Good Economics for Hard Times

by Abhijit V. Banerjee

  41 Clément Imbert and John Papp, “Labor Market Effects of Social Programs: Evidence from India’s Employment Guarantee,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 7, no. 2 (2015): 233–63; Muralidharan Karthik, Paul Niehuas, and Sandip Sukhtankar, “General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence from India,” NBER Working Paper 23838, 2018 DOI: 10.3386/w23838.

  42 Martin Ravalion, “Is a Decentralized Right to Work Policy Feasible?,” NBER Working Paper 25687, March 2019.

  43 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Clement Imbert, Santhos Mattthews, and Rohini Pande, “E-Governance, Accountability, and Leakage in Public Programs: Experimental Evidence from a Financial Management Reform in India,” NBER Working Paper 22803, 2016.

  44 “Economic Survey 2016–17,” Government of India, Ministry of Finance, Department of Economic Affairs, Economic Division, 2017, 188–90.

  45 Nur Cahyadi, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, Rizal Adi Prima, Elan Satriawan, and Ekki Syamsulhakim, “Cumulative Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: Experimental Evidence from Indonesia,” NBER Working Paper 24670, 2018.

  46 Najy Benhassine, Florencia Devoto, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Victor Pouliquen, “Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A “Labeled Cash Transfer” for Education,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 7, no. 3 (2015): 86–125.

  47 Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson, “Americans’ Attitudes towards a Future in Which Robots and Computers Can Do Many Human Jobs,” Pew Research Center, October 4, 2017, accessed April 3, 2019, http://www.pew internet.org/2017/10/04/americans-attitudes-toward-a-future-in-which-robots-and-computers-can-do-many-human-jobs/.

  48 Robert B. Reich, “What If the Government Gave Everyone a Paycheck?,” July 9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/books/review/annie-lowrey-give-people-money-andrew-yang-war-on-normal-people.html.

  49 Olli Kangas, Signe Jauhiainen, Miska Simanainen, Mina Ylikännö, eds., “The Basic Income Experiment 2017–2018 in Finland. Preliminary Results,” Reports and Memorandums of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, 2019, 9.

  50 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Stefanie Stantcheva, “Me and Everyone Else: Do People Think Like Economists?,” MIMEO, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019.

  51 Nicole Maestas, Kathleen J. Mullen, David Powell, Till von Wachter, and Jeffrey B. Wenger, “Working Conditions in the United States: Results of the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey,” Rand Corporation, 2017.

  52 “The State of American Jobs: How the Shifting Economic Landscape Is Reshaping Work and Society and Affecting the Way People Think about the Skills and Training They Need to Get Ahead,” ch. 3, Pew Research Center, October 2016, accessed April 21, 2019, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/10/06/3-how-americans-view-their-jobs/#fn-22004-26.

  53 See Steve Davis and Till Von Wachter, “Recession and the Costs of Job Loss,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011b_bpea_davis.pdf, and references therein.

  54 Daniel Sullivan and Till Von Wachter, “Job Displacement and Mortality: An Analysis Using Administrative Data,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 124, no. 3 (2009): 1265–1306.

  55 Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst, “Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time over Five Decades,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, no. 3 (2007): 969–100.

  56 Mark Aguiar, Mark Bils, Kerwin Kofi Charles, and Erik Hurst, “Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men,” NBER Working Paper 23552, June 2007.

  57 “American Time Use Survey—2017 Results,” news release, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, June 28, 2018, accessed June 19, 2019, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm.

  58 Mark Aguiar, Erik Hurst, and Loukas Karabarbounis, “Time Use During the Great Recession,” American Economic Review 103, no. 5 (2013): 1664–96.

  59 Daniel Kahneman and Alan G. Krueger, “Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 1 (2006): 3–24.

  60 Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson, “Americans’ Attitudes towards a Future in Which Robots and Computers Can Do Many Human Jobs,” Pew Research Center, October 4, 2017, accessed April 3, 2019, http://www.pew internet.org/2017/10/04/americans-attitudes-toward-a-future-in-which-robots-and-computers-can-do-many-human-jobs/.

  61 “Volunteering in the United States, 2015,” Economic News Release, February 25, 2016, accessed April 21, 2019, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/volun.nr0.htm.

  62 David Deming, “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 132, no. 4 (2017): 1593–1640, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx022.

