Pub Date : 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105482
Yuanning Liang , Ivan Rudik , Eric Yongchen Zou
The environmental impacts of economic activities extend beyond those directly affecting humans. This paper provides new evidence on the link between economic activity and ecosystem decline using a novel dataset that compiles longitudinal ecological sampling information at tens of thousands of locations across the United States between 1960 and 2015. Local shocks in economic activities, such as those driven by national military buildups, led to a significant reduction in species abundance, diversity, and stability, with one-third of the observed effects explained by the causal impact of air pollution. Government environmental regulations significantly mitigated pollution externalities.
{"title":"Economic activity and biodiversity in the United States","authors":"Yuanning Liang , Ivan Rudik , Eric Yongchen Zou","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105482","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105482","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The environmental impacts of economic activities extend beyond those directly affecting humans. This paper provides new evidence on the link between economic activity and ecosystem decline using a novel dataset that compiles longitudinal ecological sampling information at tens of thousands of locations across the United States between 1960 and 2015. Local shocks in economic activities, such as those driven by national military buildups, led to a significant reduction in species abundance, diversity, and stability, with one-third of the observed effects explained by the causal impact of air pollution. Government environmental regulations significantly mitigated pollution externalities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105482"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145267528","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105483
Martin Mattsson
Under what circumstances does corruption cause inefficiencies, and when are bribes merely transfers? I propose a modified monopoly price discrimination model that shows under what circumstances corruption leads to an inefficiently high administrative burden in government-firm interactions. The model highlights the importance of the information the bureaucrat has regarding the firms’ willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid administrative burden and the bureaucrat’s decision to gather this information. The government-firm interaction will have a Pareto efficient level of administrative burden with perfect price (i.e., bribe) discrimination if the bureaucrat decides to investigate the firm and learn its WTP. If the cost of investigation is too high, the government official instead uses red tape to extract more bribes from firms with higher WTP, causing inefficiently high levels of administrative burden. I show that the model’s predictions are consistent with data from 186,277 government-firm interactions from 18 years of the Enterprise Survey covering 158 countries. I find that corruption leads to increased administrative burden when government officials have less information about the firm’s WTP and that the effect is larger for firms with a low WTP. This has several policy implications for how to reduce administrative burden and where to focus anti-corruption efforts.
{"title":"When does corruption cause red tape? Bribe discrimination under asymmetric information","authors":"Martin Mattsson","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105483","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105483","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Under what circumstances does corruption cause inefficiencies, and when are bribes merely transfers? I propose a modified monopoly price discrimination model that shows under what circumstances corruption leads to an inefficiently high administrative burden in government-firm interactions. The model highlights the importance of the information the bureaucrat has regarding the firms’ willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid administrative burden and the bureaucrat’s decision to gather this information. The government-firm interaction will have a Pareto efficient level of administrative burden with perfect price (i.e., bribe) discrimination if the bureaucrat decides to investigate the firm and learn its WTP. If the cost of investigation is too high, the government official instead uses red tape to extract more bribes from firms with higher WTP, causing inefficiently high levels of administrative burden. I show that the model’s predictions are consistent with data from 186,277 government-firm interactions from 18 years of the Enterprise Survey covering 158 countries. I find that corruption leads to increased administrative burden when government officials have less information about the firm’s WTP and that the effect is larger for firms with a low WTP. This has several policy implications for how to reduce administrative burden and where to focus anti-corruption efforts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105483"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145267529","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105481
Kerwin Kofi Charles , Jonathan Guryan , Kyung H. Park
{"title":"Corrigendum to “Consumer sentiment towards Asians in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic”. [J. Public Econom. 247 (2025) 105396]","authors":"Kerwin Kofi Charles , Jonathan Guryan , Kyung H. Park","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105481","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105481","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105481"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145363386","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105492
David Sturrock , Stefan Groot , Jan Möhlmann
We show that gifts made to heirs before death are substantial and highly responsive to taxation. Using intergenerationally-linked administrative data from the Netherlands and exploiting variation in the timing of death, we find that single people (including widows) with children transfer around 10 % of their wealth to their children in anticipation of death. This is almost entirely in the form of tax-exempt gifts. Exploiting bunching at kink points in the gift tax schedule and a reform to inheritance taxation, we estimate elasticities of gifts and wealth to taxation and find that tax-avoidance accounts for at least a significant minority of this deathbed giving. The ability to make tax-favoured gifts means that the revenue-maximising flat inheritance tax rate is at most 37 %. Equalising the tax rate on deathbed gifts and inheritances at death would increase revenues raised from singles by 10 %.
