DSpace Community:
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/10406
2024-03-28T13:25:45ZThe Economic Linkages of Covid-19 Across Sectors and Regions in the UK
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/207987
Title: The Economic Linkages of Covid-19 Across Sectors and Regions in the UK
Author: Pérez-Sebastián, Fidel; Serrano Quintero, Rafael
Abstract: This paper builds a spatial model of trade with supply-chain links to try to understand the effect of economic links and policies on the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic during the first wave across NUTS2 UK regions. We find that the fight to reduce infection rates was more successful in the UK than in the European Union. Our results imply that without the policy reaction in Europe, the number of deaths during the first wave of the pandemic would have been about 4,400,000 larger in the European Union and about 1,217,000 higher in the UK, and that these benefits vary greatly across UK regions. Comparing the effects of the policies implemented in the EU27 and in the UK, we estimate that, in the absence of European-Union’s anti-Covid-19 measures, the number of deaths in the UK would have been an 80% larger; and that UK antiCovid-19 measures saved 50,000 lives in the European Union and 1,200,000 lives in the UK.2024-02-23T11:23:17ZWar inflation and taxation
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/207580
Title: War inflation and taxation
Author: Sabaté Domingo, Oriol; Torregrosa-Hetland, Sara
Abstract: Warfare has been commonly associated with increasing levels of inflation, with important implications for tax systems. In this chapter, we first review the literature on war finance and inflation, considering both the fiscal causes of inflation during wartimes and the effects of inflation on tax revenues. Second, we focus on developments in the income tax during the World Wars, building upon our previous work (Torregrosa-Hetland and Sabaté, 2022). We describe the mechanisms through which inflation affected progressivity and redistribution, by reducing the real value of exemptions, brackets and deductions (“bracket creep”). This led to the incorporation of new taxpayers into the income tax system and increased significantly the tax burden of those already included. Third, we study the issue of income tax legitimacy in the face of war inflation using a novel dataset of parliamentary debates and press articles in the United Kingdom. Other episodes of bracket creep have been associated with legitimacy challenges. We use natural language processing techniques to examine whether the effects of inflation on tax progressivity were a topic of discussion in national parliaments and the press, and the extent to which MPs and journalists identified inflation as a challenge to income tax legitimacy.2024-02-14T09:32:58ZA ‘smart buy' for all? Unequal and unintended consequences of a messaging program for child education
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/205763
Title: A ‘smart buy' for all? Unequal and unintended consequences of a messaging program for child education
Author: Aurino, Elisabetta; Wolf, Sharon
Abstract: Through a large-scale household-randomized trial, we document divergent and unintended effects of a SMS-nudge parenting intervention in Ghana. For parents with some exposure to formal schooling, the program supported parental education engagement, child school participation and social-emotional skills. Conversely, for parents with no schooling, the program backfired, exacerbating educational inequality. Messages also lowered parental selfefficacy, educational aspirations, and the perceived importance of regular school attendance among parents with no schooling. As light-touch, low-tech strategies integrate into education systems to combat the global learning crisis, these findings caution against potential unintended and distributional consequences, particularly in rural, low-literacy contexts.2024-01-16T13:27:01ZPolitical Accountability and Misinformation
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/205060
Title: Political Accountability and Misinformation
Author: Camargo, Braz; Karpuska, Laura; Lorecchio, Caio Paes Leme
Abstract: What are the impacts of misinformation on political accountability? We address this question in a political career concerns framework with belief misspecification. In our model, an incumbent politician of an unknown ability seeks to maximize reelection chances by putting costly effort into the provision of a public good. Citizens agree ex-ante on how to interpret the outcomes of the incumbent's effort. However, some of them disagree on how to interpret other signals. Specifically, some voters incorrectly believe that a confounding signal is informative about the incumbent's ability, while others correctly understand that they are completely uninformative. This misspecification on this signal leads to ex-post disagreement on how successful the incumbent should be in providing the public good to secure a reelection. We consider both an intensive margin and an extensive margin of informational disagreement, that is, (i) how much the beliefs of citizens with learning misspecification differ from the beliefs of citizens with a correct learning model, and (ii) how much misspecified citizens represent in the composition of society. We characterize the impact of informational disagreement on effective accountability (the effort provided by the incumbent in equilibrium). Our analysis not only identifies situations in which misinformation impacts negatively the social contributions of elected governments, but also – perhaps counter-intuitively, situations in which misinformation increases political accountability.2023-12-22T08:06:22ZEducational Assortative Mating in the European Regions
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/204663
Title: Educational Assortative Mating in the European Regions
Author: Padilla-Galviz, Erick Stivens; Vilalta-Bufí, Montserrat
Abstract: Measuring social segregation, a complex socioeconomic phenomenon with multifaceted dimensions poses significant challenges. Social segregation has different dimensions that could be framed as cultural, social, economic, or even political. In this paper, we argue that assortative mating can inform us about the segregation level of society as mating choices embrace many of these dimensions. We use the EU-LFS to measure educational assortative mating at the regional NUTS 2 level for 23 European countries. We compare assortative mating patterns between two cohorts: those born between 1957 and 1966 and those born between 1975 and 1984. Our findings reveal notable variations in assortative mating, both across time and regions. We find that assortative mating has markedly increased in specific regions for individuals with lower levels of education, while it has declined in most regions for those with higher levels of education. Significant differences exist in assortative mating across regions, particularly among individuals with lower levels of education. These results are relevant for shaping informed social policies.2023-12-13T10:43:36ZSocial Security Reforms, Retirement and Sectoral Decisions
