Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Economic Policy (154)
- Economics (154)
- Education Policy (78)
- Sociology (11)
- Social Welfare (4)
-
- Health Policy (2)
- Medicine and Health Sciences (2)
- Demography, Population, and Ecology (1)
- Economic Theory (1)
- Education (1)
- Environmental Policy (1)
- Environmental Studies (1)
- Gerontology (1)
- Mental and Social Health (1)
- Military and Veterans Studies (1)
- Public Health (1)
- Race and Ethnicity (1)
- Substance Abuse and Addiction (1)
- Keyword
-
- Panel Data (4)
- COVID-19 (3)
- Luxembourg Income Study (3)
- Alcohol (2)
- Asian Americans (2)
-
- Fixed and Random Effects (2)
- Food Insecurity (2)
- Hausman test (2)
- Mundlak Regression (2)
- Older Adults (2)
- Panel data (2)
- Racial Bias (2)
- SNAP (2)
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (2)
- Teacher Evaluation (2)
- Absolute poverty (1)
- Adaptive LASSO (1)
- Affirmative Action (1)
- American income inequality (1)
- Antipoverty effectiveness (1)
- Antipoverty policies (1)
- COVID (1)
- Cardiovascular Disease (1)
- Center for Policy ResearchWorking Paper No. 123 (1)
- Cities (1)
- Climate Change (1)
- Crop Yields (1)
- Decomposition (1)
- Design of experiments (1)
- Domestic violence (1)
Articles 1 - 30 of 171
Full-Text Articles in Public Policy
Adopting The Standard Medical Deduction Increased State Snap Enrollment And Benefits, Yuwei Zhang, Jun Li, Dongmei Zuo, Colleen Heflin
Adopting The Standard Medical Deduction Increased State Snap Enrollment And Benefits, Yuwei Zhang, Jun Li, Dongmei Zuo, Colleen Heflin
Center for Policy Research
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a critical safety net program that helps reduce food insecurity among low-income households in the United States. However, many eligible households do not participate in SNAP due to burdensome administrative requirements. To make it easier for more older adults and people with disabilities to participate in SNAP, many states have adopted the Standard Medical Deduction (SMD) to simplify administrative requirements. This brief summarizes findings from a study that examined the associations between state SMD adoption and SNAP participation and benefits from 2004 to 2019.
Waiving Snap Interviews During The Covid-19 Pandemic Increased Snap Caseloads, Colleen Heflin, William Clay Fannin, Leonard M. Lopoo, Siobhan O'Keefe
Waiving Snap Interviews During The Covid-19 Pandemic Increased Snap Caseloads, Colleen Heflin, William Clay Fannin, Leonard M. Lopoo, Siobhan O'Keefe
Center for Policy Research
Food insecurity in the United States reached historically high rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus substantially increasing demand for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). To facilitate access to SNAP during the pandemic, the federal government granted state SNAP offices the option to waive the interview requirement – an administrative burden associated with the SNAP certification process. This brief summarizes findings from a recent study that used data from SNAP offices across 10 states to examine the impact of SNAP interview waivers on SNAP caseloads from January 5th to April 30th of 2021. Findings reveal that counties that implemented the …
Tax Streams, Land Rents, And Urban Land Allocation, Yugang Tang, Zhihao Su, Yilin Hou, Zhendong Yin
Tax Streams, Land Rents, And Urban Land Allocation, Yugang Tang, Zhihao Su, Yilin Hou, Zhendong Yin
Center for Policy Research
This paper examines the fiscal motives behind municipal governments' decisions to allocate commercial and residential land when two categories of land use are subject to different fiscal revenue alternatives: business-related tax and/or land rent. We use urban parcel-level land transfers during China’s peak period of urbanization, match commercial parcels with residential parcels, and find significant price discounts on commercial parcels relative to adjacent residential parcels. The observed discounts arise from the future tax flows from commercial use, i.e., expected taxes from developed commercial land reduce its transfer price. We conduct a structural estimation to examine the implications on land use …
Stronger Regulations On Air Pollution Could Reduce Cardiovascular Disease Mortality Rates, Yue Sun
Stronger Regulations On Air Pollution Could Reduce Cardiovascular Disease Mortality Rates, Yue Sun
Center for Policy Research
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States, but there are large disparities in CVD death rates across the country. Air pollution also plays an important role in shaping geographic disparities in CVD mortality, as air pollutants can become absorbed in human circulation systems, and cause inflammation, damage nervous systems, and trigger poor CVD outcomes. This brief reports the results of a study that used data on air pollution and from death certificates to estimate the association between fine particulate matter and cardiovascular disease mortality rates in the U.S. in 2016-2018. Results show that cutting …