{"title":"Wealth, gifts, and estate planning at the end of life","authors":"David Sturrock , Stefan Groot , Jan Möhlmann","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105492","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105492","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We show that gifts made to heirs before death are substantial and highly responsive to taxation. Using intergenerationally-linked administrative data from the Netherlands and exploiting variation in the timing of death, we find that single people (including widows) with children transfer around 10 % of their wealth to their children in anticipation of death. This is almost entirely in the form of tax-exempt gifts. Exploiting bunching at kink points in the gift tax schedule and a reform to inheritance taxation, we estimate elasticities of gifts and wealth to taxation and find that tax-avoidance accounts for at least a significant minority of this deathbed giving. The ability to make tax-favoured gifts means that the revenue-maximising flat inheritance tax rate is at most 37 %. Equalising the tax rate on deathbed gifts and inheritances at death would increase revenues raised from singles by 10 %.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105492"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145221125","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}
Pub Date : 2025-09-22DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105490
Mimi Jeon , Seonghoon Kim , Kanghyock Koh
We examine short-term consequences of pension income receipt on mortality and healthcare utilization within the monthly payment cycle. Using the national death registry data of South Korea, we document that the mortality rate decreases by 1.2–1.4 percent in the week of the disbursement date. The mortality-reducing effects are larger for causes of death that could have been avoided through timely and effective healthcare interventions. Using healthcare claims data, we document that the number of hospital admissions increases during the disbursement week. We provide suggestive evidence of greater mortality-reducing effects from a smaller but more frequent disbursement than from a monthly disbursement.
{"title":"Short-term mortality and healthcare utilization consequences of pension income receipt: Evidence from South Korea","authors":"Mimi Jeon , Seonghoon Kim , Kanghyock Koh","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105490","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105490","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine short-term consequences of pension income receipt on mortality and healthcare utilization within the monthly payment cycle. Using the national death registry data of South Korea, we document that the mortality rate decreases by 1.2–1.4 percent in the week of the disbursement date. The mortality-reducing effects are larger for causes of death that could have been avoided through timely and effective healthcare interventions. Using healthcare claims data, we document that the number of hospital admissions increases during the disbursement week. We provide suggestive evidence of greater mortality-reducing effects from a smaller but more frequent disbursement than from a monthly disbursement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105490"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145118947","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}
Pub Date : 2025-09-19DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105473
Anne M. Burton , David N. Wasser
Ban-the-Box (BTB) policies intend to help formerly incarcerated individuals find employment by delaying when employers can ask about criminal records. We revisit the finding in Doleac and Hansen (2020) that BTB causes statistical discrimination against minority men. We correct miscoded BTB laws and show that estimates from the Current Population Survey (CPS) remain quantitatively similar, while those from the American Community Survey (ACS) now fail to reject the null hypothesis of no effect of BTB on employment. In contrast to the published estimates, these ACS results are statistically significantly different from the CPS results, indicating a lack of robustness across datasets. We do not find evidence that these differences are due to sample composition or survey weights. There is limited evidence that these divergent results are explained by the different frequencies of these surveys. Differences in sample sizes may also lead to different estimates; the ACS has a much larger sample and more statistical power to detect effects near the corrected CPS estimates.
{"title":"Revisiting the unintended consequences of Ban the Box","authors":"Anne M. Burton , David N. Wasser","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105473","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105473","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ban-the-Box (BTB) policies intend to help formerly incarcerated individuals find employment by delaying when employers can ask about criminal records. We revisit the finding in Doleac and Hansen (2020) that BTB causes statistical discrimination against minority men. We correct miscoded BTB laws and show that estimates from the Current Population Survey (CPS) remain quantitatively similar, while those from the American Community Survey (ACS) now fail to reject the null hypothesis of no effect of BTB on employment. In contrast to the published estimates, these ACS results are statistically significantly different from the CPS results, indicating a lack of robustness across datasets. We do not find evidence that these differences are due to sample composition or survey weights. There is limited evidence that these divergent results are explained by the different frequencies of these surveys. Differences in sample sizes may also lead to different estimates; the ACS has a much larger sample and more statistical power to detect effects near the corrected CPS estimates.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105473"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145107625","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}
Pub Date : 2025-09-17DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105480
Kari Hämäläinen , Miska Simanainen , Jouko Verho
This study provides causal evidence that cash transfer programs have the potential to alleviate the income–health trap in advanced countries. We analyze the Finnish basic income experiment, which replaced the minimum unemployment benefits with a guaranteed income for 2,000 randomly selected unemployed persons during the years 2017–2018. The guaranteed income removed all job–search requirements, but participants could still choose to claim unemployment benefits and comply with related obligations. The experiment also increased average income by 9 %–11 %, for two reasons: basic income payments overlapped with benefits due from the pre-experiment period, and basic income was not tapered against labor earnings. Using register data on all prescription medications and secondary care visits, we find that the experiment reduced psychotropic drug use by 8 %–11 %. Our results also suggest a decline in outpatient mental health visits for secondary care. No effects were detected for other health outcomes. Since most participants opted out of the unconditionality aspect of the experiment and continued to claim unemployment benefits, we attribute the observed health effects primarily to the increased income.
