Digital Commons Network^™

Macroeconomic Stabilization When The Natural Real Interest Rate Is Falling, Sebastien Buttet, Udayan Roy

Publications and Research

The authors modify the Dynamic Aggregate Demand–Dynamic Aggregate Supply model in Mankiw’s widely-used intermediate macroeconomics textbook to discuss monetary policy when the natural real interest rate is falling over time. Their results highlight a new role for the central bank’s inflation target as a tool of macroeconomic stabilization. They show that even when the zero lower bound is not binding, a prudent central bank will need to match every decrease in the natural real interest rate with an equal increase in the target rate of inflation in order to stabilize the risk of the economy falling into a deflationary spiral, …

The Relationship Between Health And Schooling: What's New?, Michael Grossman

Economics Working Papers

Many studies suggest that years of formal schooling completed is the most important correlate of good health. There is much less consensus as to whether this correlation reflects causality from more schooling to better health. The relationship may be traced in part to reverse causality and may also reflect "omitted third variables" that cause health and schooling to vary in the same direction. The past five years (2010-2014) have witnessed the development of a large literature focusing on the issue just raised. I deal with that literature and what can be learned from it in this paper. I conclude that …

Joan Robinson And Mit, Harvey Gram, Geoffrey Harcourt

Economics Working Papers

The great question which has always haunted the type of analysis offered by the MIT economists in answer to Robinson's provocative critique (1953) has always been her own question: how to get into equilibrium? If the notion of "vision at a distance," inherent in dynamic equilibrium analysis (Dorfman, Samuelson, and Solow, 1958) means co-ordination of long-term expectations, recent work shows theory, that "getting into equilibrium" is an impossibility. This vindicates Robinson's position in the capital controversy, at least with respect to the MIT economists.

Cuba's Agricultural Transformations, Armando Nova Gonzalez, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo

Publications and Research

The Cuban government has implemented a series of agricultural transformations since 2007 to increase the country’s agricultural self-sufficiency and reduce its dependency on food imports. These include the transfer (in usufruct) of State-owned land to non-State producers (e.g. cooperatives and private farmers), moderate price reforms, the decentralization of decision making, and the gradual relaxation of existing forms of agricultural commercialization. As a result of these measures, the area planted, as well as physical output and agricultural yields (in selected non-sugar crop categories) have shown mixed results, but still remain below desired levels. There are three (3) fundamental unresolved aspects that …

Education And Marriage Decisions Of Japanese Women And The Role Of The Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Linda N. Edwards, Takuya Hasebe, Tadashi Sakai

Economics Working Papers

Prompted by concordant upward trends in both the university advancement rate and the unmarried rate for Japanese women, this paper investigates whether the Equal Employment Opportunity Act (EEOA), which was passed in 1985, affected women's marriage decisions either directly or via their decisions to pursue university education. To this end, we estimate a model that treats education and marriage decisions as jointly determined using longitudinal data for Japanese women. We find little evidence that the passage of EEOA increased the proportion of women who advance to university, but strong support for the proposition that it increased the deterrent effect of …

Políticas De Precios Y Comercialización Agrícola Durante La Transición: Experiencias Y Lecciones Para Cuba, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo

Publications and Research

Las políticas de precios y comercialización de productos agrícolas desempeñaron un importante papel durante las transiciones en los antiguos países socialistas. Estas transiciones agrícolas primordialmente se caracterizaron por el desmantelamiento, en algunos casos como China y Vietnam de forma gradual y calibrada y en otros de forma acelerada como en algunos países de Europa del Este y la Unión Soviética, del colectivismo, los subsidios estatales y los controles de precios y por mayores grados de participación de actores no-estatales en la comercialización de productos agrícolas. A pesar de notables diferencias estructurales y coyunturales, las experiencias de los antiguos países socialistas …

Effects Of Divorce Risk On Women's Labor Supply And Human Capital Investment, Kristin Mammen

Publications and Research

This paper examines the effects of the divorce law liberalization of the early 1970s on the increase in divorce rates during the same time period. A review of the evidence suggests that the law changes were not a major driver of the divorce rates; but the policy changes appear to have affected behavior even for those who did not divorce. The results here suggest that as they saw the laws changing, young women in the divorce reform states redirected some of their investments from marriage to their own human capital. The perceived increase in the probability of divorce motivated women …

Son Preference, Fertility Decline And Non-Missing Girls Of Turkey, Onur Altindag

Economics Working Papers

Couples in Turkey exhibit son preference through son-biased differential stopping behavior that does not cause a sex ratio imbalance in the population. Demand for sons leads to lower (higher) ratios of boys to girls in large (small) families. Girls are born earlier than their male siblings. Son-biased fertility behavior is persistent in response to decline in fertility over time and across households with parents from different backgrounds. Parents use contraceptive methods to halt fertility following a male birth. The sibling sex composition is associated with gender disparities in health. Among children who were born in the third parity or later, …

