Downtown parking meter demand in a border metropolitan economy

Prior research establishes that the price of parking in the city centre often impacts the decision to travel downtown and the mode of transportation utilized. Other factors that influence the decision to drive and park downtown have received less attention. This study uses time series data to analyse the demand for metered parking spaces in El Paso, Texas, USA. In addition to meter rates, the determinants of demand include personal income, gasoline prices and the price of a substitute good, parking garage spaces. Because international bridges connect downtown El Paso to neighbouring Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, the impacts of trans-boundary traffic flows, bridge tolls and other cross-border economic variables are also included as potential determinants of metered parking demand. Results indicate that parking meter rates, other transportation-related costs, and economic conditions in both countries affect meter use.     

Graduate Economics Programs in the United States

Sterrett and Barr comment on the results of a survey of graduate programs in economics in the United States and on the marked increase in the number of masters degrees granted by the responding institutions.     

The Evolution and Devolution of Bank Regulation in the United States

Development economics is understood as a postwar phenomenon without antecedents. Yet, Veblen's contribution to development economics was once widely disseminated and acknowledged. Veblen's evolutionary economics centered on historically relative and limited truths applicable to specific cultures. Veblen's growth theory is a theory of economic development: quantitative accumulation is significant because it engenders qualitative change. Veblen's analysis of the harnessing of the economic potential centers on the ability of a society to successfully introduce scientific and technological advances, giving rise to increasing returns as the surplus is invested in industrial activities. Veblen presented oblique comments and startling insights in a non-empirical manner.     

讨论式教学和填鸭式教学的经济学分析

对于填鸭式教学和讨论式教学两种教学模式的效果,目前的研究大多是从教学经验出发进行总结。或者从心理学或哲学的角度进行分析。运用新古典经济学、制度经济学的理论对填鸭式教学和讨论式教学的绩效进行分析,通过比较可以发现：讨论式教学无论在教学绩效还是在教育绩效方面都要远远优于填鸭式教学,从而为讨论式教学提供了经济学的理论支撑。     

Education and the minimum wage in the United States

This article shows that, across the US states, the level of education has a causal effect on the minimum wage. More specifically, it argues that a one-percentage point increase in the proportion of college graduates implies a 0.4–0.5% decrease in the real value of the minimum wage. This is the first article that uses System GMM in order to examine the effect of education on the minimum wage. Given the structure of the available data, this is the most appropriate econometric technique. System GMM not only controls for endogeneity and for fixed effects but also maximizes the precision of the estimates by using all the available variation in the data.     

Preparing Graduate Students in Economics for Teaching: Survey Findings and Recommendations

Survey data from PhD-granting economics departments are used to assess the teaching preparation of graduate students in economics. The results show that relatively few departments require graduate student instructors to take a credit course in teaching before teaching their own course or leading a recitation section. Although more graduate student instructors are required to take a noncredit course in teaching before serving as an instructor or recitation leader, the value of such noncredit courses may be limited. The assessment of teaching preparation by department chairs shows mixed responses, with about three-fifths rating it as very good or good and about two-fifths considering it to be only adequate or poor. Recommendations are offered for improving the teaching preparation of graduate student instructors in economics.     

The Status of Econometrics in the Economics Major: A Survey

In this article, the authors describe the place of econometrics in undergraduate economics curricula in all American colleges and universities that offer economics majors as listed in the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges 2010” guide (U.S. News & World Report 2009). Data come from online catalogs, departmental Web sites, and online course syllabi. About one-third of the schools require econometrics of all students majoring in economics, about half require it of none, and a sixth require it of some, but not all, economics majors. Among universities with economics PhD programs and liberal arts colleges, almost all those ranked in the top 10 require it. Below the top 10, there is little correlation between ranking and econometrics requirements. Liberal arts econometrics classes are much more likely to require research projects than their counterparts in universities.     

Economic Education in Japan at the University Level

The author describes from personal experience and observation economic education in Japan at the university level. As is true almost universally, Japanese students pursue higher education with different motives and aspirations and have a variety of institutions from which to choose. What they obtain in return depends upon the faculty with which they study and their own perseverance.     

