经济学顶刊American Economic Review 2023年第3期

American Economic Review 2023年第3期

Vol. 113 No. 3 March 2023

 

 

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When a Doctor Falls from the Sky: The Impact of Easing Doctor Supply Constraints on Mortality

当一个医生从天而降:缓解医生供应限制对死亡率的影响

Edward N. Okeke

This paper describes the results of a policy experiment conducted in coordination with the Nigerian government. In this experiment, some communities were randomly selected to receive a new doctor. These doctors were posted to the local public health center. Prior to their arrival, health care was provided by midlevel health-care providers (MLP). To separate the effect of (ostensibly higher) quality from that of quantity, another group of communities was provided with an additional midlevel provider. A third group of communities received no additional workers. No other inputs were provided. I find a measurable decrease in mortality in communities assigned a doctor but not in communities assigned an MLP, suggesting that quality in the health-care sector is a significant constraint.

本文描述了与尼日利亚政府协调进行的一项政策实验的结果。在这个实验中，一些社区被随机选择接受一名新医生。这些医生被派往当地公共卫生中心。在他们到达之前，保健由中级保健提供者提供。为了将质量(表面上更高)的影响与数量的影响区分开来，为另一组社区提供了额外的中级提供者。第三组社区没有增加工人。没有提供其他投入。我发现，在有医生的社区，死亡率有明显下降，但在有初级保健计划的社区，死亡率却没有下降，这表明卫生保健部门的质量是一个重大制约因素。

 

 

Relinquishing Riches: Auctions versus Informal Negotiations in Texas Oil and Gas Leasing

放弃财富:德克萨斯州石油和天然气租赁的拍卖与非正式谈判

Thomas R. Covert and Richard L. Sweeney

This paper compares outcomes from informally negotiated oil and gas leases to those awarded via centralized auction. We focus on Texas, where legislative decisions in the early twentieth century assigned thousands of proximate parcels to different mineral allocation mechanisms. We show that during the fracking boom, which began unexpectedly decades later, auctioned leases generated at least 55 percent larger up-front payments and 40 percent more output than negotiated leases did. These results suggest large potential gains from employing centralized, formal mechanisms in markets that traditionally allocate in an unstructured fashion, including the broader $3 trillion market for privately owned minerals.

 

 

An Alternative Explanation for the "Fed Information Effect"

“美联储信息效应”的另一种解释

Michael D. Bauer and Eric T. Swanson

Regressions of private-sector macroeconomic forecast revisions on monetary policy surprises often produce coefficients with signs opposite to standard macroeconomic models. The "Fed information effect" argues these puzzling results are due to monetary policy surprises revealing Fed private information. We show they are also consistent with a "Fed response to news" channel, where both the Fed and professional forecasters respond to incoming economic news. We present new evidence challenging the Fed information effect and supporting the Fed response to news channel, including: regressions that control for economic news, our own survey of professional forecasters, and financial market responses to FOMC announcements.

 

Partisanship and Fiscal Policy in Economic Unions: Evidence from US States

经济联盟中的党派之争与财政政策:来自美国的证据

Gerald Carlino, Thorsten Drautzburg, Robert Inman and Nicholas Zarra

Partisanship of state governors affects the efficacy of US federal fiscal policy. Using close election data, we find partisan differences in the marginal propensity to spend federal intergovernmental transfers: Republican governors spend less than Democratic governors. Correspondingly, Republican-led states have lower debt, (delayed) lower taxes, and initially lower economic activity. A New Keynesian model of partisan states in a monetary union implies sizable aggregate effects: The intergovernmental transfer impact multiplier rises by 0.58 if Republican governors spend like Democratic governors, but due to delayed tax cuts, the long-run multiplier is higher with more Republican governors, generating an intertemporal policy trade-off.

 

 

Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes among Adolescents

为时不晚:提高青少年的学业成绩

Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig, Monica P. Bhatt, Philip J. Cook, Jonathan M. V. Davis, Kenneth Dodge, George Farkas, Roland G. Fryer Jr., Susan Mayer, Harold Pollack, Laurence Steinberg and Greg Stoddard

Improving academic outcomes for economically disadvantaged students has proven challenging, particularly for children at older ages. We present two large-scale randomized controlled trials of a high-dosage tutoring program delivered to secondary school students in Chicago. One innovation is to use paraprofessional tutors to hold down cost, thereby increasing scalability. Participating in math tutoring increases math test scores by 0.18 to 0.40 standard deviations and increases math and non-math course grades. These effects persist into future years. The data are consistent with increased personalization of instruction as a mechanism. The benefit-cost ratio is comparable to many successful early-childhood programs.

