Journal of Policy Analysis and Management最新文献

Minimum quality regulations are often justified in the childcare market because of the presence of information frictions between parents and providers. However, regulations can also have unintended consequences for the quantity and quality of services provided. In this paper, we merge new data on states’ childcare regulations for maximum classroom group sizes and child-to-staff ratios with the universe of online job postings to study the impact of regulations on the demand for and characteristics of childcare labor. Our identification strategy exploits the unprecedented variation in regulatory reform during the COVID-19 pandemic, relying on changes both within states over time and across children's age groups. We find evidence that these regulations reduce the number of childcare job postings and encourage providers to substitute away from higher-skilled postings, thereby increasing the number of positions that are out-of-compliance with states’ teacher education requirements. In sum, the results imply that childcare regulations may reduce the demand for childcare labor, while simultaneously altering the composition of the workforce.

For workers employed in the public and nonprofit sectors, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program offers the potential for full forgiveness of federal student loans for those with 10 years of full-time work experience. A year-long waiver issued by the Department of Education in 2021 to address administrative problems in program access provided a new path to PSLF relief for many borrowers. We explore the overall impact and distributional implications of potential full participation in loan forgiveness enabled by the PSLF waiver program using the 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Our estimates identify more than $100 billion in loan forgiveness available to as many as 3.45 million borrowers through the PSLF waiver program. Potential beneficiaries of this initiative are disproportionately employed in occupations like teaching and health care. Full take-up of the PSLF waiver would lead to a narrowing of the racial gap in student debt burden. However, the distributional impact of the PSLF waiver depends critically on the take-up rate and there is some evidence that those borrowers with relatively high income or advanced degrees have been most likely to access benefits.

Most of the world's population lives in countries that ban the self-service sale of gasoline. Causal effects of this regulation can hardly be assessed in these countries due to a lack of policy changes, but a recent quasi-experiment in the state of Oregon allows us to analyze the impact of the ban. From 1992 to 2017, the state of Oregon was one of two U.S. states that banned self-service at gasoline stations. Oregon adjusted regulations at the start of 2018 to allow self-service at gasoline stations in counties with populations below 40,000 individuals. I examine the repeal of this self-service ban and its effects on gasoline prices. I apply a difference-in-differences design using high frequency data of gasoline prices and find that repealing the self-service ban reduced gasoline prices by 4.4 cents per gallon in affected Oregon counties. This effect represents approximately $90 in expected annual savings for a household with three licensed drivers.

Unions play a crucial role in determining wages and employment outcomes. However, union bargaining power may also have important effects on non-pecuniary working conditions. We study the effects of right-to-work laws, which removed agency shop protection and weakened union powers on long hours and non-standard work schedules that may adversely affect workers’ health and safety. We exploit variation in the timing of enactment across U.S. states and compare workers in bordering counties across adopting states and states that did not adopt the laws yet. Using the stacked approach to difference-in-differences estimates proposed by Cengiz et al. (2019), we find evidence that right-to-work laws increased the share of workers working long hours by 6%, while there is little evidence of an impact on hourly wages. The effects on long hours are larger in more unionized sectors (i.e., construction, manufacturing, and transportation). While the likelihood of working non-standard hours increases for particular sectors (education and public administration), there is no evidence of a significant increase in the overall sample.

Governments often reform financial policies, such as industrial subsidies taxes and currency exchange rates, during times of fiscal distress. Existing studies suggest that information campaigns can improve popular support for policy reforms that promise longer term macroeconomic growth but come with short-term financial costs to people's livelihoods. This article assesses the effects of information campaigns on the acceptance of fossil fuel subsidy reforms in Nigeria, a type of fiscal reform that many developing countries may adopt in the coming years. A randomized survey experiment imbedded in a nationally representative survey of Nigerian households investigates whether information interventions lead Nigerians to change their opinion on fossil fuel subsidy reforms. We find that merely providing factual information does not affect whether or not people support fossil fuel subsidy reforms. Moreover, we find that factual information helps supporters articulate their preferences and weakens the propensity of opponents to use wrongful information to justify their position.

Previous research in the U.S. has found negative health effects of contamination when it triggers regulatory violations. An important question is whether levels of contamination that do not trigger a health-based violation impact health. We study the impact of drinking water contamination in community water systems on birth outcomes using drinking water sampling results data in Pennsylvania. We focus on the effects of water contamination for births not exposed to regulatory violations. Our most rigorous specification employs mother fixed effects and finds changing from the 10th to the 90th percentile of water contamination (among births not exposed to regulatory violations) increases low birth weight by 12% and preterm birth by 17%.