  63 Román Zárate, “Social and Cognitive Peer Effects: Experimental Evidence from Selective High Schools in Peru,” MIT Economics, 2019, accessed June 19, 2019, https://economics.mit.edu/files/16276.

  64 Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 4 (2014): 1553–1623, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju022.

  65 Lawrence F. Katz, Jeffrey R. Kling, and Jeffrey B. Liebman, “Moving to Opportunity in Boston: Early Results of a Randomized Mobility Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 no. 2 (2001): 607–54, https://doi.org/10.1162/00335530151144113.

  66 Ra Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Effect of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods and Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” American Economic Review 106, no. 4 (2016): 855–902.

  67 Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, “The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility II: County-Level Estimates,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 3 (2018): 1163–1228.

  68 Roland G. Fryer Jr., “The Production of Human Capital in Developed Countries: Evidence from 196 Randomized Field Experiments,” in Handbook of Economic Field Experiments 2 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2017): 95–322.

  69 Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, Esther Duflo, Harini Kannan, Shobhini Mukerji, Marc Shotland, and Michael Walton, “From Proof of Concept to Scalable Policies: Challenges and Solutions, with an Application,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31, no. 4 (2017): 73–102.

  70 Raj Chetty, John Friedman, Nathaniel Hilger, Emmanuel Saez, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Danny Yagan, “How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 126, no. 4 (2011): 1593–1660.

  71 Ajay Chaudry and Rupa Datta, “The Current Landscape for Public Pre-Kindergarten Programs,” in The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2017, accessed June 19, 2019 https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/duke_prekstudy_final_4-4-17_hires.pdf.

  72 Maria Stephens, Laura K. Warren, and Ariana L. Harner, “Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-20 Countries: 2015. NCES 2016-100,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2015.

  73 All the references to Heckman’s research on the long-term impact of preschool education can be found at https://heckmanequation.org/. Among other references, see Jorge Luis García, James J. Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leaf, and María José Prados, “The Life-Cycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program,” NBER Working Paper 22993, 2016.

  74 Michael Puma, Stephen Bell, Ronna Cook, and Camilla Heid, “Head Start Impact Study Final Report,” US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 2010, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_summary_final.pdf; Mark Lipsey, Dale Farran, and Kelley Durkin, “Effects of the Tennessee Prekindergarten Program on Children’s Achievement and Behavior through Third Grade,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 45 (2017): 155–76.

  75 R. M. Ford, S. J. McDougall, and D. Evans, “Parent-Delivered Compensatory Education for Children at Ris
k of Educational Failure: Improving the Academic and Self-Regulatory Skills of a Sure Start Preschool Sample,” British Journal of Psychology 100, no. 4 (2009), 773–97. A. J. L. Baker, C. S. Piotrkowski, and J. Brooks-Gunn, “The Effects of the Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters on Children’s School Performance at the End of the Program and One Year Later,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1998), 571–86. K. L. Bierman, J. Welsh, B. S. Heinrichs, R. L. Nix, and E. T. Mathis, “Helping Head Start Parents Promote Their Children’s Kindergarten Adjustment: The REDI Parent Program,” Child Development, 2015. James J. Heckman, Margaret L. Holland, Kevin K. Makinom Rodrigo Pinto, and Maria Rosales-Rueda, “An Analysis of the Memphis Nurse-Family Partnership Program,” NBER Working Paper 23610, July 2017, http://www.nber.org/papers/w23610. Orazio Attanasio, C. Fernández, E. Fitzsimons, S. M Grantham-McGregor, C. Meghir, and M. Rubio-Codina, “Using the Infrastructure of a Conditional Cash Transfer Programme to Deliver a Scalable Integrated Early Child Development Programme in Colombia: A Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial,” British Medical Journal 349 (September 29, 2014): g5785. Paul Gertler, James Heckman, Rodrigo Pinto, Arianna Zanolini, Christel Vermeerch, Susan Walker, Susan Chang-Lopez, and Sally Grantham-McGregor, “Labor Market Returns to an Early Childhood Stimulation Intervention in Jamaica,” Science 344, no. 6187 (2014): 998–1001.

