This Paper challenges two widely held views: first that trade performance has been the primary reason for the declining share of manufacturing employment in the United States and other industrial economies, and second that recent productivity growth in manufacturing has actually been quite rapid but is not accurately measured. The paper shows that for many decades, relatively faster productivity growth interacting with unresponsive demand has been the dominant force behind the declining share of employment in manufacturing in the United States and other industrial economies. It also shows that since 2010, however, the relationship has been reversed and slower productivity growth in manufacturing has been associated with more robust performance in manufacturing employment. These contrasting experiences suggest a tradeoff between the ability of the manufacturing sector to contribute to productivity growth and its ability to provide employment opportunities. While some blame measurement errors for the recently recorded slowdown in manufacturing productivity growth, spending patterns in the United States and elsewhere suggest that the productivity slowdown is real and that thus far fears about robots and other technological advances in manufacturing displacing large numbers of jobs appear misplaced.

Recent innovations in hydraulic fracturing methods and micro-seismic technology along with rising oil and gas prices have led to oil and gas booms in various U.S. shale plays. While this appears to be a positive step forward, it is still unclear whether directly impacted local communities benefit from unconventional gas development. The three essays in this dissertation model and analyze the relatively unexplored short- and longterm externalities associated with energy-related economic booms on local labor market outcomes, human capital migration, and occupations, providing valuable insights on how local communities are impacted by oil and gas development. The first chapter analyzes the short- and long-run economic impacts of oil and gas boom on local labor market outcomes. I use a unique dataset with annual employment at 4-digit North American Industry Classification System codes . . .

Income tax breaks for elderly taxpayers are sizable, widespread and potentially affect economic growth through migration-induced population change and other behaviors. We provide the first investigation into their growth effects, taking a multi-pronged empirical approach to US state-level data since 1977. Some analyses include panel-interval and error- correction models combined with variation in state-level policies over time. Alternative analyses address policy endogeneity and diminish migration effects by using how changes in federal tax law manifest at the state-level. Results suggest tax breaks for lower- and middle-income elderly substantially decrease growth while higher-income breaks, often promoted as enhancing growth, have no impact.

Cosmetologists face a variety of occupational health and safety challenges. To gather information on respiratory issues related to work as a cosmetologist, licensed cosmetologists were invited by e-mail to participate in a short online survey. The survey collected demographic data, work history, respiratory symptoms, product usage, and health and safety training. Results revealed that while 57% of cosmetologists reported having received training on customer or consumer safety, only 10.5% had received training on worker health such as work-related asthma and/or breathing issues. Respiratory symptoms were reported by 46% of respondents. Length of employment and the use of glues or adhesives were associated with a diagnosis of asthma.

We propose a sampling-based framework for privacy-preserving approximate data search in the context of big data. The framework is designed to bridge multi-target query needs from users and the data platform, including required query accuracy, timeliness, and query privacy constraints. A novel privacy metric, (ε, δ)-approximation, is presented to uniformly measure accuracy, efficiency and privacy breach risk. Based on this, we employ bootstrapping to efficiently produce approximate results that meet the preset query requirements. Moreover, we propose a quick response mechanism to deal with homogeneous queries, and discuss the reusage of results when appending data. Theoretical analyses and experimental results demonstrate that the framework is capable of effectively fulfilling multi-target query requirements with high efficiency and accuracy.

This dissertation examines American fathers in the eighteenth century and argues that the American Revolution, both the war itself and the ideology it created, affected attitudes towards and practices of fatherhood. Historians have characterized the father/son relationship in the Revolutionary period as one of filial rebellion against their patriarchal fathers. My work finds, conversely, that because of their experience in the Revolution, ideas such as liberty and equality which spread throughout the colonies, and additional opportunities available to industrious young men due to national independence, fathers actively prepared their sons for an independent life free from patronage, massive inheritances, and the paternal protection which pre- Revolutionary fathers had offered their sons. Fathers throughout the thirteen colonies instilled into their children republican virtues such as self-sacrifice, independence, the value of education, and a sense of the public good, so that their sons could perform their duties as male citizens of a republic. I contend, moreover, that these values radically changed the way fathers and sons understood their relationship and their view of the world. These changes in fatherhood did not originate with the Revolution but were part of a longer historical movement which included the writings of John Locke, desacralization, subtle changes in the family economy, and a rise in individualism. It is my assertion, however, that the Revolution highlighted and accelerated these forces of change.

