This paper analyzes the three dimensions of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index to evaluate the state of Maine’s development progress in comparison with the rest of the United States. Measures of income, health, and education from 1940–2024 are included in an index number analysis of Maine’s human development progress, evaluating overall performance and each component both quantitatively and qualitatively. We find that income is the principal dimension where Maine lags behind national averages. Accordingly, four macroeconomic variables were examined over 1997–2024 to better assess Maine’s economic performance: per capita state domestic product, per capita personal income, the consumer price index, and unemployment. These metrics were used for more focused quantitative and qualitative index number analysis. The state’s progress toward United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 relating to employment security and sustainable economic growth is evaluated and discussed to formulate suggestions for effective policy. To address the economic dimension, the state should reform its property and corporate income tax structures to encourage investment and seek to scale its educational resources through cooperative agreements with institutions in neighboring states and provinces.
The Affordable Care Act’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, introduced in 2012, aimed to improve care quality by enhancing transitions and care coordination, ultimately reducing preventable hospital readmissions among Medicare patients through financial penalties. Employing a difference-in-differences approach with hospital fixed effects, this study examines how the program affected New Jersey hospitals’ discharge practices and inpatient lengths of stay using data from the New Jersey State Inpatient Databases of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for 2005, 2010, and 2015. The study analyzes 55,653 heart failure admissions, 23,960 acute myocardial infarction admissions, 34,973 pneumonia admissions, and 81,402 gastrointestinal disorder cases, with gastrointestinal disorders serving as a control group to account for underlying trends. The findings indicate that the program’s implementation was associated with a decline in discharges to home health services among heart failure patients, a decrease in discharges to skilled nursing facilities among both acute myocardial infarction and heart failure patients, and a reduction in inpatient length of stay among acute myocardial infarction and pneumonia cases. However, due to limited time variation and contemporaneous Medicare reforms, these results should be interpreted as associations rather than definitive causal effects. These findings suggest that value-based payment policies may shift hospital discharge behavior and care coordination strategies, potentially improving efficiency while also raising concerns about unintended effects on access and equity. Policymakers should account for concurrent reforms and underlying trends while ensuring that cost reductions are balanced with safeguards for care quality and patient outcomes, particularly among vulnerable populations.
This note discusses the misuse of the notion of Holling resilience in regional economics and science.
Although equity markets are widely recognized as interconnected, the drivers of these linkages remain less well understood. This paper examines how equity return shocks are transmitted across nine developed stock markets from 2017 to 2023 and whether spillovers vary with macroeconomic conditions. Using daily benchmark index returns and the spillover framework of Diebold and Yilmaz in a rolling-window generalized vector autoregression setting, the study examines spillovers during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war, links total spillovers to monetary policy and policy uncertainty, and evaluates whether net directional spillovers differ across interest-rate environments. North American and European markets are net transmitters of return shocks, whereas Asian markets are net receivers. Total spillovers surged during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and rose again around the Russia–Ukraine war. Determinant regressions show that total spillovers increased under a tighter United States monetary policy stance, higher United States policy uncertainty, and during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Net directional spillovers also varied with pandemic severity and interest rate environments, consistent with cross-border portfolio rebalancing.
This paper examines the effect of financial literacy on household investment decisions using data from the 2022 wave of the Survey of Consumer Finances. Using parental education as an instrument, the study estimates instrumental variables probit models for a broad set of financial assets and contributes new evidence on the effect of financial literacy on ownership of a range of asset classes. The results show that financial literacy significantly increases participation in complex, growth-oriented investments, such as individual retirement accounts, mutual funds, and stocks, while having no significant effect on simpler financial products. Despite large demographic differences in literacy and market participation, the study could not find evidence for heterogeneous effects of financial literacy based on sex, income level, and race. Once acquired, the benefits of financial literacy appear to be broadly similar across sex, income, and racial groups.
