Economics Commons^™

Public Health Spending, Preventable Outcomes, And Medical Cost Offsets: Questions For Health Reform, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Uncertainty continues to surround the health and economic effects that can be expected from increased federal spending on public health and prevention strategies. Recent research provides some insight into the question of whether spending on public health strategies can offset the need for future spending on medical care.

Does The Economy Determine The President? A Regression Model For Predicting Us Presidential Elections, Roy K. Roth

Undergraduate Economic Review

There is a prevalent belief that the economy determines the President. If the economy is good, the President keeps his job, if it is bad, he is out. A large body of econometric literature has been published on this topic. This paper takes a new approach. I look not at how the popular vote changes with economic conditions, but how the electoral vote changes. I further examine how these changes affect the probability that the incumbent party stays in office. I find that economic conditions may not be as important as they have been purported to be.

Agricultural Productivity And Economic Development, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

The literature on Economic Development has provided us some lessons about its links with agricultural productivity and clearly demonstrates that the process of transformation takes place when labor and jobs move out of agriculture sector while the productivity of land and labor keeps on rising. As population expands, demand for food and fibres increases and the domestic production has to keep pace with this growing demand. As the labour shifts from low productivity activities in agriculture sector to high productivity activities within agriculture such as livestock, diary, horticulture, fisheries and towards industry, the country’s allocation and utilization of resources improves …

The Steady-State Economy As A Solution To The World’S Problems: A Theoretical Examination Of The Greatest Environmental Problem Facing Human Society, Brianna L. Besch

The Macalester Review

This paper is a theoretical exploration of the questioning, if you were given a magic power to solve one, and only one, of the worlds problem outlined by a classic environmental author, which would you solve, and why? While the field of environmental studies is relatively new, since the publishing of Malthus’ An Essay on the Principles of Population environmental scholars have been debating what should be considered the greatest environmental problem facing humanity. This paper explains how the creation of a steady-state economy to replace our current economic system, as described by Herman Daly, offers a holistic solution to …

The Economic Impact Of The Pace University Athletic Department, Rebecca Tekula, Anna-Kay Sinclair Mpa

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

No abstract provided.

Illicit Money Flows As Motives For Fdi, M. Fabricio Perez

Economics Faculty Publications

We examine the role of FDI in facilitating money laundering and illegal capital flight, focusing on transition economies’ FDI outflows because they largely reflect current investment decisions rather than the inertia of past decisions. We estimate a model of FDI outflows in which illicit money flows influence the volume of FDI directed toward countries considered to be centers of money laundering. We show that traditional models of FDI are not able to account for these investment flows and that our results are robust when additional explanatory variables such as host country tax rates, governance, corruption, and cultural differences between the …

Finding The Medicine For Healthcare, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Health care costs are escalating rapidly in countries with aging populations and is often a source of headache for policymakers. Singapore, which has one of the world’s acclaimed healthcare systems, also faces the same issues of balancing social and economic objectives in its healthcare system. A healthcare expert has now proposed a radical policy shift for the Republic to meet the medical needs of its citizens.

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index — February 2012, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Upjohn Institute Policy Paper: Public Pension Crisis And Investment Risk Taking: Underfunding, Fiscal Constraints, Public Accounting, And Policy Implications, Nancy Mohan, Ting Zhang

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Public pension funds that cover retirement benefits for almost 20 million active or retired employees have been significantly underfunded. An important, though largely overlooked, issue related to pension underfunding is the excessive investment risk levels assumed by public plans. Our analysis suggests government accounting standards strongly affect public fund investment risk, as higher return assumptions (used to discount pension liabilities) are associated with higher investment risk.

Public funds undertake more risk if they are underfunded and have lower investment returns in previous years, consistent with the risk transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, pension funds in states facing fiscal constraints allocate more assets …

Us Manufacturing And Vertical/Horizontal Intra-Industry Trade: Examining The Smooth Adjustment Hypothesis, Roger White, Cheng Chen

Economics

Using data that represent the six-digit North American Industrial Classification System-classified industries that comprise the US manufacturing sector and that span the years 1989–2005, we test the validity of the smooth adjustment hypothesis (SAH). To our knowledge, this is the first examination of the SAH for the USA. The results of our empirical analysis are consistent with the confirmation of the SAH. Further, using measures of vertical marginal intra-industry trade and of horizontal marginal intra-industry trade, we find that the latter has a stronger effect on employment of production workers than does the former. The findings suggest that for total …

Economic Impact Of Legalizing Retail Alcohol Sales In Benton County, Katherine A. Deck, Viktoria Riiman

Publications and Presentations

Converting from a dry county to a wet county would have a number of tangible and intangible economic benefits for Benton County. Legal retail alcohol sales are a signal of a contemporary economic development environment. Quantifying the value of that perception is quite difficult, but it is entirely possible to estimate sales effects and tax implications of becoming a wet county for the residents of Benton County. A study was conducted by the Center for Business and Economic Research to assess the magnitude of those economic effects. Data from 2010 were used because of completeness, but the sizes of the …

When To Say “I Love You”: Before Or After Sex?, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

There are no hard and fast rules on when one should say 'I love you', or who should say it first. Yet, the implications either way can be profound. Taking an evolutionary-economics perspective, these words, for men, could be taken as "bids for sexual access". Women, on the other hand, might view it differently, depending on whether the words were uttered before or after sex. SMU associate professor Norman Li examines what it is that romantic partners really mean when they say "love".

