The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy

Published by De Gruyter

Volume 22 Issue 1

January 2022

Issue of The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy

Submit manuscript

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available January 14, 2022

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iii

Download PDF

Research Articles

Publicly Available November 18, 2021

The Impact of Mask Usage on COVID-19 Deaths: Evidence from US Counties Using a Quasi-Experimental Approach

David Welsch

Page range: 1-28

More Download PDF

Abstract

I examine the relationship between mask usage and COVID-19 deaths at the county level. When examining this relationship, even the direction caused by the potential endogeneity bias is unclear. In one direction, characteristics that are known to correlate with a larger amount of potential COVID-19 deaths, such as an older population, may make people more likely to wear masks. This will cause a bias that makes mask usage look less effective than it truly is. In the other direction, areas with higher risk tolerances may have less mask usage, but may at the same time be engaging in other behavior that puts them at higher risk for contracting COVID-19. This will cause a bias that makes mask usage look more effective than it truly is. The identification approach exploits a large set of controls and employs percentage of vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election as an instrumental variable for mask usage. The main finding is that a one percentage point increase in the number of individuals who say they often or frequently wear a mask when within six feet of people will reduce COVID-19 deaths in a county by 10.5%, or six deaths in the average county.

November 12, 2021

Monetary and Non-Monetary Poverty within Urban Locals and Rural Migrants in China using Inequality-Sensitive Poverty Measures

Jing Yang, Pundarik Mukhopadhaya

Page range: 29-66

Abstract

This paper measures monetary and non-monetary poverty among urban local and rural migrant groups in the urban labour market in China, capturing incidence, intensity and inequality of poverty. To measure non-monetary poverty in multiple dimensions the chosen indicators are education, health status, health insurance and pension insurance. Using data from the China Household Income Project for the years 2002, 2007, and 2013, it appears that although monetary poverty in both groups is low, migrants have higher levels of non-monetary deprivation for various levels of poverty thresholds. Compared to the urban locals, the rural migrants experienced relatively less severe poverty than mild or moderate poverty during 2002 and 2007. Our Shapley decomposition exercise on non-monetary poverty measure reveals that the incidence contributes most to the urban-migrant gap, and the contribution of intensity is higher than that of inequality. The most important factors in multidimensional poverty for both groups are health insurance and pension insurance in all years. Our logit analysis shows that the effects of demographic characteristics, level of contract, occupation, and the industry have different impacts on these two groups.

November 15, 2021

College Readiness, Early Post-secondary Academic Performance and the GED Degree: Evidence from Kentucky

T. M. Tonmoy Islam, Kathryn Rouse

Page range: 67-98

Abstract

We use detailed administrative data from Kentucky to provide robust descriptive evidence on the relationship between the General Educational Development (GED) degree, college readiness, and early post-secondary (PSE) academic performance. Following previous work in this area, we address selection issues by focusing on a sample of students who are identified as at-risk prior to high school entry. Our results suggest the GED credential is not a credible signal of PSE readiness, particularly in mathematics. GED graduates attain a lower first semester GPA and are also less likely to re-enroll in second semester courses. We also find that changes made to the GED exam in 2014 to enhance student readiness in PSE institutions did not yield meaningful improvements. Finally, we investigate the extent to which differences in math coursework can explain estimated GED-related math readiness gaps, finding coursework to account for about for about 40 percent of the observed gap.

November 22, 2021

Recreational Marijuana Sales Legalization and Monday Work Injury Claims

Xiuming Dong

Page range: 99-121

Abstract

An important stylized fact in the literature is that more Workers’ Compensation claims for difficult-to-diagnose injuries are filed on Monday than on any other day of the week. This paper studies the impact of recreational marijuana sales legalization on Monday work injury claims. Using restricted-use Workers’ Compensation claim data in Oregon and a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) model, I find the probability of overall Monday injuries increase by 4 percentage points after recreational marijuana sales legalization. The event study graphs suggest the medium-term effects appear to equal the short-term effects. Additionally, I do not find strong evidence to support those difficult-to-diagnose Monday injuries disproportionately increase after recreational marijuana sales legalization, suggesting a limited moral hazard of Monday injury claiming behavior after recreational marijuana sales legalization.

