Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Antidepressent Treatment For Depression: Total Charges And Therapy Duration, Deborah G. Dobrez, Catherine A. Melfi, Thomas W. Croghan, Thomas J. Kniesner, Robert L. Obenchain

Center for Policy Research

Background: The economic costs of depression are significant, both the direct medical costs of care and the indirect costs of lost productivity. Empirical studies of antidepressant costeffectiveness suggest that the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) may be no more costly than tricyclic antidepressants (TCA), will improve tolerability, and is associated with longer therapy duration. However the success of depression care usually involves multiple factors, including source of care, type of care, and patient characteristics, in addition to drug choice. The cost-effective mix of antidepressant therapy components is unclear.

Aims of the Study: Our study evaluates cost and antidepressant-continuity …

November 2000, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Workplace Safety Policy: Past, Present, And Future, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth

Economics - All Scholarship

With an annual budget of about $400 million, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is about 5 percent the size of the Environmental Protection Agency, another federal agency created by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the "Year of the Environment." Nearly all workers in the United States come under OSHA's juridction, with some notable exceptions, including miners, transportation workers, many public employees, and people who are self-employed. OSHA is currently responsible for ptoecting over 100 million workers at 6 million work sites with the help of only about 2,000 workplace health and safety inspectors. Nevertheless, suppoers of OSHA …

Quality Of The Business Environment Versus Quality Of Life In A Dynamic Model Of Urban Composition And Growth Do Firms And Households Like The Same Cities?, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Stuart A. Gabriel

Economics - All Scholarship

Appropriately constructed measures of the quality of life and the quality of the business environment should be important determinants of the growth and composition of population across urban areas. This paper examines that question by extending theoretical measures of household quality of life to construct the first ever measure of the quality of the business environment? the value that firms place on the basket of amenities in a metropolitan area. An annual panel of quality of life and quality of business environment values for 37 cities in the United States is then constructed for the 1977 to 1995 period.

A …

Chasing The Elderly: Can State And Local Governments Attract Recent Retirees?, William Duncombe, Mark Robbins, Douglas A. Wolf

Center for Policy Research

Recruiting recent retirees to relocate from elsewhere has become an important economic development strategy in an increasing number of states. State governments have planned or enacted a variety of tax and fee incentives to lure retirees. The objective of this paper is to determine whether states can, in fact, influence the retirement destination of elder households using fiscal tools. To estimate the determinants of retiree location decisions we have developed an extensive data set on county attributes, and a methodology for estimating an individual-level discrete-choice model for a very large number of potential locations. Using 1990 county-to-county migration data, we …

Chronic Illness And Health Insurance-Related Job Lock, Eleaonr D. Kinney, Thomas J. Kniesner, Kevin Stroupe

Economics - All Scholarship

We examine job duration patterns for evidence of health insurance-related job lock among chronically ill workers or workers with a chronically ill family member. Using Cox proportional hazard models, we allow for more general insurance effects than in the existing literature to indicate the impact of health insurance and health status on workers' job durations. We use data for workers in Indiana predating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to examine the potential impact of HIPAA on job mobility. Chronic illness reduced job mobility by about 40 percent among the workers in our sample who relied on their …

Measuring The Career Concerns Of Security Analysts: Job Separations, Stock Coverage Assignments And Brokerage House Status, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper examines the career concerns of security analysts using long histories of their earnings forecasts, job separations and stock coverage assignments. Our findings include the following. Relatively good (accurate) past forecast performance increases the probability that an analyst moves from a low status to a high status (large, prestigious) brokerage house, while relatively poor past forecast performance leads to movements down the brokerage house hierarchy. High status brokerage houses are more likely to discharge an analyst for poor past forecast performance than other houses. In addition, analysts with poor past forecast performances but who do not change employers are …

Generational Conflict, Human Capital Accumulation, And Economic Growth, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mary Lovely, Mehmet S. Tosun

Economics - All Scholarship

Worldwide, dependency ratios are forecast to increase dramatically in the next 50 years. A great deal of attention has been devoted to understanding the changes in fiscal policies that "must" take place to accommodate these changes. In contrast, less effort has been concentrated on studying the fiscal shifts that will endogenously result from demographic pressures. An example of particular interest is the degree to which a more elderly population will support public spending for education. We use an overlapping-generations model to investigate the effect of this demographic transition on the endogenous determination of public spending for education. A demographic transition …

Association Between Body Size And Mortality In Later Life, Christine L. Himes

Center for Policy Research

The rising prevalence of obesity in the United States has focused attention on the health consequences of excess weight. Obesity is linked to many of the major causes of death in the United States, including heart disease, some types of cancer, strokes, diabetes, and atherosclerosis. However, the effects of body size on mortality and health among the elderly are much less clear. This paper extends our current understanding of the relationship between body size and mortality by using two nationally representative, longitudinal datasets of individuals at older ages. These analyses indicate that obesity may not contribute greatly to increased mortality …