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/204583
Title: Social Security Reforms, Retirement and Sectoral Decisions
Author: Delalibera, Bruno R.; Ferreira, Pedro; Parente, Rafael
Abstract: In many countries, the regulations governing public and private pension systems, hiring procedures, and job contracts differ. Public sector employees tend to have longer tenures and higher wages compared to workers in the private sector. As such, social security reforms can affect both retirement decisions and sectoral choices. We study the effects of social security reforms on retirement and sectoral behavior in an economy with multiple pension systems. We develop a life-cycle model with three sectors - private formal, private informal and public - and endogenous retirement. In a model calibrated to Brazil, we quantitatively assess the long-run effects of reforms being discussed and implemented across countries. Among them, we study the unification of pension systems and increasing the minimum retirement age. We find that these reforms affect the decision to apply to a public job, the profile of savings over the life cycle, and informality. In the long run, these reforms lead to higher output and capital, reduced informality, and average welfare gains. They also drastically reduce the social security deficit.2023-12-13T10:14:15ZTax Reforms and Network Effects
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/204640
Title: Tax Reforms and Network Effects
Author: Delalibera, Bruno R.; Ferreira, Pedro; Gomes, Diego; Soares, Johann
Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of a tax reform that eliminates tax rate heterogeneity and cumulative taxation using a general equilibrium model with multiple sectors with market power. Industries are connected through input-output linkages, and changes in taxation are not confined within industries. We calibrate the model to Brazil, a country with a highly distorted tax system. The revenue-neutral tax reform generates gains of 7.8% of GDP and 1.9% of welfare. Just eliminating VAT rate dispersion leads to a 5.9% increase in GDP. Due to propagation effects, in 10 sectors direct taxes increased but output and profits did not fall.2023-12-13T09:00:16ZThe long-term evolution of intergenerational transfers in Spain (1958-2012)
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/203830
Title: The long-term evolution of intergenerational transfers in Spain (1958-2012)
Author: Souto Nieves, Guadalupe; Abío, Gemma; Herranz Loncán, Alfonso; Espuelas Barroso, Sergio; Patxot, Concepció
Abstract: National Transfer Accounts (NTA) aim at disentangling how people produce, consume and save along the lifecycle, and how resources move among generations through the different resource allocation devices available (family, market and government). This paper extends the available Spanish NTA estimates (2000 -2012) to the past until 1958, to analyse changes in intergenerational transfers associated to long-term processes such as the demographic transition and the welfare state development. For 1980 and 1990, we provide new estimates based on the Spanish Household Budget Surveys (HBS) while, for previous periods in which HBS do not provide enough information, we resort to the available evidence on demography, national accounts and public finance. The long-term evolution of Spanish NTA shows the increasing weight of government transfers as a device to reallocate resources across generations and the growing importance of the elderly in the system of intergenerational transfers as a result of population ageing.2023-11-22T13:16:10ZBad NGOs? Competition in the market for donations and workers' misconduct
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/203820
Title: Bad NGOs? Competition in the market for donations and workers' misconduct
Author: Burani, Nadia; Manna, Ester
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate how competition among NGOs to attract donations affects the behavior of NGOs' employees. NGOs hire workers to undertake development projects, which are horizontally and vertically differentiated. Workers can engage in constructive activities, which enhance project quality, but also in non-observable destructive activities, that damage their employer. NGOs provide their workers with monetary incentives in order to induce them to exert the desired level of constructive effort, but NGOs also need to monitor their employees to curb destructive behavior. When workers' activities are complementary, we obtain the following results: (i) monitoring can fully deter workers' destructive behavior, provided that NGOs do not particularly care about the quality of their projects; (ii) an increase in the degree of competition in the market for development aid raises project quality, but also leads to higher destructive effort, thereby exposing NGOs to scandals; (iii) intense competition has detrimental effects because it leads to insufficient monitoring and excessive destructive behavior relative to the social optimum.2023-11-20T07:58:17ZCapital Misallocation and Economic Development in a Dynamic Open Economy
http://hdl.handle.net/2445/203691
Title: Capital Misallocation and Economic Development in a Dynamic Open Economy
Author: Delalibera, Bruno R.; Pereira, Luciene; Rios, Heron
Abstract: Some countries such as Canada, Italy, and Mexico have experienced a higher growth rate of capital per worker but a lower growth rate for GDP per worker when compared to the United States. This paper tries to reconcile this apparent contradiction in a dynamic open economy model. In the model, capital accumulation and exogenous technology adoption jointly generate output growth. In this environment, sectors with higher import participation have, ceteris paribus, a lower markup over production costs that in equilibrium implies a higher production level. Furthermore, when either sectoral import participation or sectoral productivity changes, capital allocation across sectors is affected, altering the actual rate of return on capital and triggering capital accumulation at a rate that differs from the long-run rate of technology adoption. We calibrate the model for the Mexican economy for 1995-2011. The results show that sectors with a reduction in TFP (total factor productivity) increased capital participation in the aggregate capital formation from 93.5% to 95.7% in the period. Furthermore, if the sectoral productivities had remained constant at the initial level in a counterfactual exercise, the aggregate output would be higher than its initial level, with capital accumulation increasing 74% and driving the rise in GDP.2023-11-16T08:34:50Z