{"title":"The graduation part II: Graduate program graduation rates","authors":"Jeffrey T. Denning , Lesley J. Turner","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105422","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105422","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper documents several facts about graduate program graduation rates using administrative data covering public and nonprofit graduate students in Texas. Only 58 % of students entering a graduate program in 2004 graduated within 6 years. Between the 2004 and 2013 entering cohorts, graduate student completion rates grew by 10 percentage points. Graduation rates vary widely by field of study, ranging from an average of 81 % for law programs to 53 % for education programs. We also find large differences in graduation rates between institutions. On average, 72 % of students who entered programs in flagship public universities graduated in 6 years compared to only 57 % of those who entered programs in non-research intensive (non-R1) institutions. Graduate students who do not complete may face negative consequences due to lower average earnings and substantial levels of student debt.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105422"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144549530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Private response to exclusionary welfare policy: Evidence from Italian municipalities","authors":"Massimo Pulejo","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105425","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105425","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Exclusionary welfare policies are among the flagship proposals in the economic agenda of the far right. Yet, there is little empirical evidence as to whether – after gaining power – such parties do indeed cut welfare provisions for immigrants. Using data on more than 6 million procurement contracts within a close-election Regression Discontinuity Design, I estimate that Italian mayors supported by the far right significantly cut welfare spending for immigrants and refugees. However, using novel data on volunteering associations, I also show that the narrow victory of a far-right coalition is followed by a 9.6 % growth in the per-capita number of local NGOs. The effect is driven by social welfare associations, which provide poverty relief and assistance to vulnerable individuals. Individual-level survey data document how the growth in volunteering is driven by left-leaning citizens with positive attitudes toward immigrants. These findings show how – following political turnovers – the non-profit sector can substitute the state in the provision of public goods that are off the agenda of incumbent policymakers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105425"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144307343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Franca Glenzer , Pierre-Carl Michaud , Stefan Staubli
{"title":"Frames, incentives, and education: Effectiveness of interventions to delay public pension claiming","authors":"Franca Glenzer , Pierre-Carl Michaud , Stefan Staubli","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105419","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105419","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In many retirement income systems, people forgo a higher stream of public pension income by claiming early. This paper provides survey- and quasi-experimental evidence on how increasing financial incentives, educating individuals, and changing the framing of the claiming decision affect pension claiming and the present value of expected pension benefits. We find that all three types of interventions induce delays, but they have heterogeneous financial consequences. Educating participants about the claiming decision and life expectancy leads to claiming ages with higher pension wealth. In contrast, changing the framing of the claiming decision and strengthening financial incentives do not improve, and may even worsen, financial outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105419"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144307344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To burn a slum: Urban land conflicts and the use of arson against Favelas","authors":"Rafael Pucci","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105436","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105436","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the understudied phenomenon of urban land conflicts in contexts with weak enforcement of property rights. I examine, both theoretically and empirically, the use of arson as a violent tool to force slum removal from high-value land in cities. Leveraging fine-grained geocoded data, I employ panel regression and Difference-in-Differences analyses to demonstrate that the probability of slum fires dramatically increases with rising land prices. This effect is nonlinear and driven exclusively by slums situated on private lands, highlighting the role of high-powered incentives behind arson. These results illustrate how urban land conflicts can have different outcomes than their rural counterparts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105436"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144481542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Aline Bütikofer , René Karadakic , Alexander Willén
{"title":"Parenthood and the gender gap in commuting","authors":"Aline Bütikofer , René Karadakic , Alexander Willén","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105371","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105371","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Childbirth raises the opportunity cost of commuting and makes it difficult for both parents to work far away from home. Using detailed Norwegian employer–employee matched register data, we show that the commuting behavior of men and women diverges immediately after childbirth and that those differences persist for at least a decade. This divergence in commuting behavior exposes mothers to more concentrated and suburban labor markets with fewer job opportunities and lower establishment quality. These findings uncover a key mechanism underlying the child penalty documented in prior work and have important implications for the design of policies seeking to address the remaining gender wage gap.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105371"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144204459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tiago Bernardino , Ricardo Duque Gabriel , João Quelhas , Márcia Silva-Pereira
