Electricity tariffs typically charge residential users a volumetric rate that covers the bulk of energy, transmission, and distribution costs. The resulting prices, charged per unit of electricity consumed, do not reflect marginal costs and vary little across time and space. The emergence of distributed energy resourcesâsuch as solar photovoltaics and energy storageâhas sparked interest among regulators and utilities in reforming electricity tariffs to enable more efficient utilization of these resources. The economic pressure to redesign electricity rates is countered by concerns of how more efficient rate structures might impact different socioeconomic groups. We analyze the bill impacts of alternative rate plans using interval metering data for more than 100,000 customers in the Chicago, Illinois area. We combine these data with granular Census data to assess the incidence of bill changes across different socioeconomic groups. We find that low-income customers would face bill increases on average in a transition to more economically efficient electricity tariffs. However, we demonstrate that simple changes to fixed charges in two-part tariffs can mitigate these disparities while preserving all, or the vast majority, of the efficiency gains. These designs rely exclusively on observable information and could be replicated by utilities in many geographies across the U.S.
The Efficiency and Distributional Effects of Alternative Residential Electricity Rate Designs -- by Scott P. Burger, Christopher R. Knittel, Ignacio J. Pérez-Arriaga, Ian Schneider, Frederik vom Scheidt
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Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Innovation in the U.S. High-Tech Sector -- by J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Mee Jung Kim, Kyung Min Lee
We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus U.S.-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly higher rates of innovation in immigrant-owned firms for 15 of 16 different innovation measures; the only exception is for copyright/trademark. The immigrant advantage holds for older firms as well as for recent start-ups and for every level of the entrepreneurâs education. The size of the estimated immigrant-native differences in product and process innovation activities rises with detailed controls for demographic and human capital characteristics but falls for R&D and patenting. Controlling for finance, motivations, and industry reduces all coefficients, but for most measures and specifications immigrants are estimated to have a sizable advantage in innovation.
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Visibility Bias in the Transmission of Consumption Beliefs and Undersaving -- by Bing Han, David Hirshleifer, Johan Walden
We study how bias in the social transmission process affects contagion of consumption beliefs and behavior. In the model, consumption is more salient than non-consumption. This visibility bias causes people to perceive that others are consuming heavily and have favorable information about future wealth prospects. These inferences increase aggregate consumption. In contrast with other approaches, the visibility bias approach suggests that relatively simple disclosure policy interventions can ameliorate undersaving. In contrast with the Veblen wealth-signaling approach, information asymmetry about wealth reduces overconsumption. Our approach offers new implications about the effects on saving of social connectedness, observation biases, and demographic structure; and offers a novel explanation for the dramatic drop in the savings rate in the US and several other countries in the last thirty years.
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When Labor’s Lost: Health, Family Life, Incarceration, and Education in a Time of Declining Economic Opportunity for Low-Skilled Men -- by Courtney Coile, Mark Duggan
The economic progress of U.S. men has stagnated in recent decades, with declining labor force participation and weak growth in real earnings, particularly for less educated and non-white men. In this paper, we illuminate the broader context in which prime-age men are experiencing economic stagnation. We explore changes for prime-age men over time in education, mortality, morbidity, disability program receipt, family structure, and incarceration rates, indicators that may be affected by menâs sluggish economic progress or play a role in explaining it, or both. While establishing causality for such a wide range of health and other outcomes is inherently difficult, we discuss clues provided by recent research.
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Bringing Satellite-Based Air Quality Estimates Down to Earth -- by Meredith Fowlie, Edward A. Rubin, Reed Walker
We use state-of-the-art, satellite-based PM2.5 estimates to assess the extent to which the EPA's existing, monitor-based measurements over- or under-estimate true exposure to PM2.5 pollution. Treating satellite-based estimates as truth implies a substantial number of "policy errors"âover-regulating areas that comply with air quality standards and under-regulating other areas that appear to violate standards. We investigate the health implications of these apparent errors and highlight the importance of accounting for prediction error in satellite-based estimates. Uncertainty in "policy errors" increases substantially when we account for these underlying prediction errors.
