Race,Restrictive State Abortion Laws and Abortion Demand

A disproportionately large number of abortions are performed on black and Hispanic women. This study empirically investigates whether restrictive state abortion laws differentially affect the abortion demand of white, black and Hispanic women for the year 2005. A state Medicaid abortion funding restriction significantly decreases the abortion rate of all three races. However, Hispanic women’s abortion demand is more sensitive to a Medicaid funding restriction than either white women or black women. Parental involvement laws and mandatory counseling laws have no significant impact on the abortion rates of the three racial groups. Two-visit laws are associated with a significant decrease in the abortion rate of white women, but have no significant effect on the abortion rates of black and Hispanic women.     

Determinants of Demand for Delivery Services in Sudan: An Empirical Investigation with Reference to Khartoum State, 2004*

Abstract: Using multinomial logistic methods, we examined the determinants of the delivery care seeking behavior of women in Khartoum State of Sudan, as well as the impact of changes in the attributes of public delivery services on the market shares of delivery services. Time distance and transportation cost have significant negative effects, while the random ‘quality’ coefficient is positive but not significantly different from zero. Further, the likelihood of choosing home over public delivery services increases with order of birth. The positive effects of women's education and household income are most important for those who prefer private over home delivery whereas the use of modern antenatal services is decisive in choosing modern over home delivery. Also, shifts in demand toward public delivery services resulting from improvements in quality and qualifications of medical staff might be undermined by the reduction in demand emanating from a rise in the order of delivery, time distance and transportation cost to public delivery institutions. The income effects are more pronounced, particularly for the share of private delivery services. Educated women tend to shift from home to modern delivery services.     

Black abortion demand

Conclusion This study estimates the demand for abortion by black women. The empirical results find that black abortion demand is price inelastic, negatively related to unemployment conditions, and positively related to the presence of state Medicaid and a college education. These results are consistent with the findings in prior studies of all childbearing women. The only two findings at odds with those of all childbearing women were that black women's abortion demands are considerably more responsive to changes in income and do not depend on marital status.     

考虑机场旅客感知的步行距离研究

缩短机场旅客步行距离是实现人民群众美好航空出行需求的重要途径。以机场旅客感知步行距离为研究对象,基于结构方程测量模型,构建个人属性、出行属性、机场属性和感知属性的回归模型,识别影响感知步行距离的关键因素并确定分级标准与心理阈值。研究结果表明：旅客感知步行距离受年龄、提前到达机场的时间、行李数量、对机场的熟悉程度、步行速度和机场客流量等客观因素影响,主观因素中路径设施有效性感知和服务环境适宜性感知具有正向影响作用;旅客感知步行距离范围可划分为5级,可接受的步行距离心理阈值距离为1 200 m。     

Health-seeking behavior and patient welfare: Evidence from China

The inefficient use of healthcare resources is a persisting challenge to almost all healthcare systems, making it imperative to understand the underlying factors of healthcare demand. This paper investigates patients' health-seeking behavior in rural China using a random coefficients logit model. We further perform a counterfactual simulation and welfare analyses to evaluate the inefficiencies in health services utilization. The counterfactual simulation reallocates patients to more efficient health providers following the principles of the hierarchical medical system. Our analysis suggests that out-of-pocket expenses and distance to providers discourage patients from utilizing healthcare, while quality of care has a positive effect on patients' hospital choices. However, significant heterogeneity exists in patient preferences over quality of care, out-of-pocket expenses, and distance to providers. The simulation results show that the overall welfare change may have masked variations related to the hypothetical change, with societal welfare loss from switching to higher-tier providers. Our analysis provides support for policies to improve hospitals and assist rural patients in financing healthcare in China.     

Using the Synthetic Control Method to Determine the Effect of Ultrasound Laws on State-Level Abortion Rates

Atlantic Economic Journal - The purpose of the present study is to determine if laws requiring ultrasounds prior to an abortion being performed have any effect on the demand for abortions. Using...     

Can Beer Taxes Affect Teen Pregnancy? Evidence Based on Teen Abortion Rates and Birth Rates

Economists have investigated the effects of increased alcohol taxes on various alcohol-related phenomena like traffic fatalities, but to my knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the effects of beer taxes on teen pregnancy outcomes, namely abortion and birth rates. The study employs state-level data for 15-19-year-old women for the years 1985, 1988, 1992, and 1996. The smallness of the panel imposes some constraints on the statistical methods used. Results indicate that higher beer taxes have statistically significant negative effects on teen abortion rates, though the magnitudes of the effects are quite small. Effects on birthrates are statistically insignificant. This suggests that increased beer taxes may help prevent some unwanted pregnancies that would typically be terminated via abortions rather than culminating in live births. However, the small magnitudes of the effects strongly caution against relying on increased beer taxes to noticeably reduce teen pregnancy rates.     

