Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

November 2001, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Explicit Versus Implicit Income, Thomas J. Kniesner, James P. Ziliak

Center for Policy Research

By supplementing income explicitly through payments or implicitly through taxes collected, income-based taxes and transfers make disposable income less variable. Because disposable income determines consumption, policies that smooth disposable income also create welfare improving consumption insurance. With data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics we find that annual consumption variation is reduced by almost 20 percent due to explicit and implicit income smoothing. Consumption insurance is as important economically as private health or automobile insurance. Although taxes have become an increasingly important source of consumption insurance, the 2001 income-tax reform legislation should have little effect on implicit consumption insurance.

Visual Displays Of Information: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Scott Warren

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

This paper creates a taxonomic model for visual information displays looking at three levels: information design (based on Edward Tufte’s work), information architecture, and information spaces. Special attention is paid to the use of spatial and navigational metaphors in visual systems as they affect the user’s experience. Especially interesting is how a user creates an “information space” – a mental model of what he has seen, how she keeps track of where she is within a system, and how these activities fit together with the data that is being sought. Mathematics is one area that holds promise for better understanding …

Social Interaction And Stock Market Participation, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong, Jeremy C. Stein

Economics - All Scholarship

We investigate the idea that stock-market participation is influenced by social interaction. We build a simple model in which any given "social" investor finds it more attractive to invest in the market when the participation rate among his peers is higher. The model predicts higher participation rates among social investors than among "non-socials". It also admits the possibility of multiple social equilibria. We then test the theory using data from the Health and Retirement Study. Social households-defined as those who interact with their neighbors, or who attend church-are indeed substantially more likely to invest in the stock market than non-social …

Have 401(K)S Raised Household Savings? Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart

Center for Policy Research

The most popular tax subsidy to household saving in the United States is the 401(k)-type pension arrangement, which subsidizes saving through income-tax deferral on wages and salary dedicated to retirement saving and through investment accrual at the pre-tax interest rate. Although enabled by legislation in 1978, 401(k) plans effectively were not adopted until the Internal Revenue Service issued clarifying rules in 1981. Since then, they have grown remarkably and become the primary vehicle for retirement saving. In 1996, 33 percent of all private pension assets, 33 percent of all pension plans, and 45 percent of all active pension participants were …

Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Pension Distributions And Retirement Income Security: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Gary V. Engelhart

Center for Policy Research

This paper uses data from the 1992 and 1998 Waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the extent of retirement wealth erosion from pre-retirement lump-sum distributions. There is little evidence that spent distributions have resulted in significant pension leakage. If spent distributions had been rolled over into a tax-qualified plan instead, they would have represented in present value between 5 and 11 percent of pension and Social Security wealth for the median household that spent a distribution. However, one-quarter of the households that spent distributions—which is 2.25 percent of all households age 51 to 61—could have increased …

Slippery When Wet: The Effects Of Local Alcohol Access Laws On Highway Safety, Reagan Anne Baughman, Michael Conlin, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, John V. Pepper

Economics - All Scholarship

Using detailed panel data on local alcohol policy changes in Texas, this paper tests whether the effect of these changes on alcohol-related accidents depends on whether the policy change involves where the alcohol is consumed and the type of alcohol consumed. After controlling for both county and year fixed effects, we find evidence that: (i) the sale of beer and wine may actually decrease expected accidents; and (ii) the sale of higher alcohol-content liquor may present greater risk to highway safety than the sale of just beer and wine.

April 2001, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Unfinished Business: Inadequate Health Coverage For Privately Insured, Seriously Ill Children, Nancy Swigonski, Eleanor D. Kinney, Deborah A. Freund, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

During the 1980s and 1990s there were great increases of health insurance coverage for poor children through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and extended Medicaid eligibility. Problems remain for the small number of children with serious medical conditions whose care is a high proportion of total health care expenditures on children. We report on the adequacy of health insurance coverage for a sample of children with serious and rare illnesses treated at the single tertiary care pediatric hospital in Indiana. One-third of privately insured children in our data had inadequate insurance. Compared to families with inadequate health insurance families …

Determinants Of Medical Costs Following A Diagnosis Of Depression, Regina H. Powers, Thomas J. Kniesner, Thomas W. Croghan

Center for Policy Research

Objective: Assess the determinants of medical costs for depressed individuals.

