Economic Policy Commons^™

Did Government Benefits Help Israeli Households Avoid Hardship During Covid-19? Evidence From A National Survey, Olga Kondratjeva, Talia Schwartz-Tayri, Sam Bufe, Stephen Roll, John Gal, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Israel quickly introduced aggressive social distancing measures to curb the virus spread and adapted its unemployment insurance program in response to rising unemployment rates. This study examines the relationship between household income and the experience of material hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, and investigates how the receipt of unemployment benefits moderated the relationship between income and material hardship. Using data from a household survey, we find a negative association between household income and the experience of material hardship. Moreover, middle-income households receiving unemployment benefits were more likely to …

The Coronavirus Pandemic And International Trade, E. Wesley F. Peterson

Cornhusker Economics

The Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted economic activities around the world. Many businesses had to cease operations and furlough or lay off their workers. The World Bank (2021) has reported that global economic output fell by 3.4% in 2020. The good news is that the massive infusion of financial support from many governments in high-income countries meant that the worst economic effects of the pandemic were mitigated, and a rapid recovery has begun to make up for the pandemic-related losses. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that the global economy will grow by 5.9% in 2021 recovering the 2020 losses and …

Poverty In A North American Context, Nathanael Snow, Benjamin Pettus

White Papers

From the Introduction

Understanding the impact of poverty can be aided by careful measurement. Statisticians and economists, both within the government and in the private sector, collect and analyze such statistics.

Disagreement about the interpretation of those figures can make it difficult for most people to know how they should respond to specific cases of poverty they encounter. For a meaningful discussion to take place, the existing understanding should be presented. This report summarizes the existing research on poverty and provides the interested reader with resources to continue learning about the topic. This report does not offer policy advice or …

A Game Theoretic Study On Csr And Government Intervention For Sustainable Production, Katherine Ann J. Fernandez, Joshua Ryan C. Go, Jean Nicole L. Ng, Bianca Alanis Ysabel C. Redulla, Jason P. Alinsunurin, Dickson A. Lim, Mariel Monica R. Sauler

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

We use a game theoretic approach to assess how the government can influence firms’ CSR investment and production decisions to enhance social welfare, considering the negative externalities brought by unsustainable production and positive externalities brought by CSR investments. Using a Stackelberg duopoly as a base model and lump-sum tax as the government’s decision variable, we find that when the government chooses not to intervene, it results in greater environmental damage as firms will underinvest in CSR and overproduce in quantity to achieve profit maximization. As such, the model extends to the assumption that the government acts as a benevolent dictator …

Behavioral Bias In Occupational Fatality Risk: Theory, Evidence, And Implications, Perry Singleton

Center for Policy Research

Behavioral bias in occupational fatality risk is introduced to the theoretical framework of hedonic wages, yielding an endogenous risk ceiling that increases social welfare. Empirically, bias is most evident among workers with no high school diploma, who do not report relatively greater exposure to death in high fatality rate occupations. These findings suggest that extant population estimates of value of statistical life are biased downwards and should be factored by at least 1.35. Under reasonable assumptions, simulations suggest an optimal risk ceiling between 73.0 to 85.9 percentile of the population distribution of occupational fatality risk.

What Makes A Classmate A Peer? Examining Which Peers Matter In Nyc Elementary Schools, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Jonathan L. Pressler, Amy Ellen Schwartz

Center for Policy Research

Generalizing the group interaction model of Lee (2007), we identify and estimate the effects of student level social spillovers on standardized test performance in New York City (NYC) elementary schools. We leverage student demographic data to construct within-classroom social networks based on shared student characteristics, such as a gender or ethnicity. Rather than aggregate shared characteristics into a single network matrix, we specify additively separate network matrices for each shared characteristic and estimate city-wide peer effects for each one. Conditional on being in the same classroom, we find that the most important student peer effects are shared ethnicity, gender, and …

Non-Tariff Measures And Their Impacts On Asean Economic Integration, Myrna S. Austria

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Using a gravity model that accounts for the asymmetric effects of non-tariff measures (NTMs), the study examined the impact of the five most prevalent NTMs in the region on intra-ASEAN imports. The study found that all five NTMs are significant factors affecting intra-ASEAN imports. However, their effects vary at the sectoral level, by pairs of trading partners, and whether the products are covered by mutual recognition and harmonization agreements (MRA) or not. For example, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, in general, negatively affect imports and are trade-reducing. Exceptions are prepared foodstuff and medicinal products, both of which are covered by …

Expanded Child Tax Credit Payments Have Not Reduced Employment, Stephen Roll, Leah Hamilton, Yung Chun

Social Policy Institute Research

Approximately 60 million American children living in 35 million households are now receiving monthly payments from the federal government as part of the temporary Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion. Recently, a debate has emerged over whether or not the expanded CTC will cause parents to leave the workforce. On one side of the debate, a large number of economists have argued that the CTC will not cause a reduction in employment. However, a recent study used a simulation approach to estimate that 2.6% of parents will exit the labor force as a result of the CTC.

The reports below address …

Exploring Optimal Lockdown Policies During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Cameron Bundy

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

COVID-19 has impacted public and economic health worldwide. To bolster the economy and maintain human life, economic and epidemiological research is vital. Nations have implemented lockdowns intent on slowing the spread of the virus. This research examines how lockdown parameter adjustments can help control a nations fatalities. The study incorporated an SIRD disease model that is simulated over a 200 day period. The goal of the research is to take the SIRD model and use it to create a minimization function that analyzes dynamics that best produce minimal loss of GDP as well as low loss of life in a …

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Capacity In Mountain West Metros, Olivia K. Cheche, Ally M. Beckwith, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet highlights data on artificial intelligence (AI) growth in Mountain West metropolitan areas over the last several decades, as originally reported by Mark Muro and Sifan Liu from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. The Brookings report examines how various metros across the United States contribute towards AI technology creation and business activity.

