Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 30 of 104
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Agglomeration Economics: Small Establishments/Big Effects: Agglomeration, Industrial Organization And Entrepreneurship, Stuart S. Rosenthal, William Strange
Agglomeration Economics: Small Establishments/Big Effects: Agglomeration, Industrial Organization And Entrepreneurship, Stuart S. Rosenthal, William Strange
Economics - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.
China's Growing Role In World Trade: Trade Growth, Production Fragmentation, And China's Environment, Judith M. Dean, Mary Lovely
China's Growing Role In World Trade: Trade Growth, Production Fragmentation, And China's Environment, Judith M. Dean, Mary Lovely
Economics - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Social Interactions In The Labor Market, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner, John A. Bishop
Social Interactions In The Labor Market, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner, John A. Bishop
Economics - All Scholarship
We examine theoretically and empirically social interactions in labor markets and how policy prescriptions can change dramatically when there are social interactions present. Spillover effects increase labor supply and conformity effects make labor supply perfectly inelastic at a reference group average. The demand for a good may also be influenced by either a spillover effect or a conformity effect. Positive spillover increases the demand for the good with interactions, and a conformity effect makes the demand curve pivot to become less price sensitive. Similar social interactions effects appear in the associated derived demands for labor. Individual and community factors may …
Losers And Losers: Some Demographics Of Medical Malpractice Tort Reforms, Andrew Friedson, Thomas J. Kniesner
Losers And Losers: Some Demographics Of Medical Malpractice Tort Reforms, Andrew Friedson, Thomas J. Kniesner
Economics - All Scholarship
Our research examines individual differences in the effects of medical malpractice tort reforms on pre-trial settlement speed and settlement amounts by age and most likely settlement size. Findings of note include that, unlike previously assumed, both absolute and percentage losses from tort reform are small for infants in an asset value sense and that the prime-aged working population is the group most negatively affected by tort reform. Maximum entropy quantile regressions highlight the robustness of our conclusions and reveal that the settlement losses most informative for policy evaluation differ greatly from mean regression estimates.
What’S Wrong With Economics? It Ignores The Pogo Principle: 'We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us', Jerry Evensky
What’S Wrong With Economics? It Ignores The Pogo Principle: 'We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us', Jerry Evensky
Economics - All Scholarship
The piece begins with the proposition that the economic perspective on human activity must reflect the fact that human beings transact in a world defined for the actors by social norms. An analysis of the crisis of 2008 is offered as a demonstration of the value of adopting such a broader perspective. Part two offers a historical model based on Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy of such a broader analysis. The piece closes with the case that the history of ideas offers alternative perspectives on the questions we explore in economics today and thus can serve as a valuable resource for …
Leaving Or Staying: Inter-Provincial Migration In Vietnam, Phuong Nguyen-Hoang, John G. Mcpeak
Leaving Or Staying: Inter-Provincial Migration In Vietnam, Phuong Nguyen-Hoang, John G. Mcpeak
Economics - All Scholarship
Internal migration has several policy implications for economic growth and development for developing countries in general and for the fast growing low-income country of Vietnam in particular. Little research has been done, however, on inter-provincial migration in Vietnam. This study makes two major contributions to the migration and development literature in terms of the datasets and policy-relevant estimation approach. It is the first paper to use the annual survey data on migration published by Vietnam’s General Statistics Office. This study also adopts a functional form to accommodate the flexibility of income’s elasticity. Income, together with urban unemployment rates, are endogenously …
Homeownership Boom And Bust 2000 To 2009: Where Will The Homeownership Rate Go From Here?, Stuart A. Gabriel, Stuart S. Rosenthal
Homeownership Boom And Bust 2000 To 2009: Where Will The Homeownership Rate Go From Here?, Stuart A. Gabriel, Stuart S. Rosenthal
Economics - All Scholarship
The increase in the homeownership rate in the middle of the last decade extended to all age groups but was most pronounced among individuals under age 30. These increases coincided with looser credit conditions that enhanced household access to mortgage credit along with evidence of less risk averse attitudes towards investment in homeownership. Following the crash, these trends have reversed and homeownership rates have largely reverted back to the levels of 2000. The drop in the homeownership rate from an all-time high of 69.2 in 2004 to 66.4 percent in the first quarter of 2011 reflects a decline from unsustainable …
Do Arbitrageurs Amplify Economic Shocks?, Harrison Hong, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Tal Fishman
Do Arbitrageurs Amplify Economic Shocks?, Harrison Hong, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Tal Fishman
Economics - All Scholarship
We test the hypothesis that arbitrageurs amplify economic shocks in equity markets. The ability of speculators to hold short positions depends on asset values: shorts are often reduced following good news about a stock. Therefore, the prices of highly shorted stocks are excessively sensitive to shocks compared to stocks with little short interest. We confirm this hypothesis using several empirical strategies including two quasi-experiments. In particular, we establish that the price of highly shorted stocks overshoots after good earnings news due to short covering compared to other stocks.
