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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Behavioral Economics

Research Collection School Of Economics

2020

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Decomposing Duration Dependence: Skill Depreciation Vs. Statistical Discrimination, Ismail Baydur, Jianhuan Xu Dec 2020

Decomposing Duration Dependence: Skill Depreciation Vs. Statistical Discrimination, Ismail Baydur, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops a random matching model with unobserved worker heterogeneity and learning about worker types from unemployment duration. The model features negative duration dependence that stems from unobserved heterogeneity as well as statistical discrimination and skill depreciation. We estimate our model using micro-level data from Current Population Survey (CPS) and we decompose the contribution of each channel to job finding rates by duration. We find that shutting down statistical discrimination substantially increases the job finding rates of the long-term unemployed while skill depreciation mainly affects the medium-term unemployed.

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Natural Disasters And Domestic Violence: A Study Of The 2015 Nepal Earthquake, Arpita Khanna, Tomoki Fujii Dec 2020

Natural Disasters And Domestic Violence: A Study Of The 2015 Nepal Earthquake, Arpita Khanna, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study explores the link between exposure to an earthquake and the incidence of intimate partner violence using two rounds of Demographic and Health Surveys data in Nepal. Using a differences-in-differences estimation, we find that exposure to the earthquake lead to a statistically and economically significant increase in the incidence of intimate partner violence in urban areas, which is attributable to the increase in stress felt by the victims. We argue that the heterogeneity of the impact between the urban and rural areas would be partly due to the differences in the reconstruction processes and assistance provided.

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Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel©, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu Nov 2020

Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel©, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Housing affordability for elderly homeowners involves an entirely different set of issues as compared to housing affordability for first-time homeowners. To afford to ‘age-in-place’ may require homeowners to access channels that enable them to withdraw their housing equity to finance consumption in retirement. We utilize data from the Singapore Life Panel© survey to empirically investigate the impact of housing equity on the consumption of elderly households. Based on panel analysis, we find housing equity value has no significant impact on non-durable consumption for elderly people. The conclusion holds for a battery of robustness checks. Moreover, heterogeneity analyses based on subsamples …

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Does Early Access To Pension Wealth Improve Health?, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh Oct 2020

Does Early Access To Pension Wealth Improve Health?, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the health impacts of early access to public pension wealth by exploiting a unique policy in Singapore allowing individuals to withdraw a proportion of their pension savings after their 55th birthday. For the identification, we employ a regression discontinuity design by comparing individuals before and after their 55th birthday. To address anticipated and lagged health impacts, we adopt the donut regression discontinuity approach. Using nationally representative monthly panel data, we find that early access to pension wealth improves self‐reported overall health.

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Covid-19, Lockdown, And The Dynamics Of Subjective Well-Being, Terence C. Cheng, Kim, Kanghyock Koh Sep 2020

Covid-19, Lockdown, And The Dynamics Of Subjective Well-Being, Terence C. Cheng, Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide novel evidence on how the COVID-19 global health and economic crisis is affecting overall life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction using data from a monthly longitudinal survey of middle-aged and older Singaporeans. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we document large declines in overall life satisfaction and domain-specific satisfaction during the COVID-19 outbreak, except satisfaction with health. These declines coincide with the introduction of a nationwide lockdown, with life satisfaction remaining below its pre-pandemic levels even after the lockdown is lifted. We also find that individuals who report a drop in household income during the COVID-19 outbreak experience a decline in …

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Spending Impact Of Covid-19 Stimulus Payments: Evidence From Card Transaction Data In South Korea, Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Wonjun Lyou Sep 2020

Spending Impact Of Covid-19 Stimulus Payments: Evidence From Card Transaction Data In South Korea, Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Wonjun Lyou

Research Collection School Of Economics

Various countries have implemented transfer programs to individuals since the Covid-19 outbreaks. However, the extent to which such transfers alleviate economic recessions is unclear. This paper analyzes a South Korean program, which provided vouchers redeemable only at small local businesses. We find that, due to the program, over 30% of households across all income groups increased their food and overall household spending, but the usage restriction may have affected consumer choice, distorting business competition. While the employment and sales of small businesses improved, the program’s fiscal sustainability is in question because of the large tax exemption.

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Fertility And Rural Electrification In Bangladesh, Tomoki Fujii, Abu S. Shonchoy Mar 2020

Fertility And Rural Electrification In Bangladesh, Tomoki Fujii, Abu S. Shonchoy

Research Collection School Of Economics

We use contemporaneous and retrospective panel datasets to examine the household-level relationship between fertility and access to electricity in Bangladesh. We find that access to electricity reduces fertility by about 0.2 children over a period of five years or total fertility rate by about 1.2 in most estimates. This finding is robust with respect to the choice of the estimation method, the choice of sample, and potential presence of endogeneity. The finding also corroborates the theoretical predictions on time use and consumption pattern derived from our model of electrification and fertility. The results also suggest that television is an important …

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Geography, Trade, And Internal Migration In China, Lin Ma, Yang Tang Jan 2020

Geography, Trade, And Internal Migration In China, Lin Ma, Yang Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper quantitatively studies the local welfare impacts of inter-city migration in China. We structurally estimate a trade model with endogenous migration decisions using data from 279 prefecture-level cities. The results suggest that inflows of migrant workers increase welfare in the destination cities between 2000 and 2005 despite their negative impacts on congestion and nominal wage. The positive local impacts of migration depend crucially on the endogenous firm entry. The positive impacts in the destination cities also spill over to the neighboring cities through inter-city trade, often leading to higher welfare gains in the nearby cities than the destination cities …

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