Occupational Safety and English Language Proficiency

Recent occupational injury data shows a rising trend, which happens to coincide with both increases in the population of foreign born in the U.S. and with changes in its composition. This study aims at exploring the presence of a statistical relationship between occupational injuries and the level of English proficiency of foreign born using cross-sectional data on the rate of injury and count of injury incidents. A cultural gap hypothesis is also examined as an alternative explanation for the rise in work injuries. While there is some support for the adverse effect of inadequate English language proficiency of foreign born, the results for the cultural gap hypothesis are more robust.English Proficiency, Occupational Injury

A Contingent Valuation of Customer Delay in Medical Services

In this study, the contingent valuation method, based on a survey of patients at medical practices, is used to estimate patients' willingness-to-pay to avoid delays in the reception area and the examination room. The maximum likelihood estimates indicate that patients' willingness-to-pay is affected by the actual waiting time rather than perception of the delay. Other factors that influence patients’ willingness-to-pay are rating of their experience at the medical practice, appointment, gender, age, health insurance, and the waiting location. The results also suggest that losses of consumer surplus due to delays at medical practices could be large, which has policy implications with respect to improvements in health care utilization in the U.S.

Barter and Business Cycles: A Comment and Further Empirical Evidence

The purpose of this comment is a critical evaluation of the empirical analysis made by Cresti (2005) and her finding that commercial barter behaves differently than corporate barter during the course of business cycles. Here, we correct the arbitrary replacement of the missing observations by filling them with forecasts using the Box-Jenkins ARMA and Kalman filter methods before performing the unit root and cointegration tests. Although the ECM estimates for various measures of business cycle are occasionally inconsistent, overall the inventory measures and capacity utilization results suggest that barter transactions are counter-cyclical regardless of the size of the business. Additionally, we find that barter rises with inflationary trend, dissemination of access to computer technology, tax rates and tax laws requiring disclosure of barter transactions.Barter, Business Cycles, Error Correction Model, Box-Jenkins ARMA

Alternative Regimes of Common Property Exploitation for Manganese Nodules and Their Market Structure Impact.

As a result of the technological and financial changes in the extraction of manganese nodules from the deep-seabed, the nodules have been recognized as an alternative source of minerals to land-based sources. The commercial interest in the extraction of the nodules is primarily for their nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. Three sources of uncertainty, however, have prevented involved consortia from entry into the actual production stage. These uncertainties are of a technological, economic, and legal nature. In spite of these difficulties, most experts maintain that the nodules are likely to be mined before the end of the century. The choice of the regime to govern the use of a resource, i.e., the property right system, determines the efficiency in the use of resource, the rate of extraction, and the distribution of economic rent. Both developing and developed countries agree with the notion that manganese nodules are a part of the common heritage of mankind, but the regime advocated by each group is different. The efficiency oriented free-access regime of the developed countries attempts to maximize the economic rent before dealing with the distributional problems through fiscal policies. On the other hand, the regime supported by the U.N., the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), reflects the emerging New International Economic Order and seeks more than a fair distribution of the economic rent. Extraction of manganese nodules from the deep-sea is perceived by most observers as an opportunity to increase the degree of competitiveness in the metal markets. However the existing knowledge of the technology and the costs of deep-seabed mining and the historical trend in other industries which have gone through similar changes indicate that the utilization of the new source of supply may not improve the concentration significantly. Several factors are introduced as barriers to entry such as economies of scale in production and in financing. In the evaluation of the two alternative regimes, most of the entry barriers are shared by both. However, since the consortia views the LOST as a legal barrier, the future of the sea-bed mining under this regime does not look promising

Occupational Safety and English Language Proficiency

Recent occupational injury data shows a rising trend, which happens to coincide with both increases in the population of foreign born in the U.S. and with changes in its composition. This study aims at exploring the presence of a statistical relationship between occupational injuries and the level of English proficiency of foreign born using cross-sectional data on the rate of injury and count of injury incidents. A cultural gap hypothesis is also examined as an alternative explanation for the rise in work injuries. While there is some support for the adverse effect of inadequate English language proficiency of foreign born, the results for the cultural gap hypothesis are more robust

Barter and Business Cycles: A Comment and Further Empirical Evidence

The purpose of this comment is a critical evaluation of the empirical analysis made by Cresti (2005) and her finding that commercial barter behaves differently than corporate barter during the course of business cycles. Here, we correct the arbitrary replacement of the missing observations by filling them with forecasts using the Box-Jenkins ARMA and Kalman filter methods before performing the unit root and cointegration tests. Although the ECM estimates for various measures of business cycle are occasionally inconsistent, overall the inventory measures and capacity utilization results suggest that barter transactions are counter-cyclical regardless of the size of the business. Additionally, we find that barter rises with inflationary trend, dissemination of access to computer technology, tax rates and tax laws requiring disclosure of barter transactions

Barter and Business Cycles: A Comment and Further Empirical Evidence

The purpose of this comment is a critical evaluation of the empirical analysis made by Cresti (2005) and her finding that commercial barter behaves differently than corporate barter during the course of business cycles. Here, we correct the arbitrary replacement of the missing observations by filling them with forecasts using the Box-Jenkins ARMA and Kalman filter methods before performing the unit root and cointegration tests. Although the ECM estimates for various measures of business cycle are occasionally inconsistent, overall the inventory measures and capacity utilization results suggest that barter transactions are counter-cyclical regardless of the size of the business. Additionally, we find that barter rises with inflationary trend, dissemination of access to computer technology, tax rates and tax laws requiring disclosure of barter transactions

Did tradable quota rights really affect fleet size? The case of the Gulf of Mexico reef-fish fishery

An explicit policy objective of the tradable individual fishing quota programs introduced for various reef-fish species in the Gulf of Mexico in 2007 and 2010 was to restore cost-effectiveness by reducing the fishery’s significant excess capacity. To gauge the success of this policy shift from a common-pool to a catch shares system, we construct a simple model of vessel participation that takes into account the regulatory systems as well as environmental and economic variables. Calibrating our model with historical data from 1990 to 2020, we show how changes in the total allowable catch, biomass, dockside prices, and the regulatory system can explain the observed contraction of the fleet size. We find that only about half of the initial contraction was due to the switch from a common-pool to a tradable quota system, the remainder being driven by the simultaneously occurring biomass recovery on the one hand and a participation-inflating contest for catch shares prior to the regime change on the other

BARTER'S ROLE IN THE MONEY-INCOME RELATIONSHIP

This paper deals with a reassessment of the money-income relation and predictability of changes in GDP with innovations in money in the presence of barter. Organized barter as a method of transaction, through barter exchanges, has been growing rapidly in the US�economy. With the introduction of computers and the use of a credit system which allows non-simultaneous transactions, barter exchanges have found new opportunities to offer an alternative to monetary transactions. Analysis of data from the 1974-96 period provides some evidence suggesting that inclusion of barter in the output function improves the marginal predictability of money. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd