The Impact of an Epidemic: Experimental Evidence on Preference Stability from Wuhan

By Jason Shachat, Matthew J. Walker, and Lijia Wei

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We examine how the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in the Hubei province of China impacted pro-social behavior and attitudes toward risk and uncertainty. The study repeatedly applies a panel of financially incentivized individual and strategic decision tas...

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Consumption: Learning from High-Frequency Transaction Data

By Haiqiang Chen, Wenlan Qian, and Qiang Wen

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We use daily transaction data in 214 cities to study the impact of COVID-19 on consumption after China's outbreak in late January 2020. Based on difference-in-difference estimation, daily offline consumption—via bank card and mobile Quick Response code ...

Where Is Pollution Moving? Environmental Markets and Environmental Justice

By Joseph S. Shapiro and Reed Walker

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Do US air pollution offset markets disproportionately relocate pollution to or from low-income or minority communities? Concerns about an equal distribution of environmental quality across communities—environmental justice—have growing policy influenc...

Cycles of Fire? Politics and Forest Burning in Indonesia

By Clare Balboni, Robin Burgess, Anton Heil, Jonathan Old, and Benjamin A. Olken

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

This paper examines the link between electoral incentives and environmental degradation by exploiting a satellite dataset on 107,000 forest fires and 879 asynchronous district elections in Indonesia. Fires represent a cheap but illegal means of converting...

Indoor Air Quality, Information, and Socioeconomic Status: Evidence from Delhi

By Michael Greenstone, Kenneth Lee, and Harshil Sahai

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

In Delhi, one of the world's most polluted cities, there is relatively little information on indoor air pollution and how it varies by socioeconomic status (SES). Using indoor air quality monitors (IAQMs), we find that winter levels of household air pollu...

Estimating the Elasticity to Real-Time Pricing: Evidence from the Spanish Electricity Market

By Natalia Fabra, David Rapson, Mar Reguant, and Jingyuan Wang

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We estimate consumer response to the first large-scale real-time electricity pricing (RTP) program. In 2015, RTP became the default tariff for residential customers in Spain, exposing them to prices that vary hourly based on day-ahead wholesale prices. Us...

Who Gets Their First Job at a Large Firm? The Distinct Roles of Education and Skills

By Jaime Arellano-Bover

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Young workers' early years in the labor market are a key and formative time. Using data from 31 countries, this article documents the selection of labor market entrants into large firms, which existing literature associates with propitious environments fo...

Pure-Chance Jobs versus a Labor Market: The Impact on Careers of a Random Serial Dictatorship for First Job Seekers

By Ashna Arora, Leonard Goff, and Jonas Hjort

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Do workers' first jobs affect their careers? Do such first-job effects (FJEs) vary across worker types? If so, can policy improve upon a "free" labor market by altering initial worker-employer matches? We study these questions using Norway's pre–2013 sy...

Initial Industry and Long-Term Earnings Growth

By Stephen L. Ross and Patralekha Ukil

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We test whether employment growth in a male worker's initial industry influences earnings growth using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We follow workers for 20 years after reporting their first industry, finding that lower employment growt...

The Distributional Impacts of Active Labor Market Programs for Indigenous Populations

By Donna Feir, Kelly Foley, and Maggie E. C. Jones

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We evaluate the distributional impacts of active labor market programming for indigenous peoples in Canada. Using administrative data and an empirical strategy that compares participants in high-intensity programs—skills interventions, job-creation part...

Gaming Opportunities: American Indian Casinos, Cash Transfers, and Income Mobility on the Reservation

By Emilia Simeonova, Randall Akee, and Maggie R. Jones

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We examine the impact of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act on the income rank of American Indian (AI) reservation residents. We assemble a panel dataset at the individual level for tax filers residing on AI reservations in 1989. We examine the effect of ca...

Ownership and Trust in Banks: Evidence from the First Bank in an American Indian Nation

By Donna Feir, Rachel L. Wellhausen, and Calvin Thrall

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

In collaboration with an American Indian nation, we conducted a survey that is the first of its kind in Indian Country. The survey explored tribal members' financial experiences in the months before the first bank opened on their reservation. In this arti...

Disparities in Health Care and Medical Evaluations by Gender: A Review of Evidence and Mechanisms

By Marika Cabral and Marcus Dillender

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Male and female patients often receive different medical evaluations and treatment even when they have the same symptoms, and relative to men, women are less likely to receive benefits within social insurance programs that rely on medical evaluations. Thi...

COVID-19 Disruptions Disproportionately Affect Female Academics

By Tatyana Deryugina, Olga Shurchkov, and Jenna Stearns

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent countermeasures disrupted economic activity around the world. We investigate the effects of COVID-19 disruptions on the gender gap in academia. We administer a global survey of academics to collect ...

Up the Political Ladder: Gender Parity in the Effects of Electoral Defeats

By Melanie Wasserman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

This paper investigates whether an electoral defeat has different effects on the subsequent political involvement of male and female candidates for state office. Using US state legislative election returns from 1972 to 2010 and a regression discontinuity ...

Information, Confidence, and the Gender Gap in Bargaining

By Barbara Biasi and Heather Sarsons

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We test whether the observed difference in the propensity to negotiate between men and women can be explained by gender differences in information about other people's negotiating experiences and outcomes and by confidence in one's abilities and in talkin...

Changes in the US Gender Gap in Wages in the 1960s

By Martha J. Bailey, Thomas Helgerman, and Bryan A. Stuart

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The 1960s witnessed landmark legislation that aimed to increase women's wages, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the 1966 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Although the gender gap in pay changed little a...

Work-Care Balance over the Day and the Gender Wage Gap

By German Cubas, Chinhui Juhn, and Pedro Silos

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We focus on the timing of labor supplied during the day and its interaction with home care responsibilities. Using the American Time Use Survey, we measure the incidence of household care activities between 8 AM and 5 PM (the prime time of the day). Women...

Do Male and Female Students Use Networks Differently?

By Yana Gallen and Melanie Wasserman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Gender differences in professional networks have been shown to contribute to men and women's disparate labor market outcomes. This gap could be due to differences in network access, differences in network usage, or both. Using novel administrative data fr...

Promoting Female Interest in Economics: Limits to Nudges

By Todd Pugatch and Elizabeth Schroeder

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We assess whether light-touch interventions can increase the proportion of women who study economics. Over 2,000 students were randomly assigned to receive a message with basic information about the economics major, the basic message combined with an emph...