Outsourcing Mutual Fund Management: Firm Boundaries, Incentives And Performance, Joseph S. Chen, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong
Outsourcing Mutual Fund Management: Firm Boundaries, Incentives And Performance, Joseph S. Chen, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper investigates the effects of managerial outsourcing on the incentives and performance of mutual funds. We document that mutual fund families outsource the management of a significant fraction of their funds to unaffiliated advisory firms. Funds managed externally significantly under-perform those ran internally. To establish the causality of this relationship, we instrument for whether a fund is outsourced and find similar estimates. We hypothesize that contractual externalities due to firm boundaries make it more difficult to extract performance from an outsourced relationship. We verify two auxiliary predictions of this hypothesis: compared to counterparts ran internally, an outsourced fund faces …
The Impact Of International Trade On Wages: Trade Flows And Wage Premiums: Does Who Or What Matter?, Mary Lovely, J. David Richardson
The Impact Of International Trade On Wages: Trade Flows And Wage Premiums: Does Who Or What Matter?, Mary Lovely, J. David Richardson
Economics - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Challenging Orthodoxies: Understanding Poverty In Pastoral Areas Of East Africa, Peter D. Little, John G. Mcpeak, Christopher B. Barrett, Patti Kristjanson
Challenging Orthodoxies: Understanding Poverty In Pastoral Areas Of East Africa, Peter D. Little, John G. Mcpeak, Christopher B. Barrett, Patti Kristjanson
Economics - All Scholarship
Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable attention by a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities, academics, activists, and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there surprisingly is little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of poverty among one of the continents most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic remoteness, and market integration. It argues that …
Empirical Forecasting Of Slow-Onset Disasters For Improved Emergency Response: An Application To Kenya's Arid North, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Robert Kaitho, Patti Kristjanson
Empirical Forecasting Of Slow-Onset Disasters For Improved Emergency Response: An Application To Kenya's Arid North, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Robert Kaitho, Patti Kristjanson
Economics - All Scholarship
Mitigating the negative welfare consequences of crises such as droughts, floods, and disease outbreaks, is a major challenge in many areas of the world, especially in highly vulnerable areas insufficiently equipped to prevent food and livelihood security crisis in the face of adverse shocks. Given the finite resources allocated for emergency response, and the expected increase in incidences of humanitarian catastrophe due to changing climate patterns, there is a need for rigorous and efficient methods of early warning and emergency needs assessment. In this paper we develop an empirical model, based on a relatively parsimonious set of regularly measured variables …
Policy Relevant Heterogeneity In The Value Of Statistical Life: New Evidence From Panel Data Quantile Regressions, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. Ziliak
Policy Relevant Heterogeneity In The Value Of Statistical Life: New Evidence From Panel Data Quantile Regressions, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. Ziliak
Economics - All Scholarship
We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects the estimated VSL. Our findings indicate that a reasonable average cost per expected life saved cut-off for health and safety regulations is $7 million to $8 million per life saved, but the VSL varies considerably across the labor force. Our results reconcile the previous discrepancies between hedonic VSL estimates and the values implied by theories linked to the coefficient of relative risk aversion. Because the VSL varies elastically with income, …
Psychotherapy And Pharmacotherapy In Depression, Thomas J. Kniesner, Regina Powers, Thomas Croghan
Psychotherapy And Pharmacotherapy In Depression, Thomas J. Kniesner, Regina Powers, Thomas Croghan
Economics - All Scholarship
Depression is a condition with various modes of treatment, including pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and some combination of each. The role of psychotherapy in the treatment of depression relative to the role of pharmacotherapy is not well understood, and guidelines for psychotherapy in the primary care setting differ from guidelines for specialty care. There is little evidence about the circumstances in actual practice that affect the use of psychotherapy in conjunction with pharmacotherapy.
