Economics Commons^™

Trends And Tariffs: Nebraska In An Aging Recovery, Eric Thompson

Business in Nebraska

Nebraska will record solid economic growth during the forecast period but will lag U.S. growth. Nebraska’s large farming sector is struggling and will not contribute much to economic growth during the forecast period. Job growth also will be sluggish in transportation and retail trade. Job growth, however, will be stronger in the services, finance, manufacturing and construction. Projected growth rates for 2019 to 2021 are presented in Table 1.

Employment will grow by 0.7% to 0.9% per year, below the national rate. Nonfarm income will grow between 4.4% and 4.5% each year. This growth readily exceeds inflation and population growth, …

The Three-Year Impact Of The Affordable Care Act On Disparities In Insurance Coverage, Charles J. Courtemanche, James Marton, Benjamin Ukert, Aaron Yelowitz, Daniela Zapata, Ishtiaque Fazlul

Economics Faculty Publications

Objective
To estimate the impact of the major components of the ACA (Medicaid expansion, subsidized Marketplace plans, and insurance market reforms) on disparities in insurance coverage after three years.

Data Source
The 2011-2016 waves of the American Community Survey (ACS), with the sample restricted to nonelderly adults.

Design
We estimate a difference-in-difference-in-differences model to separately identify the effects of the nationwide and Medicaid expansion portions of the ACA using the methodology developed in the recent ACA literature. The differences come from time, state Medicaid expansion status, and local area pre-ACA uninsured rates. In order to focus on access disparities, we …

Social Security And Medicare Spending Growth: Is It Just More Seniors Or More Per Senior?, John Garen

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

Long-term federal budget forecasts show sizable increases in federal spending in the coming decades. This is concerning to those who worry that the growth of government will diminish incentives, reduce productivity, and limit economic growth. A large share of the forecasted increase in spending is due to Social Security and Medicare. This paper considers how much of this increase is simply due to the growth in the eligible population and how much is due to growth in spending per beneficially. The findings show both the former and the latter account for sizable shares of the growth. Thus, there is room …

The Federal-Private Wage Differential: How Has It Evolved?, Sun-Ki Choi, John Garen

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

Federal, state, and local budget issues in the aftermath of the Great Recession stimulated a revival of interest in government worker pay. In the paper, we study the evolution of the federal-private pay differential from 1995 to 2017 using Current Population Survey data, enabling us to examine the current pay gap and how it has changed over time. Wage regressions are estimated by year for federal and private sector workers and used to calculate the yearly federal-private wage differential. To deal with unobserved heterogeneity, we adopt control function methods. We also estimate of the probability of receiving employer-provided health insurance …

Physical Laws And Human Behavior: A Three-Tier Framework, Shabnam Mousavi, Shyam Sunder

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Social sciences start by looking at the social-psychological attributes of humans to model and explain their observed behavior. However, we suggest starting the study of observed human behavior with the universal laws of physics, e.g., the principle of minimum action. In our proposed three-tier framework, behavior is a manifestation of action driven by physical, biological, and social-psychological principles at the core, intermediate, and top tier, respectively. More broadly, this reordering is an initial step towards building a platform for reorganizing the research methods used for theorizing and modeling behavior. This perspective outlines and illustrates how a physical law can account …

Non-Exclusive Insurance With Free Entry: A Pedagogical Note, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider the Rothschild-Stiglitz model of insurance but without the exclusivity constraint. It turns out that there always exists a unique equilibrium, in which the reliable and unreliable consumers take out a primary insurance up to its quantity limit, and the unreliable take out further secondary insurance at a higher premium. We provide a simple proof of this result (extended to multiple types of consumers) with the hope that it may be pedagogically useful.

Variable Mismeasurement In A Class Of Dsge Models: Comment, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This comment points out mismeasurement of three of the variables in the DSGE model in Smets and Wouters (2007) and in models that use the Smets-Wouters model as a benchmark. The mismeasurement appears serious enough to call into question the reliability of empirical results using these variables.

