当代中国经济与社会工作室
Fudan Lab for China Development Studies

2017 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，并与陈乔伊（joychen93@163.com）和刘志阔（lzhikuo@163.com）和联系。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

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.

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。

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.

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.

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.

城市经济学（By 吴建峰老师）

房地产泡沫和就业结构（下载地址：http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/noto/）：

Charles K K, Hurst E, Notowidigdo M J. The masking of the decline in manufacturing employment by the housing bubble[J]. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2016, 30(2): 179-200.

Charles K K, Hurst E, Notowidigdo M J. Housing booms and busts, labor market opportunities, and college attendance[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015.

Abstract: We study how the recent national housing boom and bust affected college enrollment and attainment during the 2000s. We exploit cross-city variation in local housing booms, and use a variety of data sources and empirical methods, including models that use plausibly exogenous variation in housing demand identified by sharp structural breaks in local housing prices. We show that the housing boom improved labor market opportunities for young men and women, thereby raising their opportunity cost of college-going. According to standard human capital theories, this effect should have reduced college-going overall, but especially for persons at the margin of attendance. We find that the boom substantially lowered college enrollment and attainment for both young men and women, with the effects concentrated at two-year colleges. We find that the positive employment and wage effects of the boom were generally undone during the bust. However, attainment for the particular cohorts of college-going age during the housing boom remain persistently low after the end of the bust, suggesting that reduced educational attainment may be an enduring effect of the housing cycle. We estimate that the housing boom explains roughly 30 percent of the recent slowdown in college attainment.

理论与实证结合的文章：

Serrato J C S, Zidar O. Who benefits from state corporate tax cuts? A local labor markets approach with heterogeneous firms[J]. The American Economic Review, 2016, 106(9): 2582-2624.

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.

推荐 By 唐为

Aghion, Philippe, et al. "Creative Destruction and Subjective Well-Being." American Economic Review 106.12 (2016): 3869-97.

Abstract: In this paper we analyze the relationship between turnover-driven growth and subjective well-being. Our model of innovation-led growth and unemployment predicts that: (i) the effect of creative destruction on expected individual welfare should be unambiguously positive if we control for unemployment, less so if we do not; (ii) job creation has a positive and job destruction has a negative impact on well-being; (iii) job destruction has a less negative impact in areas with more generous unemployment insurance policies; and (iv) job creation has a more positive effect on individuals that are more forward-looking. The empirical analysis using cross sectional MSA (metropolitan statistical area)-level and individual-level data provide empirical support to these predictions.

Adamopoulos, Tasso, and Diego Restuccia. "The size distribution of farms and international productivity differences." The American Economic Review 104.6 (2014): 1667-1697.

Abstract: There is a 34-fold difference in average farm size (land per farm) between rich and poor countries and striking differences in their size distributions. Since labor productivity is much higher in large relative to small farms, we study the determinants of farm-size differences across countries and their impact on agricultural and aggregate productivity. We develop a quantitative model of agriculture and non-agriculture that features a non-degenerate size distribution of farms. We find that measured aggregate factors such as capital, land, and economy-wide productivity cannot account for more than 1/4 of the observed differences in farm size and productivity. We argue that, among the possible explanations, farm-level policies that misallocate resources from large to small farms have the most potential to account for the remaining differences. Such farm-size distortions are prevalent in poor countries. We quantify the effects of two specific policies in developing countries: (a) a land reform that imposes a ceiling on farm size and (b) a progressive land tax. We find that each individual policy generates a reduction of 3 to 7% in average size and productivity.

David, Joel M., Hugo A. Hopenhayn, and Venky Venkateswaran. "Information, misallocation and aggregate productivity." The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2016): qjw006.

Abstract: We propose a theory linking imperfect information to resource misallocation and hence to aggregate productivity and output. In our setup, firms look to a variety of noisy information sources when making input decisions. We devise a novel empirical strategy that uses a combination of firm-level production and stock market data to pin down the information structure in the economy. Even when only capital is chosen under imperfect information, applying this methodology to data from the United States, China, and India reveals substantial losses in productivity and output due to the informational friction. Our estimates for these losses range from 7% to 10% for productivity and 10% to 14% for output in China and India, and are smaller, though still significant, in the United States. Losses are substantially higher when labor decisions are also made under imperfect information. We find that firms turn primarily to internal sources for information; learning from financial markets contributes little, even in the United States.

