2014年下半年的workshop文章开始认领。我们将继续在劳动（包括健康、政策评估）、区域和城市、政治经济学、社会经济学、发展经济学等领域内选择论文。时间仍然是每周二下午3点半至5点半，地点在710或714。请参与者积极认领，并与刘志阔联系，EMAIL是lzhikuo@163.com。workshop的博客将按报告时间发布最新信息和相关评论，参见http://blog.sina.com.cn/developmentcritics。同时我们的微信号(flcds2014)，也将在第一时间推送相关信息，欢迎关注。
1、政治偏爱和诅咒
这组文献都是关于政治和资源分配，并且数据独特，方法新颖，值得学习。Hodler & Raschky(2014)这篇文章讲政治领导人的家乡容易获得各种资源，这篇文章的数据利用卫星的灯光数据；Brollo et al.(2013)这篇文章讲获得更多财政资源的地方存在很多坏处，这篇文章是RDD的setting。如果这个版块关注RDD方法，可以新增Hinnerich & Pettersson-Lidbom(2014)这篇利用RDD研究不同民主形式对于再分配政策的影响。
Brollo, F., Nannicini, T., Perotti, R. and Tabellini, G., 2013, "The Political Resource Curse", The American Economic Review, 103(5): 1759-1796.
Abstract
The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a version of the career concerns model of political agency with endogenous entry of political candidates. The evidence refers to municipalities in Brazil, where federal transfers to municipal governments change exogenously according to given population thresholds. We exploit a regression discontinuity design to test the implications of the theory and identify the causal effect of larger federal transfers on political corruption and the observed features of political candidates at the municipal level. In accordance with the predictions of the theory, we find that larger transfers increase political corruption and reduce the quality of candidates for mayor.
（钟辉勇）领导人与地方经济发展
Hodler, R. and Raschky, P. A., 2014, "Regional Favoritism", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(2): 995-1033.
Abstract
We complement the literature on distributive politics by taking a systematic look at regional favoritism in a large and diverse sample of countries, and by employing a broad measure that captures the aggregate distributive effect of many different policies. In particular, we use satellite data on nighttime light intensity and information about the birthplaces of the countries' political leaders. In our panel of 38,427 subnational regions from 126 countries with yearly observations from 1992 to 2009, we find that subnational regions have more intense nighttime light when being the birth region of the current political leader. We argue that this finding provides evidence for regional favoritism. We explore the dynamics and the geographical extent of regional favoritism, and show that regional favoritism is most prevalent in countries with weak political institutions and poorly educated citizens. Further, foreign aid inflows and oil rents tend to fuel regional favoritism in weakly institutionalized countries, but not elsewhere.
Hinnerich, B. T. and Pettersson-Lidbom, P., 2014, "Democracy, Redistribution, and Political Participation: Evidence From Sweden 1919-1938", Econometrica, 82(3): 961–993.
Abstract
In this paper, we compare how two different types of political regimes—direct versus representative democracy—redistribute income toward the relatively poor segments of society after the introduction of universal and equal suffrage. Swedish local governments are used as a testing ground since this setting offers a number of attractive features for a credible impact evaluation. Most importantly, we exploit the existence of a population threshold, which partly determined a local government's choice of democracy to implement a regression-discontinuity design. The results indicate that direct democracies spend 40–60 percent less on public welfare. Our interpretation is that direct democracy may be more prone to elite capture than representative democracy since the elite's potential to exercise de facto power is likely to be greater in direct democracy after democratization.
2、产业集聚和城市发展
（徐力恒）Behrens, K., Duranton, G. and Robert-Nicoud, F., 2014, "Productive Cities: Sorting, Selection and Agglomeration", Journal of Political Economy, Forthcoming.
Abstract
Large cities produce more output per capita than small cities. This may occur because more talented individuals sort into large cities, because large cities select more productive entrepreneurs and firms, or because of agglomeration economies. We develop a model of systems of cities that combines all three elements and suggests interesting complementarities between them. The model can replicate stylised facts about sorting, agglomeration, and selection in cities. It can also generate Zipf's law for cities. Finally, it provides a useful framework within which to reinterpret existing empirical evidence.
