i went editor-in-chief of Economic Outlook Journal Since its launch in summer 1987. JEP is published by the American Economic Association, and we're pleased to announce that in 2011, we decided to make the magazine available for free online, from the latest issue to the first issue. Individual articles or entire issues can be downloaded and are also available in a variety of e-reader formats. Let's start here with the just released Table of Contents. Spring 2024 issue, known in the Taylor family as Issue #148. Below that you will find summaries and direct links to all papers. I'll be blogging about some of the papers in more detail, probably in the next few weeks.
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Symposium: How research impacts policy analysis
„How economists can contribute to the economic and budget analyzes used in the U.S. CongressCongressional Budget Office Staff
The U.S. Congress uses economic and budget forecasts, bill cost estimates, and other analyzes provided by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as part of the legislative process. CBO bases its evaluation on an understanding of federal programs and funding, a reading of relevant research literature, data analysis, and consultation with outside experts, and often relies on economic research. The article begins with a discussion of the role of the Congressional Budget Office and then discusses how economists conduct research that helps inform Congress by improving the quality of the analyzes and parameter estimates used by the CBO. We will discuss whether it is possible. It provides general background and specific examples in his seven areas: credit and insurance, energy and environment, health, labor, macroeconomics, national security, and taxes and transfers.
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„The Economic Constitution of the United States“by Cass R. Sunstein
The United States has an economic constitution that governs federal regulation and describes how to conduct regulatory impact analysis in connection with quantifying and monetizing the costs and benefits of proposed and final regulations. Masu. The U.S. economic constitution, known as OMB Circular A-4, was overhauled in 2023 with new directions on behavioral economics and nudges. About discount rates and their impact on future generations. About distributional effects and how to explain them. It also describes benefits and costs that are difficult or impossible to quantify. The revised document leaves many unanswered questions, including (for example) the valuation of human life, the valuation of the impact of morbidity, and the value of children's lives.
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“Financial Crisis Investigation Committee and Economic Investigation”by Wendy Edelberg and Greg Feldberg
Researchers and economic research were essential to the success of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. For example, researchers submitted testimony, briefed commissioners, and spoke to staff in recorded interviews. They also provided access to key data sources and helped us use them. Our research, which began just a year after the height of the crisis, revealed why investors operate certain markets, why incentive problems pervade securitization markets, and why so many large companies Did risk management fail? We also benefited from a wealth of research examining developments in financial markets leading up to the crisis. The process of growing research staff to meet tight deadlines was chaotic, requiring long hours, people willing to work in teams, and a willingness to follow evidence wherever it was.
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“Prioritizing Charity”written by Emily Olsen
Many foundations decide how much and where to donate based on the founder's prior personal commitment to a particular issue, region, or institution. How should grantmakers approach this goal if they want to select problems based on a common measure of impact per dollar spent? Promising cause areas (climate change, education, health, etc.) ) and compare grants that achieve different outcomes? This document was published by funding organization Open Philanthropy for its Global Health and Wellbeing It focuses on the approach taken by philanthropy, focusing on two important frameworks: equalization, materiality, negligibility, and tractability of the marginal benefits of philanthropy. He discusses measurement and comparability under the first framework and then applies his second framework to the example of reducing exposure to lead. Finally, consider points of criticism and areas for improvement.
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Labor market and macroeconomy
„The reason for the change in the Beveridge curve“Gadi Barlevy, R. Jason Faberman, Bart Hobijn, Ayşegül Şahin
Discuss how the relative importance of factors contributing to the movement of the U.S. Beveridge curve changed from 1959 to 2023. We review these factors in the context of a simple flow analogy used to capture key insights of labor search and matching theory. market. Demographic-related changes in inflow rates were responsible for the shift in the Beveridge curve from 1959 to 2000. The decline in matching efficiency suppressed the outflow of unemployed people, and the Great Recession shifted the curve outward. In contrast, recent changes in the Beveridge curve appear to be driven by changes in workers' turnover intentions. Finally, while the Beveridge curve is a useful tool for relating unemployment rates and job openings to inflation, the association of these labor market indicators with inflation depends on whether and why the Beveridge curve has changed. claim. Careful consideration of the factors underlying the movement of the Beveridge curve is therefore essential for drawing policy conclusions from the joint movement of unemployment and job vacancies.
