Agriculture and food producers face the perennial challenge of differentiating their products based on quality without falling victim to the market failure problems due to asymmetric information. Firms have long faced the thorny issue of supplying quality attributes in such situations, and several market mechanisms have emerged to deal with it. Chief among them are market-based solutions that rely on reputation through firms’ strong brand identities that can foster repeat purchases. Wine is a classic example of an experience good where consumers cannot ascertain the quality of the product before consumption, which potentially leads to an asymmetric information problem in the wine market. A systematic component of wine quality is believed to depend on the geo-climatic factors of its production conditions. Thus, the wine industry has also developed a somewhat unique system of geographic origin labeling. However, geographic origin labeling has been believed to play a more important role in Old World than in the New World wine industry. It was only in the 1980s when the United States developed its own federally recognized appellation of origin designations for its prestigious wine-growing regions known as American Viticulture Areas (AVAs). This dissertation attempts to quantify the role of product attributes in shaping consumer demand in a highly differentiated market — wine. It also measures the welfare generated from product attribute information, emphasizing the impact of AVA classification in the United States wine industry. The study uses the Nielsen Consumer Panel dataset, a nationally representative and extensive dataset available on wine purchases for the United States market. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the general introduction to the dissertation, the background, and recent trends in the United States wine industry. Chapter 3 analyzes the determinants of retail wine prices in the US market to characterize the main dimensions of product differentiation. The study also proposes using a metric based on the Shapely value from cooperative game theory to represent the overall importance of the set of determinants of wine price. Empirical findings suggest that, after accounting for firms’ brands, wine type, varietals, and the other control variables, information about the geographic origin of US wines carries considerable explanatory power. Furthermore, using the metric based on Shapely Value, the study finds that more than 67 percent of US retail wine prices are accounted for by individual wines own brands, a finding consistent with the basic economics of markets for experience good and the role of reputations. The study also finds that geographic origin is the next most important predictor of wine prices, and its contribution is about twice as significant as that of varietals. Chapter 4 of this dissertation takes a more structural approach and develops and estimates a novel wine demand model of the discrete choice framework for the United States market. The modeling approach adopts a two-level nested logit model. The estimated parameters conform broadly with expectations. Elasticity estimates indicate that product-specific own-price elasticities are large, as expected, given the very disaggregated formulation of the product space. As for geographical indications, we find an economically and statistically significant impact of AVAs on wine demand. Consumers’ willingness to pay for wine products’ geographic origin over the other quality indicators such as the wine brand and varietals appears sizeable. AVAs command heterogeneous values in the eyes of the consumers relative to the base (relative to a generic US label), ranging from $1 to $13 per bottle. The study also finds significant welfare gains from AVA information on wine labels. Over the period of interest, the welfare gain attributable to AVAs is estimated at about $2.4 billion, with wine producers and retailers capturing approximately 80% of this surplus. Approximately 90% of consumer welfare gains are due to product differentiation and increased variety, with the remaining gains due to price decreases resulting from increased product competition.

This article reviews the sectors and main economic activities in which young Mexicans are currently employed in the labor markets of Mexico and the United States. The analysis is based on the fact that labor markets are segmented and the Mexican labor market is linked to and subordinated to the North American labor market; together, they form a regional labor market. In both Mexico and the United States, young Mexicans are entering the service sector: in the United States due to a process of productive restructuring, and in Mexico due to the subordination of the Mexican economy to the United States.

Background: Advance care planning (ACP), or the consideration and communication of care preferences for the end-of-life (EOL), is a critical process for improving quality of care for patients with advanced cancer. The incorporation of billed service codes for ACP allows for new inquiries on the association between systematic ACP and improved EOL outcomes. Objective: Using the IBM MarketScan® Database, we conducted a retrospective medical claims analysis for patients with an advanced cancer diagnosis and referral to hospice between January 2016 and December 2017. We evaluated the association between billed ACP services and EOL hospital admissions in the final 30 days of life. Design: This is a cross-sectional retrospective cohort study. Participants: A total of 3,705 patients met the study criteria. Main Measures: ACP was measured via the presence of a billed ACP encounter (codes 99497 and 99498) prior to the last 30 days of life; hospital admissions included a dichotomous indicator for inpatient admission in the final 30 days of life. Key Results: Controlling for key covariates, patients who received billed ACP were less likely to experience inpatient hospital admissions in the final 30 days of life compared to those not receiving billed ACP (OR: 0.34; p < 0.001). Conclusion: The receipt of a billed ACP encounter is associated with reduced EOL hospital admissions in a population of patients with advanced cancer on hospice care. Strategies for consistent, anticipatory delivery of billable ACP services prior to hospice referral may prevent potentially undesired late-life hospital admissions.

