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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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2011

Series

Economics

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Articles 1 - 18 of 18

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Agglomeration Economics: Small Establishments/Big Effects: Agglomeration, Industrial Organization And Entrepreneurship, Stuart S. Rosenthal, William Strange Dec 2011

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 Dec 2011

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 Sep 2011

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 Sep 2011

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 Aug 2011

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 Jul 2011

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 Jul 2011

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 Jun 2011

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 Jun 2011

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 Jun 2011

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 May 2011

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 May 2011

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 Apr 2011

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 Apr 2011

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 Feb 2011

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 Jan 2011

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 Jan 2011

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 Jan 2011

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.