If You Build It Nearby and Keep the Price Low,Will They Come? Large-Scale Evidence on the Relative Roles of Access and Quality in Use of Healthcare in Low-and Middle-Income Countries

Health policy reform often emphasises improving access to healthcare. Recent studies highlight the role healthcare quality plays in determining which health providers individuals use and health outcomes. Yet, there is little standardised large-scale evidence on the importance of quality of care relative to access in determining healthcare use. This paper examines the relative roles of access and quality in whether individuals seek healthcare and how these vary with socioeconomic status in a sample of over 250,000 national household survey respondents from low- and middle-income countries. My results suggest that quality is as large a barrier as access. Among quality barriers, drug availability is as large a barrier as provider availability. Analyses of the barriers-socioeconomic status gradients indicate that the quality-SES gradient is much less steep than the access-SES gradient, highlighting that increasing incomes may not be sufficient to address quality barriers and that supply-side interventions may be necessary.     

Spatial Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta in China

This paper examines the spatial externality from foreign direct investment on domestic firms. Using Chinese firm‐level data for 2004, and after accounting for an endogeneity problem, we find that foreign firms generate a significantly positive spillover effect on the regional productivity of domestic firms in similar counties and industries. Estimating a spatial‐autoregressive model, we further show that such local spillovers could transmit to domestic firms in other counties and industries through interactions among domestic firms. However, these spatial multiplier effects decline with distance, thereby reducing the foreign direct investment spillover effects for domestic firms in distant locations.     

市场容量、交易密度与农业服务规模决定

发展农业社会化服务市场,将农户卷入分工经济,是提高农业家庭经营效率的重要路径。已有研究较少关注农业社会化服务的生成机理。文章借助交易半径和交易密度的理论概念,一方面从服务商面临的交易半径选择、作业周期约束、交易费用等维度,刻画交易半径的决定机制;另一方面从信息传递和"赢定输移"策略等维度,考察农户卷入分工经济的需求约束。将服务商和农户的局限约束同时纳入模型分析发现：（1）农业社会化服务市场的初始交易密度,决定了服务商交易半径的增长速度;（2）当市场的信息披露程度和传递速度提高,"赢定输移"策略会促使小农卷入分工经济,并使得交易密度、交易半径和市场容量同时提升;（3）服务商的交易半径和市场容量受制于农业的时令特征和作业周期性,这为构建种植业"纬度布局"提供了理论依据。文章认为,中国农业现代化和组织化进程与农业分工经济和种植业布局调整密切关联。     

Modelling regional imbalances in English plebeian migration to late eighteenth‐century London†

Using a substantial set of vagrancy removal records for Middlesex (1777–86) giving details of the place of origin of some 11,500 individuals, and analysing these records using a five‐variable gravity model of migration, this article addresses a simple question: from which parts of England did London draw its lower‐class migrants in the late eighteenth century? It concludes, first, that industrializing areas of the north emerged as a competitor for potential migrants—contributing relatively fewer migrants than predicted by the model. Rising wage rates in these areas appear to explain this phenomenon. Second, it argues that migration from urban centres in the west midlands and parts of the West Country, including Bristol, Birmingham, and Worcester, was substantially higher than predicted, and that this is largely explained by falling wage rates and the evolution of an increasingly efficient travel network. Third, for the counties within about 130 kilometres of the capital, this article suggests that migration followed the pattern described in the current literature, with London drawing large numbers of local women in particular. It also argues that these short‐distance migrants came from a uniquely wide number of parishes, suggesting a direct rural‐to‐urban path.     

机场地面保障服务车辆协同调度和仿真优化

为实现大型机场地面保障服务高效化、智能化运行管理,通过研究多航班、多种地服车辆、多车场、带容量时间窗的复杂车辆路径规划问题,构建地服资源协同调度模型。结果表明：根据航班到达规律和机位分布情况,基于分解的高维进化算法求解效果较好,得到车辆使用数少、行驶距离短、超出时间窗惩罚函数最小和任务均衡的四维多目标优化问题的调度优化方案;通过Anylogic仿真软件验证,可实现机位占用情况、车辆使用情况动态分配和监控。     

The Intergenerational Consequences of Tobacco Policy: A Review of Policy's Influence on Maternal Smoking and Child Health

The response of pregnant women to tobacco policy is of particular interest due to these women being in a unique position to pass health capital to the next generation. By comparing estimates in the literature, we highlight that while pregnant women are responsive to taxes and taxes improve child health, their responsiveness has declined over time. We show that these trends reflect a compositional change; specifically, the least addicted smokers quit in the 1990s, leaving the pool of smoking mothers to be dominated by less price elastic smokers. Reviewing the literature on other tobacco policies, we show that a state‐level U.S. smoking ban has roughly three times the effect on pregnant women of a 10% increase in prices using elasticity estimates from more recent periods. Throughout this review, we identify areas for improvement in the literature and offer a number of ideas for future research projects.     

