Evidence of Large-Scale Social Interactions in Mammography in the United States

This paper examines the extent of social interactions in an individual’s decision to undergo mammography. Using Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System surveys from 1993 to 2016, the effect of other female screening behavior on an individual’s decision to have a routine breast cancer screening was measured by calculating the size of a so called “social multiplier” in mammography. A vector of social multipliers was estimated in the use of mammograms in the past 1–2 years by taking the ratio of group-level effects of exogenous explanatory variables to individual-level effects of the same variables. Peer groups were defined as same-aged women living in the same state. Three age groups of women were considered: 40–49, 50–74, and 75 and older. Several econometric approaches were used to analyze the effect of social interactions on mammography use, including ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and split-sample instrumental variable. For all women, evidence was found of social interactions associated with individual’s education, employment, and poor health. In addition, number of age-group-specific social multipliers was found. The strongest evidence of spillover in mammography was found for women ages 75 and older. Policy makers should be aware that, in the presence of a social multiplier, the value of any type of screening intervention is higher than the one that would be measured at the individual-level.

     

New development: China renews reform of central–local fiscal relations and provides for basic national public services

China’s reform on central–local fiscal reform has slowed down in recent years. The appointment of a new finance minister experienced in local government affairs is expected to renew the reform affirmed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress in late 2017. China has unprecedentedly identified a comprehensive list of 81 national basic public services as entitlements. Eighteen of them are subject to national and local standards, and co-financed by central and local governments. A new cost-sharing method for 10 of these services classifies sub-national jurisdictions into five tiers, in which the central government’s share declines from 80% to 10%. These measures, effective in 2019, aim at creating a ‘harmonious and moderately prosperous society’.     

A regularity theory of causality for the social sciences

Quality & Quantity - This article discusses a regularity theory of causality (RTC) for the social sciences. With RTC, causality is a relationship between X and Y characterized by three...     

Getting the Most Out of a Mandatory Subordinated Debt Requirement

Recent advances in asset pricing—the reduced-form approach to pricing risky debt and derivatives—are used to quantitatively evaluate several proposals for mandatory bank issue of subordinated debt. We find that credit spreads on both fixed- and floating-rate subordinated debt provide relatively clean signals of bank risk and are not unduly influenced by nonrisk factors. Fixed-rate debt with a put is unacceptable, but making the putable debt floating resolves most problems. Our approach also helps to clarify several different notions of “bank risk.”     

The Benefits of Visibility Improvement: New Evidence from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area

This article examines the impact of a specific aspect of air quality—visibility, or the ability to clearly see distant objects—on housing values. Our analysis is based on a data set constructed by matching residential housing sales data from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area for the period 1980 through 1995 with visibility and other air pollution data and other characteristics. We find that visibility differences are capitalized into housing values, producing a measurable hedonic price gradient. The time-series design facilitates an estimate of the demand for visibility that we use to calculate the benefits of changes in visual range.