Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 61 - 90 of 104
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Ranking Inequality: Applications Of Multivariate Subset Selection, William C. Horrace, Joseph T. Marchand, Timothy M. Smeeding
Ranking Inequality: Applications Of Multivariate Subset Selection, William C. Horrace, Joseph T. Marchand, Timothy M. Smeeding
Economics - All Scholarship
Inequality measures are often presented in the form of a rank ordering to highlight their relative magnitudes. However, a rank ordering may produce misleading inference, because the inequality measures themselves are statistical estimators with different standard errors, and because a rank ordering necessarily implies multiple comparisons across all measures. Within this setting, if differences between several inequality measures are simultaneously and statistically insignificant, the interpretation of the ranking is changed. This study uses a multivariate subset selection procedure to make simultaneous distinctions across inequality measures at a pre-specified confidence level. Three applications of this procedure are explored using country-level data …
Gentrification And Neighborhood Housing Cycles: Will America's Future Downtowns Be Rich?, Jan K. Brueckner, Stuart S. Rosenthal
Gentrification And Neighborhood Housing Cycles: Will America's Future Downtowns Be Rich?, Jan K. Brueckner, Stuart S. Rosenthal
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper identifies a new factor, the age of the housing stock, that affects where high- and low-income neighborhoods are located in U.S. cities. High-income households, driven by a high demand for housing services, will tend to locate in areas of the city where the housing stock is relatively young. Because cities develop and redevelop from the center outward over time, the location of these neighborhoods varies over the city's history. The model predicts a suburban location for the rich in an initial period, when young dwellings are found only in the suburbs, while predicting eventual gentrification once central redevelopment …
How Unobservable Productivity Biases The Value Of A Statistical Life, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. Ziliak, Christopher Woock
How Unobservable Productivity Biases The Value Of A Statistical Life, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. Ziliak, Christopher Woock
Economics - All Scholarship
A prominent theoretical controversy in the compensating differentials literature concerns unobservable individual productivity. Competing models yield opposite predictions depending on whether the unobservable productivity is safety-related skill or productivity generally. Using five panel waves and several new measures of worker fatality risks, first-difference estimates imply that omitting individual heterogeneity leads to overestimates of the value of statistical life, consistent with the latent safety-related skill interpretation. Risk measures with less measurement error raise the value of statistical life, the net effect being that estimates from the static model range from $5.3 million to $6.7 million, with dynamic model estimates somewhat higher.
The Only Game In Town: Stock-Price Consequences Of Local Bias, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong, Jeremy Stein
The Only Game In Town: Stock-Price Consequences Of Local Bias, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong, Jeremy Stein
Economics - All Scholarship
Theory suggests that, in the presence of local bias, the price of a stock should be decreasing in the ratio of the aggregate book value of firms in its region to the aggregate risk tolerance of investors in its region. We test this proposition using data on U.S. Census regions and states, and find clear-cut support for it. Most of the variation in the ratio of interest comes from differences across regions in aggregate book value per capita. Regions with low population density - e.g., the Deep South - are home to relatively few firms per capita, which leads to …
Are Foreign Investors Attracted To Weak Environmental Regulations? Evaluating The Evidence From China, Judith M. Dean, Mary E. Lovely, Hua Wang
Are Foreign Investors Attracted To Weak Environmental Regulations? Evaluating The Evidence From China, Judith M. Dean, Mary E. Lovely, Hua Wang
Economics - All Scholarship
One of the most contentious debates today is whether pollution-intensive industries from rich countries relocate to poor countries with weaker environmental standards, turning them into "pollution havens." Empirical studies to date show little evidence to support the pollution haven hypothesis, but suffer potentially from omitted variable bias, specification, and measurement errors. Dean, Lovely, and Wang estimate the strength of pollution-haven behavior by examining the location choices of equity joint venture (EJV) projects in China. They derive a location choice model from a theoretical framework that incorporates the firm's production and abatement decision, agglomeration, and factor abundance. The authors estimate conditional …
Are Household Production Decisions Cooperative? Evidence On Pastoral Migration And Milk Sales From Northern Kenya, Cheryl R. Doss, John G. Mcpeak
Are Household Production Decisions Cooperative? Evidence On Pastoral Migration And Milk Sales From Northern Kenya, Cheryl R. Doss, John G. Mcpeak
Economics - All Scholarship
Market-based development efforts frequently create opportunities to generate income from goods previously produced and consumed within the household. Production within the household is often characterized by a gender and age division of labor. Market development efforts to improve well being may lead to unanticipated outcomes if household production decisions are non-cooperative. We develop and test models of household decision-making to investigate intra-household decision making in a nomadic pastoral setting from Kenya. Our results suggest that household decisions are contested, with husbands using migration decisions to resist wives' ability to market milk.
