2016 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：每周二下午3点半至5点半，地点在复旦大学经济学院 714 或 710。请参与者积极认领，并与刘志阔（lzhikuo@163.com）和邓东升（ddswhu@outlook.com）联系。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，欢迎大家关注。
1、政治偏爱和诅咒
Brollo F, Nannicini T. The Political Resource Curse[J]. THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, 2013, 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.
Hinnerich B T, Pettersson‐Lidbom P. Democracy, Redistribution, and Political Participation: Evidence From Sweden 1919–1938[J]. Econometrica, 2014, 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.
环境污染系列
Oliva P. Environmental regulations and corruption: Automobile emissions in Mexico City[J]. Journal of Political Economy, 2015, 123(3): 686-724.
Abstract: Emission regulations become more prevalent in developing countries, but they may be compromised by corruption. This paper documents the prevalence of corruption and the effectiveness of vehicle emission regulations in Mexico City. I develop a statistical test for identifying a specific type of cheating that involves bribing center technicians. I also estimate a structural model of car owner retesting and cheating decisions. Results suggest that 9.6 percent of car owners paid US$20 to circumvent the regulation. Eliminating cheating and increasing the cost of retests would reduce emissions by 3,708 tons at a high cost for vehicle owners.
匹配和DID是修正 selection bias时经常用到的两种方法，但很多情况下并不清楚如何针对特定研究背景取舍两种方法，该文回应了此问题。(By “人畜无害的econometrics”)
Bursztyn L, Ederer F, Ferman B, et al. Understanding mechanisms underlying peer effects: Evidence from a field experiment on financial decisions[J]. Econometrica, 2014, 82(4): 1273-1301.
Abstract: Using a high-stakes field experiment conducted with a financial brokerage, we implement a novel design to separately identify two channels of social influence in financial decisions, both widely studied theoretically. When someone purchases an asset, his peers may also want to purchase it, both because they learn from his choice ("social learning") and because his possession of the asset directly affects others' utility of owning the same asset ("social utility"). We randomize whether one member of a peer pair who chose to purchase an asset has that choice implemented, thus randomizing his ability to possess the asset. Then, we randomize whether the second member of the pair: (1) receives no information about the first member, or (2) is informed of the first member's desire to purchase the asset and the result of the randomization that determined possession. This allows us to estimate the effects of learning plus possession, and learning alone, relative to a (no information) control group. We find that both social learning and social utility channels have statistically and economically significant effects on investment decisions. Evidence from a follow-up survey reveals that social learning effects are greatest when the first (second) investor is financially sophisticated (financially unsophisticated); investors report updating their beliefs about asset quality after learning about their peer's revealed preference; and, they report motivations consistent with "keeping up with the Joneses" when learning about their peer's possession of the asset. These results can help shed light on the mechanisms underlying herding behavior in financial markets and peer effects in consumption and investment decisions.
Muralidharan K, Niehaus P, Sukhtankar S. Building state capacity: Evidence from biometric smartcards in India[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014.
Abstract: Anti-poverty programs in developing countries are often difficult to implement; in particular, many governments lack the capacity to deliver payments securely to targeted beneficiaries. We evaluate the impact of biometrically-authenticated payments infrastructure ("Smartcards") on beneficiaries of employment (NREGS) and pension (SSP) programs in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, using a large-scale experiment that randomized the rollout of Smartcards over 158 sub- districts and 19 million people. We find that, while incompletely implemented, the new system delivered a faster, more predictable, and less corrupt NREGS payments process without adversely affecting program access. For each of these outcomes, treatment group distributions first-order stochastically dominated those of the control group. The investment was cost-effective, as time savings to NREGS beneficiaries alone were equal to the cost of the intervention, and there was also a significant reduction in the "leakage" of funds between the government and beneficiaries in both NREGS and SSP programs. Beneficiaries overwhelmingly preferred the new system for both programs. Overall, our results suggest that investing in secure payments infrastructure can significantly enhance "state capacity" to implement welfare programs in developing countries.
下面第一篇是劳动经济学的文章；第二篇是更一般的方法性文章，该方法尝试在结构方程与reduced form 之间建立桥梁，以方便进行总体福利分析，有着十分广泛的应用前景。
Choo E, Siow A. Who marries whom and why[J]. Journal of political Economy, 2006, 114(1): 175-201.
Abstract: This paper proposes and estimates a static transferable utility model of the marriage market. The model generates a nonparametric marriage matching function with spillover effects. It rationalizes the standard interpretation of marriage rate regressions and points out its limitations. The model was used to estimate U.S. marital behavior in 1971/72 and 1981/82. The marriage matching function estimates show that the gains to marriage for young adults fell substantially over the decade. Unlike contradictory marriage rate regression results, the marriage matching function estimates showed that the legalization of abortion had a significant quantitative impact on the fall in the gains to marriage for young men and women.