What Lies Ahead For The Oecd?, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

The “rise of the rest” has prompted questions about the capacity and willingness of the United States to lead the liberal international order established under its post-war hegemony. Some prophesize that stronger connections amongst emerging powers are the basis for a parallel international order parading different rules, norms and institutions. In contrast, Ikenberry argues that the visionary use of US power has woven capitalist and democratic societies together into a uniquely entrenched “Western” order that is “hard to overturn and easy to join.” Prevailing arrangements will condition the environment within which rising powers make their decisions; nevertheless, by joining the …

Agriculture Futures: Potential Rural Land Uses On The Palusplain, Rodney Safstrom, Nicolyn Short Dr

Resource management technical reports

The purpose of this project was to identify agricultural land use options and opportunities within the Serpentine–Jarrahdale and Murray Shires, with particular focus on the Palusplain wetland section. The report will contribute to the Department of Planning’s natural resource management plan for the region and guide development of regional and local planning strategies. Historically, the Palusplain was a slowly moving, interconnected, seasonal wetland system with areas of higher ground. Extensive clearing and drainage occurred in the late 1800s through to the mid-1900s to facilitate agriculture; however, agriculture has been found to be a major contributor of nutrients to the system. …

Sustainable Local Development. The Revitalization Of The Town Of Adwa (Ethiopia) Through Community-Based Endogenous Projects, Asayehgn Desta

Collected Faculty Scholarship

Over the years, either self-initiated or by funding from development agencies, a number of developing countries have implemented various programs to tackle poverty. This case study was inspired by the One Village One Product (OVOP) movement initiated in the Oita Prefecture region of Japan. Given the positive aspects of the OVOP, the purpose of the study is to transfer some aspects of the OVOP movement in order to revitalize the town of Adwa, Tigrai, Ethiopia. The case study therefore suggests some possible community-based endogenous projects that could revitalize the town of Adwa, Tigrai, Ethiopia. As a result of the initiative …

Designing And Implementing An Evaluation Of A National Work Support Program, Kong Weng Ho, Irene Y. H. Ng, Thartmalingam Nesamani, Alex Lee, Tee Liang Ngiam

Research Collection School Of Economics

Welfare reforms in the 1990s have shifted governments around the world towards financial assistance conditional on work. While large-scale rigorous research on welfare-to-work programs has demonstrated effectiveness towards employment in other countries, no such micro-level evaluation of a policy has ever been conducted in Singapore. This article describes the process of developing a large experimental evaluation of the Work Support Program, which the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports started in 2006. The lessons learned from planning and implementing the research can be helpful to future researchers in negotiating long-term rigorous evaluations in an environment where collaborators lack sufficient …

Micro-Finance Competition With Motivated Mfis, Brishti Guha, Prabal Roy Chowdhury

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we examine the effect of increased MFI competition, focusing on its implications for borrower targeting, both in the presence and the absence of double-dipping. In the absence of competition we find that the loans are more likely to go to relatively richer borrowers whenever inequality is not too large, and the technology is sufficiently convex. In the presence of competition, the results depend on whether double-dipping is feasible or not. In case double-dipping is not feasible, we find that the MFIs necessarily target the richer borrowers. Interestingly, it turns out that double-dipping may encourage the MFIs to …

The Long-Term Decline In Kentucky’S General Fund Buoyancy, Michael T. Childress, William Hoyt

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

No abstract provided.

Sieve Inference On Semi-Nonparametric Time Series Models, Xiaohong Chen, Zhipeng Liao, Yixiao Sun

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The method of sieves has been widely used in estimating semiparametric and nonparametric models. In this paper, we first provide a general theory on the asymptotic normality of plug-in sieve M estimators of possibly irregular functionals of semi/nonparametric time series models. Next, we establish a surprising result that the asymptotic variances of plug-in sieve M estimators of irregular (i.e., slower than root-T estimable) functionals do not depend on temporal dependence. Nevertheless, ignoring the temporal dependence in small samples may not lead to accurate inference. We then propose an easy-to-compute and more accurate inference procedure based on a “pre-asymptotic” sieve variance …

On The Limit Equilibrium Payoff Set In Repeated And Stochastic Games, Johannes Hörner, Satoru Takahashi, Nicolas Vieille

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper provides a dual characterization of the limit set of perfect public equilibrium payoffs in stochastic games (in particular, repeated games) as the discount factor tends to one. As a first corollary, the folk theorems of Fudenberg, Levine and Maskin (1994), Kandori and Matsushima (1998) and Hörner, Sugaya, Takahashi and Vieille (2011) obtain. As a second corollary, in the context of repeated games, it follows that this limit set of payoffs is a polytope (a bounded polyhedron) when attention is restricted to equilibria in pure strategies. We provide a two-player game in which this limit set is not a …