Journal Article
World Population: What Helps Explain the Explosion?
Ravikumar, B.; Arbogast, Iris (2022-09-15)
A steep decline in India’s death rate from 1950 to 2019 substantially affected the size of the global population and reduced that nation’s median age relative to the U.S.
The Regional Economist

Journal Article
Who’s Driving a Recent Decline in Life Expectancy?
Ravikumar, B.; Arbogast, Iris (2023-07-03)
Life expectancy in the U.S. and most other G-7 nations declined from 2019 to 2021. For the U.S., it was the biggest two-year drop since the early 1920s.
The Regional Economist

Journal Article
Increasing Employment by Halting Pandemic Unemployment Benefits
Dupor, Bill; Arbogast, Iris (2022-07-14)
In mid-2021, 26 states halted participation in all or some federal emergency unemployment benefits (EUB) programs before those programs' federal funding lapsed. This article uses this asynchronous EUB cessation between early- and late-halting states to estimate the causal impact of benefit cessation on employment. We find that cessation increased employment by 29 persons for every 100 (pre-halt) EUB recipients. Expressed as a number of jobs, if all states had halted EUB in June, September employment would have been 3.4 million persons higher relative to a no-halt counterfactual. Late-halting ...
Review , Volume 104 , Issue 3 , Pages 166-177

How Uneven Were the Labor Market Recoveries across U.S. States?
Arbogast, Iris; Dupor, Bill (2022-02-10)
Some states finished 2021 with unemployment rates below their pre-pandemic levels, while most had rates still above levels before COVID-19.
On the Economy

How COVID-19 Has Impacted Stock Performance by Industry
Wen, Yi; Arbogast, Iris (2021-03-21)
Aggregate market indexes such as the S&P 500 have fully recovered since the beginning of the pandemic, but not all sectors have performed equally well.
On the Economy

Working Paper
The Jobs Effect of Ending Pandemic Unemployment Benefits: A State-Level Analysis
Arbogast, Iris; Dupor, Bill (2023-02-08)
This paper uses the asynchronous cessation of emergency unemployment benefits (EUB) in 2021 to investigate the jobs impact of ending unemployment benefits. While some states stopped providing EUB in September, others stopped as early as June. Using the cessation month as an instrument, we estimate the effect on employment of reducing unemployment rolls. In the second month following a state’s program termination, for every 100 person reduction in beneficiaries, state employment causally increased by about 27 persons. The effect is statistically different from zero and robust to a wide array ...
Working Papers , Paper 2022-010

Not All Bursting Market Bubbles Have the Same Recessionary Effect
Wen, Yi; Arbogast, Iris (2021-02-15)
The popped IT bubble ushered in an eight-month recession in 2001. The burst housing bubble resulted in the Great Recession (2007-09). Why the difference?
On the Economy

Journal Article
How to Jump-Start Industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa
Wen, Yi; Arbogast, Iris (2021-05-27)
Most sub-Saharan nations are poor and a long way from full-scale industrialization. However, certain policies could help spur their economic development.
The Regional Economist

Journal Article
Anecdotal Evidence Suggests State Capacity Unrelated to COVID-19 Spread
Wen, Yi; Arbogast, Iris; Reinbold, Brian (2020-11-23)
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored many societal issues, including the capacity of different world governments to contain the virus’ spread.
The Regional Economist , Volume 28 , Issue 4

Journal Article
Geographic Dispersion in U.S. Employment
Ravikumar, B.; Arbogast, Iris; LaBelle, Jesse (2022-04-04)
In the U.S., 112 of more than 3,000 counties accounted for 50% of employment in 2020.
Economic Synopses , Issue 9 , Pages 1-2