Spatial dependence is an important factor in regional economic growth analysis, especially in terms of population, employment, and per capita income. This paper employs spatial econometric techniques and U.S. Census Bureau county-level data for the period of 1980-2010 to identify and estimate...

This paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of a woman’s household participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and her likelihood of being obese. We use an economic model of lifetime behavior in a finite life model to provide the structure of...

Replaced with revised version of poster 08/30/11.

This paper provides quantitative estimates of the effect of proximity to fast food restaurants and grocery stores on obesity in urban food markets. Our empirical model combined georeferenced micro data on access to fast food restaurants and grocery stores with data about salient personal...

Xi Chen acknowledges generous Doctoral Research Grant from the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University and precious data set provided by the Development Strategy and Governance Division at IFPRI. Conference Travel Grant provided by the Department of Applied Economics and...

Dichotomous choice willingness to pay questions are often used to determine the value visitors place on nature-based recreation. Ambiguity in wording can result in the use of information that does not necessarily reflect visitors’ true WTP. For example, depending on the specificity of the...

This paper assesses the effect of the U.S. Job Corps (JC), the nation's largest and most comprehensive job training program targeting disadvantaged youths, on wages. We employ partial identification techniques and construct informative nonparametric bounds for the causal effect of interest under...

This paper is based on our ongoing joint work with Ravi Kanbur. Xi Chen is grateful to Ravi Kanbur for invaluable comments, guidance and encouragement. For comments and suggestions, please direct correspondence to Xi Chen at xc49@cornell.edu.

This paper exploits a liquidity shock from a large-scale welfare program in Brazil to investigate the importance of credit constraints and informal financial assistance in explaining entrepreneurship. Previous research focuses exclusively on how liquidity shocks change recipients’ behavior...