Marriage equality and interstate migration

This study examines the impact of state imposed, marriage equality laws on interstate migration prior to the 26 June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to legalize same-sex marriage in all states. Results of the estimation of a series of probit models suggest that all head of households are more likely to leave states without marriage equality. This estimated impact is significantly larger for household heads in same-sex relationships. When examining the migration choices separately by both sex and relationship type, this result remains significant for female heads of households in different-sex relationships and male heads of households in same-sex relationships. Simulations, using the results of the probit estimations, the analysis of regional trends, and recent rebellions against the Supreme Court ruling indicate that state level, marriage equality laws may be aggravating the imbalanced distribution of same- and different-sex couple households across the country.     

Marriage, Divorce and Reciprocity-based Cooperation

This paper considers partnership formation, partnership dissolution and reciprocity‐based cooperation by couples in the form of voluntary transfers to smooth consumption. While risk sharing is one benefit of having a partner, it is also limited by the (endogenous) risk of separation. The equilibrium formation and dissolution of partnerships are determined simultaneously with cooperative behavior. Publicly provided earnings insurance is shown to increase the “turnover” rate in the marriage market as well as to reduce the steady‐state marriage rate and the implicit financial cooperation between partners.     

WOULD AUSTRALIA–NEW ZEALAND BE A VIABLE CURRENCY UNION? EVIDENCE FROM INTERSTATE RISK‐SHARING PERFORMANCES

In this article, we first measure the potential welfare gains from perfect risk sharing among Australian states and New Zealand regions under possible unification. We show that New Zealand regions reap moderate gains from perfect risk sharing when they form a union with Australia, whereas for Australian states, the gains are somewhat similar to what they have attained at the intranational level. Second, we measure the extent of interstate risk sharing and intertemporal smoothing between the two countries. We are able to observe a substantial degree of intertemporal smoothing among Australian states and New Zealand regions, either alone or jointly, thus confirming the permanent income hypothesis. Further, unique to the risk‐sharing literature, we decompose the aggregate (nondiversifiable) output shocks into positive and negative components, in order to assess the strength of risk‐sharing mechanisms across business cycles. The study finds a virtual absence of risk sharing when Australia and New Zealand face negative aggregate fluctuations, raising doubts about the feasibility of the union, particularly during economic downturns. (JEL F41, F36)     

The Logic of the Survival of North Korea

Why has North Korea been able to survive up to now, while other rogue states such as Afghanistan and Iraq have suffered military intervention by the USA? To solve this puzzle, we present a simple two‐level game model that takes into account strategic interdependence between intrastate and interstate wars. Using the two‐level game framework, we show that the ethnic homogeneity of North Korea helps defend itself from US armed intervention, whereas a rogue state with a relatively heterogeneous society is expected to experience international insecurity by providing the USA with an opportunity to find domestic allies that help it win an interstate war against the rogue state. As a policy implication, we discuss the possibility that the recent development of a market economy in North Korea might destabilize the peace between the USA and North Korea.     

Determinants of healthcare spending: a state level analysis

Within the high and rising level of healthcare spending for the US as a whole is substantial variation in spending across states. Yet relatively little attention has been given to the empirical analysis of interstate differences in aggregate healthcare expenditures, and therefore little empirical evidence exists at the state level to guide policymakers. Using data for all 50 states for the year 1998, we estimate an empirical model that includes structural and reduced-form healthcare spending equations and a health production function to assess the significance, size and relative importance of factors that prior research indicates, may play an important role in explaining interstate variation in medical care expenditures, and the main pathways through which they operate. Our results indicate higher levels of healthcare spending for state populations with higher income, less education, fewer uninsured residents, less healthy lifestyles, larger proportion of elderly residents, greater availability of medical care providers and less urbanization. Our findings suggest that the most effective cost containment measures may be those that increase education and promote healthy lifestyles. Not only do these actions lead to reductions in healthcare spending, they also improve the health status of the population, and may help to achieve other important social policy goals.     

Risk sharing through capital gains

Abstract We estimate channels of international risk sharing between European Monetary Union (EMU), European Union, and other OECD countries, 1992–2007. We focus on risk sharing through savings, factor income flows, and capital gains. Risk sharing through factor income and capital gains was close to zero before 1999 but has increased since then. Risk sharing from capital gains, at about 6%, is higher than risk sharing from factor income flows for European Union countries and OECD countries. Risk sharing from factor income flows is higher for euro zone countries, at 14%, reflecting increased international asset and liability holdings in the euro area.     

State enforcement of federal standards: Implications for interstate pollution

This paper explores the relationship between interstate air pollution and the division of power between federal and state agencies in setting and enforcing standards. In the context of the US Clean Air Act we argue that the EPA is able to monitor the adoption of technology-based standards more closely than it can monitor state-level enforcement, and that this causes an effective division of control between federal and state agencies. Our analysis offers three main insights into the interstate pollution problem in this setting. First, states have an incentive to enforce standards less stringently on firms located close to downwind borders, and this leads to excessive interstate pollution in equilibrium. Second, there can arise an inherent substitutability in the regulatory problem between strict standards and compliance effort, and this creates a strategic linkage between the federal policy on standards and state policies on enforcement. In particular, a tighter federal standard can induce less selective enforcement but can also lead to less enforcement overall. Third, states will attempt to neutralize the impact of location-based federal standards (that specifically target interstate pollution) in a way that actually exacerbates the underlying enforcement problem.     

