Much research has investigated the association between maternal employment and child outcomes. Although most studies examined maternal employment at one point in time, mothers employment paths may not be static. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 712), we find that a majority of mothers change employment hours more than twice across the 16 waves from their childrens infancy through kindergarten, supporting the notion that mothers typically take a flexible work pathway. Older age, fewer children, relationship dissolution, and work-orientation are related to a continuous full-time work pathway than a flexible work hours pathway, whereas more children, family-orientation, no professional occupation prior birth, higher family income, and lone parenthood at birth are related to a continuous nonwork pathway. More children and having a college degree are related to a continuous reduced work pathway. Controlling for these background characteristics, a continuous full-time work pathway is negatively related to childrens academic ability and positively related to risk-taking behavior at age 15 compared to a flexible work pathway. A continuous reduced work pathway is positively related to childrens outcomes at bivariate level, but the associations are not found after controlling for background characteristics.

The recent emergence and spread of vector-borne viruses including Zika, chikungunya and dengue has raised concerns that climate change may cause mosquito vectors of these diseases to expand into more temperate regions. However, the long-term impact of other anthropogenic factors on mosquito abundance and distributions is less studied. Here, we show that anthropogenic chemical use (DDT; dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and increasing urbanization were the strongest drivers of changes in mosquito populations over the last eight decades in areas on both coasts of North America. Mosquito populations have increased as much as tenfold, and mosquito communities have become two- to fourfold richer over the last five decades. These increases are correlated with the decay in residual environmental DDT concentrations and growing human populations, but not with temperature. These results illustrate the far-reaching impacts of multiple anthropogenic disturbances on animal communities and suggest that interactions between land use and chemical use may have unforeseen consequences on ecosystems.

The paper develops novel methods to measure the extend of factor misallocation. These rely on production functions being homogeneous, but not on specific parameterizations and partly not even on specific functional forms. This reduces the risk to incorrectly reject an efficient allocation. In an empirical application these general methods strongly reject an efficient capital and labor allocation across 473 six-digit U.S. manufacturing industries. Potential output gains of efficiently reallocating factors are between 22 and 64% of observed output. There is also evidence that misallocation increased substantially during the Great Recession with a sizeable contribution to the observed fall in manufacturing output.

Since 2000, strengthening gentrification in an expanding section of cities and neighborhoods has renewed interest from policymakers, researchers, and the public in the causes of gentrification. The identification of causal factors can help inform analyses of welfare, policy responses, and forecasts of future neighborhood change. We highlight some features of recent gentrification that popular understandings often do not emphasize, and we review progress on identifying some causal factors. However, a complete account of the relative contribution of many factors is still elusive. We suggest questions and opportunities for future research.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) has recently (20142015) re-emerged in the United States (US) causing the largest outbreak in US history with 232 outbreaks and an estimated economic impact of $950 million. This study proposes to use suitability maps for Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza (LPAI) to identify areas at high risk for HPAI outbreaks. LPAI suitability maps were based on wild bird demographics, LPAI surveillance, and poultry density in combination with environmental, climatic, and socio-economic risk factors. Species distribution modeling was used to produce high-resolution (cell size: 500m x 500m) maps for Avian Influenza (AI) suitability in each of the four North American migratory flyways (NAMF). Results reveal that AI suitability is heterogeneously distributed throughout the US with higher suitability in specific zones of the Midwest and coastal areas. The resultant suitability maps adequately predicted most of the HPAI outbreak areas during the 20142015 epidemic in the US (i.e. 89% of HPAI outbreaks were located in areas identified as highly suitable for LPAI). Results are potentially useful for poultry producers and stakeholders in designing risk-based surveillance, outreach and intervention strategies to better prevent and control future HPAI outbreaks in the US.

The dual banking system created an environment of regulatory competition between state and federal bank regulators that resulted in a number of free banking laws passed at the state level prior to 1900. I provide evidence that the entry of state banks under these laws contributed to the convergence in banking returns observed over this period by decreasing the prevalence of monopoly in banking markets. I also quantify the role of free banking laws in facilitating the expansion of state banking. Finally, I estimate the role of state banks in promoting economic growth in order to quantify the impact of free banking laws on real economic variables. The results indicate that the expansion of state banks, mainly due to the passage of state-level banking laws, significantly increased growth of agricultural output and physical capital prior to 1900

Using data from the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs Trade Act Participant Report (TAPR) and the US Census Displaced Workers Surveys, we illustrate the patterns of occupation changes for workers displaced from manufacturing sector jobs. Specifically, we provide information on the difference in offshorability between workers pre and postdisplacement occupations. We find significant variation in these changes while many workers move from one highly offshorable occupation to another.

