Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Effects Of Child Care Vouchers On Price, Quantity, And Provider Turnover In Private Care Markets, Won Fy Lee, Aaron Sojourner, Elizabeth E. Davis, Jonathan Borowsky

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Harnessing changes in funding for a voucher program that subsidizes consumers’ use of child care services at private providers, this study quantifies effects on local markets’ service capacity and prices. We also estimate how increased funding effects provider entry rate, exit rate, and highly rated provider market share. The evidence shows that an additional $100 in private voucher funding per local young child would 1) raise the number of private-provider slots by 0.026 per local young child, 2) raise average prices by $0.56 per week, mainly driven by a price increase among incumbent providers, and 3) induce new provider entry …

Effects Of Subsidies On The Child Care Market: Large Increases In Capacity, Small Increases In Price, Won Fy Lee, Aaron Sojourner, Elizabeth E. Davis, Jonathan Borowsky

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

How Personalized Networks Can Limit Free Riding: A Multi-Group Version Of The Public Goods Game, Aaron S. Berman, Laurence R. Iannaccone, Mouli Modak

ESI Working Papers

People belong to many different groups, and few belong to the same network of groups. Moreover, people routinely reduce their involvement in dysfunctional groups while increasing involvement in those they find more attractive. The net effect can be an increase in overall cooperation and the partial isolation of free-riders, even if free-riders are never punished, excluded, or recognized. We formalize and test this conjecture with an agent-based social simulation and a multi-good extension of the standard repeated public goods game. Our initial results from three treatments suggest that the multi-group setting indeed raises overall cooperation and dampens the impact of …

Climate Change And Tourism In The Seychelles: Perceptions And Measures, Tatjana Thimm

International Journal of Islands Research

The aim of this paper is to find out in how accommodation providers in the Seychelles perceive climate change and what mitigation and adaptation measures they can provide. In order to answer these questions, a qualitative mixed-method-approach, comprised of twenty semi-structured interviews, an online-survey and participant observation was used. Results show that accommodation providers especially perceive the effects of climate change that directly affect their business and that they have already partly implemented some mitigation and adaptation measures. However, strategies and regulations are needed at the Seychelles’ government level and on a global level to actually achieve CO2 neutral travel.

Preparing Pakistan For Meeting The Challenges Of The 21st Century, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

The three decades 1990-2020 ( despite the set backs of the Global financial crisis of 2009 and the pandemic of 2019) have resulted in remarkable gains for the Emerging and Developing Countries (EDCs). The hollowing out of the Soviet economy followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself gave impetus to the trend of Deregulation, Privatization and Liberalization which was being followed by Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan .This trend was then emulated by the larger East Asian countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand the Philippines. The major and unprecedented break through came when China, the most populous …

Are Too Many Or Too Few Babies Being Born?, E. Wesley F. Peterson

Cornhusker Economics

An additional 1.8 billion people will be added to the world’s population by 2050. At the same time, average incomes are likely to rise. Data from the Groningen Growth and Development Center suggest that average real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per capita increased by a factor of fifteen between 1820 and 2018 and World Bank data indicate that real per capita GDP more than tripled over the past 62 years. It is likely that these trends will continue and there will be more people with higher average incomes in the future straining global food systems and natural resources. Slower population growth rates …

Survey Of The Labor Market For New Ph.D. Hires In Economics 2024-2025, Kashfia Kamal, Mervin Jebaraj, Raja Kali

Labor Market Survey

This year, the survey questionnaire was sent to 549 organizations. Questionnaires were returned by 136 organizations (24.8 percent). Of this year’s responses, 80 (58.8 percent) were from those who responded to the last survey conducted for the 2023-24 academic year. Among the academic institutions responding, the distribution of highest degrees offered was as follows: Ph.D.—44.9 percent; Master’s—8.1 percent and Bachelor’s—45.6 percent.

The responses are reported for all respondents, and separately for Ph.D. Degree granting institutions and for schools whose highest degree offered is the Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree. Data for the top 30 institutions in the revised National Research Council’s …

Caste-Ethnicity Based Disparities In The Labor Market: Evidence From Panel Household Surveys In Nepal, Rajendra Dulal, Shankar Ghimire, Kul Kapri

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This paper examines labor market disparities across various caste-ethnic groups in Nepal using the 2004 and 2011 Nepal Living Standards Survey data. We study annual wage and salary employment to identify the disparities at both the individual and group levels. First, we use panel regression to capture the disparities in wage and employment and then employ the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method to identify the determinants of these disparities across various caste-ethnic groups. The results show that individual, household, and caste-ethnicity specific factors are all critical determinants of labor market outcomes. The results indicate education as a key contributor to employment disparities …