Method: Using medical insurance claims for a population of depressed individuals with employer provided insurance, we estimated multivariate models of the costs for general medical care, exclusive of costs for mental health services, following diagnosis. Explanatory variables included provider choice (psychiatrist or non-physician mental health specialist), treatment choice (medication, psychotherapy, or combination treatment); treatment adequacy as defined by APA guidelines; characteristics of depression symptoms and severity; and other demographic characteristics.

Results: On average, there were increases in the costs for general medical services in the year following diagnosis of a …

Intergenerational Labor Market And Welfare Consequences Of Poor Health, Thomas J. Kniesner, Anthony T. Losasso

Center for Policy Research

Our research provides new econometric evidence concerning partial economic risk sharing between a frail elderly parent and an adult child. We estimate a jointly determined limited dependent variables system explaining the parent’s entry into a nursing home, the adult child’s visits to the parent, and the adult child’s labor supplied. The time allocation of adult sons is unaffected by a parent’s frail health. Adult daughters who visit a frail elderly parent daily decrease their annual labor supplied by about 1,000 hours annually, largely through labor force non-participation. The implied welfare loss to the daughter from a frail elderly parent in …

Intergenerational Labor Market And Welfare Consequences Of Poor Health, Thomas J. Kniesner, Anthony T. Losasso

Center for Policy Research

Our research provides new econometric evidence concerning partial economic risk sharing between a frail elderly parent and an adult child. We estimate a jointly determined limited dependent variables system explaining the parent’s entry into a nursing home, the adult child’s visits to the parent, and the adult child’s labor supplied. The time allocation of adult sons is unaffected by a parent’s frail health. Adult daughters who visit a frail elderly parent daily decrease their annual labor supplied by about 1,000 hours annually, largely through labor force non-participation. The implied welfare loss to the daughter from a frail elderly parent in …

The Role Of Microsimulation In Longitudinal Data Analysis, Douglas A. Wolf

Center for Policy Research

The term “microsimulation” has been linked to a range of tools and techniques that are finding growing use in empirical social science applications. This paper considers one such area, namely the potential for microsimulation to serve the needs of the data analyst, in contrast to the more common use of microsimulation by the model user. Furthermore, the focus is on longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data analysis. The paper identifies several types of longitudinal data modeling approaches in which microsimulation is particularly relevant, suggesting algorithms with which to conduct such microsimulations. Microsimulation can be used to extend the range of inferences …

Tax Reform And Automatic Stabilization, Thomas J. Kniesner, James P. Ziliak

Economics - All Scholarship

A fundamental property of a progressive income tax is that it provides implicit insurance against shocks to income by dampening the variability of disposable income and consumption. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) in combination with the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) greatly reduced the number of marginal tax brackets and the maximum marginal rate, which limits the stabilizing effect of the tax system on household consumption when pre-tax income fluctuates. We examine the effect of the federal income tax reforms of the 1980s on the associated degree of automatic stabilization of consumption. The empirical framework derives …

On The Fly Bi: Reaching And Teaching From The Reference Desk, Nancy B. Turner, Susan E. Beck

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

Today’s reference librarians are constantly faced with the challenge of orienting users to the complex, ever changing world of the electronic library. A well-structured library instruction program is one important approach to the overall goal of educating users. But library instruction sessions cannot and do not reach all students. Studies indicate that students are most receptive to learning research techniques at the point of need, which most often occurs at the reference desk. Although many reference librarians are committed to ‘‘teaching students to fish,’’ they are frequently faced with students whose research needs require in-depth lessons that exceed the time …