In the 1930s, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created maps of American cities that were used to restrict investment in minority neighborhoods, leaving a durable mark on redlined neighborhoods. Since the 1990s, place-based policies are one tool the federal government has used to reinvest in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Do these programs target historically redlined neighborhoods—and to what effect? In this article, we combine data on federal place-based initiatives from 1990 to 2015 and historical HOLC maps to answer these questions. Results indicate that formerly redlined areas received substantially more funding than areas graded more favorably, indicating concentrated investment in neighborhoods that had experienced disinvestment. Federal place-based funding was associated with increased property values in formerly redlined areas, but also reductions in the share of Black homeowners, suggesting racial disparities in who benefits from rising property values. We conclude by discussing the potential and the challenges of place-based policy to address urban inequality.

In this paper, we qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the effect of statehood and ethnicity on earnings of Asian Americans from 1970 to 2010 using Opportunity Insights data and IPUMS survey data. For Asian Americans, women’s average national household income rank is higher than that of men’s, and immigrant’s higher than US-born’s. Certain states show advantageous conditions that allow immigrants to earn on par with or more than their US-born counterparts; however, the sample size may be too small to be accurate. When examined through an interaction variable, several states or ethnicities on their own had negative coefficients whereas their interactions with the immigrant variable had positive coefficients. Asian American women on average earned less than Asian American men; immigrant women’s earnings were inconclusive. Overall, the IPUMS survey data used was not large enough to be accurately representative, nor were there sufficient parent assignments within the database to curate meaningful conclusions regarding intergenerational effects.

This report examines demographic trends in educational attainment and employment among Puerto Ricans living in New York City between 1990 and 2019. The report also observes the relationship between race and gender with employment and education trends.

Social demographers and historians have devoted extensive research to patterns of racial segregation that emerged under Jim Crow and during the post-Civil Rights era but have paid less attention to the role of slavery in shaping the residential distribution of Black populations in the United States. One guiding assumption has been that slavery rendered racial segregation to be both unnecessary and impractical. In this study, I argue that apart from the master-slave relationship, slavery relentlessly produced racial segregation during the antebellum period through the residential isolation of slaves and free people of color. To explain this pattern, I draw on racial threat theory to test hypotheses regarding interracial economic competition and fear of slave mobilization using data from the 1850 Census, as well as an architectural survey of antebellum sites. Findings suggest that the residential segregation of free people of color increased with their local prevalence, whereas the segregation of slaves increased with the prevalence of the slave population. These patterns continue to hold after controlling for interracial competition over land or jobs and past slave rebellions or conspiracies.

To understand marriage patterns, homogamy, and fertility of women of European ancestry in the United States from an evolutionary perspective, we investigated if a prevalence of ancestral homogamy exists, the factors influencing a female preference for an ancestral homogamous vs. heterogamous marriage, and if ancestral homogamous vs. heterogamous marriages have an impact on fertility. Furthermore, we aim to determine the heritability of homogamous vs. heterogamous marriage behavior. We used the census data of 369,121 women in the United States married only once and aged between 46 and 60 years, provided by IPUMS USA (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/). We used linear mixed models to determine the association between the probability of a homogamous vs. heterogamous marriage and the individual fertility of women. We aimed to estimate the heritability (genetics and parental environment) of marriage behavior using a linear mixed model. We found that ancestral heterogamous marriages are more frequent compared to homogamous marriages, but only if all ancestry groups are included. If ancestry is aggregated, homogamous marriages are more frequent compared to heterogamous marriages. Most of the variance (up to 27%) in inter-ancestry marriage and fertility (up to 12%) is explained by ancestry per se, followed by the ratio of individuals of a certain ancestral background in a county (∼6%), indicating a frequency depending selection into marriage: the more individuals of a certain ancestry live in a county, the lower is the tendency to marry someone of a different ancestral background. Furthermore, we found that about 12% (depending to some extent on the clustering) of the marriage behavior is heritable. Being in a homogamous marriage and the income of the spouse are both significantly positively associated with the number of children women have and the probability that women have at least one child, albeit explaining only a very low proportion of the overall variance. The most important factor (in terms of variance explained) for being in an ancestral homogamous vs. heterogamous marriage, for the number of children, and for childlessness is the ancestry of the women. Most children are born to women of Irish, French, and Norwegian ancestry (Irish � ̄ : 3.24, French � ̄ : 3.21, and Norwegian � ̄ : 3.18), the lowest number of children is to women of Latvian, Rumanian, and Russian ancestry (Latvian � ̄ : 2.26, Rumanian � ̄ : 2.19, and Russian � ̄ : 2.35). Albeit, we are not able to distinguish the genetic and social heritability on the basis of our data, only a small heritability for in-group vs. out-group marriage behavior is indicated (∼12% of variance explained).