Chetty R. Sufficient statistics for welfare analysis: A bridge between structural and reduced-form methods[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008.
Abstract: The debate between "structural" and "reduced-form" approaches has generated substantial controversy in applied economics. This article reviews a recent literature in public economics that combines the advantages of reduced-form strategies -- transparent and credible identification -- with an important advantage of structural models -- the ability to make predictions about counterfactual outcomes and welfare. This recent work has developed formulas for the welfare consequences of various policies that are functions of high-level elasticities rather than deep primitives. These formulas provide theoretical guidance for the measurement of treatment effects using program evaluation methods. I present a general framework that shows how many policy questions can be answered by identifying a small set of sufficient statistics. I use this framework to synthesize the modern literature on taxation, social insurance, and behavioral welfare economics. Finally, I discuss topics in labor economics, industrial organization, and macroeconomics that can be tackled using the sufficient statistic approach.
2016-2-28 新增文章（By 兰小欢老师）
Naidu S, Nyarko Y, Dhabi N Y U A, et al. Monopsony Power in Migrant Labor Markets: Evidence from the United Arab Emirates[R]. Working paper, 2015.
Abstract: By exploiting a reform in the UAE that relaxed restrictions on employer transitions, we provide new estimates of the monopsony power of firms over migrant workers. Our results show that the reform increased incumbent migrants’ earnings and firm retention. This occurs despite an increase in employer transitions, and is driven by a fall in country exits. While the outcomes of incumbents improved, the reform decreased demand for new migrants and lowered their earnings. These results are consistent with a model of monopsony where firms face upward-sloping labor supply curves for both new recruits in source countries and incumbent migrants.
Lusardi A, Michaud P C, Mitchell O S. Optimal financial knowledge and wealth inequality[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013.
Abstract: While financial knowledge is strongly positively related to household wealth, there is also considerable cross-sectional variation in both financial knowledge and net asset levels. To explore these patterns, we develop a calibrated stochastic life cycle model featuring endogenous financial knowledge accumulation. The model generates substantial wealth inequality, over and above that of standard life cycle models; this is because higher earners typically have more hump-shaped labor income profiles and lower retirement benefits which, when interacted with precautionary saving motives, boost their need for private wealth accumulation and thus financial knowledge. Our simulations show that endogenous financial knowledge accumulation has the potential to account for a large proportion of wealth inequality. The fraction of the population which is rationally financially "ignorant" depends on the generosity of the retirement system and the level of means-tested benefits. Educational efforts to enhance financial savvy early in the life cycle so as to produce one percentage point excess return per year would be valued highly by people in all educational groups.
Adda J. Economic Activity and the Spread of Viral Diseases: Evidence from High Frequency Data[J]. 2015.
Abstract: Viruses are a major threat to human health, and - given that they spread through social interactions - represent a costly externality. This paper addresses three main issues: i) what are the unintended consequences of economic activity on the spread of infections? ii) how efficient are measures that limit interpersonal contacts? iii) how do we allocate our scarce resources to limit their spread? To answer these questions, we use novel high frequency data from France on the incidence of a number of viral diseases across space, for different age groups, over a period of a quarter of a century. We use quasi-experimental variation to evaluate the importance of policies reducing inter-personal contacts such as school closures or the closure of public transportation networks. While these policies significantly reduce disease prevalence, we find that they are not cost-effective. We find that expansions of transportation networks have significant health costs in increasing the spread of viruses and that propagation rates are pro-cyclically sensitive to economic conditions and increase with inter-regional trade.
Saez E, Zucman G. Wealth inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from capitalized income tax data[R]. National bureau of economic research, 2014.
Abstract: This paper combines income tax returns with Flow of Funds data to estimate the distribution of household wealth in the United States since 1913. We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers, accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income. We successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth: the Survey of Consumer Finance, linked estate and income tax returns, and foundations' tax records. Wealth concentration has followed a U-shaped evolution over the last 100 years: It was high in the beginning of the twentieth century, fell from 1929 to 1978, and has continuously increased since then. The rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0.1% wealth share, from 7% in 1979 to 22% in 2012--a level almost as high as in 1929. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality. Top wealth-holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of total labor income in the economy. We explain how our findings can be reconciled with Survey of Consumer Finances and estate tax data.
Malmendier U, Nagel S. Learning from inflation experiences*[J]. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2015: qjv037.
Abstract: How do individuals form expectations about future inflation? We propose that individuals overweight inflation experienced during their lifetimes. This approach modifies existing adaptive learning models to allow for age-dependent updating of expectations in response to inflation surprises. Young individuals update their expectations more strongly than older individuals since recent experiences account for a greater share of their accumulated lifetime history. We find support for these predictions using 57 years of microdata on inflation expectations from the Reuters/Michigan Survey of Consumers. Differences in experiences strongly predict differences in expectations, including the substantial disagreement between young and old individuals in periods of highly volatile inflation, such as the 1970s. It also explains household borrowing and lending behavior, including the choice of mortgages.
