It is only a tradition: making sense of Swedish Somalis' narratives of female circumcision and avoiding submission to hegemonic political discourse
Sara Johnsdotter and Birgitta Essen
Critical Social Policy 2005;25 577-589
http://csp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/25/4/577?etoc.
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at www.ingentaconnect.com.
© copyright 2005 ingenta
THE LATEST WORKING PAPERS
National Bureau of Economic Research
Week of October 3, 2005
------------------------------
Deficits and Debt in the Short and Long Run
by Benjamin M. Friedman #11630 (EFG ME PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Employment Dynamics and Business Relocation: New Evidence from the National Establishment Time Series
by David Neumark, Junfu Zhang, Brandon Wall #11647 (LS)
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11647
Entry and Competition in Local Hospital Markets
by Jean M. Abraham, Martin S. Gaynor, William B. Vogt #11649 (HC IO)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Is It Is or Is It Ain't My Obligation? Regional Debt in a Fiscal Federation
by Russell Cooper, Hubert Kempf, Dan Peled #11655 (
http://papers.nber.org/papers
What Undermines Aid's Impact on Growth?
by Raghuram G. Rajan, Arvind Subramanian #11657 (IFM PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
How Unobservable Productivity Biases the Value of a Statistical Life
by Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, Christopher Woock, James P. Ziliak #11659 (HE LE PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement
by Thomas S. Dee #11660 (CH ED)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Hospital Ownership and Financial Performance: A Quantitative Research Review
by Yu-Chu Shen, Karen Eggleston, Joseph Lau, Christopher Schmid #11662 (HC)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Religious Extremism: The Good, The Bad, and The Deadly
by Eli Berman, Laurence R. Iannaccone #11663 (LS)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Media Bias and Reputation
by Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse Shapiro #11664 (LS PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Tax Reform and Environmental Taxation
by Gilbert E. Metcalf #11665 (PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
The Effect of Joint and Several Liability Under Superfund on Brownfields
by Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman #11667 (
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Will China Eat Our Lunch or Take Us Out to Dinner? Simulating the Transition Paths of the U.S., EU, Japan, and China
by Hans Fehr, Sabine Jokisch, Laurence J. Kotlikoff #11668 (EFG IFM ITI)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Expanding School Enrollment by Subsidizing Private Schools: Lessons from Bogota
by Claudia Uribe, Richard J. Murnane, John B. Willett, Marie Andree Somers #11670 (ED)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Rethinking the Gains from Immigration: Theory and Evidence from the U.S.
by Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, Giovanni Peri #11672 (ITI LS)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Estimation and Identification of Merger Effects: An Application to Hospital Mergers
by Leemore S. Dafny #11673 (HC IO)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Minorities and Storable Votes
by Alessandra Casella, Thomas Palfrey, Raymond Riezman #11674 (ME PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Fractional Treatment Rules for Social Diversification of Indivisible Private Risks
by Charles F. Manski #11675 (PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Health Risk, Income, and the Purchase of Private Health Insurance
by M. Kate Bundorf, Bradley Herring, Mark Pauly #11677 (HC PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11677
Job Loss, Job Finding, and Unemployment in the U.S. Economy Over the Past Fifty Years
by Robert E. Hall #11678 (EFG LS)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Saving Incentives for Low- and Middle-Income Families: Evidence from a Field Experiment with H&R Block
by Esther Duflo, William Gale, Jeffrey Liebman, Peter Orszag, Emmanuel Saez #11680 (PE)
http://papers.nber.org/papers
------------------------------
Deficits and Debt in the Short and Long Run
by Benjamin M. Friedman - #11630 (EFG ME PE)
Abstract:
This paper begins by examining the persistence of movements
in the U.S. Government's budget posture. Deficits display
considerable persistence, and debt levels (relative to GDP) even more
so. Further, the degree of persistence depends on what gives rise to
budget deficits in the first place. Deficits resulting from shocks
to defense spending exhibit the greatest persistence and those from
shocks to nondefense spending the least; deficits resulting from
shocks to revenues fall in the middle.