This paper measures the effects of labor regulations on the structure of earnings and employment in the context of occupational licensing. Using a state border match design, I estimate the labor market spillovers of licensing on other occupations with similar skills, which I classify using hierarchical clustering techniques on skills data from O*NET. I find evidence of negative earnings and employment spillovers, with the largest earnings effects concentrated among women, black, and foreign-born Hispanic workers. These effects lead to greater earnings inequality. The results are consistent with a monopsony model where licensing increases search costs and reduces workers' outside options.

The relationships between gender-based earnings disparity and gendered dimensions of human capital gains and labor market changes are quite complex. Some scholars have argued that gender bias improves the over economy of a country/society. Others, however, have argued otherwise, adding to the narrative that despite an overall positive role of educational/human capital gains by women, the benefits reaped by them is non-linear, often with declining premiums for educational progress. This research investigates gendered earnings disadvantage and (dis)parity across US counties by employing GIS-based maps, descriptive statistics, correlations and regression analyses wherein female earnings and female-versus-male earnings ratios are regressed against select explanatory variables representing educational attainments, gender-based work-status, and their occupational over/under-representation in the labor market. Five-years estimates data (2015–2019) from the NHGIS are used for computing location quotients for major occupation-types by gender and additional statistical analyses. Females with professional, Master’s and doctoral degrees have improved earnings, even though gender parity is better for both genders among the less educated. Sadly, gender disparity in earnings is higher when male-versus-female ratio increases for those majoring in science/engineering, science and engineering-related and business degrees. Greater gender parity, however, is noted when more men major in Education—a sub-field largely deemed as feminine. This research calls for focused policy interventions toward encouraging more women in STEM and science/engineering disciplines, along with strategic programs to help attract more women into working full-time—one of the several ways toward bridging the earnings gap.

I study how people understand and reason about trade and which factors shape their views on trade policy. I design and run large-scale surveys and experiments in the U.S. to elicit respondents' knowledge and understanding of trade. I also ask about their perceived economic gains and distributional impacts from trade and their views on trade restrictions and compensatory redistribution for those hurt by trade. People's understanding of the price, wage, and welfare effects of trade is mixed. In general, respondents are optimistic about the efficiency gains from trade, but also understand that there may be adverse distributional consequences from it. Respondents' own exposure to trade through their sector, occupation, skill, and local labor market shapes their perceptions of the impacts of trade on themselves, others, and on the broader U.S. economy. I also find patterns consistent with the idea of "diffuse gains and concentrated losses'': respondents' perceived benefits as consumers are nonsalient and unclear to them, while those in at-risk jobs starkly perceive the threats from trade. Beyond material self-interest, people have broader social and economic concerns that strongly influence their views on trade policy. The belief that is most predictive of support for open trade is that trade generates efficiency gains. Furthermore, people who believe that those hurt by trade can be helped using other tools (compensatory redistribution) do not oppose free trade, even if they think that it will entail adverse distributional consequences. The results highlight the importance of compensatory redistribution as an indissociable part of trade policy in people's minds.

Leaving school to work trades off schooling with on-the-job human capital acquisition. How do industry shocks impact how youth make this trade-off? Exploiting the geography of natural resources, I estimate the effect of oil and gas job prospects on college and work outcomes. Using CPS data, I find that these job opportunities decrease college-going for men but not women. I next assess the importance of this schooling loss for later outcomes using longitudinal geocoded NLSY79 data. I find permanent declines in college attainment but gains in employment and earnings at ages 25–30, driven by cohorts who reach college age during industry booms. The results suggest that informal human capital can compensate for schooling loss for the men who leave school for oil and gas work. They speak to the need for further research on non-college work as a form of human capital investment outside of the traditional college pathway.

