Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Public Long-Term Care Insurance And The Housing And Living Arrangements Of The Elderly: Evidence From Medicare Home Health Benefits, Gary V. Engelhardt, Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley

Economics - All Scholarship

We provide empirical evidence on the extent to which long-term care insurance affects the housing and living arrangements of the elderly by examining plausibly exogenous changes in the supply of long-term care insurance through the Medicare program that occurred in the late 1990s. Prior to 1997, Medicare reimbursed home health care agencies on a retrospective-cost basis. Then, starting in October, 1997, as a result of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA97), Medicare switched to a system of prospective payments for home health care, which induced state-by-calendar-year variation in the supply of this type of public long-term care insurance. We …

The Changing Book: Transitions In Design, Production, And Preservation, Peter D. Verheyen

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

This book review was originally published in the Guild of Book Workers' Newsletter, Vol 181, December, 2008. "The Changing Book: Transitions in Design Production, and Preservation publishes the proceedings of the conference of the same name organized by and held at the University of Iowa July 22-25,2005. This conference tied together many threads, from an exhibition honoring the life's work of William (Bill) Anthony, the first conservator at the University of Iowa and teacher to some of today's best, to a "tent show" which gave the public the opportunity to learn about the book arts hands-on, to 19 formal presentations …

Interest On Bank Reserves And Optimal Sweeping, David D. Vanhoose, Donald H. Dutkowsky

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper utilizes a profit maximizing banking model to analyze sweeping behavior. Comparative statics results indicate that sweeping responds positively to increases in bank loan rates and reserve ratios and negatively to increases in the interest rate on reserves or to exogenous increases in bank deposits or equity. Sweeping generates greater responsiveness in lending to changes in loan rates or the interest rate on reserves and lower responsiveness to exogenous changes in reserve ratios or equity. Empirical analysis of an explicit condition that we derive relating sweeping to the interest rate on reserves suggests with an unchanged reserve requirement, the …

Fall 2008, School Of Information Studies

iSchool Newsletter

No abstract provided.

A Review Of Real Education By Charles Murray, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Household Wealth And Heterogeneous Impacts Of A Market-Based Training Program: The Case Of Projoven In Peru, Jose Galdo, Miguel Jaramillo, Veronica S. Montalva, Sonia Moreau

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper analyzes the relationship between households' wealth and heterogeneous treatment impacts for a market-based training program that has benefited more than 40,000 disadvantaged individuals in Peru since 1996. We proxy long-run wealth by a linear index based on 21 household assets, and three main findings emerge. First, we find that voluntary choices among eligibles, rather than administrative choices, play a bigger role in explaining demographic disparities in program participation. Second, quantile treatment effects on the treated suggest important differences in program impacts at different quantiles of earnings, and strong differences in distributional impacts for men and women. Third, both …

Distribution Of Wealth And Interdependent Preferences, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner

Economics - All Scholarship

We examine the socially optimal wealth distribution in a two-person two-good model with heterogeneous workers and asymmetric social interactions where only one (social) individual derives positive or negative utility from the leisure of the other (non-social) individual. We show that the interdependence can effectively counter-act the need to transfer wealth to low-wage individuals and may require them to be poorer by all objective measures. We demonstrate that in the presence of social interactions it can be socially desirable to keep substantial wealth inequality.

The Incidence Of Tobacco Taxation: Evidence From Geographic Micro-Level Data, Andrew Hanson, Ryan S. Sullivan

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper uses a recent increase in the state of Wisconsin's tobacco tax as a natural experiment to measure the economic incidence of tobacco taxation. We estimate the economic incidence of tobacco taxation using micro level data on cigarette prices collected from retail locations in Wisconsin and states that share its border. We find that Wisconsin's $1.00 increase in tobacco tax was over-shifted to consumers; they pay the entire amount of the tax as well as a premium of between $0.08 and $0.17 per pack of cigarettes. We use geo-coded data to test if the incidence of the tobacco tax …

Social Interactions In Demand, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner

Economics - All Scholarship

We examine theoretically demand in a two-good economy where the demand of one good is influenced by either a spillover effect in the form of an externality from other consumers' choices and or a conformity effect representing a need for making similar choices as others. A positive spillover effect increases the demand for the good with interactions, and a conformity effect makes the demand curve pivot around the average market demand to make demand less price sensitive. The collateral implication is that spillover in consumption increases the associated derived demand for labor and conformity in consumption makes the associated derived …

Patterns Of Culture: Re-Aligning Library Culture With User Needs, Nancy Turner

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

Radical changes in technology and information access have given rise to new academic disciplinary connections, new research and teaching practices, and new modes of communication. With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Syracuse University Library has undertaken a research project to better understand these changes at the University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. We intend to develop an indepth understanding of one multi-disciplinary academic culture and then to examine the library’s culture and work practices to discover where services and resources are meeting needs and where they are not.

