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Full-Text Articles in Economics

Where Does The Money Come From? The Financing Of Small Entrepreneurial Enterprises, Zsuzsanna Fluck, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Harvey Rosen Jul 1998

Where Does The Money Come From? The Financing Of Small Entrepreneurial Enterprises, Zsuzsanna Fluck, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Harvey Rosen

Center for Policy Research

Using data from the Wisconsin Entrepreneurial Climate Study, we study the sources of firms’ finance during the very early stages of their lives. Our focus is the evolution of the mix of financial capital from “insiders” and “outsiders” as firms age. We find that at the beginning of firms’ life cycles, the proportion of funds from internal sources increases with age, while the proportion from banks, venture capitalists, and private investors declines. There is also evidence that these patterns eventually reverse themselves, with the proportion of insider finance ultimately declining and the proportion of outsider finance increasing with age. We …

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Financial Capital, Human Capital, And The Transition To Self-Employment: Evidence From Intergenerational Links, Thomas Dunn, Douglas Holtz-Eakin Jul 1998

Financial Capital, Human Capital, And The Transition To Self-Employment: Evidence From Intergenerational Links, Thomas Dunn, Douglas Holtz-Eakin

Center for Policy Research

The environment for business creation is central to economic policy, as entrepreneurs are believed to be forces of innovation, employment and economic dynamism. We use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) to investigate the relative importance of family financial and human capital in the transition into self-employment. Specifically, we estimate the impacts of own wealth and human capital and parental wealth and self-employment experience on the probability that an individual makes the transition from a wage and salary job to self-employment. We find that young men’s own financial assets exert a statistically significant, but quantitatively modest effect on the …

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Apocalypse Now? Fundamental Tax Reform And Residential Housing Values, Donald Bruce, Douglas Holtz-Eakin Jul 1998

Apocalypse Now? Fundamental Tax Reform And Residential Housing Values, Donald Bruce, Douglas Holtz-Eakin

Center for Policy Research

Using a simulation model crafted to integrate the short-run and long-term impacts of tax reform on the housing market, we find modest impacts from fundamental reform of the Federal income tax. These results suggest that concerns over the impact of tax reform on housing values and household net worth are overstated. To the extent that reform is otherwise desirable, fears of drastic effects on the housing market should not stand as an impediment to reform. Donald

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Entrepreneurs, Income Taxes, And Investment, Robert Carroll, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mark Rider, Harvey Rosen Jul 1998

Entrepreneurs, Income Taxes, And Investment, Robert Carroll, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mark Rider, Harvey Rosen

Center for Policy Research

This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurs’ personal income tax situations on their capital investment decisions. We examine the income tax returns of a sample of sole proprietors before and after the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and determine how the substantial reductions in marginal tax rates for the relatively affluent associated with that law affected their decisions to invest in physical capital. We find that individual income taxes exert a statistically and quantitatively significant influence on investment decisions. In our sample, a 5 percentage point increase in marginal tax rates would reduce the proportion of entrepreneurs who make new …

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Discrimination In Qualitative Actions By Real Estate Brokers, Jan Ondrich, Alex Stricker May 1998

Discrimination In Qualitative Actions By Real Estate Brokers, Jan Ondrich, Alex Stricker

Center for Policy Research

Discrimination occurs when people in a particular class are systematically treated less favorably than other equally qualified people. This study focuses on racial and ethnic discrimination in qualitative actions by real estate brokers, such as showing a customer a housing unit that was advertised in the newspaper. The data come from the Housing Discrimination Study, which conducted over 2,000 fair housing audits of real estate brokers in 25 metropolitan areas in 1989. Each audit consists of a visit to a real estate agency by a white person and either a black or Hispanic person with similar socio-economic characteristics. Using Chamberlain’s …

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The Outlook For Onondaga County's Finances: Baseline Scenario, William Duncombe, Bernard Jump Jr. Aug 1997

The Outlook For Onondaga County's Finances: Baseline Scenario, William Duncombe, Bernard Jump Jr.

Center for Policy Research

This is the third of four reports to the Onondaga Lake Management Conference about the economic and fiscal implications for Onondaga County of court-mandated expenditures for sewer-related remediation of Onondaga Lake.