宏观发展的一系列文章（推荐-奚锡灿老师）

Gollin D. Getting income shares right[J]. Journal of political Economy, 2002, 110(2): 458-474.

Henderson J V, Storeygard A, Weil D N. Measuring economic growth from outer space[J]. The American Economic Review, 2012, 102(2): 994-1028.

Abstract: We develop a statistical framework to use satellite data on night lights to augment official income growth measures. For countries with poor national income accounts, the optimal estimate of growth is a composite with roughly equal weights on conventionally measured growth and growth predicted from lights. Our estimates differ from official data by up to three percentage points annually. Using lights, empirical analyses of growth need no longer use countries as the unit of analysis; we can measure growth for sub- and supranational regions. We show, for example, that coastal areas in sub-Saharan Africa are growing slower than the hinterland.

Caselli F, Feyrer J. The marginal product of capital[J]. The quarterly journal of economics, 2007, 122(2): 535-568.

Abstract: Whether or not the marginal product of capital (MPK) differs across countries is a question that keeps coming up in discussions of comparative economic development and patterns of capital flows. Using easily accessible macroeconomic data we find thatMPKs are remarkably similar across countries. Hence, there is no prima facie support for the view that international credit frictions play a major -role in preventing capital flows from rich to poor countries. Lower capital ratios in these countries areinstead attributable to lower endowments of complementary factors and lower efficiency, as well as to lower prices of output goods relative to capital. We also show that properly accounting for the share of income accruing to reproducible capital is critical to reach these conclusions. One implication of our findings is that increased aid flows to developing countries will not significantly increase these countries capital stocks and incomes. 

Schoellman T. Education quality and development accounting[J]. The Review of Economic Studies, 2011, 79(1): 388-417.

Abstract: This paper measures the role of quality-adjusted years of schooling in accounting for cross-country output per worker differences. While data on years of schooling are readily available, data on education quality are not. I use the returns to schooling of foreign-educated immigrants in the U.S. to measure the education quality of their birth country. Immigrants from developed countries earn higher returns than do immigrants from developing countries. I show how to incorporate this measure of education quality into an otherwise standard development accounting exercise. The main result is that cross-country differences in education quality are roughly as important as cross-country differences in years of schooling in accounting for output per worker differences, raising the total contribution of education from 10% to 20% of output per worker differences. 

Lagakos D, Moll B, Porzio T, et al. Life-Cycle Human Capital Accumulation Across Countries: Lessons From US Immigrants[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016.

Abstract: How much does life-cycle human capital accumulation vary across countries? This paper seeks to answer this question by studying U.S. immigrants, who come from a wide variety of countries but work in a common labor market. We document that returns to potential experience among U.S. immigrants are higher on average for workers coming from rich countries than for those coming from poor countries. To understand this fact we build a model of life-cycle human capital accumulation that features three potential theories, working respectively through cross-country differences in: selection, skill loss, and human capital accumulation. To distinguish between theories, we use new data on the characteristics of immigrants and non-migrants from a large set of countries. We conclude that the most likely theory is that immigrants from poor countries accumulate relatively less human capital in their birth countries before migrating. Our findings imply that life cycle human capital stocks are on average much larger in rich countries than poor countries.

Schmitz Jr J A. What determines productivity? Lessons from the dramatic recovery of the US and Canadian iron ore industries following their early 1980s crisis[J]. Journal of political Economy, 2005, 113(3): 582-625.

Abstract: Great Lakes iron ore producers had faced no competition from foreign iron ore in the Great Lakes steel market for nearly a century as the 1970s closed. In the early 1980s, as a result of unprecedented developments in the world steel market, Brazilian producers were offering to deliver iron ore to Chicago (the heart of the Great Lakes market) at prices substantially below prices of local iron ore. The U.S. and Canadian iron ore industries faced a major crisis that cast doubt on their future. In response to the crisis, these industries dramatically increased productivity. Labor productivity doubled in a few years.

Hsieh C T, Klenow P J. The life cycle of plants in India and Mexico[J]. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2014, 129(3): 1035-1084.

Abstract: In the United States, the average 40-year-old plant employs more than seven times as many workers as the typical plant 5 years or younger. In contrast, surviving plants in India and Mexico exhibit much slower growth, roughly doubling in size over the same age range. The divergence in plant dynamics suggests lower investments by Indian and Mexican plants in process efficiency, quality, and in accessing markets at home and abroad. In simple general equilibrium models, we find that the difference in life cycle dynamics could lower aggregate manufacturing productivity on the order of 25 percent in India and Mexico relative to the United States.  

