VoxEU.org: Recent Articles

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• The gender gap in the COVID-19 consumption response
• Climate change, weather shocks, and migratory flows
• Bargaining advantages of autocratic leaders in conflicts between totalitarian and democratic regimes
• The limits of microfinance
• Goods inflation is likely transitory, but upside risks to longer-term inflation remain
• Assisted suicide laws increase suicide rates, especially among women
• Linking education policies to productivity
• Household spending and fiscal support during the pandemic

The gender gap in the COVID-19 consumption response Posted: Living through the COVID-19 crisis affected women and men differently. This column presents representative survey evidence from five European countries that women reduced their pre-pandemic consumption substantially more than men. Perceptions of infection risk and precautionary saving motives are only a partial explanation. Instead, men report realising that they had not missed certain goods and services during lockdown, while women attribute their reduced expenditures to perceived financial constraints – suggesting that women felt the economic consequences of the pandemic more intensely than men.

Climate change, weather shocks, and migratory flows Posted: A high dependence on agriculture has left rural households in sub-Saharan Africa particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. This column combines a multi-country panel dataset with precipitation records to re-examine the growing season in five sub-Saharan African countries, and the impact of frequent and extreme drought on a household's decision to migrate. While the effects of recent weather shocks were modest, the cumulative impact of persistent exposure to drought over several years led to a significant increase in the probability of migrating.

Bargaining advantages of autocratic leaders in conflicts between totalitarian and democratic regimes Posted: Russia's invasion of Ukraine has stoked tensions between Western democracies and Russia, presenting the risk of an explicit conflictual situation. This column explores the bargaining advantages of democratically elected leaders relative to autocratic ones. The typically shorter terms in office of democratic leaders and greater accountability to their populations contributes to a greater aversion to armed conflict, as does the freer flow of information and typically greater aversion to military casualties. This lends insight to Western democracies' refrainment from direct involvement in the Ukraine war.

The limits of microfinance Posted: Microfinance has helped millions of the world's poor build better lives. But can it help the world's poorest people, who spend most of their lives growing food to feed their families, to diversify into other jobs? Jack Thiemel tells Tim Phillips about the impact of one of these projects, and what it tells us about the best ways to help the ultra-poor. Download the free DP and read more about this research: Bandiera, O, Burgess, R, Deserranno, E, Morel, R, Rasul, I, Sulaiman, M and Thiemel, J. 2022. 'Microfinance and Diversification'.  CEPR

Goods inflation is likely transitory, but upside risks to longer-term inflation remain Posted: Supply chain disruptions and labour shortages coupled with demand-side pressures have seen goods inflation soaring since early 2021. This column shows that while goods inflation used to contribute to permanently higher headline inflation, such as during the Great Inflation of the 1970s, since the early 1990s it has become predominantly transitory. The current high goods inflation can therefore be expected to be somewhat short-lived. Nonetheless, the authors document that the upside risks to longer-term aggregate and sector-specific inflation remain greater than usual.

Assisted suicide laws increase suicide rates, especially among women Posted: Richard Posner argued that legalising assisted suicide may have the counter-intuitive effect of reducing unassisted and possibly even total suicide rates. This column examines the empirical evidence for this idea using data from ten US states that implemented an assisted suicide law up to the end of 2019. In contrast to Posner's hypothesis, the real-world data suggest that assisted suicide laws lead to a substantial increase in total suicide rates and, if anything, are associated with an increase even in unassisted suicides. This effect is most pronounced amongst women.

Linking education policies to productivity Posted: Investing in education and human capital is an important ingredient for economic growth. This column constructs a new aggregate stock measure of human capital data using OECD data on adult skills, quality of education, and mean years of schooling. The relative weights of quality and quantity are estimated rather than imposed, as they are in the existing literature. Improvements in human capital are estimated to boost productivity significantly, but only with long lags. Furthermore, simulating the impact of pre-primary education on human capital and productivity demonstrates the usefulness of the new measure for policy analysis.

Household spending and fiscal support during the pandemic Posted: The COVID-19 pandemic shock posed an enormous challenge to fiscal policy in supporting household consumption. This column discusses the extent to which the pandemic-related fiscal interventions influenced consumers' spending behaviour. Using new high-frequency data, the authors find that improving perceptions about the adequacy of fiscal interventions incentivised spending. Importantly, this perceptions channel operated equally strongly for consumers who received government support and for those who did not. Consumers who viewed the adequacy of fiscal packages more favourably also expected higher future incomes and easier access to credit, and did not anticipate an increase in taxes.

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