Gatekeeper incentives and demand inducement: An empirical analysis of care managers in the Japanese long-term care insurance program

This study analyzes the incentives and supplier-induced demand of care managers, who are intermediaries between consumers and service providers in the Japanese social insurance program for long-term care. Care managers can be considered as pure gatekeepers, in that their function is limited to referral people to specialists and they themselves do not provide care. Care managers are rewarded by capitation, which is considered as a cost-effective payment mechanism for insurers. However, many care managers actually work for firms that also operate as service providers. Service providers are rewarded by a fee-for-service payment and can have a motivation to induce excess consumer demand. The violation of the neutrality of care managers might result in a financial burden on social insurance. In this study, we empirically test whether there is a positive correlation between care manager density and care costs, which might imply the existence of supplier-induced demand. Our results show a positive correlation, particularly in the case of care managers who work for firms that jointly operate in service provision sectors. Based on these results, we conduct a quantitative analysis, and show that the demand induced by care managers might produce a considerable financial burden on social insurance.     

Land tenure reform and grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia,China

Since the start of the land tenure reform in the pastoral areas of China in the 1980s, grassland use rights have increasingly been assigned to individual households. However, this period has also been accompanied by extensive grassland degradation in China, which has raised the question of whether a tragedy of privatisation has occurred. This paper investigates the impact of land tenure reform on the changes in grassland condition, using data from 60 counties in Inner Mongolia between 1985 and 2008. A fixed effects model is employed to control for time-invariant factors. Two alternative model specifications in terms of land tenure reform and time-variant factors are conducted to verify the robustness of the estimation results. The results show that land tenure reform did not affect the grassland condition significantly, and the major drivers of grassland degradation include the land use change and the increase in market demand (meat prices). Thereby, we provide empirical evidence that the privatisation of grasslands did not cause grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia, China.     

Government Form and Performance: Fiscal Illusion and Administrative Ability in U.S. Counties

Key differences in local government organizational form lie in separation of powers versus unified powers and elected versus professional chief executive officers (CEOs). This paper studies how these features lead to differences in fiscal illusion and production cost. Evidence from U.S. counties indicates that there is less fiscal illusion under separation of powers, which by itself reduces spending. Separation of powers, however, leads to greater overall spending when compared with unified governments. The inelastic public demand, therefore, implies that separation of powers leads to services being provided at greater cost than under governments with unified powers. Similar conclusions hold for professional relative to elected CEOs.     

东亚区域内最终产品需求的影响因素分析——基于面板数据的引力模型研究

本文利用东亚十国(或地区)1991～2010年间数据,运用引力模型,分析影响东亚区域内最终产品需求的因素。研究结果表明:区域性贸易协定(RTA)、经济总量、2008年金融危机和人均GDP差额绝对值,对区域内最终产品需求起显著促进作用;人口规模、地理距离对区域内最终产品需求起显著阻碍作用。1997年金融危机也对区域内最终产品需求起阻碍作用,但不显著。从行业差别来看,除了距离变量之外,各解释变量对资本品需求的影响均大于对消费品需求的影响。因此,为扩大东亚区域内的最终产品需求,区域内各经济体应该降低物流成本、发展区域性贸易合作组织、稳定汇率、扩大各自经济规模。     

Structural Change and Industrial Policy in Taiwan, 1966–91: An Extended Input-Output Analysis

This paper studies the structural changes in Taiwan from an input-output perspective for 1966–91, a period marked by rapid economic growth. The analysis has been performed by examining the coefficient changes of both demand- and supply-side IO models through the use of the rowscaler-cum-columnscaler method. Empirical results based on the deflated data with shifting-base scenario show that significant changes exist in interindustry transaction, final demand and value-added coefficients for the majority of industries. Extensive variations in industrial pattern are detected across various developmental stages.     

The Spillover Effect of Race on Police Expenditures: An Alternative Test of the Minority Threat Hypothesis

This paper implements a novel application of spatial econometrics to test the minority threat hypothesis by estimating the relationship and potential spillovers between race and police expenditures. This paper uses a strategic interaction framework to describe the mechanism that may drive expenditure spillovers as well as demographic spillovers. Estimating a Spatial Durbin Model (SDM), the findings of this study show counties with more residential segregation and are more conservative exhibit positive spillovers on neighboring county police expenditures. This paper makes a contribution by showing the effects of greater minority threat is not limited within geographic boundaries.     

Positive and Negative Earnings Surprises,Regulatory Climate,and Stock Returns*

This study focuses on electric utilities in the United States to consider two related issues. First, the study tests for asymmetric price reactions to positive and negative earnings surprises (ES). Second, the study associates policy differences across jurisdictions with variations in the cash flow effects of positive and negative ES and then uses the framework to consider variations in price responses across regulatory climates. In the same context, the study investigates the effects of a utility's abnormal profits on the asymmetry of price reactions to positve and negative ES. The empirical predictions are motivated by the disparity between the principles and practices that underlie cost recovery for the utilities and the uneven effects of the cost‐recovery practies on the cash flows associated with positve and negative ES. The results show that the sign of ES and the climate in which a utility operates are related to the size of price reactions to ES. Furthermore, a utility's abnormal profit status has significant effects on the size of price reactions to ES. Only a modest price response asymmetry is indicated for manufacturing firms.