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“Perspectives on labor share”written by Lucas Calabarbounis
As of 2022, work as a share of U.S. income is at its lowest level since the Great Depression. We update previous research with more recent observations and document continued declines in the labor share in the United States, other countries, and various industries. Describe how changes in technology and products, labor markets, and capital markets affect trends in the labor share. We also explore relationships with other macroeconomic trends, such as rising markups, centralization of economic activity, and globalization. Finally, we provide some perspectives on the economic and policy implications of declining labor shares.
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“Why is labor supply important to the macroeconomy?”by Richard Rogerson
Benchmark models taught in undergraduate macro education do not take into account the role of labor supply as a key determinant of macroeconomic outcomes. The first part of this paper describes three facts. First, the differences in working hours between OECD countries are large, which implies large differences in his GDP per capita. Second, there are large differences in the size of tax and transfer programs across countries, as exemplified by differences in government revenues as a share of GDP. Third, these two outcomes are strongly negatively correlated. Taken together, these facts suggest an important role for labor supply in influencing macroeconomic outcomes. The reason why macroeconomic textbooks do not include discussions on labor supply stems from the idea that the elasticity of labor supply is sufficiently small that even large differences in labor incentives do not produce important macroeconomic effects. I suspect that it is. In the second part of this paper, I argue that this belief is based on a faulty inference that links small elasticities among middle-aged men to small elasticities in aggregate labor supply. The role of labor supply at the broad margin plays an important role in understanding this error in reasoning.
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“How cyclical are user labor costs?Written by Marianna Kudryak
In the employment relationship, wages are installments based on an implicit long-term contract between the worker and the company. Instead, the price of labor, which influences a firm's hiring decisions, reflects not only the employment wage but also the effect of economic conditions at the time of employment on future wages. The price of labor, as measured by the employer cost of labor, is significantly more cyclical than wages of new hires or average wages. The strong cyclicality of labor prices requires other forces that create cyclical labor demand to explain changes in employment.
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Privacy protection and government data
“Government Data of the People, by the People, and for the People: Addressing Public Privacy Concerns.”by Claire McKay Bowen
The data privacy community generally focuses on government data, particularly that of the people (data collected about the people), by the people (collected and supported using tax dollars), and for the people (providing public and social benefits). We agree that it should be more widely accessible. . But what of that data to protect and how to protect it is highly debated. This paper describes the fundamental trade-off between data privacy and data utility, and how difficult it is to determine the right balance. This paper also provides ideas about what must be addressed to shape the future of data privacy, make a meaningful contribution to policy debates, and ensure responsible representation of people in data.
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“When Privacy Protection Goes Wrong: How and Why the 2020 Census Confidentiality Program Failed.”written by Stephen Ruggles
The U.S. Census Bureau is introducing a new disclosure management strategy for the 2020 Census that adds intentional error to all demographic statistics for all geographic units smaller than a state, including metropolitan areas, cities, and counties. did. This article tracks the evolving rationale for new procedures and assesses the impact of 2020 disclosure controls on data quality. The Census Bureau claims that previous disclosure regulations used in pre-2010 censuses revealed confidential responses from millions of Americans. I maintain that this claim is unsupported and there is no evidence that anyone's response was compromised. New disclosure management strategies introduce unnecessary errors with no clear benefits. In fact, the new procedure may be less effective at protecting confidentiality than the procedure it replaces. We conclude with recommendations to minimize disclosure risks while maximizing the usefulness of the data in future censuses.
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article
„Gabriel Zakman: 2023 Clark Medal Winnerby Emmanuel Saez
The American Economic Association's 2023 John Bates Clark Medal was awarded to Gabriel Zucman, associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, for his fundamental contributions to the study of inequality and taxation. Through his rigorous empirical research and creative methodological approaches, he has uncovered important trends in the concentration of global wealth, the scale and distribution of tax evasion, and the tax-saving strategies of multinational corporations. These findings have had a major impact on academic literature and global policy debates. He changed the way economic research was done by showing that measurement could have a profound impact on our field and the world, and inspired many young scholars to follow in his footsteps.
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Features
„Recommendations for further readingwritten by Timothy Taylor