This thesis studies the effects of local environments on perceptions. The last chapter examines older workers' responses to unemployment benefits cuts.
In the first essay, I study the effects of neighborhoods on perceived inequality and preferences for redistribution in the context of Barcelona. I first construct a novel measure of inequality based on the geospatial distribution of housing. I then elicit inequality perceptions and preferences for redistribution from an original large-scale survey. I link these measures to respondents' specific local environments using exact addresses. I identify the causal effects of neighborhoods using two different approaches. The first is an outside-the-survey quasi-experiment that exploits within-neighborhood variation in respondents' recent exposure to new apartment buildings. The second is a within-survey experiment inducing variation in respondents' information set about inequality across neighborhoods. Local environments significantly influence inequality perceptions but only mildly affect demand for redistribution.
In the second essay, I study the effects of neighborhoods on perceived immigration and preferences for redistribution. I construct flexible definitions of local neighborhoods by aggregating census tracts and measure immigration at this fine geographic level. I elicit immigration perceptions and preferences for redistribution from my original survey. Most respondents significantly overestimate the number of immigrants in the country, but those residing in neighborhoods with more immigrants are more likely to do so. Misperceptions negatively correlate with demand for redistribution and are partly explained by the local immigrant composition. They are exacerbated when more African or Asian immigrants reside in the local area.
In the third essay, I causally estimate the effects of pro-cyclical unemployment-assistance (UA) reductions on job search behavior and re-employment outcomes using reform-induced changes in UA durations for older workers in Spain. Benefit reductions are effective in bringing workers back to work and reduce non-employment duration, but also induce displacements out of the labor force and strong substitution patterns towards less generous UA programs, highlighting the social insurance role of long-term benefits during economic downturns. Despite the sharp drop in non-employment duration, I also document a significant decrease in re-employment wages, consistent with a reduction in workers' reservation wages and limited duration dependence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43924 |
| Date | 24 February 2022 |
| Creators | Domènech-ArumÃ, Gerard |
| Contributors | Paserman, M. Daniele |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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