Tracking Can Be More Equitable Than Mixing

Parents and policy‐makers often wonder whether and how the choice of a tracked or mixed educational system affects the equality of opportunity. I answer this question by analyzing the influence of peers on future educational results. I define an equal opportunity policy as one that maximizes the average lifetime income of the worst‐off type of individuals in society (i.e., students from disadvantaged backgrounds). I find that tracking maximizes average lifetime income if the opportunity cost of college attendance is sufficiently high.     

Bohn's Test of Fiscal Sustainability of the American State Governments

The dramatic fall in state revenues during the Great Recession and the resultant large budget deficits accentuated concerns about state fiscal sustainability. I employ a model‐based approach proposed by 1998 to test for sustainability. In this approach, a positive and significant reaction of the ratio of primary surplus ratio (s) to lagged debt constitutes a sufficient condition for sustainability. Based on a panel of 48 contiguous states (1961–2008) and several model specifications, I find robust evidence in favor of sustainability. Further analysis suggests that the adjustment of the components of s to debt is asymmetric with the revenue side bearing a heavier burden than the spending side. The response of s is also found to be asymmetric with respect to the level of debt. Finally, the magnitude of the response is larger in states with a higher degree of fiscal stringency in general and “own‐revenue” and “no‐deficit‐carryover” provisions in particular.     

Party Discipline and Environmental Policy: The Role of “Smoke‐filled Back Rooms”*

We adopt the view that greater party discipline induces legislators to commit to promised policies after being elected. We then develop the hypothesis that the effect of party discipline on the stringency of environmental policy is conditional on the degree of government corruption. Our empirical work suggests that greater party discipline results in more stringent environmental policies when the level of corruption is relatively low, but in weaker policies when the level of corruption is comparatively high.     

Labor Income Taxation,Human Capital,and Growth: The Role of Childcare*

In this paper, we examine the effects of labor income taxation on growth in an overlapping generations model in which schooling and childcare play a role in the production of human capital. We compare such effects with those obtained in a model in which only schooling matters for skill formation. We show that the omission of childcare from the technology of skill formation can bias the results related to the impact of labor income taxation on growth.     

试探IGF2和H19基因与韦伯综合征的关系

笔者就韦伯综合征（Beckwith Wiedemannsyndrome,BWS）的特征,及IGF2与H19印迹基因各自生物学生性、印迹状况以及与BWS疾病的关系展开了详尽阐述。     

State wage-payment laws, the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and 401(k) saving behavior

I show empirically that state wage-payment laws, which forbid deductions from wages and salaries without the written permission of the employee, constituted a binding constraint on firms’ choices to adopt automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans prior to 2006.     

Wage and employment effects of a wage norm

Most transition countries used tax‐supported wage norms in the early 1990s, as a part of their market liberalization programmes. This article analyses how a firm‐level tax (or subsidy) on deviations from a pre‐set wage norm may promote employment by rotating the labour demand curve perceived by the workers’ union around the value of the norm. We derive the conditions under which it yields a positive employment effect. We test the effect of the norm on the wages on a sample of Polish firms in 1990 and 1991. The data support the role of the wage norm on the position of the perceived labour demand curve and the role of the tax rate on its slope.     

Reasonable and Risk‐Based? Replacing NFIP Generally Subsidized Rates with a Means‐Tested Subsidy

The National Flood Insurance Program was created to seek two often conflicting goals: (i) shifting risks from federal taxpayers to those who choose to live in flood plains and (ii) ensuring flood insurance is available to everyone at “reasonable” rates. Efforts to accomplish the second goal currently take the form of subsidies based on location and the date a home was constructed. The resulting revenue from subsidized insurance premiums is not sufficient to cover the true cost of flood insurance, and federal taxpayers have paid the difference: $30 billion to date. Based on a detailed survey of households in the high‐risk flood zones of New York City (NYC), we find that replacing existing premium subsidies with risk‐based prices and a subsidy for low‐income housing‐burdened households could better meet both goals by ensuring low‐income individuals have access to affordable flood insurance while still saving the federal taxpayer up to $183 million per year in NYC alone.     

Measuring performance in the presence of stochastic demand for hospital services: an analysis of Belgian general care hospitals

Since demand for hospital services is subject to substantial variability, the relationship between uncertain demand, excess capacity, hospital costs and performance should be investigated thoroughly. In this paper a waiting time indicator to proxy hospital standby capacity is incorporated into a multi-product translog cost function for Belgian general care hospitals. The indicator is derived from queuing theory and improves on the conventionally used (inverse of the) occupancy rate. The multi-product stochastic frontier specification allows calculation of cost elasticities and marginal cost of seven hospital departments, as well as the degree of economies of scale and scope and enables identification of differences in efficiency.

CLASSIFICATION PROBLEMS AND THE DIVIDING LINE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND THE MARKET: AN EXAMINATION OF NHS FOUNDATION TRUST CLASSIFICATION IN THE UK

ABSTRACT: In this paper we argue that national accounting categories provide an inadequate basis for evaluating differences between public and private sector services. This is because accounting categories rely on economic concepts such as market price but do not take account of substantive public policy goals such as universality. The argument has important consequences for the structures and systems of delivery especially where nonprofit providers and social enterprise models are substituted for public bodies formerly integrated into the government's delivery system. Using an example taken from the UK's National Health Service, we show that the mechanisms for ensuring universality through redistribution are not sufficiently taken into account for classification purposes.