Using the Stocker Cattle Futures and Options Contracts to Manage Price Risks

Marketing,

New Lows From New Highs: Latino Economic Losses in the Current Recession

Assesses the recession's impact on the Latino population and the likely long-term effects of unemployment on Hispanic communities. Examines recession-related job losses for Hispanics and forecasts their prospects for economic recovery

Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy

[Excerpt] Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds is an energizing, optimistic book. By using the contemporary metropolis as a comparative laboratory to see what contexts and strategies contribute best to labor revitalization, Lowell Turner, Daniel Cornfield, and their collaborators generate a fresh sense of positive possibilities for labor and new insights as to how creative actors can best take advantage of those possibilities. Energizing optimism should not be confused with seeing things through rose-colored glasses. The book fully acknowledges the odds against labor revitalization and the structural obstacles to a more equitable society. Optimism is generated by pairing obstacles with possibilities, often brought to light by another city in which similar obstacles have been overcome with innovative strategies. This book builds on a new tradition of recent analyses of U.S. labor that compellingly contests previous premature obituaries of the labor movement while making a distinctive contribution. Its power is rooted in the comparative metropolis analytical theme and the editors\u27 skill in bringing a diverse baker\u27s dozen of substantive studies to bear on it. The individual chapters are empirically diverse, complementing a gamut of metropolitan areas in the United States with comparative cases from Europe. They employ varied methodological approaches to look at the social infrastructure and strategic choices that underlie urban successes and failures. Many chapters are in-depth case studies of individual cities, while others (e.g., Greer, Byrd, and Fleron; Hauptmeier and Turner) are paired comparisons. Still others (Applegate; Luce; Reynolds) draw their evidence from larger numbers of cities. One (Sellers) employs an ingenious analysis of cross-national data to draw inferences about differences in urban strategic possibilities. The result is much more powerful analytically than it would have been had the editors collected thirteen metropolitan case studies and then tried to figure out their comparative implications. Empirical range and methodological diversity augment the power of the volume, but the overarching focus on comparative metropolitan analysis is what gives the book its distinctive analytical punch. Even though a variety of organizations and social actors populate the stage—campaigns, nongovernmental organizations, individual unions, and ethnic communities—defining the urban area as the stage on which the dramas occur was a critical decision. From this decision flows the book\u27s special contribution to refocusing contemporary labor debates

How Many Undocumented: The Numbers Behind the U.S.-Mexico Migration Talks

Presents estimates of the undocumented migrant population in the U.S., broken down into the categories that were most relevant to the migration proposals under consideration by the U.S. and Mexican governments, prior to the March 2002 migration talks

A gendered assessment of the brain drain

This paper updates and extends the Docquier-Marfouk data set on international migration by educational attainment. We use new sources, homogenize definitions of what a migrant is, and compute gender-dissaggregated indicators of the brain drain. Emigration stocks and rates are provided by level of schooling and gender for 195 source countries in 1990 and 2000. Our data set can be usded to capture the recent trend in women’s brain drain and to analyze its causes and consequences for developing countries. We show that women represent an increasing share of the OECD immigration stock and exhibit relatively higher rates of brain drain than men. The gender gap in skilled migration is strongly correlated with the gender gap in educational attainment at origin. Equating women’s and men’s access to education would probably reduce gender differences in the brain drain.Brain drain, Gender, Human capital, Migration

THE IMPACT OF RECLAMATION ON ACCEPTABLE STRIP MINING ROYALTY PAYMENTS

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Incentives in HMOs

We study the effect of physician incentives in an HMO network. Physician incentives are controversial because they may induce doctors to make treatment decisions that differ from those they would chose in the absence of incentives. We set out a theoretical framework for assessing the degree to which incentive contracts do in fact induce physicians to deviate from a standard guided only by patient interests and professional medical judgement. Our empirical evaluation of the model relies on details of the HMO's incentive contracts and access to the firm's internal expenditure records. We estimate that the HMO's incentive contract provides a typical physician an increase, at the margin, of $0.10 in income for each$1.00 reduction in medical utilization expenditures. The average response is a 5 percent reduction in medical expenditures. We also find suggestive evidence that financial incentives linked to commonly used quality measures may stimulate an improvement in measured quality.

"Incentives In HMOs"

We studied the effect of physician incentives in an HMO network. Physician incentives are controversial because they may induce doctors to make treatment decisions that differ from those they would choose in the absence of incentives. We set out a theoretical framework for assessing the degree to which incentive contracts do, in fact, induce physicians to deviate from a standard, guided only by patient interest and professional medical judgment. Our empirical evaluation of the model relies on details of the HMO's incentive contracts and access to the firms' internal expenditure records. We estimate that the HMO's incentive contract provides a typical physician an increase, at the margin, of $.10 in income for each$1.00 reduction in medial utilization expenditures. The average response is a 5-percent reduction in medical expenditures. We also find suggestive evidence that financial incentives linked to commonly used "quality" measures may stimulate an improvement in measured quality.

Incentives in HMO's

We study the effect of physician incentives in an HMO network. Physician incentives are controversial because they may induce doctors to make treatment decisions that differ from those they would chose in absence of incentives. We set out a theoretical framework for assessing the degree to which incentive contracts do in fact induce physicians to deviate from a standard guided only by patient interests and professional medical judgement. Our empirical evaluation of the model relies on details of the HMO's incentive contracts and access to the firm’s internal expenditure records. We estimate that the HMO's incentive contract provides a typical physician an increase, at the margin of $0.10 in income for each$1.00 reduction in medical utilisation expenditures. The average response is a 5% reduction in medical expenditures. We also find suggestive evidence that financial incentives linked to commonly used "quality" measure may stimulate an improvement in measured quality.analysis of health care markets

Do Labor Markets Provide Enough Short Hour Jobs? An Analysis of Work Hours and Work Incentives

This paper examines the role that work incentives play in the determination of work hours. Following previous research by Lang (1989), we use a conventional efficiency wage model to analyze how firms respond to worker preferences regarding wage-hours packages. We find that when workers are homogeneous, the role of worker preferences in determining work hours is similar to the simple neoclassical model of labor supply. For instance, if worker preferences shift in favor of shorter hours, firms will respond by offering jobs entailing shorter hours. When workers have heterogeneous preferences, however, employers will want to use a worker's hours preferences as a signal for the responsiveness of the worker to the work incentives used by the firm, and workers in turn may not reveal their hours preferences. Our key finding in this instance is that the labor market equilibrium may be characterized by a sub-optimal number of short-hour jobs. This shortage of short-hour jobs is likely to be found in high wage labor markets.