Cycles of boom and bust plague mining communities around the globe, and decades after the bust the skeletons of shrunken cities remain. This article evaluates strategies for how former mining communities cope and strive for sustainability in the decades well beyond the bust, using a case study of Calumet, Michigan. In 1910, Calumet was at the center of the mining industry in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but in the century since its peak, mining employment steadily declined until the last mine closed in 1968, and the population declined by over 80%. This paper explores challenges, opportunities, and progress toward sustainability associated with arts-related development in this context. Methods are mixed, including observation, interviews, document review, a survey, and secondary data analysis. We follow Flora and Floras Community Capitals Framework to analyze progress toward sustainability. Despite key challenges associated with the shrunken city context (degraded tax base, overbuilt and aging infrastructure, diminished human capital, and a rather limited set of volunteers and political actors), we find the shrunken city also offers advantages for arts development, including low rents, less risk of gentrification, access to space, and political incentive. In Calumet, we see evidence of a spiraling up pattern toward social sustainability resulting from arts development; however impacts on environmental and economic sustainability are limited.

Det är tio gånger så vanligt att migranter från Somalia startar eget företag i Minnesota, som i Sverige. Sysselsättningsgraden för somaliafödda är också två till tre gånger högre i USA. I rapporten ”Etniskt företagande som startmotor” har ekonomhistorikerna Benny Carlson och Tobias Schölin vid Lunds universitet intervjuat företagare och företrädare för somaliska företagarcenter i Minnesota.

Who invents? This is a central question to understanding possible barriers to entry in the innovation process. To address it, we match the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents from 1870 to 1940 to the corresponding U.S. Federal Population Censuses. This matching procedure provides a rich set of demographic information on a comprehensive set of inventors. We first document that patentees over this seventy year period are more likely to be older, white, male and to be living in a state other than the one in which they were born. Surprisingly, these patterns are very persistent over space and time though the fraction of women appears to rise slightly. We then attempt to correlate the demographics of patentees with county-level economic and demographic characteristics. Beyond the most obvious such as the number of a particular group in that county, very little explains differences in the demographics of inventors across counties. This suggest that most barriers to entry are persistent over time and very little across space.

This paper studies a nonparametric hedonic equilibrium model in which certain product characteristics are unobserved. Unlike most previously studied hedonic models, both the observed and unobserved agent heterogeneities enter the structural functions nonparametrically. Prices are endogenously determined in equilibrium. Using both within and cross-market price variation, I show that all the structural functions of the model are nonparametrically identified up to normalization. In particular, the unobserved product quality function is identified if the relative prices of the agent characteristics differ in at least two markets. Following the constructive identification strategy, I provide easy-to-implement series minimum distance estimators of the structural functions and derive their uniform rates of convergence. To illustrate the estimation procedure, I estimate the unobserved efficiency of American full-time workers as a function of age and unobserved ability.

The first chapter examines issues of vertical inequity in property assessment across Massachusetts. Several previous studies claim to identify bias in the assessment of housing value for the purposes of property taxes. This chapter highlights some problems with the methodologies used in many of those studies and provides an alternative framework for finding minimum values for assessor error and bias. Using data from the Massachusetts’ Office of Geographic Information, we build off previous studies in three ways. First, we briefly explain why the errors-in-variables problem can cause biased estimates of vertical inequity in property assessment and how previous solutions to this problem are based on misleading assumptions. Second, we show that a method based on hedonic price estimates using property-level observables can provide a lower bound for the extent of assessor error and bias for Massachusetts towns. Third, we explore if there are differences in vertical inequity across towns in Massachusetts. Our results show that more than 23.3 percent of the variance in the difference between assessment and . . .

In this work, I will explain why whats occurred in West Harlem over the years is such a perilous indicator of what may be to come for the future of Harlem; why Bollingers claim that he will bring economic and other benefits to our neighbors was one of false pretenses, and emphasizing that even with activism, native Harlemites may find themselves being forced out, regardless of a stark resistance. I will frame my argument taking into account the forced nature of the development of Black Harlem, and leave it up to the reader as to why this situationone that is reflected in the perpetuation of a problematic history for people of color in this nationis so dire.

This study examines the pay differential for urban green infrastructure occupations focused on installation, maintenance, and/or inspection as well as the differences in workforce composition by urban green infrastructure status. An original definition of urban green infrastructure jobs developed by Jobs for the Future as part of the NatureWORKS national initiative is used in this analysis. It focused on the broad research questions: Is there a pay premium or gap in urban green infrastructure, and how do worker characteristics contribute to the observed raw differential? To address these questions, we explored the impact of expanding the Mincer earnings equation to account for occupation fixed effects as well as measures of needed skills within occupation.