  76 Moira R. Dillon, Harini Kannan, Joshua T. Dean, Elizabeth S. Spelke, and Esther Duflo, “Cognitive Science in the Field: A Preschool Intervention Durably Enhances Intuitive but Not Formal Mathematics,” Science 357, no. 6346 (2017): 47–55.

  77 Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais, Johanna Posch, Andreas Steinhauer, and Josef Zweimüller, “Child Penalties Across Countries: Evidence and Explanations,” no. w25524, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019.

  78 Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais, and Jakob Egholt Søgaard, “Children and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Denmark,” no. w24219, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2018.

  79 “Denmark: Long-term Care,” Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2011, http://www.oecd.org/denmark/47877588.pdf.

  80 Bruno Crépon and Gerard van den Berg, “Active Labor Market Policies,” Annual Review of Economics, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080614-115738; Bruno Crépon, Esther Duflo, Marc Gurgand, Roland Rathelot, and Philippe Zamora, “Do Labor Market Policies Have Displacement Effects? Evidence from a Clustered Randomized Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 128, no. 2 (2013): 531–80.

  81 Sheila Maguire, Joshua Freely, Carol Clymer, Maureen Conway, and Deena Schwartz, “Tuning In to Local Labor Markets: Findings from the Sectoral Employment Impact Study,” Public/Private Ventures, 2010, accessed April 21, 2019, http://ppv.issuelab.org/resources/5101/5101.pdf.

  82 Yann Algan, Bruno Crépon, Dylan Glover, “The Value of a Vacancy: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation with Local Employment Agencies in France,” J-PAL working paper, 2018, accessed April 21, 2019, https://www.povertyactionlab.org/sites/default/files/publications/5484_The-Value_of_a_vacancy_Algan-Crepon-Glover_June2018.pdf.

  83 “Employment Database—Labour Market Policies And Institutions,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

  84 “Active Labour Market Policies: Connecting People with Jobs,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, http://www.oecd.org/employment/activation.htm.

  85 Benjamin Hyman, “Can Displaced Labor Be Retrained? Evidence from Quasi-Random Assignment to Trade Adjustment Assistance,” January 10, 2018, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3155386 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3155386.

  86 86.Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson, “Automation in Everyday Life: Chapter 2,” Pew Research Center, 2017, accessed April 21, 2019, https://www.pewinternet.org/2017/10/04/americans-attitudes-toward-a-future-in-which-robots-and-computers-can-do-many-human-jobs/.

  87 Bruno Tardieu, Quand un people parle (Paris: La Découverte, 2015).

  88 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Nathanael Goldberg, Dean Karlan, Robert Osei, William Parienté, Jeremy Shapiro, Bram Thuysbaert, and Christopher Udry, “A Multifaceted Program Causes Lasting Progress for the Very Poor: Evidence from Six Countries,” Science 348, no. 6236 (2015): 1260799.

  89 Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, Raghabendra Chattopadyay, Jeremy Shapiro, “The Long Term Impacts of a ’Graduation’ Program: Evidence from West Bengal,” MIMEO, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019.

  90 Christopher Blattman, Nathan Fiala, and Sebastian Martinez, “The Long Term Impacts of Grants on Poverty: 9-Year Evidence from Uganda’s Youth Opportunities Program,” April 5, 2019, https://ssrn.com/abstract =3223028 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3223028.

  91 Bruno Crépon, Esther Duflo, Éllise Huillery, William Pariente, Juliette Seban, and Paul-Armand Veillon, “Cream Skimming and the Comparison between Social Interventions Evidence from Entrepreneurship Programs for At-Risk Youth in France,” 2018.

  92 Ibid.

  93 Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, “Pygmalion in the Classroom,” Urban Review 3, no. 1 (1968): 16–20.

  94 Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (New York; Scribner, 2016).

  95 Yann Algan, Adrien Bouguen, Axelle Charpentier, Coralie Chevallier, and Élise Huillery, “The Impact of a Large-Scale Mindset Intervention on School Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from France,” MIMEO, 2018.

  96 Sara B. Heller, Anuj K. Shah, Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Harold A. Pollack, “Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 132k, no. 1 (2017): 1–54.

  CONCLUSION: GOOD AND BAD ECONOMICS

  1 Chang-Tai Hsieh and Peter J. Klenow, “The Life Cycle of Plants in India and Mexico,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 3 (August 2014): 1035–84, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju014.

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