The treatment of Brazil in seven middle-grade geography textbooks

Thesis (Ed. M.)--Boston University, 195

Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson: “Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now”

Following this week’s the launch of EUROPP – an academic blog investigating matters of European Politics and Policy –Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson (also the creators of this blog!) discuss social scientists’ obligation to spread their research to the wider world and how blogging can help academics break out of restrictive publishing loops

On Heckits, LATE, and Numerical Equivalence

Structural econometric methods are often criticized for being sensitive to functional form assumptions. We study parametric estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE) derived from a widely used class of latent threshold crossing models and show they yield LATE estimates algebraically equivalent to the instrumental variables (IV) estimator. Our leading example is Heckman's (1979) two-step ("Heckit") control function estimator which, with two-sided non-compliance, can be used to compute estimates of a variety of causal parameters. Equivalence with IV is established for a semi-parametric family of control function estimators and shown to hold at interior solutions for a class of maximum likelihood estimators. Our results suggest differences between structural and IV estimates often stem from disagreements about the target parameter rather than from functional form assumptions per se. In cases where equivalence fails, reporting structural estimates of LATE alongside IV provides a simple means of assessing the credibility of structural extrapolation exercises

A tractable model of buffer stock saving

We present a tractable model of the effects of nonfinancial risk on intertemporal choice. Our purpose is to provide a simple framework that can be adopted in fields like representative-agent macroeconomics, corporate finance, or political economy, where most modelers have chosen not to incorporate serious nonfinancial risk because available methods were too complex to yield transparent insights. Our model produces an intuitive analytical formula for target assets, and we show how to analyze transition dynamics using a familiar Ramsey-style phase diagram. Despite its starkness, our model captures most of the key implications of nonfinancial risk for intertemporal choice

Child Mortality under Chinese Reforms

This paper looks for the impact of the Chinese economic reforms on its health performance. From an appropriate health outcomes indicator, it appears that while still being one of the most performing countries, China’s relative advance decreased during the reforms. Consistent with the fact that the health system had to rely more and more on private expenditures, we find an increasing impact of income on infant survival. We also show that relative prices matter for infant survival: for a given increase of income per capita, a currency real depreciation lowers survival. Focusing on poverty reduction still seems to be in China the main way to significantly improve infant survival.China., policy reforms, Infant mortality rate, Child mortality rate

Estimating Equilibrium Models of Sorting across Locations

With the growing recognition of the role played by geography in all sorts of economic problems, there is strong interest in measuring the size and scope of local spillovers (i.e., simple anonymous agglomeration or congestion effects, or more complicated interactions between individuals or firms of specific types). It is well-understood, however, that such spillovers cannot be distinguished from unobservable local attributes using just the observed location decisions of individuals or firms. We propose an empirical strategy for recovering estimates of spillovers in the presence of unobserved local attributes for a broadly applicable class of equilibrium sorting models. This approach relies on an instrumental variables strategy derived from the internal logic of the sorting model itself. We show practically how the strategy is implemented, provide intuition for our instrumental variables, and discuss the role of effective choice-set variation in identifying the model, and carry-out a series of Monte Carlo experiments to demonstrate the instruments' performance in small samples.Local Spillovers, Location Choice, Economic Geography, Natural Advantage, Social Interactions, Network Effects, Endogenous Sorting, Discrete Choice Models, Agglomeration, Congestion

A Dynamic Child Survival Function: Natural Convergence and Economic Policy

Convergence has been much less studied with regards to human development than it has been done in economic growth models. However, since the evolution of human development indicators is bounded, the analyse of their convergence may be importantly biased. This paper investigates the question of child survival convergence, attempting to identify the most relevant dynamic survival function, taking into account the characteristics of any bounded indicator. This function enables us to assess the impact of economic factors on child survival, and in particular that of relative prices. The econometric analysis relies on a dynamic panel with 5-years periods, covering 1965-1999 for 100 countries. The method used, namely the GMM System, enables us to test a dynamic model while controlling for the heterogeneity of the sample. We do not reject the assumption that that beside its effect through the level of income, real depreciation of the currency may lead to a deterioration of child survival in poor countries.

A Note on the Equilibrium Properties of Locational Sorting Models

A central feature of many models of location choice -- whether of firms or households, within or across cities -- is the role of local interactions or spillovers, whereby the payoffs from choosing a location depend in part on the number or attributes of other individuals or firms that choose the same or nearby locations in equilibrium. The main goal of this paper is to develop the equilibrium properties of a broadly applicable and readily estimable class of sorting models that allow the location decision to depend on both fixed local attributes (including unobserved attributes) and such local interactions. In particular, we prove uniqueness in the case of congestion effects and use a series of simulations to demonstrate that a unique equilibrium is more likely to obtain (i) the smaller are any agglomeration effects, (ii) the larger are the set of choices available to the agents, (iii) the more "meaningful variation" there is in those choices, and (iv) the more heterogeneous are the agents themselves. This is encouraging for the use of our model to describe the sorting of individuals and firms over geographic space, where the number of choices is usually large and variation in exogenous fixed attributes can be important. Moreover, these results conveniently coincide with the conditions required for econometric identification of our model.Local Spillovers, Social Interactions, Economic Geography, Natural Advantage, Endogenous Sorting, Discrete Choice Models, Agglomeration, Congestion, Random Utility