Inflation In The Great Recession And New Keynesian Models: Comment, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This comment points out mismeasurement of three of the variables in the DSGE model in Del Negro, Giannoni, and Schorfheide (2015). These errors began with the model in Smets and Wouters (2007), and they also exist in other models that use the Smets-Wouters model as a benchmark. The mismeasurement appears serious enough to call into question the reliability of empirical results using these variables.

Some Important Macro Points, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper lists 19 points that follow from results I have obtained using a structural macroeconomic model (SEM). Such models are more closely tied to the aggregate data than are DSGE models, and I argue that DSGE models and similar models should have properties that are consistent with these points. The aim is to try to bring macro back to its empirical roots.

The Effect Of The Dependent Coverage Provision Of The Affordable Care Act On Opioid Use And Abuse, Christian Carrillo

Theses and Dissertations

The non-medical use of prescription opioids has become the fastest growing drug problem in the United States. This paper examines the effect of the ACA's dependent coverage provision on the prevalence of prescription opioid misuse and abuse along with the mechanism driving the results.

Effects Of Physician-Hospital Integration On Malpractice Claims, Elizabet Shvets

Theses and Dissertations

Recent increases in physician-hospital (i.e., vertical) integration has spurred both opposition on the grounds of anti-trust concerns and support on the basis of lowering transaction costs and improving communication. This paper examines the effects of vertical integration on quality of care as measured by malpractice claims.The study employs four data sets from the state of Florida (FL AHCA Financial Data, AHA Survey Data, FL AHCA Discharge Data, and FL Malpractice Claims from the Office of Insurance Regulation) culminating in an unbalanced panel dataset for the years 1998 to 2013. I utilize a linear model with hospital and year fixed effects …

The Impact Of Legalization Of Marijuana On Opioid Overdose Deaths, Radhika N. Bharadwaj

Theses and Dissertations

This masters’ thesis aims to examine the impact of the legalization of marijuana for recreational use on the death toll from opioid misuse in the state of Colorado. This investigation was done using the Synthetic Controls Method via data collected primarily from the CDC and IPUMS databases. The results indicate that the 2012 legalization policy in Colorado appears to reduce the number of deaths due to opioid overdoses.

The Impacts Of State Anti-Bullying Laws On Bullying Perpetration Levels Among School-Aged Children And Adolescents In The United States, Min Ji Ryu

Theses and Dissertations

Using data from National Survey of Children’s Health, this paper studies the causal effect of state anti-bullying laws (ABLs) in reducing the prevalence of bullying. The nonlinear difference-in-differences (DD) estimates suggest that the state ABLs decrease the likelihood of students’ having higher levels of bullying perpetration with a statistical significance.

The Effect Of Public Transportation Quality On Economic Outcomes, John Safy

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between public transportation quality and economic well-being using New York City data from 2010-2016. We use fixed effects, random effects, and finite mixture models, and find that increasing on-time performance increases the number of businesses but decreases the number of employees and total payroll.

The Effect Of Per Capita Relief Spending On County Level Joblessness In The United States In 1937 & 1940, Mohammad S. Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

This paper uses the 1937 and 1940 county level census data to estimate what effect did additional per capita relief spending have on joblessness in the United States in 1937 and 1940. To account for endogeneity in relief spending and its unequal/non-random distribution, an instrumental variables approach is used. The results show that additional per capita relief spending lowered joblessness in the United States in both years: 1937 and 1940.