 

 

Subjective Performance Evaluation, Influence Activities, and Bureaucratic Work Behavior: Evidence from China

主观绩效评价、影响活动与官僚主义工作行为:来自中国的证据

Alain de Janvry, Guojun He, Elisabeth Sadoulet, Shaoda Wang and Qiong Zhang

Subjective performance evaluation could induce influence activities: employees might devote too much effort to pleasing their evaluator, relative to working toward the goals of the organization itself. We conduct a randomized field experiment among Chinese local civil servants to study the existence and implications of influence activities. We find that civil servants do engage in evaluator-specific influence to affect evaluation outcomes, partly in the form of reallocating work efforts toward job tasks that are more important and observable to the evaluator. Importantly, we show that introducing uncertainty about the evaluator's identity discourages evaluator-specific influence activities and improves bureaucratic work performance.

主观的绩效评估可能会引发影响活动:员工可能会投入过多的精力来取悦评估者，而不是朝着组织本身的目标努力。我们在中国地方公务员中进行了随机现场实验，以研究影响活动的存在及其影响。我们发现，公务员确实参与了评估人员特定的影响，以影响评估结果，部分形式是将工作努力重新分配到对评估人员更重要和更可观察的工作任务上。重要的是，我们表明，引入关于评估者身份的不确定性会阻碍评估者特定的影响活动，并提高官僚主义的工作绩效。

 

 

Persuasion through Slanted Language: Evidence from the Media Coverage of Immigration

语言倾斜性说服:来自媒体对移民报道的证据

Milena Djourelova

I study the persuasive effects of slanted language, exploiting a ban on the politically charged term "illegal immigrant" by the Associated Press (AP) news wire. My empirical strategy combines the timing of the ban with variation across media outlets in their baseline reliance on AP copy. I document sizable diffusion of the ban from AP copy to media outlets. Moreover, individuals exposed to the ban through local media show significantly lower support for restrictive immigration policies. This effect is more pronounced for moderates and in locations with fewer immigrants, and does not transfer to views on issues other than immigration.

我研究了倾斜语言的说服力，利用美联社(AP)新闻专线禁止使用具有政治意味的“非法移民”一词。我的经验策略结合了禁令的时机和各媒体对美联社拷贝的基线依赖的差异。我记录了大量从美联社拷贝到媒体的禁令扩散。此外，通过当地媒体了解禁令的个人对限制性移民政策的支持明显降低。这种影响在温和派和移民较少的地区更为明显，并且不会转移到对移民以外问题的看法上。

 

 

Nonlinear Pricing with Underutilization: A Theory of Multi-part Tariffs

利用不足的非线性定价:多部分电价理论

Roberto Corrao, Joel P. Flynn and Karthik A. Sastry

We study the nonlinear pricing of goods whose usage generates revenue for the seller and of which buyers can freely dispose. The optimal price schedule is a multi-part tariff, featuring tiers within which buyers pay a marginal price of zero. We apply our model to digital goods, for which advertising, data generation, and network effects make usage valuable, but monitoring legitimate usage is infeasible. Our results rationalize common pricing schemes including free products, free trials, and unlimited subscriptions. The possibility of free disposal harms producer and consumer welfare and makes both less sensitive to changes in usage-based revenue and demand.

我们研究了一种商品的非线性定价，这种商品的使用为卖方带来收入，买方可以自由处置。最优的价格表是一个多部分关税，其特点是买家支付的边际价格为零。我们将我们的模型应用于数字产品，广告、数据生成和网络效应使使用变得有价值，但监控合法使用是不可行的。我们的研究结果合理化了常见的定价方案，包括免费产品、免费试用和无限订阅。自由处置的可能性损害了生产者和消费者的福利，并使两者对基于使用的收入和需求的变化不那么敏感。