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Retirement Implications of a Low Wage Growth, Low Real Interest Rate Economy -- by Jason Scott, John B. Shoven, Sita Slavov, John G. Watson
We examine the implications of persistent low real interest rates and wage growth rates on individuals nearing retirement. We begin by reviewing the concept of r star â the long-term real, safe interest rate that is neither expansionary nor contractionary â and presenting recent estimates suggesting that this value has declined. We then examine the implications of low returns and low wage growth for individuals currently aged 45 and 55. We find that low returns and low wage growth have substantial welfare effects, with compensating variations that are often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Low returns increase optimal Social Security claiming ages and the marginal benefit of working longer, while low wage growth decreases the marginal benefit of working longer. Low economy-wide wage growth has a much larger welfare effect than low individual wage growth due to wage indexation of the initial benefit and the progressivity of the Social Security benefit formula. When individual wage growth alone is low, wage indexation is unchanged, and the progressivity of the benefit formula provides insurance. When economy-wide wage growth is low, wage indexation is less generous and there is no insurance benefit from progressivity as average wages fall along with individual wages.
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The Endowment Model and Modern Portfolio Theory -- by Stephen G. Dimmock, Neng Wang, Jinqiang Yang
We develop a dynamic portfolio-choice model with illiquid alternative assets to analyze conditions under which the âEndowment Model,â used by some large institutional investors such as university endowments, does or does not work. The alternative asset has a lock-up, but can be voluntarily liquidated at any time at a cost. Quantitatively, our model's results match the average level and cross-sectional variation of university endowment funds' spending and asset allocation decisions. We show that asset allocations and spending crucially depend on the alternative asset's expected excess return, risk unspanned by public equity, and investors' preferences for inter-temporal spending smoothing.
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The Dynamics of the U.S. Trade Balance and Real Exchange Rate: The J Curve and Trade Costs? -- by George A. Alessandria, Horag Choi
We study how changes in trade barriers contributed to the dynamics of the US trade balance and real exchange rate since 1980 - a period when trade tripled. Using two dynamic trade models, we decompose fluctuations in the trade balance into terms related to trade integration (global and unilateral) and business cycle asymmetries. We find three main results. First, the relatively large US trade deficits as a share of GDP in the 2000s compared to the 1980s mostly reflect a rise in the trade share of GDP. Second, controlling for trade, only about 60 percent of net trade flows are due to business cycle asymmetries. And third, about two-thirds of the contribution of business-cycle asymmetries are a lagged response. For instance, the short-run Armington elasticity is about 0.2 while the long-run is closer to 1.12 with only 6.9 percent of the gap closed per quarter. We show that a two-country IRBC model with a dynamic exporting decision, pricing-to-market, and trade cost shocks can account for the dynamics of the US trade balance, real exchange rate, and trade integration. The model clarifies how permanent and transitory changes in trade barriers affect the trade balance and how to identify changes in trade barriers. We also show the effect of temporary trade policies on the trade balance depends on whether they induce a trade war.
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Ambiguity Attitudes about Investments: Evidence from the Field -- by Kanin Anantanasuwong, Roy Kouwenberg, Olivia S. Mitchell, Kim Peijnenberg
Using an incentivized survey and a representative sample of investors, we elicit ambiguity attitudes toward a familiar company stock, a local stock index, a foreign stock index, and a crypto currency. We separately estimate ambiguity aversion (ambiguity preferences) and perceived ambiguity levels (perceptions about ambiguity), while controlling for unknown likelihood beliefs. We show that ambiguity aversion is highly correlated across different assets and can be summarized by a single underlying factor. By contrast, individualsâ perceived ambiguity levels differ depending on the type of asset and cannot be summarized by a single underlying factor. Perceived ambiguity is mitigated by financial literacy and education, while the preference component is correlated with risk aversion. Perceived ambiguity proves to be related to actual investment choices, validating our measure. Finally, our results imply that policies enhancing financial literacy and knowledge of financial markets can help stimulate equity market participation and reduce inequality, as these reduce peoplesâ perceived levels of ambiguity about financial assets.