Hsieh C T, Hurst E, Jones C I, et al. The allocation of talent and us economic growth[R]. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013.

Gollin D, Lagakos D, Waugh M E. The agricultural productivity gap[J]. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2013, 129(2): 939-993.

Abstract: According to national accounts data, value added per worker is much higher in the nonagricultural sector than in agriculture in the typical country, particularly in developing countries. Taken at face value, this “agricultural productivity gap” suggests that labor is greatly misallocated across sectors. In this article, we draw on new micro evidence to ask to what extent the gap is still present when better measures of sector labor inputs and value added are taken into consideration. We find that even after considering sector differences in hours worked and human capital per worker, as well as alternative measures of sector output constructed from household survey data, a puzzlingly large gap remains.

Herrendorf B, Schoellman T. Why is measured productivity so low in agriculture?[J]. Review of Economic Dynamics, 2015, 18(4): 1003-1022.

Abstract: In poor countries, labor productivity in agriculture is considerably lower than in the rest of the economy. We assess whether this well-known fact implies that labor is mis-allocated between the two sectors. We make several observations that suggest otherwise. First, the same fact holds for US states where severe mis-allocation is implausible. Second, the gaps between the marginal value products of agriculture and non-agriculture are considerably smaller when measured through wages than through labor productivities. Third, labor productivity in agriculture is severely mis-measured in the US.

Adamopoulos T, Restuccia D. The size distribution of farms and international productivity differences[J]. The American Economic Review, 2014, 104(6): 1667-1697.

Abstract: We study the determinants of di fferences in farm-size across countries and their impact on agricultural and aggregate productivity using a quantitative sectoral model featuring a distribution of farms. Measured aggregate factors (capital, land, economy-wide productivity) account for ? of the observed differences in farm size and productivity. Policies and institutions that misallocate resources across farms have the potential to account for the remaining diff erences. Exploiting within-country variation in crop-specifi c price distortions and their correlation with farm size, we construct a cross-country measure of farm-size distortions which together with aggregate factors accounts for ? of the cross-country diff erences in size and productivity.

Henderson V, Squires T, Storeygard A, et al. The global distribution of economic activity: nature, history, and the role of trade[J]. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2017.

We explore the role of natural characteristics in determining the worldwide spatial distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, observed across 240,000 grid cells. A parsimonious set of 24 physical geography attributes explains 47% of worldwide variation and 35% of within­country variation in lights. We divide geographic characteristics into two groups, those primarily important for agriculture and those primarily important for trade, and confront a puzzle. In examining within­country variation in lights, among countries that developed early, agricultural variables incrementally explain over 6 times as much variation in lights as do trade variables, while among late developing countries the ratio is only about 1.5, even though the latter group is far more dependent on agriculture. Correspondingly, the marginal effects of agricultural variables as a group on lights are larger in absolute value, and those for trade smaller, for early developers than for late developers. We show that this apparent puzzle is explained by persistence and the differential timing of technological shocks in the two sets of countries. For early developers, structural transformation due to rising agricultural productivity began when transport costs were still high, so cities were localized in agricultural regions. When transport costs fell, these agglomerations persisted. In late­developing countries, transport costs fell before structural transformation. To exploit urban scale economies, manufacturing agglomerated in relatively few, often coastal, locations. Consistent with this explanation, countries that developed earlier are more spatially equal in their distribution of education and economic activity than late developers.

实证方法（推荐by刘志阔老师）

de Chaisemartin, C. and X. D'Haultfoeuille. Fuzzy Differences-in-Differences[J]. Review of Economic Studies, 2017, 01: 1-30.

Difference-in-differences (DID) is a method to evaluate the effect of a treatment. In its basic version, a "control group" is untreated at two dates, whereas a "treatment group" becomes fully treated at the second date. However, in many applications of the DID method, the treatment rate only increases more in the treatment group. In such fuzzy designs, a popular estimator of the treatment effect is the DID of the outcome divided by the DID of the treatment. We show that this ratio identifies a local average treatment effect only if the effect of the treatment is stable over time, and if the effect of the treatment is the same in the treatment and in the control group. We then propose two alternative estimands that do not rely on any assumption on treatment effects, and that can be used when the treatment rate does not change over time in the control group. We prove that the corresponding estimators are asymptotically normal. Finally, we use our results to revisit Duo (2001).