Atkin D. Endogenous skill acquisition and export manufacturing in Mexico[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012.
Abstract: This paper presents empirical evidence that the growth of export manufacturing in Mexico during a period of major trade reforms, the years 1986-2000, altered the distribution of education. I use variation in the timing of factory openings across commuting zones to show that school dropout increased with local expansions in export manufacturing. The magnitudes I find suggest that for every twenty-five jobs created, one student dropped out of school at grade 9 rather than continuing through to grade 12. These effects are driven by less-skilled export-manufacturing jobs which raised the opportunity cost of schooling for students at the margin.
Imas A. The realization effect: Risk-taking after realized versus paper losses[J]. Available at SSRN, 2014, 2403865.
Abstract: Understanding how prior outcomes a↵ect risk attitudes is critical for the study of choice under uncertainty. A large literature documents the influence of prior losses on subsequent risk attitudes. The findings appear contradictory: some studies find that people become more risk seeking after a loss, whereas others assert the opposite – that they become more risk averse. In this paper, we show that these seemingly inconsistent findings can be explained by individuals’ di↵erential responses to realized versus paper losses. Following a realized loss, individuals avoid risk; if the loss has not been realized – a paper loss – individuals are more likely to chase their losses and take on even greater risk. We provide support for our framework using existing data and across two experiments. We also show that giving individuals flexibility in choosing when to realize losses can lead to lower earnings in environments where loss-chasing decreases expected returns. These findings can be reconciled by drawing a distinction between how paper and realized outcomes a↵ect choice bracketing, and have important implications for contract design and optimal monitoring.
Jones C I, Klenow P J. Beyond GDP? Welfare across countries and time[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010.
Abstract: We propose a summary statistic for the economic well-being of people in a country. Our measure incorporates consumption, leisure, mortality, and inequality, first for a narrow set of countries using detailed micro data, and then more broadly using multi-country data sets. While welfare is highly correlated with GDP per capita, deviations are often large. Western Europe looks considerably closer to the U.S., emerging Asia has not caught up as much, and many developing countries are further behind. Each component we introduce plays a significant role in accounting for these differences, with mortality being most important.
城市经济学（By 吴建峰老师）
Glaeser E L, Ponzetto G A M, Zou Y. Urban Networks: Connecting Markets, People, and Ideas[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015.
Abstract: Should China build mega-cities or a network of linked middle-sized metropolises? Can Europe’s mid-sized cities compete with global agglomeration by forging stronger inter-urban links? This paper examines these questions within a model of recombinant growth and endogenous local amenities. Three primary factors determine the trade-off between networks and big cities: local returns to scale in innovation, the elasticity of housing supply, and the importance of local amenities. Even if there are global increasing returns, the returns to local scale in innovation may be decreasing, and that makes networks more appealing than mega-cities. Inelastic housing supply makes it harder to supply more space in dense confines, which perhaps explains why networks are more popular in regulated Europe than in the American Sunbelt. Larger cities can dominate networks because of amenities, as long as the benefits of scale overwhelm the downsides of density. In our framework, the skilled are more likely to prefer mega-cities than the less skilled, and the long-run benefits of either mega-cities or networks may be quite different from the short-run benefits.
Gollin D, Jedwab R, Vollrath D. Urbanization with and without Industrialization[J]. Journal of Economic Growth, 2013: 1-36.
Abstract: We document a strong positive relationship between natural resource exports and urbanization in a sample of 116 developing nations over the period 1960–2010. In countries that are heavily dependent on resource exports, urbanization appears to be concentrated in “consumption cities” where the economies consist primarily of non-tradable services. These contrast with “production cities” that are more dependent on manufacturing in countries that have industrialized. Consumption cities in resource exporters also appear to perform worse along several measures of welfare. We offer a simple model of structural change that can explain the observed patterns of urbanization and the associated differences in city types. We note that although the development literature often assumes that urbanization is synonymous with industrialization, patterns differ markedly across developing countries. We discuss several possible implications for policy.
Harari M. Cities in bad shape: Urban geometry in india[J]. Job market paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015.
Cities are valuable to the extent they bring people (and jobs) together. To what extent is this value a§ected by the diffculty of commuting from various points in the city to others? While many factors can a§ect commuting length, this paper investigates one determining factor of urban commuting e¢ciency, previously highlighted by urban planners but overlooked by economists: city shape. A satellite-derived dataset of night-time lights is combined with historic maps to retrieve the geometric properties of urban footprints in India over time. I propose an instrument for urban shape that combines geography with a mechanical model for city expansion: in essence, cities are predicted to expand in circles of increasing sizes, and actual city shape is predicted by obstacles within each circle. With this instrument in hand, I investigate how city shape affects the location choices of consumers, in a spatial equilibrium framework a la Roback-Rosen. Cities with more compact shapes are characterized by larger population, lower wages, and higher housing rents, consistent with compact shape being a consumption amenity. The implied welfare cost of deteriorating city shape is estimated to be sizeable. I also attempt to shed light on policy responses to deteriorating shape. The adverse effects of unfavorable topography appear to be exacerbated by building height restrictions, and mitigated by road infrastructure.
