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Journal Article
Texas Sees Job, Output Gains from 2018 U.S. Tax Cut
Texas is among the top 10 states in terms of tax stimulus received from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The law likely played an important role in the state’s stronger subsequent job growth relative to the nation.
Journal Article
Texas twist: why did state's unemployment fall below nation's?
Symbolic of Texas’ relative economic health during the recent recession, the unemployment rate has trailed U.S. joblessness by an average 1 percentage point since January 2007.
Journal Article
Texas Joblessness Persists Above U.S. Rate, Weighing on Black, Hispanic Workers
Texas lost proportionately fewer jobs than the nation during the pandemic, yet the unemployment rate rose above the national rate—a gap that has persisted. Women and minorities were affected disproportionately at the outset. While the gender unemployment gap has largely dissipated, the gaps between white workers and both Black and Hispanic workers have persisted above pre-COVID-19 levels.
Working Paper
Labor Market Effects of Credit Constraints: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
We exploit the 1998 and 2003 constitutional amendment in Texas—allowing home equity loans and lines of credit for non-housing purposes—as natural experiments to estimate the effect of easier credit access on the labor market. Using state-level as well as micro data and the synthetic control approach, we find that easier access to housing credit led to a notably lower labor force participation rate between 1998 and 2007. We show that our findings are remarkably robust to improved synthetic control methods based on insights from machine learning. We explore treatment effect heterogeneity ...
Journal Article
Strength of economy, limited benefit eligibility in Texas curb long-term unemployment rate
An unemployment rate with a persistent long-term component can be more detrimental to the economy than the same jobless rate with a smaller share of long-term unemployed.
Working Paper
Nonparametric estimation of the impact of taxes on female labor supply
Econometric models with nonlinear budgets sets frequently arise in the study of impact of taxation on labor supply. Blomquist and Newey (2002) have suggested a nonparametric method to estimate the uncompensated wage and income effects when the budget set is nonlinear. This paper extends their nonparametric estimation method to censored dependent variables. The modified method is applied to estimate female wage and income elasticities using the 1987 PSID. I find evidence of bias if the nonlinearity in the budget set is ignored. The median compensated elasticity is estimated at 1.19 (with a ...
Journal Article
Does foreign direct investment help emerging economies?
Working Paper
Do restrictions on home equity extraction contribute to lower mortgage defaults? evidence from a policy discontinuity at the Texas border
Texas is the only US state that limits home equity borrowing to 80 percent of home value. This paper exploits this policy discontinuity around the Texas? interstate borders and uses a multidimensional regression discontinuity design framework to find that limits on home equity borrowing in Texas lowered the likelihood of mortgage default by about 1 percentage point for all mortgages and 2-4 percentage points for nonprime mortgages. Estimated nonprime mortgage default hazards within 25 to 100 miles on either side of the Texas? border are about 15 percent smaller as one crosses into Texas.
Journal Article
Globalizing Texas: exports and high-tech jobs
Working Paper
Did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Create Jobs and Stimulate Growth?
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 is the most extensive overhaul of the U.S. income tax code since the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Existing estimates of TCJA’s economic impact are based on economic projections using pre-TCJA estimates of tax effects. I exploit plausibly exogenous state-level variation in tax changes from TCJA and find that an income tax cut equaling 1 percent of GDP led to a 1.2-percentage-point faster job growth and nearly 1.5 percentage points higher GDP growth over two years following the law change. While the estimates are imprecise, the overall pattern suggests that ...