Brad Hershbein, a senior economist and deputy director of research at the Upjohn Institute, recorded a 15-minute video looking at the persistent effects of recessions on hard-hit places, and specifically at how social safety net and other government programs respond.
The video is posted on the academic streaming platform Faculti.
Hershbein details research conducted with Bryan Stuart of the Philadelphia Fed and published as "Place-Based Consequences of Person-Based Transfers: Evidence from Recessions" in the August 23 Journal of Public Economics. Open-access versions of the paper are available from the Upjohn Institute and Philadelphia Fed.
In the paper, Hershbein and Stuart detail the shifting of government money to local labor markets with the largest employment losses during recessions.
At first, the increase in transfers is driven by unemployment insurance and then by old-age security programs and the public health system. Very little of the increase in transfers go to education, training, business development or other programs designed to promote job growth.
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