Daca, Mobility Investments, And Economic Outcomes Of Immigrants And Natives, Jimena Villanueva Kiser, Riley Wilson

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Daca, Mobility Investments, And Economic Outcomes Of Immigrants And Natives, Jimena Villanueva Kiser, Riley Wilson

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Exploiting variation created by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), we document the effects of immigrant legalization on immigrant mobility investments and economic outcomes. We provide new evidence that DACA increased both geographic and job mobility of young immigrants, often leading them to high-paying labor markets and licensed occupations. We then examine whether these gains to immigrants spill over and affect labor market outcomes of U.S.-born workers. Exploiting immigrant enclaves and source-country flows of DACA-eligible immigrants to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in the concentration of DACA recipients, we show that in labor markets where more of the working-age population can …

Thorstein Veblen And His Underlying Philosophical Influences, John B. Hall

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This inquiry recognizes Thorstein Veblen first and foremost as a philosopher who advanced a literature in Social Sciences, generally, and Economic Science, in particular. Veblen’s thinking and writing were supported by rich traditions drawn from notable philosophers that included among several: Charles Sanders Peirce, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Relying upon his strong background in Philosophy, he then sought to challenge mainstream, neoclassical economics, especially. As his career developed, he would turn his talents and energies towards advancing ideas that would ultimately prove foundational for heterodox economics and, relatedly, American Institutionalism.

Journal of Economic Literature Classification Codes:
B15 – Historical, …

Sartaj Aziz: Public Service Embodied, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

He was passionate about agriculture development, mitigation of rural-urban income inequality, absorption of new entrants to job market Very few Pakistanis have made a name for their significant contributions on national and international fronts and are admired for their personal attributes. Sartaj Aziz was one of them – an active student leader during the freedom movement, a civil servant par excellence, an international mover and shaker, a politician of integrity and stature, and an academic of high calibre.

Do Mineral Imports Increase In Response To Decarbonization Indicators Other Than Renewable Energy?, Mahelet G. Fikru, Nurcan Kilinc-Ata

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

While previous studies examine the impact of renewable energy generation capacity on mineral imports where minerals are broadly defined, this study examines the role of three decarbonization indicators (energy efficiency, energy's carbon footprint, and renewable generation) in driving import demand for four specific minerals used in multiple decarbonization technologies: copper, aluminum, nickel, and manganese. Our results, based on the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag modeling approach applied to panel data from 33 countries, suggest that imports for some minerals increase in response to (1) investments in energy efficiency (aluminum and manganese), (2) reducing energy's carbon footprint (copper), and (3) investments in …

Do Mineral Imports Increase In Response To Decarbonization Indicators Other Than Renewable Energy?, Mahelet G. Fikru, Nurcan Kilinc-Ata

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

While previous studies examine the impact of renewable energy generation capacity on mineral imports where minerals are broadly defined, this study examines the role of three decarbonization indicators (energy efficiency, energy's carbon footprint, and renewable generation) in driving import demand for four specific minerals used in multiple decarbonization technologies: copper, aluminum, nickel, and manganese. Our results, based on the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag modeling approach applied to panel data from 33 countries, suggest that imports for some minerals increase in response to (1) investments in energy efficiency (aluminum and manganese), (2) reducing energy's carbon footprint (copper), and (3) investments in …

Still Waiting For The Shoe To Drop? An Empirical Analysis Of Private College And University Financial Stress, Mary Ellen Benedict, David Mcclough, John Hoag

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This study uses the 2010, 2017, and 2018 data of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to estimate which institutional factors increase the probability that a private, nonprofit, higher education institution will face financial stress. The study first estimates enrollment and net tuition with a reduced form market model. Those estimates, endowment dollars, and college rankings are used to identify institutions that are financially stressed. Our assessment indicates that approximately 11.5 percent of the sample institutions are stressed, suggesting that the earlier predictions of a 25-50 percent reduction are overestimated, at least for private-nonprofit institutions. The study next employs a …

Internal And External Determinants Of Short-Run Inflation In Pennsylvania, Corey Williams

Pennsylvania Economic Review

Using new quarterly data on consumer price inflation for the state of Pennsylvania, we study the persistence and sensitivity of consumer price inflation to both internal and external determinants of potential pass-through. Leveraging an autoregressive distributed lag modeling framework that approximates an augmented state-specific Phillips Curve, we find that the dynamics of house price inflation, and the unemployment gap are the two strongest sources of internal inflation pass-through while producer price inflation, and money supply growth are the two strongest sources of external inflation pass-through. Relative to neighboring states, we find the persistence of inflation to be the strongest in …