We retrospectively identify the most important factors associated with the use of psychotherapy in combination with pharmacotherapy in the treatment of depression. Specifically, we study provider choice, health plan …
Do The Gses Expand The Supply Of Mortgage Credit? New Evidence Of Crowd Out In The Secondary Mortgage Market, Stuart A. Gabriel, Stuart S. Rosenthal
Do The Gses Expand The Supply Of Mortgage Credit? New Evidence Of Crowd Out In The Secondary Mortgage Market, Stuart A. Gabriel, Stuart S. Rosenthal
Economics - All Scholarship
The dramatic government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September, 2008 was motivated in part by a desire to ensure a continued flow of credit to the mortgage market. This study examines a closely related issue: the extent to which GSE activity crowds out mortgage purchases by private secondary market intermediaries. Evidence of substantial crowd out suggests that government support for the GSEs may be less warranted, whereas the absence of crowd out implies that GSE loan purchases enhance liquidity.
Using 1994-2008 HMDA data for conventional, conforming sized loans, three distinct periods with regard to GSE crowd out …
Financial Constraints On Corporate Goodness, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Jose A. Scheinkman, Harrison Hong
Financial Constraints On Corporate Goodness, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Jose A. Scheinkman, Harrison Hong
Economics - All Scholarship
We model the firm's optimal choice of capital and goodness subject to financial constraints. Managers and shareholders derive benefits over profits and social responsibility. Goodness is costly and its marginal benefit is finite; as a result, less-constrained firms spend more on goodness. We verify that less-constrained firms do indeed have higher social responsibility scores. Our empirical analysis addresses identification issues that have long plagued the corporate social responsibility literature, establishing the causality of this relationship using a natural experiment. During the technology bubble, previously constrained firms experienced a temporary relaxation of their constraints and their goodness scores also temporarily increased …
The Value Of A Statistical Life: Evidence From Panel Data, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, Christopher Woock, James P. Ziliak
The Value Of A Statistical Life: Evidence From Panel Data, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, Christopher Woock, James P. Ziliak
Economics - All Scholarship
This article addresses fundamental long-standing concerns in the compensating wage differentials literature and its public policy implications: the econometric properties of estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) and the wide range of such estimates. Here we address most of the prominent econometric issues using panel data, a new and more accurate fatality risk measure, and systematic application of panel data estimators. Controlling for measurement error, endogeneity, latent individual heterogeneity that may be correlated with the regressors, state dependence, and sample composition yields estimates of the value of a statistical life in the range of about $6 million to …
Instrumental Variable Estimation Of A Spatial Autoregressive Panel Model With Random Effects, Badi Baltagi, Long Liu
Instrumental Variable Estimation Of A Spatial Autoregressive Panel Model With Random Effects, Badi Baltagi, Long Liu
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper extends the instrumental variable estimators of Kelejian and Prucha (1998) and Lee (2003) proposed for the cross-sectional spatial autoregressive model to the random effects spatial autoregressive panel data model. It also suggests an extension of the Baltagi (1981) error component 2SLS estimator to this spatial panel model.
Accounting For Disability Insurance In The Dynamic Relationship Between Disability Onset And Earnings, Perry Singleton
Accounting For Disability Insurance In The Dynamic Relationship Between Disability Onset And Earnings, Perry Singleton
Economics - All Scholarship
The onset of a work-limiting disability coincides with an immediate decline in earnings with little recovery. This study examines whether this relationship is attributable to the labor disincentives of disability insurance. The data come from the Survey of Income and Program Participation linked to administrative data from the Social Security Administration. The analysis suggests that disability insurance accounts for little of the initial drop in earnings at the time of disability onset, but its effect may increase as time since disability onset elapses. The results highlight the advantages of immediate, though temporary disability benefits.
