what drives deregulation economics and politics of the relaxation of bank branching restrictions this paper investigates private interest public interest and political institutional theories of regulatory change to analyze state level deregulation of bank branching restrictions using a hazard model we find that interest group factors related to the relative strength of potential winners large banks and small bank dependent firms and losers small banks and the rival insurance firms can explain the timing of branching deregulation across states during the last quarter century the same factors also explain congressional voting on interstate branching deregulation while we find some support for each theory the private interest approach provides the most compelling overall explanation of our results

the medicaid notch labor supply and welfare participation evidence from eligibility expansions i assess the impact of losing public health insurance on labor market decisions of women by examining a series of medicaid eligibility expansions targeted toward young children these targeted expansions severed the historical tie between afdc and medicaid eligibility the reforms allowed a mother s earnings to increase without losing public health insurance for her young children increasing the income limit for medicaid resulted in a decrease in afdc participation and an increase in labor force participation among these women the effects were large for ever married women and negligible for never married women

did the affordable care act young adult provision affect labor market outcomes analysis using tax data using a data set of us tax records spanning 2008 to 2013 the authors study the impact of the affordable care act aca young adult dependent coverage requirement on labor market related outcomes including measures of employment status job characteristics and postsecondary education they find that the aca provision did not result in substantial changes in labor market outcomes results show that employment and self employment are not statistically significantly affected although some evidence supports the increased likelihood of young adults earning lower wages not receiving fringe benefits enrolling as full time or graduate students and young men being self employed the magnitudes imply extremely small impacts on these outcomes in absolute terms and when compared to other estimates in the literature the authors find these results to be consistent with health insurance being less salient to young adults compared to other populations when making labor market decisions

moral hazard in health insurance what we know and how we know it we describe research on the impact of health insurance on healthcare spending moral hazard and use this context to illustrate the value of and important complementarities between different empirical approaches one common approach is to emphasize a credible research design we review results from two randomized experiments as well as some quasi experimental studies this work has produced compelling evidence that moral hazard in health insurance exists that is individuals on average consume less healthcare when they are required to pay more for it out of pocket as well as qualitative evidence about its nature these studies alone however provide little guidance for forecasting healthcare spending under contracts not directly observed in the data therefore a second and complementary approach is to develop an economic model that can be used out of sample we note that modeling choices can be consequential different economic models may fit the reduced form but deliver different counterfactual predictions an additional role of the more descriptive analyses is therefore to provide guidance regarding model choice

the impact of agricultural subsidies on global welfare increasing global nature of the world economy have sparked much debate as to whether globalization is a vehicle for growth and development or a bane to society the debate is not simply one between the informed and the uneducated some of the most respected economists in the world disagree as to the impacts of globalization stiglitz 2002 refers to the devastating effect that globalization can have on developing countries on the other hand bhagwati 2004 holds that globalization can be beneficial for both developed and developing countries he postulates that for this to occur there must be a set of new policies and institutions that will help developing countries handle increased volatilities result

new evidence on earnings and benefit claims following changes in the retirement earnings test in 2000 abstract this paper examines the labor force activity and timing of benefit claims of workers aged 65 69 in response to the removal of the retirement earnings test in 2000 we use the 1 sample of longitudinal social security administrative data that covers the period from 4 years before to 4 years after the removal of the test using a reduced form quantile regression method we find that effects on earnings are limited to workers with earnings just around the test threshold and above as predicted by economic theory our estimated effects suggest that labor supply elasticities with respect to the net of tax rate are approximately 0 05 0 07 for working primary beneficiaries aged 65 69 whose earnings are between the median and the 80th percentile further results show that applications for social security benefits following the earnings test removal accelerated by 2 to 5 percentage points among individuals aged 65 69 and by 3 to 7 percentage points among those reaching age 65

effects of health insurance on labour supply evidence from the health care fund for the poor in vietnam the expansion of health insurance in emerging countries raises concerns about the unintended negative effects of health insurance on labour supply this article examines the labour supply effects o

the impact of medicaid on labor market activity and program participation evidence from the oregon health insurance experiment united states dept of health and human services assistant secretary for planning and evaluation

targeted agricultural export subsidies and social welfare global export subsidies are known to be welfare reducing this paper demonstrates that a small targeted subsidy can increase the welfare of the subsidizing country by exploiting differences in excess demand elasticities targeted export subsidies can also increase the subsidizing country s welfare by exploiting transportation cost differences excess supply elasticities of competitors or excess demand elasticities of markets supplied by competitors when markets are shared an empirical model of the world wheat market illustrates the theoretical conclusions an optimal targeted subsidy scheme causes a small increase in u s welfare but with major disruptions in world trade flows

