The Quarterly Journal of Economics 2023年第4期

? ——更多動態(tài)，請持續(xù)關(guān)注gzh：理想主義的百年孤獨

?01 Misdemeanor Prosecution 輕罪起訴 Amanda Agan; Jennifer L Doleac; Anna Harvey Abstract： Communities across the United States are reconsidering the public safety benefits of prosecuting nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, yet there is little empirical evidence to inform policy in this area. We report the first estimates of the causal effects of misdemeanor prosecution on defendants’ subsequent criminal justice involvement. We leverage the as-if random assignment of nonviolent misdemeanor cases to assistant district attorneys (ADAs) who decide whether a case should be prosecuted in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts. These ADAs vary in the average leniency of their prosecution decisions. We find that for the marginal defendant, nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense leads to a 53% reduction in the likelihood of a new criminal complaint and a 60% reduction in the number of new criminal complaints over the next two years. These local average treatment effects are largest for defendants without prior criminal records, suggesting that averting criminal record acquisition is an important mechanism driving our findings. We also present evidence that a recent policy change in Suffolk County imposing a presumption of nonprosecution for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses had similar beneficial effects, decreasing the likelihood of subsequent criminal justice involvement. 摘要： 美國各地的社區(qū)都在重新考慮起訴非暴力輕罪對公共安全的好處，但幾乎沒有經(jīng)驗證據(jù)可以為這一領(lǐng)域的政策提供信息。我們報告了對輕罪起訴對被告隨后的刑事司法參與的因果影響的第一次估計。我們將非暴力輕罪案件隨機分配給助理地區(qū)檢察官(ADAs)，由他們決定是否在馬薩諸塞州薩?？丝h地區(qū)檢察官辦公室起訴一個案件。這些助理檢察官的起訴決定的平均寬大程度各不相同。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，對于邊緣被告，非暴力輕罪的不起訴導致在接下來的兩年里，新的刑事訴訟的可能性降低了53%新的刑事訴訟的數(shù)量減少了60%。對于沒有犯罪記錄的被告，這些當?shù)仄骄委熜Ч畲?，這表明避免獲取犯罪記錄是推動我們研究結(jié)果的重要機制。我們還提供證據(jù)表明，薩?？丝h最近的一項政策變化，對非暴力輕罪推定不起訴，具有類似的有益效果，降低了隨后刑事司法介入的可能性。 02 The Geography of Unemployment 失業(yè)的地理分布 Adrien Bilal Abstract： Unemployment rates differ widely across local labor markets. I offer new empirical evidence that high local unemployment emerges because of elevated local job-losing rates. Local employers, rather than local workers or location-specific factors, account for most of the spatial gaps in job stability. I propose a theory in which spatial differences in job loss emerge in equilibrium because of systematic differences between employers across local labor markets. The spatial sorting decisions of employers in turn shape heterogeneity across locations. Labor market frictions induce productive employers to overvalue locating close to each other. The optimal policy incentivizes them to relocate toward areas with high job-losing rates, providing a rationale for commonly used place-based policies. I estimate the model using French administrative data. The estimated model accounts for over three-quarters of the cross-sectional dispersion in unemployment rates and for the respective contributions of job-losing and job-finding rates. Inefficient location choices by employers amplify spatial unemployment differentials fivefold. Both real-world and optimal place-based policies can yield sizable local and aggregate welfare gains. 