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How The Fruits Of Growth Were Distributed Among Working-Age Families In The United States And Germany In The 1980s, Richard V. Burkhauser, Amy D. Crews, Mary C. Daly Aug 1997

How The Fruits Of Growth Were Distributed Among Working-Age Families In The United States And Germany In The 1980s, Richard V. Burkhauser, Amy D. Crews, Mary C. Daly

Center for Policy Research

We use cross-sectional and longitudinal data from Germany (Socio-Economic Panel) and the United States (Panel Study on Income Dynamics) to show how the income distribution changed over the 1980s business cycle in these two countries. Consistent with other researchers we find income inequality in the United States increased over the peak years of the 1980s business cycle and that the middle of the income distribution shrank. However, we also find that the great bulk of the disappearing middle shifted to the right— became richer— over the period. Hence, it was disproportionate gains from growth rather than the “immiseration” of the …

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Expensive Children In Poor Families: Out-Of-Pocket Expenditures For The Care Of Disabled And Chronically Ill Children And Welfare Reform, Anna Lukemeyer, Marcia K. Meyers, Timothy M. Smeeding Aug 1997

Expensive Children In Poor Families: Out-Of-Pocket Expenditures For The Care Of Disabled And Chronically Ill Children And Welfare Reform, Anna Lukemeyer, Marcia K. Meyers, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

This study explores one aspect of the costs experienced by low-income families with one or more special needs children: direct, out-of-pocket expenses for items related to the child’s disability, such as special foods, transportation to medical clinics, or medical costs not covered by insurance. We find that almost half (46 percent) of a sample of California AFDC families with special needs children experienced some special expenses in the preceding month. About 20 percent of these low-income families experienced total costs exceeding $100. Families with severely disabled children were more likely to experience costs and tended to experience higher costs. While …

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Placing A Lid On Marginal Tax Rates: A New Way To Simplify The Income Tax Structure, John Yinger Aug 1997

Placing A Lid On Marginal Tax Rates: A New Way To Simplify The Income Tax Structure, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

Thanks to the phasing out of exemptions and excess itemized deductions and to the alternative minimum tax, the federal income tax rate schedule is difficult to draw, to understand, and to connect with any tax principle. Moreover, some taxpayers now face unreasonably high marginal tax rates. This paper proposes a new approach that simplifies the income tax system at its point of intersection with taxpayers; sets absolute upper and lower bounds on true marginal tax rates; and allows for the phasing out of any or all exemptions, deductions, or other tax preferences according to clear principles. This approach can achieve …

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The Economic And Fiscal Impact Of Lake Remediation On Onondaga County, William Duncombe, Shannon Felt, James R. Follain, Bernard Jump Jr. Aug 1997

The Economic And Fiscal Impact Of Lake Remediation On Onondaga County, William Duncombe, Shannon Felt, James R. Follain, Bernard Jump Jr.

Center for Policy Research

This is the fourth and final report to the Onondaga Lake Management Conference about the economic and fiscal implications for Onondaga County of court-mandated expenditures for sewer-related remediation of Onondaga Lake. Exactly how much remediation will cost and what, precisely, will be the technical specifications of the plan that is finally approved by the court are both still to be decided. Yet, there is little doubt that an undertaking of the dollar magnitude contemplated for lake remediation has the potential to affect the fiscal condition of the county and the future health of the local economy.

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The Cost Of Caring: Childhood Disability And Poor Families, Marcia K. Meyers, Anna Lukemeyer, Timothy M. Smeeding Jul 1997

The Cost Of Caring: Childhood Disability And Poor Families, Marcia K. Meyers, Anna Lukemeyer, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

Children in poor families are at heightened risk for disabilities and chronic health problems, and care for these children can impose substantial costs on families and public programs. Although the prevalence and costs of disabilities among poor children have important policy implications, they have been largely overlooked in research on poverty and welfare and on the costs of childhood disabilities. This paper analyzes the prevalence of childhood disabilities and chronic illness among welfare recipient families in California and the probability families caring for these children experience higher out-of-pocket costs and material hardship then do other similar families.

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A Review And Forecast Of The Onondaga County Economy, Shannon Felt, James R. Follain, Suzanne Mccoskey Mar 1997

A Review And Forecast Of The Onondaga County Economy, Shannon Felt, James R. Follain, Suzanne Mccoskey

Center for Policy Research

The purpose of this paper is to review the economy of Onondaga County and to offer a forecast of its future until the year 2035. This information will be used in forming a plan to improve the quality of Onondaga Lake. Understanding the past and the forecastable future is crucial to the formation of this plan and to anyone with a stake in the county’s future economic growth. To create this review and forecast, we used the REMI model, a multi-equation model of a local or regional economy and is a tool that is widely used in studies of this …

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Onondaga County's Economic Performance Since 1980 And Prospects For The Next Decade, William Duncombe, Wilson Wong Feb 1997