The qualitative methods used in the Patterns of …

Can Offshoring Reduce Unemployment?, Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan

Economics - All Scholarship

In this paper, in order to study the impact offshoring on sectoral and economywide rates of unemployment, we construct a two-sector, general-equilibrium model in which labor is mobile across the two sectors, and unemployment is caused by search frictions. We find that, contrary to general perception, wage increases and sectoral unemployment decreases due to offshoring. This result can be understood to arise from the productivity enhancing (cost reducing) effect of offshoring. If the search cost is identical in the two sectors, or is higher in the sector which experiences offshoring, the economywide rate of unemployment decreases. When we modify the …

Summer 2008, School Of Information Studies

iSchool Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Understanding Declining Mobility And Interhousehold Transfers Among East African Pastoralists, Marieke Huysentruyt, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak

Economics - All Scholarship

We model interhousehold transfers between nomadic livestock herders as the state-dependent consequence of individuals' strategic interdependence resulting from the existence of multiple, opposing externalities. A public good security externality among individuals sharing a social (e.g., ethnic) identity in a potentially hostile environment creates incentives to band together. Self-interested interhousehold wealth transfers from wealthier herders to poorer ones may emerge endogenously within a limited wealth space as a means to motivate accompanying migration by the recipient. The distributional reach and size of the transfer are limited, however, by a resource appropriation externality related to the use of common property grazing lands. …

Mapping The New Commons, Charlotte Hess

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

From Introduction: "This paper is a guide to the rapidly growing area of research and activity I call 'new commons.' Simply put, new commons (NC) are various types of shared resources that have recently evolved or have been recognized as commons. They are commons without pre-existing rules or clear institutional arrangements. The paper introduces a map that outlines the NC resource sectors and identifies some of the salient questions that this new area of research raises. In addition, it examines the relationship between new commons and traditional common-pool resources and common property regimes. "This overview includes a survey of the …

Why A Property Tax Cap Is A Bad Idea For New York, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Exploring The Characteristics Of Opinion Expressions For Political Opinion Classification, Bei Yu, Stefan Kaufmann, Daniel Diermeier

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Recently there has been increasing interest in constructing general-purpose political opinion classifiers for applications in e-Rulemaking. This problem is generally modeled as a sentiment classification task in a new domain. However, the classification accuracy is not as good as that in other domains such as customer reviews. In this paper, we report the results of a series of experiments designed to explore the characteristics of political opinion expression which might affect the sentiment classification performance. We found that the average sentiment level of Congressional debate is higher than that of neutral news articles, but lower than that of movie reviews. …

“‘Why Does Google Scholar Sometimes Ask For Money?’ Leveraging The Economics Of Information And Scholarly Communication Processes To Enrich Instruction.”, Scott A. Warren, Kim Duckett

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

Librarians at North Carolina State University have developed useful techniques for enhancing information literacy instruction through the systematic incorporation of concepts pertaining to scholarly communication and the economics surrounding information. This presentation describes ways to leveraging such concepts as the Deep Web, Google Scholar, the nature of scholarly communication, and the inflated costs of journal subscriptions to contextualize hands-on instruction in the use of library resources. Assessment data from open-ended quizzes and surveys positively reflects students’ attitudes towards this instruction and exposes the impact of such instruction on student understanding about how research is made available on the Web.

The Preliminary Report Of The New York Commission On Property Tax Relief, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

The Effect Of Disability Insurance On Health Investment: Evidence From The Va Disability Compensation Program, Perry Singleton

Center for Policy Research

I examine whether individuals respond to monetary incentives to detect latent medical conditions. The effect is identified by an amendment to Title 38 that deemed diabetes associated with Agent Orange exposure a compensable disability under the VA’s Disability Compensation program. Since a diagnosis is a requisite for benefit eligibility, and nearly one-third of diabetics remain undiagnosed, the advent of disability insurance may have encouraged the detection of diabetes among the previously undiagnosed population. Evidence from the National Health Interview Survey suggests that the policy increased the prevalence of diabetes by 2.7 percentage points among veterans.