(Wp 2019-01) Stratification Economics As An Economics Of Exclusion, John B. Davis

Economics Working Papers

Stratification Economics (SE) is an emergent sub-field in economics, but its JEL classification misrepresents its content and its relationship to the whole of economics. This paper first develops a more accurate characterization of SE by identifying its differences with Mainstream Economics (ME), its commonalities with economics in a broad sense, and how the combination of these differences and commonalities define it as a distinct research program. It then applies this definition to an economic goods taxonomy that makes a distinction between local public goods and common pool goods to interpret SE’S distinct research program as an economics of exclusion. The …

Economic Impact Study: Downtown Market Grand Rapids, Grand Valley State University, Christian Glupker

Other Faculty Publications

Purpose of study This study focuses on the economic impact of the Market from four perspectives:

1. Visitors who traveled for the express purpose of visiting the Market
2. Visitors who visited the Market while already in Grand Rapids
3. Tenant activity within the Market
4. The Market’s impact on local business revenue and job creation

Optimal Climate Policy And The Future Of World Economic Development, Mark Budolfson, Francis Dennig, Marc Fleurbaey, Noah Scovronick, Asher Siebert, Dean Spears, Fabian Wagner

Journal Articles

How much should the present generations sacrifice to reduce emissions today, in order to reduce the future harms of climate change? Within climate economics, debate on this question has been focused on so-called "ethical parameters" of social time preference and inequality aversion. We show that optimal climate policy similarly importantly depends on the future of the developing world. In particular, although global poverty is falling and the economic lives of the poor are improving worldwide, leading models of climate economics may be too optimistic about two central predictions: future population growth in poor countries, and future convergence in total factor …

Testing For Shifts In A Time Trend Panel Data Model With Serially Correlated Error Component Disturbances, Badi Baltagi, Chihwa Kao, Long Liu

Center for Policy Research

This paper studies testing of shifts in a time trend panel data model with serially correlated error component disturbances, without any prior knowledge of whether the error term is stationary or nonstationary. This is done in case the shift is known as well as unknown. Following Vogelsang (1997) in the time series literature, we propose a Wald type test statistic that uses a fixed effects feasible generalized least squares (FE-FGLS) estimator derived in Baltagi, et al. (2014). The proposed test has a Chi-square limiting distribution and is valid for both I (0) and I (1) errors. The finite sample size …

Getting On And Moving Up The Property Ladder: Real Hedging In The Us Housing Market Before And After The Crisis, Damian S. Damianov, Diego Escobari

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Real hedging is the practice of getting onto the property ladder in order to trade up to a larger home in the future. We define the value of the real hedge of home ownership as the difference between the risk premiums of renting and owning and explore how this value depends on local housing price dynamics and household characteristics. Controlling for the potential endogeneity of housing bubble bursts across different U.S metropolitan areas, we find a significantly higher correlation in the appreciation rates across the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller tiered house price indices in the period after the housing crisis. …

Do Women Managers Keep Firms Out Of Trouble? Evidence From Corporate Litigation And Policies, Binay K. Adhikari, Anup Agrawal, James Malm

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We find that firms where women have more power in the top management team, measured by female executives’ plurality and pay slice, face fewer operations-related lawsuits. This effect is robust to several treatments of endogeneity and does not appear to be driven by female executives' greater willingness to settle the cases. Evidence from a simultaneous equations approach suggests that firms where women executives have more power avoid lawsuits partly by avoiding some risky but value-increasing firm policies, such as more aggressive R&D, intensive advertising, and policies inimical to other parties.

Policy Uncertainty And Firm Cash Holdings, Hieu V. Phan, Nam H. Nguyen, Hien T. Nguyen, Shantaram Hegde

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This research examines the relation between government economic policy uncertainty and firm cash holdings. We find evidence that policy uncertainty is positively related to firm cash holdings due to firms’ precautionary motives and, to a lesser extent, investment delays. The relation between policy uncertainty and cash holdings is more pronounced for firms dependent on government spending and extends beyond business cyclicality. Further analysis indicates that the effects of policy uncertainty on corporate cash holdings are distinct from those of political, market, or other macroeconomic uncertainty.