Behavioral Science Interventions Could Increase Snap Comprehension And Awareness Among Military Families, Colleen Heflin, Hannah Patnaik, Leonard M. Lopoo, Siobhan O'Keefe
Behavioral Science Interventions Could Increase Snap Comprehension And Awareness Among Military Families, Colleen Heflin, Hannah Patnaik, Leonard M. Lopoo, Siobhan O'Keefe
Center for Policy Research
Food insecurity is more common among military families than the general population, and the transition from active service to civilian life is a time of heightened risk. The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) is designed to support food security among low-income families. Many eligible military and veteran families do not enroll in SNAP due to a lack of information, stigma, and administrative barriers. This brief highlights findings from a survey experiment conducted in 2022 and 2023 to assess how small changes to SNAP informational flyers, such as simplifying information provided about SNAP, highlighting that other veterans use SNAP, and emphasizing …
The Mundlak Spatial Estimator, Badi H. Baltagi
The Mundlak Spatial Estimator, Badi H. Baltagi
Center for Policy Research
The spatial Mundlak model first considered by Debarsy (2012) is an alternative to fixed effects and random effects estimation for spatial panel data models. Mundlak modelled the correlated random individual effects as a linear combination of the averaged regressors over time plus a random time-invariant error. This paper shows that if spatial correlation is present whether spatial lag or spatial error or both, the standard Mundlak result in panel data does not hold and random effects does not reduce to its fixed effects counterpart. However, using maximum likelihood one can still estimate these spatial Mundlak models and test the correlated …
Treatment For Mental Health And Substance Use: Spillovers To Police Safety, Monica Deza
Treatment For Mental Health And Substance Use: Spillovers To Police Safety, Monica Deza
Center for Policy Research
We study the effect of community access to mental health and substance use treatment on police officer safety, which we proxy with on-duty assaults on officers. Police officers often serve as first-responders to people experiencing mental health and substance use crises, which can place police officers at risk. Combining agency-level data on police officer on-duty assaults and county-level data on the number of treatment centers that offer mental health and substance use care, we estimate two-way fixed-effects regressions and find that an additional four centers per county (the average annual increase observed in our data) leads to a 1.3% reduction …
Covid-19 Has Strengthened The Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption And Domestic Violence, Monica Deza, Aaron Chalfin, Shooshan Danagoulian
Covid-19 Has Strengthened The Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption And Domestic Violence, Monica Deza, Aaron Chalfin, Shooshan Danagoulian
Center for Policy Research
A large body of evidence documents a link between alcohol consumption and violence involving intimate partners and close family members. Recent scholarship suggests that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders, there has been a marked increase in domestic violence. This research considers an important mechanism behind the increase in domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: an increase in the riskiness of alcohol consumption. We combine 911 call data with newly available high-resolution microdata on visits to bars and liquor stores in Detroit, MI and find that the strength of the relationship between visits to alcohol …
Unemployment, Alcohol, And Tobacco Use: Separating State Dependence From Unobserved Heterogeneity, Monica Deza
Unemployment, Alcohol, And Tobacco Use: Separating State Dependence From Unobserved Heterogeneity, Monica Deza
Center for Policy Research
Previous literature presents mixed evidence on the effect of alcohol consumption on labor market outcomes. On one hand, heavy alcohol consumption has been shown to have detrimental effects on labor market outcomes. On the other hand, moderate consumption is positively associated with wages and employment. Despite substantial reduced form evidence, previous literature has not been able to separately identify the causal pathways linking moderate versus heavy alcohol use to labor market performance due to the lack of natural experiments that only target moderate versus heavy drinking, as well as limitations of available structural methods that model state dependence and unobserved …
Covid-19 Mortality Rates Were Higher In States That Limited Governments From Enacting Public Health Emergency Orders, Xue Zhang, Mildred Warner, Gen Meredith