Davis, M. A., Fisher, J. D. and Whited, T. M., 2014, "Macroeconomic Implications of Agglomeration", Econometrica, 82(2): 731-764.
Abstract
We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of cities and use it to estimate the effect of local agglomeration on per capita consumption growth. Agglomeration affects growth through the density of economic activity: higher production per unit of land raises local productivity. Firms take productivity as given; produce using a technology that has constant returns in developed land, capital, and labor; and accumulate land and capital. If land prices are rising, as they are empirically, firms economize on land. This behavior increases density and contributes to growth. We use a panel of U.S. cities and our model's predicted relationship among wages, output prices, housing rents, and labor quality to estimate the net e®ect of agglomeration on local wages. The impact of agglomeration on the level of wages is estimated to be 2 percent. Combined with our model and observed increases in land prices, this estimate implies that agglomeration raises per capita consumption growth by 10 percent.
（梁文泉）Eeckhout, J., Pinheiro, R. and Schmidheiny, K., 2014, "Spatial Sorting", Journal of Political Economy, Forthcoming.
Abstract
We investigate the role of complementarities in production and skill mobility across cities. We propose a general equilibrium model of location choice by heterogeneously skilled workers, and consider different degrees of complementarities between the skills of workers. The nature of the complementarities determines the equilibrium skill distribution across cities. We prove that with extreme-skill complementarity, the skill distribution has fatter tails in large cities; with top-skill complementarity, there is first-order stochastic dominance. Using the model to back out skills from wage and housing price data, we find robust evidence of fat tails in large cities. Big cities have big inequality. This pattern of spatial sorting is consistent with extreme-skill complementarity: the productivity of high skilled workers and of the providers of low skilled services is mutually enhanced.
Helsley, R. W. and Strange, W. C., 2014, "Coagglomeration and the Scale and Composition of Clusters", Journal of Political Economy, Forthcoming.
Abstract
Cities are neither completely specialized nor completely diverse. However, the theoretical agglomeration literature has focused almost entirely on the polar cases of complete diversity and specialization. In order to give theoretical foundations to cluster analysis, this paper develops a model that can also generate the intermediate case of cities that feature the coagglomeration of some but not all industries into clusters. The analysis sharply challenges the conventional wisdom that the size and composition of clusters are driven primarily by agglomerative efficiencies. It also illuminates what observed patterns of coagglomeration imply about the nature of agglomeration economies.
3、成长环境的后续影响。
这两篇文章是精心选出来的，一篇利用地区层面的差异去分析高犯罪地区成长的影响，另外一篇用时间维度的差异去看衰退时期成长的影响(Damm & Dustmann, 2014; Giuliano & Spilimbergo, 2014)。这种文章很值得学习，中国有很多类似值得研究的问题。
（任雅）Damm, A. P. and Dustmann, C., 2014, "Does Growing Up in a High Crime Neighborhood Affect Youth Criminal Behavior?", American Economic Review，Forthcoming.
Abstract
This paper investigates the effect of early exposure to neighborhood crime on subsequent criminal behavior of youth exploiting a unique natural experiment between 1986 and 1998 when refugee immigrants to Denmark were assigned to neighborhoods quasi-randomly. We find strong evidence that the share of young people convicted for crimes, in particular violent crimes, in the neighborhood increases convictions of male assignees later in life. No such effects are found for other measures of neighborhood crime including the rate of committed crimes. Our findings suggest social interaction as a key channel through which neighborhood crime is linked to individual criminal behavior.
（王旸）Giuliano, P. and Spilimbergo, A., 2014, "Growing Up in a Recession", The Review of Economic Studies, 81(2): 787-817.
