About
60
Publications
7,604
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,775
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Publications
Publications (60)
The New York legislature granted charters to 28 new banks in 1829. Over $5 million in capital was subscribed by 1745 individuals or entities. The average distance between investor and bank is less than 40 miles, and the average number of investors is 75 per bank, with ownership and control closely aligned. A gravity model fixed effects regression i...
The unemployment theory of Pissarides-Mortensen-Diamond is applied to the close-by geographic comparison identification strategy to analyze the effect of the minimum wage in New York State. The increase in the minimum wage in 2018 is estimated to raise the natural rate of unemployment almost 20 percent. The elasticity of the unemployment rate with...
People who must travel more than one mile to purchase fresh and healthy food are defined by the US Department of Agriculture as living in a ‘food desert’. An extensive literature has evolved on the subject, but it lacks an economic model or empirical evidence to explain food deserts. This paper estimates an economic location model to explain the oc...
The composed error stochastic frontier model is used to separate random variations in fire insurance losses from systematic unexpected losses due to adverse selection or moral hazard. Net premiums are an ex-ante predictor of losses, based on information available to insurers. Losses due to information unknown to the insurer are picked up by the hal...
An efficient hospital location minimizes the sum of treatment costs and patient travel costs. This paper presents a model of a circular hospital market area and estimates the parameters of that model for 125 hospitals in New York State outside of New York City. On average, an efficient location involves a patient vehicle journey of 16 min, but the...
Utilizing the duality properties of a production/profit function, this article estimates the risk premium received by Pennsylvania bituminous coal miners in 1915, without recourse to any information related to wages. A Cobb-Douglas coal production function is fitted to data for 694 mining establishments. Miners received modest risk compensation, ex...
A variable profit function is used in a novel way to estimate wage–risk premiums in Ohio bituminous coal mining. Unlike the dominant hedonic method, the profit function does not assume equilibrium and allows inferences about the marginal opportunity cost of accidents to mining companies. The profit function risk premium, expressed as a value of a s...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the demand and supply of opiates in the USA during the period 1870–1914 when the market was virtually unregulated.
Design/methodology/approach
The price and quantity of opiates is econometrically estimated using a data set constructed primarily from pharmaceutical trade journals.
Findings
Per capit...
Bribery to secure street railway franchises was notorious in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, and New York was the epicenter of this type of fraud. This paper analyzes the cost efficiency of 64 franchises operated in 31 cities across New York state in 1890. The modeling platform is a stochastic frontier estimation of a variable cost f...
Ten New York canals are evaluated as an integrated transport investment covering 1817-1880. A newly estimated willingness-to-pay (WTP) of canal users augments toll revenues as a benefits stream, and all effects are rendered in real terms. Net present value is positive for a range of real discount rates from 4 to 10 percent. A Monte Carlo simulation...
A random effects stochastic frontier variable cost function is estimated for the Erie Canal and nine interconnected lateral canals in New York, covering the period 1837–1881. Variable costs are 50 % above least cost for the Erie and 42 % above across all the 10 canals. Inefficiency does not vary over time in response to numerous changes in canal ad...
This paper measures the relative efficiency of 50 municipal police departments in New York State using an output-oriented data envelopment analysis programming model and finds that 30 departments are efficient, while 20 could improve their efficiency. Adoption of best practice methods in the 20 laggard agencies could reduce violent crime by an aver...
In spite of an estimated increase in annual alcohol-related motor vehicle costs of $2.767 billion (1947 dollars), the net social benefit of repeal of alcohol Prohibition amounts to $432 million per annum in 1934–1937, about 0.33% of gross domestic product. Total benefits of $3.25 billion consist primarily of increased consumer and producer surplus,...
A sample of 200 households in one New York City neighborhood in 1904 shows constant per capita food consumption as households grow in size, holding constant per capita expenditure. Logan (Econ Inq 49(4):1008–1028, 2011) presents US historical evidence that per capita food consumption declines as households grow, replicating contemporary cross-natio...
Since the seminal contribution of Haveman and Krutilla(1968), the subject of the potential drawdown from the pool of unemployed versus diversion of labor from existing employments consequent upon a public investment project has been largely neglected in the BCA literature. The advent of a new BLS series on job vacancies now permits direct estimatio...
