cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.3886/e113414
title: Replication data for: Secular Stagnation: A Supply-Side View

description: Secular stagnation on the supply side takes the form of a slow 1.6 percent annual growth rate of US potential real GDP, roughly half the 3.1 percent annual growth rate of actual real GDP realized from 1972 to 2004. This slowdown stems from a sharp decline in the growth rate of aggregate hours of work and of output per hour. This paper attributes the productivity growth decline to diminishing returns in the digital revolution that had its peak effect business hardware, software, and best practices in the late 1990s but has resulted in little change in those methods over the past decade.
DOI: 10.3886/e113414v1
title: Replication data for: Secular Stagnation: A Supply-Side View

description: Secular stagnation on the supply side takes the form of a slow 1.6 percent annual growth rate of US potential real GDP, roughly half the 3.1 percent annual growth rate of actual real GDP realized from 1972 to 2004. This slowdown stems from a sharp decline in the growth rate of aggregate hours of work and of output per hour. This paper attributes the productivity growth decline to diminishing returns in the digital revolution that had its peak effect business hardware, software, and best practices in the late 1990s but has resulted in little change in those methods over the past decade.
DOI: 10.3886/e113415
title: Replication data for: Demand Side Secular Stagnation

description: The experience of first Japan and now Europe and the USA suggests that Hansen's concept of secular stagnation is highly relevant. Recovery has been anemic and follows a generation of financially unsustainable and often lackluster growth. Investment demand has declined while the supply of saving has increased, leaving the economy vulnerable to liquidity traps. Although some US indicators have improved, forward real rates have declined sharply, European prospects remain muddled, and the zero-bound will likely constrain again during the next recession. Infrastructure and private investment are the best ways to both minimize the risk of secular stagnation and raise demand.
DOI: 10.3886/e113415v1
title: Replication data for: Demand Side Secular Stagnation

description: The experience of first Japan and now Europe and the USA suggests that Hansen's concept of secular stagnation is highly relevant. Recovery has been anemic and follows a generation of financially unsustainable and often lackluster growth. Investment demand has declined while the supply of saving has increased, leaving the economy vulnerable to liquidity traps. Although some US indicators have improved, forward real rates have declined sharply, European prospects remain muddled, and the zero-bound will likely constrain again during the next recession. Infrastructure and private investment are the best ways to both minimize the risk of secular stagnation and raise demand.
DOI: 10.3886/e113668
title: Replication data for: The Effect of Labor Migration on the Diffusion of Democracy: Evidence from a Former Soviet Republic

description: Migration contributes to the circulation of goods, knowledge, and ideas. Using community and individual-level data from Moldova, we show that the emigration wave that started in the aftermath of the Russian crisis of 1998 strongly affected electoral outcomes and political preferences in Moldova during the following decade, eventually contributing to the fall of the last Communist government in Europe. Our results are suggestive of information transmission and cultural diffusion channels. Identification relies on the quasi-experimental context and on the differential effects arising from the fact that emigration was directed both to more democratic Western Europe and to less democratic Russia.
DOI: 10.3886/e113668v1
title: Replication data for: The Effect of Labor Migration on the Diffusion of Democracy: Evidence from a Former Soviet Republic

description: Migration contributes to the circulation of goods, knowledge, and ideas. Using community and individual-level data from Moldova, we show that the emigration wave that started in the aftermath of the Russian crisis of 1998 strongly affected electoral outcomes and political preferences in Moldova during the following decade, eventually contributing to the fall of the last Communist government in Europe. Our results are suggestive of information transmission and cultural diffusion channels. Identification relies on the quasi-experimental context and on the differential effects arising from the fact that emigration was directed both to more democratic Western Europe and to less democratic Russia.
DOI: 10.3886/e113669
title: Replication data for: Why Do College-Going Interventions Work?

description: We present evidence from a series of field experiments in college coaching/mentoring. We find large impacts on college attendance and persistence, but only in the treatments where we use an intensive boots-on-the-ground approach to helping students. Our treatments that provide financial incentives or information alone do not appear to be effective. For women, assignment to our mentoring treatment yields a 15 percentage point increase in the college-going rate while treatment on the treated estimates are 30 percentage points (against a control complier mean rate of 43 percent). We find much smaller treatment effects for men, and the difference in treatment effects across genders is partially explained by the differential in self-reported labor market opportunities. We do not find evidence that the treatment effect derives from simple behavioral mistakes, student disorganization, or a lack of easily obtained information. Instead our mentoring program appears to substitute for the potentially expensive and often missing ingredient of skilled parental or teacher time and encouragement.
DOI: 10.3886/e113669v1
title: Replication data for: Why Do College-Going Interventions Work?

