The present study revisits Litwak and Longinos seminal article, Migration Patterns among the Elderly: A Developmental Perspective. Data from the American Community Survey, 2005-2007 are exploited to partially replicate and build on the original study. Findings indicate that Florida later-life migrant exchanges with selected states in the Northeast and Midwest appear to be characterized by positively selected in-bound streams and negatively selected out-bound streams, consistent with the results reported by Litwak and Longino. The amenity in-migrant, assistance out-migrant pattern is also evident in the exchange of older migrants between Florida and other regions, excepting the West. Older in-migrants to Arizona from the Midwest and West similarly appear to be positively selected compared to their out-bound counterparts leaving Arizona for destinations in those same regions. Implications of these results are discussed together with study limitations and directions for further research.

We propose a theory of skill mobility across cities. It predicts the well documented city size-wage premium: the wage distribution in large cities first-order stochastically dominates that in small cities. Yet, because this premium is reflected in higher house prices, this does not necessarily imply that this stochastic dominance relation also exists in the distribution of skills. Instead, we find there is second-order stochastic dominance in the skill distribution. The demand for skills is non-monotonic as our model predicts a Sinatra as well as an Eminem effect: both the very high and the very low skilled disproportionately sort into the biggest cities, while those with medium skill levels sort into small cities. The pattern of spatial sorting is explained by a technology with a varying elasticity of substitution that is decreasing in skill density. Using CPS data on wages and Census data on house prices, we find that this technology is consistent with the observed patterns of skills.

Public higher education is a large enterprise in the United States. Total state expenditures for higher education totaled nearly $152 billion dollars in FY2008, accounting for over ten percent of total state expenditures and representing the single largest category of discretionary spending in most states (NASBO, 2009). The last threedecades have witnessed the introduction of hundreds of pieces of legislation across states which make structural changes to state higher education governance systems(Marcus, 1997; McLendon, Deaton, and Hearn, 2007). Despite the ubiquity of state higher education governance change much remains unknown, both in terms of why states choose to enact reforms as well as the implications of state governancearrangements for institutional performance.This dissertation attempts to fill these critical gaps in knowledge. First, it surveys the historical development of state higher education governance structures and reviews thelimited empirical literature regarding the antecedents and impacts of various state approaches to higher education management. Drawing on this literature, the first empirical chapter, utilizing hazard modeling, seeks to uncover the factors associated with state enactment of legislation decentralizing higher education governance. It finds that state fiscal characteristics emerge as strong predictors of decentralization. Specifically, states with greater tax efforts are much less likely to decentralize, while states experiencing real dollar declines in tax revenues are much more likely to decentralize, all else constant.The second empirical chapter explores the implications of state management of public higher education for institutional degree completion rates. Utilizing a unique, institutional-level dataset comprising 518 public, four-year institutions of higher education in the United States, it finds that, controlling for relevant institutional-level characteristics such as institutional selectivity, mission, and per-FTE student expenditures, inter-institutional competition emerges as a powerful predictor of student degree completion. Institutions operating in more competitive environmentsdefined as states with less concentrated undergraduate enrollments and states with weaker higher education governance structuresgraduate students at higher rates than institutions operating in less competitive environments. The dissertation concludes by discussing the implications for these empirical findings for policy makers seeking to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of public higher education.

Research on Chinese Americans often centers onsuccessful economic incorporation in American society (e.g.,model minority). Unfortunately, previous research hasoverlooked the changing economic circumstances of nativeandforeign-born Chinese children, despite the fact thatChinese children living in America are diverse in socioeconomicstatus and geographic origin. In this paper, we use datafrom the 1990 and 2000 censuses to compare levels andchanges in child poverty rates among U.S.-born Chinese andimmigrants from Taiwan, Mainland China, and Hong Kong,and to investigate how changes in maternal employment andfamily structure (including cohabitation) contributed to thedecline in poverty rates in the 1990s. Compared to otherAsian Americans and non-Asians, Chinese children in theU.S. are less likely to live in poverty, thanks in part to moremarried-couple families and higher levels of maternalemployment. Yet, child poverty rates vary among ChineseAmerican subpopulationsbeing lowest for children ofU.S.-born Chinese and highest for children of mainland-bornChinese. In addition, we find that poverty among U.S.-bornand Taiwan-born Chinese would have been even lower hadtheir rates of divorce and cohabitation had been similar tothose for mainland-born and Hong Kong-born Chinese.