Value Of A Statistical Life: Relative Position Vs. Relative Age, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi
Value Of A Statistical Life: Relative Position Vs. Relative Age, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper examines the influence on estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) of the worker's relative position in the wage distribution and relative position in the life cycle. Whereas past work on relative position effects in the labor market have been based on illustrative hypothetical examples, this paper develops empirical tests using actual market behavior. To test for the effect of relative wage position, we use two different measures: the individual's wage rank in the state and the wage rank by gender in the state. Using the CPS coupled with constructed BLS fatality risk measures by industry and …
Pastoralist Livestock Marketing Behavior In Northern Kenya And Southern Ethiopia: An Analysis Of Constraints Limiting Off-Take Rates, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Winnie Luseno, Peter D. Little, Sharon M. Osterloh, Hussein Mahmoud, Getachu Gebru
Pastoralist Livestock Marketing Behavior In Northern Kenya And Southern Ethiopia: An Analysis Of Constraints Limiting Off-Take Rates, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Winnie Luseno, Peter D. Little, Sharon M. Osterloh, Hussein Mahmoud, Getachu Gebru
Economics - All Scholarship
Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks that plunge them into massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. One of the most puzzling features of pastoralist behavior in times of stress has been their relatively low and non-responsive rate of marketed off-take of animals when faced with likely losses to herd mortality. As Figure 1, from Desta (1999), finds in 17-year herd history data from Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia, mortality always exceeds net sales as a share of beginning period herd size, with the latter never exceeding three percent and moving hardly …
Shelter Strategies For The Urban Poor: Idiosyncratic And Successful, But Hardly Mysterious, Jerry Kalarickal, Robert M. Buckley
Shelter Strategies For The Urban Poor: Idiosyncratic And Successful, But Hardly Mysterious, Jerry Kalarickal, Robert M. Buckley
Economics - All Scholarship
In 1986 the World Bank prepared a strategy for low-income housing in developing countries. This work grew out of the Bank's efforts to support the urban poor through an extensive housing assistance program that was launched by Bank President McNamara's speech on urban poverty. By that time, the Bank had provided more than $4 billion of such assistance, and had undertaken an extensive research effort to design support for that lending. Much has changed since that time, not only in the way the Bank provides shelter assistance, more than doubling its support since that review, but also in the changing …
Educational Investments In A Dual Economy, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Cheryl R. Doss
Educational Investments In A Dual Economy, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Cheryl R. Doss
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational investment patterns. But when financial markets are incomplete and informal mechanisms subject to imperfect contract enforcement must fill the breach, spatial inequality in infrastructure or other attributes that affect the returns to education create spatial differentiation in educational lending and consequently, in educational attainment. Although migration options can increase the returns to education, they can also choke off the …
Bayesian Herders: Asymmetric Updating Of Rainfall Beliefs In Response To External Forecasts, Travis J. Lybbert, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Winnie Luseno
Bayesian Herders: Asymmetric Updating Of Rainfall Beliefs In Response To External Forecasts, Travis J. Lybbert, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Winnie Luseno
Economics - All Scholarship
Temporal climate risk weighs heavily on many of the world's poor. Model-based climate forecasts could benefit such populations, provided recipients use forecast information to update climate expectations. We test whether pastoralists in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya update
their expectations in response to forecast information and find that they indeed do, albeit with a systematic bias towards optimism. In their systematic optimism, these pastoralists are remarkably like Wall Street's financial analysts and stockbrokers. If climate forecasts have limited value to these pastoralists, it is due to the flexibility of their livelihood rather than an inability to process forecast information.
Social Identity And Manipulative Interhousehold Transfers Among East African Pastoralists, Marieke Huysentruyt, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak
Social Identity And Manipulative 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. …
Entry Deterring Capacity In The Texas Lodging Industry, Michael Conlin, Vrinda Kadiyali
Entry Deterring Capacity In The Texas Lodging Industry, Michael Conlin, Vrinda Kadiyali
Economics - All Scholarship
We test whether capacity is used to deter entry and whether the amount invested in entry deterring capacity is related to market concentration and market presence. We use a unique dataset containing all lodging properties in Texas from 1991 through 1997. For each of the 3,830 properties, we have information on occupancy rate, number of rooms, location and ownership. This information is augmented by market level information such as tax rates, travel expenditures and retail wages. We find that there is higher investment in capacity relative to demand (i.e. idle capacity) in markets with larger Herfindahl index and by firms …
Social Interactions And The Health Insurance Choices Of The Elderly: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Eldar Beiseitov, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Social Interactions And The Health Insurance Choices Of The Elderly: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Eldar Beiseitov, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Economics - All Scholarship
Using data from the 1998 Wave of the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the effect of social interactions on the health insurance choices of the elderly. We find that having more social interactions, as measured by contacts with friends and neighbors, reduces the likelihood of enrolling in a Medicare managed care plan relative to purchasing a medigap policy or having coverage through Medicare alone. Our estimates indicate that social networks are an important determinant of the health insurance choices of the elderly and provide suggestive evidence that "word-of-mouth" information sharing may have played a role in the preference of …
Bayesian Herders: Optimistic Updating Of Rainfall Beliefs In Response To External Forecasts, Travis J. Lybbert, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Winnie Luseno
Bayesian Herders: Optimistic Updating Of Rainfall Beliefs In Response To External Forecasts, Travis J. Lybbert, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Winnie Luseno
Economics - All Scholarship
Temporal climate risk weighs heavily on many of the world's poor. Model based climate forecasts could benefit such populations, provided recipients use forecast information to update climate expectations. We test whether pastoralists in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya update their expectations in response to forecast information and find that they indeed do, albeit with a systematic bias towards optimism. In their systematic optimism, these pastoralists are remarkably like Wall Street's financial analysts and stockbrokers. If climate forecasts have limited value to these pastoralists, it is due to the flexibility of their livelihood rather than an inability to process forecast information.
Life-Cycle Consumption And The Age-Adjusted Value Of Life, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. Ziliak
Life-Cycle Consumption And The Age-Adjusted Value Of Life, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. Ziliak
Economics - All Scholarship
Our research examines empirically the age pattern of the implicit value of life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of life expectancy, aging can affect the value of life through an effect on planned life-cycle consumption. The elderly could, a priori, have the highest implicit value of life if there is a life-cycle plan to defer consumption until old age. We find that largely due to the age pattern of consumption, which is non-constant, the implicit value of life rises and falls over the lifetime in a way that the …
Does Fund Size Erode Mutual Fund Performance? The Role Of Liquidity And Organization, Joseph Chen, Harrison G. Hong, Ming Huang, Jeffrey D. Kubik
Does Fund Size Erode Mutual Fund Performance? The Role Of Liquidity And Organization, Joseph Chen, Harrison G. Hong, Ming Huang, Jeffrey D. Kubik
Economics - All Scholarship
We investigate the effect of scale on performance in the active money management industry. We first document that fund returns, both before and after fees and expenses, decline with lagged fund size, even after adjusting these returns by various performance benchmarks. We then explore a number of potential explanations for this relationship. We find that this relationship is most pronounced among funds that have to invest in small and illiquid stocks, which suggests that the adverse effects of scale are related to liquidity. Controlling for its size, a fund's performance actually increases with the asset base of the other funds …
Love At What Price? Estimating The Value Of Marriage, Michael Conlin, Stacy A. Dickert-Conlin, Elyse Whitney
Love At What Price? Estimating The Value Of Marriage, Michael Conlin, Stacy A. Dickert-Conlin, Elyse Whitney
Economics - All Scholarship
Using a law within Social Security that provides clear financial incentives to delay marriage, we estimate the financial value of a month of marriage. Specifically, the law provides that widows who are eligible for Social Security benefits on their deceased spouse's earnings records are eligible for benefits at age 60, unless they remarry before that age. If they remarry before that age, they cannot claim widow benefits and must wait until at least age 62 to claim spousal benefits on their new husband's record, which are typically less generous than widow benefits. To generate an estimate of what this behavior …
Improving Economic Literacy: The Role Of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, Donald H. Dutkowsky, Jerry M. Evensky, Gerald S. Edmonds
Improving Economic Literacy: The Role Of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, Donald H. Dutkowsky, Jerry M. Evensky, Gerald S. Edmonds