April 2000, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Does Chronic Illness Affect The Adequacy Of Health Insurance Coverage?, Eleanor D. Kinney, Thomas J. Kniesner, Kevin Stroupe

Economics - All Scholarship

Although chronically ill individuals need protection against high medical expenses, they often have difficulty obtaining adequate insurance coverage due to medical underwriting practices used to classify and price risks and to define and limit coverage for individuals and groups. Using data from healthy and chronically ill individuals in Indiana, we found that illness decreased the probability of having adequate insurance, particularly among single individuals. Chronic illness decreased the probability of having adequate coverage by about 10 percentage points among all individuals and by about 25 percentage points among single individuals. Preexisting condition exclusions were a major source of inadequate insurance. …

Patterns Of Time Use Of People Age 55 To 64 Years Old: Some Cross-National Comparisons, Anne H. Gauthier, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

Objectives. This paper examines the patterns of time use of adults age 55 to 64 years old in six countries: Austria, Canada, Finland, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. It examines the discontinuity in daily activities by employment status and gender. Methods. The paper uses nationally representative samples from time use surveys carried out in each country. We compute aggregate patterns of time use by employment status and gender for seven categories of activities: personal activities, paid work, unpaid work, housework, social leisure, active leisure, and passive leisure. We also compute dissimilarity indices to measure the degree of discontinuity in …

Multiple Comparisons With The Best, With Economic Applications, William C. Horrace, Peter Schmidt

Economics - All Scholarship

In this paper we discuss a statistical method called multiple comparisons with the best, or MCB. Suppose that we have N populations, and population i has parameter value θ_i. Let $\theta _{(N)}={\rm max}_{i=1,\ldots ,N}\theta _{i}$\nopagenumbers\end, the parameter value for the ‘best’ population. Then MCB constructs joint confidence intervals for the differences $[\theta _{(N)}-\theta _{1},\theta _{(N)}-\theta _{2},\ldots ,\theta _{(N)}-\theta _{N}]$\nopagenumbers\end. It is not assumed that it is known which population is best, and part of the problem is to say whether any population is so identified, at the given confidence level. This paper is meant to introduce MCB …

What Is Free Trade? The Real Issue Lurking Behind The Trade And Environment Debate, David M. Driesen

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that a fundamental question, "What is free trade?," lurks behind the ongoing debate about the relationship between international trade law and competing legal regimes. It also lurks behind much of the confusion in the Supreme Court's dormant commerce clause jurisprudence under the United States constitution, sometimes mentioned as a model for international trade law. Yet, the literature has remarkably little to say about free trade's definition, although it contains volumes about the reasons for free trade.

This article explores three possible concepts of free trade, trade free from discrimination against foreign companies, trade free from coercion, and …

Soziale Arbeit Und Ökonomie : Politische Ökonomie - Arbeitsmärkte - Sozialpolitik Grenzen Der Ökonomisierung - Soziale Ökonomie Gemeinwesenentwicklung - Bürgergesellschaft, Susanne Elsen, Dietrich Lange, Isidor Wallimann

Books

Globalization has seen the removal of borders and increased global flows of capital and goods and services, changing the employment landscape, pressuring revenues and social-welfare spending of modern welfare states. This collection of essays brings together perspectives from different disciplines to discuss the role globalization has had on social policies of the modern welfare state and the changing relationship between social policy, social work and the economy, describes its consequences and presents innovative approaches for action.

Worldwide Population Aging: Endogenous Policy Formation And Capital Market Transmissions In The Presence Of Symmetric Demographic Shocks, Mehmet Serkan Tosun

Center for Policy Research

This paper examines the transition effects of population aging in more developed regions that is also expected to occur in developing regions in the near future. We address these effects by exploring the influences of internationally mobile capital and a politically responsive fiscal policy in a two-country overlapping generations model. Our results show that the combination of capital mobility and endogenous fiscal policy play an important role in how economies respond to population aging. Capital mobility has consumption smoothing effects but endogenous fiscal policy is the key factor in creating asymmetries between countries. The interaction of the two may even …

Chronic Illness And Health Insurance-Related Job Lock, Kevin T. Stroupe, Eleanor D. Kinney, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

We examine job duration patterns for evidence of health insurance-related job lock among chronically ill workers or workers with a chronically ill family member. Using Cox proportional hazard models, we allow for more general insurance effects than in the existing literature to indicate the impact of health insurance and health status on workers' job durations. We use data for workers in Indiana predating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to examine the potential impact of HIPAA on job mobility. Chronic illness reduced job mobility by about 40 percent among the workers in our sample who relied on their …

Microdata Panel Data And Public Policy: National And Cross-National Perspectives, Richard V. Burkhauser

Center for Policy Research

This paper focuses on the movement of data-based social policy analysis from a single-country cross-section frame to a multi-country panel frame. It provides examples of policy insights this movement to panel data has permitted, both with respect to economic well-being and behavior--using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the British Household Panel Study (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). It also suggests fruitful areas for future panel data-based policy research.