The paper next reviews recent evidence on the impact of
changes in government debt levels (again, relative to GDP) on
interest rates. The recent literature, focusing on expected future
debt levels and expected real interest rates, indicates impacts that
are large in the context of actual movements in debt levels: for
example, an increase of 94 basis points due to the rise in the
debt-to-GDP ratio during 1981-93, and a decline of 65 basis point due
to the decline in the debt-to-GDP ratio during 1993-2001.
The paper next asks why deficits would exhibit the observed
negative correlation with key elements of investment. One answer,
following the analysis presented earlier, is that deficits are
persistent and therefore lead to changes in expected future debt
levels, which in turn affect real interest rates. A different
reason, however, revolves around the need for markets to absorb the
increased issuance of Government securities in a setting of costly
portfolio adjustment.
The paper concludes with some reflections on "the Perverse
Corollary of Stein's Law": that is, the view that in the presence of
large government deficits nothing need be done because something will
be done.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Employment Dynamics and Business Relocation: New Evidence from
the National Establishment Time Series
by David Neumark, Junfu Zhang, Brandon Wall - #11647 (LS)
Abstract:
We analyze and assess new evidence on employment dynamics from a new
data source -- the National Establishment Time Series (NETS). The
NETS offers advantages over existing data sources for studying
employment dynamics, including tracking business establishment
relocations that can contribute to job creation or destruction on a
regional level. Our primary purpose in this paper is to assess the
reliability of the NETS data along a number of dimensions, and we
conclude that it is a reliable data source although not without
limitations. We also illustrate the usefulness of the NETS data by
reporting, for California, a full decomposition of employment change
into its six constituent processes, including job creation and
destruction stemming from business relocation, which has figured
prominently in policy debates but on which there has been no
systematic evidence.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Entry and Competition in Local Hospital Markets
by Jean M. Abraham, Martin S. Gaynor, William B. Vogt - #11649 (HC IO)
Abstract:
There has been considerable consolidation in the hospital industry in
recent years. Over 900 deals occurred from 1994-2000, and many local
markets, even in large urban areas, have been reduced to monopolies,
duopolies, or triopolies. This surge in consolidation has led to
concern about competition in local markets for hospital services. We
examine the effect of market structure on competition in local
hospital markets -- specifically, does the hardness of competition
increase with the number of firms? We extend the entry model
developed by Bresnahan and Reiss to make use of quantity information,
and apply it to data on the
markets we examine, entry leads to a quick convergence to competitive
conduct. Entry reduces variable profits and increases quantity. Most
of the effects of entry come from having a second and a third firm
enter the market. The fourth entrant has little estimated effect. The
use of quantity information allows us to infer that entry is
consumer-surplus-increasing.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Is It Is or Is It Ain't My Obligation? Regional Debt in a Fiscal
Federation
by Russell Cooper, Hubert Kempf, Dan Peled - #11655 (
Abstract:
This paper studies the repayment of regional debt in a multi-region
economy with a central authority: who pays the obligation issued by a
region? With commitment, a central government will use its taxation
power to smooth distortionary taxes across regions. Absent
commitment, the central government may be induced to bailout the
regional government in order to smooth consumption and distortionary
taxes across the regions. We characterize the conditions under which
bailouts occur and their welfare implications. The gains to creating
a federation are higher when the (government spending) shocks across
regions are negatively correlated and volatile. We use these insights
to comment on actual fiscal relations in three quite different
federations: the
http://papers.nber.org/papers
What Undermines Aid's Impact on Growth?
