Journal of Public Economics

2023年第5期 ? ? ——更多動(dòng)態(tài)，請(qǐng)持續(xù)關(guān)注gzh：理想主義的百年孤獨(dú)

? 1.The effect of increasing retirement age on households’ savings and consumption expenditure Stefan Etgeton, Bj?rn Fischer, Han Ye Abstract This paper examines how households adjust their savings and consumption expenditure in response to an anticipated increase in the early retirement age (ERA). We examine the 1999 pension reform in Germany, which increased the ERA for women born after 1951 by at least three years. First, we present suggestive evidence that women update their retirement planning in response to the reform. Using the German Income and Consumption Survey, we find a negative impact on private savings of 0.6 percentage points that is driven by households with married women. We show that households consisting of highly educated women and homeowners are more likely to reduce their savings rates. Furthermore, we find that the treated households increase their leisure spending while maintaining an unchanged level of disposable income. Our findings suggest that the households anticipate experiencing a lifetime income increase and reduce their savings rate to smooth consumption. ? 2.Doctor switching costs Gordon B. Dahl, Silke J. Forbes Abstract We exploit a quasi-random health insurance experiment which for some employees increased the price to keep their doctors between $600 to $1900 per year, while holding all other insurance plan characteristics constant. Our setting allows us to identify doctor switching costs separately from inattention, option value and other characteristics. Forty-six percent of individuals are willing to pay the higher premiums to keep their doctors, and these doctor switching costs account for the largest share of inertia in plan choice. Our findings imply that older and sicker individuals would be more negatively impacted by reforms which restrict access to doctors. ? 3.Corporate political spending and state tax policy: Evidence from Citizens United Cailin Slattery, Alisa Tazhitdinova, Sarah Robinson Abstract To what extent is U.S. state tax policy affected by corporate political contributions? The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling provides an exogenous shock to corporate campaign spending, allowing corporations to spend on elections in 23 states which previously had spending bans. Ten years after the ruling and for a wide range of outcomes, we are not able to identify statistically significant effects of corporate independent expenditures on state tax policy, including tax rates, discretionary tax breaks, and tax revenues. Our results allow for a moderate economic effect on corporate tax rates and revenues, but suggest economically insignificant effects for other tax outcomes of interest to firms and their owners. A complementary analysis of the original introduction of the spending bans supports our finding that corporate spending has modest, if any, effects on tax policy. ? 4.Occupy government: Democracy and the dynamics of personnel decisions and public finances Klenio Barbosa, Fernando Ferreira Abstract This work investigates causes and consequences of patronage in Brazilian cities since the country’s re-democratization. It uses five election cycles and compares the hiring of winning and losing party members in close elections to causally estimate patronage. Cities increase their shares of civil servants affiliated with winning political coalitions by 3 percentage points during a mayoral term, and also increase their wage shares by 4 percentage points. Overall, patronage explains slightly more than 50% of the large increase in politically affiliated public employees since re-democratization. Moreover, we find that federal transfers and lack of accountability are important determinants of patronage. ? 5.The consequences of the Swedish rent control system on labor income: Evidence from a randomized apartment lottery Cecilia Enstr?m ?st, Per Johansson Abstract Using a unique randomized rental apartment lottery in Stockholm metropolitan statistical area, this paper analyses behavioral effects on individuals receiving a rent-controlled contract in the Swedish rent control program. The result shows that receiving a rent-controlled contract reduces the annual labor income by 13 to 20 percent and employment by 8 to 13 percent. To some extent, these effects can be explained by an increased propensity to enter higher education. ? 6.De Jure versus De Facto transparency: Corruption in local public office in India 法律上的透明與事實(shí)上的透明:印度地方公職的腐敗 Dahyeon Jeong, Ajay Shenoy, Laura V. Zimmermann Abstract Governments and NGOs have invested heavily in fighting corruption by designing anti-poverty programs that maximize transparency and accountability. We analyze whether corruption is still widespread in the context of one such program, a massive make-work scheme in India where every job spell is posted publicly online. Linking millions of administrative job records to local election outcomes, we measure how many jobs local politicians self-deal. In the year after the election, winners of close elections receive 3 times as many workdays as losers and typical villagers. We find that corruption persists because of a gap between de jure and de facto transparency. Only when citizens have tools to access information in a timely manner does corruption eventually vanish. ? 7.Prescription drug advertising and drug utilization: The role of Medicare Part D Abby Alpert, Darius Lakdawalla, Neeraj Sood Abstract This paper examines how direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) for prescription drugs influences utilization by exploiting a large and plausibly exogenous shock to DTCA driven by the introduction of Medicare Part D. Part D led to larger increases in advertising in geographic areas with higher concentrations of Medicare beneficiaries. We examine the impact of this differential increase in advertising on non-elderly individuals to isolate advertising effects from the direct effects of Part D. We find that exposure to advertising led to large increases in treatment initiation and improved medication adherence. Advertising also had sizeable positive spillover effects on non-advertised generic drugs. Our results imply significant spillovers from Medicare Part D on the under-65 population and an important role for non-price factors in influencing prescription drug utilization. ? 