The Impact of Alcohol Consumption and Marijuana Use on High School Graduation

In this study we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). We estimate the relationship between high school graduation, and alcohol and marijuana use among the sample of high school students. We also estimate these students' demand determinants for each of these substances. Our results show that there are significant adverse effects of alcohol and marijuana use on high school graduation. In addition, we find that beer taxes, minimum drinking age laws and marijuana decriminalization have a significant impact on the demand for these substances. Our findings have important policy implications. We find that a ten percent increase in beer tax, reduces alcohol consumption among high school students, which in turn raises the probability of high school graduation by about 3.7 percent. Further, a ten percent increase in liquor prices, raises the probability of high school graduation by 6.6 to 8.2 percent. Raising the minimum drinking age for liquor also reduces liquor and wine consumption, and consequently, improves the probability of high school graduation.

Oil industry consolidation and refined product prices: Evidence from US wholesale gasoline terminals

Our objective in this paper is to quantify the impact of petroleum industry consolidation on refined product prices, controlling for other important factors that could also impact prices. Our empirical analysis focuses on the US petroleum refining industry using data on industry consolidation and wholesale gasoline prices collected over the interval 2000-2008. We match refinery units to wholesale city-terminal gasoline markets, and then estimate pooled cross-section time-series regressions to quantify the impact of petroleum industry consolidation on wholesale gasoline prices at city-specific terminals. The results of the empirical analysis of mergers are mixed, showing that some petroleum industry mergers resulted in statistically significant increases in refined product prices; others resulted in statistically significant declines and still others had no statistical impact at all. Our analysis of the effects of measures of market concentration--one at the level of city-specific wholesale terminals and another at the level of regional spot markets--found evidence that less concentrated markets are associated with lower price levels.Petroleum refining Oil industry mergers Fuel prices

Estimating the impact of refinery outages on petroleum product prices

We quantify the impact of refinery outages on petroleum product prices. The empirical analysis focuses on wholesale gasoline prices in the US using weekly data collected from January 2002 through September 2008, a period including many refinery outages. We match refinery unit output to specific wholesale gasoline markets, and then estimate panel data regressions to quantify the impact of refinery unit outages on wholesale gasoline prices while controlling for time-specific effects, city-specific effects, fuel-specific effects, refinery concentration, and other factors that could impact the price of refined petroleum products. The estimation results show that refinery outages have a statistically significant positive impact on refined product prices, and that the magnitude of this effect is larger for certain special fuel blends. Policy implications are discussed.Refinery outages Gasoline prices Boutique fuels

Biofuels policy and the US market for motor fuels: Empirical analysis of ethanol splashing

Low ethanol prices relative to the price of gasoline blendstock, and tax credits, have resulted in discretionary blending at wholesale terminals of ethanol into fuel supplies above required levels--a practice known as ethanol splashing in industry parlance. No one knows precisely where or in what volume ethanol is being blended with gasoline and this has important implications for motor fuels markets: Because refiners cannot perfectly predict where ethanol will be blended with finished gasoline by wholesalers, they cannot know when to produce and where to ship a blendstock that when mixed with ethanol at 10% would create the most economically efficient finished motor gasoline that meets engine standards and has comparable evaporative emissions as conventional gasoline without ethanol blending. In contrast to previous empirical analyses of biofuels that have relied on highly aggregated data, our analysis is disaggregated to the level of individual wholesale fuel terminals or racks (of which there are about 350 in the US). We incorporate the price of ethanol as well as the blendstock price to model the wholesaler's decision of whether or not to blend additional ethanol into gasoline at any particular wholesale city-terminal. The empirical analysis illustrates how ethanol and gasoline prices affect ethanol usage, controlling for fuel specifications, blend attributes, and city-terminal-specific effects that, among other things, control for differential costs of delivering ethanol from bio-refinery to wholesale rack.Biofuels Ethanol splashing Wholesale fuel markets

Geographic variation in utilization of cataract surgery

Cataract surgery is the most frequently performed surgical procedure on Medicare beneficiaries, with an annual cost to the Medicare program of more than $3.4 billion. In this study, the relationship between demographic, environmental, and provider-related factors, and the likelihood that cataract surgery will be performed on a Medicare beneficiary were assessed. The association between likelihood of cataract surgery and patient age, sex, race Income, and latitude of residence was examined, as was the association with the supply of ophthalmologists and optometrists in each region, and the allowed charge for cataract surgery and cost of practice in a region. This cross- sectional, population-based study used administrative data. Both regional models, using least-squares regression and person-based models, using logistic regression were employed. A random 5$15,000. Neither analysis detected a statistically significant association between the concentration of ophthalmologists per 1,000 Medicare beneficiaries and the re-gional rate of, or an individual’s likelihood of, cataract surgery. Compared with the geographic variation in provision of other surgical procedures, the variation in cataract surgery across large geographic areas observed in this analysis was relatively low. A person-based analytic strategy offers considerable advantages over traditional small-area-variation approaches in measuring the association between personal characteristics and likelihood of receiving particular health services. Causal relationships between particular variables examined and the rate or likelihood of cataract surgery cannot be inferred from this analysis. The decreased likelihood of undergoing cataract surgery among black Medicare beneficiaries is concerning, particularly in light of data showing a four-fold higher prevalence of cataract blindness among black Americans. © 1995 J.B. Lippincott Company