The black-white gap in non marital fertility education and mates in segmented marriage markets

This study is the first to find that mate availability explains much of the race gap in non marital fertility in the United States. Both a general and an education-based metric have strong effects. The novel statistical power arises from difference-indifferences for blacks and whites, multiple cohorts, periods, and coefficient restrictions consistent with both the data and models in which differences in mate availability can induce blacks and whites to respond in opposite directions to changes in mate availability. Results are robust to several alternative specifications and tests and appear relevant where marriages are segmented along racial, religious, or other lines.fertility marriage education

The Reaction of Reduced-Form Coefficients to Regime Changes: The Case of Interest Rates

This study investigates whether the apparent intertemporal instability of a particular reduced-form equation (that for interest rates) can be explained by changing government policy parameters, or regimes, and otherwise stable structural parameters. We hypothesize that major fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policy parameter shifts have been important sources of that instability. Direct tests imply that reduced-form coefficients move by statistically significant and economically meaningful amounts in response to policy parameter change. Allowing for this systematic parameter variation produces greater stability in the remaining parameters. Furthermore, in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts from the proposed model out perform those from the non-responsive parameter specification.

Observations of thermal ion influxes about the space shuttle

Ion mass spectrometer measurements made as part of the University of Iowa's Plasma Diagnostic Package on the STS-3 and Spacelab 2 Space Shuttle missions sampled a variety of ion composition and collected ion current responses to gas emissions from the vehicle. The only other shuttle ion measurements were made by an Air Force Geophysics Laboratory (AFGL) quadrupole spectrometer flown on STS-4. Gas emissions change the distribution of the incoming plasma through scattering and charge transfer processes. A background flux of contaminant ion species (mostly relating to water) always exists in the near vicinity of the shuttle with a magnitude which is dependent on the look direction of the spectrometer but which varies differently with changes in the angle of attack than that of the ambient ions. There is a near shuttle wake cavity in the contaminant ion distributions which has a different spatial configuration than the wake of the ambient ions. Although water dumps produce the most persistent ion perturbations, the sources for ion current modification were best delineated from measurements made when only one or two of the Reaction Control System thrusters fired for a relatively long duration. Contaminant ion perturbations associated with such firings were observed to persist for the order of a second after the cessation of the firings. The dense thruster plumes are efficient collisional, charge exchange barriers to the passage of ambient ions. Collected ion current perturbations were more evident for firings of the rear verniers, whose plumes scatter off projecting surfaces, than for the nose thrusters. The effect of the Vernier firings was found to depend not only on the location and attitude of the spectrometer with respect to the shuttle and thruster plume direction, but also on the orientation of the local magnetic field with respect to the shuttle velocity

The Degree of Fiscal Illusion in Interest Rates: Some Direct Estimates

This article demonstrates why the procedures used in previous studies do not permit inference about the relationship between interestrates and taxes. We present a model that leads to direct estimates of the degree to which interest rates respond to changes in tax rates. The empirical results imply that the adjustment of taxable interest rates has been large enough to render after-tax yields impervious to tax rate changes. Further, tax-exempt yields are unaffected by changes in taxrates. Thus, there is no evidence of fiscal illusion in interest rates.

The measurement and determinants of single-family house prices

We assess the conceptual and empirical features of a number of house price series for the United States. We then calculate a measure of the net upgrading of the existing stock of houses that took place during the 1950-1989 period and adjust price indexes for this net increase in quality. Judgments about the trend, volatility, and determinants of house prices are shown to depend crucially on which price series is used. The Freddie Mac upgrade adjusted house price measure rose 5.7% over the past four decades, falling 7.7% from 1950 through 1970 before rising 14.5% from 1970 through 1989. Real house prices declined in the early 1980s as a result of the increase in real after-tax interest rates and the decline in real materials costs. The recovery of house prices in the late 1980s is attributed to lower unemployment and real after-tax interest rates and particularly to demographic factors associated with the aging of baby boomers.Housing

Firm Value, Investment and Monetary Policy

This paper presents empirical evidence on the effects of three nominal risk factors, local interest spreads, US interest spread, and US federal funds rate signal-to-noise ratio on the value of firms and on the cross-listing decision of firms destined to three major markets in North America, Asia, and Europe. We use firm-level data in 29 countries of cross-listing origin over a six year period, from 2000-2005. We find consistent and robust evidence that the US federal funds rate signal-to-noise ratio risk factor in the Sharpe sense provides an important benchmark for firm value across the universe of publicly traded companies; and this effect is larger for smaller firms that cross-list abroad. Countries in Asia, Europe, and South America tend to seek more funds abroad through cross-listing relative to other regions in this sample. In general, we find that the lagged local interest risk factor is positively related to current probability of cross listing. Small firms located in Asia, medium firms located in Europe, and large firms located in Asia, Europe, and South America have a higher relative probability of cross listing abroad.

Ranking State Fiscal Structures using Theory and Evidence

taxes growth infrastructure state rankings

Richtags: Cross Repository Browsing

richtags allows you to search across multiple repositories from numerous institutions covering hundreds of disciplines for research that is of interest to you

Taxable and Tax-Exempt Interest Rates: The Role of Personal and Corporate Tax Rates

This paper investigates empirically the effects of personal and corporate taxes on taxable interest rates and on the spread between taxable and tax-exempt rates. Two main sets of results emerge. First, we establish that the effective marginal investors in the Treasury bill market are households, as opposed to tax-exempt institutions or corporations. We find no evidence of corporate tax rate effects on Treasury bill yields. The study is then extended to an examination of the tax-exempt market. The results there contradict the hypothesis that commercial bank arbitrage generally ensures that the taxable-tax-exempt interest rate spread is determined by the corporate tax rate. Our estimates decisively reject the corporate in favor of the personal income tax rate as being the relevant tax rate of the marginal investor in this market as well.