摘要： 各地勞動力市場的失業(yè)率差別很大。我提供了新的經(jīng)驗證據(jù)，表明當?shù)馗呤I(yè)率的出現(xiàn)是由于當?shù)厥I(yè)率的上升。工作穩(wěn)定性的空間差距主要是由當?shù)毓椭髟斐傻?，而不是由當?shù)毓と嘶蛱囟ǖ攸c因素造成的。我提出了一個理論，在這個理論中，由于當?shù)貏趧恿κ袌錾瞎椭髦g的系統(tǒng)性差異，失業(yè)的空間差異以均衡的方式出現(xiàn)。雇主的空間分類決策反過來塑造了不同地點的異質(zhì)性。勞動力市場的摩擦導致生產(chǎn)性雇主高估彼此靠近的位置。最優(yōu)政策激勵他們遷往失業(yè)率高的地區(qū)，為常用的基于地方的政策提供了理由。我使用法國的行政數(shù)據(jù)來估計模型。估計的模型解釋了失業(yè)率橫截面分布的四分之三以上，以及失業(yè)和找到工作率各自的貢獻。雇主低效的地點選擇將空間失業(yè)差異放大了5倍?，F(xiàn)實世界和最優(yōu)的基于地方的政策都可以產(chǎn)生可觀的地方和總體福利收益。 03 The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right 另一次大移民:南方白人和新右翼 Samuel Bazzi; Andreas Ferrara; Martin Fiszbein; Thomas Pearson ; Patrick A Testa Abstract： This article shows how the migration of millions of Southern whites in the twentieth century shaped the cultural and political landscape across the United States. Racially and religiously conservative, Southern white migrants created new electoral possibilities for a broad-based coalition with economic conservatives. With their considerable geographic scope, these migrants hastened partisan realignment and helped catalyze and bolster a New Right movement with national influence over the long run. More than just augmenting the conservative voter base outside the South, they influenced non-Southerners by building evangelical churches, diffusing right-wing media, and mixing through intermarriage and residential integration. Tracking non-Southern households, we show that exposure to Southern white neighbors increased adoption of conservative religious norms. Overall, our findings suggest that this mass migration blurred the North–South cultural divide and reshaped the geography of conservatism in the United States. 摘要： 這篇文章展示了20世紀數(shù)以百萬計的南方白人的移民如何塑造了整個美國的文化和政治格局。南方白人移民在種族和宗教上都很保守，他們?yōu)榕c經(jīng)濟保守派結(jié)成廣泛的聯(lián)盟創(chuàng)造了新的選舉可能性。這些移民的地理分布相當廣泛，他們加速了黨派的重組，從長遠來看，他們幫助催化和支持了一場具有全國影響力的新右翼運動。他們不僅擴大了南方以外的保守派選民基礎(chǔ)，還通過建立福音派教堂、傳播右翼媒體、通過異族通婚和居住融合來影響非南方人。通過對非南方家庭的跟蹤研究，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)與南方白人鄰居的接觸增加了對保守宗教規(guī)范的接受?？偟膩碚f，我們的研究結(jié)果表明，這種大規(guī)模的移民模糊了南北文化鴻溝，重塑了美國保守主義的地理位置。 04 Market Power and Spatial Competition in Rural India 印度農(nóng)村的市場力量和空間競爭 Shoumitro Chatterjee Abstract： Market power of intermediaries contributes to the low incomes of farmers in India. I study the role of spatial competition between intermediaries in determining the prices that farmers receive in India by focusing on a law that restricts farmers to selling their goods to intermediaries in their own state. I show that the discontinuities in market power generated by the law translate into discontinuities in prices. Increasing spatial competition by one standard deviation causes prices received by farmers to increase by 6.4%. I propose and estimate a quantitative spatial model of bargaining and trade to shed light on spatial and aggregate implications. Estimates from the structural model suggest that removing the interstate trade restriction in India would increase competition between intermediaries. Thereby average farmer prices and their output would increase by at least 11% and 7%, respectively. The value of the national crop output would increase by at least 18%. However, there are distributional consequences as well, as some farmers stand to lose due to increased local production. 