Onondaga County's Economic Performance Since 1980 And Prospects For The Next Decade, William Duncombe, Wilson Wong

Center for Policy Research

The last three decades have been a time of transition for the economy of Onondaga County. After its poor performance in the 1970s, it rebounded during most of the 1980s. Since then the county economy has stagnated and even declined in key sectors. This report probes behind these aggregate trends to shed light on the nature of the changing county economy. To put these trends in perspective, the county's performance is compared to that of other metropolitan areas and regions in New York State and several fast growing metropolitan areas in the South. Understanding the reasons for Onondaga County's current …

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Stochastic Modeling Of Active Life And Its Expectancy, Douglas A. Wolf, Sarah B. Laditka Jan 1997

Stochastic Modeling Of Active Life And Its Expectancy, Douglas A. Wolf, Sarah B. Laditka

Center for Policy Research

The concept of “active” (or “disability-free”) life, and its average value, has proven to be a useful index of public health and of quality of life for populations. A question of great interest in recent years is whether recent trends towards longer life expectancy have been accompanied by comparable increases in active life expectancy. Past research on patterns and trends of active and “inactive” life has focused almost exclusively on the expectancy—or, the average value—of years spent with and without disability. This measure is useful for actuarial calculations, for example analysis of the insurance value of programs that provide long-term …

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Who Minimum Wage Increases Bite: An Analysis Using Monthly Data From The Sipp And Cps, Richard V. Burkhauser, Kenneth A. Couch, David C. Wittenburg Jan 1997

Who Minimum Wage Increases Bite: An Analysis Using Monthly Data From The Sipp And Cps, Richard V. Burkhauser, Kenneth A. Couch, David C. Wittenburg

Center for Policy Research

In this paper we use an estimating equation from the research of leading proponents of the view that minimum wage increases do not cause employment losses. Rather than using annual data from the May Current Population Survey (CPS), we test this hypothesis using monthly data from both the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the CPS. We find the traditional result that neoclassical theory would predict: minimum wage increases create employment losses that are concentrated among less valued workers. Minimum wage increases have an insignificant effect on the employment of prime age workers (aged 25 to 61), but …

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Where Do The Rents Go? Land Ownership In An Urban Model, Stephen Ross, John Yinger Nov 1996

Where Do The Rents Go? Land Ownership In An Urban Model, Stephen Ross, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

Despite the predominance of homeownership, general equilibrium urban models assume that rents flow to absentee landlords or are redistributed to residents. This paper explores open urban models with more realistic forms of land ownership, namely ownership of shares in a land corporation and individual home ownership. These models, which produce capital gains and losses for residents, can yield different comparative static results than previous open models, with post-shock bid functions that are flatter at the periphery or steeper at the center. Moreover, shocks to these models cannot in general be analyzed without knowing the characteristics of all the urban areas …

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Recounting Winners And Losers In The 1980s: A Critique Of Income Distribution Measurement Methodology, Richard V. Burkhauser, Amy D. Crews, Mary C. Daly Aug 1996

Recounting Winners And Losers In The 1980s: A Critique Of Income Distribution Measurement Methodology, Richard V. Burkhauser, Amy D. Crews, Mary C. Daly

Center for Policy Research

The 1980s have been characterized as a time when the “rich got richer and the poor got poorer.” Using a cross-over point methodology used in several recent studies, we show how sensitive the measurement of winners and losers can be to seemingly small differences in methodological practice. Specifically, we show sensitivity to the years compared, the income sharing unit chosen, and the inflation index used. Our results show that these and other studies of economic well-being exaggerate losses by mixing cyclical with cross-cycle effects

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Financial Capital, Human Capital, And The Transition To Self-Employment; Evidence From Intergenerational Links, Thomas Dunn, Douglas Holtz-Eakin Jun 1996

Financial Capital, Human Capital, And The Transition To Self-Employment; Evidence From Intergenerational Links, Thomas Dunn, Douglas Holtz-Eakin

Center for Policy Research

The environment for business creation is central to economic policy, as entrepreneurs are believed to be forces of innovation, employment and economic dynamism. We use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) to investigate the relative importance of financial and human capital exploiting the variation provided by intergenerational links. Specifically, we estimate the impacts of parental wealth and human capital on the probability that an individual will make the transition from a wage and salary job to self-employment. We find that young men’s own financial assets exert a statistically significant, but quantitatively modest effect on the transition to self-employment. In …

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An Estimation Of Three Sets Of Indicators Of Financial Risk Among Multifamily Properties, Amy S. Bogdon, James R. Follain May 1996

