2015年上半年的 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。我们的微信号(flcds2014)，也将在第一时间推送最新信息和相关评论，欢迎关注。
（钟辉勇）商业银行监管
Agarwal S, Lucca D, Seru A, et al. Inconsistent Regulators: Evidence from Banking*[J]. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2014: qju003.
Abstract
We find that regulators can implement identical rules inconsistently due to differences in their institutional design and incentives and that this behavior may adversely impact the effectiveness with which regulation is implemented. We study supervisory decisions of U.S. banking regulators and exploit a legally determined rotation policy that assigns federal and state supervisors to the same bank at exogenously set time intervals. Comparing federal and state regulator supervisory ratings within the same bank, we find that federal regulators are systematically tougher, downgrading supervisory ratings almost twice as frequently as state supervisors. State regulators counteract these downgrades to some degree by upgrading more frequently. Under federal regulators, banks report worse asset quality, higher regulatory capital ratios, and lower return on assets. Leniency of state regulators relative to their federal counterparts is related to costly outcomes, such as higher failure rates and lower repayment rates of government assistance funds. The discrepancy in regulator behavior is related to different weights given by regulators to local economic conditions and, to some extent, to differences in regulatory resources. We find no support for regulator self-interest, which includes “revolving doors” as a reason for leniency of state regulators.
（王旸）经济衰退与经济增长
Giuliano P, Spilimbergo A. Growing up in a Recession[J]. The Review of Economic Studies, 2014, 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.
（刘志阔、肖金川）统计推断
Cameron A C, Miller D L. A practitioner’s guide to cluster-robust inference[J]. Forthcoming in Journal of Human Resources, 2013: 221-236.
Abstract
We consider statistical inference for regression when data are grouped into clusters, with regression model errors independent across clusters but correlated within clusters. Examples include data on individuals with clustering on village or region or other category such as industry, and state-year differences-in-differences studies with clustering on state. In such settings default standard errors can greatly overstate estimator precision. Instead, if the number of clusters is large, statistical inference after OLS should be based on cluster-robust standard errors. We outline the basic method as well as many complications that can arise in practice. These include cluster-specific fixed effects, few clusters, multi-way clustering, and estimators other than OLS.
（曹晖）华尔街与房地产泡沫
Cheng I H, Raina S, Xiong W. Wall Street and the housing bubble[J]. The American Economic Review, 2014, 104(9): 2797-2829.
Abstract
We analyze whether midlevel 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.
（曹晖）环境污染和婴儿健康
Luechinger S. Air pollution and infant mortality: A natural experiment from power plant desulfurization[J]. Journal of health economics, 2014, 37: 219-231.
Abstract
The paper estimates the effect of SO2 pollution on infant mortality in Germany, 1985–2003. To avoid endogeneity problems, I exploit the natural experiment created by the mandated desulfurization at power plants and power plants’ location and prevailing wind directions, which together determine treatment intensity for counties. Estimates translate into an elasticity of 0.07–0.13 and the observed reduction in pollution implies an annual gain of 826–1460 infant lives. There is no evidence for disproportionate effects on neonatal mortality, but for an increase in the number of infants with comparatively low birth weight and length.
Shinsuke Tanaka. Environmental Regulations on Air Pollution in China and Their Impact on Infant Mortality[J]. Journal of health economics, Available online 6 March 2015.
Abstract
This study explores the impact of environmental regulations in China on infant mortality. In 1998, the Chinese government imposed stringent air pollution regulations, in one of the first large-scale regulatory attempts in a developing country. We find that the infant mortality rate fell by 20 percent in the treatment cities designated as “Two Control Zones.” The greatest reduction in mortality occurred during the neonatal period, highlighting an important pathophysiologic mechanism, and was largest among infants born to mothers with low levels of education. The finding is robust to various alternative hypotheses and specifications. Further, a falsification test using deaths from causes unrelated to air pollution supports these findings.
