The National Institute of Health Awards UCLA Professor Martha Bailey an R01 Grant

Professor Martha Bailey received an R01 Grant from the National Institute of Health for her research project “The Effects of Contraceptive Access on Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial at Five Years.”
 
The project will conduct a follow-up study of an NIH-funded randomized control trial (RCT) that made contraception more affordable for U.S. women seeking care at Title X providers–a federal program that has offered subsidized, patient-centered reproductive health services since 1970. From 2018-23, the Michigan Contraceptive Access, Research, and Evaluation Study (M-CARES) randomly assigned vouchers making any method of contraception highly discounted or free and has followed participants for two years in administrative and survey data. The proposed project extends the scope of M-CARES to consider a comprehensive set of health and well-being outcomes measured three to five years after study enrollment. The project’s specific aims are to:
(1) Link M-CARES participants to administrative records three to five years after enrollment, including (a) birth records, (b) credit reports, (c) IRS tax and Census data, and (d) health care records to be used for research.
(2) Develop and field a year-five follow-up survey (Y5FU), which will focus on information missing or incomplete in administrative records, including (a) contraceptive use; (b) retrospective pregnancy outcomes and desire/intendedness; (c) physical and mental health; (d) relationship stability and quality; (e) education and labor-market outcomes; (f) financial stability; (g) parenting; and (h) overall well-being.
(3) Quantify the cumulative causal effects of reducing the costs of contraception on outcomes measured three to five years later, using the RCT’s random assignment and outcomes from data in Aims 1 and 2.
Achieving these aims contributes novel and rigorous evidence regarding how the affordability of contraception affects a comprehensive set of health and well-being outcomes at three to five years. The combination of administrative and survey data maximizes the information collected per dollar spent and minimizes attrition and measurement error. Achieving this study’s aims is highly relevant to understanding how public policy could mitigate the potential negative effects of Dobbs and for providing a more complete cost-benefit accounting of public programs subsidizing contraceptives, such as Title X and Medicaid.

How a Historic Corporate Tax Cut Reshaped the U.S. Economy

By Patrick Kennedy

Patrick Kennedy

In a sweeping one-time test of corporate tax policy, UCLA economist Patrick Kennedy (with collaborators at the Joint Committee on Taxation) analyzes the effects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the largest federal corporate income tax cut in U.S. history. Leveraging a natural experiment due to idiosyncrasies in U.S. tax law, the study compares outcomes of corporations that received larger versus smaller tax cuts, providing clean before‑and‑after comparisons across otherwise similar firms.

Sharper incentives, faster growth

The researchers identify a substantial tax cut of 5–6% for C‑corporations relative to S‑corporations, fueled by the TCJA’s reduction in corporate tax liability. This translated into a 4.4 percentage‑point uptick in their capital stock, pointing to meaningful firm expansion. Pre‑tax profits rose by about 2.2 percentage points, signaling that the value of the additional goods and services provided by these firms exceeded the costs required to produce them.

Shareholder payouts soar

Shareholders reaped especially large benefits. After‑tax profits of C‑corps rose by 9.2%, while payouts to shareholders through dividends and buybacks jumped by 18.2%. These results confirm that much of the immediate tax windfall was distributed directly to firms’ shareholders, rather than plowed back into new equity issuance or borrowing.

More jobs and higher pay at the top

Workers also shared in the gains, but unevenly. Employment at C-corps increased by 1.3%, reallocating workers from other jobs into the corporate sector. Average earnings at C‑corps increased modestly, by 0.6%. The median worker saw no detectable change in earnings, but pay at the 95th percentile rose 1.1%, and executive compensation climbed 2.3%. These results suggest that corporate tax cuts disproportionately boosted high-income earners within firms, with little short-run effect on typical workers’ wages.

Bringing it all together: Growth and Fairness

Aggregating across the economy, the study estimates that 73% of the total income gains from the tax cuts accrued to the top 10% of households. Moreover, income gains were nearly twice as large in high-income urban centers like New York and San Francisco than in the median American county. The evidence thus highlights a central trade-off: corporate tax cuts reduce distortions, increase firm activity, and raise economic growth across the American economy, but also deliver disproportionately large benefits to high earners. For policymakers, the findings underscore that while tax cuts can spur measurable economic growth, their consequences are uneven for American households across the country.

The study, “Corporate Tax Cuts, Firm Growth, and Workers’ Earnings,” is available here.

