Luca Di Gialleonardo, Mauro Marè, Antonello Motroni, Francesco Porcelli 04 February 2021
It was clear from early on in the Covid-19 pandemic that combatting it would require governments to monitor mass transit, schools, workplaces, and large public events. Less appreciated was the role played by social capital and family ties in the spread of the virus. This column provides an empirical analysis demonstrating a robust positive relationship between family ties and the contagion rate across the world. Death rates, by contrast, are not affected by family ties or other social factors, but by structural variables – from geography and GDP to median age and available hospital beds.
Jerónimo Carballo, Kyle Handley, Nuno Limão
Five years after the Brexit referendum, research has evaluated its impact so far on UK trade. The findings show that the ongoing Brexit uncertainty has already reduced UK trade in goods and services before any actual policy changes took place. This disintegration is present in UK trade, with countries potentially affected by trade policy changes including the EU and other UK preferential trade partners. Firms in these countries faced increased trade policy uncertainty, leading to depressed export investments.
We discuss the importance of policy stability and commitments, and their effects on business decisions and investment generally (Bloom et al. 2018, 2019). We focus on recent evidence drawn for the impact of Brexit uncertainty on UK trade in goods and services and conclude with some policy remarks.
Biden s immigration reforms deserve conservatives support Print this article
On the first day of his presidency, President Biden signed executive orders reversing many of former President Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions and announced plans to introduce major immigration reform legislation. Immigration reform is long overdue, and free-market conservatives should support much of what Biden proposes.
One of Biden’s first executive orders reversed Trump’s restriction on immigration from predominantly Muslim and African countries. Those concerned with national security need not worry. In prior academic research, published in October 2019 in the
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, three co-authors and I examined migration data from 170 countries over 25 years (1990-2015) and found no relationship between immigration from Muslim majority or conflict-torn countries and terrorism in the destination countries.
Marco Francesconi, Robert Pollak, Domenico Tabasso
People care about their social position, their consumption practices, and their income relative to others (Duesenberry 1949, Easterlin 1974 and 1995, Blanchflower and Oswald 2004). But how well do they actually understand the income of peers in their reference groups – such as people from the same cohort, those working in the same sector or firm, living in the same city or neighbourhood, or with the same level of education – and their own position relative to their peers? How do they view the (un)fairness of inequality within these different reference groups, and to what extent do their views on the fairness of inequality depend on their own social position within these groups?