Knowledge that Transforms

Children’s and parents’ incomes are highly correlated, yet little is known about how early-career shocks contribute to this correlation. This paper focuses on a consequential labor market shock: job loss. We document three new results. First, adult children born into the bottom 20% of the income distribution have double the unemployment following job loss compared with those from the top 20% and 154% higher earnings losses. Second, this increases the rank-rank correlation 30% for those impacted. Third, richer parents provide career opportunities to their adult children after job loss, consistent with advantages from wealthy parents persisting well into adulthood.

The US suffers from persistent regional disparities in employment rates. In principle, these disparities should be eliminated by population mobility. Can immigration fulfill this role? Remarkably, since 1960, I show that new migrants from abroad account for 40% of the average population response to these disparities - which vastly exceeds their historic share of gross migratory flows. But despite this, immigration does not significantly accelerate local population adjustment (or reduce local employment rate disparities), as it crowds out the contribution from internal mobility. Indeed, this crowd-out can help account for the concurrent decline in internal mobility. Finally, I attribute the “excess” foreign contribution to a local snowballing effect, driven by persistent local shocks and the dynamics of migrant enclaves. This mechanism raises challenges to the (pervasive) application of migrant enclaves as an instrument for foreign inflows. But rather than abandoning the instrument, I offer an empirical strategy (motivated by my model) to overcome these challenges; and I demonstrate its efficacy.

Class size reduction mandates are frequent and invariably justified by studies reporting positive effects on student achievement. Yet other studies report no effects, and the literature as a whole awaits correction for potential publication bias. Moreover, if identification drives results systematically, the relevance of individual studies will vary. We build a sample of 1,767 estimates collected from 62 studies and for each estimate codify 42 factors reflecting estimation context. We employ recently developed nonlinear techniques for publication bias correction and Bayesian model averaging techniques that address model uncertainty. The results suggest publication bias among studies featured in top five economics journals, but not elsewhere. The implied class size effect is zero for all identification approaches except Tennessee's Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio project. The effect remains zero for disadvantaged students and across subjects, school types, and countries.

Michael Luca of Johns Hopkins University reviews “Decisions about Decisions: Practical Reason in Ordinary Life” by Cass R. Sunstein. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the psychological, practical, and emotional factors that inform decision-making processes.”

Elena Carletti of Bocconi University reviews “Unexpected Revolutionaries: How Central Banks Made and Unmade Economic Orthodoxy” by Manuela Moschella. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the development of central banks from the heyday of monetary orthodoxy in the 1980s to the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, explaining why central banks responded to changed economic conditions by breaking with monetary orthodoxy and what consequences this evolutionary path entails for the role of central banks in domestic societies.”

Daiji Kawaguchi of University of Tokyo reviews “Building a New Economy: Japan's Digital and Green Transformation” by D. Hugh Whittaker. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores institutional and ideational change in Japan and whether or not these are coming together to form a new growth model, focusing on the changing nature of the Japanese state and state–market relations, corporate governance, management and employment, education and training, and innovation and entrepreneurship.”