by Raghuram G. Rajan, Arvind Subramanian - #11657 (
Abstract:
We examine one of the most important and intriguing puzzles in
economics: why it is so hard to find a robust effect of aid on the
long-term growth of poor countries, even those with good policies. We
look for a possible offset to the beneficial effects of aid, using a
methodology that exploits both cross-country and within-country
variation. We find that aid inflows have systematic adverse effects
on a country's competitiveness, as reflected in a decline in the
share of labor intensive and tradable industries in the manufacturing
sector. We find evidence suggesting that these effects stem from the
real exchange rate overvaluation caused by aid inflows. By contrast,
private-to-private flows like remittances do not seem to create these
adverse effects. We offer an explanation why and conclude with a
discussion of the policy implications of these findings.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
How Unobservable Productivity Biases the Value of a Statistical
Life
by Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, Christopher Woock, James P. Ziliak - #11659 (HE LE PE)
Abstract:
A prominent theoretical controversy in the compensating differentials
literature concerns unobservable individual productivity. Competing
models yield opposite predictions depending on whether the
unobservable productivity is safety-related skill or productivity
generally. Using five panel waves and several new measures of worker
fatality risks, first-difference estimates imply that omitting
individual heterogeneity leads to overestimates of the value of
statistical life, consistent with the latent safety-related skill
interpretation. Risk measures with less measurement error raise the
value of statistical life, the net effect being that estimates from
the static model range from $5.3 million to $6.7 million, with
dynamic model estimates somewhat higher.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
10. Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement
by Thomas S. Dee - #11660 (CH ED)
Abstract:
In the United States, girls outperform boys in measures of reading
achievement while generally underperforming in science and
mathematics. One major class of explanations for these gaps involves
the gender-based interactions between students and teachers (e.g.,
role-model and Pygmalion effects). However, the evidence on whether
these interactions actually matter is limited and contradictory. In
this study, I present new empirical evidence on whether assignment to
a same-gender teacher influences student achievement, teacher
perceptions of student performance, and student engagement. This
study's identification strategy exploits a unique "matched pairs"
feature of a major longitudinal survey. Within-student comparisons
based on these data indicate that assignment to a same-gender teacher
significantly improves the achievement of both girls and boys as well
as teacher perceptions of student performance and student engagement
with the teacher's subject. For example, assignment to a female
science teacher increases the likelihood that a girl views science as
useful for her future. However, because the middle-school teachers in
most academic subjects are female, these results also suggest that
the gender dynamics between teachers and students at this level
amplify boys' large underperformance in reading while attenuating the
more modest underperformance of girls in math and science.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Hospital Ownership and Financial Performance: A Quantitative
Research Review
by Yu-Chu Shen, Karen Eggleston, Joseph Lau, Christopher Schmid - #11662 (HC)
Abstract:
We apply meta-analytic methods to conduct a quantitative review of
the empirical literature since 1990 comparing financial performance
of US for-profit, not-for-profit, and government-owned general acute
hospitals. We find that the diverse results in the hospital ownership
literature can be explained largely by differences in authors'
underlying theoretical frameworks, assumptions about the functional
form of the dependent variables, and model specifications. Weaker
methods and functional forms tend to predict larger differences in
financial performance between not-for-profits and for-profits. The
combined estimates across studies suggest little difference in cost
among all three types of hospital ownership, and that for-profit
hospitals generate more revenue and greater profits than
not-for-profit hospitals, although the difference is only of modest
economic significance. There is little difference in revenue or
profits between government and not-for-profit hospitals.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Religious Extremism: The Good, The Bad, and The Deadly
by Eli Berman, Laurence R. Iannaccone - #11663 (LS)
Abstract:
This paper challenges conventional views of violent religious
extremism, particularly those that emphasize militant theology. We
offer an alternative analysis that helps explain the persistent
demand for religion, the different types of religious that naturally
arise, and the special attributes of the "sectarian" type. Sects are
adept at producing club goods both spiritual and material. Where
governments and economies function poorly, sects often become major
suppliers of social services, political action, and coercive force.
Their success as providers is much more due to the advantages of
their organizational structure than it is to their theology.
