Income Distribution Commons^™

Child Poverty Has Been Declining In Single-Mother Families, But The Gap Remains Large, Xiaoyan Zhang

Population Health Research Brief Series

Family structure (whether a child lives in a single parent or married family) is a strong predictor of childhood poverty. While childhood poverty has been on the decline, there is still a high rate of poverty among children in single-mother families, affecting the health of these children. This data slice describes the trends of childhood poverty among different family structures in the U.S.

Measuring The Financial Shocks Of Natural Disasters: A Panel Study Of U.S. States, Qing Miao, Yilin Hou, Michael Abrigo

Center for Policy Research

This paper employs panel vector autoregression to examine the dynamic fiscal response to disaster shocks. With 50-state, 1970-2013 panel data of state government finance and disaster damage, we estimate disaster impacts on revenue, expenditure, debt issuance, and intergovernmental transfers. We find that following a disaster, states increase program expenditure, but receive more federal transfers. Disasters have limited impact on total tax revenues but amplify fluctuations in sales, income, and property tax revenues. Our findings suggest that disaster-induced additional spending is largely financed through federal transfers, which include not only disaster relief funds but also non-disaster-related public welfare aids.

The Behavioral Impacts Of Property Tax Relief: Salience Or Framing?, Phuong Nguyen-Hoang, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

New York State’s School Tax Relief Program, STAR, provides state-funded exemptions from school property taxes. From 2006-07 to 2008-09, these exemptions were supplemented with rebates, which arrived as a check in the mail. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether these two algebraically equivalent but administratively distinct policies of tax relief led to different behavioral responses. Drawing on behavioral economics, we explore the impact of STAR on the price elasticity of demand for school quality based on the concepts of salience and framing. Our main results are that the behavioral impact of the STAR provisions are larger (1) …

Estimating The Effects Of The Minimum Wage In A Developing Country: A Density Discontinuity Design Approach, Hugo Jales

Center for Policy Research

This paper proposes a new framework to identify the effects of the minimum wage on the joint distribution of sector and wages in a developing country. I show that under reasonable assumptions, cross-sectional data on the worker's wage and sector can identify the joint distribution of the latent counterparts of these variables; that is, the sector status and wage that would prevail in the absence of the minimum wage. I apply the method in the “PNAD”, a nationwide representative Brazilian cross-sectional dataset for the years 2001 to 2009. The results indicate that the size of the informal sector is increased …

Testing For Spatial Lag And Spatial Error Dependence In A Fixed Effects Panel Data Model Using Double Length Artificial Regressions, Badi H. Baltagi, Long Liu

Center for Policy Research

This paper revisits the joint and conditional Lagrange Multiplier tests derived by Debarsy and Ertur (2010) for a fixed effects spatial lag regression model with spatial auto-regressive error, and derives these tests using artificial Double Length Regressions (DLR). These DLR tests and their corresponding LM tests are compared using an empirical example and a Monte Carlo simulation.

The Spatial Polish Wage Curve With Gender Effects: Evidence From The Polish Labor Survey, Badi H. Baltagi, Bartlomiej Rokicki

Center for Policy Research

This paper reconsiders the Polish wage curve using individual data from the Polish Labor Force Survey (LFS) at the 16 NUTS2 level allowing for spatial spillovers between regions. In addition it estimates the total and gender-specific regional unemployment rate elasticities on individual wages. The paper finds significant spatial unemployment spillovers across Polish regions. In addition, it finds that the results for the Polish wage curve are sensitive to gender-specific regional unemployment rates. This is especially true for women.

The Settlers Of Catan And A Study Of Trade In Non-Cooperative Games, Dmitriy Ioselevich

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Free trade has long been hailed as the world’s answer to increased competitiveness, greater overall wealth and a higher standard of living. Adam Smith’s ideas on the foundations of capitalism assert that open market policies lead to global economic growth, and conversely that protectionist measures stunt growth and inflate prices. Critics argue that protectionism helps protect developing markets and industries and prevents unfair competition. But in the debate over trade which economic policy is actually best?

To answer this question I conducted an experiment using the board game, The Settlers of Catan, as an economic model. I isolated trade …

The Interrelation Of Box Office Results How Does One Weekend’S Movie Attendance Affect The Next?, Drew Sullivan

Honors Capstone Projects - All

In this paper, I attempted to determine the relationship between a movie’s box office success and the immediate timing of its release. Considering the large investment that needs to be made in producing and distributing a major motion picture, a full understanding of the factors that affect its success is vital. One factor that has been historically underexplored is the impact of movies that are directly competing with each other at the box office. This has been due to limitations in data. However, using publicly available data I was able to put together a dataset that looked at box office …

Earnings Effects Of Sexual Orientation Revisited: Evidence From The Cps, Clay Rehrig

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Objective. To measure the wage premium or penalty associated with sexual orientation of partnered lesbians and gays and to compare these estimates with those produced using smaller sample sizes and alternative definitions of homosexuality.

Data Source and Sampling Methods. Data are drawn from the Current Population Survey, produced by the U.S. Census Bureau. Extracting household information from the out-going March rotation provides a sample of 37,000 households interviewed in the years 1995 and 2000. Only workers living with a partner are included in the analysis.

Study Design. Following the methodology used by Black et al. (2003), this study uses a …

Credit Card Interest Rates: Does Race And Gender Matter?, Brian Hecht

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This paper examines the consumer credit card market in theUnited Statesto determine what factors, race and gender specifically, influence interest rates available to consumers. Data from the 2001 Survey of Consumer Finances is used to model the credit card market and answer the questions: All else being equal do women have higher credit card interest rates than men? Do blacks or Hispanics, all else being equal, have higher credit card interest rates than whites?

The paper provides background on the credit card market and its growing importance, reviews key literature on the role that discrimination can play in different lending …

Movement Of Economics Professors Among Top Research Universities In The Us, Benjamin E. Resnick

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Abstract not Included

The College Football Gambling Market An Empirical Approach, Brian Mcneil

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This study tests the efficiency of the college football gambling market and whether the market allows for profitable wagering. Operating upon the theoretical framework that, at any given time, prices fully reflect all information available in a particular market, I test for the existence of residual information that is not currently incorporated into the market, thus rendering it inefficient. This project expands upon several previous studies performed on sports betting – most notably that of Zuber, Gandar, and Bowers (1985), which examined the gambling market efficiency for National Football League games. The findings prove to be consistent with the conclusions …