Abstract
Does the historical macroeconomic environment affect preferences for redistribution? We find that individuals who experienced a recession when young believe that success in life depends more on luck than effort, support more government redistribution, and tend to vote for left-wing parties. The effect of recessions on beliefs is long-lasting. We support our findings with evidence from three different datasets. First, we identify the effect of recessions on beliefs exploiting time and regional variation in macroeconomic conditions using data from the 1972 to 2010 General Social Survey. Our specifications control for nonlinear time-period, life-cycle, and cohort effects, as well as a host of background variables. Second, we rely on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 to corroborate the age–period–cohort specification and look at heterogeneous effects of experiencing a recession during early adulthood. Third, using data from the World Value Survey, we confirm our findings with a sample of 37 countries whose citizens experienced macroeconomic disasters at different points in history.
4、移民的影响
中国的城市化进程就是最大的移民潮，这会产生什么样的影响，更重要的是如何去研究这种影响，我们可能需要参考移民相关的文献，同样是一组(Abramitzky et al., 2014; Dustmann et al., 2013; Hornbeck & Naidu, 2014; Hornung, 2014; Moser et al., 2014)。
Abramitzky, R., Boustan, L. P. and Eriksson, K., 2014, "A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration", Journal of Political Economy, 122(3): 467-506.
Abstract
During the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), the US maintained an open border, absorbing 30 million European immigrants. Prior cross-sectional work on this era finds that immigrants initially held lower-paid occupations than natives but experienced rapid convergence over time. In newly-assembled panel data, we show that, in fact, the average immigrant did not face a substantial occupation-based earnings penalty upon first arrival and experienced occupational advancement at the same rate as natives. Cross-sectional patterns are driven by biases from declining arrival cohort quality and departures of negatively-selected return migrants. We show that assimilation patterns vary substantially across sending countries and persist in the second generation.
Dustmann, C., Frattini, T. and Preston, I. P., 2013, "The Effect of Immigration Along the Distribution of Wages", The Review of Economic Studies, 80(1): 145-173.
Abstract
This paper analyses the effect immigration has on the wages of native workers. Unlike most previous work, we estimate wage effects along the distribution of native wages. We derive a flexible empirical strategy that does not rely on pre-allocating immigrants to particular skill groups. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate that immigrants downgrade considerably upon arrival. As for the effects on native wages, we find a pattern of effects whereby immigration depresses wages below the 20th percentile of the wage distribution but leads to slight wage increases in the upper part of the wage distribution. This pattern mirrors the evidence on the location of immigrants in the wage distribution. We suggest that possible explanations for the overall slightly positive effect on native wages, besides standard immigration surplus arguments, could involve deviations of immigrant remuneration from contribution to production either because of initial mismatch or immigrant downgrading.
Hornbeck, R. and Naidu, S., 2014, "When the Levee Breaks: Black Migration and Economic Development in the American South", American Economic Review, 104(3): 963–990.
Abstract
In the American South, post-bellum economic stagnation has been partially attributed to white landowners' access to low-wage black labor; indeed, Southern economic convergence from 1940 to 1970 was associated with substantial black out-migration. This paper examines the impact of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 on agricultural development. Flooded counties experienced an immediate and persistent out-migration of black population. Over time, landowners in flooded counties dramatically mechanized and modernized agricultural production relative to landowners in nearby similar non-flooded counties. Landowners resisted black out-migration, however, benefiting from the status quo system of labor-intensive agricultural production.
Hornung, E., 2014, "Immigration and the Diffusion of Technology: The Huguenot Diaspora in Prussia", The American Economic Review, 104(1): 84-122.
Abstract
This paper analyzes long-term effects of skilled-worker immigration on productivity for the Huguenots migration to Prussia. We combine Huguenot immigration lists from 1700 with Prussian firm-level data on the value of inputs and outputs in 1802 in a unique data base. In 1685, religious persecution drove highly skilled Huguenots out of France into backward Brandenburg-Prussia where they were channeled into towns to compensate population losses due to plagues during the Thirty Years’War. Exploiting this settlement pattern in an instrumental-variable approach, we still find causal effects of Huguenot settlement on the productivity of textile manufactories hundred years after their immigration.
