We investigate whether physicians' financial incentives influence health care supply, technology diff usion, and resulting patient outcomes. In 1997, Medicare consolidated the geographic regions across which it adjusts payments forphysician services, generating area-speci fic price shocks that are plausibly exogenous with respect to health care demand. Areas with higher payment shocks experience significant increases in health care supply. On average, a 2 percent increase in payment rates leads to a 5 percent increase in care provision per patient. Elective procedures such as cataract surgery respond twice as strongly as less discretionary services like dialysis. Higher reimbursements also increase the pace of technology di ffusion, as non-radiologists acquire magnetic resonance imaging scanners more readily when prices increase. The magnitudes of our empirical findings imply that changing provider incentives explain up to one third of recent growth in spending on physician services. The incremental care has nosignifi cant impacts on mortality, hospitalizations, or heart attacks.

This booklet contains a series of tutorials with tips and techniques on how to use ArcGIS to map yourlocal community. In these opening pages I hope to put the remainder of the booklet in context byaddressing the more fundamental question of why it is a good idea to map your community. I willsuggest that there are two fundamental, inter-related reasons. Quite simply, people should map theircommunity to:1 = Place themselves on the map, helping t o build a sense of place in the world, and2 - Place local issues on the map, enabling better investigation and analysis.

Although a large literature exists on the United States labor market experiences of low-skilled immigrant men, relatively few studies have examined the labor market position of highly skilled immigrant women. The current study explores the issue of labor market discrimination and examines the extent to which highly skilled immigrant women experience an earnings disadvantage as a result of both gender status and nativity status. Relying on data from the 2000 US Decennial Census 5-Percent Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample and using an augmented Oaxaca decomposition technique, this study finds that highlyskilled immigrant women do experience a double earnings penalty. In addition, the results suggest that nativity status explains a larger portion of the double earnings penalty than gender status. These findings are important in light of the higher emigration rates for skilled women than for skilled men in regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Oceania.

The consular assistance to the national citizen of the sending State is provided in article 5 of the Convention of Vienna on Consular Relations between the diverse consular functions. The article 36 of the same diploma with the purpose of making the exercise of consular functions easy it grants rights to the foreign citizen and to the sending State; and impose duties to the local authorities of the receiving State. It requires that the local authorities inform, without delay, the competent consular post as to the detention of a national citizen of the sending State. The local authorities will also have to inform the foreign prisoner about such right, at the pisoners request, the authorities shall notify the detention to the consulate; besides authorize the access of the consular officers to the prisoner. This piece, analyzes the importance of this right, specially in the cases of death penalty; and describes the Consular Assistance institute, particularly, in respect to Mexican immigrants prisoners with a death penalty sentence in the United States. The relevance of the migratory phenomenon in Latin America, above all of the Mexicans in United States, makes this situation a vital example. It contributes, in this sense, with the discussion of international law in consular matters, as an instrument of citizenship and human rights achievement. It presents the International Court of Justice position - main international law judicial organism to solution of conflict between States - and, by comparison, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights position, in the regional sphere. Upon the analysis of International Law and the main contingent of migrants in the United States circumstances - the Latin-Americans, and among them, the Mexicans, this piece contributes to a better understanding of the integration process on the continent.

The impending retirement of the baby boom cohort represents the first time in the history of the United States that such a large and well-educated group of workers will exit the labor force. This could imply skill shortages in the U.S. economy. We develop medium-term labor force projections of the educational demands on the workforce and the supply of workers by education to assess the potential for skill imbalances to emerge. Based on our formal projections, we see little likelihood of skill shortagesemerging by the end of this decade. More tentatively, though, skill shortages are more likely as all of thebaby boomers retire in later years, and skill shortages are more likely in the medium-term in states with large and growing immigrant populations. We discuss conflicting evidence on skill shortages based on alternative projections as well as criticisms of the definition of skill requirements, concluding that our projections are likely the most reasonable.

The publishing of data with privacy guarantees is a task typically performed by a data curator who is expected to provide guarantees for the data he publishes in quantitative fashion, via a privacy criterion (e.g., k-anonymity, l-diversity). The anonymization of data is typically performed off-line. In this paper, we provide algorithmic tools that facilitate the negotiation for the anonymization scheme of a data set in user time. Our method takes as input a set of user constraints for (i) suppression, (ii) generalization and (iii) a privacy criterion (k-anonymity, l-diversity) and returns (a) either an anonymization scheme that fulfills these constraints or, (b) three approximations to the user request based on the idea of keeping the two of the three values of the user input fixed and finding the closest possible approximation for the third parameter. The proposed algorithm involves precomputing suitable histograms for all the different anonymization schemes that a global recoding method can follow. This allows computing exact answers extremely fast (in the order of few milliseconds).

A Public Agenda survey of young adults sheds light on why so many don't finish college.

