%0 Generic %D 2017 %T A Permutation Test for the Regression Kink Design %A Peter Ganong %A Simon Jäger %X

The Regression Kink (RK) design is an increasingly popular empirical method for estimating causal effects of policies, such as the e ect of unemployment benefits on unemployment duration. Using simulation studies based on data from existing RK designs, we empirically document that the statistical significance of RK estimators based on conventional standard errors can be spurious. In the simulations, false positives arise as a consequence of non- linearities in the underlying relationship between the outcome and the assignment variable, confirming concerns about the misspecification bias of discontinuity estimators pointed out by Calonico et al. (2014b). As a complement to standard RK inference, we propose that researchers construct a distribution of placebo estimates in regions with and without a policy kink and use this distribution to gauge statistical significance. Under the assumption that the location of the kink point is random, this permutation test has exact size in finite samples for testing a sharp null hypothesis of no e ect of the policy on the outcome. We implement simulation studies based on existing RK applications that estimate the effect of unemployment benefits on unemployment duration and show that our permutation test as well as inference procedures proposed by Calonico et al. (2014b) improve upon the size of standard approaches, while having suffcient power to detect an effect of unemployment benefits on unemployment duration. 

%G eng %0 Generic %D 2017 %T Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined? %A Peter Ganong %A Daniel Shoag %X

The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decrease in the rate of income convergence across states and in population flows to wealthy places. These changes coincide with (1) an increase in housing prices in productive areas, (2) a divergence in the skill-specific real returns to living in productive places, (3) a redirection of low-skilled migration and (4) diminished human capital convergence due to migration. We develop a model where falling housing supply elasticity and endogenous labor mobility generates these patterns. Using a new panel measure of housing supply regulations, we demonstrate the importance of this channel. Income convergence continues in less-regulated places, while it has stopped in more-regulated places.

%B Journal of Urban Economics %V 102 %P 76-90 %G eng %U http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119017300591 %0 Journal Article %J American Law and Economics Review %D 2012 %T Criminal Rehabilitation, Incapacitation, and Aging %A Peter Ganong %X In April 1993, Georgia instituted new parole guidelines that led to longer prison terms for parole-eligible offenders. This paper shows that an extra year of prison reduces the three-year recidivism rate by 6 percentage points (14%) and that the benefits of preventing this crime are likely outweighed by the costs of this additional incarceration. I develop a new econometric framework to jointly estimate the effects of rehabilitation, incapacitation, and aging in reducing crime. Estimates of incapacitation effects using existing methodologies are biased upward by at least a factor of 2 because they focus on a short time horizon. %B American Law and Economics Review %V 14 %P 391-424 %G eng %U http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/2/391.full.pdf?keytype=ref&ijkey=pOZCioTN4m5baYb %N 2