description: We present evidence from a series of field experiments in college coaching/mentoring. We find large impacts on college attendance and persistence, but only in the treatments where we use an intensive boots-on-the-ground approach to helping students. Our treatments that provide financial incentives or information alone do not appear to be effective. For women, assignment to our mentoring treatment yields a 15 percentage point increase in the college-going rate while treatment on the treated estimates are 30 percentage points (against a control complier mean rate of 43 percent). We find much smaller treatment effects for men, and the difference in treatment effects across genders is partially explained by the differential in self-reported labor market opportunities. We do not find evidence that the treatment effect derives from simple behavioral mistakes, student disorganization, or a lack of easily obtained information. Instead our mentoring program appears to substitute for the potentially expensive and often missing ingredient of skilled parental or teacher time and encouragement.
DOI: 10.3886/e113670
title: Replication data for: Human Capital Persistence and Development

description: This paper documents the persistence of human capital over time and its association with long-term development. We exploit variation induced by a state-sponsored settlement policy that attracted immigrants with higher levels of schooling to particular regions of Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. We show that one century after the policy, municipalities that received settlements had higher levels of schooling and higher income per capita. We provide evidence that long-run effects worked through higher supply of educational inputs and shifts in the structure of occupations toward skill-intensive sectors.
DOI: 10.3886/e113670v1
title: Replication data for: Human Capital Persistence and Development

description: This paper documents the persistence of human capital over time and its association with long-term development. We exploit variation induced by a state-sponsored settlement policy that attracted immigrants with higher levels of schooling to particular regions of Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. We show that one century after the policy, municipalities that received settlements had higher levels of schooling and higher income per capita. We provide evidence that long-run effects worked through higher supply of educational inputs and shifts in the structure of occupations toward skill-intensive sectors.
DOI: 10.3886/e113671
title: Replication data for: Persuasion: A Case Study of Papal Influences on Fertility-Related Beliefs and Behavior

description: We study the persuasive impacts of non-informative communication on the short-run beliefs and long-run behavior of individuals. We do so in the context of the Papal visit to Brazil in October 1991, in which persuasive messages related to fertility were salient in Papal speeches during the visit. We use individual's exposure to such messages to measure how persuasion shifts short-run beliefs such as intentions to contracept and long-term fertility outcomes such as the timing and total number of births. To measure the short-run causal impact of persuasion, we exploit the fact the Brazil 1991 DHS was fielded in the weeks before, during, and after the Papal visit. We use this fortuitous timing to identify that persuasion significantly reduced individual intentions to contracept by more than 40 percent relative to pre-visit levels, and increased the frequency of unprotected sex by 30 percent. We measure the long-run causal impacts of persuasion on fertility outcomes using later DHS surveys to conduct an event study analysis on births in a five-year window on either side of the 1991 Papal visit. Estimating a hazard model of fertility, we find a significant change in births 9 months post-visit, corresponding to a 1.6 percent increase in the aggregate birth cohort. Our final set of results examine the very long-run impact of persuasion and document the impacts to be on the timing of births rather than on total fertility.
DOI: 10.3886/e113671v1
title: Replication data for: Persuasion: A Case Study of Papal Influences on Fertility-Related Beliefs and Behavior

description: We study the persuasive impacts of non-informative communication on the short-run beliefs and long-run behavior of individuals. We do so in the context of the Papal visit to Brazil in October 1991, in which persuasive messages related to fertility were salient in Papal speeches during the visit. We use individual's exposure to such messages to measure how persuasion shifts short-run beliefs such as intentions to contracept and long-term fertility outcomes such as the timing and total number of births. To measure the short-run causal impact of persuasion, we exploit the fact the Brazil 1991 DHS was fielded in the weeks before, during, and after the Papal visit. We use this fortuitous timing to identify that persuasion significantly reduced individual intentions to contracept by more than 40 percent relative to pre-visit levels, and increased the frequency of unprotected sex by 30 percent. We measure the long-run causal impacts of persuasion on fertility outcomes using later DHS surveys to conduct an event study analysis on births in a five-year window on either side of the 1991 Papal visit. Estimating a hazard model of fertility, we find a significant change in births 9 months post-visit, corresponding to a 1.6 percent increase in the aggregate birth cohort. Our final set of results examine the very long-run impact of persuasion and document the impacts to be on the timing of births rather than on total fertility.
DOI: 10.3886/e113939
title: Replication data for: Why Do Developing Countries Tax So Little?