Professor Till von Wachter’s Research on Unemployment Impact of Los Angeles Wildfires Featured by UCLA News

A new UCLA report led by Professor Till reveals that more than 11,000 workers filed for unemployment assistance following the Los Angeles wildfires, highlighting the broader economic consequences of the disaster.

Here is the direct link to the article:

More than 11,000 workers filed for unemployment assistance programs because of Los Angeles wildfires, new report shows | UCLA

UCLA Professor Rosa Matzkin Named to Editorial Board of Prestigious National Academy of Sciences Publication

UCLA scholar, Professor Rosa Matzkin, has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), one of the world’s most cited and impactful scientific journals.
Matzkin’s appointment to the PNAS Editorial Board is a testament to her exceptional contributions to the sciences. The PNAS Editorial Board is comprised of members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), an honor to which Matzkin was elected in 2022 in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors a scientist in the United States can receive.
PNAS is the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences and is a vital platform for the dissemination of cutting-edge research in the biological, physical, and social sciences.

Is International Trade Draining Our Water?

By Levi Crews

Levi Crews Profile Photo

Levi Crews

It’s an all-too-familiar headline: “In the midst of drought, California farmers used more water for almonds.” Almonds are one of the most water-intensive crops we grow—it takes more than a gallon of water to produce a single nut. And yet California, one of the driest agricultural regions in the country, now produces about 80% of the world’s almonds, much of it for export. This boom has coincided with a stretch of deepening droughts, land subsidence, and groundwater overdraft across the Central Valley. That raises a natural question: Is international trade draining California’s water?

In a new paper “Agriculture, Trade, and Global Water Use” with Tamma Carleton (UC Berkeley) and Ishan Nath (Harvard Kennedy School), Professor Levi Crews studies this question on a global scale. He and his coauthors combine recent advances in hydrological measurement from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) with agricultural and economic data to inform a dynamic, high-resolution model of agricultural production, trade, and water use. The goal: to understand how trade in agricultural commodities affects long-run water availability and agricultural productivity the world over.

The answer, it turns out, suggests that California and its almonds are the exception, not the rule.

Globally, water-intensive agriculture overwhelmingly takes place in water-abundant regions. This is true even though most farmers around the world use water as an open-access resource, with no market prices or tradable rights (another way that California and its Sustainable Groundwater Management Act are the exception). The data show that farms in the wettest parts of the world use nearly nine times more water per acre than those in the driest. That pattern is both surprising and encouraging: it suggests that nature—through annual endowments of rainfall and the physical costs of reaching deep water tables—does much of the work of rationing water use, even without formal markets.

Against this backdrop, trade tends to reduce water stress globally. When the authors simulate a world without trade in agricultural commodities, global water consumption rises by 60% and water tables fall sharply—especially in dry, food-importing countries. Food prices also skyrocket, increasing fourteen-fold in some places. Why? Trade allows countries to specialize according to their natural resource endowments, effectively exporting crops from wet to dry places and preserving global water stocks. Without it, everyone needs to grow their own almonds.

But California’s Central Valley is one of the rare exceptions: in the simulation without trade, the rate of groundwater depletion there slows. Without access to global markets, local farmers scale back on water-intensive crops, easing pressure on aquifers. But these reversals are confined to a small number of already overdrawn exporters; for most of the world, trade is what prevents depletion in the first place.

Additional simulations add more nuance. The Uruguay Round of WTO negotiations—the largest agricultural liberalization to date—shifted production toward several dry, water-scarce countries and modestly increased global depletion. Even when trade improves efficiency overall, then, specific reforms can push in the wrong direction.

California’s Central Valley stands out as a rare case where agricultural trade, combined with high water-intensity, has put mounting pressure on local resources. But zooming out to the global picture reveals a more optimistic story: trade, when well-aligned with natural resource endowments, is a big part of the solution.

The paper can be found here: https://www.levicrews.com/files/p-wateruse_paper.pdf

 

Combating Political Corruption with Policy Bundles

Maurizio Mazzocco

Maurizio Mazzocco

By Maurizio Mazzocco

The abuse of entrusted power by politicians through rent-seeking and corruption is a serious concern in much of the developing world. There have been countless examples both across countries and over time of political elites diverting funds intended for basic public services such as in education, health, and infrastructure. Notable cases include former President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, who reportedly embezzled around $5 billion before being removed from power in 1997, and Ferdinand Marcos, the former president of the Philippines, who allegedly stole over $35 billion. Not surprisingly, corruption is widely considered to be a major obstacle for economic and social development, and several studies have documented a strong negative relationship between corruption and various measures of economic development such as investment and growth. Therefore, designing effective policies to reduce political corruption is of first-order importance.

