Inequality and Public Opinions

This talk will present a framework for understanding how, in the United States, public opinion about inequality, economic opportunity, and redistribution are related to one another in ways that are at odds with key tenets of American exceptionalism, such as American dream and free market ideologies. The framework posits that Americans connect rising and high levels of economic inequality to a restriction of economic opportunities that in turn motivates support for opportunity-enhancing policies (e.g., in education and employment). McCall and collaborators test this model using survey experiments and new survey questions in nationally representative surveys, including, for comparative purposes, in Sweden and Denmark.

Do lower minimum wages for young workers raise their employment? Evidence from a Danish discontinuity

Labour market concerns and support for immigration

Seminar Topic:

We examine whether labor market concerns causally affect people’s support for immigration. Using a large, representative sample of the US population, we first elicit beliefs about the labor market impact of immigration. To generate exogenous variation in beliefs, we then provide respondents in the treatment group with research evidence showing no adverse labor market impacts of immigration. We find that treated respondents update their beliefs about the labor market impact of immigration and become more supportive of immigration, as measured by self-reported policy views and signatures on real online petitions. We also employ an obfuscated follow-up study which hides the connection between the follow-up and the main study. The treatment effects persist in this setting where experimenter demand is mitigated. Our results demonstrate that beliefs about the labor market impact of immigration are an important causal driver of people’s support for immigration.

Speaker Bio:

Chris Roth is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Behavior and Inequality. Before, he studied economics at the University of Oxford and the University of Warwick. His fields of specialization are economics & psychology, applied microeconometrics, and political economy. He is especially interested in the role of subjective beliefs in shaping economic and political behavior. Chris’ work has examined a variety of topics, such as attitudes towards immigration, beliefs about racial discrimination, experimenter demand effects, the formation of macroeconomic expectations, and the determinants of political engagement. Methodologically, his work relies on online experiments, natural field experiments and laboratory experiments.

Inequality and Women in Politics

Inequality in political empowerment between men and women is higher than in the economic sphere. According to the Global Gender Gap Index (World Economic Forum, 2017), the world has closed only 23% of the gender gap in politics. In Europe, women represent 30% of politicians in legislative bodies and 29.5% in government cabinets (EIGE, 2018). What is the source of this inequality? Why do we care about eliminating it? Are there effective policies to promote female political empowerment and reduce gender gaps in the political arena? This lecture will present recent research addressing the above questions, while offering a picture of gender inequality in politics, and the challenges ahead.

Speaker

Prof. Alessandra Casarico (Università Bocconi)

Seminar: Trust in other people and the usage of peer platform markets

The use of online peer – to – peer marketplaces is growing rapidly. It is important to understand what drives consumers’ usage of these markets.  Based on detailed survey data collected among a representative panel of Dutch consumers, we report a significant positive relationship between trust in other people and current and expected future usage of peer platform markets (PPMs). People who in general trust others are 10 percentage points more likely to use PPMs than people who distrust others. Less uncertainty about the reliability of other persons, the quality of goods and services offered and payments can stimulate usage of PPMs.

Seminar: Pension Reform: Disentangling Retirement and Savings Responses

In January 2006, the Dutch government implemented a pension reform that substantially reduced the public pension wealth of workers born in 1950 or later. At the same time, a tax-facilitated savings plan was introduced that substantially reduced the saving costs of all workers, irrespective of birth year. This paper uses linked administrative and survey data to assess the effect of the reform on the savings and retirement expectations and realizations of two virtually identical male cohorts that differ only in treatment status, the treated having been born in 1950 and the controls having been born in 1949. We show that retirement expectations are in line with realizations and that the reform had the intended effect on the labor supply for the larger part of the workers, namely, those without sufficient means to substantially increase private savings to counter the effect of the reform. These workers, who are generally in worse health, have zero substitution rates between private and public wealth. On the other hand, there is a group of mostly high-wage workers who participate in the tax-facilitated Life Course Savings Scheme and who increase private savings to fully counter the impact of the drop in public wealth. A further, unintended side effect of the introduction of the tax-facilitated savings plan is that high wage earners who are not affected by the drop in pension wealth retire even sooner than initially planned.