Abstract Why do similar place‐based assistance policies generate stronger entrepreneurial responses in some underdeveloped counties than in others? We argue that policy effects depend on counties' pre‐existing relative opportunity structure (ROS). Using China's county‐level assistance policies since 2013 as a quasi‐natural experiment, we estimate heterogeneous policy effects with a difference‐in‐differences design based on a 2007–2022 county panel. Assistance policies significantly increase tourism‐related entrepreneurial entry on average, but the magnitude varies systematically with pre‐policy ROS. We identify both convergence and complementarity patterns, highlighting the importance of local structural conditions for policy targeting and differentiated place‐based development policy.
Between 1970 and 1980, 37 states adopted unilateral-no-fault divorce laws. This change was known as the no-fault revolution. Critics claim that no-fault divorce has weakened moral values and contributed to family breakdown. Past research offers mixed conclusions on whether these laws increased divorce rates. This paper improves upon previous studies by distinguishing between unilateral-no-fault and overall (unilateral and mutual) no-fault divorce treatment dates. Using a causal inference framework and a stacked-regression difference-in-differences estimator with entropy balancing, this study accounts for varied treatment timing. The findings show no lasting or statistically significant effects of unilateral-no-fault divorce laws on divorce rates.
Recent veteran college graduates report experiencing high levels of underemployment, which have a negative impact on their well-being and hinder their successful transition to civilian life. This paper quantifies the scope of this problem by estimating the impact of World War II, Vietnam War, and Post-9/11 G.I. Bill subsidies on the U.S. underemployment rate. The paper identifies several determinants of underemployment, including choice of college major, lower academic ability, lower rates of graduate school completion, loss of labor market experience, combat exposure effects, and cohort size effects. Underemployment explains approximately a quarter of the earnings penalty experienced by recent college educated veterans.
This paper examines how targeted reserve requirements shape bank lending behavior and financial stability in China. Using bank-branch-level data, we show that the 2008 TRR policy expanded SMB lending by 14.3%, broadened firm-level credit access by 45.8%, but raised non-performing loan ratios by 5.2 percentage points. Heterogeneity analyses by trade exposure and bank sub-type alleviate the concern that differential GFC balance-sheet damage, rather than the TRR policy, drives our results. County-level analysis shows greater policy exposure boosted GDP growth through manufacturing and investment. These findings highlight a tension between credit expansion and financial stability in TRR-driven policies.
This paper investigates how trade liberalization influences intergenerational occupational mobility in China. Using a sample of Chinese household-level data, we find that liberalization in intermediate inputs significantly enhances mobility, especially upward mobility, whereas liberalization in final goods has no notable effect. The impact is stronger among rural households and those in central China. Further analysis suggests that education, cross-industry labor transfer, and population migration are key mechanisms. The findings provide evidence that trade liberalization in developing economies can foster social mobility and inform policies promoting equitable labor opportunities.
The Porter Hypothesis asserts that environmental regulations can spur innovation and benefit regulated firms. Prior economic models derive this outcome only in the presence of additional distortions, suggesting it is unlikely and difficult to induce, though desirable. Using the same graphical framework that economists first employed to critique Porter's hypothesis, this note shows that when distributional consequences of policy are considered, Porter-consistent outcomes are plausible and could be generated through targeted regulation. However, such outcomes provide no benefit beyond reducing environmental externalities. The benefits to firms indicate that regulators have failed to exploit the revenue recycling potential of environmental policy.
This paper estimates granular specific non-routine tasks and examines employment reallocation across those tasks in the United States. Employment shifts into decision-making, technology, and information-related tasks account for 90% of high-wage employment growth. The granularity reveals non-routine abstract tasks are intensive in all skill environments and that non-college men experienced deskilling arising from displacement from routine work and from non-routine abstract tasks. This is potentially linked to the decline in supervisory employment. The pattern of task reallocation differs across genders. Both non-college and college educated women expanded into a wider array of non-routine abstract tasks relative to their male counterparts.
Using LinkedIn and GitHub data, this paper examines how firms' adoption of GitHub Copilot (GHC), a generative AI coding assistant, relates to software engineer (SWE) skills and labor outcomes. GHC adoption is associated with around a 3%-5% higher monthly probability of hiring SWEs, driven by entry-level hires. New hires exhibit around 5% more non-programming skills, with no decrease in coding skills. These findings are consistent with, for SWEs, GAI's productivity impacts and creation of new tasks outweighing potential displacement effects from automation of some SWE tasks.
Incarceration for tax debt enforcement may be utilized, although it is often deemed overly harsh by the public. Identifying factors that lower social and economic costs of this policy could improve its overall acceptability. Analyzing Taiwanese cases (2001-2016) with uniform 3-month sentences reveals that repayment occurs mostly early during incarceration. Repayment rates are lower for those with large unpaid taxes but higher for obligors with third-party guarantors, installment plans, or real estate ownership. Juridical and older obligors generally repay more, whereas gender and travel restrictions have no significant impact. The findings may help shape a more effective system.
