Manouchehr Mitch Mokhtari

• PhD
• Professor at University of Maryland, College Park

Background The maternal mortality rate in the United States is high and disparities among non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black women remain. In the State of Georgia, the pregnancy-related death rate is among the worst in the nation. Objective To examine current pregnancy-related deaths in the State of Georgia using measures of timing and caus...

This study provides theory and evidence on the relation between financial literacy overconfidence (FLO) and high-cost borrowing and its mediation and moderation through mobile financial services (MFS). We investigate whether MFS carry the effect of FLO on the household demand for alternative financial services (AFS), such as payday loans. Using the...

This case-control study aimed to test interaction between the most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (i.e., chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis) and prenatal care (PNC) utilization status on preterm birth (PTB) (<37 weeks gestation) and low birthweight (LBW) (<2500 g). We used data of participants with singleton live births (N = 3,418,02...

Paucity of information on the informal market for health services hampers the governments' efforts in performing their desirable roles in informing, regulating, mandating, financing and providing health services to their people. Analysis of data from a survey of almost 20,000 patients fills a void in understanding informal payments in Moldova and,...

Two decades of tax system reforms in the Central Asian Republics (CARs) show that, in the absence of political commitment and a clear roadmap , borrowed laws and institutions are not effective in catapulting the CARs' tax systems to their western level aspirations. Persistence of the Soviet legacy and the gradual piecemeal approach to tax reform ha...

Using birth, marriage, and divorce data from the U.S. Census, this study examines the stability in trends between 1920 and 2008. Our investigation substantiates the reactive nature of family trends to any intervention or change in its environment. We find that changes in family trends, which might have been initiated by changes in policies or other...

To review blockchain lessons learned in 2018 and near-future predictions for blockchain in healthcare, Blockchain in Healthcare Today (BHTY) asked the world's blockchain in healthcare experts to share their insights. Here, our internationally-renowned BHTY peer-review board discusses their major predictions.Based on their responses, presented in de...

Background: While alcohol consumption is pervasive in the country of Georgia, the extent of alcohol consumption among pregnant women is yet to be examined. The goal of this study is to examine prevalence and correlates of alcohol consumption during pregnancy in Georgia. Methods: Using data from the World Health Organization’s Stepwise approach to n...

A survey of models used for forecasting exchange rates and inflation reveals that the factor-based and time-varying parameter or state space models generate superior forecasts relative to all other models. This survey also finds that models based on Taylor rule and portfolio balance theory have moderate predictive power for forecasting exchange rat...

Legalizing marijuana, whether for medical use, for recreation, or for recreation under the guise of medicine, has raised concerns about stoned drivers imperiling the safety of other drivers. In response, legislators have set legal limits for THC (Delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol), the primary psychoactive component in marijuana 1. Legislators in Washin...

This paper shows that competition among health insurance licensors has strong pro-patient effects, if inter-regulatory competition is allowed. The pro-patient effects of the competition among health insurance licensors do not depend on the need for the patients to form or exercise their political influence, such as, forming cooperatives or voting,...

HEALTH AND CONSUMER FINANCE, Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning

HEALTH AND CONSUMER FINANCE, Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning

Do Mental Health, BMI, and Appearance affect Marital Satisfaction? Manouchehr Mokhtari, Elizabeth D. Pollock, Mamak Ashtari, Ryan Blick Abstract This paper examines the relationship between health and marital satisfaction. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, ordered logistic regression estimates show that mentalhealth and BMI sig...

Two decades of tax system reforms in the Central Asian Republics (CARs) show that, in addition to political commitment, understanding reformers' incentive structure and a roadmap are necessary if full reform equilibrium is to be reached. Borrowed laws and institutions that are based on international best practice are useful, but are not effective i...

Paucity of information on the informal market for health services hampers the governments' efforts in performing their desirable roles in informing, regulating, mandating, financing and providing health services to their people. Analysis of data from a survey of almost 20,000 patients fills a void in understanding informal payments in the countries...

Paucity of information on the informal market for health services hampers the governments' efforts in performing their desirable roles in informing, regulating, mandating, financing and providing health services to their people. Analysis of data from a large patient satisfaction survey of almost 20,000 patients fills a significant void in understan...

