Unconventional Fiscal Policy at Work

By Rüdiger Bachmann, Benjamin Born, Olga Goldfayn-Frank, Georgi Kocharkov, Ralph Luetticke, and Michael Weber

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

In an effort to stabilize the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German government reduced value-added taxes (VAT) by 3 percentage points for a period of six months in the latter half of 2020. This measure resulted in a boost in aggregate consumer ...

Advanced Technology Adoption: Selection or Causal Effects?

By Daron Acemoglu, Gary Anderson, David Beede, Catherine Buffington, Eric Childress, Emin Dinlersoz, Lucia Foster, Nathan Goldschlag, John Haltiwanger, Zachary Kroff, Pascual Restrepo, and Nikolas Zolas

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

This paper uses data from the 2019 Annual Business Survey to document that firms adopting advanced technologies are larger in terms of employment than other firms in their same industry and cohort. Using data from the Longitudinal Business Survey, we show...

Robot Hubs: The Skewed Distribution of Robots in US Manufacturing

By Erik Brynjolfsson, Catherine Buffington, Nathan Goldschlag, J. Frank Li, Javier Miranda, and Robert Seamans

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We use establishment-level data from the US Census Bureau's Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geographic locations of investments in robots. We find that the distribution of robots is highly skewed across locations. Some locat...

The Local Labor Market Effects of Modern Manufacturing Capital: Evidence from France

By Philippe Aghion, Celine Antonin, Simon Bunel, and Xavier Jaravel

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation technologies. We estimate that commut...

Robots and Female Employment in German Manufacturing

By Liuchun Deng, Steffen Müller, Verena Plümpe, and Jens Stegmaier

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We analyze the impact of robot adoption on female employment. Our analysis is based on novel micro data on robot use by German manufacturing establishments linked with social security records. An event study analysis for robot adoption shows increased chu...

The Macroeconomic Consequences of International Financial Sanctions

By Javier Bianchi and Cesar Sosa-Padilla

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Financial sanctions have emerged as powerful weapons in the current geopolitical landscape. In this paper, we use a graphical framework to trace their macroeconomic implications, highlighting lessons for the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency, ...

International Sanctions and Limits of Lerner Symmetry

By Oleg Itskhoki and Dmitry Mukhin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

After a wave of globalization, trade wars and financial sanctions again become frequent tools of international policymaking, leading to an increased interest in the consequences and effectiveness of international sanctions. Itskhoki and Mukhin (2022b) sho...

How Should Sanctions Account for Bystander Countries?

By John Sturm

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Neutral "bystander countries" have profoundly shaped the impact of trade sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. How should sanctions account for the presence of such bystanders? I study this question in a simple trade model where a...

Sectoral Shocks and the Role of Market Integration: The Case of Natural Gas

By Silvia Albrizio, John Bluedorn, Christoffer Koch, Andrea Pescatori, and Martin Stuermer

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We quantify how market integration affects the economic propagation of sectoral supply shocks at the example of a Russian gas shutoff to the European Union. An open-economy, multisector general equilibrium model suggests that the adverse output impact on ...

Emoticons as Performance Feedback for College Students: A Large-Classroom Field Experiment

By Darshak Patel and Justin Roush

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We use a field experiment in a large college classroom to study the use of written representations of emotion ("emoticons") as a form of feedback on exams. We find that treatment improved student attendance, quiz scores, homework scores, and test scores. ...

Competition, Motivation, and Student Engagement

By Amanda J. Felkey, Eva Dziadula, and Eric Chiang

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We consider the gamification aspect of a technology that delivers small daily tasks to students to analyze how competition motivates engagement. We randomly assigned 400 students into teams of up to 10, who compete by committing to the daily task and then...

Messages That Foster a Sense of Belonging Improve Learning and Satisfaction: An Experiment in an Online Environment

By Sara Avila Forcada

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The literature in pedagogy has shown that having a sense of belonging affects learning. This paper shows the result of a communication experiment in an online environment. For six consecutive terms, the instructor taught Introduction to Statistics. The in...

Anxiety, Test-Taking Aid, and Test Scores: Evidence from Economics Classes

By Colin Cannonier and Monica Galloway Burke

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Using data collected over five years for an introductory economics course, this study investigates the relationship between anxiety, test-taking aid, and test performance. The results show that test aid is associated with a 0.21 standard deviation increas...

Timely Business Dynamics Using Google Places

By Thibaut Duprey, Daniel E. Rigobon, Artur Kotlicki, and Philip Schnattinger

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We introduce a new real-time method to measure business opening and closure rates by relying on Google Places, the data behind the Google Maps platform. We collect data on establishments of customer-facing industries (food, retail, accommodation) and prov...

Measuring Business Trends and Outlook through a New Survey

By Catherine Buffington, Lucia Foster, and Colin Shevlin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The Census Bureau's new Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) provides timely information from businesses on their current trends and expectations over core concepts such as prices, employment, and revenue. The BTOS collects qualitative information in...

Payroll Employment at the Weekly Frequency

By Tomaz Cajner, Leland D. Crane, Ryan A. Decker, Adrian Hamins-Puertolas, and Christopher Kurz

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Nontraditional data can provide critical economic insights in real time. We document the development of weekly employment indexes based on microdata from the payroll processor ADP. These data have provided insights into labor market developments in the fa...

Are Business Applications Early Economic Indicators?

By Jose Asturias, Emin Dinlersoz, John Haltiwanger, and Rebecca Hutchinson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Are business applications early indicators of economic activity? Our analysis indicates that monthly year-over-year growth in applications for likely employer businesses significantly leads growth in total nonfarm employment and has a positive correlation...

Knowledge about Federal Employment Nondiscrimination Protections on the Basis of Sexual Orientation

By Billur Aksoy, Christopher S. Carpenter, and Dario Sansone

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Using a US nationally representative online sample, we measure the level of knowledge on employment nondiscrimination laws. Although Americans are well informed about sex, race, and disability being protected characteristics, only about 71 percent think t...

Heterogeneity in Attitude Responses: Evidence from Bostock v. Clayton County

By Cameron Deal

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Traditional models of policy formation emphasize how political attitudes and actions affect policy outcomes. However, the converse may occur—policies are often a signal to constituents about the priorities and positions of both political actors and the ...

Hormone Therapy, Suicidal Risk, and Transgender Youth in the United States

By Travis Campbell, Samuel Mann, Duc Hien Nguyen, and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

This study uses the 2015 US Transgender Survey to test how initiation of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) affects the risk of attempting suicide among transgender individuals. We constructed a retrospective panel and employed a stacked event study design...