Thread by @michael_stiefel

Going to take some notes of my learnings from this year's #UBSCenterForum Research Slam in this thread:

https://twitter.com/michael_stiefel/status/1318852877612404736

.@SiljaHausermann investigates the causes of voting for radical parties. Voters are forward-looking and care about their future economic opportunities. Confident voters vote for mainstream parties, less confident "apprehensive" voters are vulnerable to radical parties.

.@Florian_Scheuer shows that for the top incomes, capital gains become an increasingly import source of income. Capital gains have tax benefits (especially if they are not realized during an individual's lifetime). This results in a regressive system that favors the rich.

Policy recommendation is to fix the taxation of capital gains to restore a progressivity in the tax system.

Ernst Fehr argues that an unequal wealth distribution has strong implications in recessions. The poor cannot compensate possible income losses. For this reason, recessions are more pronounced and harmful in unequal societies.

Wealth inequality is driven by an individual's patience, education and (strongly) by parental wealh.

.@alterelim shows that in low income countries, obesity becomes a signal for wealth (because there is a lack of other documentation of wealth such as bank accounts). Obesity leads to economic benefits, such as easier access to credit (as shown in an experiment in Uganda).

David Hémous explores the link between automation and wages. In firm-level patent data, he shows that higher low skill wages are associated with more automation patents.

Redistributive polices can thus have heterogeneous effects, a higher minimum wage can lead to more automation, labour market reforms such as the Hartz reforms might lead to less automation.

.@uZoelitz makes a strong case for intervening early to create equal education opportunites in primary school. In an experiment in Zurich, he showed that an intervention training socioemotional skills (for example, patience) leads to higher enrollment in higher education.

The intervention is more powerful for children from a low socio-economic background, thus creating more equality of opportunities and fairness in the education sector.

.@Jaimovich23 studies the macroeconomic impact of a universal basic income scheme, a very popular policy proposal recently. He shows that the necessary increase in (distortionary) taxation leads to lower returns on work and capital, thus also to less labor force participation.

On the positive side, UBI leads to more redistribution. The open question is whether there are other, more efficient ways to create a more equal society with less harmful consequences for the economy?