Suchergebnisse

We match cell phone data to administrative school records and combine it with information on school learning modes to study effective in-person learning (EIPL) in the U.S. during the pandemic. We find large differences in EIPL for the 2020-21 school year. Public schools averaged less EIPL than private schools. Schools in more affluent localities and schools with a larger share of non-white students provided lower EIPL. Higher school spending and federal emergency funding is associated with lower EIPL. These results are explained in large part by regional differences, reflecting political preferences, vaccination rates, teacher unionization rates, and local labor conditions.

This reply to Cascaldi-Garcia's (2017) comment argues that by using the original code of Kurmann and Otrok (2013) with new data on utilization-adjusted TFP, Cascaldi-Garcia (2017) confounds positive and negative news shocks. With a small modification to the code—how a news shock is signed as positive—we obtain news shock responses consistent with Sims (2016) and Kurmann and Sims (2017) and largely reestablish the results of Kurmann and Otrok (2013). (JEL E23, E32, E43, E52, G12, G14)

Beaudry and Portier (2006) propose an identification scheme to study the effects of news shocks about future productivity in vector error correction models (VECMs). This comment shows that, when applied to their VECMs with more than two variables, the identification scheme does not have a unique solution. The problem arises from a particular interplay of cointegration assumptions and long-run restrictions. (JEL E32, E44, G12, G14)

We adopt a statistical approach to identify the shocks that explain most of the fluctuations of the slope of the term structure of interest rates. We find that one shock can explain the majority of unpredictable movements in the slope. Impulse response functions lead us to interpret this shock as news about future total factor productivity (TFP). By showing that "slope shocks" are essentially "TFP news shocks" we provide a new explanation for the relationship between the slope and macroeconomic fundamentals. Our results also provide a new empirical benchmark for structural models at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance. (JEL E23, E43, E52, G12, G14)

We study the efficiency of non‐compete agreements (NCAs) in an equilibrium model of labour turnover. The model is consistent with empirical studies showing that NCAs reduce turnover and average wages for low‐wage workers. The model also predicts that, by reducing turnover, NCAs raise recruitment and employment. We show that optimal NCA policy: (i) is characterized by a Hosios‐like condition that balances the benefits of higher employment against the costs of inefficient congestion and poaching; (ii) depends critically on the minimum wage; and (iii) alone cannot always achieve the constrained‐efficient allocation—a result that also holds for optimal minimum wage policy—yet with both policies, efficiency is always attainable. To guide policymakers, we derive a sufficient statistic in the form of an easily computed employment threshold above which NCAs are necessarily inefficiently restrictive, and show that employment levels in current low‐wage US labour markets typically exceed this threshold. Finally, we calibrate the model and show that Oregon's 2008 NCA ban for low‐wage workers increased welfare modestly (by roughly 0.1%), and that if policymakers had also raised the minimum wage to its optimal level conditional on the enacted NCA ban (a 30% increase), then welfare would have increased more substantially—by over 1%.