The veterans disability compensation (VDC) program, which provides a monthly stipend to disabled veterans, is the third largest American disability insurance program. Since the late 1990s, VDC growth ...has been driven primarily by an increase in claims from Vietnam veterans, raising concerns about costs as well as health. We use the draft lottery to study the long-term effects of Vietnam-era military service on health and work in the 2000 Census. We find no evidence that military service affected overall employment rates or overall work-limiting disability rates (that is, health conditions that make work difficult). At the same time, military service sharply increased federal transfer income, especially for lower skilled white men, among whom there was also a large negative impact on employment and a marked increase in disability rates. The differential impact of Vietnam-era service on low-skilled men cannot be explained by more combat or war-theatre exposure for the least educated, because high school graduates were at least as likely to be exposed to combat or war theatre as the less-educated. This leaves the relative attractiveness of VDC for less-skilled men and the work disincentives embedded in the VDC system as a likely explanation for our findings.
Child protection and adult crime Doyle, Joseph J
Journal of political economy,
08/2008, Letnik:
116, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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This paper uses the randomization of families to child protection investigators to estimate causal effects of foster care on adult crime. The analysis uses a new data set that links criminal justice ...data to child protection data in Illinois, and I find that investigators affect foster care placement. Children on the margin of placement are found to be two to three times more likely to enter the criminal justice system as adults if they were placed in foster care. One innovation describes the types of children on the margin of placement, a group that is more likely to include African Americans, girls, and young adolescents.
I investigate the export performance of firms from emerging economies based on resource based view (RBV) of a firm. Based on review of extant literature, I identify firm size, research and ...development expenditure, advertising expenditure and business group affiliation to be important antecedents of level of exporting activities of a firm. I utilize a two-stage least square estimation (G2SLS) on a sample of 47,140 firm-year observations over a period of sixteen years from 1990–2005. The findings suggest that export sales and domestic sales are interdependent and affect each other. R&D expenditure and business group affiliation positively affect export sales, however advertising expenditure negatively affects export sales.
We quantify the effects of lending and balance sheet channels on corporate investment during large devaluations. We find that if currency crises are accompanied by banking crises, domestic exporters ...holding unhedged foreign currency debt decrease investment while foreign exporters with better access to credit increase investment despite their unhedged foreign currency debt. We do not find such a differential effect under pure currency crises. Using firm-bank matched data during the global financial crisis, we show that both domestic and foreign-owned firms experienced a decline in bank credit from affected banks; however, foreign-owned firms substituted the lost credit.
Provides a detailed treatment of an important topic that has received no scholarly attention: the surprising transformation of indigenous peoples' movements into viable political parties in the 1990s ...in four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela) and their failure to succeed in two others (Argentina, Peru). The parties studied are crucial components of major trends in the region. By providing to voters clear programs for governing, and reaching out in particular to under-represented social groups, they have enhanced the quality of democracy and representative government. Based on extensive original research and detailed historical case studies, the book links historical institutional analysis and social movement theory to a study of the political systems in which the new ethnic cleavages emerged. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications for democracy of the emergence of this phenomenon in the context of declining public support for parties.
A unique panel of retail prices spanning 123 cities in 79 countries from 1990 to 2005 is used to uncover the novel properties of long-run international price dispersion. At the PPP level, almost all ...of price dispersion is attributed to unskilled wage dispersion. At the level of individual goods and services, the average contribution of these wages is significantly reduced, reflecting that good-specific sources of price dispersion, such as trade costs and good-specific markups, tend to average out across goods. At the LOP level, borders and distance contribute about equally to price dispersion that is rising in the distribution share.
•Long-run price dispersion is investigated at the good level.•Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson holds at the PPP level.•Borders and distance contribute about equally to price dispersion at the LOP level.•Long-run price dispersion is rising in the distribution share.
Cross-Border Returns Differentials Curcuru, Stephanie E.; Dvorak, Tomas; Warnock, Francis E.
The Quarterly journal of economics,
11/2008, Letnik:
123, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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Using a monthly data set on the foreign equity and bond portfolios of U.S. investors and the U.S. equity and bond portfolios of foreign investors, we find that the returns differential for portfolio ...securities is far smaller than previously reported. Examining all U.S. claims and liabilities, we find that previous estimates of large differentials are biased upward. The bias owes to computing implied returns from an internally inconsistent data set of revised data; original data produce a much smaller differential. We also attempt to reconcile our findings with observed patterns of cumulated current account deficits, the net international investment position, and the net income balance. Overall, we find no evidence that the United States can count on earning substantially more on its claims than it pays on its liabilities.
While the rapid rise of the sex ratio at birth (SRB) in Asia and Eastern Europe is well documented, the conditions surrounding its onset are poorly understood. Was the increase a response to factors ...determining prenatal sex selection or was it triggered by contingent events? We examine the timing of the rise in the sex ratio at birth in Albania, Georgia, and Vietnam, countries characterized by different social, political, and economic conditions in 1990–2005. We use unique microdata to identify turning points in birth masculinity trends in each of these countries. The rise in the SRB appears to have clearly started in January 1992 in Georgia, during the first quarter of 1997 in Albania, and in August 2003 in Vietnam. We relate the onset of birth masculinization to various contextual events such as economic and political crisis, significant policy changes, and fertility decline. The article concludes with a discussion of the respective role of triggers of sudden demographic change and of structural factors affecting reproductive choices.
Are Restaurants Really Supersizing America? Anderson, Michael L.; Matsa, David A.
American economic journal. Applied economics,
01/2011, Letnik:
3, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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While many researchers and policymakers infer from correlations between eating out and body weight that restaurants are a leading cause of obesity, a basic identification problem challenges these ...conclusions. We exploit the placement of Interstate Highways in rural areas to obtain exogenous variation in the effective price of restaurants and examine the impact on body mass. We find no causal link between restaurant consumption and obesity. Analysis of food-intake micro-data suggests that consumers offset calories from restaurant meals by eating less at other times. We conclude that regulation targeting restaurants is unlikely to reduce obesity but could decrease consumer welfare.
We evaluate the introduction of monetary incentives in the market for live and cadaveric organ donations. We show that monetary incentives would increase the supply of organs for transplant ...sufficiently to eliminate the very large queues in organ markets, and the suffering and deaths of many of those waiting, without increasing the total cost of transplant surgery by more than about 12 percent. We build on the value-of-life literature and other parts of economic analysis to estimate the equilibrium cost of live transplants for kidneys and livers. We also show that market price for kidneys will be determined by the cost of live donations, even though most organs will come from cadavers.
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