The Quarterly Journal of Economics 2023年第3期

The Quarterly Journal of Economics 2023年第3期

Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023

 

 

——更多动态，请持续关注gzh：理想主义的百年孤独

 

 

Ai-Tocracy 

Martin Beraja and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1349–1402, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad012

Recent scholarship has suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) technology and autocratic regimes may be mutually reinforcing. We test for a mutually reinforcing relationship in the context of facial-recognition AI in China. To do so, we gather comprehensive data on AI firms and government procurement contracts, as well as on social unrest across China since the early 2010s. We first show that autocrats benefit from AI: local unrest leads to greater government procurement of facial-recognition AI as a new technology of political control, and increased AI procurement indeed suppresses subsequent unrest. We show that AI innovation benefits from autocrats’ suppression of unrest: the contracted AI firms innovate more both for the government and commercial markets and are more likely to export their products; noncontracted AI firms do not experience detectable negative spillovers. Taken together, these results suggest the possibility of sustained AI innovation under the Chinese regime: AI innovation entrenches the regime, and the regime’s investment in AI for political control stimulates further frontier innovation.

 

 

 

Justifying Dissent

Leonardo Bursztyn and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1403–1451, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad007

Dissent plays an important role in any society, but dissenters are often silenced through social sanctions. Beyond their persuasive effects, rationales providing arguments supporting dissenters’ causes can increase the public expression of dissent by providing a “social cover” for voicing otherwise stigmatized positions. Motivated by a simple theoretical framework, we experimentally show that liberals are more willing to post a tweet opposing the movement to defund the police, are seen as less prejudiced, and face lower social sanctions when their tweet implies they had first read credible scientific evidence supporting their position. Analogous experiments with conservatives demonstrate that the same mechanisms facilitate anti-immigrant expression. Our findings highlight both the power of rationales and their limitations in enabling dissent and shed light on phenomena such as social movements, political correctness, propaganda, and antiminority behavior.

 

 

 

Misdemeanor Prosecution

Amanda Agan and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1453–1505, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad005

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.

 

 

The Geography of Unemployment

Adrien Bilal

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1507–1576, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad010

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.

 

 

The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right

Samuel Bazzi and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1577–1647, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad014

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.

 

 

 

Market Power and Spatial Competition in Rural India

印度农村的市场力量和空间竞争

Shoumitro Chatterjee

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1649–1711, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad004

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.

中间商的市场力量导致了印度农民的低收入。我研究了中介机构之间的空间竞争在决定印度农民获得的价格方面的作用，重点关注了一项限制农民向自己邦的中介机构出售商品的法律。我展示了由法律产生的市场力量的不连续性转化为价格的不连续性。空间竞争每增加一个标准差，农民获得的价格就会增加6.4%。我提出并估计了一个议价和贸易的定量空间模型，以阐明空间和总体影响。结构模型的估计表明，取消印度的州际贸易限制将增加中间商之间的竞争。因此，农民的平均价格和产量将分别增长至少11%和7%。全国农作物产值将至少增加18%。然而，也有分配方面的后果，因为一些农民会因为当地产量的增加而蒙受损失。

 

 

Overreaction in Expectations: Evidence and Theory

期望中的过度反应:证据与理论

Hassan Afrouzi and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1713–1764, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad009

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.

我们通过一个大规模的随机实验来研究不同环境下期望的偏差，参与者预测稳定的随机过程。这个实验使我们能够控制预测者的信息集以及数据生成过程，因此我们可以清楚地测量信念中的偏差。我们报告三个事实。首先，预测显示出对最近观察结果的严重过度反应。其次，对于不太持久的过程，过度反应更强烈。第三，对于较长期的预测，过度反应也更为强烈。我们开发了一个易于处理的模型的期望形成与昂贵的处理过去的信息，这非常符合经验事实。我们还进行了额外的实验来测试模型的机制。

 

 

Imperfect Risk Sharing and the Business Cycle

不完善的风险分担与商业周期

David Berger and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1765–1815, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad013

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.

本文研究了一类具有异质主体的新凯恩斯模型所隐含的不完全风险分担的宏观经济含义。这类模型可以等效地表示为带有楔形的代表-代理经济。这些楔形是家庭消费份额和相对工资的函数，它们确定了控制家庭异质性对总变量影响的关键横截面时刻。我们使用美国家庭层面的数据来测量楔形，并将它们与代表性代理经济相结合，以执行反事实。我们发现，这类模型所隐含的与完全风险分担的偏差平均只占产出波动的7%，但当名义利率达到其下界时，可能会产生相当大的产出影响。

 

 

Cultural Distance and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

文化距离与冲突相关的性暴力

Eleonora Guarnieri and Ana Tur-Prats

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1817–1861, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad015

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.

 

 

The Political Economics of Green Transitions 

绿色转型的政治经济学

Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1863–1906, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad006

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.

如果没有绿色转型——消费和生产模式的重大转变——减少温室气体排放几乎是不可能的。为了研究这种转变，我们提出了一个动态模型，它在两个方面不同于经济学中的常用方法。首先，消费模式不仅反映了价格和税收的变化，也反映了价值的变化。价值观和技术的转变创造了一种动态的互补性，可以帮助或阻碍绿色转型。其次，与虚构的社会规划者不同，民主社会的政策制定者无法承诺未来的政策路径，因为他们要接受定期选举。我们表明，市场失灵和政府失灵可以相互作用，阻止福利增加的绿色转型实现，或使正在进行的绿色转型过于缓慢。

 

 

Regulating Untaxable Externalities: Are Vehicle Air Pollution Standards Effective and Efficient?

管制不应课税的外部性:车辆空气污染标准是否有效?

Mark R Jacobsen and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1907–1976, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad016

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.

 

 

Visual Inference and Graphical Representation in Regression Discontinuity Designs

回归不连续设计中的视觉推理与图形表示

Christina Korting and others

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023, Pages 1977–2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad011

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.

尽管在实证研究中广泛使用图表，但读者处理统计信息的能力(“视觉推理”)却知之甚少。我们研究了回归不连续(RD)设计背景下的视觉推理，通过测量读者在数据生成过程中识别不连续图的准确性，这些图表是根据11篇发表在主要经济学期刊上的论文进行校准的。首先，我们通过随机实验评估了不同图形表示方法对视觉推理的影响。我们发现，bin宽度和拟合线对参与者是否正确感知不连续性的存在或不存在有最大的影响。我们的实验结果使我们能够向从业者提出基于证据的建议，并且我们建议使用没有拟合线的小箱子作为构建RD图的起点。其次，我们比较了使用我们的首选方法构建的图形的视觉推理与广泛使用的计量经济学推理程序。我们发现视觉推理达到相似或更低的I型错误率(假阳性)，并补充计量经济学推理。