Humans are the most important drivers of invasive species introduction and natural habitat transformation globally. Ecological differences between areas of dense human habitation and minimally managed natural habitats were explored across an urban-to-rural gradient of land use in southern New England. These differences were examined through presence/absence and leaf functional traits for a set of invasive species; and urban and rural environmental conditions. Some species were more restricted to particular sites than others along the urbanization gradient, based on introduction history and habitat preference. A priori urban-classified species showed trait values associated with drought tolerance, including higher LWR, greater leaf thickness, higher LDMC and lower SLA. Finally, urban habitats were found to be significantly different from rural habitats. Urban soils were more alkaline, and had higher lead concentrations and sand content than rural soils. Urban habitats had more open canopies, impervious surface, patch forests, and induced edge habitats than rural habitats. Our findings suggest that urban environmental conditions contribute to an urban drought island syndrome and will favor species capable of tolerating drought.

In 1978, California passed one of the most significant tax changes initiated by voters in the United States. Proposition 13 lowered property tax rates and restricted future property tax increases. In this paper, we study the implications of Proposition 13 on house prices, housing turnover, and household welfare in an economy populated with overlapping generations of agents who derive utility from consuming goods and housing. For our benchmark calibration, the introduction of Proposition 13 leads to an 18% increase in house prices and a 17% decrease in the probability of moving. We study the transition dynamics of moving from an economy featuring Proposition 13 to alternative revenue-neutral regimes with proportional real estate taxes. Overall, our findings indicate that elimination of Proposition 13 leads to small changes in house prices and modest increases in mobility depending on how revenue neutrality is achieved. Welfare gains of reform are quite large and stem mostly from the decline in the tax burden on those who are young and borrowing constrained.

Elderly individuals exhibit wide disparities in their sources of income. For those in the bottom half of the income distribution, Social Security is the most important source of support; program changes would directly affect their well-being. Income from private pensions, assets, and earnings are relatively more important for higher-income elderly individuals, who have more diverse income sources. The trend from private sector defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans has shifted responsibility for retirement security to individuals. A significant subset of the population is unlikely to be able to sustain their standard of living in retirement without higher pre-retirement saving.

In 2013, a cohort of youth-serving nonprofits in Washington, D.C. completed a self-assessment and quality improvement process led by the National Youth Employment Coalition. The nonprofits, all of which provide education, training, and employment-related services to young people aged 14 to 24, assessed themselves against a set of quality standards and identified data collection, data analysis, and performance management as areas for improvement. In response, the nonprofits developed performance improvement plans and expressed interest in continuing the dialogue about how to improve programs and measure progress toward the goal of preparing young people for employment and career advancement. However, nonprofit organizations do not operate in a vacuum; they are one part of a broader ecosystem of funders, policymakers, and other service providers. Accordingly, this papers recommendations to improve youth employment services and outcomes involve an array of stakeholders: Funders, public and private, and direct service providers should co-invest in performance management and quality improvement at the organizational level, and should also work together to develop a more coherent youth employment system based on a career pathways framework.

This research furthers the knowledge of how skill and the demand for skill impacts regional labor markets. Skill more specifically measures the human capital level of the labor force and its heterogeneity. The first essay provides evidence that men and women as labor inputs into the production function may have inherently different butcomplementary skill sets. Utilizing regional differences in female employment share, the impact of women on productivity is estimated using an instrumentalvariables approach to determine causality.Inherent differences in skill may have contributed to women and certain cities faring better in the most recent recessions. By combining employment data with detaileddata on specific skills by occupation, the value of skills over time and within recessions is estimated and any recession-proof skills rooted out. Human capital and more specifically cognitive skills are rewarded in the economy through wages but also through a higher probability of employment over time and within recessions.Demand shocks for specifically skilled workers in particular those in the oil and gas extraction industry have also affected economic growth in regions. The labor market restructuring that occurs as a result of displacement effects and the higher wages that result from a natural resource boom shed light on the natural resource curse noted in the literature.

