Economics Commons^™

The Efficiency Of A Group-Specific Mandated Benefit Revisited: The Effect Of Infertility Mandates, Joanna N. Lahey

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper examines the labor market effects of state health insurance mandates that increase the cost of employing a demographically identifiable group. State mandates requiring that health insurance plans cover infertility treatment raise the relative cost of insuring older women of child-bearing age. Empirically, wages in this group are unaffected, but their total labor input decreases. Workers do not value infertility mandates at cost, and so will not take wage cuts in exchange, leading employers to decrease their demand for this affected and identifiable group. Differences in the empirical effects of mandates found in the literature are explained by a …

Metropolitan Report - May 2011, Division Of Business And Economic Research, College Of Business Administration, University Of New Orleans

UNO Metropolitan Report (1986-2017)

No abstract provided.

Why Pay For Paper? An Analysis Of The Internet's Effect On Print Newspaper Subscriber Retention, Kevin Payne

All Theses

The goal of this paper is to quantify the effect that increases in home internet access had on the print newspaper subscriber retention for an anonymous newspaper during the years 1998 through 2003. Using weekly, subscriber-level transaction data from the newspaper and internet usage statistics from the Current Population Survey Internet and Computer Use Supplements, a discrete-time duration model is used to estimate the effect that home internet access had on the probability of a current subscriber canceling her subscription. I find that on average, increasing the probability of internet access from the 10th to the 90th percentile value increases …

Immigration And Illicit Drugs: Two Case Studies And Their Connection With Select European Countries, And Potential Implications For American Policy, Seth Huffman

All Theses

Two topics of much debate in the United States, immigration and drug prohibition, are issues that all countries must scrutinize. I have taken two Euro areas, Scandinavia and Portugal, and have attempted to use them as templates for the United States so to draw potential policy implications. Scandinavian countries can be characterized as having pull factors in the form of welfare policies, which draw immigrants to those countries. It is hard to deduce whether this has a negative effect on the country because immigrants, not only use services, but are also consumers. This creates a problem as we try to …

Economic Policies To Address The Environmental Consequences Of Global Reuse, Thomas C. Kinnaman

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper summarizes a two-country model that solves for optimal tax rates to achieve efficiency in an economy with international trade in used consumer electronics. If only the developed nation can tax the disposal of e-waste, then the global Pareto Optimum can be obtained by either imposing an import tariff on used consumer electronics or subsidizing the return of e-waste for disposal in the developed country. The global Pareto Optimum can also be obtained by reducing the disposal tax in the developed country to a level below the external marginal cost of disposal should no other policy option be available.

Test Of Hypotheses In Panel Data Models When The Regressor And Disturbances Are Possibly Nonstationary, Badi H. Baltagi, Chihwa Kao, Sanggon Na

Center for Policy Research

This paper considers the problem of hypotheses testing in a simple panel data regression model with random individual effects and serially correlated disturbances. Following Baltagi, Kao and Liu (2008), we allow for the possibility of non-stationarity in the regressor and/or the disturbance term. While Baltagi et al. (2008) focus on the asymptotic properties and distributions of the standard panel data estimators, this paper focuses on test of hypotheses in this setting. One important finding is that unlike the time series case, one does not necessarily need to rely on the “super-efficient” type AR estimator by Perron and Yabu (2009) to …

The Practical Pev: Removing Barriers To Plug-In Electric Vehicle Charging And Ownership, Stephen Parry

Pomona Senior Theses

The paradigm of personal transportation is changing. Electric vehicles are here. The arrival of the Tesla Roadster, Nissan Leaf, and Chevy Volt has changed the way in which we have to think about the energy that fuels our transportation needs. As PEVs find their way into garages this year and especially in the coming years, the neighborhood, city, state, and regional electric infrastructure will take on a new importance for many people as their interactions with it become significantly more complex and intimate as a result of regular electric vehicle charging.

An Analysis Of Financial Leverage And The 2007-2009 Financial Crisis, Larissa A. French

Honors Program Theses

This thesis will analyze the recent financial crisis, attempting to find and explain sources that caused the crisis, which includes monetary excesses, mortgage-backed securities, the August 2007 bank panic, credit default swaps, and other causes. It will link together events and activities to provide a complete picture. Additionally, this thesis will compare financial leverage with Gross Domestic Product to determine if increases in financial leverage predate financial crises. Leverage, by itself, is not enough to cause a recession, as it exists at some level all the time. However, it may be possible that excessive amounts of leverage or increasing leverage …

Donor-Side Determinants Of Disaggregated Foreign Assistance: A Sur Approach To Understanding U.S. Economic, Military, And Food Aid Commitments, Stephanie Hugie

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This study addresses whether the absolute and relative impact of economic, political, and humanitarian variables that restrain or boost U.S. foreign assistance varies for different types of aid, from a strictly domestic decision-making framework. Using a SUR analysis for U.S. economic, military, and food aid obligations, the various aid budgets indeed behave differently with respect to the explanatory variables. GDP growth, the military budget, and Congressional orientation are more suitable predictors for economic assistance than for food or military assistance. Food aid is less likely to be correlated with the ideological orientation of the Congress and President, and is not …

