Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Delia Furtado
Author-Name: Kerry L. Papps
Author-Name: Nikolaos Theodoropoulos
Title: Who Goes on Disability when Times are Tough? The Role of Work Norms among Immigrants
Classification-JEL: H55, J61, I18, J15
Keywords: Disability Insurance; Social Norms; Unemployment Rates; Immigrants
Abstract: We examine how work norms affect Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) take-up rates in response to worsening economic conditions. By focusing on immigrants in the US, we can consider the influence of work norms in a person’s home country, which we argue are exogenous to labor market prospects in the US. We find that the probability of receiving SSDI is more sensitive to economic downturns among immigrants from countries where people place less importance on work. We also provide evidence that this result is not driven by differential sensitivities to the business cycle or differences in SSDI eligibility.


Length: 53 pages
Creation-Date: 2021-03
File-URL: http://papers.econ.ucy.ac.cy/RePEc/papers/01-2021.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ucy:cypeua:01-2021

Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Panayiota Lyssiotou
Title: Can Targeted Child Benefits Affect Fertility? Evidence from a Natural Experiment 
Classification-JEL: D12, J13, J18, H31, J11
Keywords: fertility, child benefits, financial incentives, unbalanced sex ratios, female labour force participation
Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on whether targeted cash child benefits can affect fertility and, specifically, induce families to have more than two children. We exploit the introduction of a monthly non-means tested cash child benefit paid only to families with at least four children. We apply a quasi experimental methodology since the reform is expected to have increased births of fourth child relative to births of third child or higher than four. We find robust evidence that the reform increased significantly the treated family’s probability to have a (fourth) child by about 5% and had no effect on births greater than four. In the post reform period, the control group’s probability to have a (third) child was not significantly different than before the reform. In particular, the finding that the probability of birth among parities greater than four was not affected by the reform supports that what we are estimating is a response of the targeted family to the introduction of the child benefit and not a change in the fertility preferences of families with many children. Other changes (besides the reform) had a negative effect on the probability to have a child that was reversed only for the birth of fourth child among treated families due to the economic incentives created by the reform.

Length: 45 pages
Creation-Date: 2021-04
File-URL: http://papers.econ.ucy.ac.cy/RePEc/papers/02-2021.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ucy:cypeua:02-2021

Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Snezana Eminidou
Author-Name: Martin Geiger
Author-Name: Marios Zachariadis
Title: Public Debt and state-dependent Effects of Fiscal Policy in the Euro Area
Classification-JEL: E62, E3, H63, H3
Keywords: government spending, shock, debt-to-gdp, output, consumption, inflation, credit constraints, expectations
Abstract: We investigate public debt related state dependencies in the impact of fiscal policy shocks on the macroeconomy for a panel of fifteen euro area economies during the period from 2000:Q1 to 2019:Q4. Our estimated impulse response functions suggest that the impact of fiscal policy shocks varies depending on the level of public debt characterizing an economy. We observe that differences in the time-serial as well as in the cross-sectional dimension play an important role driving the impact of fiscal policy. In the high-debt cross sectional state, output, consumption and inflation, as well as consumption intentions and inflation expectations, go up in response to a positive government spending shock, and these responses are distinctly different from those in the low-debt state. Using an extended model that considers simultaneously time-serial and cross-sectional high- and low-debt states, our results suggest that cross-sectional debt variation is more important in driving cross-country differences in the responses to expenditure shocks across the euro area.

Length: 43 pages
Creation-Date: 2021-05
File-URL: http://papers.econ.ucy.ac.cy/RePEc/papers/03-2021.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ucy:cypeua:03-2021