Knowledge that Transforms

In this paper, we study the effects of the timing of nutritional aid disbursement on crime, using two main sources of variation: (a) a policy change in Illinois that substantially increased the number of SNAP distribution days and (b) an existing Indiana policy that issues SNAP benefits by last name. We find that staggering SNAP benefits leads to large reductions in crime and theft at grocery stores by 17.5% and 20.9%, respectively. Findings also show that theft decreases in the second and third weeks following receipt but increases in the last week of the benefit cycle due to resource constraints.

We collate sixteen panel surveys from twelve developing countries to develop stylized facts from over 14,000 firms on how much firm death there is, which types of these firms are most likely to die, and why they die. Small firms die at an average rate of 8.2% per year. Death rates are higher in richer countries, for younger firms and less profitable firms, and for firms run by youth. We also find that firm death need not mean permanent exit from self-employment for the firm owner.

Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United States, with unique nationally representative microdata on both U.S. immigrant workers and workers in their 42 home countries. The average price equivalent of migration barriers in this setting for low-skill men is greater than $13,700 per worker per year. Natural and policy barriers may each create annual global losses of trillions of dollars.

The downtrend in U.S. interest rates over the past two decades may partly reflect a decline in the longer-run equilibrium real rate of interest. We examine this issue using dynamic term structure models that account for time-varying term and liquidity risk premiums and are estimated directly from prices of individual inflation-indexed bonds. Our finance-based approach avoids two potential pitfalls of previous macroeconomic analyses: structural breaks at the zero lower bound and misspecification of output and inflation dynamics. We estimate that the longer-run equilibrium real rate has fallen about 2 percentage points and appears unlikely to rise quickly.

We examine the U.S. internal migration response to increased import competition following the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China in 2001. Using a variety of data sets and empirical approaches, we find that local labor markets most exposed to the policy change experienced a relative reduction in population growth over the following decade. The majority of the effect occurs at a lag of seven to ten years and is most pronounced among young individuals and low-education groups. Such population adjustments should influence the interpretation of evidence in the growing literature on import competition and local labor markets.

Policymakers often assume that targeting observably poor households suffices in reaching nutritionally deprived individuals. We question that assumption. Our comprehensive assessment for sub-Saharan Africa reveals that undernourished women and children are spread widely across the household wealth and consumption distributions. Roughly three-quarters of underweight women and undernourished children are not found in the poorest 20% of households, and around half are not found in the poorest 40%. Countries with higher undernutrition tend to have higher shares of undernourished individuals in nonpoor households. Intrahousehold inequality accounts in part for our results, but other factors appear to be important, including common health risks.

Residential segregation by race grew sharply during the early twentieth century as black migrants from the South arrived in northern cities. Using newly assembled neighborhood-level data, we provide the first systematic evidence on the impact of prewar population dynamics within cities on the emergence of the American ghetto. Leveraging exogenous changes in neighborhood racial composition, we show that white flight in response to black arrivals was quantitatively large and accelerated between 1900 and 1930. A key implication of our findings is that segregation could have arisen solely from the flight behavior of whites.

Employment declined substantially during the 2007–2009 recession, especially in small and young firms. Using confidential firm-level data of the universe of firms and a difference-in-differences methodology, this paper estimates that financial constraints reduced employment growth by 4 to 8 percentage points in small firms relative to large firms and by 7 to 9 percentage points in young relative to old firms. I find that the effect of financial constraints on small firms is driven to a large extent by young firms. I then document that financial constraints affected employment growth in small and young firms strongly through the entry and exit of firms.

This paper examines the long-term determinants of intimate partner violence (IPV) by analyzing its relationship with traditional family structures: stem families in which one child stays in the parental household and nuclear families in which all children leave the household upon marriage. My hypothesis is that coresidence with a mother-in-law increases a wife's contribution to nondomestic work, which may decrease the level of violence. I find that areas where stem families were socially predominant in the past currently have a lower IPV rate, and use differences in inheritance laws in medieval times as an instrument for the different family types.

Transfer programs have been shown to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), but little evidence exists on how activities linked to transfers affect IPV or what happens when programs end. We assess postprogram impacts on IPV of randomly assigning women in Bangladesh to receive cash or food, with or without nutrition behavior change communication (BCC). Six to ten months postprogram, IPV did not differ between women receiving transfers and a control group; however, women receiving transfers with BCC experienced 26% less physical violence. Evidence on mechanisms suggests sustained effects of BCC on women's “threat points,” men's social costs of violence, and household well-being.