Religious militancy is most effectively controlled through a
combination of policies that raise the direct costs of violence,
foster religious competition, improve social services, and encourage
private enterprise.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Media Bias and Reputation
by Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse Shapiro - #11664 (LS PE)
Abstract:
A Bayesian consumer who is uncertain about the quality of an
information source will infer that the source is of higher quality
when its reports conform to the consumer's prior expectations. We use
this fact to build a model of media bias in which firms slant their
reports toward the prior beliefs of their customers in order to build
a reputation for quality. Bias emerges in our model even though it
can make all market participants worse off. The model predicts that
bias will be less severe when consumers receive independent evidence
on the true state of the world, and that competition between
independently owned news outlets can reduce bias. We present a
variety of empirical evidence consistent with these predictions.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Tax Reform and Environmental Taxation
by Gilbert E. Metcalf - #11665 (PE)
Abstract:
I measure the industry impacts of an environmental tax reform where a
carbon tax is used to finance full or partial corporate tax
integration. I find that the industry impacts of such a reform are
likely to be modest (in the sense of impacts on returns on equity).
http://papers.nber.org/papers
The Effect of Joint and Several Liability Under Superfund on Brownfields
by Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman - #11667 (
Abstract:
In response to claims that the threat of Superfund liability deters
the acquisition of potentially contaminated sites or "brownfields"
for redevelopment, the federal government and the states have enacted
laws or adopted programs to protect purchasers from liability. This
protection may be unwarranted, however, if sellers can simply adjust
the price of contaminated property downward to compensate buyers for
the liabilities associated with the property. We present a formal
model of joint and several liability under Superfund that allows us
to distinguish four different reasons that Superfund liability may
discourage the purchase of contaminated property despite the tendency
for land prices to reflect the expected transfer of liability to the
buyer. The previous literature has overlooked the four effects that
we identify, which all arise because a sale may increase the number
of defendants in a suit to recover cleanup costs. First, a sale may
increase the share of liability that a seller and a buyer may expect
to pay as a group. Second, a sale may increase the amount of damages
that the government can expect to recover from the defendants at
trial. Third, a sale may increase the total litigation costs that a
buyer and a seller may face as a group. Fourth, game theory suggests
that a sale may increase the amount that the government can expect to
extract from defendants in a settlement.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Will China Eat Our Lunch or Take Us Out to Dinner? Simulating
the Transition Paths of the U.S., EU, Japan, and China
by Hans Fehr, Sabine Jokisch, Laurence J. Kotlikoff - #11668 (EFG IFM ITI)
Abstract:
This paper develops a dynamic, life-cycle, general equilibrium model
to study the interdependent demographic, fiscal, and economic
transition paths of
countries/regions is entering a period of rapid and significant aging
requiring major fiscal adjustments.
In previous studies that excluded
needed to pay benefits along the developed world's demographic
transition would lead to capital shortage, reducing real wages per
unit of human capital. Adding
this prediction. Even though
behavior, growth rate, and fiscal policies are very different from
those of developed countries. If this continues to be the case, the
model's long run looks much brighter.
developed world's savoir with respect to its long-run supply of
capital and long-run general equilibrium prospects. And, rather than
seeing the real wage per unit of human capital fall, the West and
These wage increases are over and above those associated with
technical progress.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Expanding School Enrollment by Subsidizing Private Schools:
Lessons from Bogota
by Claudia Uribe, Richard J. Murnane, John B. Willett, Marie Andree Somers - #11670 (ED)
Abstract:
Many countries use tax revenues to subsidize private schools. Whether
these policies meet social objectives depends, in part, on the
relative quality of education provided by the two types of schools.