New York Camp Econometrics Iii Program, Center For Policy Research

Camp Econometrics-Programs

No abstract provided.

Semiparametric Deconvolution With Unknown Error Variance, William C. Horrace, Christopher F. Parmeter

Economics - All Scholarship

Deconvolution is a useful statistical technique for recovering an unknown density in the presence of measurement error. Typically, the method hinges on stringent assumptions about the nature of the measurement error, more specifically, that the distribution is entirely known. We relax this assumption in the context of a regression error component model and develop an estimator for the unknown density. We show semi-uniform consistency of the estimator and provide an application to the stochastic frontier model.

Fixed-Effect Estimation Of Highly-Mobile Production Technologies, William C. Horrace, Kurt E. Schnier

Economics - All Scholarship

We consider fixed-effect estimation of a production function where inputs and outputs vary over time, space, and cross-sectional unit. Variability in the spatial dimension allows for time-varying individual effects, without parametric assumptions on the effects. Asymptotics along the spatial dimension provide consistency and normality of the marginal products. A finite-sample example is provided: a production function for bottom-trawler fishing vessels in the flatfish fisheries of the Bering Sea. We find significant spatial variability of output (catch) which we exploit in estimation of a harvesting function.

Semiparametric Deconvolution With Unknown Error Variance, William C. Horrace, Chris Parmeter

Economics - All Scholarship

Deconvolution is a useful statistical technique for recovering an unknown density in the presence of measurement error. Typically, the method hinges on stringent assumptions about the nature of the measurement error, more specifically, that the distribution is entirely known. We relax this assumption in the context of a regression error component model and develop an estimator for the unknown density. We show semi-uniform consistency of the estimator and provide Monte Carlo evidence that demonstrates the merits of the method.

Perspectives On Development In Arid And Semi-Arid East Africa: Results Of A Ranking Exercise, John G. Mcpeak, Cheryl R. Doss, Christopher B. Barrett, Patti Kristjanson

Economics - All Scholarship

This study investigates perspectives on development held by individuals living in arid and semi-arid areas of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. Overall, we find that interventions to meet basic human needs (access to water, health care and education) are the most highly desired. Projects supporting pastoral livelihoods (livestock health and marketing-oriented, restocking and conflict resolution) are second most important, followed by those that support alternatives to pastoralism (cropping, other income generating activities). Econometric analysis indicates that variation in rankings is mostly driven by variation across communities rather than across households within communities, lending support to community-based approaches to priority setting.

Fixed-Effect Estimation Of Highly-Mobile Production Technologies, William C. Horrace, Kurt E. Schnier

Center for Policy Research

We consider fixed-effect estimation of a production function where inputs and outputs vary over time, space, and cross-sectional unit. Variability in the spatial dimension allows for time-varying individual effects, without parametric assumptions on the effects. Asymptotics along the spatial dimension provide consistency and normality of the marginal products. A finite-sample example is provided: a production function for bottom-trawler fishing vessels in the flatfish fisheries of the Bering Sea. We find significant spatial variability of output (catch) which we exploit in estimation of a harvesting function.

Reform In New York State’S Education Aid Formula?, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Testing For Random Effects And Spatial Lag Dependence In Panel Data Models, Badi Baltagi, Long Liu

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper derives a joint Lagrange Multiplier (LM) test which simultaneously tests for the absence of spatial lag dependence and random individual effects in a panel data regression model. It turns out that this LM statistic is the sum of two standard LM statistics. The first one tests for the absence of spatial lag dependence ignoring the random individual effects, and the second one tests for the absence of random individual effects ignoring the spatial lag dependence. This paper also derives two conditional LM tests. The first one tests for the absence of random individual effects without ignoring the possible …

Is A Circuit Breaker The Solution For Property Tax Relief In New York?, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Property Tax Relief In New York State, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

International Trade And Unemployment: Theory And Cross-National Evidence, Pushan Dutt, Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan

Economics - All Scholarship

In this paper, we present two alternative models of trade and unemployment, in which unemployment is generated through a search mechanism. The basic framework of the first model is Ricardian in that the only factor of production is labor and trade is based on relative technological differences. The second model has a Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) framework with two factors of production, namely labor and capital that are intersectorally mobile. Using cross-country data on various measures of trade policy, unemployment and a variety of controls, we find strong evidence for the Ricardian prediction that unemployment and trade openness are negatively related (protection …