Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt

We present the first causal estimates of the effect of Social Security Disability Insurance benefit receipt on labor supply using all program applicants. We use new administrative data to match applications to disability examiners, and exploit variation in examiners’ allowance rates as an instrument for benefit receipt. We find that among the estimated 23% of applicants on the margin of program entry, employment would have been 28 percentage points higher had they not received benefits. The effect is heterogeneous, ranging from no effect for those with more severe impairments to 50 percentage points for entrants with relatively less severe impairments.

Over-Relaxation in Diffusive Integer Lattice Gas

One of the most striking draw-backs of standard lattice gas methods over lattice Boltzmann methods is a much more limited range of transport parameters that can be achieved. It is common for lattice Boltzmann methods to use over-relaxation to achieve arbitrarily small transport parameters in the hydrodynamic equations. Here, we show that it is possible to implement over-relaxation for integer lattice gases. For simplicity we focus here on lattice gases for the diffusion equation. We demonstrate that adding a flipping operation to lattice gases results in a multi-relaxation time lattice Boltzmann scheme with over-relaxation in the Boltzmann limit.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Brand positioning strategies : an expiremental test ot two types of benefit differentiation

The purpose of this study is to examine associative- and instrumental benefit differentiation based on secondary associations as part of brand positioning. The field of brand positioning has been subject to extensive research, however, differentiation based on secondary associations and differences between instrumental- and associative benefit differentiation has received less attention. Instrumental benefit differentiation relates to benefits that are linked directly to product performance, while associative benefit differentiation relates to indirect benefits that evoke associations of consumption contexts, feelings, and emotions. We look at how the differentiation strategies vary in effectiveness with regard to creating positive brand attitude and their ability to generate benefit associations. We conducted a classical experiment on a convenience sample (N = 294) by utilizing six questionnaires to collect our data. Our research reveals that associative- and instrumental benefit differentiation does not differ in their positive effect on brand attitude, and that the associative strategy generates more benefit associations than the instrumental strategy. The results thus contradict the fundamental view of unique selling propositions and imply that brands could successfully acheive positive brand attitude with both differentiation strategies. Further, an associative benefit differentiation strategy should lead to a richer, more positive, and more sustainable network of associations. We failed to detect that the number of benefit associations positively mediates the effect of differentiation strategy on brand attitude. This could imply that one exposure is not sufficient in order to reveal such a relationship

Does Delay Cause Decay? The Effect of Administrative Decision Time on the Labor Force Participation and Earnings of Disability Applicants

An influential body of research studies the labor supply and earnings of denied Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applicants to estimate the potential employment and earnings of those awarded benefits. This research design implicitly treats employability as a stable applicant attribute that is not directly impacted by the process of applying for SSDI benefits. If, plausibly, applicants’ employment potential deteriorates while they are out of the labor force, then the labor force participation of denied applicants -- who spend an average of 10 months seeking benefits -- may understate their employment potential at the time of application. This paper tests whether the duration of SSDI applications causally affects applicants’ subsequent employment. We use a unique Social Security Administration workload database to identify exogenous variation in applicants’ initial decision times induced by differences in processing speed among the disability examiners to which they are randomly assigned. This variation significantly affects applicants’ total processing time but, importantly, is uncorrelated with their initial award and denial outcomes. We find that longer processing times reduce the employment and earnings of SSDI applicants in the years after their initial decision. A one standard deviation (2.4 month) increase in initial processing time reduces annual employment rates by 1 percentage point (3.2%) in years two, three and four post-decision. Extrapolating these effects to total applicant processing times, we estimate that the SSDI determination process directly reduces the post-application employment of denied applicants by approximately 3.6 percentage points (7%) and allowed applicants by approximately 5.2 percentage points (33%).Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90514/1/wp258.pd

Barns mestring ved fysisk utelek

I rammeplanen står det barna skal få støtte i å mestre motgang og håndtere utfordringer (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017, s. 11), barna skal oppleve ett stimulerende miljø som vektlegger deres lyst til å leke, utforske og mestre (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017, s. 22), og personalet skal stimulere barnas evne til å mestre nye ting (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017, s. 43). Jeg ønsket å forske på barns mestring, mestringsfølelsen og mestringsmuligheter som kan oppnås i den fysiske uteleken. Hva betyr mestring for barna? Hvilke fordeler bærer det med seg å kjenne på mestringsfølelsen i den fysiske uteleken? Hvilke konsekvenser kan forekomme barna ved at de ikke opplever mestring i den fysiske uteleken? Hva må til for at barna opplever mestring i den fysiske uteleken og hva er det som står i veien for at barna får muligheten til å oppleve mestring i den fysiske uteleken? Problemstillingen endte derfor opp slik: Hvilke erfaringer har barnehagelærere på en 3-5 års avdeling med hva som fremmer og hemmer barns muligheter for mestring ved fysisk utelek?publishedVersio

First principles study on the segregation of metallic solutes and non-metallic impurities in Cu grain boundary

Metallic dopants have the potential to increase the mechanical strength of polycrystalline metals. These elements are expected to aggregate in regions of lower coordination, such as grain boundaries. At the grain boundaries, they can have a beneficial (toughening) or detrimental effect (e.g. grain boundary embrittlement). In this study, we employ Density Functional Theory (DFT) to compute the segregation energies of various metallic and other non-metallic elements to determine their effect when introduced in a symmetric Cu grain boundary. The study results may be used to qualitatively rank the beneficial effect of certain metallic elements, such as V, Zr, and Ag, as well as the strong weakening effect of non-metallic impurities like O, S, F and P. Furthermore, the induced local distortion is found to be proportional to the weakening effect of the elements

Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt?

We present the first estimates of the causal effects of SSDI receipt on labor supply that are generalizable to the entire population of program entrants in the present day system. We take advantage of a unique workload management database to match Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applicants to disability examiners, and use natural variation in examiners’ allowance rates to estimate the labor supply effects of SSDI. Because applicants are randomly assigned to examiners (conditional on observable characteristics), examiner specific allowance rates can be used to instrument for the allowance decision in a labor supply equation contrasting denied vs. allowed applicants. We find that the labor force participation rate of the marginal entrant would be on average 21 percentage points greater in the absence of SSDI benefit receipt. His or her likelihood of engaging in substantial gainful activity as defined by the SSDI program would be on average 13 percentage points higher, and he or she would earn $1,600 to$2,600 more per year on average in the absence of SSDI benefit receipt. The marginal entrant is likely to have a mental impairment, be young, and have low pre-onset earnings. Importantly, the disincentive effect varies across individuals with impairments of different degrees of unobservable severity, ranging from a low of 10 percentage points for those with more severe impairments to a high of 60 percentage points for entrants with relatively less severe impairments.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78733/1/wp241.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78733/4/wp241.pd

Disability Insurance and Healthcare Reform: Evidence from Massachusetts

As health insurance becomes available outside of the employment relationship as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the cost of applying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)—potentially going without health insurance coverage during a waiting period totaling 29 months from disability onset—will decline for many people with employer-sponsored health insurance. At the same time, the value of SSDI and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) participation will decline for individuals who otherwise lacked access to health insurance. We study the 2006 Massachusetts healthcare reform to estimate the potential effects of the ACA on SSDI and SSI applications.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102264/1/wp289.pd