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper introduces Concurrent Enrollment Programs (CEPs), within the context of Syracuse University Project Advance (PA) Economics, as a way to improve economic literacy. We describe measures implemented to operate PA Economics as a high-quality CEP, as well as the National Alliance of Concurrent Education Partnerships to establish national standards. This study also contains results from administering to high school students taking PA Economics the nationally normed Test of Economic Literacy (TEL). PA students average nearly one percentage point higher than the AP/Honors Economics Group, and score considerably better than AP/Honors Economics in fundamentals and international economics. By cognitive level, …
Option Value And Dynamic Programming Model Estimates Of Social Security Disability Insurance Application Timing, Rickard V. Burkhauser, J. S. Butler, Gulcin Gumus
Option Value And Dynamic Programming Model Estimates Of Social Security Disability Insurance Application Timing, Rickard V. Burkhauser, J. S. Butler, Gulcin Gumus
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper develops dynamic structural models - an option value model and a dynamic programming model - of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. We estimate the time to application from the point at which a health condition first begins to affect the kind or amount of work that a currently employed person can do. We use Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and restricted access Social Security earnings data for estimation. Based on tests of both in-sample and out-of-sample predictive accuracy, our option value model performs better than both our dynamic programming model and our reduced form …
Dynamic Modeling Of The Ssdi Application Timing Decision: The Importance Of Policy Variables, Rickard V. Burkhauser, J S. Butler, Gulcin Gumus
Dynamic Modeling Of The Ssdi Application Timing Decision: The Importance Of Policy Variables, Rickard V. Burkhauser, J S. Butler, Gulcin Gumus
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper analyzes the importance of policy variables in the context of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. Previously, we explicitly modeled the optimal timing of SSDI application using dynamic structural models. We estimated these models using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). This paper uses option value model estimates to simulate application timing under alternative SSDI policy formulations. We consider changes in three policy variables: benefit levels, acceptance rates, and employer accommodation. Our simulations suggest all these changes would have substantial effects on expected spell lengths until application and on lifetime application rates, and hence …
Does Fund Size Erode Performance? Liquidity, Organizational Diseconomies And Active Money Management, Joseph S. Chen, Harrison Hong, Ming Huang, Jeffrey D. Kubik
Does Fund Size Erode Performance? Liquidity, Organizational Diseconomies And Active Money Management, Joseph S. Chen, Harrison Hong, Ming Huang, Jeffrey D. Kubik
Economics - All Scholarship
We investigate the effect of fund size on performance among active mutual funds. We first document that fund returns, both before and after management fees, decline with fund size, even after adjusting performance by various benchmarks and controlling for other fund characteristics such as turnover and age. We then explore a number of potential explanations for this relationship. We find that the effect of fund size on fund returns is most pronounced among funds that play small cap stocks. Interestingly, performance only depends on fund size and does not decline with family size. Finally, small funds are better than large …
Educational Investments In A Spatially Varied Economy, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Cheryl R. Doss
Educational Investments In A Spatially Varied Economy, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Cheryl R. Doss
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational investment patterns. But when financial markets are incomplete and informal mechanisms subject to imperfect contract enforcement must fill the breach, spatial inequality in infrastructure or other attributes that affect the returns to education create spatial differentiation in educational lending and consequently, in educational attainment. Although migration options can increase the returns to education, they can also choke off the …
Data Mining Mining Data: Msha Enforcement Efforts, Underground Coal Mine Safety, And New Health Policy Implications, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth
Data Mining Mining Data: Msha Enforcement Efforts, Underground Coal Mine Safety, And New Health Policy Implications, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth
Economics - All Scholarship
Studies of industrial safety regulations, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in particular, often find little effect on worker safety. Critics of the regulatory approach argue that safety standards have little to do with industrial injuries, and defenders of the regulatory approach cite infrequent inspections and low fines for violating safety standards. We use recently assembled data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) concerning underground coal mine production, safety inspections, and workplace injuries to shed new light on the regulatory approach to workplace safety. Because all underground coal mines are inspected at least once per quarter, MSHA regulations …
Thy Neighbor's Portfolio: Word-Of-Mouth Effects In The Holdings And Trades Of Money Managers, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong, Jeremy Stein
Thy Neighbor's Portfolio: Word-Of-Mouth Effects In The Holdings And Trades Of Money Managers, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong, Jeremy Stein
Economics - All Scholarship
A mutual-fund manager is more likely to hold (or buy, or sell) a particular stock in any quarter if other managers in the same city are holding (or buying, or selling) that same stock. This pattern shows up even when controlling for the distance between the fund manager and the stock in question, so it is distinct from a local-preference effect. It is also robust to a variety of controls for investment styles. These results can be interpreted in terms of an epidemic model in which investors spread information about stocks to one another by word of mouth.