description: Low-income countries typically collect taxes of between 10 to 20 percent of GDP while the average for high-income countries is more like 40 percent. In order to understand taxation, economic development, and the relationships between them, we need to think about the forces that drive the development process. Poor countries are poor for certain reasons, and these reasons can also help to explain their weakness in raising tax revenue. We begin by laying out some basic relationships regarding how tax revenue as a share of GDP varies with per capita income and with the breadth of a country's tax base. We sketch a baseline model of what determines a country's tax revenue as a share of GDP. We then turn to our primary focus: why do developing countries tax so little? We begin with factors related to the economic structure of these economies. But we argue that there is also an important role for political factors, such as weak institutions, fragmented polities, and a lack of transparency due to weak news media. Moreover, sociological and cultural factors—such as a weak sense of national identity and a poor norm for compliance—may stifle the collection of tax revenue. In each case, we suggest the need for a dynamic approach that encompasses the two-way interactions between these political, social, and cultural factors and the economy.
DOI: 10.3886/e113939v1
title: Replication data for: Why Do Developing Countries Tax So Little?

description: Low-income countries typically collect taxes of between 10 to 20 percent of GDP while the average for high-income countries is more like 40 percent. In order to understand taxation, economic development, and the relationships between them, we need to think about the forces that drive the development process. Poor countries are poor for certain reasons, and these reasons can also help to explain their weakness in raising tax revenue. We begin by laying out some basic relationships regarding how tax revenue as a share of GDP varies with per capita income and with the breadth of a country's tax base. We sketch a baseline model of what determines a country's tax revenue as a share of GDP. We then turn to our primary focus: why do developing countries tax so little? We begin with factors related to the economic structure of these economies. But we argue that there is also an important role for political factors, such as weak institutions, fragmented polities, and a lack of transparency due to weak news media. Moreover, sociological and cultural factors—such as a weak sense of national identity and a poor norm for compliance—may stifle the collection of tax revenue. In each case, we suggest the need for a dynamic approach that encompasses the two-way interactions between these political, social, and cultural factors and the economy.
DOI: 10.3886/e113940
title: Replication data for: Pricing in the Market for Anticancer Drugs

description: In 2011, Bristol-Myers Squibb set the price of its newly approved melanoma drug ipilimumab— brand name Yervoy—at $120,000 for a course of therapy. The drug was associated with an incremental increase in life expectancy of four months. Drugs like ipilimumab have fueled the perception that the launch prices of new anticancer drugs and other drugs in the so-called "specialty" pharmaceutical market have been increasing over time and that increases are unrelated to the magnitude of the expected health benefits. In this paper, we discuss the unique features of the market for anticancer drugs and assess trends in the launch prices for 58 anticancer drugs approved between 1995 and 2013 in the United States. We restrict attention to anticancer drugs because the use of median survival time as a primary outcome measure provides a common, objective scale for quantifying the incremental benefit of new products. We find that the average launch price of anticancer drugs, adjusted for inflation and health benefits, increased by 10 percent annually—or an average of $8,500 per year—from 1995 to 2013. We argue that the institutional features of the market for anticancer drugs enable manufacturers to set the prices of new products at or slightly above the prices of existing therapies, giving rise to an upward trend in launch prices. Government-mandated price discounts for certain classes of buyers may have also contributed to launch price increases as firms sought to offset the growth in the discount segment by setting higher prices for the remainder of the market.
DOI: 10.3886/e113940v1
title: Replication data for: Pricing in the Market for Anticancer Drugs

description: In 2011, Bristol-Myers Squibb set the price of its newly approved melanoma drug ipilimumab— brand name Yervoy—at $120,000 for a course of therapy. The drug was associated with an incremental increase in life expectancy of four months. Drugs like ipilimumab have fueled the perception that the launch prices of new anticancer drugs and other drugs in the so-called "specialty" pharmaceutical market have been increasing over time and that increases are unrelated to the magnitude of the expected health benefits. In this paper, we discuss the unique features of the market for anticancer drugs and assess trends in the launch prices for 58 anticancer drugs approved between 1995 and 2013 in the United States. We restrict attention to anticancer drugs because the use of median survival time as a primary outcome measure provides a common, objective scale for quantifying the incremental benefit of new products. We find that the average launch price of anticancer drugs, adjusted for inflation and health benefits, increased by 10 percent annually—or an average of $8,500 per year—from 1995 to 2013. We argue that the institutional features of the market for anticancer drugs enable manufacturers to set the prices of new products at or slightly above the prices of existing therapies, giving rise to an upward trend in launch prices. Government-mandated price discounts for certain classes of buyers may have also contributed to launch price increases as firms sought to offset the growth in the discount segment by setting higher prices for the remainder of the market.
DOI: 10.3886/e113942v1
title: Replication data for: Pareto and Piketty: The Macroeconomics of Top Income and Wealth Inequality