摘要： 中間商的市場力量導致了印度農(nóng)民的低收入。我研究了中介機構(gòu)之間的空間競爭在決定印度農(nóng)民獲得的價格方面的作用，重點關(guān)注了一項限制農(nóng)民向自己邦的中介機構(gòu)出售商品的法律。我展示了由法律產(chǎn)生的市場力量的不連續(xù)性轉(zhuǎn)化為價格的不連續(xù)性?？臻g競爭每增加一個標準差，農(nóng)民獲得的價格就會增加6.4%。我提出并估計了一個議價和貿(mào)易的定量空間模型，以闡明空間和總體影響。結(jié)構(gòu)模型的估計表明，取消印度的州際貿(mào)易限制將增加中間商之間的競爭。因此，農(nóng)民的平均價格和產(chǎn)量將分別增長至少11%和7%。全國農(nóng)作物產(chǎn)值將至少增加18%。然而，也有分配方面的后果，因為一些農(nóng)民會因為當?shù)禺a(chǎn)量的增加而蒙受損失。 05 Overreaction in Expectations: Evidence and Theory 期望中的過度反應:證據(jù)與理論 Hassan Afrouzi; Spencer Y Kwon; Augustin Landier ; Yueran Ma; David Thesmar Abstract： We investigate biases in expectations across different settings through a large-scale randomized experiment where participants forecast stable stochastic processes. The experiment allows us to control forecasters’ information sets as well as the data-generating process, so we can cleanly measure biases in beliefs. We report three facts. First, forecasts display significant overreaction to the most recent observation. Second, overreaction is stronger for less persistent processes. Third, overreaction is also stronger for longer forecast horizons. We develop a tractable model of expectations formation with costly processing of past information, which closely fits the empirical facts. We also perform additional experiments to test the mechanism of the model. 摘要： 我們通過一個大規(guī)模的隨機實驗來研究不同環(huán)境下期望的偏差，參與者預測穩(wěn)定的隨機過程。這個實驗使我們能夠控制預測者的信息集以及數(shù)據(jù)生成過程，因此我們可以清楚地測量信念中的偏差。我們報告三個事實。首先，預測顯示出對最近觀察結(jié)果的嚴重過度反應。其次，對于不太持久的過程，過度反應更強烈。第三，對于較長期的預測，過度反應也更為強烈。我們開發(fā)了一個易于處理的模型的期望形成與昂貴的處理過去的信息，這非常符合經(jīng)驗事實。我們還進行了額外的實驗來測試模型的機制。 06 Imperfect Risk Sharing and the Business Cycle 不完全風險分擔與商業(yè)周期 David Berger; Luigi Bocola ; Alessandro Dovis Abstract： This article studies the macroeconomic implications of imperfect risk sharing implied by a class of New Keynesian models with heterogeneous agents. The models in this class can be equivalently represented as a representative-agent economy with wedges. These wedges are functions of households’ consumption shares and relative wages, and they identify the key cross-sectional moments that govern the impact of households’ heterogeneity on aggregate variables. We measure the wedges using U.S. household-level data and combine them with a representative-agent economy to perform counterfactuals. We find that deviations from perfect risk sharing implied by this class of models account for only 7% of output volatility on average but can have sizable output effects when nominal interest rates reach their lower bound. 摘要： 本文研究了一類具有異質(zhì)主體的新凱恩斯模型所隱含的不完全風險分擔的宏觀經(jīng)濟含義。這類模型可以等效地表示為帶有楔形的代表-代理經(jīng)濟。這些楔形是家庭消費份額和相對工資的函數(shù)，它們確定了控制家庭異質(zhì)性對總變量影響的關(guān)鍵橫截面時刻。我們使用美國家庭層面的數(shù)據(jù)來測量楔形，并將它們與代表性代理經(jīng)濟相結(jié)合，以執(zhí)行反事實。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，這類模型所隱含的與完全風險分擔的偏差平均只占產(chǎn)出波動的7%，但當名義利率達到其下界時，可能會產(chǎn)生相當大的產(chǎn)出影響。 