（赵瑞丽）企业的分布与城市的集聚
Gaubert C. Firm sorting and agglomeration[J]. Unpublished manuscript, Princeton University, 2014.
Abstract
The distribution of firms in space is far from uniform. Some locations host the most productive large firms, while others barely attract any. In this paper, I study the sorting of heterogeneous firms across locations and analyze policies designed to attract firms to particular regions (place-based policies). I first propose a theory of the distribution of heterogeneous firms in a variety of sectors across cities. Aggregate TFP and welfare depend on the extent of agglomeration externalities produced in cities and on how heterogeneous firms sort across them. The distribution of city sizes and the sorting patterns of firms are uniquely determine din equilibrium. This allows me to structurally estimate the model, using French firm-level data. I find that nearly two thirds of the observed productivity advantage of large cities is due to firm sorting. I use the estimated model to quantify the general equilibrium effects of place-based policies. I find that policies that decrease local congestion lead to a new spatial equilibrium with higher aggregate TFP and welfare. In contrast, policies that subsidize under-developed areas have negative aggregate effects.
（刘郁）以邻为壑：中国的环境污染
Cai H, Chen Y, Gong Q. Polluting thy neighbor: Unintended consequences of China's pollution reduction mandates[J]. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2015.
Abstract
This paper studies how the pollution reduction mandates imposed by China׳s central government in 2001 triggered unanticipated responses from its provinces. We apply the difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) method to a unique dataset on industry-level activities in counties along 24 major rivers in China from 1998 through 2008. We find that the most downstream county of a province has up to 20 percent more water-polluting activities than otherwise identical counties since 2001. Moreover, we find that the enforcement of pollution fee collection is more lenient in the most downstream county of a province, and that private firms contribute more to the downstream effect than state-owned enterprises and foreign firms. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the provincial governments respond to the pollution reduction mandates by shifting their enforcement efforts away from the most downstream county.
Kahn M E, Li P, Zhao D. Pollution Control Effort at China's River Borders: When Does Free Riding Cease?[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013. AEJ:EP forthcoming.
Abstract
At political boundaries, local leaders often have weak incentives to reduce polluting activity because the social costs are borne by downstream neighbors. This paper exploits a natural experiment set in China in which the central government changed the local political promotion criteria and hence incentivized local officials to reduce border pollution along specific criteria. Using a difference in difference approach, we document evidence of pollution progress with respect to targeted criteria at river boundaries. Other indicators of water quality, not targeted by the central government, do not improve after the regime shift. Using data on the economic geography of key industrial water polluters, we explore possible mechanisms.
（任迪诗雅）低收入家庭的长期社区效应：以“搬向机遇”项目为例
Ludwig J, Duncan G J, Gennetian L A, et al. Long-Term Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Families: Evidence from Moving to Opportunity[J]. The American Economic Review, 2013, 103(3): 226-231.
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.
（郭杰振）产业集聚和城市发展
Helsley R W, Strange W C. Coagglomeration, Clusters, and the Scale and Composition of Cities[J]. Journal of Political Economy, 2014, 122(5): 1064-1093.
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.
（文倩玉）竞争与多元意识形态
Gentzkow M, Shapiro J M, Sinkinson M. Competition and ideological diversity: Historical evidence from us newspapers[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012.
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.
（方娴）创新与机构投资者
Aghion P, Van Reenen J, Zingales L. Innovation and Institutional Ownership[J]. THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, 2013, 103(1): 277-304.
Abstract
We find that greater institutional ownership is associated with more innovation. To explore the mechanism, we contrast the “lazy manager” hypothesis with a model where institutional owners increase innovation incentives through reducing career risks. The evidence favors career concerns. First, we find complementarity between institutional ownership and product market competition, whereas the lazy manager hypothesis predicts substitution. Second, CEOs are less likely to be fired in the face of profit downturns when institutional ownership is higher. Finally, using instrumental variables, policy changes, and disaggregating by type of institutional owner, we argue that the effect of institutions on innovation is causal.
