Despite the large costs of covering flood losses, little is known about whether flood insurance availability affects the decision to live and stay in more flood-prone areas. In this paper, we test whether subsidized flood insurance alters residency choices by exploiting the within- and across-county variation in various programs the federal government implemented to encourage flood-prone areas to join the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). We find that the NFIP had an overall positive effect on the population of communities enrolling into the program, but a significantly larger impact on relatively more flood-prone locations — causing an additional 5 percent increase in population per one standard deviation increase in flood risk. Our findings highlight the potential for nationally subsidized flood insurance to contribute to flood damages by altering incentives to reside in risky areas.

Election fraud is considered pervasive throughout developing countries, raising concerns it can facilitate corruption and inhibit economic growth by preventing voters from holding elected officials accountable. This paper examines whether reducing election fraud causes improvements in government performance. To measure the type of government corruption and red tape that inhibits economic growth, I focus on building permit approvals in the Philippines, since delays in granting approvals are often associated with requests for bribes. To identify effects, I exploit a switch to automated elections in 2010 that made committing fraud more difficult through the use of stronger ballot security measures, timely counting of ballots, and simultaneous transmission of votes to various servers. Estimates from a research design comparing changes over time in previously high-fraud and low-fraud towns indicate that automated elections significantly reduced election fraud, as measured by digit-based tests. In addition, results indicate that this led to a sharp and sustained 15 percent increase in the number of building permits approved annually, leading to greater investment in the local economy.

I determine whether pressure from upcoming elections affects an effort-based measure of government performance – evacuations in preparation for tropical cyclones in the Philippines. Unlike measures used in previous studies, this isolates politician effort because the costs of maintaining shelters and transporting people to shelters are borne by national agencies. Governors need only to coordinate these resources. By comparing performance over time in provinces whose governors are eligible to seek re-election to provinces whose governors are ineligible, I find that pressure from upcoming elections causes a 14 percent increase in evacuation rates. This implies that electoral pressure drives politicians to exert more effort in fulfilling their responsibilities. My results are robust to various controls, including governor fixed effects.

Many countries rely on a system of fiscal transfers to support local governments. We examine the effect of such transfers on local budgets and economic development by exploiting a 1991 decentralization reform in the Philippines that resulted in newly created cities getting a large and permanent increase in fiscal transfers from the national government. Comparing outcomes over time in pre-existing cities to cities created after the 1991 reform, we find strong evidence of spending increases in the new cities, followed by increased economic activity – new cities exhibit an increased nighttime light intensity of about 10 percent. Our estimates are robust to controlling for regional shocks, town-specific time trends, and population changes over time.

Do high taxes cause superstars to work less? We test this hypothesis using complete data on Hollywood movie stars’ labor supply from 1927 to 2014. Changes to marginal tax rates in high tax brackets have no significant effect on the number of films a movie star makes each year. However, in years with high taxes stars produce more highly rated movies with award-winning directors, potentially substituting prestigious films for pecuniary gains.

Racially charged rhetoric often surrounds layoff events, with specific minorities often blamed for the loss of “American jobs.” We examine whether information about impending mass layoffs causes racial animus. Our data consist of information on mass layoff notices linked to Google Search Trends and FBI Hate Crime Statistics. We compare outcomes across areas that vary in the timing of news of impending layoffs. Results indicate an increase in both racist searches (1.5 percent) and hate crimes (23 percent) following layoff notices.

Objective information from credible sources is critical for efficient policy that involves uncertain outcomes. This paper presents evidence that scientific projections are under-utilized in decisions involving dynamic risks. We leverage the COVID-19 pandemic, using plausibly exogenous updates to the dominant model on death projections and show revealed mitigation actions were largely driven by contemporary outcomes over scientific predictions. Further, we document behavior consistent with cognitive dissonance – agents favor scientific forecasts when they predict more optimistic outcomes. When taken to the context of climate policy, we demonstrate that these estimates would imply an undervaluing of carbon costs of 50 percent.

We examine whether mosques depress home values in Michigan, which forms the basis for opposition to new mosques. We link administrative data on the universe of property transactions in Detroit and Hamtramck to the opening dates of new mosques. We then compare sales prices over time for properties closer to newly opened mosques to properties that are slightly farther away. Unlike related studies using data from other settings, our results show that exposure to new mosques do not significantly depress housing prices, implying weak evidence for religious discrimination, if it exists.