Local governments in the United States are required to offer free legal services to low-income people accused of crimes. Indigent defendants represented by private attorneys working as assigned counsel fare worse than defendants represented by public defenders or retained attorneys, but the reasons for the observed differences in case outcomes are not well understood. We shed new light on the causes of these disparities by taking advantage of detailed court records from one large jurisdiction in Texas that allow us to track the same lawyers across different case types. We find that the majority of the disparity in outcomes is due to within-attorney differences across cases in which they are assigned versus retained. In contrast to the existing literature, our results show the selection of low-quality attorneys into assigned counsel can explain at most one-quarter of the gap in outcomes for low-income defendants. A fee structure for assigned counsel that incentivizes obtaining quick pleas from clients likely contributes to moral hazard. We also present evidence that endogenous matching of defendants and privately retained attorneys plays some role in determining case outcomes, but does not explain the assigned counsel penalty.

Migration is a human capital investment that allows individuals to encounter more favorable labor markets. This paper exploits county-level variation in exposure to news about labor markets impacted by fracking, to show that access to information about potential labor market opportunities affects migration. I use pre-fracking newspaper circulation rates and content from national news outlets to capture exogenous variation in exposure to news about fracking in a particular destination. I then isolate the effect of news exposure by comparing migration flows to the same destination from differentially exposed origin counties. Exposure to newspaper articles about fracking increased migration to the areas mentioned in the news by 2.4 percent on average. News exposure also increases commuting to fracking counties. Exposure to TV news has a similar impact, and positive news about fracking increases migration more than negative news. As further evidence that news matters, Google searches for the term fracking and the names of states specifically mentioned spike after TV news broadcasts about fracking. Migration responses to news about fracking are largest from counties experiencing weak labor markets, suggesting these areas see the largest benefits to information provision.

Climate change is a growing threat to socioeconomic systems at all geographic scales, from local to global. Each of the three essays in this paper looks at a different economic aspect of climate change, from the value of a blue carbon sink, the impact of renewable energy technology on property prices, and the effect of changing flood risk and coastal amenities on property prices. ☐ The first essay in this work looks at valuing changes in the economic value of carbon stored in tidal wetlands undergoing land cover change. Coastal wetland systems are highly effective at sequestering and storing carbon dioxide, and represent an important “Blue Carbon” sink. This essay first develops an economic model for valuing carbon sequestration and then applies the model to the Delaware Estuary. The annual value of net carbon sequestration is found to be between $5,000 and $44,000, and the Delaware estuary is losing between $165,000 and $7.33 million in sequestration potential each year, depending on discount rate used. The results of this study are useful for land management decisions in Delaware, and the model developed can be applied to valuing carbon sequestration in any ecosystem, provided sequestration rates are known. ☐ The second essay investigates the impact of the University of Delaware’s Wind Turbine in Lewes, Delaware, on local property prices. Wind turbine developments are frequently met with fervent local opposition, citing concerns over changing views, noise, and wildlife impacts, which may lead to reduced property prices. Using a hedonic valuation approach and advanced GIS techniques, this study finds no significant impact of the UD Wind Turbine on the majority of local property prices, with the exception of properties that are located closest to the turbine and are in full view. Results of this study are an important addition to the wind energy hedonic literature, contributing a study on the impacts of a single turbine to a literature that has largely focused on the effects of larger wind farm developments. ☐ The third essay looks at how flood risk affects property prices. Floods are among the costliest natural disasters and the National Flood Insurance Program is stretched thin. Using a hedonic valuation approach and advanced GIS techniques, this study looks at the extent to which a range of coastal amenities, including flood risk, are capitalised in the property market in coastal Sussex County, Delaware. I find evidence that property owners are in fact willing to pay a premium to live in flood zones, indicating that the amenity effect of living close to the ocean surpasses the perceived risk of flooding. Results from this work provide evidence in opposition to a number of studies in the literature that find lower property prices in flood zones, demonstrating the importance of considering other coastal amenities.

