A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that lockdowns improve air quality, but the effects appear to dissipate after ten weeks.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: Little evidence currently exists on the effects of COVID-19 on air quality in poorer countries, where most air pollution-linked deaths occur. We offer the first study that examines the pandemic’s impacts on improving air quality in Vietnam, a lower-middle income country with worsening air pollution. Employing the Regression Discontinuity Design method to analyze a rich database that we compile from satellite air pollution data and data from various other sources, we find the concentration of NO2 to decrease by 24 to 32 percent two weeks after the COVID-19 lockdown. While this finding is robust to different measures of air quality and model specifications, the positive effects of the lockdown appear to dissipate after ten weeks. We also find that mobility restrictions are a potential channel for improved air quality. Finally, our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that two weeks after the lockdown, the economic gains from better air quality are roughly $0.6 billion US dollars.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds large negative effects on welfare receipts for an Australian reform that imposed job search requirements as a condition of unemployment benefit receipt with expected large labor supply consequences.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: Many countries impose job search requirements as a condition of unemployment benefit receipt, but there is relatively little evidence on the efficacy of these requirements. Australian reforms in 1995 and 2003 saw groups of welfare recipients newly subjected to job search requirements, providing an opportunity to identify their effects on welfare receipt. Using this quasi-experimental design and administrative data, we find negative effects on welfare receipt for the mature-age partnered women targeted by the reforms. We also find large negative effects on welfare receipt of their partners, suggesting family labor supply decisions were considerably affected.
The GLO Discussion Paper of the Month of August demonstrates how to use administrative data to estimate the number of deaths, the number of infections, and mortality rates from Covid-19 in Lombardia, the hot spot of the disease in Italy and Europe.
Author Abstract: In this paper I use administrative data to estimate the number of deaths, the number of infections, and mortality rates from Covid-19 in Lombardia, the hot spot of the disease in Italy and Europe. The information is relevant for the policy maker, to make decisions, and for the public, to adopt appropriate behaviors. As the available data suffer from sample selection bias I use partial identification to derive these quantities. Partial identification combines assumptions with the data to deliver a set of admissible values, or bounds. Stronger assumptions yield stronger conclusions, but decrease the credibility of the inference. Therefore, I start with assumptions that are always satisfied, then I impose increasingly more restrictive assumptions. Using my preferred bounds, during March 2020 in Lombardia there were between 10,000 and 18,500 more deaths than before 2020. The narrowest bounds of mortality rates from Covid-19 are between 0.1% and 7.5%, much smaller than the 17.5% discussed for long time. This finding suggests that the case of Lombardia may not be as special as some argue.
GLO DP Team Senior Editors: Matloob Piracha (University of Kent) & GLO; Klaus F. Zimmermann (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University and Bonn University). Managing Editor: Magdalena Ulceluse, University of Groningen. DP@glabor.org
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on GLO Discussion Paper of the Month on ‘True Covid-19 mortality rates from administrative data’ authored by GLO Fellow Domenico Depalo & all GLO DPs of August.
A new GLO Discussion Paperusing data for Germany finds that negative emotions are statistically and significantly associated with the respondent’s immigration concerns.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: Despite being a regular suspect, a causal role of residents’ emotions in predicting their opposition to international immigration has not been investigated. Using the individual-level panel data from Germany, we study the impact of the individual’s experience of negative emotions (sadness, fear, and anger) on immigration concerns and bridge this gap in the literature. After controlling for person fixed effects and a battery of individual-level and macroeconomic controls, we find that negative emotions are statistically and significantly associated with the respondent’s immigration concerns. The association holds for male as well as female respondents. To estimate the causal effects of negative emotions, we exploit the exogenous variation in negative emotions induced by the death of a parent or the change in averages of daily temperature and employ IV fixed effects regressions. Our findings suggest that, while within-person changes in the respondent’s feelings of anger affect immigration concerns among all respondents, the feelings of sadness and fear affect immigration concerns only among females. The impact of sadness and fear is more forceful among females who are not always-working during the sample period, older in age, and rarely use online social media.
The successful candidate will undertake econometric analysis to explore regional inequalities in health in the UK using detailed biomarker data available in a large national representative social science datasets. Contact: GLO Fellow Apostolos Davillas.
A new GLO Discussion Paperfinds for Portugal that workers’ earnings and employment are significantly negatively affected by China’s competition, but only through the indirect ’market-stealing’ channel. In contrast to earlier evidence, the direct effects of Chinese imports are mostly non-significant.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: The increasing range and quality of China’s exports is a major development internationally with potentially far-reaching effects. In this paper, on top of the direct labor market effects of imports from China studied in previous research, we also measure the indirect effects stemming from increased export competition in third markets. Our findings, based on matched employer-employee data of Portugal covering the 1991-2008 period, indicate that workers’ earnings and employment are significantly negatively affected by China’s competition, but only through the indirect ’market-stealing’ channel. In contrast to earlier evidence, the direct effects of Chinese imports are mostly non-significant. The results are robust to a number of checks and also highlight particular groups more affected by indirect competition, including women, older and less educated workers, and workers in larger, older and domestic firms.
Posted inNews, Research|Comments Off on Labor Market Effects of Competing with China – at Home and Abroad. Not much of an issue for the Portuguese economy.
