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Social Science > Demography

You are looking at 1 - 3 of 3 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
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Cover IMF Working Papers
Preferences for Reforms: Endowments vs. Beliefs
Mr. Romain A Duval
,
Yi Ji
,
Mr. Chris Papageorgiou
,
Mr. Ippei Shibata
, and
Mr. Antonio Spilimbergo
Are preferences for reforms driven by individuals’ own endowments or beliefs? To address this question, we conducted a cross-country survey on people’s opinions on employment protection legislation—an area where reform has proven to be difficult and personal interests are at stake. We find that individuals’ beliefs matter more than their own endowments and personal pay-offs. A randomized information treatment confirms that beliefs explain views about reform, but beliefs can change with new information. Our results are robust to several robustness tests, including to alternative estimation techniques and samples.
Keywords:
political opinions; preferences; political economy; regulation; reform; employment protection; beliefs; ideology; endowments; surveys.; IMF working paper research Department; EPL deregulation; copyright page; individuals' belief; knowledge indicator; Labor markets; Labor force; Southern Europe; Northern Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
COVID-19 Vaccines: A Shot in Arm for the Economy
Mr. Niels-Jakob H Hansen
and
Rui Mano
We quantify the effect of vaccinations on economic activity in the United States using weekly county level data covering the period end-2020 to mid-2021. Causal effects are identified through instrumenting vaccination rates with county-level pharmacy density interacted with state-level vaccine allocations, and by including county and state-time fixed effects to control for unobserved factors. We find that vaccinations are a significant and substantial shot in the arm of the economy. Specifically, an increase of initiated vaccination rates of 1 percentage point increases weekly consumer spending by 0.6 percent and reduces weekly initial unemployment claims by 0.004 percentage points of the 2019 labor force. Vaccinations also increase workrelated mobility. Importantly, we find that the effects vary with county characteristics. Specifically, urban counties and counties with initially worse socioeconomic conditions and lower education levels exhibit larger effects of vaccinations. This way, vaccinations are also a fair shot in the arm for the economy, which highlights that equitable distribution of vaccines is important to reduce inequality. Our results are specific to the United States, but hold important lessons for the expected economic impact of vaccinations in other countries.
Keywords:
COVID-19; pandemics; vaccinations.; initiated vaccination rate; IMF working papers; vaccine allocation; effect of vaccination; vaccination rate; Unemployment; Labor force; Unemployment benefits
Cover IMF Working Papers
Poland: The Social Safety Net During the Transition
Mr. Xavier Maret
and
Mr. Gerd Schwartz
This paper argues that the brunt of the reform-induced increase in Polish social expenditures has been borne by social insurance arrangements (mainly pensions and unemployment compensation) rather than by social assistance schemes targeted to the poor or more temporary social safety net schemes. This is largely due to ease of access to social security and its more attractive benefit structure. Much of recent social expenditure reform had an ad-hoc nature and was driven by the need to alleviate looming financial distress. A major policy challenge is to avoid a further burdening of social security by needs that should be addressed by basic income support and emergency assistance policies or by general transfers (e.g., family allowances). Current reform needs are illustrated by using unemployment benefits and pensions as examples.
Keywords:
WP; pension system; unemployment compensation; dependency ratio; early retirement; labor market; retirement age; social security; gross income; occupational pension; Pension spending; Pensions; Social assistance spending; Aging; Unemployment benefits; Eastern Europe; Western Europe