Political Inclusion And Educational Investment, Stephen D. O'Connell

Economics Working Papers

Using exogenous geographic variation in exposure to 1993 reforms that introduced seat quotas for women in local government in India, I find a sizable increase in the enrollment rate of male and female school-age children resulting from additional exposure to women leaders. Effects are particularly concentrated among poorer households and those with less- educated proximate role models, and were commensurate with reductions in idle time and household-enterprise employment. There is no evidence for the effects being facilitated by changes in school infrastructure, the labor market, or among broader social factors related to intrahousehold bargaining. Using textual data from the news …

White Paper On Research Opportunities And Cuny Library Faculty: The Need For Annual Leave Parity, Psc Cuny Library Faculty Committee (2014-­2015), Jay H. Bernstein, Jill Cirasella, John A. Drobnicki, Francine Egger-Sider, Lisa Ellis, Robert Farrell, William Gargan, Bonnie Nelson, Mariana Regalado, Sharon Swacker, Tess Tobin

Publications and Research

This White Paper provides an exposition and analysis of how annual leave disparity has arisen for Library Faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY) as compared to other CUNY faculty, its effects on librarians, and what a positive solution to the problem would look like.

Negative Externalities, Network Effects, And Compatibility, Matthew G. Nagler

Publications and Research

Positive network effects arise where incremental product use increases the utility of users of compatible products (user-positive effects), but also in situations where product use imposes negative externalities that selectively affect the adopters of incompatible alternatives (nonuser-negative effects). This paper compares the social optimality of firms’ incentives for compatibility under these two regimes. Using a “location” model of differentiated products, I find that, under both regimes, incentives for unilateral action to increase compatibility tend to be suboptimal when firms’ networks are close in size, but they may be excessive for small firms when networks differ greatly in size. The result …

Resistance, Acquiescence Or Incorporation? An Introduction To Land Grabbing And Political Reactions ‘From Below’, Marc Edelman, Ruth Hall, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ian Scoones, Ben White, Wendy Wolford

Publications and Research

Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of ground- breaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives ‘from below’ in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats. The relevance of political reactions to land grabbing is discussed in light of theories of social movements and …

Precarity And Gentrification: A Feedback Loop, Samuel Stein

Graduate Student Publications and Research

How do rent hikes and labor precarity conspire to reinforce each other against tenants and workers? Samuel Stein explains the mechanisms that link these two trends affecting citizens and calls for a tightening of rent-control laws to stop the spiraling descent of American residents into poverty.

Estimating The Variance Of Decomposition Effects, Takuya Hasebe

Economics Working Papers

We derive the asymptotic variance of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition effects. We show that the delta method approach that builds on the assumption of fixed regressors understates true variability of the decomposition effects when regressors are stochastic. Our proposed variance estimator takes randomness of regressors into consideration. Our approach is applicable to both the linear and nonlinear decompositions, for the latter of which only a bootstrap method is an option. As our derivation follows the general framework of m-estimation, it is straightforward to extend to the cluster-robust variance estimator. We demonstrate the finite-sample performance of our variance estimator with a Monte …

Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project: A Requirement For The Ms In Sustainability Degree, Latif M. Jiji, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, George A. Smith

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to describe experience gained with a required six-credit year-long course, the Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project, a key component of the Master of Science (MS) in Sustainability degree at the City College of New York. A common feature of sustainability problems is their interdisciplinary nature. Solutions to sustainability problems often require professionals with different training and backgrounds to work as a team. A sustainability curriculum should provide students with the skills needed to competently participate in an interdisciplinary team.

Design/methodology/approach – Instructors drawn from different departments and divisions of the college developed a pool of sustainability-focused …

O Espaço Como Palavra-Chave / Space As A Keyword, David Harvey

Publications and Research

Neste artigo, David Harvey discute teoricamente “espaço” como uma palavra-chave, associando a visão tripartite espaço absoluto-relativo-relacional com a leitura lefebvreana dos espaços percebido, concebido e vivido (também denominados espaços material ou experimentado, conceitualizado e da representação).

David Harvey in this article discuss theoretically “space”as a keyword, by associating the tripartite approach absolute-relative-relational space with Lefebvre’s view of perceived, conceived andlived spaces (also called material or experienced space, conceptua-lized space and spaces of representation

Heteroskedasticity Of Unknown Form In Spatial Autoregressive Models With A Moving Average Disturbance Term, Osman Dogan

Publications and Research

In this study, I investigate the necessary condition for the consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of spatial models with a spatial moving average process in the disturbance term. I show that the MLE of spatial autoregressive and spatial moving average parameters is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not considered in the estimation. I also show that the MLE of parameters of exogenous variables is inconsistent and determine its asymptotic bias. I provide simulation results to evaluate the performance of the MLE. The simulation results indicate that the MLE imposes a substantial amount of bias on both autoregressive and …