description: Since the early 2000s, research by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and their coauthors has revolutionized our understanding of income and wealth inequality. In this paper, I highlight some of the key empirical facts from this research and comment on how they relate to macroeconomics and to economic theory more generally. One of the key links between data and theory is the Pareto distribution. The paper describes simple mechanisms that give rise to Pareto distributions for income and wealth and considers the economic forces that influence top inequality over time and across countries. For example, it is in this context that the role of the famous r - g expression is best understood.
DOI: 10.3886/e113943
title: Replication data for: The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism

description: Thomas Piketty's (2013) book, Capital in the 21st Century, follows in the tradition of the great classical economists, like Marx and Ricardo, in formulating general laws of capitalism to diagnose and predict the dynamics of inequality. We argue that general economic laws are unhelpful as a guide to understanding the past or predicting the future because they ignore the central role of political and economic institutions, as well as the endogenous evolution of technology, in shaping the distribution of resources in society. We use regression evidence to show that the main economic force emphasized in Piketty's book, the gap between the interest rate and the growth rate, does not appear to explain historical patterns of inequality (especially, the share of income accruing to the upper tail of the distribution). We then use the histories of inequality of South Africa and Sweden to illustrate that inequality dynamics cannot be understood without embedding economic factors in the context of economic and political institutions, and also that the focus on the share of top incomes can give a misleading characterization of the true nature of inequality.
DOI: 10.3886/e113943v1
title: Replication data for: The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism

description: Thomas Piketty's (2013) book, Capital in the 21st Century, follows in the tradition of the great classical economists, like Marx and Ricardo, in formulating general laws of capitalism to diagnose and predict the dynamics of inequality. We argue that general economic laws are unhelpful as a guide to understanding the past or predicting the future because they ignore the central role of political and economic institutions, as well as the endogenous evolution of technology, in shaping the distribution of resources in society. We use regression evidence to show that the main economic force emphasized in Piketty's book, the gap between the interest rate and the growth rate, does not appear to explain historical patterns of inequality (especially, the share of income accruing to the upper tail of the distribution). We then use the histories of inequality of South Africa and Sweden to illustrate that inequality dynamics cannot be understood without embedding economic factors in the context of economic and political institutions, and also that the focus on the share of top incomes can give a misleading characterization of the true nature of inequality.
DOI: 10.3886/e113944v1
title: Replication data for: What Do We Know about the Evolution of Top Wealth Shares in the United States?

description: I discuss available evidence about the evolution of top wealth shares in the United States over the course of the 20th century. The three main approaches—the Survey of Consumer Finances, estate tax multiplier, and capitalization methods—generate generally consistent findings until mid-1980s but diverge since then, with the capitalization method showing a dramatic increase in wealth concentration and the other two methods showing at best a small increase. I discuss strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. The increase in capitalization estimates since 2000 is driven by a dramatic and puzzling increase in fixed income assets. There is evidence that estate tax estimates may not be sufficiently accounting for mortality improvements over time. The nonresponse and coverage issues in the SCF are a concern. I conclude that the changing nature of top incomes and the increased importance of self-made wealth may explain difficulties in implementing each of the methods and why the results diverge.
DOI: 10.3886/e114102
title: Replication data for: The Great Housing Boom of China

description: China's housing prices have been growing nearly twice as fast as national income over the past decade, despite a high vacancy rate and a high rate of return to capital. This paper interprets China's housing boom as a rational bubble emerging naturally from its economic transition. The bubble arises because high capital returns driven by resource reallocation are not sustainable in the long run. Rational expectations of a strong future demand for alternative stores of value can thus induce currently productive agents to speculate in the housing market. Our model can quantitatively account for China's paradoxical housing boom.
DOI: 10.3886/e114433
title: Replication data for: Workplace Signaling and Financial Commitment: Evidence from a Field Experiment

description: We provide evidence of strategic behavior in financial decisions that occur in the workplace and are observable to one's employer. We offer factory workers the opportunity to sign up for a commitment savings account that credibly signals the intention to remain employed with the firm. Workers are more likely to sign up when the account is endorsed by their employer and their decision is observed by the firm. An experiment with the firm's managers shows that the firm is more likely to invest in the human capital of workers with accounts, suggesting that financial commitment is rewarded by the employer.