Moser, P., Voena, A. and Waldinger, F., 2014, "German-Jewish Emigrés and US Invention", American Economic Review, Forthcoming.
Abstract
Historical accounts suggest that Jewish émigrés from Nazi Germany revolutionized U.S. science. To analyze the émigrés’ effects on chemical innovation in the U.S. we compare changes in patenting by U.S. inventors in research fields of émigrés with fields of other German chemists. Patenting by U.S. inventors increased by 31 percent in émigré fields. Regressions that instrument for émigré fields with pre-1933 fields of dismissed German chemists confirm a substantial increase in U.S. invention. Inventorlevel data indicate that émigrés encouraged innovation by attracting new researchers to their fields, rather than by increasing the productivity of incumbent inventors
5、标准误问题
实证文章主要关注系数的无偏性和一致性，可是对于标准误却存在一定的忽视，尤其对于Cluster的标准误问题。如果没有考虑with-cluster error问题，那么容易造成误导性的小标准误问题，从而产生错误的置信区间，即导致较大的T统计量和较小的P值。聚类稳健标准误（Cluster-robust standard errors）已经被广泛的使用，但是也存在一定的误用。比如：Bertrand et al. (2004)指出很多DID的研究并未控制聚类标准误，而且经常在错误的范围内进行聚类标准误分析。对此，Cameron et al.(2013)提供了详细的综述，并提供相应程序。
（刘志阔）Cameron A C, Miller D L., 2014, "A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference", Journal of Human Resources, Forthcoming
（刘志阔）Bertrand M, Duflo E, Mullainathan S, 2004, "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?" The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(1): 249-275.
（刘志阔）Cameron A C, Gelbach J B, Miller D L, 2008, "Bootstrap-based improvements for inference with clustered errors",The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(3): 414-427.
Cameron A C, Gelbach J B, Miller D L, 2011 "Robust inference with multiway clustering". Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 29(2): 238-249.
6、城市与企业家精神
这两篇文章均是从同一研究问题出发，即为什么企业家精神的程度在不同城市间表现得明显不同？作者从城市的角度来研究企业家精神，说明城市所具有的集聚效应、人力资本优势等特征可以促进企业家精神，也说明城市间不同的发展阶段以及差异化特征导致了企业家精神在不同城市程度的差别。这对于中国的城市发展以及如何培育企业家精神也有一定的借鉴意义。
（倪鹏途）Edward,G., William, K., Giacomo, P.,“Clusters of Entrepreneurship”, working paper, NO.15377,NBER.
Abstract
Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both across cities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry costs or raise entrepreneurial returns, thereby increasing net returns and attracting entrepreneurs. A secondclass of theories hypothesizes that some places are endowed with a greater supply of entrepreneurship. Evidence on sales per worker does not support the higher returns for entrepreneurship rationale. Our evidence suggests that entrepreneurship is higher when fixed costs are lower and when there are more entrepreneurial people.
（倪鹏途）Edward L. Glaeser,“Entrepreneurship and the City”, working paper, No.13551, NBER.
Abstract
Why do levels of entrepreneurship differ across America's cities? This paper presents basic facts on two measures of entrepreneurship: the self-employment rate and the number of small firms. Both of these measures are correlated with urban success, suggesting that more entrepreneurial cities are more successful. There is considerable variation in the self-employment rate across metropolitan areas, but about one-half of this heterogeneity can be explained by demographic and industrial variation. Self-employment is particularly associated with abundant, older citizens and with the presence of input suppliers. Conversely, small firm size and employment growth due to unaffiliated new establishments is associated most strongly with the presence of input suppliers and an appropriate labor force. I also find support for the Chinitz (1961) hypothesis that entrepreneurship is linked to a large number of small firms in supplying industries. Finally, there is a strong connection between area-level education and entrepreneurship.
7、环境管制
这篇文章基于城市层面的环境规制政策、主要污染物排放量和婴儿死亡率数据，采用DID方法系统评估了印度环境规制政策的实施效果，并将空气和水污染的政策效果进行比较，认为公众关注度可能是导致空气和水污染政策实施效果不同的原因。对于中国环境污染和健康方面的研究，这篇文章值得借鉴。
（刘郁）Greenstone, M. and Hanna, R., 2014, "Environmental Regulations, Air and Water Pollution, and Infant Mortality in India", American Economic Review, Forthcoming.