新推荐文章（By 封进老师）
研究新的传媒引入对生育决策和孩子姓名的影响。有趣、真实、有政策含义。
La Ferrara E, Chong A, Duryea S. Soap operas and fertility: Evidence from Brazil[J]. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2012: 1-31.
Abstract: We estimate the effect of television on fertility in Brazil, where soap operas portray small families. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into different markets of Globo, the main novela producer. Women living in areas covered by Globo have significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and in the central and late phases of fertility, consistent with stopping behavior. The result does not appear to be driven by selection in Globo entry. We provide evidence that novelas, and not just television, affected individual choices, based on children's naming patterns and novela content.
用新颖的视角和方法研究经典的问题，结论更为有趣和丰富。
Bertrand M, Kamenica E, Pan J. Gender Identity and Relative Income within Households[J]. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2015, 130(2): 571-614.
Abstract: We examine causes and consequences of relative income within households. We show that the distribution of the share of income earned by the wife exhibits a sharp drop to the right of 1212, where the wife’s income exceeds the husband’s income. We argue that this pattern is best explained by gender identity norms, which induce an aversion to a situation where the wife earns more than her husband. We present evidence that this aversion also impacts marriage formation, the wife’s labor force participation, the wife’s income conditional on working, marriage satisfaction, likelihood of divorce, and the division of home production. Within marriage markets, when a randomly chosen woman becomes more likely to earn more than a randomly chosen man, marriage rates decline. In couples where the wife’s potential income is likely to exceed the husband’s, the wife is less likely to be in the labor force and earns less than her potential if she does work. In couples where the wife earns more than the husband, the wife spends more time on household chores; moreover, those couples are less satisfied with their marriage and are more likely to divorce. These patterns hold both cross-sectionally and within couples over time.
房地产泡沫和就业结构（下载地址：http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/noto/）：
The Masking of Declining Manufacturing Employment by the Housing Bubble (with Kerwin Kofi Charles and Erik Hurst). Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Housing Booms and Busts, Labor Market Opportunities, and College Attendance (with Kerwin Kofi Charles and Erik Hurst). September 2015. (Online Appendix) Under review.
Housing Booms, Manufacturing Decline, and Labor Market Outcomes (with Kerwin Kofi Charles and Erik Hurst). March 2016. Under review.
理论与实证结合的两篇文章：
Production vs Revenue Efficiency with Limited Tax Capacity: Theory and Evidence from Pakistan, Journal of Political Economy 123(6), 1311-1355, 2015.
Who Benefits from State Corporate Tax Cuts? A Local Labor Market Approach with Heterogeneous Firms, forthcoming, American Economic Review. 2016.
城市经济学（BY 吴建峰老师）
Glaeser E L. A world of cities: the causes and consequences of urbanization in poorer countries[J]. Journal of the European Economic Association, 2014, 12(5): 1154-1199.
Abstract: Historically, urban growth required enough development to grow and transport significant agricultural surpluses or a government effective enough to build an empire. But there has been an explosion of poor mega-cities over the last 30 years. A simple urban model illustrates that in closed economies, agricultural prosperity leads to more urbanization, but that in an open economy, urbanization increases with agricultural desperation. The challenge of developing world mega-cities is that poverty and weak governance reduce the ability to address the negative externalities that come with density. This paper models the connection between urban size and institutional failure, and shows that urban anonymity causes institutions to break down. For large cities with weak governments, draconian policies may be the only way to curb negative externalities, suggesting a painful trade-off between dictatorship and disorder. A simple model suggests that private provision of infrastructure to reduce negative externalities is less costly when city populations are low or institutions are strong, but that public provision can cost less in bigger cities.
Ciccone A, Papaioannou E. Estimating Cross-Industry Cross-Country Interaction Models Using Benchmark Industry Characteristics[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016.
Abstract: Empirical cross-industry cross-country models are applied widely in economics, for example to investigate the determinants of economic growth or international trade. Estimation generally relies on US proxies for unobservable technological industry characteristics, for example industries' dependence on external finance or relationship-specific inputs. We examine the properties of the estimator and find that estimates can be biased towards zero (attenuated) or away from zero (amplified), depending on how technological similarity with the US covaries with other country characteristics. We also develop an alternative estimator that yields a lower bound on the true effect in cross-industry cross-country models of comparative advantage.