The continued decline in college enrollment in the United States will intensify competition among colleges to attract new students. This, in turn, will also increase the impetus for colleges to retain current students. While past work has primarily focused on the examination of best practices for student success and increased retention rates, this paper models the relationships between retention, academic progress, enrollment, and graduation outcomes to generate new policy insights. To calibrate the model, data were sourced from the United States National Center for Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System’s surveys from 2017 and 2022. Results suggest that the retention elasticity of enrollment in public institutions (77.1
This paper addresses the important question of whether the widespread adoption of market-based and outward-oriented reforms in Latin America has reversed the net transfer of resources from the region to the developed nations of the world. It provides econometric (time-series) evidence for the impact of foreign direct investment flows and reverse net transfers of profits and interest on labor productivity growth in the case of Chile. The selection of Chile is notable because it was one of the first countries to adopt market-based reforms and it is generally considered one of the best performing economies in the region, even in comparison to larger economies such as Brazil and Mexico. This paper documents reverse flows of capital that are not only large in absolute terms, but also relative to gross domestic product and gross fixed capital formation. It represents foregone opportunities for domestic investment in physical and human capital and may further undermine the country’s already strained capacity to generate future income and employment opportunities for its population. In this connection, the error-correction estimates for Chile suggest that, once remittances of profits and interest are deducted, the positive economic impact (and importance) of the growth rate in the net foreign capital stock per worker on labor productivity growth is diminished, ceteris paribus. The paper addresses the endogeneity and serial correlation problem via use of the parametric dynamic ordinary least squares and non-parametric fully modified ordinary least squares long-run estimator for the Chilean labor productivity equation in level form. The generated estimates are, in general, consistent with the error-correction estimates. The paper does not address the important question of whether the financial and technological (managerial) knowhow foreign capital ostensibly brings to the country (and the region) is enough to offset the negative effects emanating from the unprecedented reverse transfer of resources in recent decades.
Smartphones enable both easy reservations of motel accommodations and carefree searches for sexual partners. This study investigates the relationship between smartphone use, motel spending, and the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections in South Korea. Monthly data (N = 72) from December 2017 to November 2023 were analyzed, combining information on diagnosed sexually transmitted infection cases from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, smartphone users from the Korean Statistical Information Service, and motel credit and debit card spending from the Korea Tour Data Lab. Using a vector error correction model from time series analysis, the results show that smartphone use Granger causes both higher motel spending and higher incidences of sexually transmitted infections. The latter effect is particularly pronounced in cases of condyloma, suggesting that smartphone use may disproportionately impact the gay community, as condylomas are more common among men who have sex with men. In addition to the effect of smartphone use, motel spending is found to Granger cause a higher incidence of sexually transmitted infections. The evidence thus indicates a direct and indirect influence of smartphone use on the spread of sexually transmitted infections. These findings highlight the complex relationship between technology adoption, behavioral patterns, and public health concerns, and underscore the need for targeted interventions and awareness campaigns to mitigate potential adverse effects associated with smartphone-driven behavior.
The ticket price for the government lottery Lotto 6/49 in Canada has gone through two changes. The price increased from $1 to $2 (Canadian dollars) per ticket in 2004, then increased to $3 in 2013. The rules of the game also changed with the price increases. The average sales revenue increased slightly, while the number of tickets sold decreased substantially. Using the implicit utility theory developed by Erwin Diewert and the extension to lotteries developed by others, this paper estimates the effects of ticket price changes on consumer welfare. Payout prizes of 1,983 draws were collected from Lottery Canada, while data on average household characteristics were collected from Statistics Canada. A byproduct of the estimation is a true cost-of-living index for the game. The results show that there were substantial decreases in consumer welfare and increases in the real price. While the changes in ticket prices increased revenue for the Lottery Corporation, implications suggest reverting to the $1 ticket price regime.
This paper examines the effect of H-1B visa lottery outcomes on firm concentration and business diversity at the county level in the United States, leveraging a natural experiment. H-1B data from the Department of Labor and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services were merged with business data from the United States Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns to analyze changes in market structure. Business diversity was measured using two indices: the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and the Shannon Diversity Index. Using a continuous difference-in-differences design, the analysis found that counties with a higher lottery win rate experienced a 0.64
This study predicts the body weight implications of coronavirus disease 2019 using eight waves of pre-pandemic Canadian Community Health Survey data (2003–2018). Since coronavirus disease 2019 affected the level and location of meal production, leisure, and work, the primary determinants of interest are food quantities, physical activity, and employment. Assuming prices are an inverse proxy of food quantities, regression results suggest that away-from-home meals are associated with a higher body mass index, meaning that lockdowns may have caused Canadians to lose weight. However, the decrease in consumption of take-out meals was smaller than for dine-in meals, and results suggest the former is far more predictive of weight gain. Consequently, substitution within the away-from-home category plausibly mitigated some of the impact of more at-home meals. Given that at-home physical activity was an incomplete substitute for away-from-home exercise during the pandemic, on average, regression results imply that Canadians gained weight. While employment is associated with weight gain among those ages 25–64, it is associated with weight loss for those 18–24. Young people were more at risk of job loss during coronavirus 2019 and their re-entry to the labour market was characterised by employment similar, in terms of physical activity, to that of older Canadians. Thus, for those 18–24, weight gain from job loss is expected to have occurred during the lockdown months and, unlike behavioural changes in eating and exercise that were primarily temporary, the post-pandemic shift to more sedentary employment will likely have a long-run impact on the body weight of young Canadians.
