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Surviving Competition: Neighborhood Shops vs. Convenience Chains

Miguel Angel Talamas Marcos

Hundreds of millions of microenterprises in emerging economies face increased competition from the entry and expansion of large firms that offer similar products. This paper examines the impacts of the opening of chain-run convenience stores on one of the world’s most ubiquitous microenterprises: owner-operated shops. To address endogeneity in time and location of chains’ opening, I pair two-way fixed effects with a novel instrument that shifts the profitability of chains but not of shops at the neighborhood level. Expanding the number of chain outlets from zero to the neighborhood average of 6.7 stores reduces the number of shops by 15%, a decline driven not by increased shop exits but by decreased shop entries.

Partially Linear Models under Data Combination

Xavier D'Haultfoeuille, Christophe Gaillac, and Arnaud Maurel

We study partially linear models when the outcome of interest and some of the covariates are observed in two different datasets that cannot be linked. This type of data combination problem arises very frequently in empirical microeconomics. Using recent tools from optimal transport theory, we derive a constructive characterization of the sharp identified set. We then build on this result and develop a novel inference method that exploits the specific geometric properties of the identified set.

Reservation Raises: The Aggregate Labor Supply Curve at the Extensive Margin

Preston Mui and Benjamin Schoefer

We measure desired labor supply at the extensive (employment) margin in two representative surveys of the U.S. and German populations. We elicit reservation raises: the percent wage change that renders a given individual indifferent between employment and nonemployment. It is equal to her reservation wage divided by her actual, or potential, wage. The reservation raise distribution is the nonparametric aggregate labor supply curve.

Estimating Equilibrium in Health Insurance Exchanges: Price Competition and Subsidy Design under the ACA

Pietro Tebaldi

Regulations to design private yet publicly sponsored health insurance markets are increasingly adopted in many OECD countries. Here I combine data and economic theory to analyze the interaction between insurers’ competition and the design of premium subsidies in determining equilibrium outcomes. My empirical model includes adverse selection, rich heterogeneity in preferences for vertically and horizontally differentiated plans and accommodates alternative assumptions on pricing conduct.

The Causal Impact of Socio-Emotional Skills Training on Educational Success

Giuseppe Sorrenti, Ulf Zölitz, Denis Ribeaud, and Manuel Eisner

We study the long-term effects of a randomized intervention targeting children’s socio-emotional skills. The classroom-based intervention for primary school children has positive impacts that persist for over a decade. Treated children become more likely to complete academic high school and enroll in university. Two mechanisms drive these results.

Inefficient Automation

Martin Beraja and Nathan Zorzi

How should the government respond to automation? We study this question in a heterogeneous agent model that takes worker displacement seriously. We recognize that displaced workers face two frictions in practice: reallocation is slow and borrowing is limited. We analyze a second best problem where the government can tax automation but lacks redistributive tools to fully alleviate borrowing frictions. The equilibrium is (constrained) inefficient and automation is excessive.

Robust Implementation with Costly Information

Harry Pei and Bruno Strulovici

We construct mechanisms that can robustly implement any desired social choice function when (i) agents may incur a cost to learn the state of the world, (ii) with small probability, agents’ preferences can be arbitrarily different from some baseline known to the mechanism designer, and (iii) the mechanism designer does not know agents’ beliefs and higher-order beliefs about one another’s preferences. The mechanisms we propose have a natural interpretation and do not require the mechanism designer to be able to verify the state ex post.

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Version 2.0 of the National Elections Database is online!
We now cover presidential and parliamentary elections 1789–2023, extending the post-1945 data of Electoral Turnovers @RevEconStudies (https://academic.oup.com/restud/advance-article/doi/10.1093/restud/rdae108/7899604).
w/ @benjaminmarx and @vincent_rollet

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``Many networks naturally form as people come together to form subgraphs, e.g. as coauthors of a paper, or other teams. This is the basis for a new, computationally tractable method of estimating network formation."

From Chandrasekhar & @JacksonmMatt:

https://www.restud.com/a-network-formation-model-based-on-subgraphs/

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Recently accepted to #REStud, ``Simultaneous Search and Adverse Selection," from Auster, Gottardi and Wolthoff @rpwolthoff:

https://www.restud.com/simultaneous-search-and-adverse-selection/

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Recently accepted to #REStud, ``Affiliated Common Value Auctions with Costly Entry," from Murto & Välimäki:

https://www.restud.com/affiliated-common-value-auctions-with-costly-entry/

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