The Quarterly Journal of Economics 2023年

The Quarterly Journal of Economics 2023年第4期

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​01 Misdemeanor Prosecution 轻罪起诉 Amanda Agan; Jennifer L Doleac; Anna Harvey Abstract： 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. 摘要： 美国各地的社区都在重新考虑起诉非暴力轻罪对公共安全的好处，但几乎没有经验证据可以为这一领域的政策提供信息。我们报告了对轻罪起诉对被告随后的刑事司法参与的因果影响的第一次估计。我们将非暴力轻罪案件随机分配给助理地区检察官(ADAs)，由他们决定是否在马萨诸塞州萨福克县地区检察官办公室起诉一个案件。这些助理检察官的起诉决定的平均宽大程度各不相同。我们发现，对于边缘被告，非暴力轻罪的不起诉导致在接下来的两年里，新的刑事诉讼的可能性降低了53%新的刑事诉讼的数量减少了60%。对于没有犯罪记录的被告，这些当地平均治疗效果最大，这表明避免获取犯罪记录是推动我们研究结果的重要机制。我们还提供证据表明，萨福克县最近的一项政策变化，对非暴力轻罪推定不起诉，具有类似的有益效果，降低了随后刑事司法介入的可能性。 02 The Geography of Unemployment 失业的地理分布 Adrien Bilal Abstract： 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. 摘要： 各地劳动力市场的失业率差别很大。我提供了新的经验证据，表明当地高失业率的出现是由于当地失业率的上升。工作稳定性的空间差距主要是由当地雇主造成的，而不是由当地工人或特定地点因素造成的。我提出了一个理论，在这个理论中，由于当地劳动力市场上雇主之间的系统性差异，失业的空间差异以均衡的方式出现。雇主的空间分类决策反过来塑造了不同地点的异质性。劳动力市场的摩擦导致生产性雇主高估彼此靠近的位置。最优政策激励他们迁往失业率高的地区，为常用的基于地方的政策提供了理由。我使用法国的行政数据来估计模型。估计的模型解释了失业率横截面分布的四分之三以上，以及失业和找到工作率各自的贡献。雇主低效的地点选择将空间失业差异放大了5倍。现实世界和最优的基于地方的政策都可以产生可观的地方和总体福利收益。 03 The Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right 另一次大移民:南方白人和新右翼 Samuel Bazzi; Andreas Ferrara; Martin Fiszbein; Thomas Pearson ; Patrick A Testa Abstract： 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. 摘要： 这篇文章展示了20世纪数以百万计的南方白人的移民如何塑造了整个美国的文化和政治格局。南方白人移民在种族和宗教上都很保守，他们为与经济保守派结成广泛的联盟创造了新的选举可能性。这些移民的地理分布相当广泛，他们加速了党派的重组，从长远来看，他们帮助催化和支持了一场具有全国影响力的新右翼运动。他们不仅扩大了南方以外的保守派选民基础，还通过建立福音派教堂、传播右翼媒体、通过异族通婚和居住融合来影响非南方人。通过对非南方家庭的跟踪研究，我们发现与南方白人邻居的接触增加了对保守宗教规范的接受。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，这种大规模的移民模糊了南北文化鸿沟，重塑了美国保守主义的地理位置。 04 Market Power and Spatial Competition in Rural India 印度农村的市场力量和空间竞争 Shoumitro Chatterjee Abstract： 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. 摘要： 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。 05 Overreaction in Expectations: Evidence and Theory 期望中的过度反应:证据与理论 Hassan Afrouzi; Spencer Y Kwon; Augustin Landier ; Yueran Ma; David Thesmar Abstract： 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. 摘要： 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。 06 Imperfect Risk Sharing and the Business Cycle 不完全风险分担与商业周期 David Berger; Luigi Bocola ; Alessandro Dovis Abstract： 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. 摘要： 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。 07 Cultural Distance and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence 文化距离与冲突相关的性暴力 Eleonora Guarnieri; Ana Tur-Prats Abstract： 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. 摘要： 本文探讨了基于种族的性别规范与冲突相关的性暴力之间的关系。我们生成了一个新的二元数据集，其中包含1989年至2019年期间世界各地参与种族内部冲突的所有行动者的种族身份及其性暴力行为的信息。我们利用人种学信息在种族层面构建了一个新的男性优势指数，该指数捕捉了根深蒂固的性别规范。首先，我们发现男性主导的武装行动者更有可能是性暴力的肇事者。其次，我们考虑了战斗人员之间性别规范的文化距离，并表明性暴力是由对男性和女性在社会中适当角色的特定观念冲突所驱动的:当犯罪者比受害者更具男性主导地位时，性暴力就会增加。其他分析表明，性别规范既影响出于军事目的战略性地使用性暴力，也影响出于私人动机表现性暴力。这些模式是针对性暴力的，并不能解释冲突中的一般暴力。与性别无关的其他文化层面的差异与冲突相关的性暴力无关。 08 The Political Economics of Green Transitions 绿色转型的政治经济学 Timothy Besley ; Torsten Persson Abstract： 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. 摘要： 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。 09 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; James M Sallee; Joseph S Shapiro; Arthur A van Benthem Abstract： 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. 摘要： 世界上有14亿辆乘用车。政府应如何管制空气污染排放?庇古税在技术上是不可行的。相反，大多数国家依赖于限制新车每英里空气污染排放量的排放标准。我们评估了这些标准的有效性和效率，这些标准是美国《清洁空气法》对交通运输和反事实政策监管的核心。我们的研究表明，自1967年开始实施标准以来，美国新车每英里的空气污染排放量已经显著下降了99%以上。几项基于半个世纪数据的研究设计表明，废气排放标准是造成这种下降的主要原因。然而，废气排放标准并不具有成本效益，部分原因是它们未能鼓励报废旧车，而旧车是排放的主要来源。为了研究反事实政策，我们开发了一个车队的分析和定量模型。对这些模型的分析表明，更严格的尾气排放标准会增加社会福利，而提高污染车辆的注册费会加速报废，从而产生更大的收益，尽管这两项改革对不平等都有复杂的影响。 10 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; Carl Lieberman; Jordan Matsudaira; Zhuan Pei ; Yi Shen Abstract： 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. 摘要： 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。