A new GLO Discussion Paperstudies both the physical and mental dimensions of health among European-born emigrants over 50, who originate from seven European countries and now live elsewhere in Europe.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: The Healthy Immigrant Paradox found in the literature by comparing the health of immigrants to that of natives in the host country, may suffer from serious cultural biases. Our study evades such biases by utilizing a destination-origin framework, in which we compare the health of emigrants to that of their compatriots who stay in the country of origin. Isolating cultural effects can best gauge self-selection and host country effects on the health of emigrants with longer time abroad. We study both the physical and mental dimensions of health among European-born emigrants over 50, who originate from seven European countries and now live elsewhere in Europe. We use the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and apply multi-level modeling. Regarding the physical health we find positive self-selection, beneficial adaptation effects, and effects from other observables for some but not all countries. With the notable exception of the German émigrés, we cannot confirm selection in mental health, while additional years abroad have only weak effects. Overall, living abroad has some favorable effects on the health of older emigrants. The economic similarity of countries and the free intra-European mobility mitigate the need for initial self-selection in health and facilitate the migration experience abroad.
GLO Country Lead Thailand Ruttiya Bhula-or (Chulalongkorn University) and GLO Southeast Asia Lead M Niaz Asadullah (University of Malaya) are heading a Chula-GLO Publication Workshop on “Publishing in high impact factor journals”. The event takes place on 16 September 2020, 9-12 am (Bangkok time).
Posted inEvents, News, Teaching|Comments Off on Chula-GLO Publication Workshop: Advancing knowledge and promoting the dissemination of labor-related research through publishing in high impact factor journals on 16 Sept 2020, 9-12 am (Bangkok time).
A new paper published in the Journal of Population Economics investigates for the Italian case how to identify the pandemic early in “dirty” data and how to measure the success of lockdowns.
Luca Bonacini, Giovanni Gallo & Fabrizio Patriarca
Journal of Population Economics (2020), published ONLINE FIRST. PDF free accessible. Based on GLO Discussion Paper No. 534, 2020
GLO Fellow Fabrizio Patriarca
Author Abstract: Identifying structural breaks in the dynamics of COVID-19 contagion is crucial to promptly assess policies and evaluate the effectiveness of lockdown measures. However, official data record infections after a critical and unpredictable delay. Moreover, people react to the health risks of the virus and also anticipate lockdowns. All of this makes it complex to quickly and accurately detect changing patterns in the virus’s infection dynamic. We propose a machine learning procedure to identify structural breaks in the time series of COVID-19 cases. We consider the case of Italy, an early-affected country that was unprepared for the situation, and detect the dates of structural breaks induced by three national lockdowns so as to evaluate their effects and identify some related policy issues. The strong but significantly delayed effect of the first lockdown suggests a relevant announcement effect. In contrast, the last lockdown had significantly less impact. The proposed methodology is robust as a real-time procedure for early detection of the structural breaks: the impact of the first two lockdowns could have been correctly identified just the day after they actually occurred.
LEAD ARTICLE OF ISSUE 4: Yun Qiu, Xi Chen & Wei Shi, Impacts of social and economic factors on the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China Journal of Population Economics33, 1127–1172 (2020). OPEN ACCESS
ANOTHER COVID-19 ARTICLE JUST PUBLISHED ONLINE FIRST. PDF free accessible. Fabio Milani: COVID-19 outbreak, social response, and early economic effects: A global VAR analysis of cross-country interdependencies. Journal of Population Economics, (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-020-00792-4
Posted inNews, Research|Comments Off on What can we learn from Italy? Identifying policy challenges of COVID-19 in hardly reliable data and judging the success of lockdown measures.
TheGLO Virtual Seminar is a monthly internal GLO research event chaired by GLO Director Matloob Piracha and hosted by the GLO partner institution University of Kent. The results are available on the GLO website and the GLO News section, where also the video of the presentation is posted. All GLO related videos are also available in the GLO YouTube channel. (To subscribe go there.)
The last seminar was given by Kompal Sinha on Paid Parental Leave and Maternal Mental Health. Below find a report, the video of the seminar and the presentation slides.
Announcement/forthcoming seminar: October 1, 2020:London/UKat 1-2 pm —Alfonso Flores-Lagunes (Syracuse University and GLO) Topic: To be announced. Registration details will be provided in time.
Report
Paid Parental Leave and Maternal Mental Health
GLO Virtual Seminar on September 3, 2020: Kompal Sinha Macquarie University and GLO Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics GLO Cluster Lead “Development, Health, Inequality and Behavior” Presentation Slides. Video of Seminar.
Related paper: The presentation of Kompal Sinha is based on a joint paper with Anam Bilgrami and Henry Cutler of the Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University, on “The impact of introducing a national scheme for Paid Parental Leave on maternal mental health outcomes“, forthcoming Health Economics.
Abstract
Paid maternity leave is an essential component of a progressive society. It can enhance postnatal health, improve mother and child wellbeing, and deliver better labour market outcomes for mothers. We evaluate the impact of the introduction of Australia’s Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme in 2011 and complementary Dad and Partner Pay (DAPP) in 2013 on maternal mental health. Using a sample of 1,480 births to eligible, partnered women between 2004-2016 and a range of mental health outcomes from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, we find depression likelihood reduced significantly in post-reform years. When focusing on post-DAPP years and women whose partners had concurrent access to DAPP, significant mental health improvements were found across a wider range of measures including the Mental Component Summary (MCS) score and specific SF-36 items that have a high sensitivity for detecting major depression. Subgroup analysis suggests significant improvements applied specifically to first-time mothers and mothers with employer-paid maternity leave and unpaid leave entitlements. These results suggest that an increase in PPL and DAPP entitlements for mothers without access to employer-paid and unpaid leave entitlements, particularly those in less secure employment, may further reduce postnatal depression and improve health equity in Australia.
Posted inEvents, News|Comments Off on GLO Fellow Kompal Sinha of Macquarie University spoke about ‘Paid Parental Leave and Maternal Mental Health’. Video from the GLO Virtual Seminar Series.
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DP of the Month August