Hedonic Wage Equilibrium: Theory, Evidence And Policy, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth
Hedonic Wage Equilibrium: Theory, Evidence And Policy, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth
Economics - All Scholarship
We examine theoretically and empirically the properties of the equilibrium wage function and its implications for policy. Our emphasis is on how the researcher approaches economic and policy questions when there is labor market heterogeneity leading to a set of wages. We focus on the application where hedonic models have been most successful at clarifying policy relevant outcomes and policy effects, that of the wage premia for fatal injury risk. Estimates of the overall hedonic locus we discuss imply the so-called value of a statistical life (VSL) that is useful as the benefit value in a cost-effectiveness calculation of government …
The Long-Run Labor-Market Consequences Of Civil War: Evidence From The Shining Path In Peru, Jose Galdo
The Long-Run Labor-Market Consequences Of Civil War: Evidence From The Shining Path In Peru, Jose Galdo
Economics - All Scholarship
This study exploits district-level variation in the timing and intensity of civil war violence to investigate whether early-life exposure to civil wars affects labor-market outcomes later in life. In particular, we examine the impacts of armed conflict in Peru, a country that experienced the actions of a tenacious, brutally effective war machine, the Shining Path, between 1980 and 1995. This study finds that the most sensitive period to early-life exposure to civil war violence is the first 36 months of life. A one standard deviation increase in civil war exposure leads to a four percent fall in adult monthly earnings. …
Insuring Against Drought‐Related Livestock Mortality: Piloting Index Based Livestock Insurance In Northern Kenya, Andrew G. Mude, Sommarat Chantarat, Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter, Munenobu Ikegami, John G. Mcpeak
Insuring Against Drought‐Related Livestock Mortality: Piloting Index Based Livestock Insurance In Northern Kenya, Andrew G. Mude, Sommarat Chantarat, Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter, Munenobu Ikegami, John G. Mcpeak
Economics - All Scholarship
Climate related shocks are among the leading cause of production and efficiency losses in smallholder crop and livestock production in rural Africa. Consequently, the identification of tools to help manage the risks associated with climactic extremities is increasingly considered to be amongst the key pillars of any agenda to enhance agricultural growth and welfare in rural Africa. This paper describes the application of a promising innovation in insurance design – index‐based insurance – that seeks to bring the benefits of formal insurance to help manage the weather‐related risks faced by rural crop and livestock producers in low‐income countries. In particular, …
Alternative Technical Efficiency Measures: Skew, Bias, And Scale, Qu Feng, William C. Horrace
Alternative Technical Efficiency Measures: Skew, Bias, And Scale, Qu Feng, William C. Horrace
Economics - All Scholarship
In the fixed-effects stochastic frontier model an efficiency measure relative to the best firm in the sample is universally employed. This paper considers a new measure relative to the worst firm in the sample. We find that estimates of this measure have smaller bias than those of the traditional measure when the sample consists of many firms near the efficient frontier. Moreover, a two-sided measure relative to both the best and the worst firms is proposed. Simulations suggest that the new measures may be preferred depending on the skewness of the inefficiency distribution and the scale of efficiency differences.
The Value Of Statistical Life: Pursuing The Deadliest Catch, Kurt E. Schnier, William C. Horrace, Ronald G. Felthoven
The Value Of Statistical Life: Pursuing The Deadliest Catch, Kurt E. Schnier, William C. Horrace, Ronald G. Felthoven
Economics - All Scholarship
Observed trade-offs between monetary returns and fatality risk identify estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL), which inform public policy and quantify preferences for environmental quality, health and safety. To date, few investigations have estimated the VSL associated with trade-offs between returns from natural resource extraction activities and the fatality risks they involve. Furthermore researchers have been unable to determine whether or not one’s VSL is stable across multiple decision environments using revealed preference methods. Understanding these tradeoffs (and the VSL that they imply) may be used to inform resource management policy and safety regulations, as well as …
A Note On The Application Of Ec2sls And Ec3sls Estimators In Panel Data Models, Badi Baltagi, Long Liu
A Note On The Application Of Ec2sls And Ec3sls Estimators In Panel Data Models, Badi Baltagi, Long Liu
Economics - All Scholarship
Baltagi and Li (1992) showed that for estimating a single equation in a simultaneous panel data model, EC2SLS has more instruments than G2SLS. Although these extra instruments are redundant in White (1986) terminology, they may yield different estimates and standard errors in empirical studies with finite N and T. We illustrate this using the crime data of Cornwell and Trumbull (1994). We show that the standard errors of EC2SLS are smaller than those of G2SLS for this example. In general, we prove that the asymptotic variance of G2SLS differs from that of EC2SLS by a positive semi-definite matrix. Although this …
