Economics Commons^™

Social Interactions And The Health Insurance Choices Of The Elderly: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Eldar Beiseitov, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran

Economics - All Scholarship

Using data from the 1998 Wave of the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the effect of social interactions on the health insurance choices of the elderly. We find that having more social interactions, as measured by contacts with friends and neighbors, reduces the likelihood of enrolling in a Medicare managed care plan relative to purchasing a medigap policy or having coverage through Medicare alone. Our estimates indicate that social networks are an important determinant of the health insurance choices of the elderly and provide suggestive evidence that "word-of-mouth" information sharing may have played a role in the preference of …

Bayesian Herders: Optimistic Updating Of Rainfall Beliefs In Response To External Forecasts, Travis J. Lybbert, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Winnie Luseno

Economics - All Scholarship

Temporal climate risk weighs heavily on many of the world's poor. Model based climate forecasts could benefit such populations, provided recipients use forecast information to update climate expectations. We test whether pastoralists in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya update their expectations in response to forecast information and find that they indeed do, albeit with a systematic bias towards optimism. In their systematic optimism, these pastoralists are remarkably like Wall Street's financial analysts and stockbrokers. If climate forecasts have limited value to these pastoralists, it is due to the flexibility of their livelihood rather than an inability to process forecast information.

April 2004, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Habitat Destruction By Collectors Associated With Decreased Abundance Of Rock-Dwelling Lizards, Matthew J. Goode, William C. Horrace, Michael J. Sredl, Jeffrey M. Howland

Economics - All Scholarship

Declines in biodiversity caused by habitat loss have been well documented on large spatial scales, however, effects of habitat loss on small scales have received little attention. Some common methods of reptile collection, primarily for commercial harvest, result in destruction of cracks, crevices, and other cool, moist microhabitats in desert rock outcrops. We developed a method for identifying habitat destruction associated with reptile collecting. We surveyed lightly and heavily disturbed areas near Phoenix, Arizona to determine if microhabitat loss caused by collectors was associated with decreased relative abundance of reptiles. Of four diurnal lizard species studied, relative abundance of two …

Life-Cycle Consumption And The Age-Adjusted Value Of Life, Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. Ziliak

Economics - All Scholarship

Our research examines empirically the age pattern of the implicit value of life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of life expectancy, aging can affect the value of life through an effect on planned life-cycle consumption. The elderly could, a priori, have the highest implicit value of life if there is a life-cycle plan to defer consumption until old age. We find that largely due to the age pattern of consumption, which is non-constant, the implicit value of life rises and falls over the lifetime in a way that the …

Does Fund Size Erode Mutual Fund Performance? The Role Of Liquidity And Organization, Joseph Chen, Harrison G. Hong, Ming Huang, Jeffrey D. Kubik

Economics - All Scholarship

We investigate the effect of scale on performance in the active money management industry. We first document that fund returns, both before and after fees and expenses, decline with lagged fund size, even after adjusting these returns by various performance benchmarks. We then explore a number of potential explanations for this relationship. We find that this relationship is most pronounced among funds that have to invest in small and illiquid stocks, which suggests that the adverse effects of scale are related to liquidity. Controlling for its size, a fund's performance actually increases with the asset base of the other funds …

Sozialpolitik Anders Denken. Das Verursacherprinzip – Von Der Umweltpolitischen Zur Sozialpolitischen Anwendung, Isidor Wallimann, Esteban Piñeiro

Books

The “polluter pays” principle in environmental law assumes that the actor would reduce or avoid adverse effects of his actions if he had to bear the consequences of those actions (internalization of effects). Such internalization can generally be done in two ways: either by avoiding or eliminating the harmful effects or by wearing the financial consequences of the injury. It is therefore on the one hand to have an incentive effect, on the other to a compensatory effect.

