Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Chance Elections, Social Distancing Restrictions, And Kentucky's Early Covid-19 Experience, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joseph Garuccio, Anh Le, Joshua C. Pinkston, Aaron Yelowitz

Economics Faculty Publications

Early in the pandemic, slowing the spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) relied on non-pharmaceutical interventions. All U.S. states adopted social-distancing restrictions in March and April of 2020, though policies varied both in timing and scope. Compared to states with Democratic governors, those with Republican governors often adopted measures for shorter durations and with greater resistance from their residents. In Kentucky, an extremely close gubernatorial election immediately prior to the discovery of SARS-CoV-2 replaced a Republican incumbent with a Democrat, despite Republicans easily winning all other statewide races. This chance election result offers a unique opportunity to examine the …

Covid-19 And The Us Safety Net, Robert A. Moffitt, James P. Ziliak

Economics Faculty Publications

We examine trends in employment, earnings and incomes over the last two decades in the United States, and how the safety net has responded to changing fortunes, including the shutdown of the economy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The US safety net is a patchwork of different programmes providing in-kind as well as cash benefits, and it had many holes prior to the pandemic. In addition, few of the programmes are designed explicitly as automatic stabilisers. We show that the safety net response to employment losses in the COVID-19 pandemic largely consists only of increased support from unemployment insurance …

The Full Impact Of The Affordable Care Act On Political Participation, Charles J. Courtemanche, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz

Economics Faculty Publications

This article examines the impact of both the Medicaid expansion and the private insurance-related components of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on voter turnout and registration. We employ a difference-in-difference-in-differences identification strategy exploiting variation over time, state Medicaid expansion status, and within-state local area pre-ACA uninsured rates. Using data between 2006 and 2016 from the November Current Population Survey and the Census Bureau's Small Area Health Insurance Estimates, our results suggest little effect of the ACA on voter turnout or registration.

Trouble In The Tails? What We Know About Earnings Nonresponse 30 Years After Lillard, Smith, And Welch, Christopher R. Bollinger, Barry T. Hirsch, Charles M. Hokayem, James P. Ziliak

Economics Faculty Publications

Earnings nonresponse in household surveys is widespread, yet there is limited knowledge of how nonresponse biases earnings measures. We examine the consequences of nonresponse on earnings gaps and inequality using Current Population Survey individual records linked to administrative earnings data. The common assumption that earnings are missing at random is rejected. Nonresponse across the earnings distribution is U-shaped, highest in the left and right tails. Inequality measures differ between household and administrative data due in part to nonresponse. Nonresponse biases earnings differentials by race, gender, and education, particularly in the tails. Flexible copula-based models can account for nonrandom nonresponse.

The Three-Year Impact Of The Affordable Care Act On Disparities In Insurance Coverage, Charles J. Courtemanche, James Marton, Benjamin Ukert, Aaron Yelowitz, Daniela Zapata, Ishtiaque Fazlul

Economics Faculty Publications

Objective
To estimate the impact of the major components of the ACA (Medicaid expansion, subsidized Marketplace plans, and insurance market reforms) on disparities in insurance coverage after three years.

Data Source
The 2011-2016 waves of the American Community Survey (ACS), with the sample restricted to nonelderly adults.

Design
We estimate a difference-in-difference-in-differences model to separately identify the effects of the nationwide and Medicaid expansion portions of the ACA using the methodology developed in the recent ACA literature. The differences come from time, state Medicaid expansion status, and local area pre-ACA uninsured rates. In order to focus on access disparities, we …

Maternal Work Hours And Childhood Obesity: Evidence Using Instrumental Variables Related To Sibling School Eligibility, Charles J. Courtemanche, Rusty Tchernis, Xilin Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

This study exploits plausibly exogenous variation derived from the youngest sibling’s school eligibility to estimate the effects of maternal work on the weight outcomes of older children. We first show that mothers’ work hours increase gradually along both the extensive and intensive margins as the age of the youngest child rises, whereas mothers’ spouses’ work hours do not appear to be responsive. We develop an instrumental-variables model that shows that mothers’ work hours lead to larger increases in children’s body mass index z-scores and probabilities of being overweight/obese than those identified in previous studies. Subsample analyses find that the …

Can Maternity Benefits Have Long-Term Effects On Childbearing? Evidence From Soviet Russia, Olga Malkova

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper quantifies the effects of Russia’s 1981 expansion in maternity benefits on completed childbearing. The program provided one year of partially paid parental leave and a small cash transfer upon a child’s birth. I exploit the program’s two-stage implementation and find evidence that women had more children as a result of the program. Fertility rates rose immediately by 8.2% over twelve months. The increase in fertility rates not only persisted for the ten-year duration of the program, but it reflected large increases in higher-order births to older women who already had children before the program started.