Nevada Campaign Financing: U.S. House Of Representatives, 2020, Kristian Thymianos, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Elections & Governance

In the 2020 election cycle, Nevada’s U.S. House of Representatives delegation fundraised a combined total of $9,994,636. This fact sheet summarizes the campaign donations and expenditures of these representatives. The data are collected from the Open Secrets website.

Investment Patterns In Mountain West States, Counties, And Nevada Cities 2005-2019, Peter Grema, Zachary Walusek, Katie M. Gilbertson, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

The purpose of this fact sheet is to summarize findings on capital flows across Mountain West states and counties, and within Nevada cities. The “Gauging Investment Patterns across the US” report by the Urban Institute present findings of overall volume of capital deployed, racial equity of investments, and income equity for each respective geographic area. The full report further breaks down these three main categories into 18 other metrics.

Robust Dynamic Panel Data Models Using ��-Contamination, Badi H. Baltagi, Georges Bresson, Anoop Chaturvedi, Guy Lacroix

Center for Policy Research

This paper extends the work of Baltagi et al. (2018) to the popular dynamic panel data model. We investigate the robustness of Bayesian panel data models to possible misspecification of the prior distribution. The proposed robust Bayesian approach departs 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 dynamic …

Startup Businesses In The Mountain West, 2014-2018, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet highlights data on startup businesses in Mountain West states and metropolitan areas, as originally reported by Roofstock’s “U.S. Cities With the Most Startup Businesses” report. Startup businesses are defined as new businesses launched by entrepreneurs that create jobs and spur efficiency and innovation. This report examines the startup formation rate, annual startup formations, annual new jobs created by startups, and jobs created by startups as a percentage of all new jobs within states and metros across the United States.

Covid-19 And Nevada Counties: Employment Data, May 2019 And May 2021, Joshua Padilla, Katie M. Gilbertson, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet displays county-level employment data and unemployment rates for 17 counties in Nevada, as reported by The Daily Yonder article “Rural Employment Grew in May, but Fewer People Are Seeking Jobs” in July 2021. Bill Bishop and Tim Marema compiled data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for each county in the United States for May 2019 and May 2021.

Effect Of Public Debt On Private Investment In Nigeria: Evidence From An Asymmetric Dynamic Model, A. B. Abubakar, S. O. Mamman

Economic and Financial Review

This study examines the effect of public debt on private investment in Nigeria. The linear and non-linear ARDL models are employed to analyse the series spanning the period 1981 to 2018. The estimation results show that an increase in total debt, external debt, and debt service payment adversely affects private investment, with the effects being symmetric. On the other hand, the effect of domestic debt on private investment is found to be asymmetric. Although a negative shock in domestic debt greatly improves private investment, a positive shock leads to a meagre positive effect on private investment. This finding indicates that …

The Socioeconomic Impacts Of Covid-19 Study: Survey Methodology Report, Stephen Roll, Sam Bufe, Yung Chun, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, and economic shutdowns began in March 2020, households across the United States were faced with an unprecedented crisis that would affect their health, financial security and overall well-being for an unforeseeable amount of time. In order to examine and track the wide-ranging impacts of the pandemic on households, as well as the efficacy of different public and private efforts to mitigate these impacts, the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis (SPI) launched the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey (SEICS) in the United States just weeks after the pandemic became a national …

Vaccination Options For Medicaid Parents Uncomfortable With Office Visits During Covid Pandemic, Amy Mcqueen, Tess Thompson, Enguday Teshome, Jennifer Staten, Saneel Kulkarni, Thidaporn Tanpattana, Lourdes Balaez, Matthew W. Kreuter

Social Policy Institute Research

Objective: Rates of child vaccinations declined during the COVID pandemic, which increases the risk of outbreaks of preventable diseases among children. Methods: We conducted an online survey of parents of Medicaid beneficiaries age 0-5 years old in Florida USA during January 2021 to assess barriers and strategies to increase adherence to childhood vaccinations.

Results: We surveyed 1,951 parents. Most (91%) respondents reported their child was up-to-date with childhood vaccinations, but fewer (36%) children had received a flu shot. Some (31%) parents had wanted to take their child to see a doctor but decided not to, and 22% were …

Use Of Public Benefits Over The First Year Of Pandemic: Exploring Access, Delays And Outcomes, Sam Bufe, Stephen Roll, Katie Kristensen, Dan Zhao, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

In response to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. federal government enacted initiatives designed to help households weather the pandemic’s effects. These initiatives included expansions of existing programs, such as unemployment insurance, as well as new programs like the economic impact payments. In this brief, we investigate the extent to which households relied on an array of public benefit programs over the course of the pandemic, how they used their economic impact payments, and the extent to which the unemployment insurance expansion was effective in insulating recipients from hardship during the pandemic.

We find that, in …

Housing Hardships During Covid-19, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Yung Chun, Stephen Roll, Katie Kristensen, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. households were burdened by the cost of rental and mortgage payments, burdens which disproportionately fell on Black and Hispanic families. Using a 5-wave survey, we examined whether disparities in housing cost burden continued throughout the pandemic and trends in how households fell behind on rent and mortgage payments. We found that more than a third of households experienced housing cost burdens during the pandemic, with a slightly higher percentage of households of color bearing cost burdens than white households. Renters had greater cost burdens than homeowners.

During the pandemic, significantly more Black and …