Pineiro and Wallimann apply these societal cost principles from the environmental world to the social realm, where social problems can be seen …

Taxes, Deadweight Loss And Intertemporal Female Labor Supply: Evidence From Panel Data, Anil Kumar

Center for Policy Research

Very few existing studies have estimated female labor supply elasticities using a U.S. panel data set, although cross-sectional studies abound. Also, most existing studies have done so in a static framework. I make an attempt to fill the gap in this literature by estimating a lifecycle-consistent specification with taxes, in a limited dependent variable framework, on a panel of married females from the PSID. Both parametric random effects and semi parametric fixed effects methods are applied. I find evidence of larger substitution effects than found in female labor supply literature with taxes, suggesting considerable distortionary effects from income taxation. The …

Improving Economic Literacy: The Role Of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, Donald H. Dutowsky, Jerry M. Evensky, Gerald S. Edmonds

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper introduces Concurrent Enrollment Programs (CEPs), within the context of Syracuse University Project Advance (PA) Economics, as a way to improve economic literacy. We describe measures implemented to operate PA Economics as a high-quality CEP, as well as the National Alliance of Concurrent Education Partnerships to establish national standards. This study also contains results from administering to high school students taking PA Economics the nationally normed Test of Economic Literacy (TEL). PA students average nearly one percentage point higher than the AP/Honors Economics Group, and score considerably better than AP/Honors Economics in fundamentals and international economics. By cognitive level, …

Love At What Price? Estimating The Value Of Marriage, Michael Conlin, Stacy A. Dickert-Conlin, Elyse Whitney

Economics - All Scholarship

Using a law within Social Security that provides clear financial incentives to delay marriage, we estimate the financial value of a month of marriage. Specifically, the law provides that widows who are eligible for Social Security benefits on their deceased spouse's earnings records are eligible for benefits at age 60, unless they remarry before that age. If they remarry before that age, they cannot claim widow benefits and must wait until at least age 62 to claim spousal benefits on their new husband's record, which are typically less generous than widow benefits. To generate an estimate of what this behavior …

Improving Economic Literacy: The Role Of Concurrent Enrollment Programs, Donald H. Dutkowsky, Jerry M. Evensky, Gerald S. Edmonds

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper introduces Concurrent Enrollment Programs (CEPs), within the context of Syracuse University Project Advance (PA) Economics, as a way to improve economic literacy. We describe measures implemented to operate PA Economics as a high-quality CEP, as well as the National Alliance of Concurrent Education Partnerships to establish national standards. This study also contains results from administering to high school students taking PA Economics the nationally normed Test of Economic Literacy (TEL). PA students average nearly one percentage point higher than the AP/Honors Economics Group, and score considerably better than AP/Honors Economics in fundamentals and international economics. By cognitive level, …

Option Value And Dynamic Programming Model Estimates Of Social Security Disability Insurance Application Timing, Rickard V. Burkhauser, J. S. Butler, Gulcin Gumus

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper develops dynamic structural models - an option value model and a dynamic programming model - of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. We estimate the time to application from the point at which a health condition first begins to affect the kind or amount of work that a currently employed person can do. We use Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and restricted access Social Security earnings data for estimation. Based on tests of both in-sample and out-of-sample predictive accuracy, our option value model performs better than both our dynamic programming model and our reduced form …

November 2003, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Modeling Of The Ssdi Application Timing Decision: The Importance Of Policy Variables, Rickard V. Burkhauser, J S. Butler, Gulcin Gumus

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper analyzes the importance of policy variables in the context of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. Previously, we explicitly modeled the optimal timing of SSDI application using dynamic structural models. We estimated these models using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). This paper uses option value model estimates to simulate application timing under alternative SSDI policy formulations. We consider changes in three policy variables: benefit levels, acceptance rates, and employer accommodation. Our simulations suggest all these changes would have substantial effects on expected spell lengths until application and on lifetime application rates, and hence …

Does Fund Size Erode Performance? Liquidity, Organizational Diseconomies And Active Money Management, Joseph S. Chen, Harrison Hong, Ming Huang, Jeffrey D. Kubik

Economics - All Scholarship

We investigate the effect of fund size on performance among active mutual funds. We first document that fund returns, both before and after management fees, decline with fund size, even after adjusting performance by various benchmarks and controlling for other fund characteristics such as turnover and age. We then explore a number of potential explanations for this relationship. We find that the effect of fund size on fund returns is most pronounced among funds that play small cap stocks. Interestingly, performance only depends on fund size and does not decline with family size. Finally, small funds are better than large …

Educational Investments In A Spatially Varied Economy, Andrew G. Mude, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak, Cheryl R. Doss

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational investment patterns. But when financial markets are incomplete and informal mechanisms subject to imperfect contract enforcement must fill the breach, spatial inequality in infrastructure or other attributes that affect the returns to education create spatial differentiation in educational lending and consequently, in educational attainment. Although migration options can increase the returns to education, they can also choke off the …

Technical Efficiency Of Australian Wool Production: Point And Confidence Interval Estimates, William C. Horrace

Economics - All Scholarship

A balanced panel of data is used to estimate technical efficiency, employing a fixed-effects stochastic frontier specification for wool producers in Australia. Both point estimates and confidence intervals for technical efficiency are reported. The confidence intervals are constructed using the multiple comparisons with the best (MCB) procedure of Horrace and Schmidt (1996, 2000). The confidence intervals make explicit the precision of the technical efficiency estimates and underscore the dangers of drawing inferences based solely on point estimates. Additionally, they allow identification of wool producers that are statistically efficient and those that are statistically inefficient. The data reveal at the 95% …

Data Mining Mining Data: Msha Enforcement Efforts, Underground Coal Mine Safety, And New Health Policy Implications, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth

Economics - All Scholarship

Studies of industrial safety regulations, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in particular, often find little effect on worker safety. Critics of the regulatory approach argue that safety standards have little to do with industrial injuries, and defenders of the regulatory approach cite infrequent inspections and low fines for violating safety standards. We use recently assembled data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) concerning underground coal mine production, safety inspections, and workplace injuries to shed new light on the regulatory approach to workplace safety. Because all underground coal mines are inspected at least once per quarter, MSHA regulations …

Thy Neighbor's Portfolio: Word-Of-Mouth Effects In The Holdings And Trades Of Money Managers, Jeffrey D. Kubik, Harrison Hong, Jeremy Stein

Economics - All Scholarship

A mutual-fund manager is more likely to hold (or buy, or sell) a particular stock in any quarter if other managers in the same city are holding (or buying, or selling) that same stock. This pattern shows up even when controlling for the distance between the fund manager and the stock in question, so it is distinct from a local-preference effect. It is also robust to a variety of controls for investment styles. These results can be interpreted in terms of an epidemic model in which investors spread information about stocks to one another by word of mouth.

Can Policy Changes Be Treated As Natural Experiments? Evidence From Cigarette Excise Taxes, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran

Economics - All Scholarship

An important issue in public policy analysis is the potential endogeneity of the policies under study. We examine the extent to which such political endogeneity biases estimates of behavioral parameters by identifying the elasticity of demand for cigarettes using the timing of state legislative elections as an instrument for changes in cigarette excise taxes. We find sizable differences between our estimates and those cited in Chaloupka and Warner (2000), which treat cigarette taxes as exogenous. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that policy changes may be codetermined with the outcomes they are thought to influence.

April 2003, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New Wine In Old Bottles: A Sequential Estimation Technique For The Lpm, William C. Horrace, Ronald L. Oaxaca

Economics - All Scholarship

The conditions under which ordinary least squares (OLS) is an unbiased and consistent estimator of the linear probability model (LPM) are unlikely to hold in many instances. Yet the LPM still may be the correct model or a good approximation to the probability generating process. A sequential least squares (SLS) estimation procedure is introduced that may outperform OLS in terms of finite sample bias and yields a consistent estimator. Monte Carlo simulations reveal that SLS outperforms OLS, probit and logit in terms of mean squared error of the predicted probabilities.

The Functions Of Transaction Costs: Rethinking Transaction Cost Minimization In A World Of Friction, David M. Driesen, Shubha Ghosh

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This article critically examines the goal of minimizing transaction costs, including the costs of legal decision-making. This goal permeates the law and economics literature and has profoundly influenced public policy. While most transaction cost scholarship has focused upon private law, this influence has been especially pervasive in public law, where it has contributed to a variety of legal changes aimed at reducing public transaction costs, often through privatization.

We argue that transaction costs perform useful functions. They frequently enable those engaging in transactions to obtain information needed to correct for information asymmetries or inadequate information. They facilitate efficient transactions, allow …

Das Zeitalter Der Knappheit – Ressourcen, Konflikte, Lebenschancen, Isidor Wallimann, Michael Dobkowski

Books

Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann establish a disturbing but realistic scenario of the disastrous future that awaits humankind as surplus populations collide with dwindling resources. Authors consider a number of cause-and-effect situations on industrialization, biophysical limits, exponential population growth, and genocide, to name a few. This volume is a critical contribution to the field and will serve as an ideal introduction to courses in the environment, population, resources, genocide, and social conflict.

Data Mining Mining Data: Msha Enforcement Efforts, Underground Coal Mine Safety, And New Health Policy Implications, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth

Center for Policy Research

Studies of industrial safety regulations, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in particular, often find little effect on worker safety. Critics of the regulatory approach argue that safety standards have little to do with industrial injuries and defenders of the regulatory approach cite infrequent inspections and low fines for violating safety standards. We use recently assembled data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) concerning underground coal mine production, safety inspections, and workplace injuries to shed new light on the regulatory approach to workplace safety. Because all underground coal mines are inspected at least once per quarter, MSHA regulations …

Geography, Industrial Organization, And Agglomeration, Stuart S. Rosenthal, William C. Strange

Center for Policy Research

This paper makes two contributions to the empirical literature on agglomeration economies. First, the paper uses a unique and rich database in conjunction with mapping software to measure the geographic extent of agglomerative externalities. Previous papers have been forced to assume that agglomeration economies are club goods that operate at a metropolitan scale. Second, the paper tests for the existence of organizational agglomeration economies of the kind studied qualitatively by Saxenian (1994). This is a potentially important source of increasing returns that previous empirical work has not considered. Results indicate that localization economies attenuate rapidly and that industrial organization affects …

Agglomeration, Labor Supply, And The Urban Rat Race, Stuart S. Rosenthal, William C. Strange

Center for Policy Research

This paper establishes the existence of a previously overlooked relationship between agglomeration and hours worked. Among non-professionals, hours worked decrease with the density of workers in the same occupation. Among professionals, a positive relationship is found. This relationship is twice as strong for the young as for the middle-aged. Moreover, young professional hours worked are shown to be especially sensitive to the presence of rivals. We show that these patterns are consistent with the selection of hard workers into cities and the high productivity of agglomerated labor. The behavior of young professionals is also consistent with the presence of keen …

Entrepreneurship And Economic Growth: The Proof Is In The Productivity, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Chihwa Kao

Center for Policy Research

Popular and policy discussions have focused extensively on "entrepreneurship." While entrepreneurship is often viewed from the perspective of the individual's benefits--an increase in standard of living, flexibility in hours, and so forth--much of the policy interest derives from the presumption that entrepreneurs provide economy-wide benefits in the form of new products, lower prices, innovations, and increased productivity. How large are these effects? Using a rich panel of state-level data, we quantify the relationship between productivity growth--by state and by industry--and entrepreneurship. Specifically, we use state-of-the-art econometric techniques for panel data to determine whether variations in the birth rate and death …

On The Measurment Of Job Risk In Hedonic Wage Models, Dan Black, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

We examine the incidence, form, and research consequences of measurement error in measure of fatal injury risk in United States workplaces using both BLS and NIOSH data. We find evidence of substantial measurement errors in the fatality risk researchers attach to individual workers when estimating the implicit price of risk and the value of a statistical life. We first examine possible classical attenuation bias in the fatality risk coefficient. However, because we also find non-classical measurement error that differs across multiple risk measures and is not independent of other regressors, more complex statistical procedures than a standard instrumental variables estimator …

November 2002, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.