We study inference in shift-share regression designs, such as when a regional outcome is regressed on a weighted average of observed sectoral shocks, using regional sector shares as weights. We conduct a placebo exercise in which we estimate the effect of a shift-share regressor constructed with randomly generated sectoral shocks on actual labor market outcomes across U.S. Commuting Zones. Tests based on commonly used standard errors with 5% nominal significance level reject the null of no effect in up to 55% of the placebo samples. We use a stylized economic model to show that this overrejection problem arises because regression residuals are correlated across regions with similar sectoral shares, independently of their geographic location. We derive novel inference methods that are valid under arbitrary cross-regional correlation in the regression residuals. We show that our methods yield substantially wider confidence intervals in popular applications of shift-share regression designs.

This study examines the anti‐poverty effects of increased welfare spending in the United States five years into the recovery (from 2009 to 2015) by focusing on an economically vulnerable population of divorced/separated women. More specifically, I examine the anti‐poverty effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and housing and energy assistance using the Sen, Shorrocks, and Thon poverty index. I find that the anti‐poverty effects of means‐tested programs worked primarily through reduction in headcount ratio without much amelioration in poverty intensity and inequality. Large‐scale programs such as SNAP, EITC, and housing assistance were the most effective, whereas WIC, TANF, and energy assistance were the least effective programs in the fight against poverty.

This project employs a mix of archival and digital techniques to evaluate an extensive geographic survey of the St. Lawrence River valley, conducted under auspices of the Quebec Governor James Murray following the 1760 British conquest of Canada. I show how scholars have misread the historical evidence surrounding the production and dissemination of this survey by ignoring the patronage motives of those involved in its production. I also use archival evidence to examine contemporary practices and ideas surrounding maps and accuracy. I discuss how I built a Historical Geographic Information System by manually creating and spatially adjusting vector data from Murray’s personal copy of the survey (which was composed of fortyfour individual map sheets measuring forty-five by thirty-six feet when fully assembled). This dataset allowed me to establish that the survey demonstrated a high degree of spatial accuracy for the eighteenth century. Here I also discuss methods for retroactively creating administrative boundaries, which were undocumented in the period. This allowed me to create spatial interoperability with other contemporary quantitative records—historical censuses and parish registers, which recorded births, marriages, and deaths—to evaluate the reliability of these various administrative technologies of state during the early modern period. I conclude that while the historical censuses undercounted people, the survey and parish registers support each other’s conclusions, which suggest their demographic accuracy. This work serves as a proof of concept for a much larger spatial humanities project that would employ these same techniques to digitally process the series of other geographic surveys conducted throughout British North America between 1765 and 1777 to capture a geographic snapshot of the late colonial period.

Objective: Cigarette smoking and smoking‐related diseases disproportionately affect low‐income populations. Health insurance coverage of smoking cessation treatments is increasingly used to encourage quitting. We assess the relationship between state Medicaid coverage of smoking cessation treatments and past‐year quitting in adult Medicaid beneficiaries. Data Sources: 2009–2014 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); 2008–2013 indicators of state Medicaid coverage of smoking cessation treatments. Study Design: A triple‐differencing specification based on differences in Medicaid cessation coverage policies across states as well as within‐state differences between Medicaid beneficiaries and a counterfactual group of low‐income adults not covered by Medicaid. Data Collection/Extraction Methods: Individual‐level NHIS data with restricted geographical identifiers were merged with state‐year Medicaid coverage indicators. Principal Findings: combined coverage of both cessation counseling and medications in state Medicaid programs was associated with increased quitting, with an estimated mean increase in past‐year quitting of 3.0 percentage points in covered Medicaid beneficiaries relative to persons without coverage. Conclusions: combined coverage of both smoking cessation counseling and medication by state Medicaid programs could help reduce cigarette smoking among Medicaid beneficiaries.