Using the most comprehensive developing country dataset ever compiled on air and water pollution and environmental regulations, the paper assesses India’s environmental regulations with a difference-in-differences design. The air pollution regulations are associated with substantial improvements in air quality. The most successful air regulation resulted in a modest, but statistically insignificant decline in infant mortality. In contrast, the water regulations had no measurable benefits. The available evidence leads us to cautiously conclude that higher demand for air quality prompted the effective enforcement of air pollution regulations, indicating that strong public support allows environmental regulations to succeed in weak institutional settings.
8、政府与媒体
这两篇文章研究的是政府和非政府控制的网络媒体对待药品问题的态度及其影响因素。文章1认为地方政府间的竞争会促使地方政府保护本地药业，导致市场扭曲；文章2认为市场化媒体的力量（新浪微博）的引入有助于监管公共及私人部门的运作。两篇文章提供了关于中国药品及监管的非常丰富的背景知识和数据来源，放在一起读，大家可以从一个更新的视角了解我国从计划经济向市场经济的转变。
(冯净冰) Markus, E.,Zheng W.,Zhihong Y., 2014,“From One to Many Central Plans:Drug Advertising Inspections and Intra-National Protectionism in China”, CESIFO workding paper NO. 4682.
Abstract
This paper provides the first micro-level evidence for the existence and patterns of intranational protectionism in China. We demonstrate that drug advertising inspections are used by provincial governments to discriminate against firms from outside the province and document how the degree of discrimination varies across firms: manufacturers with closer ties to rival provinces, from provinces with lower presence in the market, and smaller firms are more likely to be targeted. Our findings confirm that giving local governments strong incentives to compete with each other exacerbates the market distortions inherent in a partially reformed economy.
(冯净冰) Bei Qin,2012, “Chinese Microblogs and Drug Quality”, Job market paper.
Abstract
The paper examines the impact of the introduction of Sina Weibo, the most popular microblog in China, on the quality of drugs on the market. Using a unique data set on drug quality and Sina Weibo use, I explore the staggered diffusion of Sina Weibo across prefectures. I find that the number of bad drugs is decreasing in Sina Weibo use: a one standard deviation increase in Weibo posts reduces the number of bad drugs found by 85 percent. Consistent with the prediction of a simple moral-hazard model, I show that the reduction of bad drugs is driven by two mechanisms: SinaWeibo induces more effort from the Drug Administration and it deters the production of bad drugs. Finally, I show that the diffusion of Sina Weibo has a higher marginal effect for disadvantaged groups, consistent with microblogging being a cheap, accessible media. The results suggest that microblogs can play an important role in monitoring both the public and the private sectors, especially in a context with media censorship.
9、比较优势来源与贸易模式
贸易理论中，比较优势是解释贸易模式的重要理论之一。比较优势的来源有多个途径：Nunn and Trefler (2014)回顾了国内制度作为一国比较优势来源的理论与经验文献，Bahar et al.(2014) 则实证检验了知识传播对比较优势进而对贸易模式的影响。
（熊瑞祥）Nunn, N. and D. Trefler, 2014, “Domestic Institutions as a Source of Comparative Advantage,” in Helpman, E., K. Rogoff and G. Gopinath(Eds.), Handbook of International Economics, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 263–315.
Abstract
Domestic institutions can have profound effects on international trade. This chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of this insight. Particular attention is paid to contracting institutions and to comparative advantage, where the bulk of the research has been concentrated. We also consider the reverse causation running from comparative advantage to domestic institutions.
（熊瑞祥）Bahar, D., R. Hausmann and C. A. Hidalgo, 2014, “Neighbors and the Evolution of the Comparative Advantage of Nations: Evidence of International Knowledge Diffusion,” Journal of International Economics, 92: 111-123.
