Alaska 1332 Waiver - Economic Analysis

The four guardrails that a successful 1332 waiver must meet are as follows: 1. Coverage - There must be at least a comparable number of individuals with coverage under the waiver as would have had coverage without the waiver. 2. Affordability – The waiver should not result in an increase in out-of-pocket spending required of residents to obtain coverage, relative to income. 3. Comprehensiveness – The waiver should not decrease the number of individuals with coverage that meets the essential health benefits (EHB) benchmark. 4. Deficit Neutrality – The waiver should not have any negative impact on the federal deficit. In this report, the first three guardrails are briefly discussed to reaffirm that the actuarial analysis conducted by Oliver Wyman demonstrates that the proposed waiver meets them. The actuarial report from Oliver Wyman projects that the proposed waiver will increase the number of individuals taking up insurance in the individual market, lower average premiums, and have no impact on the comprehensiveness of coverage. The numbers reported in the actuarial analysis are then used to help evaluate the impact that the proposed waiver will have on the federal budget.Alaska Division of Insuranc

Household Composition and Gender Differences in Parental Time Investments

Recent research documents a female advantage in several important long-term outcomes among children raised in single-parent households, and highlights the importance of non-cognitive skills for explaining these gaps. Understanding the source of differences in non-cognitive skills is complicated due to the presence of many interrelated and often unobservable inputs. One potential explanation for such gaps is that boys and girls receive different levels of inputs in single-parent versus two-parent households. This paper provides empirical evidence that input levels change differentially by gender across household structures and hence may facilitate gender gaps in noncognitive skills. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and accompanying Child Development Supplement, I estimate gender differences in parental time investments, defined as the amount of time parents spend participating in activities with the child, around changes in household composition. I find that, although both boys and girls experience reductions in parental time investments following a change from a two-parent to single-mother household, boys experience a larger reduction than girls. The largest difference is found in fathers’ time investments on weekdays, for which boys lose an additional 24 minutes per day (35% of average paternal weekday investments). Moreover, there is little to no evidence that single mothers compensate for the loss by increasing time investments to boys relative to girls.IES, U.S. Department of Education Award #R305B09001

Public and Private Sector Earnings in Alaska

We compare earnings in the Alaska public and private sector labor markets from 2001 -2016. Public sector laborers are older and more likely to be female, suggesting that taking these differences into consideration will be important in our comparisons. We also focus on the public-private sector earnings gaps for men and women separately, as the magnitude and even direction of the gap depends on this distinction. We go about this in three ways: unconditional comparisons, conditional earnings gaps, and comparing the earnings and growth of individuals who remain with the same employer. Below are the main findings: • The unconditional average public-private earnings gaps for men and women are of opposing signs (see Table 1). – Men in the public sector earn about $2,129 less in quarterly wages than men in the private sector, on average. – Women in the public sector earn about$498 more in quarterly wages than women in the private sector, on average. • On average, across all occupations, men and women have higher initial earnings in the private sector at the beginning of a job spell. – For men, the difference is $3113 in quarterly earnings. – For women, the difference is$760 in quarterly earnings. • Among workers who remain with the same employer, earnings growth is 1% and 2% higher in the public sector for men and women, respectively. • For men, despite the faster growth, they don’t catch up to the earnings of private sector employees within 10 years of tenure in most occupations (See Tables 9 and 11, and Figure 12). 1 • Women in the public sector earn more than their private sector counterparts within a few years of tenure, on average. • There is substantial heterogeneity in the earnings gap across occupations (See Tables 10 and 12, and Figure 13).Alaska Department of Administratio

Dual language Education And Student Achievement

Dual language classrooms provide English language learners (ELLs) an opportunity to receive instruction in their native language in hopes of easing the transition to English fluency, and provide an opportunity for native English speakers to receive instruction in a second language. For ELLs, learning in their native language could improve achievement by helping them build a stronger foundation in core subjects, but could also have a negative impact through delayed growth in English skills. For native English speakers, communication barriers could hurt achievement, but many argue that mental stimulation from speaking two languages leads to greater cognitive growth. Empirical testing for the e↵ect of dual language education on academic achievement is necessary to inform the debate on the practice of dual language education, and to inform policymakers and practitioners on practices for assimilating students with non-English dominant languages. I examine dual language education and student achievement using school choice lotteries from Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, finding local average treatment e↵ects on math and reading exam scores of more than 0.06 standard deviations per year for participants who were eligible for English second language (ESL) services or designated limited English proficient (LEP). There is also some evidence that attending a dual language school led to a lower probability of having limited English proficient status starting in third grade. For applicants who were not eligible for ESL services or designated as LEP, attending a dual language school resulted in higher end of grade exam scores of about 0.09 and 0.05 standard deviations per year in math and reading, respectively.IES, U.S. Department of Education Award #R305B09001

Win or Lose: Residential Sorting After a School Choice Lottery

We examine residential relocation and opting out of the public school system in response to school choice lottery outcomes. We show that rising kindergarten and sixth graders who lose a school choice lottery are 6 percentage points more likely to exit the district or change neighborhood schools (20-30% increase) and make up 0.14-0.35 standard deviations in average school test scores between lottery assignment and attendance the following year. Using hedonic-based estimates of land prices, we estimate that lottery losers pay a 9-11% housing price premium for access to a school with a one standard deviation higher mean test score.https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00868Ye

Inferring Tax Compliance from Pass-through: Evidence from Airbnb Tax Enforcement Agreements

Tax enforcement is especially costly when market participants are difficult to observe. The benefits of enforcement depend crucially on pre-enforcement compliance. We derive an upper bound on pre-enforcement compliance from the pass-through of newly enforced taxes. Using data on Airbnb listings and the platform’s voluntary collection agreements, we find that taxes are paid on, at most, 24% of Airbnb transactions prior to enforcement. We also find that demand for Airbnb listings is inelastic, driving three key insights: the tax burden falls disproportionately on renters, the excess burden is small, and tax enforcement is relatively ineffective at reducing local Airbnb activity

Win or Lose: Residential Sorting After a School Choice Lottery

We examine residential relocation and opting out of the public school system in response to school choice lottery outcomes. We show that rising kindergartners and sixth graders who lose a school choice lottery are 6 percentage points more likely to exit the district or change neighborhood schools (20% to 30% increase) and make up 0.14 to 0.35 standard deviations in average school test scores between lottery assignment and attendance the following year. Using hedonic-based estimates of land prices, we estimate that lottery losers pay a 9% to 11% housing price premium for access to a school with a 1 standard deviation higher mean test score

Universal Cash Transfers and Labor Market Outcomes

One major criticism of universal basic income is that unconditional cash transfers discourage recipients from working. We estimate the causal effects of a universal cash transfer on short-run labor market activity by exploiting the timing and variation of a long-running unconditional and universal transfer: Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend. We find evidence of both a positive labor demand and negative labor supply response to the transfers, document important heterogeneity across workers, and provide a set of placebo tests supporting our main results. Altogether, a $1,000 increase in the per-person disbursement leads to a 0.2% labor market contraction on an annual basis

Graphene as Gas Detector

The so-called scotch-tape method is a commonly used process to isolate graphene from bulk graphite. However, the flakes of graphene that are produced are small and must be found individually. We present results from our home-built chemical vapor deposition chamber that allows us to produce large surface graphene sheets via the pyrolytic decomposition of methane. We also present ongoing work to produce devices from this graphene for the purpose of making gas sensors

Replication Data for: "Win or Lose: Residential Sorting After a School Choice Lottery"

Review of Economics and Statistics: Forthcomin