Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

Tax Credits and Small Firm R&D Spending

By Ajay Agrawal, Carlos Rosell, and Timothy Simcoe

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

In 2004, Canada changed the eligibility rules for its Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SRED) tax credit, which provides tax incentives for R&D conducted by small private firms. Difference-in-difference estimates show a 17 percent increase...

An Equilibrium Theory of Retirement Plan Design

By Ryan Bubb and Patrick L. Warren

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

We develop an equilibrium theory of employer-sponsored retirement plan design using a behavioral contract theory approach. The operation of the labor market results in retirement plans that generally cater to, rather than correct, workers' mistakes. Our t...

Revisiting the Effects of Unemployment Insurance Extensions on Unemployment: A Measurement-Error-Corrected Regression Discontinuity Approach

By Steven Dieterle, Otávio Bartalotti, and Quentin Brummet

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

This study documents two potential biases in recent analyses of UI benefit extensions using boundary-based identification: bias from using county-level aggregates and bias from across-border policy spillovers. To examine the first bias, the analysis uses ...

Take Two! SAT Retaking and College Enrollment Gaps

By Joshua Goodman, Oded Gurantz, and Jonathan Smith

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

Only half of SAT-takers retake the exam, with even lower retake rates among low-income students and underrepresented minority (URM) students. We exploit discontinuous jumps in retake probabilities at multiples of 100, driven by left-digit bias, to estimat...

Unemployment Insurance and Means-Tested Program Interactions: Evidence from Administrative Data

By Pauline Leung and Christopher O'Leary

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

We study the ways in which unemployment insurance (UI) benefits interact with other elements of the social safety net around job losses. We exploit a cutoff for UI eligibility, based on a workers' highest quarterly earnings in the past year, to generate q...

Upstream and Downstream Impacts of College Merit-Based Financial Aid for Low-Income Students: Ser Pilo Paga in Colombia

By Juliana Londoño-Vélez, Catherine Rodríguez, and Fabio Sánchez

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

How does financial aid affect postsecondary enrollment, college choice, and student composition? We present new evidence based on a large-scale program available to high-achieving, low-income students for attending high-quality colleges in Colombia. RD es...

Does School Desegregation Promote Diverse Interactions? An Equilibrium Model of Segregation within Schools

By Angelo Mele

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

This paper studies racial segregation in schools using data on student friendships from Add Health. I estimate an equilibrium model of friendship formation, with preferences allowing both homophily and heterophily in direct and indirect ties. I find that ...

Optimal Climate Policy When Damages Are Unknown

By Ivan Rudik

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are economists' primary tool for analyzing the optimal carbon tax. Damage functions, which link temperature to economic impacts, have come under fire because of their assumptions that may be incorrect in significant but...

Heat and Learning

By R. Jisung Park, Joshua Goodman, Michael Hurwitz, and Jonathan Smith

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2020

We demonstrate that heat inhibits learning and that school air conditioning may mitigate this effect. Student fixed effects models using 10 million students who retook the PSATs show that hotter school days in the years before the test was taken reduce sc...

EconTrack

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How to cure a debt hangover

[Research Highlight]

May 01, 2020

Relieving delinquent borrowers requires more than just lower minimum payments.

Targeted Debt Relief and the Origins of Financial Distress: Experimental Evidence from Distressed Credit Card Borrowers

By Will Dobbie and Jae Song

American Economic Review, April 2020

We study the drivers of financial distress using a large-scale field experiment that offered randomly selected borrowers a combination of (i) immediate payment reductions to target short-run liquidity constraints and (ii) delayed interest write-downs to t...

A dearth of ideas

[Page]

It's taking more resources to keep up with the same pace of growth.

Shelly Lundberg, Distinguished Fellow 2020

[Page]

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2020

Votes for Women: An Economic Perspective on Women's Enfranchisement

[Symposium: One Hundred Years of Women's Suffrage]

By Carolyn M. Moehling and Melissa A. Thomasson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2020

The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 officially granted voting rights to women across the United States. However, many states extended full or partial suffrage to women before the federal amendment. In this paper, we discuss the history ...

A Century of the American Woman Voter: Sex Gaps in Political Participation, Preferences, and Partisanship since Women's Enfranchisement

[Symposium: One Hundred Years of Women's Suffrage]

By Elizabeth U. Cascio and Na'ama Shenhav

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2020

This year marks the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, which provided American women a constitutional guarantee to the franchise. We assemble data from a variety of sources to document and explore trends in women's political participation, issue pr...

Sociological Perspectives on Racial Discrimination

[Symposium: Perspectives on Racial Discrimination]

By Mario L. Small and Devah Pager

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2020

As in economics, racial discrimination has long been a focus of research in sociology. Yet the disciplines traditionally have differed in how they approach the topic. While some studies in recent years show signs of cross-disciplinary influence, exposin...

Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective

[Symposium: Perspectives on Racial Discrimination]

By Kevin Lang and Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2020

We review the empirical literature in economics on discrimination in the labor market and criminal justice system, focusing primarily on discrimination by race. We then discuss theoretical models of taste-based discrimination, particularly models of frict...