社会资本与经济发展:理论及展望

随着社会资本理论的发展，发展经济学演进到新的发展阶段———“社会关系至关重要”。社会资本理论的引入丰富了经济发展理论研究思路：发展中国家需要构造以社会资本为纽带的综合经济发展体系；在全球化背景下，协调社会资本与现代经济发展是经济学面临的课题。     

A proposed set of nine regions for the United States and the inequality of population densities

A nine-region division of the United States is discussed and compared with the U.S. Census and BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) regional groupings. The discussion includes the population density of the regions as well as the inequality of the population densities between and within regions. First version received: October 1999/Final version received: February 2000     

The Relationship Between Education and Adult Mortality in the United States

Prior research has uncovered a large and positive correlation between education and health. This paper examines whether education has a causal impact on health. I follow synthetic cohorts using successive U.S. censuses to estimate the impact of educational attainment on mortality rates. I use compulsory education laws from 1915 to 1939 as instruments for education. The results suggest that education has a causal impact on mortality, and that this effect is perhaps larger than has been previously estimated in the literature.     

Economic stress and cigarette smoking: Evidence from the United States

This paper uses pooled data on U.S. states for the post-MSA period to estimate the demand for cigarettes, with the main contribution lying in considering the effects of economic stress/uncertainty. Different measures of economic stress – standard deviations and averages of unemployment and property prices – are considered. Greater economic stress is found to lower cigarette smoking across various specifications. Other findings largely support the literature on cigarette demand — price effects are negative, border price effects are positive and the effect of income is negative.     

Economic Education in Korea: Current Status and Changes

The authors describe key aspects of precollege and undergraduate economic education in Korea. They show that precollege students seem to have low economics literacy due to problems with the curriculum and insufficient training of teachers. At the undergraduate level, they show that economics departments have more male students than female students and that the employment rate for economics majors is lower than for business majors. They hope to draw more of Korean economists' attention to research initiatives in economic education.     

Regional productivity variation and the impact of public capital stock: an analysis with spatial interaction,with reference to Spain

In this article, we examine whether variations in the level of public capital across Spain's Provinces affected productivity levels over the period 1996 to 2005. The analysis is motivated by contemporary urban economics theory, involving a production function for the competitive sector of the economy (‘industry’) which includes the level of composite services derived from ‘service’ firms under monopolistic competition. The outcome is potentially increasing returns to scale resulting from pecuniary externalities deriving from internal increasing returns in the monopolistic competition sector. We extend the production function by also making (log) labour efficiency a function of (log) total public capital stock and (log) human capital stock, leading to a simple and empirically tractable reduced form linking productivity level to density of employment, human capital and public capital stock. The model is further extended to include technological externalities or spillovers across provinces. Using panel data methodology, we find significant elasticities for total capital stock and for human capital stock, and a significant impact for employment density. The finding that the effect of public capital is significantly different from zero, indicating that it has a direct effect even after controlling for employment density, is contrary to some of the earlier research findings which leave the question of the impact of public capital unresolved.     

Economic burden of sarcoidosis in a commercially-insured population in the United States

Background: Sarcoidosis is a multi-system inflammatory disorder characterized by the presence of non-caseating granulomas in involved organs. Patients with sarcoidosis have a reduced quality-of-life and are at an increased risk for several comorbidities. Little is known about the direct and indirect cost of sarcoidosis following the initial diagnosis.

Aims: To provide an estimate of the healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) and costs borne by commercial payers for sarcoidosis patients in the US.

Methods: Patients with a first diagnosis of sarcoidosis between January 1, 1998 and March 31, 2015 (“index date”) were selected from a de-identified privately-insured administrative claims database. Sarcoidosis patients were required to have continuous health plan enrollment 12 months prior to and following their index dates. Propensity-score (1:1) matching of sarcoidosis patients with non-sarcoidosis controls was carried out based on a logistic regression of baseline characteristics. Burden of HCRU and work loss (disability days and medically-related absenteeism) were compared between the matched groups over the 12-month period following the index date (“outcome period”).

Results: A total of 7,119 sarcoidosis patients who met the selection criteria were matched with a control. Overall, commercial payers incurred $19,714 in mean total annual healthcare costs per sarcoidosis patient. The principle cost drivers were outpatient visits ($9,050 2015 USD, 46%) and inpatient admissions ($6,398, 32%). Relative to controls, sarcoidosis patients had $5,190 (36%) higher total healthcare costs ($19,714 vs $14,524; p?p?p?Background: Sarcoidosis is a multi-system inflammatory disorder characterized by the presence of non-caseating granulomas in involved organs. Patients with sarcoidosis have a reduced quality-of-life and are at an increased risk for several comorbidities. Little is known about the direct and indirect cost of sarcoidosis following the initial diagnosis.

Aims: To provide an estimate of the healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) and costs borne by commercial payers for sarcoidosis patients in the US.

