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Publication Determinants of Health Care Use Among Rural, Low-Income Mothers and Children: A Simultaneous Systems Approach to Negative Binomial Regression Modeling(2011-09) Valluri, SwethaThe determinants of health care use among rural, low-income mothers and their children were assessed using a multi-state, longitudinal data set, Rural Families Speak. The results indicate that rural mothers’ decisions regarding health care utilization for themselves and for their child can be best modeled using a simultaneous systems approach to negative binomial regression. Mothers’ visits to a health care provider increased with higher self-assessed depression scores, increased number of child’s doctor visits, greater numbers of total children in the household, greater numbers of chronic conditions, need for prenatal or post-partum care, development of a new medical condition, and having health insurance (Medicaid/equivalent and HMO/private). Child’s visits to a health care provider, on the other hand, increased with greater numbers of chronic conditions, development of a new medical condition, and increased mothers’ visits to a doctor. Child’s utilization of pediatric health care services decreased with higher levels of maternal depression, greater numbers of total children in the household, if the mother had HMO/private health care coverage, if the mother was pregnant, and if the mother was Latina/African American. Mother’s use of health care services decreased with her age, increased number of child’s chronic conditions, income as a percent of the federal poverty line, and if child had HMO/private health care insurance. The study expands the econometric techniques available for assessing maternal and pediatric health care use and the results contribute to an understanding of how rural, low-income mothers choose the level of health care services use for themselves and for their child. Additionally, the results would assist in formulating policies to reorient the type of health care services provided to this vulnerable population.Publication Determinants of Tax Pass-Through Rates: A Study of the U.S. Beer Industry(2011-09) Tiwary, RuchitaIn 1990, the U.S. Congress approved an increase in the federal excise tax on beer from $9 to $18 per barrel. This tax was required to be paid by all brewers and importers, on all produced units as of January 1991. The hike, which was equivalent to an additional 65 cents in federal taxes per 288 ounces (a 24 pack), represented the largest federal tax increase for beer in U.S history. Interestingly, retail prices increased by an average of $1.40 per pack; that is, the tax pass-through was “over-shifted” by approximately 115% (i.e. 75 cents above the 65 cent increase). Economic theory raises questions about the standard assumption that the pass-through rate of alcohol taxes to consumer prices is equal to 100%, but does not provide exact predictions. This study analyzes the determinants of tax over-shifting observed as a result of the 1991 federal tax increase on U.S. beer production. This thesis reports cross-sectional OLS regressions where several variables at the market, firm and brand level are used to explain the change in the nominal price of beer between the last quarter of 1990 and the first quarter of 1991. After controlling for as many factors as the available dataset permits, a robust result across specifications is that non–price vertical restraints (exclusive territory and exclusive dealing contract between beer manufacturers and beer distributors), advertising expenditures (a proxy for product differentiation) and the number of brands are important determinants of pass-through rate. While the three determinants appear to be statistically significant, it is the first two that seem to be of greater economic importance. The fact that vertical restraints are associated with a smaller pass-through rate is consistent with the idea that vertical restraints can serve to mitigate the double marginalization problem; the reason for this interpretation is that theoretical work suggests that a more severe double-marginalization problem can magnify the pass-through rate. Conversely, the effect of advertising is consistent with the theoretical notion that less price-elastic (i.e. more heavily advertised) products will experience a higher pass-through rate. Together, advertising expenditures (evaluated at the mean of the data) and the absence of vertical restraints, can account for $1.075 out of the $1.40 price increase (i.e. 76.8% of the pass-through rate).Publication Regulatory Compliance in small-scale fisheries in Old Providence Island (Colombia)(2011-02) Alayon, Laura MariaThis research evaluates how contextual variables such as knowledge of the rules, the perception about punishment and formal enforcement levels, perception of social control, fishers’ attitudes about legitimacy of rules, and social/economic factors, affect compliance with fisheries regulations. The analysis is carried out in Old Providence Island [OPI]. A survey of 100 fishermen was completed and data from that survey is used to econometrically estimate a model of compliance choices. Results suggest that reports on compliance change depending whether the interviewed is asked about compliance or about violation. I argue that this seemingly inconsistency, reveals an implication on methodological approach. Contrary to the main literature on compliance behavior, in this research deterrence variables were not statistically significant in the econometric estimations. This result may be because sanctions and fines are not clearly established, reflecting the existence of structural problems in enforcement activities in the island. The results indicate that fishers adjust their violation with