Cultural Compatibility: Economic Development In Eastern Europe, Daniel Brilliant

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The objective of Daniel Brilliant’s research is to explore the relationship between culture and economic prosperity in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Learning why some of these countries do better than others is of interest in discovering what causes a country’s economy to grow in general. Knowing the causes of economic growth helps in determining what policies, if any, can be adopted by a country to help promote economic growth. Some have theorized that government policies are at the heart of prosperity. Others have speculated that cultural factors play a large role in determining if such policies will …

Essays On Population Aging And Social Security In The U.S., Shantanu Bagchi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Over the past few decades, falling birth rates and increasing life expectancies have threatened the viability of social security programs all across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In this dissertation, I attempt to shed some light on the extent of the crisis that the social security program in the United States (U.S.) currently faces, and I also recommend one possible reform policy. In the first essay, I provide an alternative estimate of the impact of population aging on the future social security benefits in the U.S., while accounting for the household-level and macroeconomic adjustments to population aging. …

Three Essays On The Economic Impact Of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy In The United States, Rachna Gollamudi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The first native-born case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE or commonly known as Mad Cow Disease) in North American continent was reported on 20 May 2003 in central Alberta, Canada. The first case of BSE in the United States was announced on 23 December 2003.

My dissertation is divided into three essays on the economic impact of the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the United States in December 2003. The first essay focuses on quantifying the impact of the outbreak of BSE in the United States and Canada on the stock returns of major publicly traded agribusiness firms …

Economic Input–Output Life Cycle Assessment Of Water Reuse Strategies In Residential Buildings And Communities, Derek J. Gardels

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The objective of this study was to determine the environmental sustainability and economic feasibility of five water reuse designs using economic input-output life cycle assessments and benefit/cost analyses. These five water reuse designs were evaluated for four regions of the United States including the Northwest (Seattle), Southwest (Scottsdale), Midwest (Omaha), and Southeast (Tampa). The water reuse designs include a greywater reuse system with no treatment for sub-surface landscape irrigation for a single-family residential house (Model 1), an indoor greywater reuse system with treatment for toilet flushing and laundry washing for a single-family residential house (Model 2), a hybrid untreated greywater …

Essays On The Link Between Alcohol Consumption And Youth Fertility, Inna Cintina

All Dissertations

In the first chapter, I use exogenous variation in state minimum legal drinking ages to examine the relationship between restrictions on teen alcohol consumption and youth fertility. Using individual level data, I find that a decrease in the minimum drinking age during the late 1970s and 1980s leads, surprisingly, to a decrease in pregnancy rate among 15-17 year-old white women. The pregnancy rate among 15-17 year-old black women, on the other hand, significantly increases with the decrease in the drinking age. I find similar racial variations for unwanted pregnancies among 15-17 years old. The differentiated response to changes in eligibility …

Pirates And Traders: Some Economics Of Pirate-Infested Seas, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

Even where all agents are risk-neutral, merchants can insure themselves against piracy. Such self-insurance is surprisingly invulnerable to moral hazard. Further, there exist a patrolling intensity and/or penalties for captured pirates which, along with mercantile self-insurance, could eliminate piracy.

Wp Chen's Criticizing Policy That Benefited Him, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Mr Chen Show Mao of the Workers' Party lamented in his speech recently that wages in Singapore are not increasing as fast as the country's gross domestic product growth, highlighting that most of the growth went to corporate profits and wage income for top earners.

Dangerous To Draw Down Reserves, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

As at the end of last year, our official reserves stood at $288 billion compared to a gross domestic product of $304 billion and bank deposits (domestic bank units or DBU) of $781 billion. In the event of a financial meltdown, the reserves would be far too small to bail out our banks. During the recent global financial crisis I was very anxious for Singapore when the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced a guarantee (until end last year) for all our DBU deposits of up to $150 billion.

Warning System For Property Bubbles, Jun Yu, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

A commentary on what constitutes a sound system to warn against property bubbles.

Instrumental Variable Quantile Estimation Of Spatial Autoregressive Models, Liangjun Su, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a spatial quantile autoregression (SQAR) model, which allows cross-sectional dependence among the responses, unknown heteroscedasticity in the disturbances, and heterogeneous impacts of covariates on different points (quantiles) of a response distribution. The instrumental variable quantile regression (IVQR) method of Chernozhukov and Hansen (2006) is generalized to allow the data to be non-identically distributed and dependent, an IVQR estimator for the SQAR model is then defined, and its asymptotic properties are derived. Simulation results show that this estimator performs well in finite samples at various quantile points. In the special case of spatial median regression, it outperforms the conventional …

Vertical Targeting And Leakage In Carbon Policy, James B. Bushnell, Erin T. Mansur

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper examines the intersection between two aspects of climate policy design. The first is the point of regulation: should it be placed on pollution sources, carbon-rich inputs, or consumers? The second aspect concerns the external effects of a local climate policy. Leakage occurs when partial regulation results in an increase in emissions in unregulated parts of the economy. Our model demonstrates how directly regulating polluters can increase foreign emissions while indirect regulation (either upstream or downstream of the pollution source) will decrease foreign emissions. The net effect on combined domestic and foreign emissions will depend on market elasticities.