450 research outputs found
Hb Hotz seinem Freunde Hanhart z. fr. Erg
No full textDedikationssilhouette nach links von Hb. Hotz, gewidmet Joseph Rudolf Hanhart (1836-1920)Anonyme/r Künstler/inHandschriftliche Widmung unterhalb des Bildes "Hb Hotz seinem Freunde Hanhart z[ur] fr[eundlichen] Er[innerun]g
Examining the Effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit on the Labor Market Participation of Families on Welfare
No full textThis paper examines the employment effects of the earned income tax credit (EITC). We use a unique dataset, created by matching administrative data from public assistance records, unemployment insurance records, and federal tax returns for a sample of California residents. We conduct a set of four tests to assess our ability to isolate the causal effects of the EITC on employment. The first test is based on the intuition that if the EITC alters employment, all else being equal, employment rates for two-or-more child families should grow relative to the employment rates of one-child families, as credit amounts available to these groups of families diverged over the 1990s. The second test examines whether or not people eligible for the EITC actually file tax returns and claim it. The third test is based on the intuition that, if the EITC, and not other factors such as the strong economy in the 1990s, is causing employment differences between families with two or more children relative to those with one child, we should expect to see no employment differences (after conditioning on other characteristics) between families with two children and families with three or more children, since the EITC did not change differentially for the latter two groups. The fourth test conditions the sample on those who do not file tax returns and again examines employment changes in the 1990s for families with two or more children relative to families with one child. Using fixed-effects empirical employment models estimated on a sample of single-parent families, our coefficient estimates are consistent with the EITC having a substantial, positive effect on the employment of families who have used or will use welfare.
Topics on the Economic Outcomes of Young Adults
No full textIn this dissertation, I present two essays linked by their focus on forces that act on young people as they prepare to enter adulthood and their economically independent life. In the first, I investigate the impact of parents' location and occupational attributes on young adult children's labor market outcomes, particularly wages. I exploit the genealogical structure of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to measure locations, occupations and wages of young adults and their parents. I find that college graduates who live near their parents have lower wages than those who do not, but that wages for high school graduates are not strongly correlated with proximity to parents. In order to determine the reasons for these patterns, I build and estimate a model of young adults' location and occupation decisions to account for potentially competing effects parents may have on their children's wages. Using the model, I find evidence that young adults have strong preferences for living near parents, a result which through compensating differentials can partially account for the tendency to earn lower wages when near parents. However, I estimate that young people across all levels of educational attainment place similar value on this proximity. I also find that living near parents may directly enhance productivity and/or occupation quality and lead to higher wages. In particular, I find that high school graduates whose fathers are in cognitive skill-intense occupations have higher wages within and occupation and switch into more cognitive skill-intense occupations themselves if they live in the same labor market as their father, but that this effect is not present for college graduates. I also find a differential selection in the earnings potential of movers and differential impacts of the cost of occupational switching between high school and college graduates. These differences all substantially contribute to the differences in wage and location choice patterns between high school and college graduates.In the second, I present joint work with V. Joseph Hotz, Peter Arcidiacono and Esteban Aucejo on college admissions in the University of California system. College graduation is an important outcome for future welfare, and in this chapter we examine possible causes for an increase in college graduations among UC students who enrolled in 1998-2000 versus those who had enrolled in the previous three years. In between these cohorts, Proposition 209 banned using racial preferences in admissions at California's public colleges. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and after Prop 209. After Prop 209, graduation rates of minorities increased by 4.4\%. We characterize conditions required for better matching of students to campuses to account for this increase. We find that Prop 209 did improve matching and this improvement was important for the graduation gains experienced by less-prepared students. At the same time, better matching only explains about 20\% of the overall graduation rate increase. Changes after Prop 209 in the selectivity of enrolled students explains 34-50\% of the increase. Finally, it appears UC campuses responded to Prop 209 by doing more to help retain and graduate its students, which explains between 30-46\% of the post-Prop 209 improvement in the graduation rate of minorities.</p
Punishing Temporary Drug-Induced Insanity: An Analysis of \u3ci\u3eState v. Hotz\u3c/i\u3e, 281 Neb. 260, 795 N.W.2d 645 (2011)
No full textOn a cold December afternoon, two roommates—Joseph Hotz and Kenneth Pfeiffer—consumed psilocybin mushrooms. Two hours later, Pfeiffer was dead by Hotz’s hands. The intervening events were more bizarre and horrific than any after-school special. By stabbing his roommate to death in the midst of a drug-induced paranoia, Hotz did the unthinkable while he was unable to think. Defenses that palliate a defendant’s criminal liability because of intoxication are “[f]requently reviled” and “ever-controversial.” State v. Hotz raises the difficult question of whether a criminal intent formed in the midst of temporary drug-induced insanity is one deserving of punishment. The answer depends on whether the criminal law is viewed through the prism of retributivism or utilitarianism. An act committed in the midst of insanity, whatever its cause, is not as culpable as an act committed while sane. However, excusing an offender by reason of temporary drug-induced insanity fails to protect the public from a potentially dangerous individual. In extending to other drugs its prior case law denying the insanity defense to those temporarily insane due to the effects of alcohol, the Nebraska Supreme Court failed to relate its decision to the conflicting rationales of punishment. By treating Hotz’s criminal act the same as any other, the court perhaps worked an injustice on a less than fully culpable offender. Surprisingly, the court suggested that if only Hotz had severely abused drugs over a prolonged period of time—instead of experimenting with drugs recreationally—he may well have been excused of criminal liability under the settled-insanity doctrine. This Note begins by briefly outlining the defenses of insanity and voluntary intoxication, both in Nebraska and beyond. Next, this Note provides an outline of the status of both temporary and settled druginduced insanity, both in general and in Nebraska. Following the overview of the relevant criminal law, the facts and holdings of State v. Hotz will be recounted. This Note’s analysis starts by tracing the different strands of the settled-insanity doctrine and the justifications for its existence. Ultimately, this Note concludes that the settled-insanity doctrine, as contemplated by the Supreme Court of Nebraska and expounded elsewhere, is unsound on retributive grounds. Next, this Note discusses how the competing aims of retributivism and utilitarianism, particularly incapacitation, are set in conflict by temporary drug-induced insanity. Finally, this Note concludes that the best way for the law to address offenders like Hotz is through an offense of reckless or negligent intoxication. Culpability, and therefore criminal liability, should be based on the offender’s decision to become intoxicated and not the criminal act committed in the midst of temporary drug-induced insanity
The Impact of Regulations on the Supply and Quality of Care in Child Care Markets
No full textWe examine the impact of state child care regulations on the supply and quality of care in child care markets. We exploit panel data on both individual establishments and local markets to control for state, time, and, where possible, establishment-specific fixed effects to mitigate the potential bias due to policy endogeneity. We find that the imposition of regulations reduces the number of center-based child care establishments, especially in lower income markets. However, such regulations increase the quality of services provided, especially in higher income areas. Thus, there are winners and losers from the regulation of child care services.
Cohort Changes in the Transition from School to Work: What Changed and What Consequences Did it have for Wages?
