Is Zimbabwe More Productive Than the United States? Some Observations From PWT 8.1

In Penn World Table (PWT) 8.1, several developing countries stand out as outliers with high total factor productivity (TFP) levels relative to the United States (U.S.). For example, in 2011, Zimbabwe and Trinidad and Tobago are reported to have 3 and 1.6 times higher TFP levels than the U.S., respectively. In addition, for several other countries, such as Turkey and Gabon, the stated levels of TFP are very similar to that of the U.S. level (1.01 and 1.11 times the U.S. levels, respectively). Estimates for some of these countries seem rather unlikely when compared with other measures of productivity (such as output per worker). While in the construction of TFP levels PWT does use country-speci c factor shares we show that their results are very similar to calculating TFP levels with a Cobb-Douglas production function where capital and labor shares are assumed to be the same across all countries, i.e., using a constant labor share of 2/3 for all countries. A simple modi cation, using a constant labor share of 2/3 for developed countries and 1/2 for developing countries, generates more \plausible" estimates for TFP levels

A Field Study on Matching with Network Externalities

We study the effects of network externalities within a protocol for matching faculty to offices in a new building. Using web and survey data on faculty's attributes and choices, we identify the different layers of the social network: institutional affiliation, coauthorships, and friendships. We quantify the effects of network externalities on choices and outcomes, disentangle the layers of the networks, and quantify their relative influence. Finally, we assess the protocol used from a welfare perspective. Our study suggests the importance and feasibility of accounting for network externalities in assignment problems and evaluates techniques that can be employed to this end

Idiosyncratic risk, aggregate risk, and the welfare effects of social security

We ask whether a pay-as-you-go financed social security system is welfare improving in an economy with idiosyncratic productivity and aggregate business cycle risk. We show analytically that the whole welfare benefit from joint insurance against both risks is greater than the sum of benefits from insurance against the isolated risk components. One reason is the convexity of the welfare gain in total risk. The other reason is a direct risk interaction which amplifies the utility losses from consumption risk. We proceed with a quantitative evaluation of social security’s welfare effects. We find that introducing an unconditional minimum pension leads to substantial welfare gains in expectation, even net of the welfare losses from crowding out. About 60% of the welfare gains would be missing when simply summing up the isolated benefits

The effect of public pensions on women’s labor market participation over a full life cycle

ABSTRACT: Spousal and survivor pensions are two important provisions of the US Social Security pension system. In this paper, we assess the impact of these benefits on the female employment rate in the context of a full life-cycle model in which households decide on female labor supply and savings. One important aspect of our model is that we allow for returns to labor market experience so that participation decisions affect not only current earnings and Social Security pension eligibility but also future earnings. We quantify the effect on female labor supply and on household inequality of (i) removing spousal benefit, (ii) removing both spousal and survivor pension benefits, and (iii) extending from 35 to 40 the number of periods of the working career that are considered when calculating the retired worker’s pension. We find that reforms (i) and (ii) significantly increase female employment throughout the life cycle, whereas reform (iii) has a very mild effect. The effect of (ii) on income inequality in older household is large, whereas the effect on consumption inequality is small. All three reforms have substantial effects on Social Security expenditure and fiscal revenues.We wish to thank the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology for financial support under Grant ECO2009-09614

Changes in Spending and Labor Supply in Response to a Social Security Benefit Cut: Evidence from Stated Choice Data

We investigate how individuals in the U.S. expect to adjust their labor force participation and savings if Social Security benefits were cut by 30 percent. Respondents were asked directly what they would do under this scenario. Using the resulting stated choice data we find that respondents would on average reduce spending by 18.2 percent before retirement and 20.4 percent after retirement. About 34.1% of respondents state they would definitely work longer and they would postpone claiming Social Security by 1.1 years. We investigate how working longer and claiming Social Security later would compensate partially for the loss in benefits among the individuals who are currently working, under the assumption that individuals retire and claim at the same time. Individuals would increase their Social Security benefits from the post-reform level due to additional earnings entering the benefit calculation and a smaller early claiming penalty (or higher delayed claiming credit). As a result, the Social Security benefit people would receive would drop on average by 21 rather than 30 percent. Still, the net financial loss, even after accounting for additional earnings, is sizeable for individuals in the lowest wealth tertile