07 Cultural Distance and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence 文化距離與沖突相關(guān)的性暴力 Eleonora Guarnieri; Ana Tur-Prats Abstract： This article examines the relationship between ethnic-based gender norms and conflict-related sexual violence. We generate a novel dyadic data set that contains information on the ethnic identity of all the actors involved in ethnic civil conflicts around the world between 1989 and 2019 and their use of sexual violence. We exploit ethnographic information to construct a new male dominance index at the ethnicity level that captures deep-rooted gender norms. First, we find that male-dominant armed actors are more likely to be perpetrators of sexual violence. Second, we consider the cultural distance in gender norms between the combatants and show that sexual violence is driven by a specific clash of conceptions on the appropriate role of men and women in society: sexual violence increases when the perpetrator is more male dominant than the victim. Additional analyses suggest that gender norms influence both the strategic use of sexual violence for military purposes and the expressive use of sexual violence for private motivations. These patterns are specific to sexual violence and do not explain general violence in a conflict. Differences in other cultural dimensions unrelated to gender are not associated with conflict-related sexual violence. 摘要： 本文探討了基于種族的性別規(guī)范與沖突相關(guān)的性暴力之間的關(guān)系。我們生成了一個新的二元數(shù)據(jù)集，其中包含1989年至2019年期間世界各地參與種族內(nèi)部沖突的所有行動者的種族身份及其性暴力行為的信息。我們利用人種學信息在種族層面構(gòu)建了一個新的男性優(yōu)勢指數(shù)，該指數(shù)捕捉了根深蒂固的性別規(guī)范。首先，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)男性主導的武裝行動者更有可能是性暴力的肇事者。其次，我們考慮了戰(zhàn)斗人員之間性別規(guī)范的文化距離，并表明性暴力是由對男性和女性在社會中適當角色的特定觀念沖突所驅(qū)動的:當犯罪者比受害者更具男性主導地位時，性暴力就會增加。其他分析表明，性別規(guī)范既影響出于軍事目的戰(zhàn)略性地使用性暴力，也影響出于私人動機表現(xiàn)性暴力。這些模式是針對性暴力的，并不能解釋沖突中的一般暴力。與性別無關(guān)的其他文化層面的差異與沖突相關(guān)的性暴力無關(guān)。 08 The Political Economics of Green Transitions 綠色轉(zhuǎn)型的政治經(jīng)濟學 Timothy Besley ; Torsten Persson Abstract： Reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases may be almost impossible without a green transition-a substantial transformation of consumption and production patterns. To study such transitions, we propose a dynamic model, which differs from the common approach in economics in two ways. First, consumption patterns reflect not just changing prices and taxes, but changing values. Transitions of values and technologies create a dynamic complementarity that can help or hinder a green transition. Second, and unlike fictitious social planners, policy makers in democratic societies cannot commit to future policy paths, as they are subject to regular elections. We show that market failures and government failures can interact to prevent a welfare-increasing green transition from materializing or make an ongoing green transition too slow. 摘要： 如果沒有綠色轉(zhuǎn)型--消費和生產(chǎn)模式的重大轉(zhuǎn)變--減少溫室氣體排放幾乎是不可能的。為了研究這種轉(zhuǎn)變，我們提出了一個動態(tài)模型，它在兩個方面不同于經(jīng)濟學中的常用方法。首先，消費模式不僅反映了價格和稅收的變化，也反映了價值的變化。價值觀和技術(shù)的轉(zhuǎn)變創(chuàng)造了一種動態(tài)的互補性，可以幫助或阻礙綠色轉(zhuǎn)型。其次，與虛構(gòu)的社會規(guī)劃者不同，民主社會的政策制定者無法承諾未來的政策路徑，因為他們要接受定期選舉。我們表明，市場失靈和政府失靈可以相互作用，阻止福利增加的綠色轉(zhuǎn)型實現(xiàn)，或使正在進行的綠色轉(zhuǎn)型過于緩慢。 09 Regulating Untaxable Externalities: Are Vehicle Air Pollution Standards Effective and Efficient? 