Racial inequality can be affected by changes in race-specific fertility patterns that influence the composition of births, in addition to post-birth factors like schools and labor markets that have been the focus of most prior research. This paper documents a large decline in the fertility of southern African American women after 1964, and argues that these fertility patterns likely led to substantial reductions in racial inequality in the next generation through a selection effect. I first show that the Black-white difference in the general fertility rate fell by approximately 40% between 1964 and 1970 among southern women, with no change in racial fertility differences in the North over this period. I also show that these fertility declines were much stronger among socioeconomically disadvantaged southern Black women, for instance those with 8 or fewer years of education and with four or more existing children, which led southern Black children born after 1964 to come from systematically smaller and more educated families. I then directly estimate the association between racial fertility differences and racial differences in the education and earnings of the next generation in a two-way fixed effects framework, and find that selective fertility declines were conditionally associated with a reduction in the Black-white education gap of approximately .15 years (22%) and a reduction in the Black-white earnings gap of approximately 6 log points (16%). These patterns suggest that a substantial share of the Black socioeconomic progress of the 1960s and 1970s was due to selective fertility declines among less advantaged African American women in the South.

We use linked survey and administrative data to document and decompose the striking differences across demographic groups in both economic and health impacts of the first year of the COVID19 pandemic in the United States. The impacts of the pandemic on all-cause mortality and on employment were concentrated in the same racial, ethnic, and education groups, with non-White individuals and those without a college degree experiencing higher excess all-cause mortality as well as a greater employment loss. Observable differences in living arrangements and the nature of work – which likely affected exposure to the virus and to economic contractions – can explain 15 percent of the Hispanic-White difference in excess mortality, almost one-quarter of the nonHispanic Black-White difference, and almost half of the difference between those with and without a Bachelor’s degree; they can also explain 35 to 40 percent of the differences in economic damages between these groups. These findings underscore the importance of non-medical factors in contributing to the disparate impacts of public health shocks.

This paper presents a search-theoretic model of union formation among women, aged 55 and older. Specifically, it provides new estimates of gender differentials in cohabitation and marriage at older ages, and documents recent patterns of assortative mating using data from the 2008–2017 American Community Survey. Our analyses reveal that cohabitation represents a much smaller share of all older unmarried women, all partnered women, and all women in comparison to patterns observed among their male counterparts. The results also reveal highly uneven patterns of union formation by age, race and marital history, which reflect demographically uneven constraints and preferences. Our analyses also document, for the first time, patterns of assortative mating at older ages. Shortages of similarly-aged men, especially among older African American women, seemingly heighten the likelihood of demographically mismatched unions. Older women are less likely to form unions with same-race or economically attractive partners, defined as men having a college-degree. This study shows that older single women, in general, are at a comparative disadvantage in the marriage market, both in forming co-residential unions and in finding partners who match their own social, demographic, and economic profiles. This paper highlights considerable heterogeneity in the experiences of America's older women. It calls for new theoretical approaches that acknowledge the unequal resources and bargaining power among older women in the marriage market.

In North Carolina, many women have made great strides towards economic equality. More women are earning bachelor’s degrees and the number of women entrepreneurs is growing. Yet not all women have equal access to these opportunities and the support they need to thrive, leaving many struggling to achieve financial and economic security. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic “she-cession,” it is more important than ever to address poverty issues and barriers to opportunities for women in North Carolina. Access to quality education, responsive health care services, and dynamic business networks can help women thrive in the workforce and achieve economic success. These systems can help women bridge the divide between poverty and economic opportunity. This report provides data and analysis on several aspects of North Carolina women in the areas of poverty, economic security, access to opportunities, and support that helps women and families achieve economic stability. Data for this report was calculated based on a composite index generated from four key indicators: (1) health insurance coverage, (2) educational attainment, (3) business ownership, and (4) poverty rates. All 50 states and the District of Columbia are ranked on the composite score and component indicators. This report also examines data on topics such as poverty by household type, home ownership and houselessness, the number of public assistance recipients, and the impact of the pandemic on women in North Carolina. Each of these indicators are key components of poverty and opportunities for North Carolina women. Without adequate education, public support, or opportunities for advancement and entrepreneurship, women and families are more likely to face conditions of poverty. Throughout this report, data are analyzed by counties in North Carolina (when available) and disaggregated by racial and ethnic groups. Most of the data referenced in this report comes from 2019 and the year of data collection is noted. This report outlines the baseline of poverty and opportunity in North Carolina prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and shares emerging data on the impact of the pandemic. The final installment in a series of four publications, this report provides data and policy recommendations to improve the status of women in North Carolina—with a focus on poverty and opportunity. The first three reports focused on employment and earnings, health and wellness, and political participation. This series aims to provide critical data that can help build economic security and overall well-being among women in North Carolina. The reports serve as a resource that may be used to make data-driven decisions about how to shape public policies, prioritize investments, and set programmatic goals to improve the lives of women and families. This Poverty and Opportunity report highlights the status of women at the intersections of health, financial well-being, and education. These factors play a major role in determining the overall economic security of women and their families.

