Collaborative Research: Novel Approaches Toward Estimating the Causal Impact of Wealth

合作研究：估计财富因果影响的新方法

• 批准号: 1326635
• 负责人: David Cesarini
• 金额: $ 9.69万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1326635&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Novel; Approaches; Toward

The effect of wealth on behavior is of substantial interest to policymakers. For example, many important public policies -- such as changes to retirement systems, property taxes, or lump-sum components of welfare payments -- often involve transfers of wealth. Moreover, the costs and benefits to income redistribution depend on exactly how people respond to changes in their wealth. Therefore, understanding how (and by how much) people respond to changes in wealth is important for predicting and evaluating a wide range of public policies.Despite a rich literature studying the effects of wealth on a large number of economic and non-economic outcomes, there remains little consensus on the importance and magnitude of wealth effects in a wide variety of settings. This lack of consensus is likely a result of the substantial practical challenges associated with credibly estimating wealth effects. This research tries to improve our understanding of the causal effects of wealth on a wide range of behaviors and outcomes by studying three large populations of Swedish lottery players. Because prizes are assigned at random, this makes it relatively straightforward to produce credible estimates using the well-accepted and uncontroversial framework of a randomized controlled design.The projects described in this research outline are all based on the analysis of three recently collected samples of Swedish lottery players, comprising more than three million individuals. With the help of Statistics Sweden, the players have been matched to population-based administrative records containing annual information about employment, earnings, health, and a number of other variables (with most of the variables available annually beginning in the late 1970s). Besides information on the lottery players themselves, the data also contains information on the players' spouses, partners, and children. Overall, the combined data set has several unique advantages. First, there are minimal biases due to attrition or non-response since the players have been matched to population-wide administrative data. Second, because of the large sample size, the data can be used to investigate differences across many different demographic groups. Lastly, there is significant variation in the amount of prizes awarded, which means that it is possible to estimate non-linear effects of the prizes. In total, the data contain 13,000 individuals who were randomly assigned more than the average annual income in Sweden and another 1,500 who were randomly assigned more than ten times the average annual income.The assembled data will be used for three separate research projects. The first project examines how wealth shocks impact labor earnings, spousal labor supply, retirement behavior, social insurance take-up, and occupational switching. These outcomes span a wide range of interesting labor market effects that one might expect to observe in response to unexpected increases in wealth. The information on spousal earnings will enable separate estimates of wealth effects by individual and by household, which may also shed light on economic models of decision-making within the household.The second project explores how wealth impacts a rich set of proxies for health, such as cause of death, drug prescriptions, and hospitalizations. The findings from this project will hopefully provide an important step toward resolving a long-running debate in social science about the extent to which the strong socioeconomic gradient in health reflects the causal effect of wealth on health.The third project explores the effect of wealth on political participation (such as voter turnout and nomination for political office) as well as political attitudes. This project is highly interdisciplinary in nature and should be of considerable interest to both political scientists and economists. While existing research in political science and economics has documented a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and political participation, the interpretation of these results remains controversial. The rich data and credible research design in this project will hopefully result in uncontroversial estimates of the effect of wealth on a number of different measures of political participation and political attitudes.

财富对行为的影响引起了政策制定者的极大兴趣。例如，许多重要的公共政策——例如退休制度的改变、财产税或一次性福利支付的组成部分——往往涉及财富转移。此外，收入再分配的成本和收益完全取决于人们如何应对财富变化。因此，了解人们对财富变化的反应方式（以及反应程度）对于预测和评估各种公共政策非常重要。尽管有丰富的文献研究财富对大量经济和非经济结果的影响，对于各种环境下财富效应的重要性和程度，人们仍缺乏共识。缺乏共识可能是由于与可信地估计财富效应相关的巨大实际挑战的结果。这项研究试图通过研究瑞典彩票玩家的三个大群体，加深我们对财富对各种行为和结果的因果影响的理解。由于奖项是随机分配的，因此使用广为接受且无争议的随机控制设计框架来产生可信的估计变得相对简单。本研究大纲中描述的项目全部基于对最近收集的三个瑞典样本的分析彩票玩家超过三百万人。在瑞典统计局的帮助下，参与者已与基于人口的行政记录相匹配，其中包含有关就业、收入、健康和许多其他变量的年度信息（大多数变量从 20 世纪 70 年代末开始每年可用）。除了彩票玩家本人的信息外，这些数据还包含彩票玩家的配偶、伴侣和子女的信息。总体而言，组合数据集具有几个独特的优势。首先，由于玩家已与全人口管理数据相匹配，因此因自然减员或无响应而造成的偏差极小。其次，由于样本量较大，数据可用于调查许多不同人口群体之间的差异。最后，所颁发奖项的数量存在显着差异，这意味着可以估计奖项的非线性影响。数据总共包含 13,000 名被随机分配高于瑞典平均年收入的个人，以及另外 1,500 名被随机分配超过平均年收入十倍的个人。收集的数据将用于三个独立的研究项目。第一个项目研究了财富冲击如何影响劳动力收入、配偶劳动力供应、退休行为、社会保险参与和职业转换。这些结果涵盖了一系列有趣的劳动力市场效应，人们可能会期望观察到这些效应是对财富意外增长的反应。有关配偶收入的信息将能够分别估计个人和家庭的财富影响，这也可能有助于揭示家庭内部决策的经济模型。第二个项目探讨了财富如何影响一系列丰富的健康指标，例如作为死亡原因、药物处方和住院治疗。该项目的研究结果有望为解决社会科学领域长期存在的争论迈出重要一步，该争论涉及健康领域的强大社会经济梯度在多大程度上反映了财富对健康的因果影响。第三个项目探讨了财富对健康的影响。政治参与（例如选民投票率和政治职位提名）以及政治态度。该项目本质上是高度跨学科的，应该引起政治学家和经济学家的极大兴趣。尽管现有的政治学和经济学研究已经证明社会经济地位与政治参与之间存在很强的相关性，但对这些结果的解释仍然存在争议。该项目中丰富的数据和可信的研究设计有望对财富对政治参与和政治态度的许多不同衡量标准的影响做出无可争议的估计。