Abstract
The literature on knowledge diffusion shows that knowledge decays strongly with distance. In this paper we document that the probability that a product is added to a country's export basket is, on average, 65% larger if a neighboring country is a successful exporter of that same product. For existing products, growth of exports in a country is 1.5% higher per annum if it has a neighbor with comparative advantage in these products. While these results could be driven by a common third factor that escapes our controls, they align with our expectations of the localized character of knowledge diffusion.
10.其他主题
华尔街与房地产泡沫
Ing-Haw Cheng, Sahil Raina and Wei Xiong，2014，“Wall Street and the Housing Bubble,” American Economic Review, 104(9): 2797–2829
Abstract
We analyze whether mid-level managers in securitized finance were aware of a large-scale housing bubble and a looming crisis in 2004-2006 using their personal home transaction data. We find that the average person in our sample neither timed the market nor were cautious in their home transactions, and did not exhibit awareness of problems in overall housing markets. Certain groups of securitization agents were particularly aggressive in increasing their exposure to housing during this period, suggesting the need to expand the incentives-based view of the crisis to incorporate a role for beliefs.
（唐为）公共交通对拥堵的影响
Michael L. Anderson，“Subways, Strikes, and Slowdowns: The Impacts of Public Transit on Traffic Congestion”, NBER Working Paper, No. 18757.
Abstract
Public transit accounts for 1 percent of U.S. passenger miles traveled but attracts strong public support. Using a simple choice model, we predict that transit riders are likely to be individuals who commute along routes with severe roadway delays. These individuals' choices thus have high marginal impacts on congestion. We test this prediction with data from a strike in 2003 by Los Angeles transit workers. Estimating a regression discontinuity design, we find that average highway delay increases 47 percent when transit service ceases. We find that the net benefits of transit systems appear to be much larger than previously believed.
竞争与多元意识形态
Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse M. Shapiro, Michael Sinkinson，"Competition and Ideological Diversity: Historical Evidence from US Newspapers", NBER Working Paper No. 18234
ABSTRACT
We study the competitive forces that shaped ideological diversity in the US press in the early twentieth century. We find that households preferred like-minded news and that newspapers used their political orientation to differentiate from competitors. We formulate a model of newspaper demand, entry, and political affiliation choice in which newspapers compete for both readers and advertisers. We use a combination of estimation and calibration to identify the model’s parameters from novel data on newspaper circulation, costs, and revenues. The estimated model implies that competition enhances ideological diversity, that the market undersupplies diversity, and that optimal competition policy requires accounting for the two-sidedness of the news market.
低收入家庭的长期社区效应：以“搬向机遇”项目为例
Ludwig, Jens, Greg J. Duncan, Lisa A. Gennetian, Lawrence F. Katz, Ronald C. Kessler, Jeffrey R. Kling, and Lisa Sanbonmatsu. 2013. "Long-Term Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Families: Evidence from Moving to Opportunity." American Economic Review, 103(3): 226-31.
ABSTRACT
We examine long-term neighborhood effects on low-income families using data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized housing-mobility experiment, which offered some public-housing families but not others the chance to move to less-disadvantaged neighborhoods. We show that 10-15 years after baseline MTO improves adult physical and mental health; has no detectable effect on economic outcomes, youth schooling and youth physical health; and mixed results by gender on other youth outcomes, with girls doing better on some measures and boys doing worse. Despite the somewhat mixed pattern of impacts on traditional behavioral outcomes, MTO moves substantially improve adult subjective well-being.
储蓄行为的根源
Henrik Cronqvist and Stephan Siegel, “The Origins of Savings Behavior”,working papaer
Abstract
Analyzing the savings behavior of a large sample of identical and fraternal twins, we find that genetic differences explain about 33 percent of the variation in savings propensities across individuals. Individuals are born with a persistent genetic predisposition to a specific savings behavior. Parenting contributes to the variation in savings rates among younger individuals, but its effect decays over time. The environment when growing up (e.g., parents’ wealth) moderates genetic effects. Finally, savings behavior is genetically correlated with income growth, smoking, and obesity, suggesting that the genetic component of savings behavior reflects genetic variation in time preferences or self-control.