8.Economic consequences of hospital closures Diane Alexander, Michael R. Richards Abstract Hospitals anchor much of US health care and receive a third of all medical spending, including various subsidies. Nevertheless, some become insolvent and exit the market. Research has documented subsequent access problems; however, less is understood about broader implications. We examine over 100 rural hospital closures spanning 2005–2017 to quantify the effects on the local economy. We find sharp and persistent reductions in employment, but these localize to health care occupations and are more impactful in areas experiencing complete closures. Aggregate consumer financial health and housing markets appear unaffected by the shuttering of a rural hospital. ? 9.Committees as active audiences: Reputation concerns and information acquisition Otto H. Swank, Bauke Visser Abstract We study committees that acquire information, deliberate, and vote. A member cares about state-dependent decision payoffs and his reputation for expertise. The state remains unobserved. In such environments, members’ internal reputations are based on deliberation patterns, while members’ external reputations are based on the observed group decision. We find that either form of reputation concerns creates strategic complementarity among members’ effort levels. Internal reputations create stronger incentives to become informed than external reputations. Their strength grows in committee size; external reputations create no incentives in large committees. Finally, reputation concerns may relax participation constraints. ? 10.The early origins of judicial stringency in bail decisions: Evidence from early childhood exposure to Hindu-Muslim riots in India Nitin Kumar Bharti, Sutanuka Roy Abstract We estimate the causal effects of judges’ exposure to communal violence during early childhood on pretrial detention rates by exploiting novel administrative data on judgments and detailed resumes of judicial officers born during 1955–1991. Our key result is that judges exposed to communal violence between ages 0 and 6 years are 16% more prone to deny bail than the average judge, with the impact being stronger for the experience of riots between ages 3 and 6 years. The observed judicial stringency is driven by childhood exposure to riots with a higher duration of state-imposed lockdowns and low riot casualties. ? 11.Taxing Uber David R. Agrawal, Weihua Zhao Abstract Ride-hailing applications create new challenges for governments providing transit services, but also create new opportunities to raise tax revenue. To shed light on the effect of taxing or subsidizing ride-hailing services, we extend a pseudo-monocentric city model to include multiple endogenously chosen transportation modes, including ride-hailing applications and endogenous car ownership. We show that most tax and spending programs that cities have currently adopted mildly increase public transit usage. However, the model predicts more significant increases in public transit ridership when ride-hailing applications are subsidized as a “l(fā)ast-mile” provider. Our model indicates that whether ride-hailing services and public transit are substitutes or complements is a policy choice. ? 12.Escaping the exchange of information: Tax evasion via citizenship-by-investment Dominika Langenmayr, Lennard Zyska Abstract With automatic exchange of tax information among countries now common, tax evaders have had to find new ways to hide their offshore holdings. One such way is citizenship-by-investment, which offers foreigners a new passport for a local investment or a fixed fee. We show analytically that high-income individuals acquire a new citizenship to lower the probability that their tax evasion is detected through information exchange. Using data on cross-border bank deposits, we find that deposits in tax havens increase after a country starts offering a citizenship-by-investment program, providing indirect evidence that tax evaders use these programs. ? 13.Centralized admission systems and school segregation: Evidence from a national reform Macarena Kutscher, Shanjukta Nath, Sergio Urzúa Abstract This paper investigates whether the adoption of centralized school admission systems can alter within-school socio-economic diversity relative to decentralized settings. We take advantage of the largest school-admission reform implemented to date: Chile’s SAS, which in 2016 replaced the country’s decentralized system with a Deferred Acceptance algorithm. We exploit its sequential introduction across regions to quantify its heterogeneous impact on segregation. The empirical analysis is carried out using administrative data and a Difference-in-Difference strategy. Our findings do not suggest an overall improvement in the representation of low-SES students across schools. SAS, however, increased within-school segregation in districts with high levels of pre-existing residential segregation or an extensive presence of private schools. The migration of high-SES students attending publicly funded schools to private institutions emerges as a potential driver. ? 14.Spend as you were told: Evidence from labeled COVID-19 stimulus payments in South Korea Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Wonjun Lyou Abstract We test the income fungibility assumption from standard economic theory by analyzing spending responses to South Korea’s labeled COVID-19 stimulus payments. We exploit unique policy rules for identification: (1) recipients cannot use payments outside their province of residence, and (2) they can only use payments at establishments in pre-specified sectors. Using data on card transactions in Seoul, we find that households do not consider stimulus payments fungible. Compared to Seoul residents’ benchmark spending responses to cash income gains by sector, the stimulus payments disproportionately increased Seoul residents’ spending in the allowed sector compared to the non-allowed sector. The payments did not increase non-Seoul residents’ card spending. Our results imply that labeled stimulus payments with usage restrictions can boost household consumption spending in targeted sectors or locations during economic recessions.