Publications

2011
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2011. “Constitutional Moments in Governing Science and Technology.” Science and Engineering Ethics. Science and Engineering Ethics. Publisher's Version Abstract

Scholars in science and technology studies (STS) have recently been called upon to advise governments on the design of procedures for public engagement. Any such instrumental function should be carried out consistently with STS’s interpretive and normative obligations as a social science discipline. This article illustrates how such threefold integration can be achieved by reviewing current US participatory politics against a seventy-year backdrop of tacit constitutional developments in governing science and technology. Two broad cycles of constitutional adjustment are discerned: the first enlarging the scope of state action as well as public participation, with liberalized rules of access and sympathetic judicial review; the second cutting back on the role of the state, fostering the rise of an academic-industrial complex for technology transfer, and privatizing value debates through increasing delegation to professional ethicists. New rules for public engagement in the United Sates should take account of these historical developments and seek to counteract some of the anti-democratic tendencies observable in recent decades.

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Hochschild, Jennifer L., Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch. 2011. “Destabilizing the American Racial Order.” Daedalus. Daedalus. Publisher's Version Abstract

Since America’s racial disparities remain as deep-rooted after Barack Obama’s election as they were before, it was only a matter of time until the myth of postracism exploded in our collective national face.
–Peniel Joseph, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 27, 2009

In electing me, the voters picked the candidate of their choice, not their race, which foreshadowed the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008. We’ve come a long way in Memphis, and ours is a story of postracial politics.
–Congressman Steve Cohen, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, September 18, 2009

Race is not going to be quite as big a deal as it is now; in the America of tomorrow . . . race will not be synonymous with destiny.
–Ellis Cose, Newsweek, January 11, 20101

Are racial divisions and commitments in the United States just as deep-rooted as they were before the 2008 presidential election, largely eliminated, or persistent but on the decline? As the epigraphs show, one can easily find each of these pronouncements, among others, in the American public media. Believing any one of them—or any other, beyond the anodyne claim that this is “a time of transition”—is likely to be a mistake, since there will be almost as much evidence against as for it. Instead, it is more illuminating to try to sort out what is changing in the American racial order, what persists or is becoming even more entrenched, and what is likely to affect the balance between change and continuity. That, at any rate, is what we propose to do (if briefly) in this article.

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Hochschild, Jennifer L., Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch. 2011. “Destabilizing the American Racial Order.” Daedalus. Daedalus. Publisher's Version Abstract

Since America’s racial disparities remain as deep-rooted after Barack Obama’s election as they were before, it was only a matter of time until the myth of postracism exploded in our collective national face.
–Peniel Joseph, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 27, 2009

In electing me, the voters picked the candidate of their choice, not their race, which foreshadowed the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008. We’ve come a long way in Memphis, and ours is a story of postracial politics.
–Congressman Steve Cohen, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, September 18, 2009

Race is not going to be quite as big a deal as it is now; in the America of tomorrow . . . race will not be synonymous with destiny.
–Ellis Cose, Newsweek, January 11, 20101

Are racial divisions and commitments in the United States just as deep-rooted as they were before the 2008 presidential election, largely eliminated, or persistent but on the decline? As the epigraphs show, one can easily find each of these pronouncements, among others, in the American public media. Believing any one of them—or any other, beyond the anodyne claim that this is “a time of transition”—is likely to be a mistake, since there will be almost as much evidence against as for it. Instead, it is more illuminating to try to sort out what is changing in the American racial order, what persists or is becoming even more entrenched, and what is likely to affect the balance between change and continuity. That, at any rate, is what we propose to do (if briefly) in this article.

Download PDF
Hochschild, Jennifer L., Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch. 2011. “Destabilizing the American Racial Order.” Daedalus. Daedalus. Publisher's Version Abstract

Since America’s racial disparities remain as deep-rooted after Barack Obama’s election as they were before, it was only a matter of time until the myth of postracism exploded in our collective national face.
–Peniel Joseph, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 27, 2009

In electing me, the voters picked the candidate of their choice, not their race, which foreshadowed the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008. We’ve come a long way in Memphis, and ours is a story of postracial politics.
–Congressman Steve Cohen, Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, September 18, 2009

Race is not going to be quite as big a deal as it is now; in the America of tomorrow . . . race will not be synonymous with destiny.
–Ellis Cose, Newsweek, January 11, 20101

Are racial divisions and commitments in the United States just as deep-rooted as they were before the 2008 presidential election, largely eliminated, or persistent but on the decline? As the epigraphs show, one can easily find each of these pronouncements, among others, in the American public media. Believing any one of them—or any other, beyond the anodyne claim that this is “a time of transition”—is likely to be a mistake, since there will be almost as much evidence against as for it. Instead, it is more illuminating to try to sort out what is changing in the American racial order, what persists or is becoming even more entrenched, and what is likely to affect the balance between change and continuity. That, at any rate, is what we propose to do (if briefly) in this article.