How many "American jobs" have U.S.-born workers lost due to immigration and offshoring? Or, alternatively , is it possible that immigration and offshoring, by promoting cost-savings and enhanced efficiency in firms, have spurred the creation of jobs for U.S. natives? We consider a multi-sector version of the Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) model with a continuum of tasks in each sector and we augment it to include immigrants with heterogeneous productivity in tasks. We use this model to jointly analyze the impact of a reduction in the costs of offshoring and of the costs of immigrating to the U.S. The model predicts that while cheaper offshoring reduces the share of natives among less skilled workers, cheaper immigration does not, but rather reduces the share of offshored jobs instead. Moreover, since both phenomena have a positive "cost-savings" effect they may leave unaffected, or even increase, total native employment of less skilled workers. Our model also predicts that offshoring will push natives toward jobs that are more intensive in communication-interactive skills and away from those that are manual and routine intensive. We test the predictions of the model on data for 58 U.S. manufacturing industries over the period 2000-2007 and find evidence in favor of a positive productivity effect such that immigration has a positive net effect on native employment while offshoring has no effect on it. We also find some evidence that offshoring has pushed natives toward more communication-intensive tasks while it has pushed immigrants away from them. participants in several seminars and conferences for useful comments and suggestions.

This study is about the role of immigrants and minority businesses in a recent community development initiative administered by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The Federal Renewal Community, Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community (RC/EZ/EC) programs spanned the Clinton and Bush administrations and promised to be a synthesis of the two poles of community development policy in that the Federal government would invest in people in a particular place. The regulatory goals of this program are to develop community and faith-based partnerships, promote economic opportunity and advance sustainable community development. Local governments applied for and won the first wave of 8 EZ and 65 ECs in 1994. Later HUD designated 15 urban EZs in 1998 and in the year 2001 designated 8 EZs and 40 Renewal Communities. Meanwhile, the immigration to the US had increased dramatically through workers, refugee inflows and family reunification. How did the RC/EZ/EC program that was targeted to neighborhoods with high poverty and unemployment incorporate immigrants compared to native born? The introduction reviews the evolution of the program in the context of community development and entrepreneurship in the United States. The introduction also describes specific program components using a typology of four types of communities 1) those with high immigration and services targeted to immigrants; 2) those with low immigration and no services targeted to immigrants; 3) those with high immigration but without services targeted to immigrants and 4) those with low immigration but services targeted to immigrants none the less.The most interesting finding from the analysis of the reports is that about one third of low immigration communities actively recruit immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurs in their community economic development strategy.The second chapter asks if there a policy treatment effect of the EZECs compared to the rest of the county on entrepreneurship controlling for the jobs housing imbalance and longitudinal immigration trends. The rate of native born entrepreneurs in wage credit EZs increased 14 to 24% from 1990 to 2000 holding other variables constant (N=134). In regards to the impact of the EZEC on the jobs housing imbalance, there was a 6 to 17% reduction in target areas compared to the rest of the county holding other variables constant (N=162). The third chapter compares changes from 1990 to 2007 in business and non-profit establishments in RC/EZ/ECs in California, chosen because it is a high immigration state, and Tennessee, a low immigration state, using the National Establishment Time Series Database. T here was a 25% increase in jobs for businesses with five or fewer employees in the wage credit areas during the wage credit period holding pre-intervention levels and trends for control and other treatment groups constant. However, minority businesses in California in wage credit areas experienced a 15% reduction in job growth holding other variables constant. The biggest effect size was a doubling of new wage credit eligible businesses in wage credit areas. On the other hand, the retail sector experienced a one time 30% reduction in new firms. For businesses with five or fewer employees, there was a 23% increase in new businesses holding other variables constant, but this was accompanied by a 3% reduction in the rate of new business formation. Minority businesses in Tennessee also saw a 115% increase in new businesses. The last section concludes with recommendations for theory, research and policy. In particular, the Obama Administration has no plans to continue the RC/EZ/EC program. The new urban program is called the Sustainable Communities program and this is tied to parallel programs in the Department of transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. While the emphasis on sustainability can recover a missed opportunities in the EZ/EC principals, the shift to a regional planning approach may lead to disinvestment in low income neighborhoods that are not well connected to transit. Overall, the while the literature is mixed on the impact of the RC/EZ/EC program on neighborhoods, my research adds to the literature that argues that the program has a net social gain. However, additional outreach, training and credit strategies are needed to reach immigrant and minority entrepreneurs.