Securitization of mortgage debt,domestic lending,and international risk sharing

Abstract Securitization makes mortgage‐related risks internationally tradeable and thus contributes considerably to the international diversification of macroeconomic risk: in the years 2003–2008, the increase in international cross‐holdings of securitized mortgage debt has lowered industrialized countries’ conditional consumption volatility (relative to the United States) by about 10–15 percentage points. We turn to the role of domestic credit in explaining this result. Domestic credit leads to better international risk sharing only if debt is securitized and traded internationally. Conversely, the risk‐sharing benefits from securitization seem to evaporate if credit dries up – as it did in the recent financial crisis.     

Does financial globalization promote risk sharing?

In theory, one of the main benefits of financial globalization is that it should allow for more efficient international risk sharing. In this paper, we provide an empirical evaluation of the patterns of risk sharing among different groups of countries and examine how international financial integration has affected the evolution of these patterns. Using a variety of empirical techniques, we conclude that there is at best a modest degree of international risk sharing, and certainly nowhere near the levels predicted by theory. In addition, only industrial countries have attained better risk sharing outcomes during the recent period of globalization. Developing countries have, by and large, been shut out of this benefit. Even emerging market economies, many of which have reduced capital controls and all of which have witnessed large increases in cross-border capital flows, have seen little change in their ability to share risk. We find that the composition of flows may help explain why emerging markets have not been able to realize this presumed benefit of financial globalization. In particular, our results suggest that portfolio debt, which had dominated the external liability stocks of most emerging markets until recently, is not conducive to risk sharing.     

DETERMINANTS OF BANK ACQUISITION PREMIUMS: ISSUES AND EVIDENCE

The recent interstate bank merger phenomenon has received little attention in the literature. Specifically, existing studies fail to explain sufficiently the variation of premiums paid and fail to investigate adequately the bank merger wave in terms of its interstate banking context.
This study employs models with substantial overall explanatory levels. The interstate banking context proves to be very significant. First, the study considers and finds significant the effective date of a state's interstate statute in relation to a deal's announcement date. This contrasts sharply with other studies. Second, the study uses and also finds significant a binary variable distinguishing intrastate deals from interstate deals. The premiums paid for interstate market entry, on average, exceeded those paid for intrastate transactions. Third, including regional binary variables reveals a pattern of variation in pricing throughout the country. The Southeast, the study's base of comparison, exhibited the highest premium level.
Other significant determinants of premiums paid include profitability as measured by returns on equity, growth proxied by state deposit growth and future expected population growth, and charge-offs to total loans as an indicator of loan quality.     

DETERMINANTS OF BANK ACQUISITION PREMIUMS: ISSUES AND EVIDENCE

The recent interstate bank merger phenomenon has received little attention in the literature. Specifically, existing studies fail to explain sufficiently the variation of premiums paid and fail to investigate adequately the bank merger wave in terms of its interstate banking context.
This study employs models with substantial overall explanatory levels. The interstate banking context proves to be very significant. First, the study considers and finds significant the effective date of a state's interstate statute in relation to a deal's announcement date. This contrasts sharply with other studies. Second, the study uses and also finds significant a binary variable distinguishing intrastate deals from interstate deals. The premiums paid for interstate market entry, on average, exceeded those paid for intrastate transactions. Third, including regional binary variables reveals a pattern of variation in pricing throughout the country. The Southeast, the study's base of comparison, exhibited the highest premium level.
Other significant determinants of premiums paid include profitability as measured by returns on equity, growth proxied by state deposit growth and future expected population growth, and charge-offs to total loans as an indicator of loan quality.     

Building the Family Nest: Premarital Investments, Marriage Markets, and Spousal Allocations

We develop a transferable utility model of the household in which the marriage market is characterized by (negative or positive) assortative matching, and spousal allocations are determined by premarital investments. We demonstrate that all sharing rules along the assortative order support efficient outcomes both in terms of premarital investments and intra-household allocations. The efficiency of premarital choices and household allocations then enables us to show that, for each couple, the marriage market generates a unique and maritally sustainable sharing rule that is a function of the distribution of premarital endowments and the sex ratios in the market. According to our results, transfers among spouses occur on two margins: premarital investments and intra-marital spousal allocations. Asymmetries in the sex ratios in the marriage markets produce gender differences in premarital investments and consumption that are larger for individuals with small premarital endowments than those with larger endowments. A corollary of these findings is that, when men are in short supply in the marriage markets, women can invest more than men even when the returns to investment are lower or the costs are higher for women.     