Climate change will impact the suburban forest and the ecosystem services it provides. Diversifying and increasing the amount of canopy cover are considered fundamental strategies for mitigating impacts of climate change on the suburban forest. However, little is known about communities most at-risk to adverse effects of climate change, especially in communities where private homeowners manage trees. To understand which subdivisions are most at-risk, applied historical ecology was used to provide a frame of reference for assessing the vulnerabilities of suburban forests (n=76) throughout Fayetteville, North Carolina. Then I evaluated the socioeconomic characteristics and, using a Likert-scaled survey, the adaptive capacity of the homeowners (n=76) within those subdivisions to mitigate and adapt the suburban forest. The most at-risk subdivisions were evaluated for potential risk factors that could be more broadly applicable for identifying at-risk subdivisions. The majority of trees in the study area had low to moderately low vulnerability, with higher vulnerability species being at the southern or easternmost edge of their habitat range. Approximately half of the samples currently above 30% canopy cover are predicted to fall below 30% due to the impacts of climate change on vulnerable . . .

It has been well documented in the literature that ethnicity matters significantly in the determination of savings. In particular, African-American savings lag far behind that of other ethnic groups. Similarly, the literature also provides evidence of the long-lived nature of institutions and the link between institutions and culture. In this paper, we provide an explanation for the savings gap that still exists between African-Americans and White Americans even after accounting for appropriate factors that can lead to savings differentials. We initially provide evidence that the savings gap exists and persist after including several control variables in a regression analysis. We then provide evidence that the persistent gap can not be attributed solely to racial discrimination but can be explained by the response of culture to institutional scaffolding erected many years earlier. Using a novel within race decomposition we provide evidence that past institutions transmitted through culture can help to explain this persistent saving disparity.

Using a unique micro-level panel dataset, we relate households’ stock market participation to policy uncertainty. We show that households significantly reduce their equity participation during periods of high policy uncertainty, identified by gubernatorial elections. The magnitude of the participation cycles varies with risk aversion, employment risk, and cost of processing information. In certain situations, election-triggered drop in participation is followed by a partial increase in post-election years as the uncertainty over policy outcomes subsides, reflecting a real distortion. Our findings suggest that policy uncertainty is an important channel through which the political process creates a negative externality in financial markets.

This paper contributes to the literature on the eect of individual-level characteristics on urban location choice by examining whether young people aged 25-34 with a bachelor's degree or higher are more likely to live in central cities in 2011 than in 1990. When I control for individual-level characteristics I nd that the eect of education on the probability of living in a central city remains similar across generations. This is evidence that to the extent education plays a role in the larger population of high human capital 25-34 year olds in cities in 2011 it is due to a composition eect rather than cities becoming more attractive to educated people at the margin.

This paper is a written version of the keynote speech presented at the Economic and Business History Society conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on May 26, 2017. I summarize existing research on the distribution and impact of New Deal spending and lending programs and also discuss several new strains of New Deal research.

Proximity between inventive actors is important for the spread of new ideas. However, in the current literature there is little attention to measures of accessibility - a form of functional proximity - which depend on infrastructural connections. This article tries to fill this gap by analysing the effect that railroad, canal and river connections have on the diffusion of electrical technology in US counties between 1850-1900. The results of the linear probability analysis show that both railroads and canals are linked to the probability of patenting in electrical technology within a county.

This study examines changes in the U.S. class structure under neoliberalism. Applying a Marxian analytic framework to U.S. Census data from 1970 to 2010, we find that the professional middle class grew to 32% of the workforce and experienced steady earnings growth. The working class declined in size and earnings, the petty bourgeoisie remained stable but lost income, whereas the ruling class advanced significantly on both fronts. This overall pattern was more pronounced for whites, Asians, and women than for blacks, Hispanics, and men, confirming some but upending other expectations about the social ramifications of neoliberal policy