Search And Offshoring In The Presence Of 'Animal Spirits', Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan
Search And Offshoring In The Presence Of 'Animal Spirits', Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan
Economics - All Scholarship
In this paper, we introduce two sources of unemployment in a two-factor general equilibrium model: search frictions and fairness considerations. We find that a binding fair-wage constraint increases the unskilled unemployment rate and can at the same time lead to a higher unemployment rate for skilled workers, as compared to an equilibrium where fairness considerations are absent or non-binding. Starting from a constrained equilibrium, an increase in the fairness parameter leads to increases in both skilled and unskilled unemployment. The wage of unskilled workers increases but the wage of skilled workers decreases. Next we allow for offshoring of unskilled jobs …
Offshoring And Unemployment: The Role Of Search Frictions And Labor Mobility, Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan
Offshoring And Unemployment: The Role Of Search Frictions And Labor Mobility, Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan
Economics - All Scholarship
In a two-sector, general-equilibrium model with labor-market search frictions, we find that wage increases and sectoral unemployment decreases upon offshoring in the presence of perfect intersectoral labor mobility. If, as a result, labor moves to the sector with the lower (or equal) vacancy costs, there is an unambiguous decrease in economywide unemployment. With imperfect intersectoral labor mobility, unemployment in the offshoring sector can rise, with an unambiguous unemployment reduction in the non-offshoring sector. Imperfect labor mobility can result in a mixed equilibrium in which only some firms in the industry offshore, with unemployment in this sector rising.
Public Long-Term Care Insurance And The Housing And Living Arrangements Of The Elderly: Evidence From Medicare Home Health Benefits, Gary V. Engelhardt, Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley
Public Long-Term Care Insurance And The Housing And Living Arrangements Of The Elderly: Evidence From Medicare Home Health Benefits, Gary V. Engelhardt, Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley
Economics - All Scholarship
We provide empirical evidence on the extent to which long-term care insurance affects the housing and living arrangements of the elderly by examining plausibly exogenous changes in the supply of long-term care insurance through the Medicare program that occurred in the late 1990s. Prior to 1997, Medicare reimbursed home health care agencies on a retrospective-cost basis. Then, starting in October, 1997, as a result of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA97), Medicare switched to a system of prospective payments for home health care, which induced state-by-calendar-year variation in the supply of this type of public long-term care insurance. We …
Interest On Bank Reserves And Optimal Sweeping, David D. Vanhoose, Donald H. Dutkowsky
Interest On Bank Reserves And Optimal Sweeping, David D. Vanhoose, Donald H. Dutkowsky
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper utilizes a profit maximizing banking model to analyze sweeping behavior. Comparative statics results indicate that sweeping responds positively to increases in bank loan rates and reserve ratios and negatively to increases in the interest rate on reserves or to exogenous increases in bank deposits or equity. Sweeping generates greater responsiveness in lending to changes in loan rates or the interest rate on reserves and lower responsiveness to exogenous changes in reserve ratios or equity. Empirical analysis of an explicit condition that we derive relating sweeping to the interest rate on reserves suggests with an unchanged reserve requirement, the …
Household Wealth And Heterogeneous Impacts Of A Market-Based Training Program: The Case Of Projoven In Peru, Jose Galdo, Miguel Jaramillo, Veronica S. Montalva, Sonia Moreau
Household Wealth And Heterogeneous Impacts Of A Market-Based Training Program: The Case Of Projoven In Peru, Jose Galdo, Miguel Jaramillo, Veronica S. Montalva, Sonia Moreau
Economics - All Scholarship
This paper analyzes the relationship between households' wealth and heterogeneous treatment impacts for a market-based training program that has benefited more than 40,000 disadvantaged individuals in Peru since 1996. We proxy long-run wealth by a linear index based on 21 household assets, and three main findings emerge. First, we find that voluntary choices among eligibles, rather than administrative choices, play a bigger role in explaining demographic disparities in program participation. Second, quantile treatment effects on the treated suggest important differences in program impacts at different quantiles of earnings, and strong differences in distributional impacts for men and women. Third, both …