SocArXiv 

About: SocArXiv is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Population & Public health. Over the lifetime, 488 publications have been published receiving 2743 citations.

Face masks for the public during Covid-19: an appeal for caution in policy

Abstract: As the Covid-19 crisis deepens, some researchers have argued for the widespread routine use of face masks in community settings, despite acknowledged gaps in the evidence base for the effectiveness of such a measure. We argue that such calls are premature, and risk neglecting important potential harms and negative consequences, known and unknown. We identify potential unintended consequences at multiple levels, from individual-behavioural to macrosocial, and suggest that it is far from clear that the benefits of widespread uptake of face masks, whether encouraged or enforced by public authorities, outweigh the downsides. Finally, we make the case for caution in communicating unequivocal messages about the scientific evidence for face mask use to policy, practitioner and public audiences, given continued scientific disagreement on the question.

The Global Platform Economy: A New Offshoring Institution Enabling Emerging-Economy Microproviders

Abstract: Global online platforms match firms with service providers around the world, in services ranging from software development to copywriting and graphic design. Unlike in traditional offshore outsourcing, service providers are predominantly one-person microproviders located in emerging-economy countries not necessarily associated with offshoring and often disadvantaged by negative country images. How do these microproviders survive and thrive? We theorize global platforms through transaction cost economics (TCE), arguing that they are a new technology-enabled offshoring institution that emerges in response to cross-border information asymmetries that hitherto prevented microproviders from participating in offshoring markets. To explain how platforms achieve this, we adapt signaling theory to a TCE-based model and test our hypotheses by analyzing 6 months of transaction records from a leading platform. To help interpret the results and generalize them beyond a single platform, we introduce supplementary data from 107 face-to-face interviews with microproviders in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Individuals choose microprovidership when it provides a better return on their skills and labor than employment at a local (offshoring) firm. The platform acts as a signaling environment that allows microproviders to inform foreign clients of their quality, with platform-generated signals being the most informative signaling type. Platform signaling disproportionately benefits emerging-economy providers, allowing them to partly overcome the effects of negative country images and thus diminishing the importance of home country institutions. Global platforms in other factor and product markets likely promote cross-border microbusiness through similar mechanisms.

COVID-19 Is Also a Reallocation Shock

Abstract: We develop several pieces of evidence about the reallocative effects of the COVID-19 shock on impact and over time. First, the shock caused 3 to 4 new hires for every 10 layoffs from March 1 to mid-May 2020. Second, we project that one-third or more of layoffs during this period are permanent in the sense that job losers won’t return to their old jobs at their previous employers. Third, firm-level forecasts at a one-year horizon imply rates of expected job and sales reallocation that are 2 to 5 times larger from April to June 2020 than before the pandemic. Fourth, full days working from home will triple from 5 percent of all workdays in 2019 to more than 15 percent after the pandemic ends. We also document pandemic-induced job gains at many firms and a sharp rise in cross-firm equity return dispersion in reaction to the pandemic. After developing the evidence, we consider implications for the economic outlook and for policy. Unemployment benefit levels that exceed worker earnings, policies that subsidize employee retention irrespective of the employer’s commercial outlook, and barriers to worker mobility and business formation impede reallocation responses to the COVID-19 shock.

Residential housing segregation and urban tree canopy in 37 US Cities

Abstract: Redlining was a racially discriminatory housing policy established by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) during the 1930s. For decades, redlining limited access to homeownership and wealth creation among racial minorities, contributing to a host of adverse social outcomes, including high unemployment, poverty, and residential vacancy, that persist today. While the multigenerational socioeconomic impacts of redlining are increasingly understood, the impacts on urban environments and ecosystems remains unclear. To begin to address this gap, we investigated how the HOLC policy administered 80 years ago may relate to present-day tree canopy at the neighborhood level. Urban trees provide many ecosystem services, mitigate the urban heat island effect, and may improve quality of life in cities. In our prior research in Baltimore, MD, we discovered that redlining policy influenced the location and allocation of trees and parks. Our analysis of 37 metropolitan areas here shows that areas formerly graded D, which were mostly inhabited by racial and ethnic minorities, have on average ~23% tree canopy cover today. Areas formerly graded A, characterized by U.S.-born white populations living in newer housing stock, had nearly twice as much tree canopy (~43%). Results are consistent across small and large metropolitan regions. The ranking system used by Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to assess loan risk in the 1930s parallels the rank order of average percent tree canopy cover today.

Inequality in homeschooling during the Corona crisis in the Netherlands. First results from the LISS Panel

Abstract: The outbreak of the Corona virus has led to unprecedented measures in education. From March 16, all schools in the Netherlands are closed, and children must keep up with their schoolwork from home. Parents are expected to take a crucial role in this “homeschooling”: they are primarily responsible for ensuring that their children follow the curriculum. In this article I report the first results of a module in the LISS Panel that was designed to map how parents school their children in primary and secondary education. Data on a nationally representative sample of 1,318 children in primary and secondary education were gathered in April. The results show marked differences between social groups. Whereas all parents find it important that their children keep up with the schoolwork, children from advantaged backgrounds receive much more parental support and have more resources (e.g., own computer) to study from home. Differences in parental support are driven by the ability to help: parents with a higher education degree feels themselves much capable to help their children with schoolwork than lower educated parents. Parents also report that schools provide more extensive distant schooling for children in the academic track in secondary education (vwo) than for children in the pre-vocational track (vmbo). Finally, there is a clear gender gap: parents feel much more capable to support their daughters than their sons. These initial findings provide clear indications that the school shutdown in the Netherlands is likely to have strong effects on the inequality in educational opportunities.