The Post-9/11 Lgbtq Human Rights Struggle In Egypt, Donna K. Huaman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the struggle for LGBTQ human rights has become a leading standard that depicts whether or not a state can be considered modern and progressive. Yet, while this new criterion seems to be supported by Global North states, other nations in other regions, like Egypt from the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) has criticized the international pressure to implement this standard as neo-imperialist and inauthentic to its Muslim-Arab culture. Egypt claims to be the universal Arab-Muslim voice for the MENA region and has become one of the greatest challengers to the international campaign for …

Immigration, Small Business And Assimilation: Three Stories Of Small-Time Capitalism On The Lower East Side, Marcus Hillman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Small businesses in New York City have often been a catalyst to assimilation for individual immigrants, their families and their communities. For this capstone project, I have recorded conversations with three small-time entrepreneurs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and created a narrative audio piece that explores some of the important and study-worthy characteristics of New York City including economic opportunities in the city, immigration, assimilation and the ways that New Yorkers share space, just to name a few. These themes are threads that ran through all three of the conversations that I had and are crucial elements of …

Shapes And Transitions Of The Interest Rate Term Structure, Biwei Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I analyze different shapes of Treasury yield curves in order to better reflect and predict the U.S. economy. Since the late 1980s, macroeconomists have found that the slope of the yield curve predicts economic activity such as inflation, output growth, and recessions, but they have not fully examined the links between various shapes of yield curve and the macroeconomy. To fill the gap, I classify yield curve shapes with the U.S. Treasury yield data, detect the shape patterns over the business cycles, and map these shapes onto corresponding inflation and production states. Although the downward-sloping yield curve reliably predicts U.S. …

Global Collateral And Capital Flows, Ana Fostel, John Geanakoplos, Gregory Phelan

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Cross-border financial flows arise when (otherwise identical) countries differ in their abilities to use assets as collateral to back financial contracts. Financially integrated countries have access to the same set of financial instruments, and yet there is no price convergence of assets with identical payoffs, due to a gap in collateral values. Home (financially advanced) runs a current account deficit. Financial flows amplify asset price volatility in both countries, and gross flows driven by collateral differences collapse following bad news about fundamentals. Our results can explain financial flows among rich, similarly-developed countries, and why these flows increase volatility.

Some Important Macro Points, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper lists 19 points that follow from results I have obtained using a structural macroeconomic model (SEM). Such models are more closely tied to the aggregate data than are DSGE models, and I argue that DSGE models and similar models should have properties that are consistent with these points. The aim is to try to bring macro back to its empirical roots.

Narratives About Technology-Induced Job Degradation Then And Now, Robert J. Shiller

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Concerns that technological progress degrades job opportunities have been expressed over much of the last two centuries by both professional economists and the general public. These concerns can be seen in narratives both in scholarly publications and in the news media. Part of the expressed concern about jobs has been about the potential for increased economic inequality. But another part of the concern has been about a perceived decline in job quality in terms of its effects on monotony vs creativity of work, individual sense of identity, power to act independently, and meaning of life. Public policy should take account …

Contract Enforcement And Productive Efficiency: Evidence From The Bidding And Renegotiation Of Power Contracts In India, Nicholas Ryan

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Weak contract enforcement may reduce the efficiency of production in developing countries. I study how contract enforcement affects efficiency in procurement auctions for the largest power projects in India. I gather data on bidding and ex post contract renegotiation and find that the renegotiation of contracts in response to cost shocks is widespread, despite that bidders are allowed to index their bids to future costs like the price of coal. Connected firms choose to index less of the value of their bids to coal prices and, through this strategy, expose themselves to cost shocks to induce renegotiation. I use a …

Spatial Linkages, Global Shocks, And Local Labor Markets: Theory And Evidence, Rodrigo Adão, Costas Arkolakis, Federico Espósito

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

How do shocks to economic fundamentals in the world economy affect local labor markets? In a framework with a flexible structure of spatial linkages, we characterize the model-consistent shock exposure of a local market as the exogenous shift in its production revenues and consumption costs. In general equilibrium, labor outcomes in any market respond directly to the market’s own shock exposure, and indirectly to other markets shocks exposures. We show how spatial linkages control the size and the heterogeneity of these indirect effects. We then develop a new estimation methodology - the Model-implied Optimal IV (MOIV) - that exploits quasi-experimental …