•We analyze the role of large floods on the onset and prevalence of internal armed conflict.•We focus on the displacement induced by floods as a determinant of armed conflict.•We address the ...endogeneity between the displacement caused by large floods and armed conflict.•Flood-induced displacement does not ignite new conflict, but it fuels existing conflicts.•This effect is larger in developing countries and it recedes with time.
Large, catastrophic floods intensify environmental scarcity and can lead to mass displacement from affected areas. The sudden and mass influx of migrants could increase the risk of social tensions in receiving areas. In this paper, we analyze the impact of the displacement induced by large floods on civil conflict using historical data for 126 countries during 1985–2009. Our results suggest that while the displacement caused by large floods did not ignite new conflicts, it fueled existing conflicts. This effect was larger in developing countries and it receded with time, vanishing five years following the flood.
We examine two possible approaches to reducing residential mortgage default using a dynamic model of heterogeneous infinitely-lived agents acting optimally subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic ...earnings shocks and systemic house price shocks. We find higher down payments are very effective in minimizing residential mortgage foreclosures, even in periods of house price declines and recessions. In contrast, the length of the credit exclusionary period for people who experience bankruptcy or foreclosure has a much smaller impact on mortgage defaults. Thus, it is much more effective to prevent mortgage default before the mortgage closes than to pressure homeowners not to default once they are in financial trouble. This also suggests a major aspect of credit scores and credit policy is non-productive and punitive, harming people in return for little societal gain.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Comparing income levels across families with different household compositions and sizes is not easy and has been a long‐term focus in welfare and policy analysis. This paper evaluates the extent ...childless two‐person households in the U.S. reduce their costs by living together relative to living alone. Using a structural collective household model and household scanner data, we find women, on average, consume 48% of total household expenditures, and a woman (man) living alone would need approximately 65% (63%) of the two‐person household's income to reach the same living standard as attained as a member of a two‐person household. Our results suggest the poverty line for two‐person childless households may need to be increased, whereas other federal benefit calculations are overly generous.
Abstract
The value of USDA reports in commodity futures markets has been intensively researched, but statistical hypothesis tests have been limited by the sheer number of reports and the consequent ...need to limit parameters to be estimated. This has led most tests of USDA report announcement effects to be based on single coefficients for each report series. We relax the implicit assumption that a report series has a constant impact on futures price volatility or returns in two ways in order to introduce more flexible tests for announcement effects. First, we introduce a time trend into the impact of announcements on futures price volatility to determine if USDA reports are becoming more or less influential over time. Then we allow each report to have a different impact on futures price returns using Theil-Goldberger mixed estimation. The results show that many, but not all, USDA reports have significant effects on corn and soybean futures market returns or volatility.
We take advantage of a long panel data set to estimate the relationship between U.S. state-level carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, economic activity, and other factors. We specify a reduced-form energy ...demand model to account for energy consumption activities that drive energy-related emissions. We contribute to the literature by exploring several spatial panel data models to account for spatial dependence between states. Estimation results and rigorous diagnostic analysis suggest that: (1) economic distance plays a role in intra- and inter-state CO2 emissions; and (2) there are statistically significant, positive economic spillovers and negative price spillovers to state-level emissions.
•We examine how economic activity affects U.S. state-level carbon dioxide emissions.•We use spatial, panel data econometric models to control for spatial dependence.•We test for different types of spatial dependence within the data.•Economic distance affects state-level emissions.•Statistically significant, positive economic and negative price spillovers.
•A new demand model to incorporate variable habit strength.•More habitual consumers display more price inelastic purchasing behavior.•Heavy consumers of addictive products respond less to policies ...such as sin taxes.•More restrictive models overestimate the effectiveness of beer and soda taxes.
In this article, we study the heterogeneity of habit strength in households’ demand for regular carbonated sweetened beverages (CSBs) and beer in the United States. A demand model that nests a smooth transition function is used to describe habit-based consumption patterns, revealing heterogeneous strengths of habits among households. We find that more habitual consumers, those with a strong preference for a particular product, are not as sensitive to price or expenditure as the aggregate population. This finding is further supported by simulations of the potential effects of soda and beer taxes. We find the aggregate response to soda and beer taxes is smaller than when the influence of habit is assumed to be homogeneous.
A well‐known feature of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is that some recipients spend a disproportionate amount of their monthly benefit early in the month. Using a finite ...mixture model that optimally separates households into two groups, coupled with the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey, we re‐examine this spending pattern. Results show that a minority of SNAP recipients cause the benefit cycle by spending, on average, two‐thirds of their monthly benefit within the first four days. A potential implication of these findings is that more frequent SNAP benefit disbursal or educational programs designed to encourage smoother spending over the month might be of benefit to some SNAP households.
Periods of high commodity prices and rising farmland debt loads are typically accompanied with speculation that there will eventually be declines in commodity and farmland prices that may lead to a ...farm credit crisis. We evaluate the likelihood of such a crisis using a simulation model of heterogeneous farmers during periods of volatile commodity and farmland prices. This model simulates a period of increasing commodity and farmland prices with a subsequent drop in prices of farmland and commodities. We find default rates are less sensitive to commodity prices than farmland prices, that the length of time prices remain low matters significantly, and that when both farmland and commodity prices fall together defaults rise more than the sum of the responses to separate price shocks.
Many cities around the world are experiencing the negative effects associated with not sustaining a sufficient level of tree canopy coverage. Tree canopy provides environmental benefits such as clean ...water and air, erosion prevention, climate control, and native species habitat and provides economic benefits such as higher housing values and lower energy expenditures. We study local government policies in a large U.S. metropolitan area (the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area) to find which policies perform the best at preserving or increasing urban forests. Empirical analysis reveals that a set of effective tree ordinance clauses, zoning ordinances, and having high quality smart growth projects in the community all help in preserving tree canopy in economically and environmentally meaningful amounts. Other actions, such as simply having a tree ordinance, designating a key management person in charge of tree programs, the presence of a tree board, and multiple communication channels were shown to be ineffective for our data set. Because benefits from tree canopy accrue to the local government's budget, to residents and to business owners, the entire community should gain from the passage of effective policies to preserve their local tree canopy. Estimated economic benefits from preserving tree canopy through an effective set of public policies are in the range of $10–15 million annually in an average county, mostly due to savings on stormwater management.
Consumer spending typically declines during periods of economic distress, but observers have noted that lipstick purchases appear to increase during recessions, which is often referred to as the ...lipstick effect. However, the existence of such effect has remained empirically unconfirmed. Using weekly retail scanner data on lipstick sales from 2006 to 2016 in the United States, we applied a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) demand model to test the relationship between economic distress and lipstick sales. This flexible demand specification allows regression coefficients to vary as a function of an exogenous macroeconomic variables and fluctuate asymmetrically, non-linearly, and time-varyingly across an unlimited number of regimes. Empirical results show the income elasticity of demand for lipstick decreased rapidly from 0.31 to 0.05 during the 2007-2009 recession, then slowly rebounded to 0.31 by the second quarter of 2014, thus first empirically confirming the existence of the lipstick effect.
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