Income and consumption smoothing and welfare gains across Pacific Island Countries: The role of remittances and foreign aid

We examine the potential welfare gains and channels of income smoothing for Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and find that, under full risk sharing overall welfare gains across all PICs (particularly, Kiribati, Palau, and Papua New Guinea) are at desirable levels. However, for Australia, the potential welfare gain from risk sharing is almost similar to the gain it obtains if Australia attains full risk sharing with the rest of the OECD countries or with New Zealand alone. We also break down output using the framework of Sørensen and Yosha (1998) to quantify the extent and channels of risk sharing across PICs. For PICs, income-smoothing channels (net factor income and current transfers) play a significant role in buffering the output shock compared to the performance of those channels on smoothing the output shock for OECD countries. Domestic savings also smooth a fair portion of shocks to output, but the extent is much lower compared to that of OECD countries. Further, we analyze the effect of remittances and foreign aid on income smoothing for the PICs excluding Australia and New Zealand. Income smoothing via remittances is highly volatile and significant in recent years, while foreign aid seems to be a stronger and more stable channel for smoothing domestic output shocks for PICs.     

Economies of superscale in commercial banking

Most previous studies of scale economies in banking have excluded banks larger than $1 billion in assets. Thus study, by contrast, estimates cost functions for the 100 largest US commercial banks. ‘Hedonic’ terms are incorporated to correct for the aggregated nature of the Call Report data available for these banks. In addition, we attempt to quantify the cost benefit of diversification in the model. We estimate efficient bank scale to range from $15 billion to $37 billion in total assets, a thousandfold increase over some previous findings. These results are supported by comparison of actual average costs, as well as by casual historical observation and the level of widespread concern over interstate banking. Our findings suggest some cost incentive or benefit to expansion or consolidation among large regional banks, including interstate expansion or consolidation.     

Bank Mergers, Information, Default and the Price of Credit

This paper addresses the impact of bank mergers on the price of firm credit, through an information channel. It is shown that, as bank mergers imply a wider spreading of information among banks concerning firms' past defaults, they may increase the expected revenue from lending. Therefore, interest rates may decline as long as a sufficiently competitive environment is preserved. A fall in interest rates, in turn, reduces the incentives for firms to strategically default, which reinforces the downward effect on the price of credit. The results are a function of the level of information sharing and of the sensitivity of the default probability to the interest rate .     

HIGHWAY SAFETY AND THE 65-mph SPEED LIMIT

A Federal Highway Bill was enacted in 1987 in response to many state governments' increasing concerns that the 55-mph national maximum speed limit was unduly restrictive. The bill permitted states to raise the maximum speed limit to 65 mph on most rural interstate highways, which historically have been the safest. The state of Indiana reacted promptly to the enabling legislation by raising the maximum speed limit on its rural interstate highways to 65 mph as of June 1, 1987. This paper uses cross-section/time-series data to estimate a model of highway safety. The primary empirical finding is that the higher speed limit on rural interstates has increased the incidence of total and injury interstate accidents but not of fatal interstate accidents. However, for the state as a whole, the relaxed speed limit has reduced total and injury accidents with no effect on fatal accidents. This indicates that the impact of speed limit legislation on non-interstate roads has more than offset its effect on interstate highways.     

Should Sales Taxes Be Imposed on E‐Commerce?

We study the impact of E‐commerce across state lines in the United States on tax revenue, public good provision, and real income. In particular, in light of the unenforceable nature of interstate taxation, we evaluate the potential gains from coordinating sales and income state taxes among sovereign jurisdictions. We find that the revenue at risk is small and that the welfare gains or losses of any countervailing policy measures, in particular those associated with the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, are even smaller.     

War,Marriage Markets,and the Sex Ratio at Birth

In belligerent countries, male‐to‐female sex ratios at birth increased during and shortly after the two world wars. These rises occurred amidst dramatically changed marriage‐market conditions caused by war‐related declines in adult sex ratios, and still defy explanation. Based on county‐level census data for the German state of Bavaria in the years just before and immediately after World War II, we explore the reduced‐form relationship between changes in marriage‐market tightness (the adult sex ratio) and changes in the offspring sex ratio, and we discuss potential mechanisms that might link the two. Our results suggest that war‐induced shortfalls of men significantly increased the percentage of boys among newborns.     

恩格斯婚姻家庭观

恩格斯的著作《家庭、私有制和国家的起源》,对于婚姻家庭的研究,有着重要的意义。在婚姻家庭的历史发展上,恩格斯认为婚姻家庭是历史发展的,具有连续性;在婚姻家庭的道德层面上,恩格斯认为人们在研究婚姻家庭时,要一分为二的看待不同时期、社会、地区的婚姻爱情观念和制度,认为婚姻家庭应该是合乎道德的,同时对资产阶级婚姻家庭进行了批判;在婚姻家庭的未来发展上,他对共产主义社会婚姻家庭也提出了自己的设想,形成了自己的婚姻家庭观。     

Wages,Profits, and Rent‐Sharing in an Open Economy

This paper examines the link between international trade and labor market bargaining power. It reviews simple theories of rent‐sharing in closed and open economies. Earlier studies on the issue of rent‐sharing implicitly assume a closed economy. This assumption may provide some misleading results, especially for studying current developments in the US labor market. Empirical results suggest that the apparent decline in labor’s bargaining power in US manufacturing may be attributable to growing international integration.