Mika Akesaka, Peter Eibich, Chie Hanaoka, Hitoshi Shigeoka
The poor live paycheck to paycheck and are repeatedly exposed to strong cyclical income fluctuations. We investigate whether such income fluctuations affect their risk preference. If risk preference temporarily changes around payday, optimal decisions made before payday may no longer be optimal afterward, which could reinforce poverty. By exploiting social security payday cycles in the United States, we find that the poor relying heavily on social security become more risk tolerant before payday. More than cognitive decline before payday, the deterioration of mental health and relative deprivation are likely to play a role. We find similar evidence among the Japanese elderly. (JEL D81, D91, G51, I12, I32, J14, J31)
{"title":"Temporal Instability of Risk Preference among the Poor: Evidence from Payday Cycles","authors":"Mika Akesaka, Peter Eibich, Chie Hanaoka, Hitoshi Shigeoka","doi":"10.1257/app.20220073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20220073","url":null,"abstract":"The poor live paycheck to paycheck and are repeatedly exposed to strong cyclical income fluctuations. We investigate whether such income fluctuations affect their risk preference. If risk preference temporarily changes around payday, optimal decisions made before payday may no longer be optimal afterward, which could reinforce poverty. By exploiting social security payday cycles in the United States, we find that the poor relying heavily on social security become more risk tolerant before payday. More than cognitive decline before payday, the deterioration of mental health and relative deprivation are likely to play a role. We find similar evidence among the Japanese elderly. (JEL D81, D91, G51, I12, I32, J14, J31)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marcella Alsan, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stefanie Stantcheva, David Y. Yang
We study people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for increased health security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by deploying representative surveys involving around 550,000 responses across 15 countries. We document significant heterogeneity across groups in willingness to sacrifice rights: citizens disadvantaged by income, education, or race are less willing to sacrifice rights than their more advantaged peers in every country. Leveraging naturally occurring variation and experimental approaches, we estimate a one standard deviation increase in health insecurity increases willingness to sacrifice civil liberties by 68–83 percent of the difference between the average Chinese and US citizen. (JEL D12, D91, I12, I18, K38, O17, P36)
{"title":"Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis","authors":"Marcella Alsan, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stefanie Stantcheva, David Y. Yang","doi":"10.1257/app.20210736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210736","url":null,"abstract":"We study people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for increased health security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by deploying representative surveys involving around 550,000 responses across 15 countries. We document significant heterogeneity across groups in willingness to sacrifice rights: citizens disadvantaged by income, education, or race are less willing to sacrifice rights than their more advantaged peers in every country. Leveraging naturally occurring variation and experimental approaches, we estimate a one standard deviation increase in health insecurity increases willingness to sacrifice civil liberties by 68–83 percent of the difference between the average Chinese and US citizen. (JEL D12, D91, I12, I18, K38, O17, P36)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136119739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Can the extent of ethnic discrimination change quickly, and what circumstances and mechanisms make such changes possible? I address these questions by using scraped data to study the daily evolution of customer discrimination against Arab doctors in Israel from January 2020 to June 2021. Results show that: (1) the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis in March 2020 led to a dramatic decline in discrimination; (2) the eruption of a wave of ethnic riots in May 2021 had the opposite effect; (3) media coverage of the contribution of Arab doctors to the fight against the pandemic helped bring about the first change. (JEL D91, I12, J15, J44, L82)
{"title":"Discrimination in Times of Crises and the Role of the Media","authors":"Asaf Zussman","doi":"10.1257/app.20210732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210732","url":null,"abstract":"Can the extent of ethnic discrimination change quickly, and what circumstances and mechanisms make such changes possible? I address these questions by using scraped data to study the daily evolution of customer discrimination against Arab doctors in Israel from January 2020 to June 2021. Results show that: (1) the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis in March 2020 led to a dramatic decline in discrimination; (2) the eruption of a wave of ethnic riots in May 2021 had the opposite effect; (3) media coverage of the contribution of Arab doctors to the fight against the pandemic helped bring about the first change. (JEL D91, I12, J15, J44, L82)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We study the effects of state hospital regulations intended to increase breastfeeding by requiring certain standards of care during the immediate postpartum hospital stay. We find that these regulations significantly increased breastfeeding initiation by 3.8 percentage points (5.1 percent) and the probability of breastfeeding at 3 and 6 months postpartum by approximately 7 percent. We also provide evidence that these breastfeeding-promoting policies significantly increased maternal time spent on child care, crowding out time spent on formal work. Observed reductions in employment are concentrated among mothers with infants between zero and three months of age. (JEL H75, I11, I18, J13, J16, J22)