Comparison Of Law Enforcement Contracts In Onondaga County, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This study provides information on the contractual agreements of 14 of the16 police departments

in Onondaga County. The study was conducted by the Community Benchmarks Program (CBP)

at The Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Information for this study was obtained from the bargaining unit contracts negotiated by

representatives of the police and sheriff’s departments with the governing bodies of their

respective municipalities or the county. The New York State and Local Police and Fire

Retirement System and the 1999 New York Municipal Reference Guide were also used as source material. This report looks at 14 of the 16 contracts in …

Converting A Controlled Vocabulary Into An Ontology: The Case Of Gem, Jian Qin, Stephen Paling

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The prevalance of digital information raised issues regarding the suitability of conventional library tools for organizing information. The multi-dimensionality of digital resources requires a more versatile and flexible representation to accommodate intelligent information representation and retrieval. Ontologies are used as a solution to such issues in many application domains, mainly due to their ability explicitly to specify the semantics and relations and to express them in a computer understandable language. Conventional knowledge organization tools such as classifications and thesauri resemble ontologies in a way that they define concepts and relationships in a systematic manner, but they are less expressive than …

Natural Language Processing, Elizabeth D. Liddy

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the computerized approach to analyzing text that is based on both a set of theories and a set of technologies. And, being a very active area of research and development, there is not a single agreed-upon definition that would satisfy everyone, but there are some aspects, which would be part of any knowledgeable person’s definition.

An Nlp Approach For Improving Access To Statistical Information For The Masses, Elizabeth D. Liddy, Jennifer H. Liddy

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Naïve users need to access statistical information, but frequently do not have the sophisticated levels of understanding required in order to translate their information needs into the structure and vocabulary of sites which currently provide access to statistical information. However, these users can articulate quite straightforwardly in their own terms what they are looking for. One approach to satisfying the masses of citizens with needs for statistical information is to automatically map their natural language expressions of their information needs into the metadata structure and terminology that defines and describes the content of statistical tables. To accomplish this goal, we …

Investigating The Interplay Between Structure And Information And Communications Technology In The Real Estate Industry, Kevin Crowston, Steve Sawyer, Rolf Wigand

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are reshaping many industries, often by reshaping how information is shared. Information intensive industries, by their nature, show the greatest impacts due to ICTs that enable information sharing and the bypassing of traditional information intermediaries. However, while the effects and uses of ICT are often associated with organizations (and industries), their use occurs at the individual level. In other words, it is changes to individual work related to the use of ICTs that reshape both organization and industry structures, and vice versa. To explore the relationships between individual uses of ICT and changes to organization …

The Social Embeddedness Of Transactions: Evidence From The Residential Real Estate Industry, Steve Sawyer, Kevin Crowston, Rolf T. Wigand, Marcel Allbritton

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Information and communications technologies (ICT) are becoming pervasive in the residential real estate industry and affecting the work lives of real estate agents. Drawing on data from a regional study of the residential real-estate industry in the United States, we focus on the disintermediation or, more accurately, the re-intermediation of real estate agents in the sales process. We examine how real estate agents are (1) taking advantage of new ICT in their work, and (2) protecting themselves from others wishing to displace their position in the real estate value chain. Our analysis draws on two contrasting theoretical approaches to better …

Genre-Based Navigation On The Web, Barbara H. Kwasnik, Kevin Crowston, Mike Nilan, X. Liu, J. Cai

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

We report on our ongoing study of using the genre of Web pages to facilitate information exploration. By genre, we mean socially recognized regularities of form and purpose in documents (e.g., a letter, a memo, a research paper). Our study had three phases. First, through a user study, we identified genres which most/least frequently meet searchers' information needs. We found that certain genres are better suited for certain types of needs. We identified five (5) major groups of document genres that might be used in an interactive search tool that would allow genrebased navigation. We tried to balance the following …

A Process Theory Of Competency Rallying In Engineering Projects, Bernhard R. Katzy, Kevin Crowston