We use data on elementary school students and their teachers in
differences in the relative effectiveness of public and private
schools. We find that, on average, the schools in the two sectors are
equally effective. However, they produce education using very
different resource combinations. Moreover, there are large
differences in the effectiveness of schools in both sectors,
especially in the private sector. The results of our analysis shed
light on the quantity-quality tradeoff that governments in many
developing countries face in deciding how to use scarce educational
resources.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Rethinking the Gains from Immigration: Theory and Evidence from
the U.S.
by Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, Giovanni Peri - #11672 (ITI LS)
Abstract:
Recent influential empirical work has emphasized the negative impact
immigrants have on the wages of U.S.-born workers, arguing that
immigration harms less educated American workers in particular and
all U.S.-born workers in general. Because
workers belong to different skill groups that are imperfectly
substitutable, one needs to articulate a production function that
aggregates different types of labor (and accounts for complementarity
and substitution effects) in order to calculate the various effects
of immigrant labor on U.S.-born labor. We introduce such a production
function, making the crucial assumption that
workers with similar education and experience levels may nevertheless
be imperfectly substitutable, and allowing for endogenous capital
accumulation. This function successfully accounts for the negative
impact of the relative skill levels of immigrants on the relative
wages of
literature, overall immigration generates a large positive effect on
the average wages of U.S.-born workers. We show evidence of this
positive effect by estimating the impact of immigration on both
average wages and housing values across
(1970-2000). We also reproduce this positive effect by simulating the
behavior of average wages and housing prices in an open city-economy,
with optimizing U.S.-born agents who respond to an inflow of
foreign-born workers of the size and composition comparable to the
immigration of the 1990s.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Estimation and Identification of Merger Effects: An Application to Hospital Mergers
by Leemore S. Dafny - #11673 (HC IO)
Abstract:
Advances in structural demand estimation have substantially improved
economists' ability to forecast the impact of mergers. However, these
models rely on extensive assumptions about consumer choice and firm
objectives, and ultimately observational methods are needed to test
their validity. Observational studies, in turn, suffer from selection
problems arising from the fact that merging entities differ from
non-merging entities in unobserved ways. To obtain an accurate
estimate of the ex-post effect of consummated mergers, I propose a
combination of rival analysis and instrumental variables. By focusing
on the effect of merger on the behavior of rival firms, and
instrumenting for these mergers, unbiased estimates of the effect of
merger on market outcomes can be obtained. Using this methodology, I
evaluate the impact of all independent hospital mergers between 1989
and 1996 on rivals' prices. I find sharp increases in rival prices
following merger, with the greatest effect on the closest rivals. The
results for this industry are more consistent with predictions from
structural models than with prior observational estimates.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Minorities and Storable Votes
by Alessandra Casella, Thomas Palfrey, Raymond Riezman - #11674 (ME PE)
Abstract:
The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to
increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate
efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend
as desidered over a series of binary decisions. By cumulating votes
on issues that it deems most important, the minority can win
occasionally. But because the majority typically can outvote it, the
minority wins only of its strength of preferences is high and the
majority's strength of preferences is low. The result is that
aggregate efficiency either falls little or in fact rises. The
theoretical predictions are confirmed by a series of experiments: the
frequency of minority victories, the relative payoff of the minority
versus the majority, and the aggregate payoffs all match the theory.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Fractional Treatment Rules for Social Diversification of
Indivisible Private Risks
by Charles F. Manski - #11675 (PE)
Abstract:
Should a social planner treat observationally identical persons
identically? This paper shows that uniform treatment is not
necessarily desirable when a planner has only partial knowledge of
treatment response. Then there may be reason to implement a
fractional treatment rule, with positive fractions of the
observationally identical persons receiving different treatments. The
planning problems studied here share some important features:
treatment is individualistic, social welfare is a strictly increasing
function of a population mean outcome, and outcomes depend on an
unknown state of nature. They differ in the information that the
planner has about the state of nature and in how he uses this
information to make treatment choices. In particular, I compare
treatment choice using Bayes rules and the minimax-regret criterion.