December 14, 2021

Does Immigration Depreciate Residential Land Prices? Case of Tokyo

Akinori Tomohara

Page range: 123-154

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of immigration on residential land prices in urban Tokyo. A rapid increase in immigrants in Tokyo raises the concern that immigration may depreciate land prices because of the negative image emerging from the perception that some immigrants might create disharmony in society. However, our analysis denies this possibility; for every 1% increase in immigrant ratio (i.e., the proportion of immigrants in the total population), the residential land prices increase by 12%. Although the literature explains that a negative immigration effect occurs when the analysis uses small geographic units, the results suggest that even a positive effect can occur under small geographic units. The implications of the current results are complicated. While the concern of immigration-induced land price depreciation is unfounded, this raises another concern—that of asset inequality between land owners and tenants.

January 4, 2022

Admission Groups and Academic Performance: A Study of Marginal Entrants in the Selection to Higher Education

Linn Karlsson, Magnus Wikström

Page range: 155-191

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study whether Swedish admission policies successful in selecting the best-performing students. The Swedish universities select students based on two different instruments, which each form a separate admission group. A regression model is recommended to estimate the achievement differences for the marginally accepted students between the admission groups and is applied to a sample of 9024 Swedish university entrants in four different fields of education. Marginally accepted students in the group selected by school grades on average perform better than students accepted by an admission test, suggesting that a small reallocation of study positions towards the grade admission group may increase overall academic achievement. However, the achievement difference appears to vary concerning university programme selectivity. We found that increasing selection by grades in less competitive programmes would improve overall achievement, while we do not find any effect for highly competitive programmes.

Letters

November 9, 2021

Birthplace Favoritism and Quality of Education

Tien Manh Vu, Hiroyuki Yamada

Page range: 193-201

Abstract

We investigated the long-term effects of birthplace favoritism by top-ranking politicians on the quality of education in Vietnam. We used over 1 million test scores from the 2009 and 2014 Vietnamese national university entrance examinations. We examined both the different timing of political terms and the total years of birthplace favoritism. Using the school fixed effects, we found that birthplace favoritism did not have any significant impacts, regardless of the timing and duration of such favoritism. We did not find evidence for such impacts in the distribution of test scores either. The results also suggest that national entrance examinations were unaffected by birthplace favoritism up to 2014.

Open Access December 29, 2021

Social Efficiency of Entry in an Open Economy

Tien-Der Han, M. Emranul Haque, Arijit Mukherjee

Page range: 203-219

More Download PDF

Abstract

We show that cost asymmetry between the domestic and foreign firms is not necessary for the occurrence of insufficient entry in the domestic country. This result provides a rationale for pro-competitive domestic policies even in the absence of cost asymmetries among the domestic and foreign firms. However, if significant demand comes from foreign countries, and the market structures are determined endogenously in the domestic and foreign countries, domestic-entry in an open economy might not be insufficient, implying that foreign competition might not reduce the importance of anti-competitive domestic policies.

About this journal

Objective
The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (BEJEAP) welcomes submissions that employ microeconomics to analyze issues in organizational economics, consumer behavior, and public policy. Articles submitted to BEJEAP can come in two formats: research papers and letters. Authors should bring to their analysis whatever microeconomic theoretical, experimental or econometric tools are helpful. We publish both empirical work and applied theory (though not more abstract forms of applied theory), and our aim is to disseminate papers that have practical implications for public policy, organizational or individual decision making.

Topics

Design of organizations and institutions
Industrial organization
Health economics
Public finance
Labour Economics
Economics of education, family, development, law, or the environment
Effects of domestic and international policy

Article formats
Research Papers, Letters

> Information on submission process