This paper provides an examination of the notion of distance and ordering between the whole distributions of earnings for men and women, and some related counterfactuals. We investigate aggregative measures and their statistical implementation and evaluation. We provide a synthesis of the decisiontheoretic basis of measures for such things as the gender gap. Strong comparison/ordering of distributions of outcomes requires subjective evaluation functions reflecting decision makers preferences. Examples include popular notions of the gender gap based on means or medians. These are seen to be supported by rather strong subjective evaluation of heterogenous outcomes at different quantiles. We examine a more flexible and well supported distribution metric based on entropies. We then examine complementary (weak) uniform ranking of distributed outcomes over large classes of preferences by such methods and tests as stochastic dominance. The papers primary purpose is to provide a comprehensive application of these two interrelated approaches based on the most popular data and models in the existing literature for the US labor market for the last several decades. Selection to the labor force is a major issue and requires new techniques for its treatment at the entire distribution level, compared to existing approaches to the conditional mean and median. We adopt a new quantile-copula approach to modeling the participation decision and find selection is consequential for a deeper understanding of the gap and its movement over the economic cycle. We also provide decomposition of the gap to market pricing effects and human characteristic effects based on counterfactual distributions derived from the conditional quantiles. We highlight the importance of education by a comparative analysis of different educational groups.

Disparities in health status, health behaviors, and health care access on the basis of sexual orientation have been largely ignored by researchers until recently. Literature reviews in public health, medicine, and nursing note a dearth of studies related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population and report a disproportionate focus on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (Bohmer, 2002; Snyder, 2011; Johnson, Smyer, & Yucha, 2012). Meanwhile, inequities in health are on the basis of sexual orientation were recently recognized by health policy makers as a public health priority and targeted for elimination (Institute of medicine, 2011). For example, Healthy People 2020 goals, set by the U.S. federal government to monitor improvements in population health, now include improving "the health, safety, and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals" (United States Department of Health and Human Services)

The share of the U.S. population over the age of 65 was 8.1 percent in 1950, 12.4 percent in 2000, and is projected to reach 20.9 percent by 2050. The percent over 85 is projected to more than double from current levels, reaching 4.2 percent by mid-century. The aging of the U.S. population makes issues of retirement security increasingly important.Elderly individuals exhibit wide disparities in their sources of income. For those in the bottom half of the income distribution, Social Security is the most important source of support; program changes would directly affect their well-being. Income from private pensions, assets, and earnings are relatively more important for higher-income elderly individuals, who have more diverse income sources. The trend from private sector defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans has shifted a greater share of the responsibility for retirement security to individuals, and made that security more dependent on choices they make. A significant subset of the population is unlikely to be able to sustain their standard of living in retirement without higher pre-retirement saving.

Ο Βόλος συγκεντρώνει μια πλούσια βιβλιογραφία και αρθρογραφία που τον κάνει να ξεχωρίζει από τη γειτονική Λάρισα και τις άλλες θεσσαλικές πόλεις. Η ιστοριογραφική αυτή προτίμηση δικαιολογείται συνήθως από τη γεωγραφική του θέση, δεδομένο βέβαια που ισχύει και για τα άλλα χερσαία λιμάνια του Αρχιπελάγους και της μεσογειακής λεκάνης γενικότερα. Το ενδιαφέρον ωστόσο με το Βόλο είναι ότι συγκέντρωνε μια σειρά από χαρακτηριστικά που τον έκαναν ιδιαίτερα ελκυστικό: μοναδικό επίνειο μιας ενοποιημένης πλούσιας σε σιτηρά ενδοχώρας, λιμάνι στο κέντρο του Αιγαίου, κοντά δηλαδή σε Θεσσαλονίκη, Πειραιά, Ερμούπολη, γειτνίαση με τους ορεινούς βιοτεχνικούς οικισμούς του Πηλίου, η συνοριακή του θέση που στη διάρκεια του 19ου αιώνα αλλάζει, μετατρέποντάς το από το νοτιότερο λιμάνι της Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας στο βορειότερο του νεοσύστατου ελληνικού κράτους. Η πλειονότητα των σχετικών μελετών, περιορίζουν την ιστορική τους ανάλυση για τη δημιουργία της πόλης σε παραπομπές, σχεδόν ευλαβικά, στους γηγενείς ιστορικούς αφηγητές Γ. Κορδάτο και Δ. Τσοποτό ή/και παραθέτουν επιλεκτικά διάσπαρτες προξενικές αναφορές. Οι πληροφορίες των εργασιών . . .