管制不應課稅的外部性:車輛空氣污染標準是否有效? Mark R Jacobsen; James M Sallee; Joseph S Shapiro; Arthur A van Benthem Abstract： The world has 1.4 billion passenger vehicles. How should governments regulate their air pollution emissions? A Pigouvian tax is technologically infeasible. Most countries instead rely on exhaust standards that limit air pollution emissions per mile for new vehicles. We assess the effectiveness and efficiency of these standards, which are the centerpiece of U.S. Clean Air Act regulation of transportation, and counterfactual policies. We show that the air pollution emissions per mile of new U.S. vehicles has fallen spectacularly, by over 99%, since standards began in 1967. Several research designs with a half century of data suggest that exhaust standards have caused most of this decline. Yet exhaust standards are not cost-effective in part because they fail to encourage scrap of older vehicles, which account for the majority of emissions. To study counterfactual policies, we develop an analytical and a quantitative model of the vehicle fleet. Analysis of these models suggests that tighter exhaust standards increase social welfare and increasing registration fees on dirty vehicles yields even larger gains by accelerating scrap, although both reforms have complex effects on inequality. 摘要： 世界上有14億輛乘用車。政府應如何管制空氣污染排放?庇古稅在技術(shù)上是不可行的。相反，大多數(shù)國家依賴于限制新車每英里空氣污染排放量的排放標準。我們評估了這些標準的有效性和效率，這些標準是美國《清潔空氣法》對交通運輸和反事實政策監(jiān)管的核心。我們的研究表明，自1967年開始實施標準以來，美國新車每英里的空氣污染排放量已經(jīng)顯著下降了99%以上。幾項基于半個世紀數(shù)據(jù)的研究設(shè)計表明，廢氣排放標準是造成這種下降的主要原因。然而，廢氣排放標準并不具有成本效益，部分原因是它們未能鼓勵報廢舊車，而舊車是排放的主要來源。為了研究反事實政策，我們開發(fā)了一個車隊的分析和定量模型。對這些模型的分析表明，更嚴格的尾氣排放標準會增加社會福利，而提高污染車輛的注冊費會加速報廢，從而產(chǎn)生更大的收益，盡管這兩項改革對不平等都有復雜的影響。 10 Visual Inference and Graphical Representation in Regression Discontinuity Designs 回歸不連續(xù)設(shè)計中的視覺推理與圖形表示 Christina Korting; Carl Lieberman; Jordan Matsudaira; Zhuan Pei ; Yi Shen Abstract： Despite the widespread use of graphs in empirical research, little is known about readers’ ability to process the statistical information they are meant to convey (“visual inference”). We study visual inference in the context of regression discontinuity (RD) designs by measuring how accurately readers identify discontinuities in graphs produced from data-generating processes calibrated on 11 published papers from leading economics journals. First, we assess the effects of different graphical representation methods on visual inference using randomized experiments. We find that bin widths and fit lines have the largest effects on whether participants correctly perceive the presence or absence of a discontinuity. Our experimental results allow us to make evidence-based recommendations to practitioners, and we suggest using small bins with no fit lines as a starting point to construct RD graphs. Second, we compare visual inference on graphs constructed using our preferred method with widely used econometric inference procedures. We find that visual inference achieves similar or lower type I error (false positive) rates and complements econometric inference. 摘要： 盡管在實證研究中廣泛使用圖表，但讀者處理統(tǒng)計信息的能力(“視覺推理”)卻知之甚少。我們研究了回歸不連續(xù)(RD)設(shè)計背景下的視覺推理，通過測量讀者在數(shù)據(jù)生成過程中識別不連續(xù)圖的準確性，這些圖表是根據(jù)11篇發(fā)表在主要經(jīng)濟學期刊上的論文進行校準的。首先，我們通過隨機實驗評估了不同圖形表示方法對視覺推理的影響。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，bin寬度和擬合線對參與者是否正確感知不連續(xù)性的存在或不存在有最大的影響。我們的實驗結(jié)果使我們能夠向從業(yè)者提出基于證據(jù)的建議，并且我們建議使用沒有擬合線的小箱子作為構(gòu)建RD圖的起點。其次，我們比較了使用我們的首選方法構(gòu)建的圖形的視覺推理與廣泛使用的計量經(jīng)濟學推理程序。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)視覺推理達到相似或更低的I型錯誤率(假陽性)，并補充計量經(jīng)濟學推理。