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Firms face an environment changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Market opportunities in particular can arise and disappear in a short time. Unfortunately, the speed with which organizations can adapt their strategies and competencies to meet these opportunities remains limited. We argue that firms can address these individual limitations by cooperating with others for access to market opportunities and needed competencies. In this paper, we present a process theory of how a network of firms can reliably engineering and deliver products in the face of rapid market changes. In this theory, the success of the network is predicated on 1) …

E-Tables: Non-Specialist Use And Understanding Of Statistical Data, Gary Marchionini, Carol Hert, Ben Shneiderman, Liz Liddy

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper provides a progress report on a project that aims to understand how people think about and understand statistical data presented in tables. The focus is on people who are not statistical specialists. To this end, studies of various user populations were conducted, underlying data enrichment and explanation was investigated, and interactive user interface prototypes were developed and tested.

Information And Communication Technologies In The Real Estate Industry: Results Of A Pilot Survey, Rolf T. Wigand, Kevin Crowston, Steve Sawyer, Marcel Allbritton

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

We have been studying the growing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the residential real estate industry and the effects of this use on how realtors work. Earlier stages of our project involved qualitative research to develop a better understanding of the industry, the work of realtors and their use of ICT. In this paper we report on the results of qualitative research and a pilot of a survey intended to gather large-scale data on realtors and ICT use.

Franz Leopold Ranke, The Ranke Library At Syracuse And The Open Future Of Scientific History, Siegfried Baur

The Courier

"The recent purchase of the great historical library of Dr. Leopold von Ranke by an American suggests some reflections. There is no doubt that this library, which numbers many thousands of books, pamphlets, manuscripts and documents of all times and all languages, is the finest historical collection in the world.... But this great and invaluable collection, which should have gone to one of the large cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago, or to one of the university towns like Cambridge, New Haven, Ithaca or Ann Arbor, is going to Syracuse, which is neither a large city nor a …

Manuscripts Processing At Syracuse: An Insider's View, Kathleen Manwaring

The Courier

After explaining the specialness of special collections, Manwaring compares the processing of books and serials, with their preselected, pre-organized content, to the processing of manuscripts, which "reflect the chaos inherent in real life." The latter requires "total immersion" in order to "discover and reflect the underlying structure of the individual's life experience" while making his or her papers accessible to scholars.

News Of The Library And The Library Associates, From Courier, Vol. Xxxiii, 1998-2001, Syracuse University Library Associates

The Courier

Post-Standard Award Citation, 1998, for David H. Starn

Post-Standard Award Citation, 1999, for Dorothea P. Nelson

Post-Standard Award Citation, 2000, for Katleen W. Rossman

Recent Acquisitions:

-Thomas Moore Papers

-Kat Ran Press (Michael Russem)

-Margaret Bourke-White Photographs

-The Werner Seligmann Papers

Library Associates Programs for 1998-99, 1999-00, and 2000-01

In Memoriam

Nominal Loss Aversion, Housing Equity Constraints, And Household Mobility: Evidence From The United States, Gary Engelhardt

Center for Policy Research

This paper exploits the significant recent variation in United States house prices to empirically examine the effect on housing equity constraints and nominal loss aversion on household mobility. The analysis uses unique, detailed data from 1985-1996 on household characteristics, mobility, and wealth from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) matched with house price data from 149 metropolitan areas to estimate semiparametric proportional hazard models of intra- and inter-metropolitan mobility. There are five principal findings: (1) household intra-metropolitan own-to-own mobility responds differently to nominal housing losses than to gains; (2) nominal loss aversion is significantly less pronounced in intra-metropolitan own-to-rent …

United States Poverty In A Cross-National Context, Timothy Smeeding, Lee Rainwater, Gary Burtles

Center for Policy Research

In this paper we use cross-national comparisons made possible by the LIS to examine America’s experience in maintaining a low poverty rate. We compare the effectiveness of United States antipoverty policies to that of similar polices elsewhere in the industrialized world. If lessons can be learned from cross-national comparisons, there is much that can be learned about antipoverty policy by American voters and policymakers. The United States has one of the highest poverty rates of all the countries participating in the LIS, whether poverty is measured using comparable absolute or relative standards for determining who is poor. Although the high …