No full textThis study examines the changes in the school-to-work transition in the United States over the latter part of the twentieth century and their consequences for the wages of young adults. In particular, we document the various types of work and schooling experiences acquired by youth who came to adulthood in the U.S. during the late 1960s, 1970s, and through the 1980s. We pay particular attention to how the differences across cohorts in these transitions vary by gender and race/ethnicity and how these differences affected their subsequent wage attainment. Evidence is evaluated using data from National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women, Young Men, and Youth 1979. In general, we find that indicators of educational attainment, working while in school and non-school related work increased across cohorts for almost all racial/ethnic and gender groups. This was especially true for young women. Furthermore, various indicators of personal and family backgrounds changed in ways consistent with an improvement across cohorts in the preparation of young men and women for their attainment of schooling and work experience and their success in the labor market. The one exception to this general picture of improvement across cohorts was Hispanic men, who experienced a notable decline in educational attainment, the acquisition of full time work early in their adult lives and in a variety of personal and family background characteristics. With respect to hourly wage rates, we find that wages over the ages 16 through 27 declined across cohorts. However, the rate of growth of wages with age, particularly over adult ages, increased across cohorts for all racial/ethnic and gender groups, except black and Hispanic men. To assess the relative importance that changes in the school, work, military and other experiences had on wages across generations, we employ the decomposition proposed by Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1993) to decompose the across-cohort wage changes in observable determinants, in their associated prices and in unobservable determinants, using a standard regression specification for the determinants of life cycle wages. We find that the dominant factor explaining the declines in wages across cohorts is attributable to changes in the prices of observable characteristics and to changes in unobservable determinants. At constant skill prices, changes in the skill composition across youth cohorts would have increased their wages, most especially for Hispanic women, followed by black women, white women, black men, and then white men. In striking contrast, Hispanic males’ wages would still have declined across cohorts purely accounting for compositional changes. We interpret this result as coming from the changing skill composition of immigrants. Our results also highlight the need for accounting for the endogeneity and selectivity of early skill acquisition.
A Simulation Estimator for Dynamic Models of Discrete Choice.
No full textThis paper analyzes a new estimator for the structural parameters of dynamic models of discrete choice. Based on an inversion theorem due to V. J. Hotz and R. Miller (1993), which establishes the existence of a one-to-one mapping between the conditional valuation functions for the dynamic problem and their associated conditional choice probabilities, the authors exploit simulation techniques to estimate models that do not possess terminal states. Drawing on work in empirical process theory by A. Pakes and D. Pollard (1989), they establish its large sample properties and conduct a Monte Carlo study of J. Rust's (1987) model of bus engine replacement to compare its small sample properties with those of maximum likelihood. Copyright 1994 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.
Strategic Information Disclosure: The Case of Multi-Attribute Products with Heterogeneous Consumers
No full textWe examine the incentives for firms to voluntarily disclose otherwise private information about the quality attributes of their products. In particular, we focus on the case of differentiated products with multiple attributes and heterogeneous consumers. We show that there exist certain configurations of consumers’ multi-dimensional preferences under which a firm, no matter whether producing a high- or low-quality product, may choose not to reveal the quality even with zero disclosure costs. The failure of information unraveling arises when providing consumers with more information results in more elastic demand, which triggers more intensive price competition and leads to lower prices and profits for competing firms. As a result, the equilibrium in which disclosure is voluntary may diverge from that in which disclosure is mandatory.
Employment and Wage Prospects of Black, White, and Hispanic Women: Evidence from the 1980s and Early 1990s
No full textSince the mid-1970s, the U.S. experienced substantial changes in the industrial composition of employment and wages owing to energy price shocks, increased international competition, and technological change (Hyclak, 1996, Levy and Murnane, 1992). As the share of total manufacturing employment declined and service employment expanded in both absolute and relative terms, wage inequality increased, particularly between college and high school educated workers (Katz and Murphy, 1992; Danziger and Gottschalk, 1993; Rasell, Bluestone and Mishel, 1997). Furthermore, changes in the legal and institutional structure of U.S. labor markets, including a decline in the share of the labor force that is unionized and changes in the enforcement of affirmative action laws, constrained employment options for unskilled and semi-skilled workers (Freeman, 1993). There is growing evidence that the consequences of these macro-economic trends were not uniform among race/ethnic and age groups (Hotz, et. al., 1995; Bound and Freeman, 1992; Acs and Danziger, 1993; Blau and Kahn, 1997). For example, real wages declined more steeply for younger that older workers (Katz and Murphy, 1992; Bound and Johnson, 1992). Reversing a long-run trend, the black-white differentials in employment rates and market earnings widene
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