Erkmen G. Aslim , Wei Fu , Erdal Tekin , Shijun You
{"title":"From syringes to dishes: Improving food sufficiency through vaccination","authors":"Erkmen G. Aslim , Wei Fu , Erdal Tekin , Shijun You","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105392","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105392","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on food insufficiency in the United States, using data from the Household Pulse Survey. Our primary research design exploits variation in vaccine eligibility across states over time as an instrumental variable to address the endogeneity of vaccination decision. We find that vaccination had a substantial impact on food hardship by reducing the likelihood of food insufficiency by 24%, with even stronger effects among minority and financially disadvantaged populations. These results are robust to alternative specifications and the use of regression discontinuity as an alternative identification strategy. We also show that vaccine eligibility had a positive spillover impact on food assistance programs, notably reducing participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the use of its benefits, suggesting that vaccination policies can help alleviate the government’s fiscal burden during public health crises. Our analysis offers detailed insights into the potential mechanisms linking vaccination to food insufficiency. We demonstrate that vaccination yields changes in both material circumstances and financial expectations. Specifically, vaccination increases the use of regular income for spending needs and reduces reports of insufficient food due to unaffordability. Additionally, we find that vaccination improves financial optimism, reflected in expectations for future employment income loss and the ability to meet mortgage and debt obligations. Our findings are consistent with the notion that this optimism, along with labor market recovery, diminished the need for precautionary savings, reduced reliance on government assistance, and encouraged household spending on essential goods like food, ultimately lowering food insufficiency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Article 105392"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143950420","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}
Kerwin Kofi Charles , Jonathan Guryan , Kyung H. Park
{"title":"Consumer sentiment towards Asians in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic","authors":"Kerwin Kofi Charles , Jonathan Guryan , Kyung H. Park","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105396","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105396","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We revisit the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic to examine whether restaurant foot traffic reveals changes in sentiment towards ethnic groups. Our findings show reduced demand for dining at Asian restaurants located inside Asian enclaves, while outside enclaves, the decline in visits to Asian restaurants was comparable to non-Asian restaurants. In contrast, Italian restaurant enclaves did not experience similar declines in foot traffic after news of the outbreak in Italy and the first U.S. case linked to travel to Italy. We also find suggestive evidence that the shift in consumption was associated with elevated negative sentiment towards Asians rather than efforts to avoid exposure to international travelers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Article 105396"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143941258","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":"Social networks and organizational helping behavior: Experimental evidence from the helping game","authors":"Hande Erkut , Ernesto Reuben","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105388","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105388","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the causal impact of social ties and network structure on helping behavior in organizations. We introduce and experimentally study a game called the ‘helping game,’ where individuals unilaterally decide whether to incur a cost to help other team members when helping is a rivalrous good. We find that social ties have a strong positive effect on helping behavior. Individuals are more likely to help those with whom they are connected, but the likelihood of helping decreases as the social distance between individuals increases. Additionally, individuals randomly assigned to be more central in the network are more likely to help others.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105388"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143923211","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}
Aljosha Henkel , Ernst Fehr , Julien Senn , Thomas Epper
{"title":"Beliefs about inequality and the nature of support for redistribution","authors":"Aljosha Henkel , Ernst Fehr , Julien Senn , Thomas Epper","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105350","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105350","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Do beliefs about inequality depend on distributive preferences? What is the joint role of preferences and beliefs about inequality for support for redistribution? We study these questions in a staggered experiment with a broadly representative sample of the Swiss population conducted in the context of a vote on a highly redistributive policy proposal. Our sample comprises a majority of inequality averse subjects, a sizeable group of altruistic subjects, and a minority of predominantly selfish subjects. Irrespective of preference types, individuals overestimate the extent of income inequality. An information intervention successfully corrects these large misperceptions for all types, but essentially does <em>not</em> affect aggregate support for redistribution. These results hide, however, important heterogeneity because the effects of beliefs about inequality for demand for redistribution are preference-dependent: only inequality averse individuals, but not the selfish and altruistic ones, significantly reduce their support for redistribution. These findings cast a new light on the seemingly puzzling result that, in the aggregate, large changes in beliefs about inequality often do not translate into changes in demand for redistribution.