Purpose
This paper aims to estimate empirically the effect on the voluntary turnover (quit) rate of employees when a large public corporation already judged as an outstanding employer is also ranked as being socially responsible by an external review organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper employs a cross‐section regression of the turn...
Abstract Previously unutilized household budget data are used to fit Engel curves to test Gary Becker's unitary theory of the household. If resources are fungible and are allocated to maximize a household utility function, the pattern of outlay should be invariant to control over and sources of income. The earnings of wives and Engel curves for foo...
Women employed in the New York paper box industry in 1913–1914 earned about 60% of what men did. This paper employs the human
capital framework to analyze the wage differential due to productivity related factors versus discriminatory nepotism towards
men. Years of schooling, years of experience in the paper box trade, and legislative restrictions...
"Recent theories of the strategic use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) emphasize the role of information asymmetry and how CSR is likely to be incorporated into a firm's product differentiation strategy. A key empirical implication of these theories is that firms selling experience or credence goods are more likely to be socially responsibl...
Purpose
This paper aims to estimate the cost to US savings banks and savings and loan institutions with assets under $250 million of complying with the anti‐redlining Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).
Design/methodology/approach
Compliance cost is modeled as a type of inefficiency because the lending institution is required to favor higher cost bo...
A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) cost minimization model is employed to estimate the cost to thrift institutions of achieving a rating of ‘outstanding’ under the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act, which is viewed as an act of voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). There is no difference in overall cost efficiency between ‘outstan...
We present an analytically tractable general equilibrium business cycle model that features micro-level investment lumpiness. We prove an exact irrelevance proposition which provides sufficient conditions on preferences, technology, and the fixed cost distribution such that any positive upper support of the fixed cost distribution yields identical...
Seventy-five small, municipal water systems are analyzed to determine if they employ the least-cost long-run capital stock, and if they minimize cost given the observed level of capital. The social cost of capital exceeds the estimated return on investment by more than four times, and actual production costs are 36 percent above minimum costs. Medi...
A stochastic frontier cost function indicates that the annual cost of complying with the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is $171,000 per thrift institution, roughly 2.3 percent of variable costs. But compliance cost is significantly less than the estimated 21 percent cost inefficiency. Based on published estimates of the incremental...
The shadow return on capital in 75 small municipal water systems is estimated using a gamma frontier variable cost function. The estimated Social Cost of capital exceeds the shadow return by an average ratio of 4.37:1, with a median capital stock inefficiency of $70, 500 per year per system owing to overinvestment in public water supply capital. In...
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering regulating radon, a naturally occurring soil gas dissolved in drinking water, because it poses a lung cancer risk. Benefits and costs of compliance are estimated for 29 water systems with radon above the proposed maximum contaminant level. The estimated cancer risk is three times higher than...
This paper tests for profit versus utility maximization by comparing the estimated marginal cost with the Medicaid reimbursement rate for 228 not-for-profit (NFP) nursing homes in New York. Seventy-nine percent of the homes operate where the rate exceeds or equals marginal cost; only 49 homes (21%) behave as if they maximize a utility function (mar...
This work involves an empirical analysis, incorporating firm-level investment in information technology and financial statement information, which provides an accurate measure of operating revenue, in a profitability function over the period from 1995-1997. The results indicate that IT can enhance firm level profitability. Factors such as advanced...
Linear programming Data Envelopment Analysis is used to determine the relative efficiency of 184 libraries in New York (U.S.A.). Efficiency is defined as whether or not a library could reduce the inputs it uses equiproportionately and still produce the same output. Inputs are defined programmatically: holdings, opening hours, serials and new books....
Inefficient operation and prevailing wage laws add about $10 billion annually to the cost of maintaining the nation's highway system. Stochastic frontier regression is used to estimate the cost efficiency of the 50 state departments of transportation. Aggregate costs are estimated to be about $5.5 billion higher because of inefficient operation. Me...
The cost efficiency of 520 New York school districts is measured using data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier regression. Mean inefficiency is 14% using either method, and the rank order correlation coefficient of inefficiency between the two methods is .86. The three largest school districts (Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse) are among...
The authors analyze 925 town highway departments in New York to determine potential economies from consolidation and the degree of cost efficiency. Only 15% of departments would reduce costs by merging, resulting in an average 13% reduction in expenditures. In addition, all of the towns are cost inefficient by an average 17%. Size economies are est...