respect to other fishers’ behavior, and the knowledge about regulations. The probability of being a violator is higher for divers, and this fact is recognized by the fishers themselves.Publication Dynamic Model Pooling Methodology for Improving Aberration Detection Algorithms(2010-01-01) Sellati, Brenton JSyndromic surveillance is defined generally as the collection and statistical analysis of data which are believed to be leading indicators for the presence of deleterious activities developing within a system. Conceptually, syndromic surveillance can be applied to any discipline in which it is important to know when external influences manifest themselves in a system by forcing it to depart from its baseline. Comparing syndromic surveillance systems have led to mixed results, where models that dominate in one performance metric are often sorely deficient in another. This results in a zero-sum trade off where one performance metric must be afforded greater importance for a decision to be made. This thesis presents a dynamic pooling technique which allows for the combination of competing syndromic surveillance models in such a way that the resulting detection algorithm offers a superior combination of sensitivity and specificity, two of the key model metrics, than any of the models individually. We then apply this methodology to a simulated data set in the context of detecting outbreaks of disease in an animal population. We find that this dynamic pooling methodology is robust in the sense that it is capable of superior overall performance with respect to sensitivity, specificity, and mean time to detection under varying conditions of baseline data behavior, e.g. controlling for the presence or absence of various levels of trend and seasonality, as well as in simulated out-of-sample performance tests.Publication Massachusetts Landowner Participation in Forest Management Programs for Carbon Sequestration: an Ordered Logit Analysis of Ratings Data(2010-05) Dickinson, Brenton JThe Family Forest Research Center recently conducted a mail survey of about 1,400 Massachusetts landowners. Respondents were given questions about themselves and their land and were then asked to rate three carbon sequestration programs in terms of their likelihood to participate. An ordered logit model is used to estimate probabilities that landowners would participate in various improved forest management programs. There are several estimation issues to consider with the ordered logit model. The relative merits of alternative models, including the multinomial and binomial logit, rank-ordered logit, binary logit and mixed ordered logit are discussed. Results of the ordered logit indicate that older males with less education and who own less than 100 acres are less likely to participate in an improved forest management program. All landowners are less likely to participate in a program that requires a management plan and that has a lengthy time commitment, low revenue stream and early withdrawal penalty. Policy implications and direction for future research are discussed.Publication Estimating Brand Level Price Elasticities for the Margarine Industry: A Two-Stage Budget Approach(1997-09) Gershoff, Matthew S.The congressional elections of 1994 rocked Washington and the country with the ousting of the Democratic party's long-standing control of the Congress. Less than two years later radical welfare reductions were signed into law by the democratic president. The reemergence of conservative ideology has brought calls for the slashing of government programs and a renewed zeal for the free market. This enthusiasm for the market mechanism rests on the belief that unfettered economic exchange will yield the most efficient allocation of resources to society. This belief is based on the implicit assumption that markets tend to be competitive in the absence of governmental intervention. Given the growing demand to limit the government's direct intervention in matters of the economy, it is imperative to know if and when markets are competitive. The solution to this question has been at the root of industrial organization since the 1950' s with the early empirical work of economist Joe Bain. It is now over forty years later and there is still a lack of a definitive answer to this fundamental query. It is not from lack of effort - hundreds of theoretical and empirical papers have been published on this topic. Why the answer should be so elusive stems largely from two basic limitations to economic inquiry: Explicit and implicit political values influencing research. The difficulty in applying the experimental design to economic questions. The two are related of course, but each plays its own role in preventing economists - and society - from reaching definitive conclusions to economic problems.Publication Wildfire Prevention and Mitigation: The Case of Southern Greece(2009-02) Zirogiannis, NikolaosThe summer of 2007 was the worst wildfire season ever recorded in Greek contemporary history with approximately 270,000 hectares of land burned throughout the country. The area most severely hit was the Peloponnesian state of Elia. Econometric analysis with the use of primary and secondary data was carried out in an attempt to disentangle the effects of a variety of factors in the spread of the fire. The findings identified villages in low altitudes and steep slopes as the ones most vulnerable to the risk of wildfire. Wind speed played a significant role in exacerbating the blazes. As far as human factors are concerned population density was negatively associated with wildfire spread. In addition, the more olive groves were found within the boundaries of a village the less damage the settlement was found to have sustained. Finally, participation of local people in fire abatement