I study the effects of improvements in transport infrastructure on the economic outcomes of parents and their children. To do so, I exploit the expansion of the railroad network in 19th-century Argentina and new longitudinal data following individuals before and after this expansion took place. To deal with the endogeneity of railroad location, I construct an instrumental variable that takes advantage of the fact that districts along the route of province capitals were more likely to be connected. I find that, once their district got connected to the railroad, adults largely remained farmers or farm workers. By contrast, their children moved out of farming toward more modern and higher paying occupations. The movement out of farming occupations reflected both local changes in employment structure and increased migration out of rural areas, and it was more pronounced among children in districts where the soil was not suitable for agriculture. Consistent with the higher level of skills required for this transition out of farming occupations, children in connected districts were more likely to be literate in adult-hood. These results shed light on how improvements in transportation can shape the transition from a mostly rural to a diversified economy. *

We analyze Medicare’s influence on private insurers’ payments for physicians’ services. Using a large administrative change in reimbursements for surgical versus medical care, we find that private prices follow Medicare’s lead. A $1.00 increase in Medicare’s fees increases corresponding private prices by $1.16. A second set of Medicare fee changes, which generates area-specific payment shocks, has a similar effect on private reimbursements. Medicare’s influence is strongest in areas with concentrated insurers and competitive physician markets, consistent with insurer-doctor bargaining. By echoing Medicare’s pricing changes, these payment spillovers amplify Medicare’s impact on specialty choice and other welfare-relevant aspects of physician practices.

The 2014 Medicaid expansion revised Medicaid eligibility provisions to allow for low-income, nonelderly adults to be eligible for Medicaid on those states which opt for this change. During the first two years after the expansion, there were more than 10.7 million newly eligible Medicaid enrollees nationwide. I investigate the short-term impact the 2014 Medicaid expansion had on Medicaid spending by the government. Using data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on all Medicaid expenditures over a seventeen year period. I apply a difference-in-differences design to exploit the variation among states electing to participate in the expansion and the health care services they offer. These data allow me to study the economic impact of the expansion on all possible health care services. Among the 21 services assessed, I find that after the expansion became effective, five services utilized by the target population for the reform experienced a statistically significant increase in average Medicaid spending: dental services (211 percent), clinic services (101 percent), outpatient hospital services (77 percent), physician and surgical services (35 percent), and inpatient hospital services (17 percent). This implies that the new adult group may be healthier and seeking more routine or preventive care compared to the traditional Medicaid population. The increase in routine and preventive care has the potential to result in better health outcomes and fewer medical emergencies in the future, ultimately lowering Medicaid spending by the state and federal government over the long term.

For generations, debates over what level of government should pay for local government services—most notably school funding—have largely boiled down to a simple pair of assumptions. Having the state or federal government pay for services promotes equality across rich and poor areas, but hampers local tailoring and thereby reduces citizens’ choice sets. Economists call this an equity-efficiency tradeoff—centralized funding promotes equity but undermines efficiency. This Article argues that this presumed trade-off is not as stark as generally thought, as it ignores important and underappreciated reasons that centralization promotes choice and thus efficiency. Specifically, more centralized funding helps people live where they prefer to live, unburdened by artificially needing to pay more for services in poor jurisdictions with large numbers of impoverished households who can pay little for services themselves. This insight should not only shift the scholarly debate on the equity-efficiency trade-off, but also supply important, real-world payoffs for debates over school funding and similar programs. Put simply, centralized funding promotes equality and, by promoting choice, efficiency. The Article does not merely make a theoretical argument; it also empirically tests the claim using natural experiments across the country in centralizing state funding for schools. The Article finds large efficiency benefits. The results also show that more centralized financing has encouraged people to move back to central cities, suggesting a second, hidden efficiency benefit to more centralized financing: It promotes the positive externalities associated with central city living. The Article could thus broaden support for more centralized funding of local services, something that could fundamentally reshape not just academic debates over fiscal federalism, but also state and local fiscal policy and urban living