{"title":"The Effect of Hospital Postpartum Care Regulations on Breastfeeding and Maternal Time Allocation","authors":"Emily C. Lawler, Katherine G. Yewell","doi":"10.1257/app.20220201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20220201","url":null,"abstract":"We study the effects of state hospital regulations intended to increase breastfeeding by requiring certain standards of care during the immediate postpartum hospital stay. We find that these regulations significantly increased breastfeeding initiation by 3.8 percentage points (5.1 percent) and the probability of breastfeeding at 3 and 6 months postpartum by approximately 7 percent. We also provide evidence that these breastfeeding-promoting policies significantly increased maternal time spent on child care, crowding out time spent on formal work. Observed reductions in employment are concentrated among mothers with infants between zero and three months of age. (JEL H75, I11, I18, J13, J16, J22)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asger Lau Andersen, Amalie Sofie Jensen, Niels Johannesen, Claus T. Kreiner, Søren Leth-Petersen, Adam Sheridan
How much and through which channels do households self-insure against job loss? Combining data from a large bank and from government sources, we quantify a broad range of responses to job loss in a unified empirical framework. Cumulated over a two-year period, households reduce spending by 30 percent of their income loss. They mainly self-insure through adjustments of liquid balances, which account for 50 percent of the income loss. Other channels—spousal labor supply, private transfers, home equity extraction, mortgage refinancing, and consumer credit—contribute less to self-insurance. Both overall self-insurance and the channels vary with household characteristics in intuitive ways. (JEL D12, G21, G51, J64, J65)
{"title":"How Do Households Respond to Job Loss? Lessons from Multiple High-Frequency Datasets","authors":"Asger Lau Andersen, Amalie Sofie Jensen, Niels Johannesen, Claus T. Kreiner, Søren Leth-Petersen, Adam Sheridan","doi":"10.1257/app.20210206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210206","url":null,"abstract":"How much and through which channels do households self-insure against job loss? Combining data from a large bank and from government sources, we quantify a broad range of responses to job loss in a unified empirical framework. Cumulated over a two-year period, households reduce spending by 30 percent of their income loss. They mainly self-insure through adjustments of liquid balances, which account for 50 percent of the income loss. Other channels—spousal labor supply, private transfers, home equity extraction, mortgage refinancing, and consumer credit—contribute less to self-insurance. Both overall self-insurance and the channels vary with household characteristics in intuitive ways. (JEL D12, G21, G51, J64, J65)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136119569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Is dishonest behavior contagious? We answer this question by studying whether corruption scandals affect the propensity of supermarket customers to steal while using a self-service checkout system. Crucially, this system allows shoppers to engage in dishonest behavior by underreporting the value of their shopping cart. Exploiting data from random audits on shoppers, we show that the probability of stealing increases by 16 percent after a local corruption scandal breaks. This effect is not driven by any change in material incentives. Suggestive evidence shows that it is driven by a reduction in the self-imposed cost of stealing. (JEL D12, D73, D91, K42, L81, Z13)
{"title":"Contagious Dishonesty: Corruption Scandals and Supermarket Theft","authors":"Giorgio Gulino, Federico Masera","doi":"10.1257/app.20210446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210446","url":null,"abstract":"Is dishonest behavior contagious? We answer this question by studying whether corruption scandals affect the propensity of supermarket customers to steal while using a self-service checkout system. Crucially, this system allows shoppers to engage in dishonest behavior by underreporting the value of their shopping cart. Exploiting data from random audits on shoppers, we show that the probability of stealing increases by 16 percent after a local corruption scandal breaks. This effect is not driven by any change in material incentives. Suggestive evidence shows that it is driven by a reduction in the self-imposed cost of stealing. (JEL D12, D73, D91, K42, L81, Z13)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Iffath Sharif, Maheshwor Shrestha