The growth of health care costs challenges the health of individuals, families, and nations. In the United States, health care expenditure has risen by more than eight folds relative to that of 1980. This rise in health care expenditure has been much higher than the growth in family income during the last three decades. Given the inherent market fa...

We examine the effect of parental employment on child health as measured by children’s percentile body mass index (pBMI). Our investigation reveals that hours of parental employment are important determinants of child health. We find a highly significant role for the influence of fathers’ hours of work on the pBMI. Given that work hours of both mot...

Two decades of transition in the five Central Asian Republics (CARs) have shown that, in the absence of a theoretical framework (roadmap) and political commitment for implementation, borrowed laws and institutions based on the international best practice are useful but not fully effective in catapulting the tax system of these republics to their de...

This study makes two contributions to the study of family and economic issues. First, it investigates the effects of consumer-market shortage on fertility. Second, it considers the effects on fertility of eliminating consumer-market shortage using a survey of families from the Former Soviet Union. The estimated model of fertility showed that consum...

We show that inter-regulatory competition among health care regulators can have strong pro-patient effects in globalized world. The positive impact of the inter-regulatory competition among health care regulators does depend on the need for the patients or consumer groups to form or exercise their political influence. These findings are consistent...

This paper shows that inter-regulatory competition can have powerful pro-consumer effects in an open economy world even when the consumers have little political influence. These findings overturn the welfare implications of capture theories that show that regulators do not vigorously pursue public interests. The paper also points to the kinds of ma...

Recent studies argue that the spread-adjusted Taylor rule (STR), which includes a response to the credit spread, replicates monetary policy in the United State. We show (1) STR is a theoretically optimal monetary policy under heterogeneous loan interest rate contracts in both discretionay and commitment monetary policies, (2) however, the optimal r...

In this paper, an Error Correction Mechanism model of U.S. clothing expenditures for the period 1929–1987 is estimated using recent developments in modeling nonstationary variables. Using clothing expenditures as an example, the pitfalls of conventional modeling of nonstationary variables and the advantages of a new modeling procedure that takes in...

This research explores if and how seasonality moderates the effect of consumer characteristics on household per capita expenditure for apparel. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis was based on quarterly micropanel data from the Continuing Consumer Expenditure Survey. The results confirmed that seasonality moderates the relationship...

We use a new independent survey of 4,000 Russian households (the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey or RLMS) to study their saving behavior. The RLMS household saving rate (12%) is less than half the official figure (29%). Despite the massive changes of the transition, the Russian household saving rate of 1994 cannot be shown to be different fr...

This paper examines the effects of shortages on the demand for money of Soviet citizens. It is the first to examine the demand for money in a centrally planned economy using cross-section data in which alternatives to income and interest rates are used to explain money demand. We find demand for broad money and liquid assets depends on income, illi...

In this study, we present a theoretical framework and an empirical analysis of the savings behavior of Soviet families living under the administrative-command system. For our empirical analysis, we used data collected in interviews of 2,793 former Soviet citizens, who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. Despite the theoretical ambigu...

We study 33 pairs of advertising agencies that merged between 1947 and 1985, comparing each merging pair against two controls: (a) a pair of agencies with combined merger-date billings close to the total billings of the merged unit, and (b) a single agency with similar total merger-date billings. Gross revenues are the dependent variable. Results:...

This paper reexamines the Soviet grain procurement crises that preceded the collectivization decision. It uses regional cross-section data to study the effects of extraordinary measures and of relative state/private purchase prices on the "private grain surplus"-the amount of grain retained by peasants or sold to private markets. We find that the p...

This study makes two contributions to the quantity-constraint literature. First, it investigates the effects of consumer-market shortage on labor supply. Second, it considers the effects on hours of work of eliminating quantity constraints in a planned socialist economy. The estimated model of Soviet labor suppl y shows that the uncompensated wage...

This paper estimates a simple error correction mechanism (SECM) model of consumption a la Davidson, Hendry, Srba and Yeo (1978) for 13 OECD countries over the period 1951-82. This is done for each country separately as well as for the pooled data. The basic results of this study are the following: (1) The SECM model appears as an adequate approxima...

The authors conduct tests to gain insight into the empirical relevance of the proposition that factor prices converge as trade expands. The test results support the proposition of factor price convergence in sixteen OECD countries during the 1961-84 period. Regression analyses support the view that trade openness has been the most significant facto...