经济学最新文献

The escalation of conflict in the Middle East in 2026 and the disruptions affecting major maritime chokepoints, particularly the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb/Red Sea corridor, threaten global food security through higher energy, fertilizer, and shipping costs. We argue that the shock is more structural than previous crises because it simultaneously affects core agricultural inputs and trade routes, unlike the 2022 price spike in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which primarily caused temporary supply shortages. This has especially severe consequences for import-dependent economies in the Gulf area, Africa, and other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While energy price shocks can be transmitted relatively quickly to food markets through immediate changes in production and transportation costs, shipping cost and fertilizer price shocks tend to operate with longer adjustment lags because they propagate through physical supply chains and agricultural production processes. Prolonged energy market disruptions stemming from conflict around the Strait of Hormuz, together with tensions affecting Bab el-Mandeb, or future disruptions from (geo)political conflicts, entail the risk of trade policy responses and further market disturbances that could exacerbate the ongoing crisis. We highlight that rising prices for energy, shipping, and food are placing an immense strain on LMICs already burdened by heavy debt, limited access to finance, and inflationary pressure, with implications for food security and hunger.

Since 2015, the National Football League (NFL) draft has been held in various cities around the United States and has been accompanied by claims of large economic benefits. This paper uses daily hotel occupancy data to examine the effects of hosting the NFL draft. The results indicate the 2015–2018 drafts had negligible effects on room rentals and hotel revenue, while the 2019–2024 drafts (excluding 2020 and 2021) had statistically significant but small effects. The paper also presents estimates for other events held in draft-hosting cities, including NFL and other professional sports games, Formula One races, a Super Bowl, and Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concerts.

Between 1970 and 1980, 37 states adopted unilateral-no-fault divorce laws. This change was known as the no-fault revolution. Critics claim that no-fault divorce has weakened moral values and contributed to family breakdown. Past research offers mixed conclusions on whether these laws increased divorce rates. This paper improves upon previous studies by distinguishing between unilateral-no-fault and overall (unilateral and mutual) no-fault divorce treatment dates. Using a causal inference framework and a stacked-regression difference-in-differences estimator with entropy balancing, this study accounts for varied treatment timing. The findings show no lasting or statistically significant effects of unilateral-no-fault divorce laws on divorce rates.

This paper estimates granular specific non-routine tasks and examines employment reallocation across those tasks in the United States. Employment shifts into decision-making, technology, and information-related tasks account for 90% of high-wage employment growth. The granularity reveals non-routine abstract tasks are intensive in all skill environments and that non-college men experienced deskilling arising from displacement from routine work and from non-routine abstract tasks. This is potentially linked to the decline in supervisory employment. The pattern of task reallocation differs across genders. Both non-college and college educated women expanded into a wider array of non-routine abstract tasks relative to their male counterparts.

This study investigates the effect of a hybrid board structure that combines Anglo-American principles with traditional Japanese practices on stock price crash risk. The 2015 amendment to Japan's Companies Act introduced the Audit and Supervisory Committee (ASC) structure, designed to strengthen outside directors' effectiveness through enhanced statutory authority, improved information access, and greater influence over board decisions. Using panel data from Japanese listed firms from 2013 to 2019 and employing a difference-in-differences approach, this study finds that ASC adoption significantly reduces future crash risk. This effect is more pronounced in firms with higher board independence and those with female outside directors, which benefit more from the institutional advantages of ASC adoption. However, the “unnatural selection” of outside directors weakens this relationship, indicating that formal compliance alone is insufficient to improve governance outcomes. Overall, the findings suggest that hybrid board structures can achieve broad acceptance while enhancing the effectiveness of outside directors when tailored to local institutional contexts, offering practical guidance for reforms in insider-dominated economies.