efforts was significant in reducing wildfire risk. We conclude that public policy should consider a more holistic approach to wildfire management; one that would incorporate the “human-fire” interactions more thoroughly and balance the importance of ecological variables and social parameters in both wildfire prevention and mitigation.Publication Bankruptcy Risk and the Performance of Market-based Pollution Control Policies(2008-09) Zhang, WeiWe study the impacts of bankruptcy risk on the performance of market-based pollution control policies. In chapter one, we concentrate on emissions trading markets. We find that firms that risk bankruptcy demand more permits than if they were financially secure. Thus, bankruptcy risk in a competitive market for tradable permits causes an inefficient distribution of these permits among firms. Moreover, the equilibrium distribution of permits is dependent on the initial allocation of permits. Thus, the main reasons for implementing emissions trading markets do not hold when some firms are financially insecure. In fact, the inefficiency that is associated with bankruptcy risk is worsened if financially insecure firms are given a smaller share of the initial allocation of permits. In chapter two, we investigate the influences of bankruptcy risk on imperfectly enforced emissions taxes. Under favorable, but not unrealistic conditions, an imperfectly enforced emissions tax produces an efficient allocation of individual emissions control; the aggregate level of control is the same whether enforcement of a tax is sufficient to induce the full compliance of firms or not, and differences in individual violations are independent of firm-level differences. All of these desirable characteristics disappear when some firms under an emissions tax risk bankruptcy—the allocation of emissions control is inefficient, imperfect enforcement causes higher aggregate emissions, and financially insecure firms choose higher violations.Publication Assessing the Impact of Economically Dispatchable Wind Resources on the New England Wholesale Electricity Market(2013-09) Goggins, AndrewAmong renewable energy resources, wind power is poised to contribute most significantly to meeting future wholesale electricity demand. However, the intermittent nature of wind power makes maintaining system reliability a challenge as the share of installed wind capacity on the grid increases. In New England, wind plants are currently unable to receive automatic dispatch instructions from the regional grid operator, but a centralized wind forecasting system under development will enable wind plants to be dispatched by ISO New England’s automatic dispatch software by 2016. Wind plants will receive an upper bound to their production through so-called Do Not Exceed (DNE) dispatch limits. This study evaluates how the automatic dispatch of wind plants in the ISO New England control area will impact wind plant output, emissions, wholesale energy market prices, and the system-wide generation mix. Wind generation is modeled using 10-minute time-series wind speed data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Eastern Wind Dataset. Market outcomes for 2020 are then simulated using the spreadsheet-based Oak Ridge Competitive Electricity Dispatch (ORCED) model which mimics the economic dispatch of power plants in deregulated wholesale electricity markets. Results show that imposing DNE dispatch limits reduce total wind generation by a small amount – 6.47% over the course of the study year. The study finds that DNE dispatch limits constrain wind generation often – 28.4% of the year on average – but that the levels of wind generation avoided were typically small – 72.4% of DNE limit curtailment events were at levels below 5% of plant nameplate capacity.Publication Zonal And Regional Load Forecasting In The New England Wholesale Electricity Market: A Semiparametric Regression Approach(2013-09) Farland, JonathanPower system planning, reliability analysis and economically efficient capacity scheduling all rely heavily on electricity demand forecasting models. In the context of a deregulated wholesale electricity market, using scheduling a region’s bulk electricity generation is inherently linked to future values of demand. Predictive models are used by municipalities and suppliers to bid into the day-ahead market and by utilities in order to arrange contractual interchanges among neighboring utilities. These numerical predictions are therefore pervasive in the energy industry. This research seeks to develop a regression-based forecasting model. Specifically, electricity demand is modeled as a function of calendar effects, lagged demand effects, weather effects, and a stochastic disturbance. Variables such as temperature, wind speed, cloud cover and humidity are known to be among the strongest predictors of electricity demand and as such are used as model inputs. It is well known, however, that the relationship between demand and weather can be highly nonlinear. Rather than assuming a linear functional form, the structural change in these relationships is explored. Those variables that indicate a nonlinear relationship with demand are accommodated with penalized splines in a semiparametric regression framework. The equivalence between penalized splines and the special case of a mixed model formulation allows for model estimation with currently available statistical packages such as R, STATA and SAS. Historical data are available for the entire New England region as well as for the smaller zones that collectively make up the regional grid. As such, a secondary research objective of this thesis is to explore whether or not an aggregation of zonal forecasts might perform better than those produced from a single regional model. Prior to this research, neither