Following the analysis, I put aside the literal notion of a planner
who makes decisions on behalf of society and consider the feasibility
of implementing fractional treatment rules in functioning
democracies.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Health Risk, Income, and the Purchase of Private Health
Insurance
by M. Kate Bundorf, Bradley Herring, Mark Pauly - #11677 (HC PE)
Abstract:
While many believe that an individual's health plays an important
role in both their willingness and ability to obtain health
insurance, relatively little agreement exists on how and why health
status is likely to affect coverage rates, particularly for
individuals purchasing coverage in the individual market. In this
paper, we examine the relationship between health risk and the
purchase of private health insurance and whether that relationship
differs between people purchasing coverage in the individual and
large group markets and between low and high income individuals. The
data source for our analysis is the panel component of the 1996-2002
Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). We find that health risk is
positively associated with obtaining private health insurance
coverage. The positive relationship between health risk and coverage
is stronger for individuals obtaining coverage in the large group
market than for individuals obtaining coverage in the individual
market. In the large group market, rates of coverage increase more
quickly with health risk for low than high income individuals. We
conclude that high premiums for high risks are not a significant
contributor to the large uninsured population in the
income individuals, high premiums may represent a barrier to low
risks in the large group market.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11677
Job Loss, Job Finding, and Unemployment in the U.S. Economy
Over the Past Fifty Years
by Robert E. Hall - #11678 (EFG LS)
Abstract:
New data compel a new view of events in the labor market during a
recession. Unemployment rises almost entirely because jobs become
harder to find. Recessions involve little increase in the flow of
workers out of jobs. Another important finding from new data is that
a large fraction of workers departing jobs move to new jobs without
intervening unemployment. I develop estimates of separation rates and
job-finding rates for the past 50 years, using historical data
informed by detailed recent data. The separation rate is nearly
constant while the job-finding rate shows high volatility at
business-cycle and lower frequencies. I review modern theories of
fluctuations in the job-finding rate. The challenge to these theories
is to identify mechanisms in the labor market that amplify small
changes in driving forces into fluctuations in the job-finding rate
of the high magnitude actually observed. In the standard theory
developed over the past two decades, the wage moves to offset driving
forces and the predicted magnitude of changes in the job-finding rate
is tiny. New models overcome this property by invoking a new form of
sticky wages or by introducing information and other frictions into
the employment relationship.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
Saving Incentives for Low- and Middle-Income Families: Evidence
from a Field Experiment with H&R Block
by Esther Duflo, William Gale, Jeffrey Liebman, Peter Orszag, Emmanuel Saez - #11680 (PE)
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the effects of a large randomized field
experiment carried out with H&R Block, offering matching incentives
for IRA contributions at the time of tax preparation. About 14,000
H&R Block clients, across 60 offices in predominantly low- and
middle-income neighborhoods in St. Louis, were randomly offered a 20
percent match on IRA contributions, a 50 percent match, or no match
(the control group). The evaluation generates two main findings.
First, higher match rates significantly raise IRA participation and
contributions. Take-up rates were 3 percent for the control group, 8
percent in the 20 percent match group, and 14 percent in the 50
percent match group. Average IRA contributions (including
non-contributors, excluding the match) for the 20 percent and 50
percent match groups were 4 and 7 times higher than in the control
group, respectively. Second, several additional findings are
inconsistent with the full information, rational-saver model. In
particular, we find much more modest effects on take-up and amounts
contributed from the existing Saver's Credit, which provides an
effective match for retirement saving contributions through the tax
code; we suspect that the differences may reflect the complexity of
the Saver's Credit as enacted, and the way in which its effective
match is presented. Taken together, our results suggest that the
combination of a clear and understandable match for saving, easily
accessible savings vehicles, the opportunity to use part of an income
tax refund to save, and professional assistance could generate a
significant increase in contributions to retirement accounts,
including among middle- and low-income households.
http://papers.nber.org/papers
------------------------------