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Productivity Measurement: Racing to Keep Up -- by Daniel E. Sichel
This paper provides a non-technical review of the literature and issues related to the measurement of aggregate productivity. I begin with a discussion of productivity measures, their performance in recent decades, and key measurement puzzles that emerge from the data. The remainder of the review focuses on two important questions. First, how do we make more accurate the measures of prices used to deflate nominal output so as to win (or at least not lose) the race for economic measurement to keep up with a changing economy? This section frames the issues and points to the most important and promising areas for further research. Second, what does or should GDP measure? I defend GDP as a valuable measure of production and offer suggestions for improving it. At the same time, I emphasize the importance of measuring economic welfare (well being) and highlight the value of supplementing GDP with a satellite account that measures economic welfare.
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How Do Americans Repay Their Debt? The Balance-Matching Heuristic -- by John Gathergood, Neale Mahoney, Neil Stewart, Jörg Weber
In Gathergood et al. (forthcoming), we studied credit card repayments using linked data on multiple cards from the United Kingdom. We showed that individuals did not allocate payments to the higher interest rate card, which would minimize the cost of borrowing, but instead made repayments according to a balance-matching heuristic under which the share of repayments on each card is matched to the share of balances on each card. In this paper, we examine whether these results extend to the United States using a large sample of TransUnion credit bureau data. These data do not provide information on interest rates, so we cannot examine the optimality of payments. However, we observe balances and repayments, so we can examine balance-matching behavior. We replicate our analysis and find that Americans also repay their debt in accordance with a balance-matching heuristic.
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Immigration and Preferences for Redistribution in Europe -- by Alberto Alesina, Elie Murard, Hillel Rapoport
We examine the relationship between immigration and attitudes toward redistribution using a newly assembled data set of immigrant stocks for 140 regions of 16 Western European countries. Exploiting within-country variations in the share of immigrants at the regional level, we find that native respondents display lower support for redistribution when the share of immigrants in their residence region is higher. This negative association is driven by regions of countries with relatively large Welfare States and by respondents at the center or at the right of the political spectrum. The effects are also stronger when immigrants originate from Middle-Eastern countries, are less skilled than natives, and experience more residential segregation. These results are unlikely to be driven by immigrants' endogenous location choices.
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Factor Momentum and the Momentum Factor -- by Sina Ehsani, Juhani T. Linnainmaa
Momentum in individual stock returns emanates from momentum in factor returns. Most factors are positively autocorrelated: the average factor earns a monthly return of 1 basis point following a year of losses and 53 basis points following a positive year. Factor momentum explains all forms of individual stock momentum. Stock momentum strategies indirectly time factors: they profit when the factors remain autocorrelated, and crash when these autocorrelations break down. Our key result is that momentum is not a distinct risk factor; it aggregates the autocorrelations found in all other factors.
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Paying to Program? Engineering Brand and High-Tech Wages -- by Prasanna Tambe, Xuan Ye, Peter Cappelli
We test the hypothesis that IT workers accept a compensating differential to work with emerging IT systems, and that employers that invest in these systems can, in turn, capture greater value from the wages they pay. We show that much of the utility IT workers derive from these systems is from skills acquired on the job. This is principally true for younger workers at employers where skill development is encouraged, and the effects are stronger in thicker markets where workers with newer skills have more outside options. An analysis of the text in online employer reviews supports the notion that IT workers value access to interesting IT systems above most other employer attributes. These findings are important because first, they provide evidence of how worker preferences can influence corporate IT investment decisions; second, because they shed light on factors influencing IT skill development; and third, because they point to a potentially important explanation for returns from IT investments.
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The Monetary and Fiscal History of Bolivia, 1960–2017 -- by Timothy J. Kehoe, Carlos Gustavo Machicado, José Peres-Cajías
After the economic reforms that followed the National Revolution of the 1950s, Bolivia seemed positioned for sustained growth. Indeed, it achieved unprecedented growth from 1960 to 1977. The rapid accumulation of debt due to persistent deficits and a fixed exchange rate policy during the 1970s led to a debt crisis that began in 1977. From 1977 to 1986, Bolivia lost almost all the gains in GDP per capita that it had achieved since 1960. In 1986, Bolivia started to grow again, interrupted only by the financial crisis of 1998â2002, which was the result of a drop in the availability of external financing. Bolivia has grown since 2002, but government policies since 2006 are reminiscent of the policies of the 1970s that led to the debt crisis, in particular, the accumulation of external debt and the drop in international reserves due to a de facto fixed exchange rate since 2012.
