Essays on Regional Amenities and Public Policies

This dissertation investigates how alterations in government policies affect the level of, and access to, public amenities, and how outcomes vary across space. The first essay sheds light on whether the recentralization of political institutions in Russia affected the provision of regional public services. First, I exploit regional variation in governors’ party affiliation to assess the impact of a uniform change in political institutions towards more centralization on the level of public services provision across states. Second, I investigate whether the combined effect, recentralization and party affiliation, is different among local and global public services. I find that a change in the region’s affiliation newly aligning with the central government party induced by the policy change increases the level of global public services by 1-2 percent. However, I find no such effect on the provision of local public services. The second essay is joint work with Carlianne Patrick. We exploit a unique characteristic of 10 charter schools in the metropolitan Atlanta area to identify property value capitalization of charter schools. Each of the 10 charter schools has two priority zones: households located in priority zone one have a higher probability of admission than households located in priority zone two. This study exploits spatial variation in the likelihood of attending a charter school between priority zone one and two to identify their effect on single-family home values using annual data on housing transactions. Our results indicate that prices increased by 6-8% for priority one zone homes compared to priority two zone homes after the opening of a new charter school. We also find that the priority one zone capitalization increases as the home’s traditional public school performs worse. The third essay is joint work with Benjamin Ukert. We estimate the causal effect of the Australian National Firearms Agreement on firearm mortality. Our identification strategy relies on state variation in the pre-NFA firearm death rates in 1994-1996. The results suggest that the NFA decreased the total firearm death rate by 60%. The reduction in the total firearm death rate is driven by large decreases in the firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates, while we find no changes in the accidental and undetermined intent firearm death rate

Cross-Country Variation in Obesity Patterns among Older Americans and Europeans

While the fraction of obese people is not as large in Europe as in the United States, obesity is becoming an important issue in Europe as well. Using comparable data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the Health and Retirement Study in the U.S. (HRS), we analyze the correlates of obesity in the population ages 50 and above, focusing on measures of energy intake and expenditure as well as socio-economic status. Our main results are as follows: 1) Obesity rates differ substantially on both sides of the Atlantic and across European countries, with most of the difference coming from the right tail of the weight distribution. 2) Part of the difference in obesity prevalence between the U.S. and Europe is explained by a higher fraction of food eaten away from home and notably lower time devoted to cooking in the U.S. 3) Sedentary lifestyle or a lack of vigorous and moderate physical activity may also explain a substantial share of the cross-country differences. 4) Differential SES patterns of energy intake and expenditure across countries cannot fully account for the observed cross-country variation in the SES gradient in obesity.Body Mass Index, International Comparison, SHARE

Region Foreign Economic Relations as a Factor of Reindustiralization

At present, the strengthening vector of the developing economies, in particular, of the countries of Eurasian Economic Union and BRICS, in the geographic structure of Russian foreign economic activity is observed. The subject matter of the article is to see, how the development of this direction can be economically favorable. For this purpose, the forms and degree of the development of economic partnership including collaboration with the Russian regions are investigated. The agreements on the economic partnership with the regions of partner countries of Russia, their production relations are considered. The analysis of foreign trade shows that in the case of the partner countries within Eurasian integration and the BRICS group — Russian economy gets the high possibility to become the supplier of products of relatively high degree of processing which is the key factor of development of its processing industry, i.e. the factor of reindustrialization and export-oriented import substitution.The article has been prepared within the project of fundamental research of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (20152017) No. 15-14-7-13 “Scenario approaches to realization of Ural vector of management and development of the Russian Arctic in terms of world instability”

Automated creation of the problem complexes for programming contests

Sistems for automated correctness-checking can be used both at programming contests and in the teaching process. To make these systems useful for a wider circle of school and university teachers, it is necessary to automate not only the checking process itself but the preliminary preparation of problem complexes as well. This article concerns various aspects of automated correctness-checking and of the automated creation of the problem complexes and test setsСистемы автоматической проверки решений задач могут применяться не только на олимпиадах, но и в учебном процессе (особенно в вузах). Для того чтобы сделать их доступными более широкому кругу преподавателей, необходима автоматизация не только самого процесса проверки, но и процесса подготовки к этой проверке Предлагаемая статья рассматривает различные аспекты автоматического создания задачных комплектов (в частности, тестовых наборов) и автоматической проверки решений задач по программировани

"Belarus in Brief"

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫКРЕСПУБЛИКА БЕЛАРУСЬУЧЕБНЫЕ ПОСОБИЯУчебное пособие знакомит студентов 1 курса ФПИГ с историей, природными ресурсами, городами, населением, обычаями и традициями, политической жизнью Республики Беларусь. Пособие состоит из четырех частей

A realist review to explore how low-income pregnant women use food vouchers from the UK’s Healthy Start programme

Objectives: To explore how low-income pregnant women use Healthy Start food vouchers, the potential impacts of the programme, which women might experience these impacts and why. Design: A realist review. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies: Primary or empirical studies (of any design) were included if they contributed relevant evidence or insights about how low-income women use food vouchers from the Healthy Start (UK) or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (US) programmes. The assessment of ‘relevance’ was deliberately broad to ensure that reviewers remained open to new ideas from a variety of sources of evidence. Analysis: A combination of evidence synthesis and realist analysis techniques was used to modify, refine and substantiate programme theories, which were constructed as explanatory ‘context – mechanism – outcome’ (CMO) configurations. Results: 38 primary studies were included in this review: four studies on Healthy Start and 34 studies on WIC. Two main outcome strands were identified: dietary improvements (intended) and financial assistance (unintended). Three evidence-informed programme theories were proposed to explain how aspects of context (and mechanisms) may generate these outcomes: the ‘relative value’ of healthy eating (prioritisation of resources); retailer discretion (pressure to ‘bend the rules’); the influence of other family members (disempowerment). Conclusions: This realist review suggests that some low-income pregnant women may use Healthy Start vouchers to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables and plain cow’s milk, whereas others may use them to reduce food expenditure and save money for other things

Supply of Primary Care Providers and Appointment Availability for Philadelphia\u27s Medicaid Population

This brief analyzes the supply of primary care providers serving the Medicaid population in Philadelphia, and the geographic variability of this measure across the city. It also examines important measures of access – appointment availability and wait time for an initial appointment – that highlight challenges faced by Medicaid patients