Jeffrey Clemens 
Associate Professor | UC San Diego
San Diego, CA, UNITED STATES
Specialties: Research on federal entitlement programs, health insurance, the minimum wage, and state/local government budgets.
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Biography
Jeffrey Clemens is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California San Diego. He is also a co-editor at the Journal of Health Economics, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a CESifo Research Network fellow.
Areas of Expertise (7)
Healthcare Capacity In The USA
Unemployment
Health Economics
Economic Stimulus Plan
Medical Innovation
Coronavirus
COVID-19
Accomplishments (2)
2015 Arrow Prize
For Research in Health Economics (awarded by IHEA)
Taubman Center Research Award
2009-2010
Education (2)
Harvard University: B.A., Economics 2005
Magna cum laude with highest honors in economics
Harvard University: Ph.D., Economics 2011
Affiliations (4)
- Co-Editor: Journal of Health Economics
- Fellow: CESifo Research Network
- Affiliate: Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute at UC Irvine: 2016 to 2019
- Faculty Research Fellow: National Bureau of Economic Research: 2013 to present
Links (1)
Media Appearances (5)
With coronavirus, California’s economy is in uncharted territory
CAL Matters online
2020-03-22
But in the longer term, “basically every source of state tax revenue that you can imagine is going to be down,” said Jeffrey Clemens, an economist at UC San Diego. That includes sales taxes, which depend on transactions in the now-paralyzed retail sector, and the state’s progressive income tax, which is particularly prone to whipsawing with each boom and bust.
Coming Recession Will End Decade-Long Boom and Test California’s Resiliency
Times of San Diego online
2020-03-23
But in the longer term, “basically every source of state tax revenue that you can imagine is going to be down,” said Jeffrey Clemens, an economist at UC San Diego. That includes sales taxes, which depend on transactions in the now-paralyzed retail sector, and the state’s progressive income tax, which is particularly prone to whipsawing with each boom and bust.
Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true
Axios online
2019-11-25
The doom-and-gloom that opponents have predicted, "are part of the political policy debate," Jeffrey Clemens, an economics professor at UC San Diego, tells Axios.
The economic debate over the minimum wage, explained
Vox online
2019-11-20
Clemens argues that other important studies did not get sufficient emphasis in Dube’s review. He names, for instance, a paper by MIT’s John Horton where an online labor market — it’s not Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but that’s a good comparison — randomly imposed minimum wages for some firms posting jobs, and not others. The firms with minimums reduced hiring and hours worked, pivoting away from low-productivity workers to high-productivity ones. That’s a true experiment, and one that suggests some disemployment effects.
A warning on health-care price setting as envisioned by AB3087
San Francisco Chronicle online
2018-04-24
When tasked with explaining the United States’ exceptionally high spending on health care, a prominent economist was famously succinct: It’s the prices, stupid! Assembly Bill 3087 takes this lesson to heart by proposing direct state regulation of health-care prices. Soberingly, all but one prior effort at this kind of price regulation collapsed. Price setting can under-deliver for many reasons, but its downfall is all but assured if California doesn’t learn from past failures.
Articles (5)
Implications of schedule irregularity as a minimum wage response margin
Applied Economics Letters2020 Empirical research on minimum wages has historically focused on employment effects, with the implicit assumption that workers who remain employed under a minimum wage regime are better off. This paper develops a simple model and a stylized example to highlight the importance of an underappreciated margin: how a minimum wage might affect the regularity of workers’ schedules.
Uncompensated care and the collapse of hospital payment regulation: An illustration of the tinbergen rule
Public Finance Review2019 The primary objective of “all-payer” rate setting—regulatory regimes through which states set hospital payment rates for all insurers—was to control costs through consistent, centrally regulated payments. These regimes were often linked, however, to an ancillary goal of financing care for the uninsured.
Cross‐Country Evidence on Labor Market Institutions and Young Adult Employment through the Financial Crisis
Southern Economic Journal2019 I develop and analyze a set of cross‐country facts regarding employment and wage setting institutions over the decade surrounding the 2008 financial crisis. Among long‐industrialized countries, young adult employment declined more than prime age employment over this time period.
Making Sense of the Minimum Wage: A Roadmap for Navigating Recent Research
Cato Institute Policy Analysis2019 The new conventional wisdom holds that a large increase in the minimum wage would be desirable policy. Advocates for this policy dismiss the traditional concern that such an increase would lower employment for many of the low-skilled workers that the increase is intended to help.
The minimum wage and the Great Recession: Evidence of effects on the employment and income trajectories of low-skilled workers
Journal of Public Economics2019 We estimate the minimum wage's effects on low-skilled individuals' employment and income trajectories following the Great Recession. Our approach exploits two dimensions of the data we analyze. First, we compare individuals in states that were fully bound by the 2007 to 2009 increases in the federal minimum wage to individuals in states that were not.
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