The US has higher infant mortality than peer countries. In this paper, we combine micro-data from the US with similar data from four European countries to investigate this US infant mortality disadvantage. The US disadvantage persists after adjusting for potential differential reporting of births near the threshold of viability. While the importance of birth weight varies across comparison countries, relative to all comparison countries the US has similar neonatal (<1 month) mortality but higher postneonatal (1-12 months) mortality. We document similar patterns across Census divisions within the US. The postneonatal mortality disadvantage is driven by poor birth outcomes among lower socioeconomic status individuals.

In the postwar era, Republican voters have become increasingly more likely than Democratic voters to live in non-urban counties, and the two parties distributed across increasingly distinct geographic enclaves. Public policies that shape geographic space have been a major contributor to this geographic polarization. This article examines the effect of the Interstate Highway System, the largest public works project in American history, on this phenomenon. Drawing on a historical database of postwar U.S. highway construction since passage of 1956 highway legislation, it shows that suburban counties with Interstate became more Republican than they would have otherwise, primarily in the less urbanized South and where highways were built earlier. Metropolitan areas with denser Interstate networks also became more polarized. Analysis of the Youth-Parent Socialization Panel Study (1965-1997) reveals individual-level mechanisms underlying these changes: suburbs along Interstates facilitated white flight and became home to more affluent residents, reinforcing partisan geographic polarization.

This paper analyzes the effect of resource-based economic specialization on women's labor market outcomes. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields in the Southern United States coupled with a county-level panel derived from US Census data for 1900-1940, we specifically test the hypothesis that the presence of mineral resources can induce changes in the sectoral composition of the local economy that are detrimental to women's labor market outcomes. We find evidence that the discovery of oil at the county level may constitute a substantial male biased demand shock to local labor markets, as it is associated with a higher gender pay gap. However, we find no evidence that oil wealth lowers female labor force participation or has any impact on local marriage and fertility patterns. While our results are consistent with oil shocks limiting female labor market opportunities in some sectors (mainly manufacturing), this effect tends to be compensated by the higher availability of service sector jobs for women who are therefore not driven out of the labor market.

This study explores the influence of US metropolitan spatial structure evolution on regional employment growth rate. The first part of this study investigates the evolution of US metropolitan spatial structures from 2000 to 2010. At the macro level, I categorized metropolitan areas (metros) into three groups (i.e., monocentric, polycentric, and coreless) based on the number of employment centers these metros had in 2000 and 2010. At the micro level, I sub-grouped the three macro spatial structure groups into micro-level clusters based on each metro’s rank of employment shares in five sub-metro locations: the main-center, sub-centers, non-center clusters, non-cluster urban areas, and rural areas. The results show that (1) among 361 US metros, over 80 percent of metros remained in their original macro spatial structure type, and (2) less than 10 percent of metros experienced employment decentralization. The second part of this study explores the influence of spatial structure evolution on regional growth rate. At the macro level, a series of two-sample t-tests showed that the group of monocentric metros that remained monocentric had no significant difference in employment growth rate from the group of monocentric metros that evolved to be polycentric. Conversely, the group of polycentric metros that remained polycentric had a higher employment growth rate than the group of polycentric metros that evolved to be monocentric. At the micro level, a regression analysis showed that the initial sub-centers’ employment share had a larger positive effect on regional employment growth rate than the initial main-center employment share, while the change in non-cluster urban areas’ employment share had a larger . ..

This dissertation is composed of three chapters. In Chapter 1 I first document a slowdown in the growth of the level of employment in high-skill occupations in the United States beginning around the year 2000 that resulted in a slight decrease in the share of the working population employed in high skill occupations. I then show that this decrease is mainly driven by demographic changes associated with the exit from the high skill employment of the first baby boom generation, which had a high rate of employment in high skill occupations. Finally, I provide evidence that suggests that this exit from high-skill employment is not caused by a negative demand shock. The finding suggests that the US economy has experienced a negative skill supply shock and that the slowdown in the share of individuals employed in high-skill occupations will continue further. In Chapter 2 I estimate the effect of increased access to credit on migration from Mexico to the United States. A newly created bank that serves low and middle income clients, Banco Azteca, opened more than 800 bank branches in October 2002. I first provide evidence of increased access to credit and migration in counties in which the Bank opened. I then show that migrants are more negatively selected after 2002. However, this is not exclusive to counties affected by the opening of the bank. In Chapter 3, Pedro Aratanha and I match newly collected individual-level administrative data from Brazil's largest microlending institution to their clients' year, month, and municipality of birth data on rainfall to estimate the effect of in utero drought exposure on bank clients' business performance during adulthood. We find that being exposed to a drought is associated with about 2 percent lower revenue.

