Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Second-Best Tax Policy And Natural Resource Management In Growing Economies, Steven P. Cassou, Arantza Gorostiaga, María José Gutiérrez, Stephen F. Hamilton

Economics

This paper investigates the exploitation of environmental resources in a growing economy within a second-best fiscal policy framework. Agents derive utility from two types of consumption goods — one which relies on an environmental input and one which does not — as well as from leisure and from environmental amenity values. Property rights for the environmental resource are potentially incomplete. We connect second best policy to essential components of utility by considering the elasticity of substitution among each of the four utility arguments. The results illustrate potentially important relationships between environmental amenity values and leisure. When amenity values are complementary …

So2 Policy And Input Substitution Under Spatial Monopoly, Shelby Gerking, Stephen F. Hamilton

Economics

Following the U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, electric utilities dramatically increased their utilization of low-sulfur coal from the Powder River Basin (PRB). Recent studies indicate that railroads hauling PRB coal exercise a substantial degree of market power and that relative price changes in the mining and transportation sectors were contributing factors to the observed pattern of input substitution. This paper asks the related question: To what extent does more stringent SO2 policy stimulate input substitution from high-sulfur coal to low-sulfur coal when railroads hauling low-sulfur coal exercise spatial monopoly power? The question underpins the effectiveness of incentive-based environmental …

General Assistance Recipients And Welfare-To-Work Programs: Evidence From New York City, John Ifcher

Economics

General Assistance (GA) programs are virtually unstudied. Yet, GA programs serve an economically vulnerable, non-trivial population that should be of interest. To begin to address this shortcoming, two welfare-to-work programs, in which GA recipients participated, are studied. Using a quasi-experimental approach, the effect of each program on welfare use and employment is estimated. The results indicate that each program significantly increased welfare exits and that the second program significantly increased employment (employment data was unavailable for the first program).

Is The Export-Led-Growth Hypothesis, Valid For Egypt? A Time Series Approach, Nagwa Khashaba, Abdelhamid Mahboub, William Latham, Mostafa Aboelsoud

Economics

This research addresses important empirical questions regarding the relationship between Egyptian exports and Egyptian economic growth by extending the Dirtsakis’s model (Dritsakis, 2004, p. 1834) with the addition of the labor force into the model. The hypothesis to be tested is, does export expansion cause economic growth in Egypt? In other words, is the Export-Led-Growth (ELG) hypothesis valid for Egypt?

This study analyzes the issue of ELG hypothesis in Egypt using the VAR analysis, quarterly time-series data over the period 1991:q1-2009:q4. The results tend to favor the effectiveness and validity of the ELG hypothesis for Egypt.

The Effects Of Refugee And Non-Refugee Immigrants On Us Trade With Their Home Countries, Roger White, Bedassa Tadesse

Economics

Employing data on US immigrants and trade with 59 home countries for the years 1996–2001, we compare the extent to which refugee and nonrefugee immigrants affect US trade with their home countries and provide the first evidence of variation in the US immigrant–trade relationship across immigrant types. We also consider the abilities of refugee and non-refugee immigrants to offset the trade-inhibiting influence of cultural distance. Our results show that while immigrants, in general, exert positive influences on US imports from – and exports to – their home countries, the influence of refugee immigrants is quite minimal when compared with that …

Identifying The Effect Of A Welfare-To-Work Program Using Capacity Constraint: A New York City Quasi-Experinmet, John Ifcher

Economics

In 1999 general assistance recipients in New York City were required to participate in a job training and outplacement assistance program. Initially, recipients were enrolled in ‘waves’ due to capacity constraints. The program’s impact is identified using a quasiexperiment in which selectees are compared to concomitantly eligible non-selectees. Selectees are 15 percentage points more likely to start a job and 10 percentage points more likely to exit welfare than are non-selectees. This methodology is important since random-assignment experiments can be costly and difficult to implement. Further, experiments are not impervious to criticism; this procedure addresses three of five known shortcomings.

The Procyclical Behavior Of Total Factor Productivity In The United States, 1890-2004, Alexander J. Field

Economics

Between 1890 and 2004 total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the United States has been strongly procyclical, while labor productivity growth has been mildly so. This article argues that these results are not simply a statistical artifact, as Mathew Shapiro and others have argued. Procyclicality resulted principally from demand shocks interacting with capital services which are relatively invariant over the cycle. This account contrasts with explanations emphasizing labor hoarding as well as those offered by the real business cycle (RBC) program, in which TFP shocks (deviations from trend) are themselves the cause of cycles.

Unemployment Insurance And The Role Of Retained Earnings From Part-Time Work, Chris Hocker

Economics

No abstract provided.

