Knowledge that Transforms

Social movements are catalysts for crucial institutional changes. To succeed, they must coordinate members’ views (consensus building) and actions (mobilization). We study union leaders within Myanmar’s burgeoning labor movement. Union leaders are positively selected on both ability and personality traits that enable them to influence others, yet they earn lower wages. In group discussions about workers’ views on an upcoming national minimum wage negotiation, randomly embedded leaders build consensus around the union’s preferred policy. In an experiment that mimics individual decision-making in a collective action setup, leaders increase mobilization through coordination. (JEL D91, J38, J51, O15)

This paper explores global perceptions and understanding of climate change and policies, examining factors that influence support for climate action and the impact of different types of information. We conduct large-scale surveys with 40,000 respondents from 20 countries, providing new international data on attitudes toward climate change and respondents’ socioeconomic backgrounds and lifestyles. We identify three key perceptions affecting policy support: perceived effectiveness of policies in reducing emissions, their impact on low-income households, and their effect on respondents’ households (self-interest). Educational videos clarifying policy mechanisms increase support for climate policies; those merely highlighting climate change’s impacts do not. (JEL C83, D83, D91, Q54, Q58)

We develop a two-country model in which currency and bond markets are populated by different investor clienteles, and segmentation is partly overcome by arbitrageurs with limited capital. Risk premia in our model are time-varying, connected across markets, and consistent with the empirical violations of uncovered interest parity and expectations hypothesis. Through risk premia, large-scale bond purchases lower domestic and foreign bond yields and depreciate the currency, and short-rate cuts lower foreign yields, with smaller effects than bond purchases. Currency returns are disconnected from long-maturity bond returns, and yet the currency market is instrumental in transmitting bond demand shocks across countries. (JEL E43, E44, E52, F31, G12, G15)

Online labor platforms for short-term, remote work have many more job seekers than available jobs. Despite their relative abundance, workers capture a substantial share of the surplus from transactions. We draw this conclusion from demand estimates that imply workers' wages include significant markups over costs and a survey that validates our surplus estimates. Demand-side search frictions and differentiated characteristics prevent workers from competing away supply-side surplus. Finally, we show that applying traditional employment regulations to online gig economy platforms would lower job posting and hiring rates, reducing aggregate surplus for all market participants, including workers.

We study robust welfare comparisons of learning biases (misspecified Bayesian and some forms of non-Bayesian updating). Given a true signal distribution, we deem one bias more harmful than another if it yields lower objective expected payoffs in all decision problems. We characterize this ranking in static and dynamic settings. While the static characterization compares posteriors signal by signal, the dynamic characterization employs an “efficiency index” measuring how fast beliefs converge. We quantify and compare the severity of several well-documented biases. We also highlight disagreements between the static and dynamic rankings, and that some “large” biases dynamically outperform other “vanishingly small” biases. (JEL D60, D82, D83, D91)

Why have white, less-educated voters left the Democratic Party? We highlight the role of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In event-study analysis, we demonstrate that counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to NAFTA suffered large and persistent employment losses after its implementation. Voters in these counties (and protectionist voters regardless of geography) turned away from the party of President Clinton, who promoted the agreement. This shift is larger for whites (especially men and those without a college degree) and social conservatives, suggesting that racial identity and social-issue positions mediate reactions to economic policies. (JEL D72, F15, F16, J15)

This paper analyzes consumption to evaluate the distributional effects of pension reforms. Using Swedish administrative data, we show that on average, workers who retire earlier consume less while retired and experience larger drops in consumption around retirement. Interpreted via a theoretical model, these findings imply that reforms incentivizing later retirement incur a substantial consumption smoothing cost. Turning to other features of pension policy, we find that reforms that redistribute based on early-career labor supply would have opposite-signed redistributive effects, while differentiating on wealth may help to target pension benefits toward those who are vulnerable to larger drops in consumption around retirement. (JEL E21, G51, H23, H55, J22, J26)

We study how decades-long exposure to individuals of a given foreign descent shapes natives’ attitudes and behavior toward that group. Using individualized donations data, we show that long-term exposure to a given foreign ancestry leads to more generous behavior specifically toward that group’s ancestral country. Focusing on exposure to Arab Muslims to examine mechanisms, we show that long-term exposure (i) decreases explicit and implicit prejudice against Arab Muslims, (ii) reduces support for policies and political candidates hostile toward Arab Muslims, (iii) increases charitable donations to Arab countries, (iv) leads to more personal contact with Arab Muslims, and (v) increases knowledge of Arab Muslims and Islam. (JEL D64, D83, D91, J15)

We experimentally document persistence of suboptimal behavior despite ample opportunities to learn from feedback in a canonical updating problem where people suffer from base-rate neglect. Our results provide insights on the mechanisms hindering learning from feedback. Importantly, our results suggest mistakes are more likely to be persistent when they are driven by incorrect mental models that miss or misrepresent important aspects of the environment. Such models induce confidence in initial answers, limiting engagement with and learning from feedback. We substantiate these insights in an alternative scenario where individuals involved in a voting problem overlook the importance of being pivotal. (JEL D83, D91)

This paper studies the interplay between genetics and family investments in the process of skill formation. We model and estimate the joint evolution of skills and parental investments throughout early childhood. We document three genetic mechanisms: the direct effect of child genes on skills, the indirect effect of child genes via parental investments, and family genetic influences captured by parental genes. We show that genetic effects are dynamic, increase over time, and operate via environmental channels. Our paper highlights the value of integrating biological and social perspectives into a single unified framework. (JEL I24, I26, J12, J13, J24)