This thesis explores an unduly neglected yet vitally important subject in the history of hospitals: patients. Although much about them remains unclear, the knowledge on who they were is essential to the interpretation of what hospitals were because well into the 20th century hospital admission had as much to do with the person suffering from illness as to do with the illness itself. Hospital patients were to such an extent a socially designated group. This thesis seeks to understand who they were. This thesis focuses on the patients in Presbyterian, Cook County, and Dunning Hospitals in Chicago from the late 19th to early 20th century. Dunning Hospital was a state mental institution; Cook County Hospital was a public hospital for the sick poor; and Presbyterian Hospital was a private hospital for the sick who could afford better accommodations. What makes those hospitals worthy of scrutiny is their close integration. Jury trials over the commitment of the allegedly insane took place in Cook County Hospital, which . . .

Growth in immigration flows in the past three decadeshas almost tripled the size of the foreign-born populationin the United States. Between 1980 and 2007, thenumber of immigrants increased from 14 million to 38 million.1 The rate of growth was fastest in the 1990s, whenimmigrants increased from 20 million in 1990 to 31 millionby 2000. Their numbers continued to increase steadily duringthe 2000s and reached 38 million in 2007.

Occupation categories in the U.S. Censuses of Population change every ten years. Meyer and Osborne (2005) proposed a standardized category system to report consistent detailed occupational data from the 1960 to 2000 Censuses, based on the occupations originally reported. This paper explores imputation of standardized occupation on the basis of further information about the respondent and special data sets from the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics which apply two Census occupation category systems to samples of respondents in the Current Population Survey. This technique uses more detail and in particular situations can be more accurate on average.

Metropolitan areas in the US are characterized by enormous differences in average income, earnings, and factor productivity. The income of individuals located in metropolitan areas at the top of the income distribution is more than double the income of observationally similar individuals located in metropolitan areas at the bottom of the distribution. These differences reflect, at least in part, variation in local productivity. Metropolitan areas in the US are also characterized by enormous differences in cost of living. These differences in cost of living are mostly due to differences in the cost of land and therefore housing. For example, the average cost of housing in metropolitan areas like Anniston, AL or Decatur, AL is about half of the average cost of housing in metropolitan areas like Naples, FL or Atlanta, GA. The existing data on average income by city or state do not take into account these cost of living differences, and therefore provide a potentially inaccurate picture of the geographical distribution of households with a low standard of living. Additionally, even within a metropolitan area, different income groups may be exposed to different price levels, if for example, retailers are less available in poor areas, or if the poor have higher search costs because of lack of transportation. Also, to the extent . . .

Many workers experience nonstandard work arrangements, such as being part time, an independent contractor, or working non-daytime hours. This article reviews existing literature and presents primary data on the United States' nonstandard workforce to make predictions about its possible growth during the current economic crisis. Analyses suggest substantial but temporary growth in the involuntary part-time workforce, as well as continued long-term growth of part-time primary earners. There will likely be a cyclical decline in temporary-help employment, contrasted with continued long-term growth of independent contractors. Existing research does not suggest growth in the prevalence of nonstandard schedules.

In this paper, we propose a Bayesian simultaneous demand andsupply model for aggregate data in a differentiated product market. The proposed method treats price endogeneity and consumer heterogeneity as well as requires only aggregate data. In the Bayesian estimation, we use an MCMC algorithm including the data augmentation, Gibbs sampler and Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. Our likelihood for the demand and supply model is directly derived from the endogenous sales volume and price unlike a past similar framework. To show validity of our proposed method, we perform an analysis of simulated data, and apply our method to data from the U.S. automobile market.

We measure the extent to which skilled immigrants increase innovation in the United States. The 2003 National Survey of College Graduates shows that immigrants patent at double the native rate, due to their disproportionately holding science and engineering degrees. Using a 1940-2000 state panel, we show that a 1 percentage point increase in immigrant college graduates' population share increases patents per capita by 9-18 percent. Our instrument for the change in the skilled immigrant share is based on the 1940 distribution across states of immigrants from various source regions and the subsequent national increase in skilled immigration from these regions.

