WIC Participation and Relative Quality of Household Food Purchases: Evidence from FoodAPS

We examine the effect of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on the quality of household food purchases using the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) and propensity score matching. A healthy purchasing index (HPI) is used to measure nutritional quality of household food purchases. WIC foods explain the improvement in quality of food purchases, not self‐selection of more nutrition‐conscious households into the program. The improvement in purchase quality was driven entirely by WIC participating households who redeemed WIC foods during the interview week. There was no significant difference between WIC participants who did not redeem WIC foods and eligible nonparticipants. In this sample, there is no evidence that lack of access to clinics has adverse effects on participation nor is there evidence that HPI depends on supermarket access. A supervised machine learning process supports our main conclusion on the importance of WIC foods.     

Firm Heterogeneity and Export Pricing in India

We examine export pricing by Indian manufacturing firms in the early 2000s using a unique data set that matches firm characteristics with product and destination‐level trade data. We find that, in contrast to China and other countries, firm productivity is negatively associated with export prices, and export prices are negatively associated with distance while positively associated with remoteness. Our conjecture is that Indian innovation costs, which are higher than China's, drive down the scope for quality differentiation causing a negative association between productivity and prices. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical evidence consistent with heterogenous goods and short quality ladders, a theoretical possibility noted in the study by Antoniades (2012), an outcome that arises here because of domestic Indian economic and regulatory features.     

基于GM(1.1)模型的西宁市商品房价格预测研究

采用西宁市1999-2008年商品房价格数据,以灰色系统理论为基础,利用GM(1,1)模型对西宁市商品房价格进行了预测。结果表明:未来5年西宁市商品房价格仍将呈上涨趋势。     

动态助词“过”的语法化历程

动态助词"过"一般分为"过1"和其中"过2","过1"表示动作的完结,"过2"表示曾然。其语法化历程为:一般动词"过"→趋向动词"过"→动态助词"过1"→动态助词"过2"。动态助词"过1"和"过2"的演变又可分别区分为两个阶段,即演变发生和演变扩散。就形成机制而言,"过1"的产生主要是受隐喻、类推以及重新分析的作用,趋向动词"过"的形成是"过1"产生的关键;而"过2"是"过1"吸收了助词"来"及其经常出现的句法环境的语法意义而产生的,可以说是"过1"在特殊语境下的产物。     

The non-linear effects of life expectancy on economic growth

This paper shows that improvements in life expectancy (LE) had a non-linear effect on income per capita over the 1940-1980 period as this effect was conditional on each country’s initial level of LE. Whereas higher LE had an initial statistically significant negative impact on income per capita in countries with LE under 43 years in 1940, the opposite is true in countries with initial LE over 53 years.     

Investigating regional house price convergence in the United States: Evidence from a pair-wise approach

In this paper we examine long-run house price convergence across US states using a novel econometric approach advocated by Pesaran (2007) and Pesaran et al. (2009). Our empirical modelling strategy employs a probabilistic test statistic for convergence based on the percentage of unit root rejections among all state house price differentials. Using a sieve bootstrap procedure, we construct confidence intervals and find evidence in favour of convergence. We also conclude that speed of adjustment towards long-run equilibrium is inversely related to distance.     

"Quicker and sicker" under Medicare's prospective payment system for hospitals: new evidence on an old issue from a national longitudinal survey

Medicare's prospective payment system for hospitals (PPS), introduced in the USA in 1983, replaced cost reimbursement with a system of fixed rates which created incentives for hospitals to control costs. Previous studies found that elderly patients were discharged from hospital "quicker and sicker" under PPS and concluded that families were coping at home. We analyse a national longitudinal survey, the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and its Epidemiologic Followup Study, which includes data on more outcomes over a longer period than earlier studies. We find that the rate of admission to nursing homes from the community in the first weeks after a hospital discharge more than tripled under PPS, suggesting that families were not always able to cope. As another response to sicker patients, discharges directly to nursing homes from hospitals, which jumped initially under PPS, may have risen further when payment rates were tightened in the early 1990s. Hospital readmissions fell after the first few years. Our findings are strengthened by the fact that we control for patients' health using health information collected independently of hospital admission.     

Illusory revenues: Import tariffs in resource-rich and aid-rich economies

Where imports are financed predominantly by rents from resource extraction or aid the revenue generated by tariffs is illusory. Revenue earned by the tariff is offset by a reduction in the real value of aid and resource rents. Revenue is however moved between accounts in the government budget which, in the case of aid, may reduce the burden of donor conditionality. We demonstrate this proposition for a simple central case and show that the result is not overturned by generalisations around this case. We argue that trade policy formulation in such economies should recognize the illusory nature of tariff revenues.     

基于引力模型与0-1规划模型的省域经济区划——以江苏省为例

借助2008年统计数据,采用主成分法得到江苏各地级城市综合质量指数值;根据运输的时间成本与货币成本,计算江苏地级城市间经济距离;运用引力修正模型计算江苏地级城市间相互引力,并结合0-1规划模型划分经济区;依据经济区内县域间三次产业结构差异度与位置邻近性,划分经济亚区。研究表明：①江苏省可分为宁镇扬泰、苏锡常通、徐连宿、淮盐等4大经济区和15个经济亚区。②各城市连接的地区个数遵循Zipf定律,作为一、二级节点的南京和苏州统领全省经济空间网络,而南通、宿迁、盐城没有显著的联系对象。③江苏经济区空间分布逐渐由南北向格局转为南部呈东西向、北部呈南北向的格局。④各经济区内城市间的引力相差悬殊,南部较大,北部较小。省域尺度的经济区划,可为我国将来划分标准经济区奠定基础,也可为优化全省劳动地域分工格局提供依据。     

A state-dependent model of intermediate goods pricing

Recent analyses of transaction-level data sets have generated new stylized facts on price setting and greatly influenced the empirical open- and closed-economy macroeconomics literatures. This work has uncovered marked heterogeneity in price stickiness, demonstrated that even non-zero price changes do not fully “pass through” exchange rate shocks, and offered evidence of synchronization in the timing of price changes. Further, intrafirm prices have been shown to differ from arm's length prices in each of these characteristics. This paper develops a state-dependent model of price setting by strategic intermediate goods producers that anticipate and respond to their competitors' actions. The model, which allows for both arm's length and intrafirm transactions, is able to generate all of these empirical pricing patterns.