relaxation of scope-of-practice laws, but no indication that they do so generally. Overall, the evidence developed here suggests that NPs and PAs do not change how they care for patients following the relaxation of scope-of-practice laws, undermining patient safety arguments along these lines.

We present the first systematic evidence on the impact of Brexit on the business links between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) through the lens of international visits. We find important asymmetry in the direction of changes in business visits between the two regions following the referendum. Specifically, we observe a significant drop in EU-to-UK trips, while UK-to-EU trips increased noticeably after the vote. These results support the claim that Brexit has made the UK less attractive to EU businesses, but also reveal that UK businesses are investing more in their relationships with EU partners to offset the uncertainty.

We quantify the impact of county-level vaccination rates on vaccine uptake. While the marginal effect at current vaccination rates is modest, the overall impact is large. Moving from a 0% to 15% vaccination rate in a county is associated with an increase in the daily uptake of over 10 fold. Our results shed light on the rise and decline of vaccine hesitancy and imply an externality of vaccination programs. For Ohio's Vax-A-Million lottery, a back-of-the-envelope calculation finds that there were an additional 30,000 vaccinations immediately following the lottery as a result of the increased vaccinations from the lottery.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act placed a $10,000 limit on the deductibility of state and local taxes (SALT) for federal tax purposes. This policy change likely increased the cost of home ownership for some households in high-tax areas. We examine whether these costs were capitalized into the local housing market through slower growth in housing prices. Motivated by the argument that the SALT cap caused some taxpayers to relocate, we also examine whether the cap influenced interstate migration patterns. The cap led to a sizable reduction in home price growth but had no discernable impact on state-to-state migration.

Discrimination often leads to economic consequences for affected groups. This study examines the economic impact of consumer discrimination on Chinese restaurants in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic's onset. Using cell phone data and revenue records, it identifies a significant −10% relative decline in visits to Chinese restaurants by April 2020, resulting in a $35 million loss. The study finds supply-side factors, such as restaurant closures and online business transitions, had limited impact, highlighting demand-side factors like county-level political affiliation, racial diversity, and Asian population ratios as significant contributors.

Numerous studies in the development economics literature examine the connection between fertility and economic development. The consensus in the research is that as a nation develops and incomes rise, fertility rates decline. However, economic freedom and policies aimed at generating economic opportunities for women may also affect fertility rates. This article utilizes the Economic Freedom of the World Index, and the associated Gender Disparity Index to discuss how economic freedom and, specifically, economic freedom for women is related to fertility, and other fertility-related outcomes.