Economic Inquiry最新文献

This analysis examines the impact of new stadiums on consumer demand for sports spectatorship in the four major US-based professional sports leagues. Estimates from difference-in-differences event studies identify a transitory attendance shock from new venues that diminishes to pre-stadium-treatment levels within a decade. The updated estimates confirm the existence of the novelty effect in modern facilities and identify subtle differences in magnitude, certainty, and duration across leagues. Revenue estimates indicate that the substantial financial returns from constructing new stadiums likely incentivize the premature replacement of host venues when combined with typical public subsidy levels.

We study how education affects Black and White youth employment in the context of No Pass, No Drive (NPND) policies, which require that teens attend school to hold drivers' licenses. Using difference-in-differences estimation, we find that NPND policies increase Black teen employment by 6.7 p.p. without affecting labor force participation (LFP), while reducing White teen employment and LFP by 8.3 p.p. and 5.9 p.p., respectively. We find similar, but smaller effects for Black and White adults ages 18–25. By increasing school enrollment, NPND policies cause White youths to exit the labor force, increasing labor market tightness and improving job finding for Black youths.

Rottenberg argued that the reassignment of negotiating rights from owners to players, that would accompany free agency in professional sports, would have little impact on locational or market outcomes. Empirical investigations into such reassignment have produced mixed results. The present paper examines the impact such reassignment had on professional sports athletes' career length. By examining the univariate time series and panel data behavior of Major League Baseball players' average tenure and retention rates, we find that the increased negotiating power associated with the advent of free agency had the impact of shortening average player career length.

Over the last 20 years, nearly all states have adopted Perinatal Quality Collaboratives (PQCs), which set guidelines for hospitals to provide higher standards of prenatal care. In this paper, I use individual-level natality data from 1989 to 2019 and a stacked difference in differences design comparing maternal and infant health outcomes in US states that have recently established a PQC to those that have not yet established one. Estimates indicate that PQCs decrease eclampsia, with the effect driven by Black mothers. Evidence also shows that PQCs reduce intensive care unit admissions for mothers.

This paper develops an oligopolistic model with consumption externalities to study (i) the policy interaction between tariffs and product standards; (ii) how such interaction may affect the welfare justification of national treatment (NT) in product standards. Absent NT, tariff reductions can lead to more discriminatory standards against foreign firms. Imposing NT eliminates discrimination but can induce higher tariffs which tend to undermine efficiency. As a result, the welfare justification of NT is stronger when tariffs are constrained. These findings suggest that the World Trade Organization's success in tariff liberalization can strengthen the case for its NT-based approach to product standards.

We characterize conditions under which a better consumption distribution implies higher welfare. Specifically, here “better consumption” means first-order stochastic dominance, and “higher welfare” means higher expected utility for every subpopulation of individuals with the same utility function. Although this implication seems natural, we first provide a counterexample wherein better consumption risk allocation outweighs lower consumption. We then show that higher expected utility results from higher consumption in different settings, including fixed dependence (fixed copula) between consumption and individual risk preferences, or alternatively using the rank invariance assumption from the treatment effects literature. These are discussed in several real-world examples.

This study examines criminal behavior over the welfare payment cycle. Using unique individual-level administrative data on welfare recipients, we exploit exogenous variation in payment dates over time and across Dutch municipalities. The results suggest that financially motivated crime increases by 12% over the payment cycle, indicating serious financial constraints toward the end of the month. Non-financially motivated offenses, particularly sex and violent offenses and driving under the influence offenses (DUIs), peak directly after benefits receipt and decrease over the payment cycle, suggesting an underlying spike in consumption conducive to crime. Public order offenses and DUIs also increase with weekend disbursement.

Using a controlled experiment, we study the dynamic effects of feedback on decision-making across verbal skills and math. Before feedback, men are more optimistic about their performance and more willing to compete than women, especially in math. While feedback shifts individuals' beliefs and behavior, we see substantial persistence of gender gaps 1 week later. This is particularly true among individuals who receive negative feedback. Our results are not well-explained by motivated reasoning; in fact, negative feedback is more likely to be recalled than positive feedback. Overall, our results highlight the challenges involved in overcoming gender gaps in dynamic settings.

Empirical studies have generally found that higher fertility has a negative or insignificant effect on economic growth. This article argues that this is because existing studies have failed to capture the long-term lagged effects of fertility. By estimating a long-term lagged panel model using data from 137 countries, I find that higher fertility first reduces and then increases economic growth, and the long-term average effect is significantly positive. This finding is robust when focusing on countries at different development levels, exploiting exogenous fertility shocks from global family planning campaigns, and capitalizing on within-country fertility variation resulting from China's one-child policy.