17,229 research outputs found
Public Health Insurance and Private Savings
Recent theoretical work suggests that means and asset-tested social insurance programs can explain the low savings of lower income households in the United States. We assess the validity of this hypothesis by investigating the effect of Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income women and children, on savings behavior. We do so using data on asset holdings from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and on consumption from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, matched to information on the eligibility of each household for Medicaid. Exogenous variation in Medicaid eligibility is provided by the dramatic expansion of this program over the 1984–1993 period. We document that Medicaid eligibility has a sizeable and significant negative effect on wealth holdings; we estimate that in 1993 the Medicaid program lowered wealth holdings by 17.7 percent among the eligible population. We confirm this finding by showing a strong positive association between Medicaid eligibility and consumption expenditures; in 1993, the program raised consumption expenditures among eligibles by 5.2 percent. We also exploit the fact that asset testing was phased out by the Medicaid program over this period to document that these Medicaid effects are stronger in the presence of an asset test, confirming the importance of asset testing for household savings decisions.
Influence of anisotropic next-nearest-neighbor hopping on diagonal charge-striped phases
We consider the model of strongly-correlated system of electrons described by
an extended Falicov-Kimball Hamiltonian where the stability of some axial and
diagonal striped phases was proved. Introducing a next-nearest-neighbor
hopping, small enough not to destroy the striped structure, we examine
rigorously how the presence of the next-nearest-neighbor hopping anisotropy
reduces the -rotation degeneracy of the diagonal-striped phase. The
effect appears to be similar to that in the case of anisotropy of the
nearest-neighbor hopping: the stripes are oriented in the direction of the
weaker next-nearest-neighbor hopping.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
Proof of phase separation in the binary-alloy problem: the one-dimensional spinless Falicov-Kimball model
The ground states of the one-dimensional Falicov-Kimball model are
investigated in the small-coupling limit, using nearly degenerate perturbation
theory. For rational electron and ion densities, respectively equal to
, , with relatively prime to and
close enough to , we find that in the ground state
the ion configuration has period . The situation is analogous to the Peierls
instability where the usual arguments predict a period- state that produces
a gap at the Fermi level and is insulating. However for far
enough from , this phase becomes unstable against phase
separation. The ground state is a mixture of a period- ionic configuration
and an empty (or full) configuration, where both configurations have the same
electron density to leading order. Combining these new results with those
previously obtained for strong coupling, it follows that a phase transition
occurs in the ground state, as a function of the coupling, for ion densities
far enough from .Comment: 22 pages, typeset in ReVTeX and one encapsulated postscript file
embedded in the text with eps
Dynamic gating in the nucleus accumbens: Behavioral state-dependent synchrony with the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus
Contextual and sensory information, goals, and the motor plan to achieve them are integrated in the nucleus accumbens (NA). Although this integration needs flexibility to operate in a variety of environments, models of NA function rarely consider changing behavioral states. Here, intracellular recordings in anesthetized rats revealed rapid changes in the synchronization between NA up states and prefrontal cortical (PFC) local field potentials (LFPs). The synchronization of the NA with the PFC and ventral hippocampus also varied over time in awake rats, depending on the behavioral state of the animal: NA LFPs followed hippocampal theta rhythms during spatial exploration, but not during an operant task when they were instead synchronized with slower PFC rhythms. These data indicate that the ability of the NA to follow cortical inputs can rapidly change, allowing for a mechanism that could select an optimal response for a given behavioral condition
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