Covid-19 Mortality Rates Were Higher In States That Limited Governments From Enacting Public Health Emergency Orders, Xue Zhang, Mildred Warner, Gen Meredith
Center for Policy Research
State and local governments enacted various public health emergency policies during the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in lower infection and death rates than would have occurred without these policies. However, some states limited emergency public health authority of state executives, state governors, and state and local officials during the pandemic. This brief summarizes the results of a study that used data from the Center for Public Health Law Research and Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to explore which states passed laws that limited emergency public health authority during the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of those limitations on COVID-19 death …
Beyond The “Model Minority” Mirage: How Does Positive Bias Affect Asian Students And Other Students Of Color?, Ying Shi, Maria Zhu
Beyond The “Model Minority” Mirage: How Does Positive Bias Affect Asian Students And Other Students Of Color?, Ying Shi, Maria Zhu
Center for Policy Research
Asian Americans are often perceived as a “model minority” in classrooms. While this stereotype seems positive, it may raise expectations for Asian students and bolster negative stereotypes for students in other minority groups due to teacher bias. This brief summarizes findings from a study that used data from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center (NCERDC) from 2007 to 2013 to identify the presence of positive bias in teachers’ assessments towards Asian American students in grades 3-8 and its effects on other minority groups. The authors find that teachers rate Asian students’ academic skills more favorably than similar White students …
Affirmative Action Is A Successful Policy For Diversity In College Graduation, Amy Lutz, Pamela R. Bennett, Rebecca Wang
Affirmative Action Is A Successful Policy For Diversity In College Graduation, Amy Lutz, Pamela R. Bennett, Rebecca Wang
Center for Policy Research
Affirmative action in higher education has become an active arena for policymaking and legal challenges in the United States. A question frequently raised about affirmative action is whether racial and ethnic minority students who benefit from affirmative action are successful in the academically demanding context of selective colleges. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study, the authors analyzed racial-ethnic differences in cumulative GPAs for White, Black, and Latino students who were high school seniors in 2004 and subsequently attended selective colleges and universities. Results show that Black and Latino students were more likely to graduate from selective colleges than White …
Moving Policies Toward Racial And Ethnic Equality: The Case Of The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Hugo B. Jales, Judith Liu, Norbert L. Wilson
Moving Policies Toward Racial And Ethnic Equality: The Case Of The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Hugo B. Jales, Judith Liu, Norbert L. Wilson
Center for Policy Research
We analyze the role played by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in alleviating or exacerbating inequality across racial and ethnic groups in food expenditures and in the resources needed to meet basic food needs (the “food resource gap”). To do this, we propose a simple framework that decomposes differences across groups in SNAP benefit transfer levels into three components: eligibility, participation, and generosity. This decomposition is then linked to differences in food expenditures and the food resource gap. Our results reveal that among the three components, differences in eligibility contribute the most to SNAP benefits differentials for Black and …
Medicaid-Insured Older Adults On Snap May Have Stronger Medication Adherence, Colleen Heflin, Chinedum O. Ojinnaka, Irma A. Arteaga, Leslie Hodges, Gabriella Alphonso
Medicaid-Insured Older Adults On Snap May Have Stronger Medication Adherence, Colleen Heflin, Chinedum O. Ojinnaka, Irma A. Arteaga, Leslie Hodges, Gabriella Alphonso
Center for Policy Research
For older adults with hypertension, medication adherence is critical to decreasing hospitalization, poor health outcomes, and healthcare costs. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the largest food and nutrition assistance program in the United States—could protect against medication non-adherence. This brief summarizes the findings from a recent study, which linked Missouri Medicaid administrative claims data to SNAP data from 2006 to 2014. The findings suggest that longer and consistent receipt of SNAP benefits was associated with higher levels of antihypertensive medication adherence among Medicaid-insured individuals aged 60 years and older.
