In this essay, we ask whether the distributions of life expectancy and mortality have become generally more unequal, as many seem to believe, and we report some good news. Focusing on groups of ...counties ranked by their poverty rates, we show that gains in life expectancy at birth have actually been relatively equally distributed between rich and poor areas. Analysts who have concluded that inequality in life expectancy is increasing have generally focused on life expectancy at age 40 to 50. This observation suggests that it is important to examine trends in mortality for younger and older ages separately. Turning to an analysis of age-specific mortality rates, we show that among adults age 50 and over, mortality has declined more quickly in richer areas than in poorer ones, resulting in increased inequality in mortality. This finding is consistent with previous research on the subject. However, among children, mortality has been falling more quickly in poorer areas with the result that inequality in mortality has fallen substantially over time. We also show that there have been stunning declines in mortality rates for African Americans between 1990 and 2010, especially for black men. Finally we offer some hypotheses about causes for the results we see, including a discussion of differential smoking patterns by age and socioeconomic status.
Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for ...bank secrecy and private wealth management but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks—such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises—and are robust to instrumenting using predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5% at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.
This paper estimates the effect on innovation of increased market access facilitated by trade liberalization. We use a novel empirical design that exploits tariff cuts during the 1990s, along with ...detailed data on innovation among firms from 65 countries. Our results reveal a large effect of tariff cuts on innovation as measured by patent data, suggesting that multilateral liberalization has promoted innovation and growth. These effects are not driven by the deterioration of innovation quality, and the results are robust to controlling for changes in the patent system and to industry-wide trends in innovation.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers are fundamental inputs for innovation, the main driver of productivity growth. We identify the long-run effect of STEM employment ...growth on outcomes for native workers across 219 US cities from 1990 to 2010. We use the 1980 distribution of foreign-born STEM workers and variation in the H-1B visa program to identify supply-driven STEM increases across cities. Increases in STEM workers are associated with significant wage gains for college-educated natives. Gains for non-college-educated natives are smaller but still significant. Our results imply that foreign STEM increased total factor productivity growth in US cities.
Adjusting to Globalization in Germany Dauth, Wolfgang; Findeisen, Sebastian; Suedekum, Jens
Journal of labor economics,
01/2021, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We study the impact of trade exposure on the job biographies of 2.4 million manufacturing workers in Germany. Rising export opportunities lead to two equally important sources of earnings gains: on ...the job and employer switches within the same industry. Highly skilled workers benefit the most. Import shocks mostly hurt low-skilled workers, especially when they possess lots of industry-specific human capital. They also destroy workers’ rents when separating from high-wage plants, and they leave strongly scarring effects in the event of a mass layoff. We connect our results to the growing theoretical literature on the labor market effects of trade.
I use industry-level returns in foreign markets to examine the hypothesis that value-relevant foreign information slowly diffuses into the stock prices of U.S. multinational firms. A trading strategy ...that exploits foreign information generates abnormal returns of 0.8% monthly. I find that the market responds more slowly in periods with lower media coverage of foreign news and to information from more linguistically and culturally distant countries. These results suggest that both investors' inattention and lack of understanding of foreign information slow the incorporation of new information into prices. I further separate these two mechanisms by examining market responses to earnings surprises.
We estimate a state-of-the-art DSGE model to study the natural rate of interest in the United States over the last 20 years. The natural rate is highly procyclical, and fell substantially below zero ...in each of the last three recessions. Although the drop was of comparable magnitude across the three recessions, the decline was considerably more persistent in the Great Recession. We discuss the usefulness and limitations, particularly due to the zero lower bound, of the natural rate for the conduct of monetary policy.
I document a new stylized fact about how investors trade assets: individuals are more likely to sell the extreme winning and extreme losing positions in their portfolio ("the rank effect"). This ...effect is not driven by firm-specific information, holding period or the level of returns itself, but is associated with the salience of extreme portfolio positions. The rank effect is exhibited by both retail traders and mutual fund managers. The effect indicates that trades in a given stock depend on how the stock compares to other positions in an investor's portfolio.
Africa's Evolving Employment Trends Yeboah, Felix Kwame; Jayne, Thomas S.
The Journal of development studies,
05/2018, Volume:
54, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Using nationally representative data from nine countries, we document demographic and employment trends in Africa's workforce based on full-time labour equivalents (FTE). The FTE approach takes ...account of individuals' multiple jobs throughout the year and is therefore likely to give more accurate estimates of the pace of structural transformation. Since 2000, Africa has experienced a sharp decline in the share of its labour force in farming. Because of the seasonal nature of farming, the share of the labour force remaining in farming is substantially lower using the FTE approach than when examined in terms of individuals' primary sources of employment or total numbers of jobs. Using the FTE approach, the share of the labour force in farming ranges across the nine countries from 35 per cent in Ghana to 54 per cent in Rwanda. Employment in off-farm segments of agri-food systems is expanding rapidly in percentage terms, but in terms of absolute numbers, non-farm activities are by far the major source of employment outside of farming. Contrary to widespread perceptions, the mean age of adults engaged primarily in farming is not rising - in fact it is falling slightly in some countries and remains stable in most others. The pace at which the labour force is shifting out of agriculture is strongly and positively tied to the rate of lagged farm productivity growth. Given the unprecedented growth in the number of young Africans entering the labour market, an effective youth employment strategy in most African countries will rely on massive job expansion, which in turn will rely on the multiplier effects of agricultural productivity growth. Strategies that raise the returns to labour in farming therefore remain crucial for achieving rapid economic transformation and may constitute the core of effective youth employment strategies.
Purpose - This study's purpose is to improve the understanding of inter-organizational trust outcomes in supply chain relationships. It focuses on synthesizing the empirical research published from ...1990 to May 2010 in order to establish both what we know and do not know about this topic, thereby identifying areas for future research.Design methodology approach - The research methodology used is the systematic literature review. It differs from traditional narrative reviews by being more systematic and explicit in the selection of the studies and employing rigorous and reproducible evaluation methods. In total 56 were selected from three databases: Business Source Premier; ABI Informs; Ingenta. A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the correlated outcomes of inter-organizational trust in supply chain relationships. A total of 33 outcome variables and 96 independent samples with an overall sample size of 69,452 were included in the meta-analytic process, providing insights for dissemination and discussion.Findings - Three major themes emerge from the analysis: direct, indirect and relational outcomes. The review identifies a number of theoretical opportunities for future investigation as well as methodological challenges.Research limitations implications - Inherent limitations could appear with regard to the methodological approaches used. The main research challenges refer to the: conceptualization of inter-organizational trust; definition of supply chain relationship typologies; and availability of primary data for the meta-analytic synthesis.Originality value - This is the first study employing a combination of systematic literature review and meta-analytic methodologies to explore the supply chain literature on inter-organizational trust outcomes. The findings are of value to academics and practitioners alike.
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