This study employs a multi-period difference-in-differences model to analyze 2009-2022 corporate data, assessing the impact of China's carbon market pilot policy on corporate green governance performance, including environmental disclosure, green innovation, and stakeholder engagement. The policy enhances green governance through two channels by easing corporate financing constraints and stimulating green technology innovation, with results robust to propensity score matching difference-in-differences and spatial placebo tests. Notably, effects are stronger for non-state-owned enterprises, central-region firms, and firms led by environmentally proactive executives. We propose tiered carbon pricing and targeted green financing to address regional and ownership-based disparities, guiding strengthening of market-based green governance in emerging economies.
The stringent measures imposed by the Chinese government to deal with COVID restricted labor mobility across the country, impairing the major mechanism for consumption smoothing in China. This paper explores the composition of risk sharing between Chinese provinces before and during the pandemic. Our results indicate that the share of income shocks smoothed by the factor market exhibits a drastic drop, illustrating the adverse effects of lockdowns and other barriers to labor mobility. By contrast, risk sharing via fiscal mechanisms becomes much more prominent but around 37% of income shocks during the pandemic remain unsmoothed.
Political power in political economy lacks standardized metrics. This study introduces a measurement method combining individual legislators' power with firms' political contributions. This corporate political power measure explains federal contracting success. Results show local politicians representing firms' operational areas provide greater contracting benefits than powerful national politicians. Federal representatives support local firms to boost constituent employment and re-election prospects. Additionally, firms strategically reallocate contributions toward more electable politicians when experiencing political power decline, demonstrating adaptive behavior in maintaining influence.
Climate shocks threaten rural livelihoods in Malawi, yet households adopt diverse coping strategies to mitigate welfare losses. Using three-wave Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture panel data (2013-2019) and household fixed-effects models, this study examines how climate shocks affect food security and expenditure-based resilience and evaluates the moderating roles of coping strategies. Climate shocks significantly increase distress coping and reduce household consumption by approximately 4%-13% of mean annual expenditure. Savings and Social Safety Nets buffer these effects by stabilizing consumption, while credit provides only limited protection. These findings underscore the importance of integrating financial inclusion and social protection to strengthen resilience to climate risks.
Since 2015, the National Football League (NFL) draft has been held in various cities around the United States and has been accompanied by claims of large economic benefits. This paper uses daily hotel occupancy data to examine the effects of hosting the NFL draft. The results indicate the 2015-2018 drafts had negligible effects on room rentals and hotel revenue, while the 2019-2024 drafts (excluding 2020 and 2021) had statistically significant but small effects. The paper also presents estimates for other events held in draft-hosting cities, including NFL and other professional sports games, Formula One races, a Super Bowl, and Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concerts.
In the 1990s, the city of San Diego agreed to purchase unsold tickets to Chargers' games at the team's price. This was a short-term contract affording the team owner ample room for opportunistic rent extraction. Research and discourse tends to frame owners' constraints on subsidy rent extraction magnitude as determined heavily by lawmaker political calculus. A multi-year, uncapped, and legally binding ticket guarantee frees the owner from these constraints. Despite this, we estimate ticket prices rose 20%-30%, less than intuition might suggest. Our results suggest owners' ticket pricing behavior faces constraints exogenous to the subsidy policy process.
We examine how liberalized recreational marijuana laws have affected freshmen enrollment and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) major choice using difference-in-differences and event study models. Estimates indicate near-zero initial enrollment growth as schools substituted between in-state and out-of-state students. However, total enrollment increased in later periods as out-of-state gains persisted and in-state enrollment returned to its baseline. We find little evidence of an adverse effect on total freshmen STEM major enrollment.
Degrowth scholars often claim that capitalism generates social and ecological imbalances, as captured by Kate Raworth's leading doughnut model. We formalize this model using social and environmental indices and measure imbalances using their coefficient of variation. We then test if capitalism, proxied by economic freedom, is associated with greater imbalances across multiple datasets, specifications, and functional forms. We find little support for the model's central prediction. If anything, the relationship often runs in the opposite direction. These results suggest that the doughnut model, minimally as here formalized, is not empirically supported and may provide a limited guide for policy.
The Affordable Care Act's dependent-coverage mandate reduced uninsurance among young adults, but less is known about the consequences of losing parental insurance at age 26. Using a regression discontinuity design and 2011-2021 Texas Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data, I find a sharp 5-7 pp (8%) coverage drop at the cutoff, concentrated among unmarried, unemployed, and non-metropolitan adults. Overall health care use and health outcomes show no statistically significant changes, but women and unemployed adults report declines in good health, and married and employed adults report worse mental health. National BRFSS results show smaller coverage losses (2%-3%), reflecting stronger safety nets outside Texas.
In 2023 a survey was given to environmental and natural resource economists to gauge levels of consensus in the field. Strong consensus can signal to policymakers the relative strength of particular policy proposals. Respondents were queried on topics including air quality, groundwater, climate change, natural resource management, land conservation, environmental justice, and more. Survey results were compared to a similar survey given in 2012, to determine how consensus levels may have changed over time. We find, for the most part, significant levels of consensus today, and over time, on many key topics and policy proposals.