Learning About Schooling: The Effects of State Level Student Achievement Data on Public Opinion There is a growing literature on the effects of student achievement data on public opinion. Prior research suggests that individuals tend to overestimate student achievement in their area. The provision of current achievement levels tends to cause a decrease in confidence in the public schools. In some cases, it appears to increase support for various education reforms. However, previous experimental studies measured outcomes immediately after the provision of information about education performance, making it difficult to distinguish between long-lasting information effects and the more ephemeral consequences of priming. As a result, we do not know how large these effects truly are nor how long they last. I address these concerns by conducting a survey experiment in which I provide state level student achievement data to a randomly assigned treatment group and then measure political attitudes on education issues at three separate times: immediately, after one day, and after ten days. There is evidence that the provision of state level student achievement data temporarily reduces individuals’ confidence in their state school systems, but this effect does not persist after ten days. Schoolhouse Democracy: Education Policy Responsiveness in the States The link between public opinion and enacted public policy is referred to as policy responsiveness in the political science literature. Using new estimates of state level public opinion, I explore the relationship between support for increased education spending and average per pupil expenditures at the state level from 1984 to 2013. Within a given year, I find a modest, positive relationship between statewide public opinion on education spending and statewide per pupil expenditures. On average, states with greater support for education spending also tend to spend more per pupil. Within states over time, an increase in support for greater education spending is also associated with an increase in actual spending. However, after controlling for both between-state differences and common trends across states over time, I observe a negative relationship between public opinion and education spending levels. In circumstances in which spending levels are low relative to the state average and low relative to the year average, support for increased education spending tends to be high for that state and year. Additionally, education spending responsiveness tends to be worse in states with weak or non-existent teachers unions. Polarization and the Politics of Education: What Moves Partisan Opinion? This study explores the conditions under which partisan polarization and de-polarization occur with respect to public opinion on education issues. To guide this investigation, I pose three general questions. First, does the provision of policy-relevant information cause partisans to converge on the same position? Second, can signals from political elites with ideologically moderate views move partisans closer together? And third, does direct experience with public schools reduce the political abstraction with which one evaluates education policies? I repurpose and extend 17 existing survey experiments to help answer the first two questions, and I conduct a non-experimental data analysis to investigate the third. I find consistent evidence that the provision of education spending information has de-polarizing consequences, but the effects of ideologically moderate elite signals on polarization vary by year. I also find tentative evidence in favor of a link between direct experience with public schools and reduced polarization on education issues.

What explains the development of repressive employer coordination? Classic historical American business and labor literature focuses on institutions of labor repression and employer associations, but little systematic examination of such associations exists, particularly during the interwar period. Similarly, recent political science literature on the origins of industrial institutions underemphasizes the importance of repressive employer associations. I use new quantitative subnational evidence from the U.S. interwar period, with data from the open-shop movement in the United States at the local level after World War I. I test a variety of families of hypotheses regarding variation in repressive employer coordination, with specific data measuring the threat posed by organized labor. I find that such threats posed by unions are correlated to repressive employer associations. The results have implications for understanding local-level variation in the business repression of labor movements in the early twentieth century and contribute to our understanding of labor repressive institutions and the incentives of firms to collectively act.

Using millions of historical Census records and modern birth certificates, we document substantial immigrant assimilation into US society. Both in the past and the present, immigrants choose less foreign names for their children as they spend time in the US, erasing one-third to one-half of the names gap with natives after twenty years. Less educated immigrants and those from poorer countries start out with more foreign names but are fastest to shift toward native-sounding names. Other measures such as intermarriage and citizenship applications also point to meaningful assimilation. Immigrant children with foreign names had worse economic outcomes and married less-assimilated spouses, but these differences disappear within brother pairs, suggesting little penalty from names themselves.

Dallas County's lowest-income residentsthose making $15,000 or less annuallycommute roughly 1.5 times farther to work than any other income group. Even when compared to 25 of the most populous U.S. counties, no other county replicates Dallas County's pattern of commuting disadvantage for its lowest-income residents. What actions can Dallas County take to reduce the commuting burden of its lowest-income residents? Through a comparative study of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, commuting patterns, and housing policies in Dallas County and Washington, DC, this paper offers five key takeaways: 1. Cities with job opportunities concentrated in the central business district (CBD) offer shorter commutes for everyone, regardless of their income. 2. However, the evidence indicates that low-wage jobs are more spatially dispersed throughout urban areas than higher-wage jobs. The relative spatial dispersion of low-wage jobs increases commuting distances of low-income workers because outward or circumferential commutes-commutes away from the CBD-are typically longer commutes. The sprawl of low-wage job opportunities explains at least some of the added commuting burden of low-income residents. 3. For Dallas County's low-income workers, increased urban density is the only factor strongly associated with a shorter commute to work. This is likely because urban sub-centers are rich in relevant job opportunities. 4. Rental housing is not inherently far from low-wage job opportunities. Clusters of rental units frequently overlap with clusters of jobs. However, when rental units are ltered out by cost to include only units affordable to low-income residents, the overlap with job opportunities disappears. 5. It follows that facilitating the moves of low-income workers to more expensive urban sub-centers by ensuring that at least some units in dense new developments are affordable can effectively reduce the commuting burden of Dallas County's lowest-income residents. A current proposal in the City of Dallas called Voluntary Inclusionary Zoning (VIZ) will do just this. VIZ allows multifamily developers to build at higher densities, provided that a certain percentage of units are below market-rate. This paper highlights just one way in which VIZ can improve the lives of Dallas County's lowest-income residents.

