Spring 2007 (Revised from May 2006). In this paper we ask, how do individual and community factors influence the average length of poverty spells? We measure local economic conditions by the county unemployment rate and neighborhood spillover effects by the racial makeup and poverty rate of the...

March 2001 (Revised from April 2000). Objective: Assess the determinants of medical costs for depressed individuals. Method: Using medical insurance claims for a population of depressed individuals with employer provided insurance, we estimated multivariate models of the costs for general...

The ability of propensity score analysis (PSA) to match impact estimates derived from random assignment (RA) is examined using data from the evaluation of two interdistrict magnet schools. As in previous within study comparisons, the estimates provided by PSA and RA differ substantially when PSA...

On November 3, 2011, Patricia Moore presented the Syracuse Seminar on Aging to a packed audience of over 250 faculty, students, and community members. She delivered an engaging lecture on “Quality of life for all ages, by designâ€. Afterwards Janet Wilmoth, Director of the Syracuse...

We use order statistics to analytically derive demand functions when consumers choose from among the varieties of two brands—such as Coke and Pepsi—and an outside good. Soft-drinks have no price variability across varieties within a brand, so traditional demand systems (e.g., mixed logit)...

The school desegregation efforts following the historic Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) represent one of the most important social policy initiatives of the 20th century. Despite a large research literature on desegregation and educational outcomes, its effects on the...

This paper considers model selection in nonlinear panel data models where incidental parameters or large-dimensional nuisance parameters are present. Primary interest typically centers on selecting a model that best approximates the underlying structure involving parameters that are common...

This paper* develops a social unrest measure by revising Esteban-Ray (1994, Econometrica) polarization index. For the purpose of measuring more effectively the level of social unrest that is generated by separation of income classes, the new index allows for asymmetry between the rich and the...

Our research addresses fundamental long-standing concerns in the compensating wage differentials literature and its public policy implications: the econometric properties of estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) and the wide range of such estimates from about $0 to almost $30 million....

In the fixed-effects stochastic frontier model an efficiency measure relative to the best firm in the sample is universally employed. This paper considers a new measure relative to the worst firm in the sample. We find that estimates of this measure have smaller bias than those of the...