the effect of expanding medicaid eligibility on supplemental security income program participation abstract low income adults without dependent children have historically had few paths to obtain public health insurance unless they qualified for supplemental security income ssi cash benefits because of a disability however in states that expand their medicaid programs childless adults may obtain medicaid without undergoing an intensive ssi disability review process and with substantially higher income and assets than the ssi program allows this expanded availability of medicaid coverage independent of ssi participation creates an opportunity to increase earnings and savings without jeopardizing health insurance coverage in this paper we use the natural experiments created by state decisions to expand medicaid to nondisabled nonelderly adults without dependent children to study the effect of decoupling medicaid eligibility and cash assistance using a difference in differences study design we collected data on the income eligibility limits enrollment caps and coverage characteristics of state medicaid expansions to childless adults from 2001 to 2013 we combine these data with the nationally representative american community survey to estimate the effects of state expansion on ssi participation we find relative declines in ssi participation of 0 17 percentage points on average after the introduction of medicaid coverage for childless adults a 7 relative decrease this finding suggests the potential for small but important efficiency gains from separating ssi and medicaid eligibility

using the medicare buy in program to estimate the effect of medicaid on ssi participation aaron s yelowitz this article assesses the importance of receiving supplemental health insurance on participation in supplemental security income ssi for the elderly the implementation of the qualified medicare beneficiary qmb program offered a substitute for medicaid and expanded health insurance eligibility to a higher income level using a sample of elderly respondents aged 66 to 75 i find that the qmb program reduced ssi participation more than half of the qmb participants were previously covered by ssi and medicaid the calculations suggest that the qmb program was not as expensive as it might first appear because of reductions in ssi expenditure jel h53 138 j14 i introduction the supplemental security income ssi program in the united states provides assistance to elderly blind and disabled individuals who are poor it is federally financed and administered by the social security administration although much more attention has been focused on the former aid to families with dependent children afdc program which primarily targets poor single parent families more money was spent on cash relief for ssi recipients in 1993 23 6 billion compared to 22 3 billion 1 in addition to cash ssi recipients receive supplemental health insurance coverage for medicare similar to private medigap policies through the medicaid program this provides a second important benefit to ssi recipients in fiscal year 1993 medicaid expenditure for elderly categorically needy ssi recipients amounted to 14 1 billion 2 several studies have examined the importance of health insurance for working age adults in the labor market 3 in addition the effects of recent medicaid expansions for younger populations have been extensively studied 4 little is known however about the quantitative importance of medicaid on the ssi participation of the elderly the key obstacle in assessing this effect is that until recently medicaid eligibility had been closely related to ssi eligibility in most states this study analyzes the introduction of the qualified medicare beneficiary qmb program enacted in different states from 1987 to 1992 which offered supplemental health insurance coverage to the elderly without the need to participate in ssi the qmb program offered some of the same medicare cost sharing benefits that an elderly ssi recipient would receive from medicaid including the payment of medicare premiums deductibles and copayments 5 moreover the qmb program expanded medicaid coverage to individuals with higher inc omes and assets than the ssi program 6 the primary goal of this article is to document the link between the qmb program and the decision to participate in ssi i find that raising the income limit in qmb program significantly reduces ssi participation particularly among african americans and the less educated the coefficient estimates suggest that in the absence of the qmb buy in program ssi participation would have been 45 higher in 1992 than it actually was the caseload growth in the elderly ssi population would have looked very similar to the caseload growth of the disabled 851 population a group not eligible for qmb in addition the qmb program was considerably less expensive than one would infer from simply calculating the increased health care expenditure because of reductions in ssi expenditure for cash benefits the rest of the article is arranged as follows section ii outlines some relevant features of the ssi medicaid and qmb programs in particular it reviews how the income eligibility limits for qmb and ssi are computed the difference between those limits is a measure of how closely are medicaid and ssi linked it will subsequently be used as the key independent variable in the regression analysis this section also shows the cross sectional and time series variation in the qmb program section iii models the potential effects on ssi participation of the introduction of the qmb program and considers the role of information

the value of medicaid interpreting results from the oregon health insurance experiment we develop frameworks for welfare analysis of medicaid and apply them to the oregon health insurance experiment across different approaches we estimate low income uninsured adults willingness to

modernizing federal economic statistics abstract official statistical data on the structure evolution and performance of the u s economy are produced by a variety federal state and local agencies much of the methodology policy frameworks and infrastructure for u s economic measurement have been in place for decades there are growing concerns that the economy is evolving more rapidly than are the economic statistics we use to monitor it we discuss both the challenges and opportunities to modernizing federal economic statistics we describe an incremental approach that federal statistics agencies can follow to build a 21st century economic measurement system

explaining the decline in the u s employment to population ratio a review of the evidence this paper first documents trends in employment rates and then reviews what is known about the various factors that have been proposed to explain the decline in the overall employment to population ratio between 1999 and 2018 population aging has had a large effect on the overall employment rate over this period but within age group declines in employment among young and prime age adults also have played a central role among the factors with effects that we can quantify based on existing evidence labor demand factors in particular increased import competition from china and the penetration of robots into the labor market are the most important drivers of observed within group declines in employment labor supply factors most notably increased participation in disability insurance programs have played a less important but not inconsequential role increases in the real value of state minimum wages and in the share of individuals with prison records also have contributed modestly to the decline in the aggregate employment rate in addition to the factors whose effects we roughly quantify we identify a set of potentially important factors about which the evidence does not yet allow us to draw clear conclusions these include the challenges associated with arranging child care improvements in leisure technology changing social norms increased use of opioids the growth in occupational licensing and declining labor market fluidity our evidence driven ranking of factors should be useful for guiding future discussions about the sources of decline in the aggregate employment to population ratio and consequently the likely efficacy of alternative policy approaches to increasing employment rates