An Estimation Of Three Sets Of Indicators Of Financial Risk Among Multifamily Properties, Amy S. Bogdon, James R. Follain

Center for Policy Research

A lack of information about the financial condition of multifamily properties has hindered the development of a secondary mortgage market in multifamily mortgages and federal policies to finance multifamily housing. The purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of the financial condition of multifamily properties. The centerpiece of the analysis is the 1991 RFS [U.S. Bureau of the Census]. Three sets of indicators of financial distress are examined in this paper. The first is interest rate related risk. We find that twenty five percent of the properties with mortgages have contract interest rates at least 87 basis points …

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Individuals' Lifetime Use Of Nursing Home Services: A Dynamic Microsimulation Approach, Sarah B. Laditka Apr 1996

Individuals' Lifetime Use Of Nursing Home Services: A Dynamic Microsimulation Approach, Sarah B. Laditka

Center for Policy Research

Despite the projected growth in the number of older Americans who will use nursing home services as the baby boom generation ages, there is little information about the total amount of time we can expect people to reside in nursing homes. I estimate individuals’ lifetime use of nursing home services using data from the 1984-1990 Longitudinal Study of Aging and the 1982, 1984, and 1989 National Long-Term Care Survey. A Markov model of functional status was used to estimate monthly functional status transition probabilities. Discrete-time hazard models were estimated to determine characteristics that were associated with nursing home use. Microsimulation …

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The Demand For Home Mortgage Debt And The Income Tax, James R. Follain, Robert M. Dunsky Apr 1996

The Demand For Home Mortgage Debt And The Income Tax, James R. Follain, Robert M. Dunsky

Center for Policy Research

The goal of this paper is to learn more about the demand for the amount of mortgage debt owed by United States home owners. Mortgage debt is defined to be the amount of outstanding household debt secured by the owner’s principal residence; mortgages for second homes and other real estate are not considered, but second mortgages and home equity loans are. The analysis focuses on the behavior of individual households and examines variations in the their demand for mortgage debt with respect to a variety of characteristics such as household income, age, education, and other characteristics of the household. Of …

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Work, Welfare, And The Burden Of Disability: Caring For Special Needs Of Children In Poor Families, Marcia K. Meyers, Anna Lukemeyer, Timothy M. Smeeding Apr 1996

Work, Welfare, And The Burden Of Disability: Caring For Special Needs Of Children In Poor Families, Marcia K. Meyers, Anna Lukemeyer, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

This paper addresses issues which arise at the juncture of welfare and disability policies. Using preliminary data from a recent survey of current and recent AFDC recipients in California, we find that disabilities and chronic health problems affect the mothers or children in 43 percent of all households in the AFDC system. The presence of one or more children with disabilities or chronic illnesses is found to have an impact on the economic well-being of families, with increased levels of direct hardship reported by families caring for one or more severely impaired children. Potential causes of higher levels of hardship …

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Do Housing Programs For Low-Income Households Improve Their Housing?, Amy D. Crews Apr 1996

Do Housing Programs For Low-Income Households Improve Their Housing?, Amy D. Crews

Center for Policy Research

The primary goals of the 1937 Housing Act were to provide safe and sanitary housing and to reduce crowding for low-income households. During the nearly 60 years since, the effective goals have expanded to include lowering housing costs, and by extension, to increasing nonhousing consumption. This paper examines the effect these programs have had on the overall consumption behavior of participants. Using data from the 1987 American Housing Survey (AHS), the results indicate that federal housing programs have little effect on the housing consumption of participants (4.4 percent increase), but an enormous effect on their nonhousing consumption (141 percent increase). …

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Ruthless Prepayment? Evidence From Multifamily Mortgages, James R. Follain, Jan Ondrich, Gyan P. Sinha Mar 1996

Ruthless Prepayment? Evidence From Multifamily Mortgages, James R. Follain, Jan Ondrich, Gyan P. Sinha

Center for Policy Research

Estimates of a prepayment function for multifamily mortgages are reported in this paper. These are among the first attempts to estimate such a function; most previous work along these lines focuses on single family mortgages. A further distinguishing aspect of the paper is its attempt to incorporate the impact of unobservable factors on the mortgage refinancing decision. A variant of the maximum likelihood procedure first developed by Meyer (1987) is employed. The results indicate an overall positive duration dependence for the conditional prepayment rate. The estimated response of prepayments to a change in the market rate of interest is significant …

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Family Structure And Institutionalization: Results From Merged Data, James Mcnally, Douglas Wolf Jan 1996