Long-Run Wage And Earnings Losses Of Displaced Workers, Roger White

Economics

Displacement-related losses are estimated using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data that span the years 1979–2000. The typical displaced worker faces losses of $34,065 during the period 4 years prior through 5 years following displacement. Proportionally, this represents a 10.8% loss compared to earnings of similar nondisplaced workers over the period. Considerable variation in losses is reported across worker types. Union, male and more mature workers suffer greater losses, respectively, than do their nonunion, female and younger counterparts. College graduates and high school dropouts are found to suffer lower losses compared to high school diploma holders and those who completed …

Do Expenditures On Tobacco Control Decrease Smoking Prevalence?, Michael L. Marlow

Economics

Effectiveness of tobacco control programmes in reducing smoking prevalence during 2001 to 2005 is examined. Tobacco control spending is found to exert no significant effects on smoking prevalence across the 50 states. Cigarette prices are found to lower prevalence of daily smokers, but exert no effect on nondaily smoking prevalence. Several reasons are suggested for why these results might conflict with previous research. These include that most previous studies examined two states (California and Massachusetts) with long-standing tobacco control programmes and that most studies examined periods in which many of the states in their samples did not actively fund their …

Does Cultural Distance Hinder Trade In Goods? A Comparative Study Of Nine Oecd Member Nations, Roger White, Bedassa Tadesse

Economics

We examine the effect of cultural distance, a proxy for the lack of a minimum reservoir of trust necessary to initiate and complete trade deals, on bilateral trade flows. Employing data for 67 countries that span the years 1996– 2001, we estimate a series of modified gravity specifications and find that cultural dissimilarity between nations has an economically significant and consistently negative effect on aggregate and disaggregated trade flows; however, estimated effects vary in magnitude and economic significance across measures of trade and our cohort of OECD reference countries. The consistently negative influence of cultural distance indicates that policymakers may …

Cultural Distance As A Determinant Of Bilateral Trade Flows: Do Immigrants Counter The Effect Of Cultural Distance?, Roger White, Bedassa Tadesse

Economics

We introduce ‘cultural distance’ as a measure of the degree to which shared norms and values in one country differ from those in another country, and employ a modified gravity specification to examine whether such cultural differences affect the volume of trade flows. Employing data for US statelevel exports to the 75 trading partners for which measures of cultural distance can be constructed, we find that greater cultural differences between the United States and a trading partner reduces state-level exports to that country. This result holds for aggregate exports, cultural and noncultural products exports as well, but with significantly different …

The Influence Of Private School Enrollment On Public School Performance, Michael L. Marlow

Economics

School choice reform refers to changes that allow parents greater freedom to choose schools for their children. School choice reform is contentious because it fundamentally alters the environment in which public and private schools operate and could result in significant changes for both demanders and suppliers of education. This article develops a model of public education with imperfect exit to predict how private school enrollment influences performance of public schools. Empirical evidence from data on all private and public schools in California provides substantial support for the hypothesis that public school test scores are inversely related to private school enrollments …

A Partial Defense Of The Giant Squid, Sanjiv Jaggia, Satish Thosar

Economics

No abstract provided.

Does Social Capital Matter? Evidence From A Five-Country Group Lending Experiment, Alessandra Cassar, Bruce Wydick

Economics

Does social capital matter to economic decision-making? We address this broad question through an artefactual group lending experiment carried out in five countries: India, Kenya, Guatemala, Armenia, and the Philippines, obtaining data from 10,673 contribution decisions on simulated group loans from 1,554 participants in 259 experimental borrowing groups. We carry out treatments for social homogeneity, group monitoring, and group self-selection. Results show that societal trust has a positive and significant impact on group loan contribution rates, that group lending appears to create as well as harness social capital, and that peer monitoring can have perverse as well as beneficial effects.

Cultural Diversity, Immigration And Trade: A Study Of Nine Oecd Host Countries, Roger White, Bedassa Tadesse

Economics

Employing data from nine OECD countries and 67 trading partners for the years 1996-2001, we examine the inter-relationships between immigration, cultural diversity and trade. We find greater cultural differences between immigrants’ host and home countries inhibit trade flows. However, immigrants exert pro-trade influences that partially offset the effect of cultural distance. We also find that greater cultural diversity within the immigrants’ host countries is associated with the creation of trade between immigrants’ host and home countries. The findings suggest that the ability of immigrants to influence their host’s trade with their home countries depends, in part, on the characteristics of …

Cultural Diversity, Immigration And International Trade: An Empirical Examination Of The Relationship In Nine Oecd Countries, Roger White, Bedassa Tadesse

Economics

Employing a variant of the standard gravity equation and data from nine OECD immigrant host countries and 67 trading partners for the years 1996-2001, we examine the immigrant-trade relationship. Particular emphasis is placed on the potential influences of host country cultural diversity and host-home cultural distance. Data from the World Values Surveys and the European Values Surveys are used to calculate the cultural distances between immigrants’ host and home countries. Cultural distance is taken to be a proxy measure for the extent to which immigrants’ host countries are culturally divergent from their home countries. To estimate the cultural diversity of …