Abstract There are few opportunities, outside of a laboratory setting, to study how workers respond to the demands of task switching. A priori, task switching might either harm or benefit productivity, and thus it becomes an empirical question. Faced with difficulties in the measurement of productivity and task switching, we turn to an industry that produces accurate, detailed, and comparable measures of worker production, namely starting pitchers in Major League Baseball. Our results suggest that task switching, between pitching and batting, can improve subsequent pitching performance, though heterogeneity in this effect is present. We discuss implications for wider labour market settings.

Abstract In this study, we estimate the tax-price elasticity of charitable giving and address the bias caused by the existence of unreported donations and self-selection regarding reporting on giving. To eliminate this bias, we propose a simple estimation method based on intention-to-treat analysis. Using our proposed method and the exogenous variation in tax incentives in the 2014 South Korean tax reform, we estimate the price elasticity to be −3.5 for the amount of total giving, which is more elastic than that in the standard results that do not account for unreported donations and self-selection. This result implies that the 2014 tax reform reduced the total amount of giving and that tax incentives should be expanded.

Abstract While public–private partnerships (PPPs) have the potential of bridging infrastructure gaps in developing countries, frequent contract renegotiations and terminations pose significant fiscal challenges. This article investigates whether government fiscal risk-taking—through guarantees or subsidies—along with the strength of underlying fiscal institutions can explain the high incidence of contract distress. Employing matching and a control function method, the analysis reveals that the contract hazard ratio increases by a factor of 3 when government guarantees are issued for PPPs. Furthermore, using a causal survival forest model, it assesses treatment effect heterogeneity of the fiscal supports. The results show that the risk of contract disputes is most pronounced in developing countries at the bottom quintile of public investment management capacity. These findings underscore the critical role of robust infrastructure governance as a prerequisite for effectively leveraging the benefits of PPPs.

Abstract This article investigates the effects of labor market concentration on employment, job security, and wages. By constructing a flow-based index, I find that concentration is generally low across markets but varies across industries. Then, I use a Two-Stage Least Squares (TSLS) strategy based on the different exposures of industries to horizontal mergers. I find that mergers increase concentration, which in turn reduces wages by −0.14 and −0.07 and hires by −0.77 and −0.68%age points. I also find that (1) concentration does not affect the likelihood of a permanent hire but increases the probability that, when a temporary worker is renewed, the contract is again temporary; (2) men are affected by concentration only through wages, while women are less affected but also through job security; (3) estimates magnitude increases in concentration levels.

Abstract Do female heads of government make different policy choices? In this article, we show that gender matters in the definition of international trade policy. We focus on an increasingly used instrument of trade policy, namely contingent protection, that is decided unilaterally by governments. Using panel data covering 149 countries over the period 1995–2019, we provide evidence that female heads of government have been significantly more intensive users of contingent protection. Our results suggest that this gender effect is unlikely to stem from gendered preferences against free trade but rather from an incentive for female heads of government to overcome gender stereotypes in international relations.

Abstract We analyse gender differences in response to social pressure. Our setting provides information on decision-making by both female and male referees towards rewarding extra time in football. The exact score at the time of the decision allows us to evaluate how much it favours the home team and, hence, pleases the audience. Controlling for in-game information that affects the length of extra time per game rules, we find that (especially young) female referees are more susceptible to social pressure and reward less extra time when the home team needs the game to end to secure a win. To confirm that social pressure from the audience drives our findings, we demonstrate that female referees tend to favour home teams more in games with high attendance.

Abstract Placing state-owned firms into the private sector is understood to yield productivity gains, but this effect is seldom decomposed into changes in ownership (privatization) and changes in firm characteristics to match privately owned firms without changing ownership (marketization). This article presents an empirical assessment of Chinese firm-level data using a counterfactual design approach to identify if the Chinese ‘grasp the large and let go of the small’ industrial policy reform initiative reduced the efficiency gap between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises and whether any gains were associated with privatization or marketization. Our empirical results show that marketization was associated with stronger increases in productivity than was privatization, suggesting that industrial reforms should consolidate assets, enhance cash flows, and reduce the need for external liquidity rather than focusing on changing ownership.

Abstract In this article, we reassess the relationship between inequality and human development, focusing on the differential role of concentration of income at different parts of the distribution. To do so, we rely on a large global panel of countries over the last decades including information on economic and human development, as well as detailed information on the distribution of income within countries. We show how the concentration of income at the bottom and top, rather than overall inequality, is negatively associated with human development. This result highlights the relevance of income shares that go to the middle part of the income distribution and seems especially important in what refers to human capital accumulation in middle- and low-income countries, and health in high-income countries. Our main results remain significant under different specifications and estimation techniques and after controlling for several country-specific characteristics, including the quality of institutions.

Abstract We study the long-run effects of fiscal policy on growth in a panel of twenty-eight European countries using annual data over the last 25 years. We draw on recent developments from the panel time series econometrics literature and introduce the unobserved common factor framework for the estimation of the growth effects of fiscal policy. This approach accounts for the country-specific impact of global macroeconomic shocks and other sources of unobserved time-varying heterogeneity. Our results indicate that fiscal policy has a significant impact on growth and highlight the importance of tax policy instruments. We furthermore demonstrate that the commonly used estimation approaches lead to a significant underestimation of the effects of fiscal policy changes on growth in our sample. Lastly, our empirical results are robust to substantial changes to the sample.

Abstract Using a district-level panel constructed from five waves of decennial Indian censuses covering 1971–2011, we examine the medium-term (1991–2001) and long-term (1991–2011) impacts of the 1991 Indian trade liberalization on marriage and fertility rates among young women aged 15–34. We exploit the fact that countrywide tariff reductions varied across industries creating exogenous local labor market shocks based on the initial employment composition of the district. We find heterogeneous results across urban and rural areas. We find that urban areas of the districts that experienced larger tariff cuts experienced relative increases in marriage rates compared to the districts that experienced smaller tariff cuts. Tariff cuts positively affect workforce participation among both young men and women in urban areas. However, there is no impact of tariff cuts on the marriage rate or workforce participation among young population (15–34) in rural areas. In contrast, tariff cuts reduced fertility rates mostly in rural areas.