New data from the IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) project permit anexploration of the demographic basis for ethnic survival across successive generations. Ifirst explore the degree of ethnic blending among the grandchildren of early- to mid-19thcenturyGerman immigrants; second, these descendants own marital choices; and third,the likely composition of the fourth generation to which they would give birth.Fundamental questions include: How high is the rate of single versus mixed origins afterso many generations in America? How large an absolute number of single-originindividuals remain (given the combined impact of out-marriage, on the one hand, andcumulative fertility, on the other)? How much less likely are single-origin individuals ofthe third generation to in-marry relative to those in the second generation? And how doall these patterns differ across 31,000 local geographic areas? I exploit the full-count1880 Census dataset and the Linked Representative Sample, which captures males in1880 as well as in one of the 190030 enumerations. Limiting attention to those whowere adolescents in 1880, we have three generations worth of ethnic information on eachsample member traced across time (birthplace as well as parents and grandparentsbirthplaces, from their parents responses) and ethnic information covering twogenerations for the women they eventually married.

This paper develops practical methods for relaxing the missing at random assumption when estimatingmodels of conditional quantiles with missing outcome data and discrete covariates. We restrict theGHJUHHof non-ignorable selection governing the missingness process by imposing bounds on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) distance between the distribution of outcomes among missing observations and theoverall (unselected) distribution. Two methods are developed for conducting inference in this environment.The first allows us to perform finite sample inference on the identified set and is well suited to testsof model specification. The second enables us to conduct inference on the parameters of potentiallymisspecified models. To illustrate our techniques, we revisit the results of Angrist, Chernozhukov,and Fernandez-Val (2006) regarding changes across Decennial Censuses in the quantile specific returnsto schooling.

This paper proposes a convenient measure of the degree of distributional overlap, both parametric and nonparametric, useful in measuring the degree of Polarization, Alienation, and Convergence. We show the measure is asymptotically normally distributed, making it amenable to inference in consequence. This Overlap measure can be used in the univariate and multivariate framework, and three examples are used to illustrate its use. The nonparametric Overlap Index has two sources of bias, the first being a positive bias induced by the unknown intersection point of the underlying distribution and the second being a negative bias induced by the expectation of cell probabilities being less than the conditional expected values. We show that the inconsistency problem generated by the first bias, prevalent within this class of Goodness of Fit measure, is limited by the number of intersection points of the underlying distributions. A Monte Carlo study was used to examine the biases, and it was found that the latter bias dominates the former. These biases can be diluted by increasing the number of partitions, but prevails asymptotically nonetheless.

This paper examines the role that American Freemasonry played in the historical expansion of the American educational system. I find evidence that 19th century Freemasonry had a significant positive impact on educational enrollment during and after the rapid rise of the `common school' in the late 19th century. And in what is a striking example of the `path dependence' of social institutions, I show that this effect persisted through the expansion of American high schools in the 1910s-1940s even after the waning of the influence of this organization. I provide evidence that Freemasonry's impact was particularly significant in areas that were the most heterogeneous - both ethnically and religiously. This, combined with the the further observation that areas with more Freemasons had higher levels of local taxation, suggests that Freemasonry helped communities overcome the common good problem. I provide evidence against potential reverse causality by demonstrating that Freemasons did not tend to migrate to areas with existing public education systems. Further, by exploiting a panel data set of enrollment data, I provide evidence that unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity are not driving the observed relationship. In a voting model augmented to allow for altruism I demonstrate the plausibility of these results. In particular I show how a relatively small number of Freemasons could affect the equilibrium provision of public education and why it is unsurprising to find that the impact of Freemasonry is larger in more heterogeneous areas.

We study the correlates of immigrant location and migration choices to address the following questions: What location-specific, economic, and demographic factors are associated with these choices? Does the influence of these factors differ by immigrant characteristics? What are the factors associated with the observed increase in immigrant geographic dispersion during the 1990s? Our analysis suggests that: (1) There is significant heterogeneity in the correlates of immigrant location and migration choices; associations vary by immigrant birthplace, age, gender, education, and duration of residence in the United States. (2) Economic factors are, for the most part, weakly associated with immigrant location decisions. (3) Immigrants appear to be more attracted to states with large (growing) populations; less attracted to states with a high proportion of other foreign-born persons; more attracted to states with high unionization, and less attracted to states with high crime. (4) The association between location-specific characteristics and immigrant location choices changed between 1990 and 2000 for some immigrant groups and this explains most of the increase in geographic dispersion during the 1990s. In contrast, changes in location attributes and changes in immigrant composition explain relatively little of the increase in dispersion.