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De Facto or De Jure? Ethnic Differences in Quit Responses to Legal Protections of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries -- by Jenny Williams, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Rosanna Smart
This paper studies the impact of legal medical marijuana markets on the decision to quit marijuana use, distinguishing between de jure legalization, in which dispensaries are legally protected, and de facto legalization, where dispensaries operate in the absence of laws protecting them. Geographic and temporal variation in the presence of de facto and de jure legalized markets serve to identify their impact on quitting. Although we find little robust evidence that quitting by females is impacted by either the presence or protection of retail medical marijuana dispensaries, our results reveal significant, and ethnically differentiated responses by males. Minority males are found to delay quitting in response to legal protection of dispensaries, while white males delay quitting in response to operating dispensaries. This behavior is consistent with racial and ethnic differences in the risks of arrest for simple marijuana offences, particularly for black males.
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Job creation in Colombia vs the U.S.: “up or out dynamics” meets “the life cycle of plants”. -- by Marcela Eslava, John C. Haltiwanger, Alvaro Pinzón
There is growing consensus that a key difference between the U.S. and developing economies is that the latter exhibit slower employment growth over the life cycle of the average business. At the same time, the rapid post entry growth in the U.S. is driven by an âup or out dynamicâ. We track manufacturing establishments in Colombia vs. the US and find that slower average life cycle growth in Colombia is driven by a less enthusiastic contribution of extraordinary growth plants and less dynamic selection of young underperforming plants. As a consequence, the size distribution of non-micro plants exhibits more concentration in small-old plants in Colombia, both in unweighted and employment-weighted bases. These findings point to a shortage of high-growth entrepreneurship and a relatively high likelihood of long-run survival for small, likely unproductive plants, as two key elements at the heart of the development problem. An extreme concentration of resources in micro plants is the other distinguishing feature of the Colombian manufacturing sector vis a vis the US.
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Chinese Bond Market and Interbank Market -- by Marlene Amstad, Zhiguo He
Over the past twenty years, especially the past decade, China has taken enormous strides to develop its bond market as an integral step of financial reform. This paper aims to provide the most up-to-date overview of Chinese bond markets, by highlighting two distinct and largely segmented markets: Over-the-Counter based interbank market, and centralized exchange market. We explain various bond instruments traded in these two markets, highlighting their inherent connection with the banking system, and many multi-layer regulatory bodies who are interacting with each other in an intricate way. We also covers the credit ratings and rating agencies in Chinese market, and offer an account of ever-rising default incidents in China starting 2014. Finally, we discuss the recent regulatory tightening of shadow banking since late 2017 and its impact on bond investors, and the forces behind the internalization of Chinese bond markets in the near future.
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Market Expectations About Climate Change -- by Wolfram Schlenker, Charles A Taylor
An emerging literature examines how agents update their beliefs about climate change. Most studies have relied on indirect belief measures or opinion polls. We analyze a direct measure: prices of financial products whose payouts are tied to future weather outcomes. We compare these market expectations to climate model output for the years 2002 to 2018 as well as observed weather station data across eight cities in the US. All datasets show statistically significant and comparable warming trends. Nonparametric estimates suggest that trends in weather markets follow climate model predictions and are not based on shorter-term variation in observed weather station data. When money is at stake, agents are accurately anticipating warming trends in line with the scientific consensus of climate models.
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Do Trade Creditors Possess Private Information? Stock Returns Evidence -- by David Hirshleifer, Yifan Li, Ben Lourie, Thomas Ruchti
Theories of customer supplier relationships hold that the private information of suppliers about buyers explains the use of trade credit even when there is a competitive banking sector. If suppliers possess private information about their buyers, then the buyer's order size and ability to pay on time should reflect that information. Using a novel dataset of trade credit relationships, we test whether suppliers have private information about their buyers. Consistent with suppliers possessing private information, we find that the amount of trade credit that a supplier offers to a buyer and the ability of the buyer to pay the trade credit on time are both associated with future buyer abnormal stock returns.
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