In their paper, “Combating Political Corruption with Policy Bundles,” UCLA Professor Maurizio Mazzocco and coauthor Frederico Finan (Berkeley) employ an objective corruption measure derived from audit reports to evaluate four popular anti-corruption policy interventions: increasing audit probabilities, prohibiting convicted politicians from seeking public office again, extending term limits, and raising politicians’ salaries.

The authors find that policies that strengthen the power of reelection incentives, such as extending term limits or banning corrupt politicians from running for office, can substantially reduce corruption among politicians who are eligible for reelection. But for politicians with shorter time horizons, such as those who have been term-limited, these policies are much less effective. In contrast, an audit policy can reduce corruption among both groups of politicians because it both promotes electoral accountability and brings about legal punishments. But audits are also costly and, as a result, are not necessarily the best option.

Leveraging these insights, the authors then evaluate the efficacy of combinations of individual policies. Their main finding reveals that policy bundles substantially outperform individual policy at a fraction of the cost. For instance, a policy that bans convicted politicians from running for public office combined with a term limit policy and an audit policy with relatively low audit probabilities, can reduce corruption by approximately 60% more than the best-performing individual policy at reduced costs. As a result, individuals are willing to pay 1.3% of their annual income for such a multi-pronged approach, significantly exceeding their willingness to pay for standalone policies by over 30%.

This study’s core insight is broadly applicable beyond corruption, including critical sectors such as healthcare and education. By strategically combining policies to leverage their respective strengths and mitigate their limitations, policymakers can construct policy bundles that are substantially more effective and cost-efficient than individual interventions.

The paper can be found here http://www.econ.ucla.edu/mazzocco/doc/Corruption.pdf.

Martha Bailey Reexamines the Long-Term Impacts of War on Poverty Programs in New NBER Feature

Professor Martha Bailey’s latest research, featured by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), offers a comprehensive reevaluation of landmark War on Poverty programs over six decades later. Drawing on newly available large-scale data, Bailey and her collaborators investigate how initiatives like Head Start, Food Stamps, family planning, and community health centers have shaped economic mobility, health, and wellbeing for generations. Their findings reveal that these programs not only reduced poverty in the long run but also delivered substantial fiscal benefits.
Read the full article on NBER here.

UCLA Professor Pierre-Olivier Weill Publishes Book on Over-the-Counter Markets

The Princeton University Press has published a book by UCLA Professor Pierre-Olivier Weill and coauthors Julien Hugonnier and Benjamin Lester on an important yet understudied type of financial markets: Over-the-Counter Markets. Over-the-counter markets are decentralized marketplaces where financial instruments, like stocks and bonds, are traded directly between buyers and sellers, without the supervision of a central exchange.
The book can be found here.
An interview with Professor Pierre-Olivier Weill and coauthors discussing the book can be found here.

Professor Yotam Shem-Tov Awarded 2025 Sloan Research Fellowship

Portrait of Yotam Shem-Tov

We are proud to congratulate Professor Yotam Shem-Tov, one of the 2025 winners of the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship. The Sloan Fellowships are extremely competitive awards with just a handful of recipients selected each year from among the best scientists throughout the United States and Canada.  Fellowships are awarded in the areas of Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth and Space Science, Economics, Mathematics, Neuroscience and Physics.  Candidates must be nominated by other scholars and the winners are selected by a committee of experts in the respective fields.

Professor Shem-Tov is a labor economist who studies the criminal justice system, examining such issues as the effect of sentencing practices on recidivism and the impact of incarceration on employment outcomes. Some of his most recent work, focusing on the effectiveness of restorative justice has shown that such programs can reduce recidivism rates by 23 percent.  His work has been published in leading economics journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economics and Statistics.     

Yotam received his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019 and came to UCLA in 2020 as an assistant professor.  He teaches Undergraduate Labor Economics and a graduate course in the same field.

Yotam joins recent past Sloan winners in the Department including David Baqaee (2022), Natalie Bau (2022),  Denis Chetverikov (2019), and Pablo Fajgelbaum (2017).

 

Related Links:

Sloan Foundation | 2025 Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship Recipients

Sloan Foundation | 2025 Sloan Research Fellows Press Announcement

UCLA Newsroom | UCLA tops public universities in number of 2025 Sloan Research Fellows

UCLA Social Sciences NewsUCLA economics professor Yotam Shem-Tov receives 2025 Sloan Research Fellowship