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Migrants to the United States are a diverse population. This diversity, captured in various migration theories, is overlooked in empirical applications that describe a typical narrative for an average migrant. Using the Mexican Migration Project data from about 17,000 first-time migrants between 1970 and 2000, this study employs cluster analysis to identify four types of migrants with distinct configurations of characteristics. Each migrant type corresponds to a specific theoretical account, and becomes prevalent in a specific period, depending on the economic, social and political conditions. Strikingly, each migrant type also becomes prevalent around the period in which its corresponding theory is developed.

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We exploit variation in U.S. gubernatorial term limits across states and time to empirically estimate two separate effects of elections on government performance. Holding tenure in office constant, differences in performance by reelection- eligible and term-limited incumbents identify an accountability effect: reelection-eligible governors have greater incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of voters. Holding term-limit status constant, differences in performance by incumbents in different terms identify a competence effect: later-term incumbents are more likely to be competent both because they have survived reelection and because they have experience in office. We show that economic growth is higher and taxes, spending, and borrowing costs are lower under reelection-eligible incumbents than under term-limited incumbents (accountability), and under reelected incumbents than under first-term incumbents (competence), all else equal. In addition to improving our understanding of the role of elections in representative democracy, these findings resolve an empirical puzzle about the disappearance of the effect of term limits on gubernatorial performance over time.

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Agriculture on the American Great Plains has been constrained by historical water scarcity. After World War II, technological improvements made groundwater from the Ogallala aquifer available for irrigation. Comparing counties over the Ogallala with nearby similar counties, groundwater access increased irrigation intensity and initially reduced the impact of droughts. Over time, land-use adjusted toward water-intensive crops and drought-sensitivity increased; conversely, farmers in water-scarce counties maintained drought-resistant practices that fully mitigated higher drought-sensitivity. Land values capitalized the Ogallala's value at $26 billion in 1974; as extraction remained high and water levels declined, the Ogallala's value fell to $9 billion in 2002.

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NEBR Working Paper #17625.
Co-Author Pinar Keskin is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College.
 

Gopinath, Gita. 2011. “Fiscal Devaluations”. Abstract

We show that even when the exchange rate cannot be devalued, a small set of conventional fiscal instruments can robustly replicate the real allocations attained under a nominal exchange rate devaluation in a standard New Keynesian open economy environment. We perform the analysis under alternative pricing assumptions—producer or local currency pricing, along with nominal wage stickiness; under alternative asset market structures, and for anticipated and unanticipated devaluations. There are two types of fiscal policies equivalent to an exchange rate devaluation—one, a uniform increase in import tariff and export subsidy, and two, an increase in value-added tax and a uniform reduction in payroll tax. When the devaluations are anticipated, these policies need to be supplemented with a reduction in consumption tax and an increase in income taxes. These policies have zero impact on fiscal revenues. In certain cases equivalence requires in addition a partial default on foreign bond holders. We discuss the issues of implementation of these policies, in particular, under the circumstances of a currency union.

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Co-author Emmanuel Farhi is a professor of economics at Harvard University. Co-author Oleg Itskhoki is a professor of economics at Princeton University.

I survey the influence of Grossman and Hart's (1986) seminal paper in the field of International Trade. I discuss the implementation of the theory in open-economy environments and its implications for the international organization of production and the structure of international trade flows. I also review empirical work suggestive of the empirical relevance of the property-rights theory. Along the way, I develop novel theoretical results and also outline some of the key limitations of existing contributions.

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Keyssar, Alexander. 2011. “How Americans Vote.” Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 10 (4). Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy: 471-473. Publisher's Version
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Singhal, Monica, and Benjamin A. Olken. 2011. “Informal Taxation.” American Economic Journal. Publisher's Version Abstract

Informal payments are a frequently overlooked source of local public finance in developing countries. We use microdata from ten countries to establish stylized facts on the magnitude, form, and distributional implications of this “informal taxation.” Informal taxation is widespread, particularly in rural areas, with substantial in-kind labor payments. The wealthy pay more, but pay less in percentage terms, and informal taxes are more regressive than formal taxes. Failing to include informal taxation underestimates household tax burdens and revenue decentralization in developing countries. We discuss various explanations for and implications of these observed stylized facts.

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Singhal, Monica, and Benjamin A. Olken. 2011. “Informal Taxation.” American Economic Journal. Publisher's Version Abstract

Informal payments are a frequently overlooked source of local public finance in developing countries. We use microdata from ten countries to establish stylized facts on the magnitude, form, and distributional implications of this “informal taxation.” Informal taxation is widespread, particularly in rural areas, with substantial in-kind labor payments. The wealthy pay more, but pay less in percentage terms, and informal taxes are more regressive than formal taxes. Failing to include informal taxation underestimates household tax burdens and revenue decentralization in developing countries. We discuss various explanations for and implications of these observed stylized facts.