{"title":"The full, persistent, and symmetric pass-through of a temporary VAT cut","authors":"Tiago Bernardino , Ricardo Duque Gabriel , João Quelhas , Márcia Silva-Pereira","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105416","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105416","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate the pass-through of a temporary value-added tax (VAT) cut on selected food products to consumer prices in Portugal. Exploiting a novel data set of daily online prices, we find that the VAT cut was fully transmitted to consumer prices, persisted throughout the policy duration, and prices returned to the pre-implementation trend after reversal. We discuss two potential mechanisms driving this result: the policy’s salience to consumers in a high-inflation environment and the decline in producer prices when implemented. We estimate that the policy reduced the inflation rate by 0.68 percentage points on impact.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105416"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144242390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Easing renegotiation rules in public procurement: Evidence from a policy reform","authors":"Kris De Jaegher , Michal Šoltés , Vítězslav Titl","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105445","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105445","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Public procurement contracts require frequent renegotiation. Exploiting a natural experiment induced by the implementation of an EU policy in the Czech Republic, we examine the effect of easing renegotiation rules on the outcomes of public procurement. We document that the policy decreased winning bids but did not change the final price, as post-award renegotiations offset the initial bid reductions. We find no evidence of a decline in the quality of the delivered procurement projects. We rationalize our findings using a stylized theoretical model.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105445"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144656478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The sectoral origins of heterogeneous spending multipliers","authors":"Hafedh Bouakez , Omar Rachedi , Emiliano Santoro","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105404","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105404","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The aggregate spending multiplier crucially depends on the sectoral origin of government purchases. To establish this result, we characterize analytically the response of aggregate output to sector-specific government spending shocks in a tractable production-network economy, showing how it maps into various characteristics of the shocked sector. The response is larger when government spending originates in sectors with a relatively small contribution to private final demand, low markup, high labor intensity, and in those located downstream in the supply chain. We confirm these predictions and evaluate their quantitative relevance within a calibrated multi-sector model of the U.S. economy that embeds several dimensions of sectoral heterogeneity. Leveraging this model, we illustrate how differences in the sectoral composition of purchases across U.S. government levels lead to large variation in the spending multiplier. The latter ranges from 0.47 for federal defense spending, which is relatively concentrated in upstream capital-intensive manufacturing, to 0.82 for state and local spending, which is mainly oriented towards downstream labor-intensive services. Finally, we exploit heterogeneity in the sectoral composition of military spending across U.S. states to provide empirical evidence supporting our theoretical predictions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105404"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144212310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of economic opportunity on criminal behavior: Evidence from the fracking boom","authors":"Brittany Street","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105402","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105402","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Theory suggests crime should decrease as economic opportunities increase the returns to legal activities. However, the current literature shows crime increases when areas experience fracking, a source of increased local economic opportunity. This paper reconciles this puzzle by separating out existing residents and isolating local economic effects from changing composition. Specifically, I exploit within- and across-county variation in fracking activities in North Dakota using individual-level data on incumbent residents, mineral lease records, and criminal charges. The results rule out increases in crime for these existing residents and suggest a modest decrease. These results are consistent with theory and in contrast to the observed aggregate increases in crime from fracking, highlighting the importance of compositional changes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105402"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144242524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dependent insurance coverage and parental job lock: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act","authors":"Hannah Bae , Katherine Meckel , Maggie Shi","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105439","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105439","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Coverage for dependents is a standard feature of employer-sponsored insurance. While prior work shows that employees trade off job mobility for their own coverage, less is known about the intra-family spillovers of dependent coverage on parental labor supply. We study this question using a large panel of employer-based insurance claims that links dependent enrollment to a proxy for parental job retention. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits a sharp change in the duration of dependent eligibility by birth month under the Affordable Care Act. We find that additional dependent insurance eligibility increases both dependent take-up and parental job retention. This “job lock” effect is strongest among parents more likely to be on the margin of a job exit, for families that place higher value on dependent coverage, and employees of firms offering a broader range of insurance options.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 105439"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144549531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}