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The Digest

Social and Economic Impacts of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
Article
India lost 16.7 million people. Five hundred and fifty thousand died in the US. Spain’s death rate was low, but the disease was called “Spanish flu” because the press there was first to report it. An estimated 40 million people, or 2.1 percent of the global population, died in the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–20. If a similar pandemic occurred today, it would result in 150 million deaths worldwide. In The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Pandemic: Lessons...

After Working with Female Peers, Federal Judges Hire More Women
Article
Male judges who hear more cases alongside female judges are 4.3 percentage points more likely to hire a female law clerk subsequently. Labor-market discrimination can be harmful to those who are discriminated against as well as to society at large, since discrimination can lead to inefficient allocation of workers to potential jobs. There is an active debate over the extent of such discrimination, and how to address it. In Professional Interactions and Hiring...

The Reporter

Rare Events and Financial Markets
Article
Author(s): Jessica Wachter
A rare disaster is an event for which there is a small probability of an extremely bad outcome, leading to a large deterioration in the quality of life. Examples of rare disasters include global warfare, pandemics, and financial crises. Indeed, a pandemic illustrates a key principle about the distribution of possible outcomes of such events. The laws of geometric growth imply that many contagious illnesses die out. Some however spread quickly and pervasively, in a...

The Impact of Land Institutions and Misallocation on Agricultural Productivity
Article
Author(s): Diego Restuccia
Differences in agricultural systems are highly relevant to the large income differences between rich and poor countries. There are two complementary reasons for this: poor countries are much less productive in agriculture than in the rest of the economy when compared with rich countries, and poor countries allocate most of their labor to agriculture. Whereas in rich countries less than 5 percent of the labor force works in agriculture, more than 70 percent is employed there...

The Bulletin on Retirement & Disability

The Career Effects Of Graduating In A Recession
Article
Graduating in a recession leads to large initial earnings losses. These losses, which amount to about 9 percent of annual earnings in the initial stage, eventually recede, but slowly -- halving within five years but not disappearing until about ten years after graduation. In the first ten years of work, individuals experience 70 percent of their overall wage growth, change jobs frequently, and often settle on a particular line of business or industry. Those college...

The 21st Annual Meeting of the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium
Article
  The Social Security Administration (SSA) convened its 2019 Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC) Meeting August 1-2 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Since last year’s meeting, the previously distinct Retirement Research Consortium and Disability Research Consortium merged into a single entity, the RDRC. In his opening remarks, Mark J. Warshawsky, Deputy Commissioner of Retirement and Disability Policy at SSA, highlighted a 2018...

The Bulletin on Health

Increased Medicaid Reimbursement Rates Expand Access to Care
Article
  Each $10 increase in Medicaid reimbursement per visit generated a 0.3 percentage point increase in the probability that a Medicaid recipient reported a doctor visit in the past two weeks. Medicaid recipients are known to experience lower access to care than privately insured patients. Potential explanations for the difficulties faced by Medicaid recipients in accessing care include their more complex medical needs, low Medicaid reimbursement rates,...

Effects of Medicaid Privatization in Texas
Article
  Public health insurance can be administered directly by the government or provided through private insurance firms.  In the US, over 80% of Medicaid beneficiaries and one-third of Medicare beneficiaries receive their benefits through a private health plan.  In theory, private provision may result in lower costs, since firms have an incentive to keep spending low in order to maximize profits.  One potential concern is that reduced spending may...