The Two-Way Mundlak Estimator, Badi H. Baltagi
The Two-Way Mundlak Estimator, Badi H. Baltagi
Center for Policy Research
Mundlak (1978) shows that the fixed effects estimator is equivalent to the random effects estimator in the one-way error component model once the random individual effects are modeled as a linear function of all the averaged regressors over time. In the spirit of Mundlak, this paper shows that this result also holds for the two-way error component model once this individual and time effects are modeled as linear functions of all the averaged regressors across time and across individuals. Woolridge (2021) also shows that the two-way fixed effects estimator can be obtained as a pooled OLS with the regressors augmented …
Racial Disparities In School Poverty And Spending: Examining Allocations Within And Across Districts, Robert Bifulco, Sarah Souders
Racial Disparities In School Poverty And Spending: Examining Allocations Within And Across Districts, Robert Bifulco, Sarah Souders
Center for Policy Research
Using recently available school-level finance data, we compare exposure to low-income classmates and average per pupil spending for black, Hispanic, and white students. Using within metropolitan area comparisons, we find that the typical black and Hispanic students attend schools with much higher proportions of low-income students than the typical white student, and that per pupil spending in the typical black and Hispanic students’ schools is higher than in the typical white student’s school. Drawing on estimates of the additional spending required to provide low-income students equal educational opportunity, we find that it is unlikely that the additional spending in schools …
America And Hope In The Time Of Fentanyl And Meth: A Fireside Chat With Sam Quinones, Sam Quinones
America And Hope In The Time Of Fentanyl And Meth: A Fireside Chat With Sam Quinones, Sam Quinones
Center for Policy Research
For the 34th Annual Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture on Health Policy, Sam Quinones sat down with Dr. Shannon Monnat for a fireside chat. He discussed how the drug-trafficking world has changed over the last twenty years, the rise of fentanyl and methamphetamine in the U.S., how drug use in the U.S. reflects American society, and what kind of policies will help with this epidemic.
The Fiscal Sustainability Of Retiree Health Care Benefits Among New York State School Districts, Robert Bifulco, Minch Lewis, Iuliia Shybalkina
The Fiscal Sustainability Of Retiree Health Care Benefits Among New York State School Districts, Robert Bifulco, Minch Lewis, Iuliia Shybalkina
Center for Policy Research
We examine spending on retiree health care as a percentage of revenues for a sample of New York State school districts. The fiscal burden of these benefits grew from 2010 to 2021, and big city school districts have faced the largest burdens. Assuming CBO forecasts regarding growth in health care costs and continuation of recent trends in revenue growth, we project that the burden of retiree health care benefits will exceed 10 percent of revenue by 2050. Projected burdens are greatest big city and high need rural districts. We discuss cutting benefits and pre-funding as possible policy responses.
“Model Minorities” In The Classroom? Positive Evaluation Bias Towards Asian Students And Its Consequences, Ying Shi, Maria Zhu
“Model Minorities” In The Classroom? Positive Evaluation Bias Towards Asian Students And Its Consequences, Ying Shi, Maria Zhu
Center for Policy Research
The fast-growing demographic group of Asian Americans is often perceived as a “model minority.” This paper establishes empirical evidence of this stereotype in the context of education and then analyzes its consequences. We show that teachers rate Asian students’ academic skills more favorably than observationally similar White students in the same class, even after accounting for test performance and behavior. This contrasts with teachers’ lower likelihood of favoring Black and Hispanic students. Notably, teachers respond to the presence of any Asian student in the classroom by exacerbating Black-White and Hispanic-White assessment gaps. This suggests that the “model minority” stereotype can …
Robust Dynamic Space-Time Panel Data Models Using Ε- Contamination: An Application To Crop Yields And Climate Change, Badi H. Baltagi, Georges Bresson, Anoop Chaturvedi, Guy Lacroix
Robust Dynamic Space-Time Panel Data Models Using Ε- Contamination: An Application To Crop Yields And Climate Change, Badi H. Baltagi, Georges Bresson, Anoop Chaturvedi, Guy Lacroix
Center for Policy Research
This paper extends the Baltagi et al. (2018, 2021) static and dynamic ε-contamination papers to dynamic space-time models. We investigate the robustness of Bayesian panel data models to possible misspecification of the prior distribution. The proposed robust Bayesian approach de-parts from the standard Bayesian framework in two ways. First, we consider the ε-contamination class of prior distributions for the model parameters as well as for the individual effects. Second, both the base elicited priors and the ε-contamination priors use Zellner (1986)’s g-priors for the variance-covariance matrices. We propose a general “toolbox” for a wide range of specifications which includes the …
Cities In A Pandemic: Evidence From China, Badi H. Baltagi, Ying Deng, Jing Li, Zhenlin Yang