The Fallacy Of Composition, Its Wide-Ranging Applications In Economics/Business And Why Systems Science Is Appropriate For Economic And Business Research, Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest, Joachim Wagner, Jennifer Nightingale, Huan Guo, Jennifer Roy

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This paper explores how widely the erroneous logic of reasoning of the fallacy of composition has been employed in many areas of knowledge, especially in economic and business studies. It then shows why systems science and methodology are truly appropriate for investigating organizations, evolutions and interactions of business entities by focusing on emergent macro-level properties that are not explainable by the characteristics of micro-level individuals. To demonstrate the potentially magnificent consequence of this proposal, a theorem of general systems is displayed to confirm how unintended and uncoordinated micro-level individual desires can naturally lead to macro-level phenomena, such as racial segregation …

Female Labor Force Rates In South Asia, Shagufta Haque, Caleb Johnson

Pennsylvania Economic Review

Female labor force participation rates are an important element of emerging markets. Yet, there have been relatively few analyses of female labor force participation among countries in Asia. This study investigates the demographic, economic, and global factors that determine the female labor force participation rates (FLFPR) in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan with a panel data sample of annual data ranging from 2000-2019. Based on the results of a Hausman (1978) test, a two-way fixed effects model is estimated to account for unobserved country-specific and time-specific heterogeneity. Explanatory variables include remittances, internet access, fertility rates, inflation rates, school enrollment rates, foreign …

Budget Capping Health Care: Its Impact On Health, Susan Chen

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of a budget cap on healthcare is to constrain total healthcare expenditure without compromising quality. This paper examines the impacts of budget capping on health and behavioral health outcomes, exploiting the completed Maryland All-Payer Model and the ongoing, extensional Maryland Total Cost of Care model, both of which capped healthcare budgets in Maryland. I use data from 2011-2021 surveys of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance system and generalized difference-in-difference regression models to find that budget capping improves health and behavioral health outcomes with a greater favorable effect during the Maryland Total Cost of Care model.

Beyond Patient Care: Economic Impact Of Pennsylvania Hospitals, Ayse Yilmaz, Obaid Zaman Obaid Zaman, Sushma Sharma

Pennsylvania Economic Review

The Hospital Association of Pennsylvania’s (HAP) analysis of FY 2021 data reveals that Pennsylvania hospitals—both directly and through the ripple effects of their economic activity—benefitted their communities and the commonwealth by: Contributing $168 billion to the state and local economies; Supporting 590,000 jobs throughout the entire Commonwealth; and Generating $38 billion in wages, salaries, and benefits. In addition, the state’s hospitals attracted highly competitive federal research dollars to the Keystone State, played a crucial role in training tomorrow’s healers, and provided extensive charity and unreimbursed care to their communities.

Ode Models Of Wealth Concentration And Taxation, Bruce Boghosian, Christoph Borgers

CODEE Journal

We refer to an individual holding a non-negligible fraction of the country’s total wealth as an oligarch. We explain how a model due to Boghosian et al. can be used to explore the effects of taxation on the emergence of oligarchs. The model suggests that oligarchs will emerge when wealth taxation is below a certain threshold, not when it is above the threshold. The underlying mechanism is a transcritical bifurcation. The model also suggests that taxation of income and capital gains alone cannot prevent the emergence of oligarchs. We suggest several opportunities for students to explore modifications of the model.

Personal Lies, Gary Charness, Ismael Rodriguez-Lara

ESI Working Papers

Using the mind game, we provide experimental evidence that people are more likely to lie when they disclose non-personal information (e.g., reporting a number they thought of) compared with personal information (e.g., reporting the last digit of their birth year). Our findings suggest that the type of information is an important factor for lying behavior.

Materials For Embezzlement: How Municipal Corruption Exploited Social And Economic Conditions In Detroit, Mi, Jimmy Showers

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This paper examines how social and economic conditions in Detroit, MI, during the second half of the twentieth century were exploited in a specific instance of municipal corruption involving the city’s Chief of Police, William L. Hart. Drawing on primary source documents, this paper argues that Chief Hart corruptly exploited the city’s social and economic conditions and evaded legal intervention over a prolonged period thereby increasing the magnitude of the corruption and exacerbating negative effects on the city’s most vulnerable residents. Media coverage surrounding Hart’s conviction depicts ramifications difficult to measure highlighting a critical need for research into municipal corruption.