Methods: Patients with a first diagnosis of sarcoidosis between January 1, 1998 and March 31, 2015 (“index date”) were selected from a de-identified privately-insured administrative claims database. Sarcoidosis patients were required to have continuous health plan enrollment 12 months prior to and following their index dates. Propensity-score (1:1) matching of sarcoidosis patients with non-sarcoidosis controls was carried out based on a logistic regression of baseline characteristics. Burden of HCRU and work loss (disability days and medically-related absenteeism) were compared between the matched groups over the 12-month period following the index date (“outcome period”).

Results: A total of 7,119 sarcoidosis patients who met the selection criteria were matched with a control. Overall, commercial payers incurred $19,714 in mean total annual healthcare costs per sarcoidosis patient. The principle cost drivers were outpatient visits ($9,050 2015 USD, 46%) and inpatient admissions ($6,398, 32%). Relative to controls, sarcoidosis patients had $5,190 (36%) higher total healthcare costs ($19,714 vs $14,524; p?<?0.001). Sarcoidosis patients also had significantly more work loss days (15.9 vs 11.3; p?<?0.001) and work loss costs ($3,288 vs $2,527; p?<?0.001) than matched controls. Sarcoidosis imposes an estimated total direct medical cost of $1.3–$8.7 billion to commercial payers, and an indirect cost of $0.2–$1.5 billion to commercial payers in work loss.

Conclusions: Sarcoidosis imposes a significant economic burden to payers in the first year following diagnosis.     

A Band Spectral Analysis of Exports and Economic Growth in the United States

This paper examines the role of exports in aggregate economic growth in the United States using band spectral regression. The findings reveal a predictable relationship between long-run frequency components of real export growth and real GDP growth over the post-Bretton Woods period of flexible exchange rates. The study fails to uncover a significant relationship between long-run frequency components of the terms of trade and real output. Overall, the findings support the export-led growth hypothesis, and dismiss long-run movements in the terms of trade as an important determinant of real output growth.     

Kay Hayward and Christine Vogel (Producers), America and the World Economy.

This lesson is designed to give students in a wide variety of undergraduate classes the opportunity to identify the problems inherent in analyzing imperfect data. Students are asked to analyze data, which the authors provide, from the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour to ponder the link between golfers’ skills in different facets of the game and their relative performances in certain tournaments. Selection issues are inherent in the data because of Tour policies regarding golfers’ tournament entry decisions. By the end of the lesson, students should better understand the importance of gaining institutional knowledge to improve the results of a study. Students are asked to mitigate the selection bias with the Heckman two-step procedure, a tool used in studies of labor, insurance, and education markets.     

A health economic model to assess the cost-effectiveness of OPTIFAST for the treatment of obesity in the United States

Objectives: Obesity is associated with high direct medical costs and indirect costs resulting from productivity loss. The high prevalence of obesity generates a justified need to identify cost-effective weight loss approaches from a payer’s perspective. Within the variety of weight management techniques, OPTIFAST is a clinically recognized and scientifically proven total meal replacement Low Calorie Diet that provides meaningful results in terms of weight loss and reduction in comorbidities. The objective of this study is assess potential cost-savings of the OPTIFAST program in the US, as compared to “no intervention” and pharmacotherapy.

Methods: An event-driven decision analytic model was used to estimate payer’s cost-savings from reimbursement of the 1-year OPTIFAST program over 3 years in the US. The analysis was performed for the broad population of obese persons (BMI >30?kg/m²) undergoing the OPTIFAST program vs liraglutide 3?mg, naltrexone/bupropion and vs “no intervention”. The model included the risk of complications related to increased BMI. Data sources included published literature, clinical trials, official US price/tariff lists, and national population statistics. The primary perspective was that of a US payer; costs were provided in 2016?US dollars.

Results: OPTIFAST leads over a period of 3 years to cost-savings of USD 9,285 per class I and II obese patient (BMI 30–39.9?kg/m²) as compared to liraglutide and USD 685 as compared to naltrexone/bupropion. In the same time perspective, the OPTIFAST program leads to a reduction of cost of obesity complications of USD 1,951 as compared to “no intervention”, with the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of USD 6,475 per QALY. Scenario analyses also show substantial cost-savings in patients with class III obesity (BMI?≥?40.0?kg/m²) and patients with obesity (BMI?=?30–39.9?kg/m²) and type 2 diabetes vs all three previous comparators and bariatric surgery.

Conclusions: Reimbursing OPTIFAST leads to meaningful cost-savings for US payers as compared with “no intervention” and liraglutide and naltrexone/bupropion in obese patients. Similar results can be expected in matching healthcare settings of other countries. Moreover, OPTIFAST has additional clinical and economic advantages through very low complication and adverse events rates.