did expanding medicaid affect welfare participation in a widely cited 1995 paper aaron yelowitz concluded that medicaid eligibility expansions for children were associated with increased labor force participation and reduced welfare participation among single mothers the authors of the present study using data from the 1988 96 current population surveys re examine the evidence presented by yelowitz they find that yelowitz s results resulted from two factors he imposed a restriction on the parameter estimates not predicted by theory and rejected in the data and he used only one of two income tests that families must pass to be eligible for welfare the authors conclude that there is no evidence detectable in the cps data of a relationship between welfare or labor force participation and the medicaid income limits

medicaid expansions for the working age disabled revisiting the crowd out of private health insurance disabled individuals under 65 years old account for 15 of medicaid recipients but half of all medicaid spending despite their large cost few studies have investigated the effects of medicaid expansions for disabled individuals on insurance coverage and crowd out of private insurance using an eligibility expansion that allowed states to provide medicaid to disabled individuals with incomes less than 100 of the federal poverty level i address these issues crowd out estimates range from 49 using an ordinary least squares procedure to 100 using two stage least squares analysis this potentially large degree of crowd out could have fiscal implications for the affordable care act which has greatly expanded medicaid eligibility in 2014

trends in employment and earnings of allowed and rejected applicants to the social security disability insurance program since the early 1980s changes in the economic environment and in the process for determining eligibility for the social security disability insurance di program have had significant effects on the program first the economic situation and labor force opportunities for lower skilled people continued to decline leading to lower rates of participation in the labor force for less educated men second changes in the eligibility process made it easier to obtain di benefits based on conditions difficult to clearly identify on medical terms alone such as back pain or depression 1 those two factors have likely contributed to a substantial increase in the number of individuals receiving di as well as a significant change in the characteristics of applicants and new beneficiaries over the same period both applicants and new beneficiaries have become younger longer lived more likely to apply because of nonterminal conditions such as back pain or mental health and more likely to be female 2 as a result recent work projects a rapid increase in program costs as greater numbers of beneficiaries stay on the program for more years e g david h autor and duggan 2006 the concurrent developments in the economy and eligibility rules have also fueled the concern that the generosity of di increasingly induces low income workers to apply for and sometimes receive benefits and that some of those beneficiaries would be able to work in the absence of the program indeed a growing body of research suggests that some workers in difficult economic conditions exit the labor force to

the oregon health insurance experiment evidence from the first year in 2008 a group of uninsured low income adults in oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for medicaid this lottery provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use financial strain and health of low income adults using a randomized controlled design in the year after random assignment the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that was not selected we find that in this first year the treatment group had substantively and statistically significantly higher health care utilization including primary and preventive care as well as hospitalizations lower out of pocket medical expenditures and medical debt including fewer bills sent to collection and better self reported physical and mental health than the control group

snap expansions and participation in government safety net programs this paper investigates the interactions between health and nutritional assistance programs such as medicaid snap wic and school lunch programs exploiting variation in snap eligibility across states and over time i find strong evidence of program interactions when a state moves from the federal rule to the most extensive snap eligibility rule enrollment in free school lunch and wic increases by 4 1 and 7 9 percentage points respectively i estimate that the federal government spends an additional 74 cents on the school lunch program and wic for each dollar spent on snap due to the expansion

long term impacts of childhood medicaid expansions on outcomes in adulthood we use administrative data from the internal revenue service to examine long term impacts of childhood medicaid eligibility expansions on outcomes in adulthood at each age from 19 to 28 greater medicaid eligibility increases college enrolment and decreases fertility especially through age 21 starting at age 23 females have higher contemporaneous wage income although male increases are imprecise together both genders have lower mortality these adults collect less from the earned income tax credit and pay more in taxes cumulatively from ages 19 to 28 at a 3 discount rate the federal government recoups 58 cents of each dollar of its investment in childhood medicaid

who feels the calorie crunch and when the impact of school meals on cyclical food insecurity abstract monthly welfare programs such as the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap produce consistent cycles of expenditure and consumption among recipients food insecurity health status crime poor behavior and test scores track these cycles this paper leverages new data from the usda the foodaps survey to better understand these cycles in three ways first i find that expenditure and consumption cycles are correlated within households a fact not previously established second i study diet quality over the benefit month and find that it worsens potentially compounding the harmful consequences of cyclical food insecurity third i find that kids bear less of the burden of the consumption cycle than adults and that much of this difference may be driven by school meal programs this finding suggests large potential gains in child welfare from expanding summer meal programs