This paper studies the extent to which the housing boom and subsequent housing bust within the U.S. during the 2000s masked (and then subsequently unmasked) the sharp, ongoing decline in the manufacturing sector. We exploit cross-city variation in manufacturing declines and housing booms during the 2000-2007 period, and we jointly estimate the effect of both types of shocks on local employment and wages. Focusing on the 2000-2007 period, we find that a one standard deviation negative manufacturing shock increases the non-employment rate of non-college-educated men by 1 percentage point, and we find that a one standard deviation positive housing price shock reduces the non-employment rate for this group by 1.2 percentage points, enough to fully offset the effects of the adverse manufacturing shock. Roughly half of the "offsetting" appears to come from increased construction employment, with the remainder coming through other sectors that are affected by shocks to local housing prices. We find that other demographic groups are affected by both of these shocks to a lesser extent. Finally, we use these estimates to construct counter factuals assessing how aggregate employment would have evolved during the 2000s absent the housing boom/bust cycle, and we find that roughly 40 percent of the increasein non-employment between 2007 and 2011 can be attributed to the decline in manufacturing employment that occurred within the U.S. during the 2000s. In particular, we find that much of the recent increase in non-employment would have occurred earlier had it not been for the large temporary boom in local housing prices.

We provide new estimates of migrant flows into and out of America during the Age of Mass Migration at the turn of the twentieth century. Our analysis is based on a novel data set of administrative records covering the universe of 24 million migrants who entered Ellis Island, New York between 1892 and 1924. We use these records to measure inflows into New York, and then scale-up these figures to estimate migrant inflows into America as a whole. Combining these flow estimates with census data on the stock of foreign-born in America in 1900, 1910 and 1920, we conduct a demographic accounting exercise to estimate out-migration rates in aggregate and for each nationality-age-gender cohort. This exercise overturns common wisdom on two fronts. First, we estimate flows into the US to be 20% and 170% higher than stated in official statistics for the 1900-10 and 1910-20 decades, respectively. Second, once mortality is accounted for, we estimate out-migration rates from the US to be around .6 for the 1900-10 decade and around .75 for the 1910-20. These figures are over twice as high as official estimates for each decade. That migration was effectively a two-way flow between the US and the sending countries has major implications for understanding the potential selection of immigrants that chose to permanently reside in the US, their impact on Americans in labor markets, and institutional change in America and sending countries.

Goldin and Katzs The Race between Education and Technology is a monumental achievement that supplies a unified framework for interpreting how the demand and supply of human capital have shaped the distribution of earnings in the U.S. labor market over the twentieth century. This essay reviews the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of this work and documents the success of Goldin and Katzs framework in accounting for numerous broad labor market trends. The essay also considers areas where the framework falls short in explaining several key labor market puzzlesof recent decades and argues that these shortcomings can potentially be overcome by relaxing the implicit equivalence drawn between workers skills and their job tasks in the conceptual framework on which Goldin and Katz build. The essay argues that allowing for a richer set of interactions between skills and technologies in accomplishing job tasks both augments and refines the predictions of Goldin and Katzs approach and suggests an even more important role for human capital in economic growth than indicated by their analysis.

The Ku Klux Klan reached its heyday in the mid-1920s, claiming millions of members.In this paper, we analyze the 1920s Klan, those who joined it, and its social and political impact.We utilize a wide range of archival data sources including information from Klan membershiproles, applications, robe-order forms, an internal audit of the Klan by Ernst and Ernst, and acensus that the Klan conducted after an internal scandal. Combining these sources with data fromthe 1920 and 1930 U.S. Censuses, we find that individuals who joined the Klan in some citieswere better educated and more likely to hold professional jobs than the typical American.Surprisingly, we find few tangible social or political impacts of the Klan. There is little evidencethat the Klan had an effect on black or foreign born residential mobility, or on lynching patterns.While historians have argued that the Klan was successful in getting candidates they favoredelected, statistical analysis suggests that any direct impact of the Klan was likely small. The Klanwas enormously successful, however, in generating revenue for its leadership through initiationfees, dues, and sales of robes and other goods to its members. Based on these facts, we argue that, rather than a terrorist organization, the 1920s Klan is best described as a social organization with a wildly successful multi-level marketing structure fueled by an army of highly-incentivizedsales agents selling hatred, religious intolerance, and fraternity in a time and place where there was tremendous demand.

The relationship between earnings returns to human capital characteristics by race and immigration status was explored. Data were from the 2000 U.S. census (5%) and the 2005 ACS. ANOVA was employed to compare groups on earnings and regression was utilized to investitate earnings returns to immigrants by race. Considerable disparities emerged. African born whites had the highest educational attainment, followed by African born Blacks; foreign born whites, native born whites, and native born Blacks. Rankings of earnings indicated a different pattern. Mean earnings were highest among African born whites, followed by foreign born whites, native born whites, and African born Blacks. Education being equal, Whites earned substantially more than native-and African-born Blacks. Human capital alone failed to explain disparities.