In the beginning of the 1890s, counties located in the Cotton Belt of the American South were hit by an agricultural plague, the boll weevil, that adversely affected cotton production and hence the demand for labor. We use variation in the incidence of the boll weevil multiplied with counties’ initial cotton share to construct instrumental variables estimates of the labor supply curve. Controlling for county and state-by-time fixed effects, we find a significant positive response of labor supply to changes in labor income. The effect is particularly large for females, consistent with evidence that females had a comparative advantage in picking cotton.

This paper investigates the occupational implications of contemporary migration flows by region and race. Even though the expectation of a positive link between geographic and social mobility is a central tenet in the stratification literature, empirical assessments are rare and have produced inconsistent results. Our analysis departs from traditional frameworks by integrating both absolute and relative notions of occupational standing for evaluating migration outcomes, comparing migrants against non-migrant peers both at origin and destination. Results document that for whites, migration is associated with higher occupational attainment both in absolute and relative terms, irrespective of the regional direction of the move. For blacks, on the other hand, absolute occupational gains are markedly absent for migration to the South, which is instead characterized by significant improvement in relative terms. The differences in absolute and relative gains by race and direction of the move helps contextualize the considerable black over representation in northsouth migration and highlight the implications of current internal mobility for racial stratification.

Labor market changes complicate the analysis of black womens status relative to white women because education, occupational attainment, and racegender are now less predictive of earnings. Low-wage black womens relative status has improved somewhat from 1970 to 2000, contrary to the well-documented decrease in relative status reported for all black women wage earners since 1980, but their dramatic occupational upgrading was not responsible for the trend. White-collar occupational positions formerly responsible for white womens relative earnings advantage no longer deliver that reward, as restructuring has produced a proliferation of bad jobs across occupational groups. This study argues that increasing exposure to precarious work is crucial to understanding changes in low-wage black womens relative economic status since 1970.

La actual crisis fiscal y económica que enfrenta Puerto Rico obliga a replantearnos los esquemas gubernamentales imperantes hasta el momento. En este contexto, la discusión de la descentralización gubernamental resurge como un tema importante. Tal como menciona Escobar-Lemmon (2001), las crisis políticas y económicas, así como la necesidad de implantar medidas de austeridad, han sido propulsores de los procesos de descentralización en Latinoamérica; factores que se dan en Puerto Rico hoy día. En las décadas de los ochenta y los noventa, las instituciones de financiamiento internacional forzaron medidas de ajuste estructural que imponían reducciones substanciales en el gasto público en muchos países latinoamericanos. De la misma manera, las casas acreditadoras actualmente ejercen gran presión sobre el gobierno de Puerto Rico forzando ajustes similares. Anteriormente, el proceso de descentralización en Puerto Rico había tomado auge con la Reforma Municipal del 1991, por lo que cualquier iniciativa de descentralización debe basarse en una evaluación rigurosa de los resultados de la misma. Esta reforma tuvo como pieza central la Ley Núm. 81 del 30 de agosto de 1991, conocida como la Ley de Municipios Autónomos. Esta ley establece una estructura . . .

Over the last several decades, the movement of people into North Carolina has been so large and so pervasive that we call them, collectively, the “new” North Carolinians. Some of the new North Carolinians are immigrants, but most are “domestic imports.” The new North Carolinians are changing the character of the state’s population but even as they do so, the new North Carolinians often reaffirm and strengthen traditional North Carolina ways of life. This paper reviews the context in which the migration has taken place, describes the new North Carolinians, assesses their impact on the state’s economy, and explores policy options for long-term labor supply.