A short-run total cost function is fitted to 1992 data for 235 public libraries in New York state. The stochastic frontier model is employed, which decomposes the error term into a random variable for statistical noise and a residual component measur ing economic inefficiency. Mean X-inefficiency (cost inefficiency) is estimated to be 24%. Governme...
A stochastic frontier cost function is fitted to data for 219 New York hospitals (1991). Economic inefficiency is estimated to be about 18 percent, comparable to published estimates for hospitals nationwide. Hospitals with over 300 beds are notably more efficient, and those with more Medicare patients are also more efficient. A reduction in excess...
The average level of cost inefficiency in New York nursing homes is estimated at 29%, based on a two-year panel of 164 Skilled Nursing Facilities and 443 combination Skilled and Health Related Facilities. The stochastic frontier cost function is fit to the data utilizing the composed error model, wherein statistical noise and allocative and technic...
The average level of cost inefficiency in New York nursing homes is estimated at 29%, based on a two-year panel of 164 Skilled Nursing Facilities and 443 combination Skilled and Health Related Facilities. The stochastic frontier cost function is fit to the data utilizing the composed error model, wherein statistical noise and allocative and technic...
A hedonic price equation of structureless farmland prices in New York State are fitted to 458 land transactions between 1982-1985. No capitalization is found of the state's Agricultural District farmland preservation program, which combines current-use property taxation with several development-inhibiting features. It is hypothesized that landowner...
The use of salt for deicing roads results in costs estimated at more than $800 per ton-including the costs of repair and maintenance of roads and bridges, vehicle corrosion costs, and loss of aesthetic value through roadside tree damage. Additionally, there are probable health costs related to elevated sodium levels in drinking water. The new Surfa...
We investigate how environmental and trade policies affect the transfer of environmental technology in a two-country model with global pollution. By comparing free trade and tariff policy without commitment, the following results are obtained. First, the existence of an environmental policy in a local country induces technology transfer from a fore...
This article employs a life-cycle model of consumption and U.S. time-series data covering 1929-1969 to estimate the long-run impact on capital formation of substituting one dollar of debt for a dollar of taxes to finance a given level of government spending. The income redistribution effects of debt service are shown to be critical to analyzing the...
Data from 166 general hospitals in New York State (1981) is used to estimate a quadratic and logarithmic long-run cost function. Both equations fit the data very well but give very different results. The quadratic appears in confirm the commonly-held view of a shallow U-shaped average cost curve, whereas the log function indicates significant econo...
A conceptual framework and multiequation model of the local public sector and property market is developed in order to test the implications of the Ricardo-Barro debt equivalence hypothesis. Substituting one debt dollar for one dollar of current real property taxes to finance a given level of expenditure implies a one dollar reduction in aggregate...
This paper estimates the burden of lost producer surplus imposed on landlords by rent control. The approach employed measures the reduction in Marshallian quasi‐rent from the side of the derived demand for factors rather than the short‐run supply of housing.
A constant elasticity of substitution production function is employed to derive the input d...
Develops a microeconomic model of landlord behavior. They key parameters of the model are then econometrically estimated and the implication of those results considered. The supply of housing services from the standing stock of structures is quite inelastic; nevertheless, rent control is shown to have reduced the flow of housing services about 25%....
This paper tests the hypothesis that an increase in the supply of public housing causes a substantially offsetting decline in the quantity supplied of competing private units. The statistical results offer little by way of confirmation of this view.
A comparative statics model of the rental housing market is presented from which estimating equation...
An increasing number of cities are attempting to use urban renewal to stem what they see as the deterioration of their central business district (CBD), manifested by physical deterioration of commercial structures and growing numbers of vacant shops. One such city is Troy, New York, population 62,000 (1970), located in upstate New York about ten mi...
This paper derives the type of tax system (progressive, proportional or regressive) required by different marginal income utility functions to satisfy the equal absolute and equal proportional sacrifice of utility among taxpayers. The context is that in which the rules were originally formulated, namely, the old welfare economics of measurable and...
This paper derives the type of tax system (progressive, proportional or regressive) required by different marginal income utility functions to satisfy the equal absolute and equal proportional sacrifice of utility among taxpayers. The context is that in which the rules were originally formulated, namely, the old welfare economics of measurable and...