the applicability of a semiparametric regression-based approach towards load forecasting nor the potential improvement in forecasting performance resulting from zonal load forecasting has been investigated for the New England wholesale electricity market.Publication Investigating the Ability of Pro-social Emotions to Enhance Cooperative Behavior(2013-01-01) Vergara Sobarzo, Lucía AThis research investigates the use of pro-social emotions to improve cooperation. In particular, it tries to reconcile the results from Noussair and Tucker (2007) and Lopez et al. (2010). To reach this goal the experiment considers different degrees of revelation: no revelation, partial and full disclosure of information. Additionally, I use different microeconometric specifications to accommodate different hypothesis about the motivation of the subjects. My results diverge from those of Lopez et al. because I find that revealing the decision of a single subject at random does not significantly increase cooperation, which is the main result of these authors. Also, my findings indicate that cooperation is triggered only when I reveal information of either 3 or all the subjects in the group, the last case being similar to the public observability of Noussair and Tucker. These authors find a non-permanent increase in contributions, so I do but using a positive framed-experiment with disclosure of additional information, the group’s earning loss. Therefore, random revelation together with the disclosure of information about subjects’ decisions appears to be a good alternative to promote cooperation in a sample pool of undergraduate students. Also, I observe a reduction in contributions over time, but in the random revelation treatment this decay by less than 40%. The most interesting result that I obtain is the evidence of altruism and positive reciprocity in the specification of Ashley et al. (2003, 2010), instead of the matching in contributions reported by these authors.Publication The Impact of the Organic Mainstream Movement: A Case Study of New England Organic Produce Prices(2008-02) Dolan, Megan MPublication The Effect of Nutrition Labelling on Fast-Food Nutritional Content(2020-05) Reed, JoshuaThe United States has implemented many policies to target obesity. Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has mandated that restaurants must label the calorie content of the food they provide on menus and menu boards. Previous literature suggests that this policy will cause a small subset of consumers to improve the nutritional quality of the food they consume. Restaurants’ responses to the policy are not as well studied but existing literature suggests that menu items become slightly healthier after the introduction of various local policies. This paper seeks to assess the impact of a nationally-instituted nutrition labeling policy on fast-food nutritional content. We find evidence that restaurants both improve the healthfulness of pre-existing food items and introduce new food items of substantially lower nutritional quality.Publication Examining Two Sides of Food System Challenges: A Case Study of the Potential Impacts of the Food Safety Modernization Act on U.S. Produce Growers and a Descriptive Analysis of the International Food Certification Industry(2016-09) Lynch, Kathryn EThe Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) represents a major change to U.S. food policy. Because several FSMA rules require that covered businesses comply with standards by 2019 at the latest, the legislation is expected to have considerable effects on the U.S. food system in the near future. This research examines potential challenges associated with two different FSMA rules. The first essay uses farm-level data from the 2012 Census of Agriculture to estimate the number of farms and acres covered by the FSMA Final Rule on Produce Safety in the California, the Northeast, and the entire U.S. Industry information and interviews with stakeholders are assessed in conjunction with the Census data to hypothesize how farms in two distinct U.S. production regions, California and the Northeast, will fare under the rule. For the second essay, we developed unique datasets containing information on 425 food certification standards and 581 certification bodies. The certification data is used to develop a descriptive analysis of patterns in the international food certification industry. We show how offices of certification bodies that offer food safety certification services are distributed geographically, which serves as a basis for assessing international auditing capacity under the FSMA Final Rule on Accredited Third-Party Certification.Publication Commercial Solar Technology Adoption in the United States: Empirical Evidence on Effects of State Policies(2016-05) Koegler, EricGrowing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions as well as electricity prices have led to more serious efforts by the state and federal government to provide promote renewable energy at affordable costs. I examine the effect of policies and incentives on added commercial solar PV capacity while controlling for pro-environmental preferences, energy prices, geographic controls, and demographic controls. I use county-level data that spans twelve northeastern states and the District of Columbia from 2005 through 2013. I utilize the Tobit estimator to account for a mass point of solar PV capacity at zero kilowatts. The results suggest that loans, performance-based incentives, rebates, sales tax waivers, and net metering standards increase the amount of added solar PV capacity. Solar Renewable Energy credits have a small impact on PV capacity growth, while interconnection standard and renewable portfolio standards are not statistically significant. If policy administrators