Search Results
Journal Article
Productivity growth: causes and consequences - conference summary
This Economic Letter summarizes the papers presented at the conference "Productivity Growth: Causes and Consequences" held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on November 18-19, 2005, under the sponsorship of the Bank's Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity.
Working Paper
Fiscal Policies for Job Creation and Innovation: The Experiences of US States
This paper reviews selected fiscal policy initiatives undertaken by US states to encourage job creation and innovation. We begin with a discussion of some general considerations about the design of tax policies summarized in a tax policy design table. Four policies are reviewed: job creation tax credits, research and development tax credits, a set of tax policies targeted to the biotechnology industry, and a broad set of tax policies that attract star scientists. The experiences at the state level are used to evaluate the effectiveness of these employment and knowledge-capital tax incentives ...
Working Paper
Keeping Up with the Joneses and Staying Ahead of the Smiths: Evidence from Suicide Data
This paper empirically assesses the theory of interpersonal income comparison using a unique data set on suicide deaths in the United States. We treat suicide as a choice variable, conditional on exogenous risk factors, reflecting one’s assessment of current and expected future utility. Using this framework we examine whether differences in group-specific suicide rates are systematically related to income dispersion, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics and income level. The results strongly support the notion that individuals consider relative income in addition to absolute ...
Working Paper
Snow Belt to Sun Belt Migration: End of an Era?
Internal migration has been cited as a key channel by which societies will adapt to climate change. We show in this paper that this process has already been happening in the United States. Over the course of the past 50 years, the tendency of Americans to move from the coldest places (“snow belt”), which have become warmer, to the hottest places (“sun belt”), which have become hotter, has steadily declined. In the latest full decade, 2010-2020, both county population growth and county net migration rates were essentially uncorrelated with the historical means of either extreme heat ...
Journal Article
Are state R&D tax credits constitutional? an economic perspective
This Economic Letter discusses how the unique economic nature of R&D may bear on the question of the constitutionality of state R&D tax credits. In particular, I discuss the conditions laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court for determining the constitutionality of a state tax credit and how economic research can play a critical role in assessing whether these conditions are met.
Working Paper
The happiness - suicide paradox
Suicide is an important scientific phenomenon. Yet its causes remain poorly understood. This study documents a paradox: the happiest places have the highest suicide rates. The study combines findings from two large and rich individual-level data sets?one on life satisfaction and another on suicide deaths?to establish the paradox in a consistent way across U.S. states. It replicates the finding in data on Western industrialized nations and checks that the paradox is not an artifact of population composition or confounding factors. The study concludes with the conjecture that people may find it ...
Journal Article
News Sentiment in the Time of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing severe disruptions to daily life and economic activity. Reliable assessments of the economic fallout in this rapidly evolving situation require timely data. Existing sentiment indexes are useful indicators of current and future spending but are only available with a lag or have a short history. A new Daily News Sentiment Index provides a way to measure sentiment in real time from 1980 to today. Compared with survey-based measures of consumer sentiment, this index shows an earlier and more pronounced drop in sentiment in recent weeks.
Journal Article
U.S. fiscal policy: headwind or tailwind?
Aggregate state, local, and federal fiscal policy was expansionary during the Great Recession and the initial stages of recovery, providing a tailwind to economic growth. Federal fiscal policy in particular was more expansionary than usual, according to a historical analysis, even when the weakness of the economy is taken into account. However, during the past year, aggregate government budgetary policy has reversed course. Over the next few years, as federal fiscal policy shifts toward austerity, it is likely to be a headwind against economic growth.
Working Paper
Taxing Billionaires: Estate Taxes and the Geographical Location of the Ultra-Wealthy
We study the effect of state-level estate taxes on the geographical location of the Forbes 400 richest Americans and its implications for tax policy. We use a change in federal tax law to identify the tax sensitivity of the ultra-wealthy?s locational choices. Before 2001, some states had an estate tax and others didn?t, but the tax liability for the ultra-wealthy was independent of their domicile state due to a federal credit. In 2001, the credit was phased out and the estate tax liability for the ultra-wealthy suddenly became highly dependent on domicile state. We find the number of Forbes ...
Journal Article
Does Ultra-Low Unemployment Spur Rapid Wage Growth?
The unemployment rate ended 2018 at just under 4%, substantially lower than most estimates of the natural rate. Could such an ostensibly tight labor market lead to a sharp pickup in wage growth from its recent moderate pace, such that the relationship between wage growth and unemployment is not always linear? Investigations using state-level data show no economically significant nonlinearity between wage growth and unemployment that would predict an abrupt jump in wage growth.