Cities In A Pandemic: Evidence From China, Badi H. Baltagi, Ying Deng, Jing Li, Zhenlin Yang
Center for Policy Research
This paper studies the impact of urban density, city government efficiency, and medical resources on COVID-19 infection and death outcomes in China. We adopt a simultaneous spatial dynamic panel data model to account for (i) the simultaneity of infection and death outcomes, (ii) the spatial pattern of the transmission, (iii) the inter-temporal dynamics of the disease, and (iv) the unobserved city- and time-specific effects. We find that, while population density increases the level of infections, government efficiency significantly mitigates the negative impact of urban density. We also find that the availability of medical resources improves public health outcomes conditional on …
Beyond The Classroom: The Broader Effects Of Public Preschool Expansion On Children’S Early Educational Experiences And Early Literacy Skills, Michah Rothbart, Taryn Morrissey
Beyond The Classroom: The Broader Effects Of Public Preschool Expansion On Children’S Early Educational Experiences And Early Literacy Skills, Michah Rothbart, Taryn Morrissey
Center for Policy Research
While previous research documents direct benefits of preschool for those who attend, less is known about how targeted expansions of public preschool to low-income households affects children’s early educational experiences, preschool attendance patterns, and school readiness in a broader community. This study uses administrative data from Virginia of first-time kindergarteners from 2011 to 2019 (about 630,000 students) and a discrete increase in targeted public pre-K (VPI+) to better understand the effects of expanding means-tested public preschool on patterns of prekindergarten participation and school readiness throughout the community. We find decreased probability that children in expansion districts spend no time in …
The Conditional Mode In Parametric Frontier Models, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yi Yang
The Conditional Mode In Parametric Frontier Models, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yi Yang
Center for Policy Research
We survey formulations of the conditional mode estimator for technical inefficiency in parametric stochastic frontier models with normal errors and introduce new formulations for models with Laplace errors. We prove the conditional mode estimator converges pointwise to the true inefficiency value as the noise variance goes to zero. We also prove that the conditional mode estimator in the normal-exponential model achieves near-minimax optimality. Our minimax theorem implies that the worst-case risk occurs when many firms are nearly efficient, and the conditional mode estimator minimizes estimation risk in this case by estimating these small inefficiency firms as efficient. Unlike the conditional …
Lasso For Stochastic Frontier Models With Many Efficient Firms, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yoonseok Lee
Lasso For Stochastic Frontier Models With Many Efficient Firms, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yoonseok Lee
Center for Policy Research
We apply the adaptive LASSO (Zou, 2006) to select a set of maximally efficient firms in the panel fixed-effect stochastic frontier model. The adaptively weighted L1 penalty with sign restrictions for firm-level inefficiencies allows simultaneous estimation of the maximal efficiency and firm-level inefficiency parameters, which results in a faster rate of convergence of the corresponding estimators than the least-squares dummy variable approach. We show that the estimator possesses the oracle property and selection consistency still holds with our proposed tuning parameter selection criterion. We also propose an efficient optimization algorithm based on coordinate descent. We apply the method to estimate …
How School Aid In New York State Penalizes Black And Hispanic Students, John Yinger
How School Aid In New York State Penalizes Black And Hispanic Students, John Yinger
Center for Policy Research
It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.
How New York State Stole $20 Billion From School Children In New York City, Part 2, John Yinger
How New York State Stole $20 Billion From School Children In New York City, Part 2, John Yinger
Center for Policy Research
It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.
How New York State Stole $20 Billion From School Children In New York City, John Yinger
How New York State Stole $20 Billion From School Children In New York City, John Yinger
Center for Policy Research
It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.
How Fair Is The New York State Education Aid System?, John Yinger, Emily Gutierrez
How Fair Is The New York State Education Aid System?, John Yinger, Emily Gutierrez
Center for Policy Research
It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.
Updated Pupil Weights For New York's Foundation Aid Formula, John Yinger, Emily Gutierrez
Updated Pupil Weights For New York's Foundation Aid Formula, John Yinger, Emily Gutierrez
Center for Policy Research
It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.
Research Informs Debate On Cuomo’S Excelsior Scholarship Proposal, John Yinger, Robert Bifulco, Ross Rubenstein
Research Informs Debate On Cuomo’S Excelsior Scholarship Proposal, John Yinger, Robert Bifulco, Ross Rubenstein
Center for Policy Research
It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.