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105350"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143906680","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":"Present bias in politics and self-committing treaties","authors":"Bård Harstad , Anke S. Kessler","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105372","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105372","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study how international environmental agreements can take advantage of domestic time-inconsistency problems. Policymakers often prefer future policies to be sustainable, but are tempted to invest less when being in office. We find the equilibrium number of signatory countries to be higher than when preferences are time consistent, especially when the political environment is unstable and polarized and the international spillovers are limited. This model also explains participation in treaties whose mandates do not vary with the coalition size and why the coalition will not unravel if, for example, the US exits the Paris Agreement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105372"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143906681","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":"Gulags, crime, and elite violence: Origins and consequences of the Russian mafia","authors":"Jakub Lonsky","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105361","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105361","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the origins and consequences of the Russian mafia (<em>vory-v-zakone</em>). Using a unique web scraped dataset containing detailed biographies of more than 5,000 mafia leaders, I first show that the Russian mafia originated in the Soviet <em>Gulag</em>, and could be found near the camps’ initial locations throughout the 1990s Russia. Then, using an instrumental variable approach that exploits the proximity of the Russian mafia to the camps, I show that Russian communities with mafia presence in the 1990s experienced a dramatic rise in crime driven by elite violence which erupted shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The surge in violence was indiscriminate with respect to the victim type. Furthermore, the effect of mafia presence on elite violence was smaller in places where either all or none of the vory were ethnic Russians, suggesting some degree of ethnic conflict within the criminal organization itself.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105361"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143904345","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}
John Chalmers , Olivia S. Mitchell , Jonathan Reuter , Mingli Zhong
{"title":"New evidence on the efficacy of state-based retirement programs: The case of OregonSaves","authors":"John Chalmers , Olivia S. Mitchell , Jonathan Reuter , Mingli Zhong","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105379","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105379","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Seventeen US states have mandated employers to facilitate auto-enrollment retirement saving for workers lacking access to employer-sponsored plans, and proposed federal legislation seeks to extend these plans to the national level. This paper examines the experience with OregonSaves, the country’s longest-running plan, documenting that the program did prompt some participant savings. Median account balances were about $600 by mid-2023, but opt-out rates were above 50%, especially for the low-paid. Repeated exposure to the plan slightly reduced opt-outs, though withdrawals remained common. While modest savings accrued for many, it remains unclear whether these accounts will grow large enough to significantly increase retirement consumption.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105379"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143898490","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":"Regulating the direction of innovation","authors":"Joshua S. Gans","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105375","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105375","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the regulation of technological innovation direction under uncertainty about potential harms. We develop a model with two competing technological paths and analyse various regulatory interventions. The optimal regulatory approach depends critically on the magnitude of potential harm relative to technological benefits. Our analysis reveals a motive to double down on harmful technologies in resource allocation across research paths, challenging common intuitions about diversification. We demonstrate that ex post regulatory instruments, particularly liability regimes, outperform ex ante restrictions in many scenarios. These insights have important implications for regulating emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, suggesting the need for informationally-responsive regulatory frameworks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105375"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143887093","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 structure of online social networks and social movements: Evidence from the Black Lives Matter protests","authors":"Matthias Flückiger , Markus Ludwig","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105373","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105373","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper documents that online social networks – Facebook in particular – can facilitate the spread of social movements across space and time. Focusing on the largest protest movement in recent history, the wave of Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd on 25 May 2020, we show that protests are more likely to spill over between US counties when they are more closely connected within the Facebook network. To identify causal effects, we develop an instrumental variable approach that exploits local Facebook outages as a source of exogenous variation in the structure of the online network.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105373"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143882248","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}
Giselle Del Carmen , Santiago Garriga , Wilman Ponce , Thiago Scot
{"title":"Two decades of top income shares in Honduras","authors":"Giselle Del Carmen , Santiago Garriga , Wilman Ponce , Thiago Scot","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105362","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105362","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study constructs distributional national accounts for Honduras from 2003 to 2019, integrating household surveys, administrative tax records, and national account aggregates. It assembles comprehensive data on formal income for high-income individuals, including information on corporate shareholders, which allows corporate profits to be assigned to their owners. Findings reveal a high and persistent inequality: the top 1 percent highest earners received approximately 30 percent of total pre-tax income, placing Honduras among the most unequal countries in the world. Capital income, mostly undistributed corporate profits, represent close to half of income for the top 0.1% of earners, highlighting its role in driving top income dynamics. Finally, using a panel of tax records, we also document that not only inequality is mostly unchanged over two decades, but the identity of top earners is also persistent — over half of those observed in the top 0.1% will stay there in a three year horizon.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 105362"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143882247","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}