{"title":"Health effects of cash transfers: Evidence from the Finnish basic income experiment","authors":"Kari Hämäläinen , Miska Simanainen , Jouko Verho","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105480","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105480","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study provides causal evidence that cash transfer programs have the potential to alleviate the income–health trap in advanced countries. We analyze the Finnish basic income experiment, which replaced the minimum unemployment benefits with a guaranteed income for 2,000 randomly selected unemployed persons during the years 2017–2018. The guaranteed income removed all job–search requirements, but participants could still choose to claim unemployment benefits and comply with related obligations. The experiment also increased average income by 9 %–11 %, for two reasons: basic income payments overlapped with benefits due from the pre-experiment period, and basic income was not tapered against labor earnings. Using register data on all prescription medications and secondary care visits, we find that the experiment reduced psychotropic drug use by 8 %–11 %. Our results also suggest a decline in outpatient mental health visits for secondary care. No effects were detected for other health outcomes. Since most participants opted out of the unconditionality aspect of the experiment and continued to claim unemployment benefits, we attribute the observed health effects primarily to the increased income.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105480"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145107533","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}
Pub Date : 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105468
Robert Germeshausen , Sven Heim , Ulrich J. Wagner
The rise of societal goals like climate change mitigation and energy security calls for rapid capacity growth in renewable electricity sources, yet citizens’ support is put to a test when such technologies emit negative local externalities. We estimate the impact of wind turbine deployment on granular measures of revealed preferences for renewable electricity in product and political markets. We address potentially endogenous siting of turbines with an IV design that exploits quasi-experimental variation in profitability induced by subsidies. We find that wind turbines significantly reduce citizens’ support locally, but this effect quickly fades with distance from the site. We assess policy instruments for enhancing citizens’ support for renewable energy in light of our results.
{"title":"Support for renewable energy: The case of wind power","authors":"Robert Germeshausen , Sven Heim , Ulrich J. Wagner","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105468","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105468","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The rise of societal goals like climate change mitigation and energy security calls for rapid capacity growth in renewable electricity sources, yet citizens’ support is put to a test when such technologies emit negative local externalities. We estimate the impact of wind turbine deployment on granular measures of revealed preferences for renewable electricity in product and political markets. We address potentially endogenous siting of turbines with an IV design that exploits quasi-experimental variation in profitability induced by subsidies. We find that wind turbines significantly reduce citizens’ support locally, but this effect quickly fades with distance from the site. We assess policy instruments for enhancing citizens’ support for renewable energy in light of our results.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105468"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145061276","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}
Pub Date : 2025-09-12DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105469
Audrey Guo , Melanie Wallskog
How costly are taxes for young firms? In this paper, we demonstrate that even small payroll taxes significantly distort hiring decisions and employment growth. First, we leverage cross-sectional variation in the taxes faced by new employers to study how these taxes affect entrepreneurs’ decisions to become employers. We find that higher taxes discourage new firms from hiring their first workers; we estimate an elasticity of the number of new employers to taxes of −0.1. Second, we study tax changes a new employer faces after it enters. We find that higher taxes lead more firms to exit, while also reducing employment for those who survive and leading some firms to avoid taxes by using non-taxable contract labor.
{"title":"New employer payroll taxes and entrepreneurship","authors":"Audrey Guo , Melanie Wallskog","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105469","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105469","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How costly are taxes for young firms? In this paper, we demonstrate that even small payroll taxes significantly distort hiring decisions and employment growth. First, we leverage cross-sectional variation in the taxes faced by new employers to study how these taxes affect entrepreneurs’ decisions to become employers. We find that higher taxes discourage new firms from hiring their first workers; we estimate an elasticity of the number of new employers to taxes of −0.1. Second, we study tax changes a new employer faces after it enters. We find that higher taxes lead more firms to exit, while also reducing employment for those who survive and leading some firms to avoid taxes by using non-taxable contract labor.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105469"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050368","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}
Pub Date : 2025-09-11DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105441
Damon Clark , Stephen Coate
Many school districts operate “school choice" or “open enrollment" programs that give parents a choice of school. The popular schools in these districts are often oversubscribed, so districts must decide which applicants receive priority at these schools. Typically, districts give priority to students who live close to these schools or allocate by random lottery. However, to provide more equitable access to popular schools and to reduce school segregation, some districts prioritize students based on socio-economic status (e.g., favoring students from less-affluent neighborhoods). This paper shows that, despite their effects on transportation costs, these equity-based priorities can increase efficiency in the sense of raising aggregate welfare. They do this by facilitating better matches of students to schools.
{"title":"An efficiency case for equity-based school priorities","authors":"Damon Clark , Stephen Coate","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105441","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105441","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many school districts operate “school choice\" or “open enrollment\" programs that give parents a choice of school. The popular schools in these districts are often oversubscribed, so districts must decide which applicants receive priority at these schools. Typically, districts give priority to students who live close to these schools or allocate by random lottery. However, to provide more equitable access to popular schools and to reduce school segregation, some districts prioritize students based on socio-economic status (e.g., favoring students from less-affluent neighborhoods). This paper shows that, despite their effects on transportation costs, these equity-based priorities can increase efficiency in the sense of raising aggregate welfare. They do this by facilitating better matches of students to schools.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"250 ","pages":"Article 105441"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050366","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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