Studies over the past 10 years revealed a positive correlation between millennials’ perceptions of marriage and witnessed marital failures. A gap in the literature was addressed by this study as the majority of existing research involved a qualitative approach based primarily on the general population and not specifically on unmarried female African American millennials. This study was done to understand unmarried female African American millennials’ perceptions of marriage by evaluating whether their parents’ marital status was an associated factor. The research employed a nonexperimental ex post facto design to examine and describe the impact of unmarried female African American millennials who are or are not children of divorced parents and unmarried female African American millennials who are or are not children of married or remarried custodial parents (independent variables) on the associated average scores on the perception of marriage (dependent variable). Data were collected from 274 unmarried female African American millennials. Fuwa’s 2014 Women’s Attitudes Toward Marriage Measure was used as a data collection instrument. The findings of this research study suggested the independent variables are not related to the dependent variable. Suggestions as to why the data did not support the hypotheses were offered. The implications of the study, limitations of the study, and recommendations for further research also were presented

Medicaid is a public health insurance program for low-income people. It was started in 1965. Medicaid insurance covers mostly children, pregnant women, parents, seniors over age 65, and people with disabilities. In Virginia, nearly 1 million people . . .

In this article, we seek to extend knowledge of the relationship between immigration and crime. We synthesize existing theories and literatures and argue that one largely overlooked aspect of immigration—language use—may play critical roles in how and why immigration is related to macro-level violence rates. Specifically, there are theoretical reasons to expect that levels of lack of English fluency and of bilinguals in neighborhoods will be associated with violent crime rates. We test these relationships using data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS). The multivariate results reveal that lack of English fluency has a nonlinear relationship with homicide and robbery, such that when lack of fluency is low, crime rates increase, but the positive effect diminishes as English nonfluent individuals come to represent a greater proportion of neighborhood population. In addition, levels of bilingualism moderate the effects of lack of English-language fluency for homicide but less so for robbery. This finding applies to the total sample as well as in traditional immigrant destinations, but not in new destinations.

My dissertation consists of three essays in consumer and small business finance. The last US housing boom and the development of mortgage securitization are commonly believed to fuel the credit expansion before the financial crisis. The first two chapters contribute to these discussions by investigating the bank-lending channel through which housing shocks and mortgage securitization affect credit access of consumers and small businesses. In addition, home equity debt is also believed to play an important role over the last boom-and-bust cycle; and my third chapter investigates how the 2005 US bankruptcy reform affect consumers’ home equity borrowing behaviors. In the first chapter I show that the last US housing boom reduced renter credit access. In particular, banks reduced non-mortgage credit supply when they expanded mortgage lending to homeowners. As a consequence, renters living in locations where banks had more geographic exposure to the housing boom ended up borrowing less but defaulting more. This research suggests that policies affecting house prices and mortgage financing have broader implications for less well-off households that do not own a home. The second chapter explores the causal effect of mortgage securitization on small business lending. It is commonly believed that mortgage securitization frees up bank liquidity and increases the supply of illiquid loans. However, based on an instrumental variable approach I find that increasing the easiness of mortgage securitization reduces bank lending to small businesses, especially to the small-size and low-income borrowers. A possible explanation is that securitization increases bank risk-taking on retained mortgages, which may reduce bank incentive to issue small business loans. The last chapter examines the effect of bankruptcy protection on home equity borrowing and consumption smoothing. Based on a natural experiment of the 2005 US bankruptcy reform, I use a difference-in-difference method to show that consumers increased home equity borrowing when debtor protection at bankruptcy reduced. The house price sensitivity of consumption and entrepreneurship were also increased. My results suggest that reducing bankruptcy protection could lead to a stronger amplification effect of housing collateral over the business cycle.

In 2011, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York signed into law NY Senate Bill S5855 establishing the NY-SUNY 2020 Challenge Grant Program Act. This legislation limited year-over-year resident undergraduate tuition increases in the City University of New York (CUNY) and State University of New York (SUNY) systems to a maximum of three hundred dollars ($300) per year from the 2011/2012 school year to 2015/2016. It also mandated that increases in nonresident undergraduate tuition not exceed 10 percent over the previous year. In addition to the tuition cap, a tuition credit is provided to students whose annual resident undergraduate rate of tuition exceeds five thousand dollars. In order to evaluate the impact of this State led policy on undergraduate enrollment in New York State, the IPUMS-CPS data set for New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts for the period of 2007 to 2014 was used. This study found that state imposed tuition cap and discount in New York State resulted in an increase in overall undergraduate enrollment, with a marked increase in enrollment in Private Colleges.