Inequality has been rising across the world in recent decades. Latin America has been an exception to what otherwise seems to be the prevalent trend in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In the U.S. the rise in inequality since the 1970s has coincided with the rise in Mexican immigration. In Mexico, inequality has been declining since the mid-1990s, a period during which emigration to the U.S. first increased to historic highs and then declined steeply. Our review of the literature suggests that low-skilled immigration to the U.S., much of it from Mexico, has only played a minor role in rising income and wage inequality. To the extent that there is an effect, it has come through the presence of immigrants, and less as a result of immigration’s effect on natives’ wages. Immigrants’ bimodal skill distribution, with clustering at the top . . .

This report provides an overview of the issues raised at the Young Children in Immigrant Families meeting that was held in Miami, Florida on January 18-19, 2006. The meeting brought together members of the foundation community to discuss critical issues related to promoting positive outcomes for young children in immigrant families. Based on the meeting panels and discussions, this report provides a brief description of recent demographic trends related to immigration and immigrant families and explores promising strategies that foundations could support to address challenges faced by young children in these families. AUTHOR Kinsey Alden Dinan, M.A., is a Research Associate at NCCP, where her focus is on research and analysis of state and federal policies that promote the economic security and well-being of low-income children and their families. Her areas of expertise also include U.S. immigration policy and issues related to immigrant families and their children. The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) is the nation's leading public policy center dedicated to promoting the economic security, health, and well-being of America's low-income families and children. Using research to inform policy and practice, NCCP seeks to advance family-oriented solutions and the strategic use of public resources at the state and national levels to ensure positive outcomes for the next generation. Founded in 1989 as a division of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, NCCP is a nonpartisan, public interest research organization.

African-American mothers and families living in Mississippi’s small towns and rural communities would be hardest hit by the work requirement the state is seeking to impose on some Medicaid recipients. These extremely poor parents would likely lose all health coverage, since few could afford private insurance. The proposal creates a lose/lose situation: If these parents don’t find work, they would lose Medicaid coverage. If they do work the required 20 hours a week, they would make too much to qualify for Medicaid in Mississippi. As many as 5,000 people would be removed from Medicaid in the first year alone, according to an analysis of state estimates. Parents losing health coverage would be bad news for their children, as well. Mississippi has reduced its rate of uninsured children significantly in the past few years. We don’t want to reverse that progress. When parents are uninsured, children tend to go to the doctor less frequently and lose their own coverage. The family is at greater financial risk for medical debt.

The process of workers switching from occupation to occupation is a vital part of career development and self-discovery. Using the CPS and SIPP I show that occupational switching rates have declined significantly over the past 25 years. This decline has been robust for each consecutive cohort and it is more pronounced for younger workers than older workers. The decline could imply that it is becoming more diffi- cult/costly for workers to find better jobs (increases in switching costs), leaving people increasingly stuck in poorly-matched and unfulfilling careers. Paradoxically, it could also mean finding better jobs is becoming easier (due to advances in ICT), since workers in good matches are less likely to switch. This paper develops a dynamic discrete choice lifecycle model to separately identify and quantify how changes in switching costs and information over time contribute to the observed declines in occupation switching. The result is that increased switching costs drive about 72% of the decline while better information drives about 8%. The increases in switching costs have decreased average lifetime welfare for workers who enter the labor market in 2003 by roughly $35,000 per person. The total aggregate labor income loss due to high switching costs from 1993 to 2013 is $292 billion dollars.