ATLANTIC ECONOMIC JOURNAL最新文献

Operations Varsity Blues, a high-profile undergraduate admissions scandal exposed in March 2019, involved some of the most elite colleges in the United States. The event charged 33 parents with bribing athletic departments and faking test scores in an effort to obtain admission for their children. This paper analyzes the effects of this scandal on institution-level outcomes, including the number of applicants, enrollment demographics, and financial aid outcomes. Data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System for the years 2017–2021 were utilized, employing entropy balancing to construct a comparable control group, combined with difference-in-differences regressions. The resulting models estimate that the scandal reduced applications by 3% and enrollment of Black students by 0.3%. Furthermore, the number of low-income students who received Pell grants decreased by 100 students, or 0.3%. A limitation of the analysis is the occurrence of the coronavirus-19 pandemic, which coincided partially with the years used as outcomes. The results highlight the level of student sensitivity to public information and speak to how highly-publicized scandals can have a small, yet significant, impact on student decisions at elite colleges. Furthermore, the results imply that college applicants, especially low-income applicants, desire equitable admission systems in higher education institutions.

Garnering much attention and public health concern, the opioid epidemic has generated severe health consequences across the United States. Of particular interest, opioid use during pregnancy has been criminalized by state-level and national policies to quell the rising rates of maternal addiction and neonatal abstinence syndrome. However, recent research, has found that punitive policies (PPs) may instead exacerbate addiction by disincentivizing treatment-seeking behavior in pregnant women. Using treatment facility admissions data from 2013–2020, this study applies difference-in-difference methodology to extend previous studies’ exploration of the effects that PPs have on rates of pregnant admissions. Moreover, this study discerns the effect that PPs have on the prevalence of medication-assisted treatment for women of childbearing age. The impacts of PPs were modeled within a variety of policy landscapes, accounting for potential policy and resource interactions. With support from supplemental event study models, findings suggest that 1) PPs reduce the use of medication-assisted treatment in all policy landscapes and 2) when in isolation, PPs stifle rates of pregnant admissions. When active in states with more complex policy landscapes (i.e. not just in isolation), PPs were found to have more complicated effects on pregnant admissions, dynamics which merit future exploration.

Families are widely recognized as crucial agents in the transmission of wealth, contributing to the perpetuation of inequality and limiting mobility across income levels. To address the economic dynamics behind this phenomenon, classical economists have explored potential solutions through government tax-transfer systems. One such proposal, advanced by Eugenio Rignano, suggests imposing higher taxes on inheritances passed down through multiple generations within a family. To analyze this idea, a model is developed that incorporates both altruistic and accidental bequests, with altruistic bequests playing a crucial role in wealth transmission. The model considers the potential disincentives that inheritance taxation might create for savings intended for altruistic bequests, as well as the benefits of taxing accidental bequests. The novelty of the model lies in its characterization of optimal inheritance taxes when there is an interaction between parents' educational decisions for their children and the transmission of wealth. Simulations suggest that adopting Rignano's proposed tax scheme enhances social welfare compared to the commonly used proportional inheritance tax. These findings suggest that Rignano's tax scheme warrants further research and policy discussion.

This study examines whether the preferences and behaviors of traditional community leaders change depending on their leadership experience. Using data from a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, in which participants were village leaders in traditional communities of these tracts, this study focused on competitiveness, dishonest behavior, and altruism, which are crucial factors in the fair governance of communities. The results of a pedometer-shaking game to measure competitiveness, a dice-casting game to extract dishonest behavior, and a simple dictator game are reported. The experimental results reveal that the longer the leader’s term, the less competitive they are and the less likely they are to engage in dishonest behavior, although experience as a leader does not have any significant effect on altruism. This study contributes to the literature as it adds experimental evidence regarding the preference change of leaders in traditional communities. Preferences change in the direction of conformity to the norms and benefits of other community members as leaders gain experience. Thus, changes in leader preferences should be considered when evaluating the governance systems of traditional communities.

This paper empirically examines the learning-by-exporting theory from a new angle: how firms innovate. Two different innovation strategies are studied. One is independent innovation if a firm conducts in-house research and development activities on its own and the other is spillover innovation if a firm adopts external technologies and knowledge from the others. Global firm-level data were acquired from the latest 2017–19 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey. The learning-by-exporting effect is interpreted as a positive effect of firms’ exports on their productivity, which is estimated semi-parametrically. After implementing a three-step estimation method that addresses endogeneity, the learning-by-exporting effect was found to be importantly subject to firms’ innovation strategies. Learning-by-exporting can only be significantly and robustly detected among firms with spillover innovation, whereas exports cannot always enhance independent innovators’ performance. Further heterogeneity tests support this finding. This paper suggests that the learning-by-exporting effect is essentially a technology spillover process, and it highlights the importance of both independent and spillover innovation that must be implemented and regulated properly.

Employing a unique approach to household utility maximization, this paper explores the implications of vehicle carbon taxation and subsidies in the context of household choice for urban transportation mode where there exist two private characteristics of travel: comfort and time efficiency, and a third public negative characteristic, carbon emissions. Two policies to reduce carbon emissions are examined in this framework; (1) subsidizing public transportation and imposing a tax on vehicle emissions, (2) increasing the cost of private vehicle travel, and providing a rebate of the tax collected to the consumer. The results suggest that the latter policy may have little impact on carbon emissions and could possibly lead to an increase in emissions.