Family Structure And Institutionalization: Results From Merged Data, James Mcnally, Douglas Wolf

Center for Policy Research

Research on the patterns and behavioral consequences of kin networks among the older population is limited due to the shortcomings of most available survey data. Often, household surveys obtain little information on the number and characteristics of nonresident kin. Moreover, surveys are often confined to the noninstitutionalized population. One possible solution is to merge information from multiple sources, in order to achieve the requisite coverage of populations and data content. This paper reports on the development of a hybrid data base containing observations from the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the 1989 National Long-Term Care Survey …

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Coresidence With An Older Mother: The Adult Child's Perspective, Beth Soldo, Douglas A. Wolf, Vicki A. Freedman Dec 1995

Coresidence With An Older Mother: The Adult Child's Perspective, Beth Soldo, Douglas A. Wolf, Vicki A. Freedman

Center for Policy Research

We estimate models of coresidence between adult children and their elderly unmarried mothers, using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The models include controls for women’s wages, along with other variables representing competing demands on their time. Among married couples we explicitly represent the “competition” for residential space between a child’s mother and mother-in-law. The information necessary to identify the observations of interest— respondents with a living, unmarried older mother— is missing in most cases. We address this problem using a multiple imputation strategy. The results indicate that wages, income, and parental health are related to parent-child …

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What We Know About Multifamily Mortgage Originations And Why We Care, Amy D. Crews, Robert M. Dunsky, James R. Follain Dec 1995

What We Know About Multifamily Mortgage Originations And Why We Care, Amy D. Crews, Robert M. Dunsky, James R. Follain

Center for Policy Research

The three publicly available data sets on multifamily mortgage originations are examined and compared in an attempt to resolve the more than $20 billion discrepancy between the published estimates of the size of the conventional conforming multifamily lending market. The data are from the Survey of Mortgage Lending Activity, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, and the 1991 Residential Finance Survey. The analyses show that all three data sets have substantial weaknesses, and that the primary source of the differences in estimates is due to differences in the populations covered. The 1993 multifamily mortgage originations volume is estimated to be …

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Using Recurrence Probabilities To Estimate The Volume Of Multifamily Mortgage Originations, Robert M. Dunsky, James R. Follain, Jan Ondrich Nov 1995

Using Recurrence Probabilities To Estimate The Volume Of Multifamily Mortgage Originations, Robert M. Dunsky, James R. Follain, Jan Ondrich

Center for Policy Research

This study uses recurrence probabilities to generate forecasts of the volume of multifamily mortgage originations for the period 1992-2002. The approach concentrates on predicting the volume of property sales using the baseline of a multifamily prepayment hazard estimation to generate the predicted cohort-specific proportion of calendar sales in a given year. The forecast for the volume of originations depends strongly on the definition of the relevant mortgage population. A definition that excludes assumptions but otherwise includes all properties selling between 1971 and 1991 in which a first mortgage was used in its acquisition yields a forecast of $47.2 billion for …

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Estimating The Volume Of Multifamily Mortgage Originations By Commercial Banks Using The Survey Of Mortgage Lending Activity And The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data, Amy D. Crews, Robert M. Dunsky, James R. Follain Nov 1995

Estimating The Volume Of Multifamily Mortgage Originations By Commercial Banks Using The Survey Of Mortgage Lending Activity And The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data, Amy D. Crews, Robert M. Dunsky, James R. Follain

Center for Policy Research

Two public data sets on multifamily mortgage originations are used to resolve the $15 billion discrepancy between the published estimates of the size of the multifamily lending market covered by commercial banks. The data are from the Survey of Mortgage Lending Activity and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The analyses show the primary sources of the differences in the estimates are differences in the populations covered, nonreporting biases, and the methods used to expand the reported values to aggregate values. The 1993 multifamily mortgage originations volume by commercial banks is estimated to be about $7-8 billion.

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Slow Motion: Economic Mobility Of Young Workers In The 1970s And 1980s, Greg J. Duncan, Johanne Boisjoly, Timothy M. Smeeding Sep 1995

Slow Motion: Economic Mobility Of Young Workers In The 1970s And 1980s, Greg J. Duncan, Johanne Boisjoly, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

This paper investigates the question of how long it takes young male workers to earn enough to reach a given standard of living, e.g., enough to support a family. We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics data on the earnings of children and their parents to answer these questions. Our findings are that all groups of men, classified by race, ethnicity, and education level, are taking longer to reach a given standard of living. Some, e.g., undereducated black males, will never reach middle class standards of living for themselves. Implications for household formation, marriage, and public policy are discussed …

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