South Asians traveling to richer Asian nations is the world's largest migration corridor. We track down applicants to a government lottery that randomly allocated visas to Bangladeshis for temporary labor contracts in Malaysia, five years later. Most lottery winners migrate, and migrants' earnings triple. Their remittance raises their family's standard of living in Bangladesh. The migrant's absence pauses marriage and childbirth and shifts decision-making power toward females. Migration removes enterprising individuals, lowering household entrepreneurship, but does not crowd out other family members' labor supply. A deferred migration offer never materialized for a subgroup. Their premigration investments in skills generate no returns in the domestic market. (JEL F22, F24, I31, J24, J31, J82, O15)
{"title":"Returns to International Migration: Evidence from a Bangladesh-Malaysia Visa Lottery","authors":"Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Iffath Sharif, Maheshwor Shrestha","doi":"10.1257/app.20220258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20220258","url":null,"abstract":"South Asians traveling to richer Asian nations is the world's largest migration corridor. We track down applicants to a government lottery that randomly allocated visas to Bangladeshis for temporary labor contracts in Malaysia, five years later. Most lottery winners migrate, and migrants' earnings triple. Their remittance raises their family's standard of living in Bangladesh. The migrant's absence pauses marriage and childbirth and shifts decision-making power toward females. Migration removes enterprising individuals, lowering household entrepreneurship, but does not crowd out other family members' labor supply. A deferred migration offer never materialized for a subgroup. Their premigration investments in skills generate no returns in the domestic market. (JEL F22, F24, I31, J24, J31, J82, O15)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136119310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marriage rates have become increasingly stratified by homeownership. We investigate this in a household model where investments in public goods reduce future earnings and, thus, divorce risk creates inefficiencies. Access to a joint savings technology, like a house, collateralizes marriage, providing insurance to the lower-earning partner and increasing specialization, public goods, and value from marriage. We use idiosyncratic variation in housing prices to show that homeownership access indeed leads to greater specialization. The model also predicts that policies that erode the marriage contract in other ways will make wealth a more important determinant of marriage, which we confirm empirically. (JEL D12, D86, G51, H41, J12, R31)
{"title":"Collateralized Marriage","authors":"Jeanne Lafortune, Corinne Low","doi":"10.1257/app.20210614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210614","url":null,"abstract":"Marriage rates have become increasingly stratified by homeownership. We investigate this in a household model where investments in public goods reduce future earnings and, thus, divorce risk creates inefficiencies. Access to a joint savings technology, like a house, collateralizes marriage, providing insurance to the lower-earning partner and increasing specialization, public goods, and value from marriage. We use idiosyncratic variation in housing prices to show that homeownership access indeed leads to greater specialization. The model also predicts that policies that erode the marriage contract in other ways will make wealth a more important determinant of marriage, which we confirm empirically. (JEL D12, D86, G51, H41, J12, R31)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Candidates' placements in polls and past elections can be powerful coordination devices for parties and voters. Using a regression discontinuity design in French two-round elections, we show that candidates who place first in the first round are more likely to stay in the race and win than those who placed second. These effects are even larger for ranking second versus third, and also present for third versus fourth. They stem from allied parties agreeing on which candidate should drop out, voters coordinating their choice, and the bandwagon effect of wanting to vote for the winner. We find similar results across 19 other countries. (JEL D72, D83, D91, K16)
{"title":"Coordination and Bandwagon Effects: How Past Rankings Shape the Behavior of Voters and Candidates","authors":"Riako Granzier, Vincent Pons, Clemence Tricaud","doi":"10.1257/app.20210840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210840","url":null,"abstract":"Candidates' placements in polls and past elections can be powerful coordination devices for parties and voters. Using a regression discontinuity design in French two-round elections, we show that candidates who place first in the first round are more likely to stay in the race and win than those who placed second. These effects are even larger for ranking second versus third, and also present for third versus fourth. They stem from allied parties agreeing on which candidate should drop out, voters coordinating their choice, and the bandwagon effect of wanting to vote for the winner. We find similar results across 19 other countries. (JEL D72, D83, D91, K16)","PeriodicalId":48212,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal-Applied Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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