Effects Of The Affordable Care Act On Health Care Access And Self-Assessed Health After 3 Years, Charles J. Courtemanche, James Marton, Benjamin Ukert, Aaron Yelowitz, Daniela Zapata

Economics Faculty Publications

Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we examine the causal impact of the Affordable Care Act on health-related outcomes after 3 years. We estimate difference-in-difference-in-differences models that exploit variation in treatment intensity from 2 sources: (1) local area prereform uninsured rates from 2013 and (2) state participation in the Medicaid expansion. Including the third postreform year leads to 2 important insights. First, gains in health insurance coverage and access to care from the policy continued to increase in the third year. Second, an improvement in the probability of reporting excellent health emerged in the third year, with …

Medicaid Managed Care And The Health Care Utilization Of Foster Children, Makayla Palmer, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz, Jeffery Talbert

Economics Faculty Publications

A recent trend in state Medicaid programs is the transition of vulnerable populations into Medicaid managed care (MMC) who were initially carved out of such coverage, such as foster children or those with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the impact of the transition of foster children from fee-for-service Medicaid coverage to MMC coverage on outpatient health care utilization. There is very little empirical evidence on the impact of managed care on the health care utilization of foster children because of the recent timing of these transitions as well as challenges associated with finding data sets large …

Consumer's Guide To Regulatory Impact Analysis: Ten Tips For Being An Informed Policymaker, Susan Dudley, Richard Belzer, Glenn C. Blomquist, Timothy Brennan, Christopher Carrigan, Joseph Cordes, Louis A. Cox, Arthur Fraas, John Graham, George Gray, James Hammitt, Kerry Krutilla, Peter Linquiti, Randall Lutter, Brian Mannix, Stuart Shapiro, Anne Smith, W. Kip Viscusi, Richard Zerbe

Economics Faculty Publications

Regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) weigh the benefits of regulations against the burdens they impose and are invaluable tools for informing decision makers.We offer 10 tips for nonspecialist policymakers and interested stakeholders who will be reading RIAs as consumers.

1. Core problem: Determine whether the RIA identifies the core problem (compelling public need) the regulation is intended to address.
2. Alternatives: Look for an objective, policy-neutral evaluation of the relative merits of reasonable alternatives.
3. Baseline: Check whether the RIA presents a reasonable “counterfactual” against which benefits and costs are measured.
4. Increments: Evaluate whether totals and averages obscure relevant distinctions and trade-offs.
5. Uncertainty: Recognize …

Second Chance For High School Dropouts? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis Of Postsecondary Educational Returns To The Ged, Christopher Jepsen, Peter Mueser, Kenneth R. Troske

Economics Faculty Publications

We evaluate the educational returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using state administrative data. We use fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) methods to account for the fact that GED test-takers can repeatedly retake the test until they pass it and the fact that test-takers have to pass all five subtests before receiving the GED. We find that the GED increases the likelihood of postsecondary attendance and course completion substantially but that the GED impact on overall credits completed is modest; the GED causes an average increment of only two credits for men and six credits for women.

Subcontracting And The Survival Of Plants In The Road Construction Industry: A Panel Quantile Regression Analysis, Dakshina G. De Silva, Georgia Kosmopoulou, Carlos Lamarche

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper investigates how subcontracting parts of contracted work shapes entrants’ success and survival. We find that newly developed quantile regression approaches can be adapted to study survival of firms competing for government contracts in road construction. The method is applied on a data set that includes patterns of firm entry, exit and auction related information. We find an apparent increase in the business life of firms who subcontract out part of their projects. In Texas, these subcontracting effects appear to be more pronounced for firms with few or no options outside the industry, and among firms who contract out …

Labor Market Returns To The Ged Using Regression Discontinuity Analysis, Christopher Jepsen, Peter Mueser, Kenneth R. Troske

Economics Faculty Publications

We evaluate returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification for high school dropouts using state administrative data. We apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity method to account for test takers retaking the test. For women we find that GED certification has no statistically significant effect on either employment or earnings. For men we find a significant increase in earnings in the second year after taking the test but no impact in subsequent years. GED certification increases postsecondary school enrollment by 4–8 percentage points. Our results differ from regression discontinuity approaches that fail to account for test retaking.