In this paper, we evaluate the ability of three measures to describe the evolution of marriage rates. We nd that the two measures commonly used to study changes in marriage rates, the number of new marriages per population and the share of individuals currently or ever married within an age range, generally lead to incorrect inference. A third measure, the share of individuals ever married by a given age in a given cohort, is better suited to analyze changes in marriage rates.

Puerto Rico’s long running experiment with active wage floor and public transfer policies manifests substantial program benefits at great efficiency costs. Transfers have sheltered large segments of the population from a deep and prolonged recession and in past decades been important instruments of positive distributive change. They have also curtailed growth potential, reducing the effective labor force through retirements that occur at very early ages and through limited market entry among the low-skilled. A high wage floor has in the past driven large increases in productivity and real wages, but has also resulted in structural unemployment and a marked loss in competitiveness concentrated in the lower half of the earnings distribution. Resulting policy design interaction has contributed to an economy with scarce job opportunities and one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the world.

This dissertation research emphasizes achieving greater urban inclusion through transit-oriented development (TOD). In exploring St. Louis, Missouri's Delmar Loop TOD site, I specifically focus on the impact public transportation activities have on residents in neighborhoods surrounding light rail transit stations. I seek to understand if these developments indeed improve living conditions and urban inclusion for residents in areas around the station. TODs can be desirable spaces for residents, planners, and developers as they potentially enhance economic development, improve regional connectivity, increase transit ridership, among many other benefits and goals. However, this desirability of TODs may lead to the people with the most need for public transportation and improved neighborhood conditions being further marginalized. I argue that TOD activities can indeed assist in establishing non-inclusive spaces. By TOD activities, I refer to TOD plans, plan-making, plan implementation, and developments related to TOD plans. The following research questions guide this research: 1) Does gentrification and TOD related neighborhood change occur in light rail transit station neighborhoods? 2) What principles guide TOD activities? 3) What are the (overall and inclusive) TOD activities planners should undertake? 4) What overall and inclusive TOD activities occur? 5) How can planners better assist in establishing inclusive TOD neighborhoods? I answer these questions through a mixed method analysis, employing both quantitative and qualitative analyses. First, I use spatial regression analyses to explore the relationship between gentrification-related residential change and LRT stations. The results from the analyses point toward St. Louis, Missouri and the Delmar Loop TOD site specifically as a place to further examine gentrification and inclusivity. Second, I undertake a case study of the Delmar Loop utilizing interviews, observations, and document analysis to identify and analyze whether and how planners engage in inclusive TOD activities. I ultimately found that: 1) planners did not assist in establishing the Delmar Loop TOD site as an inclusive neighborhood and; 2) it is not a homogenous neighborhood where all TOD residents and spaces benefit from transit and neighborhood developments. Delmar Loop TOD activities ignored a portion of the TOD site largely occupied by minorities that most needed neighborhood improvements and increased transit access. Overall, the results of this dissertation describe the ways that planners consciously and inadvertently undertake activities that socially, spatially, and economically affect urban spaces largely occupied by minorities and the poor. Demonstrating how such planning activities unfold will show the specific, everyday ways in which blacks, minorities in general, and the poor are marginalized – contributing to the . . .

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has devoted increased resources toward cycling but does not have a systematic or statistically robust way to measure how these efforts are affecting different neighborhoods and demographic groups. This report briefly introduces existing methods used by SFMTA to measure cycling followed by an analysis of American Community Survey (ACS) 3-year Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) bicycle commute to work data between 2005 and 2013. By cross-tabulating PUMS data for bicycle commuting with other demographic variables this report sheds light on changes in commute cycling for various groups of San Francisco residents. The methodology used can be applied to any Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) in the United States. Of the commute modes observed between 2005-2007 and 2011-2013, bicycle to work had a statistically significant increase, auto had a statistically significant decrease, while other modes saw no statistically significant change. The results of this analysis show that statistically significant growth in cycling between the 2005-2007 and 2011-2013 sample periods was uneven across geographic and socio-demographic variables. People living close to the urban core, men, whites, people living in households with incomes above $100,000, people with access to fewer vehicles, and people with fewer children, all had higher rates of cycling to begin with and experienced statistically significant growth, at a 95% confidence level, while other groups did not. Some of these differences can be explained by possible correlation between observed variables and distance/terrain barriers not explicitly studied in this report.