ECONOMICS 1410 / KENNEDY SCHOOL SUP-125 Public Economics: Designing Government Policy

ECONOMICS 1410 / KENNEDY SCHOOL SUP-125 Public Economics: Designing Government Polic

Do political protests matter? Evidence from the Tea Party movement

Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences

Economic Policy in a More Uncertain World

The Aspen Economic Strategy Group's Annual Policy Volume Economic Policy in a More Uncertain World marks the group's 5th anniversary and is released against a backdrop historic economic and strategic uncertainty. The book's seven chapters, each written by leading experts and edited by AESG Director Melissa S. Kearney and Deputy Director Amy Ganz, provide a deep-dive on long-term economic headwinds confronting the country, including demographic changes—declining fertility and population aging—and what a smaller worker to population ratio means in terms of slower economic growth, reduced revenue, and lower productivity growth. Additional chapters on the US immigration system and US innovation policy highlight potential solutions for countering these trends.  Another chapter explores potential adverse impacts on local labor markets from the green energy transition and highlights policies to avoid repeating painful mistakes of the past, including the response to the decline of the coal industry and rise of globalization and automation. A final chapter highlights lessons learned from the unprecedented federal aid to state and local governments during the COVID-19 pandemic

Essays in Political Economy

This dissertation consists of three essays on political economy. The first essay studies the various ways in which political activism affects policy making, drawing upon evidence from the Tea Party movement in the United States in 2009 and 2010. The second essay develops a policy-centered framework for understanding voting behavior in proportional-representation systems, and tests its predictions using survey data collected around the 2002 Dutch general elections. The third essay focuses on a specific aspect of the implementation of policy, the consequences regulatory supervision may have on firm performance, and assesses the net effect of this kind of supervision on firms' operating costs in the setting of the commercial-banking sector in the United States in the period 2001-2007.Economic

Ban-the-Box Measures Help High-Crime Neighborhoods

Many localities have in recent years regulated the use of questions about criminal history in hiring, or “banned the box.” We show that these regulations increased employment of residents in high-crime neighborhoods by up to 4 percent, consistent with the central objective of these measures. This effect can be seen in both aggregate employment patterns for high-crime neighborhoods and commuting patterns to workplace destinations with this type of ban. The increases are particularly large in the public sector and in lower-wage jobs. This is the first nationwide evidence that these policies do indeed increase employment opportunities in neighborhoods with many ex-offenders

Ban-the-Box Measures Help High-Crime Neighborhoods

Many localities have in recent years regulated the use of questions about criminal history in hiring, or “banned the box.” We show that these regulations increased employment of residents in high-crime neighborhoods by up to 4 percent, consistent with the central objective of these measures. This effect can be seen in both aggregate employment patterns for high-crime neighborhoods and commuting patterns to workplace destinations with this type of ban. The increases are particularly large in the public sector and in lower-wage jobs. This is the first nationwide evidence that these policies do indeed increase employment opportunities in neighborhoods with many ex-offenders

Replication data for: "Shops and the City: Evidence on Local Externalities and Local Government Policy from Big-Box Bankruptcies"

Replication data for: "Shops and the City: Evidence on Local Externalities and Local Government Policy from Big-Box Bankruptcies