aim to increase the amount of commercial solar PV, then they should consider loans, rebates, and performance-based incentives as the most effective policies.Publication Motivating Household Energy Conservation Using Feedback and Social Nudges: A Field Experiment(2016-02) Hunter, ElizabethIn the context of climate change and heightened concerns about our energy future, academics and policy makers have taken an interest in the different motivational factors influencing individuals’ energy-use behavior. One area of particular interest is the role of information and other non-financial motivators: When traditional financial incentives are not appropriate or inadequate, are there alternative means we can use to encourage energy conservation? Our research looks at the effect of two different types of information programs used to promote household energy conservation: feedback and social nudges. To do this we conducted a field experiment at a family housing complex where the cost of electricity is included in the rent. Residents were presented with weekly Home Electricity Reports [HERs] with feedback on their electricity use. A portion of the residents additionally received HERs with information about how their electricity consumption compared to their neighbors (a social nudge). We then monitored households’ electricity-use to see if we could detect any changes. Overall we estimated a 1.4 percent reduction in energy-use as a result of the feedback treatment. This figure increased to a 3.9 percent reduction when the sample was restricted to households that received low-user status during the pre-treatment period. Low-users also appeared to react to the social nudge, however, the reaction depended on whether the household had received an HER indicating that it consumed above- or below- average the week before. Time-of-day analysis suggested that the majority of the changes in electricity-use behavior occurred during evening and night hours.Publication Human Capital, Employment and Subjective-Objective Poverty: A Micro Case Study of Nepal(2015-05) Pradhan, TejeshThis thesis derives an alternative subjective-objective poverty line (SPL) using self-reported qualitative assessments of perceived adequacy for different categories of consumption namely, food, housing and clothing. Modeling the probability of reporting that actual consumption in each category is adequate, I find that actual measures of consumption are highly significant predictors of perceived consumption adequacy. The perceived adequacy for different consumption components respond more elastically to spending on the corresponding category of goods than to that on other types. The results suggest that the implied subjective poverty lines and regional profiles are different from those predicted by popular objective methods. This thesis also estimates the effects of human capital, employment and basic facilities on household poverty status in Nepal. Delving into this topic seems very policy relevant for the country, where there is a huge need of public education and unemployment insurance programs. To investigate this causal relationship, I use the Living Standards Measurement Survey Data for the year 2010/11, which includes information on past and present educational attainment, current employment, and availability and status of infrastructure in different communities of the country. I find that higher educational attainment, employment and improved perceived status of public amenities contribute to higher subjective wellbeing and reduced likelihood of poverty, controlling for value of assets owned, socio-demographic attributes and geographic location.Publication Solar PV Adoption in the United States: An Empirical Investigation of State Policy Effectiveness(2015) Chernyakhovskiy, IlyaState policy incentives for solar power have grown significantly in the past several years. This paper examines the effectiveness of policy incentives to increase residential solar PV capacity. County-level solar adoption data and controls for demographic characteristics, solar resources, and pro-environmental preferences are used to estimate a model of residential solar adoption. Empirical findings show that financial incentives, solar-specific mandates, and loan financing programs are important drivers of residential PV capacity growth. Incentives that reduce the up-front cost of adoption and that are subject to low uncertainty are found to have the largest impact. Results also point to a significant positive relationship between hybrid vehicle sales and residential PV capacity growth, indicating the importance of pro-environmental preference as a predictor of solar PV demand.Publication What Drives the Fracking Boom Crime Relationship? A Fixed-Effects Analysis of Crime during the Pennsylvania Fracking Boom(2022-02) Batista-Lin, WebsterThe rapid expansion of hydraulic fracturing(fracking) over the past two decades has led to an increasing interest in the relationship between natural resource booms and crime. Since the onset of the fracking boom, numerous anecdotal accounts and an increasing body of empirical studies have suggested that fracking has a significant, positive impact on crime. However, the mechanisms behind this relationship are poorly understood. This study uses a high-resolution dataset and a unique, fixed-effects approach to decompose the effect that fracking has on crime into increases due to the introduction of new wells and increases due to the presence of existing wells. The findings suggest that new wells have a different impact on crime than existing wells. Specifically, new wells result in greater increases in violent crimes. These results may indicate that the relationship between fracking and crime is largely driven by the influx of non-local, transient, fracking labor.