Entrepreneurial activity differs substantially across immigrant groups in the U.S., but relating self-employment rates in the U.S. to home country self-employment shares has provided inconclusive results. This paper offers new evidence on the robustness of the relationship between native self-employment and the self-employment decision of immigrants and their descendants. We improve over the existing literature by accounting for different proxies of entrepreneurial behavior and for determinants of self-employment in the country of origin. We find evidence of a significantly positive and robust relationship between self-employment rates of U.S. immigrants and entrepreneurial activity in their respective countries of origin. This pattern is robust and persistent across generations. In addition, the effect is increasing in GDP per capita and years since immigration. Our findings suggest that differences in self-employment across immigrants of different origin are to some degree an expression of the behavior acquired under varying economic and institutional environments.

In this paper, we apply Omi and Winant's theory of racial formation to understand how a new racial category of “Latino” is being created within Atlanta, a city firmly entrenched in a Black/White binary of race. Comparing Dominicans and Guatemalans in the Atlanta metro area, we show how two processes are “racializing” Latinos: 1) the homogenization of Latinos into a single “race” through state laws and policies and 2) the diversified understandings of and responses to race and racial categorization among Latinos based on their national origin and ethnicity and the specific Atlanta context. We argue that in moving beyond the Black/White binary, state laws that racialize Latinos create a two-dimensional category, with a homogenized “Latino” category as one axis and an illegal/legal distinction as the second axis. The meanings attached to “race” and the consequences that Latinos experience from racialization depend upon their perceived or actual legal status.

This work makes a joint analysis of prevention and saving decisions. First we determine the optimal levels of the two variables and we analyze substitution between them. Second we provide some results about the effects on optimal saving and prevention of changes in exogenous present and future wealth and in possible future loss. Finally we introduce insurance into the model and we extend the separation result, derived in the literature which studies the substitution between insurance and saving, to the case where prevention is considered too.

Schema matching is aimed at identifying semantic correspondences between elements of two database schemas. It is one of the key challenges in many database applications such as data integration and data warehousing. Before any data can be integrated, table columns in the two databases should be matched. It is a strenuous and time consuming process. To cope with this problem, many automated/semi-automated solutions have been proposed. Most of the existing solutions mainly rely on textual similarity of the data to be matched. While these approaches are valuable in many cases, they are not enough, and there exist instances of the schema matching problem for which they do not even apply. Such problem instances typically arise when the column names in the schemas and the data in the columns are opaque or difficult to interpret. Our research scope is focused on the uninterpreted matching. In this paper, we propose a five-step schema matching technique. In the first step, we find dependencies between attributes in each table. In the second step, we compute pairwise mutual information between dependent attributes only and construct a dependency graph using the mutual information as weights on arcs between attributes. In the third step, if the number of attributes in each table is different we add dummy nodes in order to complete to the same number of attributes. In the fourth stage, we find matching node pairs in the dependency graphs by running a graph-matching algorithm. In the fifth stage, we remove all attributes which are mapped to the dummies and present the results to the user. We validate our approach with experiments which show that this approach can be a useful addition to a set of existing automatic/semi- automatic schema matching techniques.

We examine whether low-skilled immigration to the United States has contributed to immigrants residential isolation by reducing native demand for public schools. We address endogeneity in school demographics using established Mexican settlement patterns in California and use a comparison group to account for immigrations broader effects. We estimate that between 1970 and 2000, the average California school district lost more than 14 non-Hispanic households with children to other districts in its metropolitan area for every 10 additional households enrolling low-English Hispanics in its public schools. By disproportionately isolating children, the native reaction to immigration may have longer-run consequences than previously thought

BACKGROUND:Overall, the incidence of papillary thyroid cancer in Hispanic women residing in the United States (US) is similar to that of non-Hispanic white women. However, little is known as to whether rates in Hispanic women vary by nativity, which may influence exposure to important risk factors.METHODS:Nativity-specific incidence rates among Hispanic women were calculated for papillary thyroid cancer using data from the California Cancer Registry (CCR) for the period 1988-2004. For the 35% of cases for whom birthplace information was not available from the CCR, nativity was statistically imputed based on age at Social Security number issuance. Population estimates were extracted based on US Census data. Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were also estimated.RESULTS: In young (age <55 years) Hispanic women, the incidence of papillary thyroid cancer among US-born women (10.65 per 100,000) was significantly greater than that for foreign-born women (6.67 per 100,000; IRR, 1.60 [95% CI, 1.44-1.77]). The opposite pattern was observed in older women. The age-specific patterns showed marked differences by nativity: among foreign-born women, rates increased slowly until age 70 years, whereas among US-born women, incidence rates peaked during the reproductive years. Incidence rates increased over the study period in all subgroups.CONCLUSION: Incidence rates of papillary thyroid cancer vary by nativity and age among Hispanic women residing in California. These patterns can provide insight for future etiologic investigations of modifiable risk factors for this increasingly common and understudied cancer.