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Chandra, Amitabh. 2011. “Massachusetts' Health Care Reform and Emergency Department Utilization.” New England Journal of Medicine. New England Journal of Medicine. Publisher's Version Abstract

Does an expansion of health insurance increase or decrease use of the emergency department (ED)? Both predictions can be justified logically. On the one hand, research on patient cost sharing predicts that by reducing the out-of-pocket costs of an ED visit, expanded insurance coverage, especially in the face of physician shortages, could result in increased ED utilization. This view has been echoed by elected leaders: Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), citing the Massachusetts experience with health care reform, claimed that if anything, universal coverage brought even higher rates of emergency room visits due to increased difficulty in getting appointments for outpatient physician visits. Others have predicted that expanded coverage would actually reduce ED use, since previously uninsured patients would now have access to preventive care. The relative importance of these countervailing forces is a question that clearly weighs on physicians: in a survey of emergency physicians conducted in April 2010, about 71 percent said they expected emergency visits to increase after the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). To explore the importance of these effects, we examined the Massachusetts experience. The state's 2006 health care reform was a model for the ACA and reduced the proportion of Massachusetts adults under the age of 65 who were uninsured by 7.7 percentage points between the fall of 2006 and the fall of 2009. To determine whether any changes in ED utilization in Massachusetts reflected the effect of Massachusetts' reform or were merely representative of broader regional trends in ED utilization, we used New Hampshire and Vermont as control states.

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Antràs, Pol. 2011. “Offshoring and the Role of Trade Agreements.” American Economic Review. American Economic Review. Publisher's Version Abstract

The rise of offshoring of intermediate inputs raises important questions for commercial policy. Do the distinguishing features of offshoring introduce novel reasons for trade policy intervention? Does offshoring create new problems of global policy cooperation whose solutions require international agreements with novel features? In this paper we provide answers to these questions, and thereby initiate the study of trade agreements in the presence of offshoring. We argue that the rise of offshoring will make it increasingly difficult for governments to rely on traditional GATT/WTO concepts and rules—such as market access, reciprocity and non-discrimination—to solve their trade-related problems

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Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, driven primarily by greater reporting rather than greater incidence of such crimes. In contrast, we find no increase in crimes against men or gender-neutral crimes. We also examine the effectiveness of alternative forms of political representation: large scale membership of women in local councils affects crime against them more than their presence in higher level leadership positions.

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Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 11-092, March 2011.
 

This study assesses the relationship between political partisanship and attitudes and behavior with respect to the Swine Flu crisis of 2009 in general, and the US mass vaccination program in particular. I argue that even seemingly non-partisan political issues like public health are increasingly characterized by partisan polarization in public attitudes, and that such polarization is in part attributable, at least in part, to the breakdown of the information commons that characterized the American mass media from roughly the 1950s until the early 1990s. In its place has arisen an increasingly fragmented and niche-oriented media marketplace in which individuals are better able to limit their information exposure to attitudes and opinions that reinforce, rather than challenge, their preexisting beliefs. I test my argument against a variety of data sources, including opinion surveys and state level Swine Flu vaccination rate data.

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Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP11-010, January 2011.

Social Knowledge in the Making
Lamont, Michèle, Charles Camic, and Neil Gross. 2011. Social Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social world.

The essays collected here tackle a range of previously unexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses topics such as the changing practices of historical research, anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research organizations, and national security and economic policy makers. Social Knowledge in the Making is a landmark volume for a new field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will be welcomed in the social science, the humanities, and a broad range of nonacademic settings.

Social Knowledge in the Making
Lamont, Michèle, Charles Camic, and Neil Gross. 2011. Social Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social world.

The essays collected here tackle a range of previously unexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses topics such as the changing practices of historical research, anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research organizations, and national security and economic policy makers. Social Knowledge in the Making is a landmark volume for a new field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will be welcomed in the social science, the humanities, and a broad range of nonacademic settings.

Social Knowledge in the Making
Lamont, Michèle, Charles Camic, and Neil Gross. 2011. Social Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social world.

The essays collected here tackle a range of previously unexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses topics such as the changing practices of historical research, anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research organizations, and national security and economic policy makers. Social Knowledge in the Making is a landmark volume for a new field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will be welcomed in the social science, the humanities, and a broad range of nonacademic settings.

We document the behavior of trade prices during the Great Trade Collapse of 2008–2009 using transaction-level data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. First, we find that differentiated manufactures exhibited marked stability in their trade prices during the large decline in their trade volumes. Prices of non-differentiated manufactures, by contrast, declined sharply. Second, while the trade collapse was much steeper among differentiated durable manufacturers than among non-durables, prices in both categories barely changed. Third, despite this lack of movement in average price levels, the frequency and magnitude of price adjustments at the product level noticeably changed with the onset of the crisis.

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Co-author Oleg Itskhoki is a professor of economics at Princeton University. Co-author Brent Neiman is at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

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