Following an Experienced Shepherd: How a Leader’s Tenure Affects the Outcome of International Crises

Previous research has shown that a leader’s preconflict tenure affects the likelihood of conflict occurrence, while conflict outcomes affect a leader’s postconflict tenure. I argue that a leader’s preconflict tenure should affect not only conflict occurrence but conflict outcomes as well, specifically by increasing a leader’s professional competence and increasing the likelihood that the state will emerge victorious from international crises. This effect should weaken as the constraints upon leaders’ behaviors increase and their competence becomes less important for policy outcomes. Using a bivariate probit model with selection and a dyadic data set on international crises experienced by 195 countries between 1950 and 2000, I find moderate-to-strong support for the hypotheses.     

Unterscheidung und Härtung. Bewertungs- und Notenkommunikation in Lehrerzimmer und Zeugniskonferenz

In schools humans are classified and categorized by other humans through the assessment of their actions and documents they produce there. This practice of differentiation essentially relies on contingent teacher judgements that are aggregated into marks, end-of-year reports or school graduation certificates. The article explores the formal and informal situations of teachers talking about their students and classes and making decisions about their school reports. While teachers share their judgements on pupils in informal staff-room conversations, the thereby generated knowledge does not necessarily result in social consequences. It does, though, in formal gatherings such as report conferences, where the judgements are ratified and fixated. The judgement of an individual teacher is hereby transformed into a grade given by the school. By analytically characterizing these social and numeric-administrative objectifications the article shows how judgements on pupils are kept reversible and simultaneously become solidified during the school year.     

Race and the Housing Cycle: Differences in Home Equity Trends Among Long-Term Homeowners

During the past decade, housing markets across the United States experienced dramatic upheaval. Housing prices rose rapidly throughout much of the country from 2000 until the start of 2007 and then fell sharply during the next 2 years. Many households lost substantial amounts of equity during this downturn; in aggregate, U.S. homeowners lost $7 trillion in equity from 2006 to 2009. Aggregate home equity holdings had fallen back to 2000 levels by early 2009. Whereas this intense volatility has been well documented, there remain unanswered questions about the variation in experiences across racial groups, particularly among those who purchased their homes before the boom and kept them through the collapse of the market. Did this housing market upheaval widen the already large racial and ethnic gaps in housing wealth? Using the American Housing Survey, we analyze differences in the changes in home equity experienced by homeowners of different races and ethnicities between 2003 and 2009. We focus on homeowners who remained in their homes over this period, and find that blacks and Hispanics gained less home equity than whites and were more likely to end the period underwater. Black–white gaps were driven in part by racial disparities in income and education and differences in types of homes purchased. Latino–white disparities were most dramatic during the market’s bust.     

The COVID Cash Transfer Study: The Impacts of a One-Time Unconditional Cash Transfer on the Well-Being of Families Receiving SNAP in Twelve States

There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one-time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. We examine the impact of the cash transfer on five pre-registered outcomes (material hardship, mental health, parenting, child behavior, partner relationships) and several secondary outcomes (hardship avoidance, consumption, employment, benefit use). We find no statistically significant effects (powered to detect effects of 0.09 standard deviations) of the cash transfer on any outcomes for the full sample. In pre-specified exploratory analyses, we find significant reductions in material hardship (-0.17 standard deviations) among families with less than $500 of earnings in the previous month, roughly the bottom 50 percent of monthly earnings for the study sample.     

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE IN SURVEY AND ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits were a central part of the social safety net during the COVID-19 recession. UI benefits, however, are severely understated in surveys. Using administrative tax data, we find that over half of UI benefits were missed in major survey data, with a greater understatement among low-income workers. As a result, 2020 official poverty rates were overstated by about 2 percentage points, and corrected poverty reached a six-decade low. We provide data to correct underreporting in surveys and show that, compared to UI benefits, the UI exclusion tax expenditure was less targeted at low incomes.