In this study, we examine the impact of a severe health condition—complete tooth loss—on educational gradients in adult mortality risk among racial/ethnic groups by nativity in the United States. We use the 1999–2014 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality File (NHIS-LMF) to estimate Cox proportional hazards models of the risk of death for non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and other-Hispanic populations, considering both Mexican-origin and other-Hispanic adults (N = 373,041). We find that although White, Black, and other-Hispanic adults have significant education gradients in mortality risk, these gradients disappear for individuals who have experienced complete tooth loss. Both foreign-born and US-born Mexican adults show no significant relationship between education and mortality risk, regardless of tooth loss status. Our results indicate that policies that focus on preventing tooth loss may be more effective at reducing disparities than those that improve care for adults with existing tooth loss.

Although technological change is widely credited as driving the last two hundred years of economic growth, its role in shaping patterns of inequality remains under-explored. Drawing parallels across two industrial revolutions in the United States, this paper provides new evidence of a relationship between highly disruptive forms of innovation and spatial inequality. Using the universe of patents granted between 1920 and 2010 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Oce, we identify disruptive innovations through their rapid growth, complementarity with other innovations , and widespread use. We then assign more-and less-disruptive innovations to subnational regions in the geography of the U.S. We document three findings that are new to the literature. First, disruptive innovations exhibit distinctive spatial clustering in phases understood to be those in which industrial revolutions reshape the economy; they are increasingly dispersed in other periods. Second, we discover that the ranks of locations that capture the most disruptive innovation are relatively unstable across industrial revolutions. Third, regression estimates suggest a role for disruptive innovation in regulating overall patterns of spatial output and income inequality

Using 62 harmonized cross-sectional surveys of 27 African countries covering around 8 million parents-children matched pairs, I study intergenerational mobility (IM) in occupational attainment in Africa. First, I document that the likelihood a child born from low skilled parents acquires a higher skill job is roughly 32%. Likewise the likelihood that a child born from high skilled parents acquires a lower skill job is roughly 30%. The two metrics vary substantially across but also within African countries. The gender gap in upward (downward) IM is around 11% (10%), whereas the urban-rural divide stands at around 34% (25%). Christian ethnic groups have, on average 7% higher likelihood of upward IM relative to Muslim groups. Second, I show that primary school attainment and household access to electricity & piped water are the strongest predictors of IM. At the macro level, countries with better educational outcomes, such as better school quality, experience higher rates of IM. Third, I examine the hypothesis that human capital is driving IM in Africa. To establish causality, I use as an event study the lifting of primary school fees in five African countries (Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, Tanzania and Ghana). School enrolment rates increased in all countries after the reform’s introduction. Exploiting within country variation in exposure to the reform across birth cohorts and districts, I show that education induced by lifting primary school fees had a positive effect on upward IM rate in Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius and a negative effect in Tanzania and Ghana. Correlational evidence suggests that the heterogeneity in the occupational outcomes might be attributable to the differences in school quality across the five countries.

In search of a job, a worker may receive more than one offer. Focusing on new hires from non-employment, this paper documents (1) over 30% of them had multiple offers simultaneously just before starting the present job, (2) the probability of having multiple offers is negatively correlated with the unemployment rate, and (3) relative to workers with one offer, comparable workers with multiple offers enjoy a persistent wage premium of over 10% for about nine years. The findings have implications for understanding the contribution of search frictions to wage inequality and the sullying effect of recessions.