How Can Smes Effectively Leverage Blockchain? A Roadmap And Five-Step Approach, Naeem Bajwa, Thomas Tudor, Joe T. Felan, Otmar E. Varela Dr.

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This paper presents blockchain technology and its applications, demonstrating how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can easily engage in blockchain initiatives. We start with an introduction to blockchain technology and its business applications. For many small enterprises, engaging in blockchain transactions remains relatively novel. Nevertheless, emerging trends indicate that large enterprises are incorporating smaller business partners, broadening the application scope across the supply chain. We demonstrate how this technology is revolutionizing both supply chain and contract management. We examine how Smart Contracts can streamline complexity and enhance business transaction transparency, facilitating more efficient and effective operations. SMEs can secure strategic …

Infant Growth And Body Composition From Birth To 24 Months: Are Infants Developing The Same?, Shane A. Norris, Lukhanyo H. Nyati, Alexia Murphy Alford, Nishani Lucas, Ina S. Santos, Caroline S. Costa, Rebecca Kuriyan, V Pujitha Wickranasinghe, Shabina Ariff, Andrew P. Hills

Department of Paediatrics and Child Health

Background: Given the importance of infancy for establishing growth trajectories, with later-life health consequences, we investigated longitudinal body composition among infants from six economically and ethnically diverse countries.
Methods: We recruited mother-infant dyads using the WHO Multicenter Growth Reference Study criteria. We measured fat-free mass (FFM) in 1393 (49% female) infants from birth to 6 months of age (Australia, India, and South Africa; n = 468), 3-24 months of age (Brazil, Pakistan, South Africa, and Sri Lanka; n = 925), and derived fat mass (FM), fat mass index (FMI), and fat-free mass index (FFMI). Height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for-age (WAZ), and weight-for-length …

Experimental Research On Contests, Subhashish M. Chowdhury, Dan Kovenock, Anwesha Mukherjee

ESI Working Papers

Contests are situations in which agents compete by irreversibly expending costly resources in an attempt to win a prize. Due to their applications in conflict, rent-seeking, organizational incentives, sports, litigation, and political campaigns, contests are widely applied in the social sciences. In this survey we summarize some main results and recent developments of experimental studies in contest theory. We also point out their broader applications in the social sciences.

Bitcoin Bubbles And A Monetary Measure Of Fundamental Value, Paul Hallwood

Pennsylvania Economic Review

Several papers estimate the time series properties of bitcoin prices. However, to know that bubbles occur, an estimate of fundamental value is needed. Few estimates of bitcoin’s fundamental price exist, and these are either statistical in nature or based on questionable economic theory. This paper calculates the non-bubble dollar price of bitcoin using a modification to the quantity theory of money, and it is estimated to be about $54.00. At the November 2021 peak market price of bitcoin, the bubble component was more than 99%. Even at end-August 2023 after bitcoin prices had more than halved, the bubble component was …

Country Culture And Bitcoin Early Adoption, Wei Du, Z. Tingting Jia, Lei Zhu

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This paper investigates the relationship between national culture and the early adoption of Bitcoin. Utilizing a dataset comprised of Google Trends data on Bitcoin search interest for 64 countries, we construct measures of early Bitcoin adoption and examine their correlation with Hofstede's cultural dimension scores. Our findings reveal that in developed countries, lower Masculinity and Long-Term Orientation are associated with earlier Bitcoin adoption. In contrast, developing countries with lower Indulgence are found to adopt Bitcoin early. This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting how different cultural traits, moderated by a country's development status, can influence the Bitcoin early adoption.

Grads On The Go: Measuring College-Specific Labor Markets For Graduates, Johnathan G. Conzelmann, Steven W. Hemelt, Brad J. Hershbein, Shawn Martin, Andrew Simon, Kevin M. Stange

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper introduces a new measure of the labor markets served by colleges and universities across the United States. About 50 percent of recent college graduates are living and working in the metro area nearest the institution they attended, with this figure climbing to 67 percent in-state. The geographic dispersion of alumni is more than twice as great for highly selective 4-year institutions as for 2-year institutions. However, more than one-quarter of 2-year institutions disperse alumni more diversely than the average public 4-year institution. In one application of these data, we find that the average strength of the labor market …

New Data Show How Far Graduates Move From Their College, And Why It Matters, Johnathan G. Conzelmann, Steven W. Hemelt, Brad J. Hershbein, Shawn Martin, Andrew Simon, Kevin M. Stange

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.