Can Policy Changes Be Treated As Natural Experiments? Evidence From Cigarette Excise Taxes, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Can Policy Changes Be Treated As Natural Experiments? Evidence From Cigarette Excise Taxes, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Economics - All Scholarship
An important issue in public policy analysis is the potential endogeneity of the policies under study. We examine the extent to which such political endogeneity biases estimates of behavioral parameters by identifying the elasticity of demand for cigarettes using the timing of state legislative elections as an instrument for changes in cigarette excise taxes. We find sizable differences between our estimates and those cited in Chaloupka and Warner (2000), which treat cigarette taxes as exogenous. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that policy changes may be codetermined with the outcomes they are thought to influence.
New Wine In Old Bottles: A Sequential Estimation Technique For The Lpm, William C. Horrace, Ronald L. Oaxaca
New Wine In Old Bottles: A Sequential Estimation Technique For The Lpm, William C. Horrace, Ronald L. Oaxaca
Economics - All Scholarship
The conditions under which ordinary least squares (OLS) is an unbiased and consistent estimator of the linear probability model (LPM) are unlikely to hold in many instances. Yet the LPM still may be the correct model or a good approximation to the probability generating process. A sequential least squares (SLS) estimation procedure is introduced that may outperform OLS in terms of finite sample bias and yields a consistent estimator. Monte Carlo simulations reveal that SLS outperforms OLS, probit and logit in terms of mean squared error of the predicted probabilities.
Health Insurance Coverage And The Disability Insurance Application Decision, Jonathan Gruber, Jeffrey D. Kubik
Health Insurance Coverage And The Disability Insurance Application Decision, Jonathan Gruber, Jeffrey D. Kubik
Economics - All Scholarship
We investigate the effect of health insurance coverage on the decision of individuals to apply for Disability Insurance (DI). Those who qualify for DI receive public insurance under Medicare, but only after a two-year waiting period. This raises concerns that many disabled are going uninsured while they wait for their Medicare coverage. Moreover, the combination of this waiting period and the uncertainty about application acceptance may deter those with health insurance on their jobs, but no alternative source of coverage, from leaving work to apply for DI.
Data from the Health and Retirement Survey show that, in fact, uninsurance does …
Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics And The Timing Of Executions, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics And The Timing Of Executions, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Economics - All Scholarship
We document the existence of a gubernatorial election cycle in state executions, suggesting that election year political considerations play a role in determining the timing of executions. Our analysis indicates that states are approximately 25 percent more likely to conduct executions in gubernatorial election years than in other years. We also find that elections have a larger effect on the probability that an African American defendant will be executed in a given year than on the probability that a white defendant will be executed, and that the overall effect of elections is largest in the South. These findings raise concerns …
Can Policy Changes Be Treated As Natural Experiments? Evidence From State Excise Taxes, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Can Policy Changes Be Treated As Natural Experiments? Evidence From State Excise Taxes, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Economics - All Scholarship
An important issue in public policy analysis is the potential endogeneity of the policies under study. If policy changes constitute responses on the part of political decision-makers to changes in a variable of interest, then standard analyses that treat policy changes as natural experiments may yield biased estimates of the impact of the policy (Besley and Case 2000). We examine the extent to which such political endogeneity biases conventional fixed effects estimates of behavioral parameters by identifying the elasticities of demand for cigarettes and beer using the timing of state legislative elections as an instrument for changes in state excise …