(汤毅)进口竞争与美国的就业
Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson, Brendan Price, “Import Competition and theGreat U.S. Employment Sag of the 2000s”, NBER Working Paper No. 20395
Abstract
Even before the Great Recession, U.S. employment growth was unimpressive. Between 2000 and 2007, the economy gave back the considerable gains in employment rates it had achieved during the 1990s, with major contractions in manufacturing employment being a prime contributor to the slump. The U.S. employment "sag" of the 2000s is widely recognized but poorly understood. In this paper, we explore the contribution of the swift rise of import competition from China to sluggish U.S. employment growth. We find that the increase in U.S. imports from China, which accelerated after 2000, was a major force behind recent reductions in U.S. manufacturing employment and that, through input-output linkages and other general equilibrium effects, it appears to have significantly suppressed overall U.S. job growth. We apply industry-level and local labor market-level approaches to estimate the size of (a) employment losses in directly exposed manufacturing industries, (b) employment effects in indirectly exposed upstream and downstream industries inside and outside manufacturing, and (c) the net effects of conventional labor reallocation, which should raise employment in non-exposed sectors, and Keynesian multipliers, which should reduce employment in non-exposed sectors. Our central estimates suggest net job losses of 2.0 to 2.4 million stemming from the rise in import competition from China over the period 1999 to 2011. The estimated employment effects are larger in magnitude at the local labor market level, consistent with local general equilibrium effects that amplify the impact of import competition.
Alwyn Young, “Structural Transformation, the Mismeasurement of Productivity Growth, and the Cost Disease of Services”, LSE working paper
Abstract
If workers self-select into industries based upon their relative productivity in different tasks, and comparative advantage is aligned with absolute advantage, then the average efficacy of a sector's workforce will be negatively correlated with its employment share. This might explain the difference in the reported productivity growth of contracting goods and expanding services. Instrumenting with defense expenditures, I find the elasticity of worker efficacy with respect to employment shares is substantially negative, albeit imprecisely estimated. The estimates suggest that the view that goods and services have similar productivity growth rates is a plausible alternative characterization of growth in developed economies.
（叶菁文） Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, 2013, "On the Origin of States: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo", Columbia University, Job market paper.
When do states arise? When do they fail to arise? This question has produced a large amount of scholarship across social sciences. A dominant view is that states first arise when violent actors impose a “monopoly of violence” in order to extract taxes (Carneiro 1970, Tilly 1985). One fundamental fact affects all existing studies: systematic data are the creation of states. There is therefore no statistical evidence preceding state formation. As a foundation for this study, I conducted fieldwork in stateless areas of DRC, managing a team that collected village-level panel data on violent actors. I introduce optimal taxation theory to the decision of violent actors to establish local “monopolies of violence”. The value of such decision hinges on their ability to tax the local population. A sharp rise in the global demand for coltan, a bulky commodity used in the electronics industry, leads violent actors to impose “monopolies of violence” and taxation systems in coltan villages. A similar rise in the demand for gold, easier to conceal and more difficult to tax, does not. Auxiliary tests also support this theory. My findings support the view that the expected revenue from taxation, determined in particular by tax base elasticity, can explain the first stages of state formation.
Melissa Dell, 2012, "Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War", Harvard univtersity, Job market paper.
Abstract
Drug trade-related violence has escalated dramatically in Mexico since 2007,and recent years have also witnessed large-scale efforts to combat trafficking, spearheaded by Mexico’s conservative PAN party. This study examines the direct and spillover effects of Mexican policy towards the drug trade. Regression discontinuity estimates show that drug-related violence increases substantially after close elections of PAN mayors. Empirical evidence suggests that the violence reflects rival traffickers’ attempts to usurp territories after crackdowns have weakened incumbent criminals. Moreover, the study uses a network model of trafficking routes to show that PAN victories divert drug traffic, increasing violence along alternative drug routes.
