estimating elasticities with pims data methodological issues and substantive implications though the pims data have been used extensively to relate profitability both to specific firm marketing actions and to market conditions no attempt has been made to estimate directly the magnitudes of marketing mix elasticities the authors propose and evaluate a simple cross sectional time series regression method that recovers unbiased estimates of the elasticities despite the presence of firm specific disguise factors in the database though measurement error creates instability for certain variables the recovered elasticities compare favorably with those found in previous research and have predictable relationships with market characteristics

complex dynamics in a cobweb model with adaptive production adjustment abstract chaos occurs in a nonlinear cobweb model with normal demand and supply naive expectations and adaptive production adjustment the model differs from existing ones in that it includes adaptive production adjustment instead of adaptive expectations the model exhibits observable chaos strange attractors as well as topological chaos horseshoes associated with homoclinic points as numerical simulations show the faster suppliers adjust their production and the more inelastic demand is the more likely the market behaves chaotically

teen motherhood and abortion access it is argued that the net effect of any restriction of abortion access on birth rates is an empirical question this study examines the impact of access to abortion on county teenage birth rates birth rates are expected to decrease by 1 among white adolescents aged 15 19 years for a 25 mile increase in the distance to the nearest abortion provider particularly among in wedlock births data are obtained from 1973 88 national natality local area summary files for counties in the us and four other national sources data did not provide useful information on the empirical relationship between access and birth rate for densely populated urban areas cross sectional findings that had omitted variable bias indicate that an increase of 25 miles in distance to a provider was associated with an additional 1 4 births per 1000 white teenage women or a 3 increase in the average teen birth rate of 45 1000 white teenagers the findings from a county fixed effects model that controlled for omitted variable bias indicate that an increase of 25 miles was associated with a reduction in teen births of 0 5 1000 or about 1 of the mean birth rate both medicaid restrictions and parental consent laws were negative and significant and more negative in poor and more isolated counties the state year effects models did not change findings on distance and medicaid restriction effects the effects of changes in timing of laws suggests that laws followed preexisting trends changes in distance to provider were primarily in the first 2 years following the change out of wedlock births were unaffected by changes in distance to providers the out of wedlock teen birth rate increased with a complete ban on abortions fewer wanted births were associated with small restrictions findings imply that closing of clinics during 1977 88 had an impact on teen birth rates of under one tenth of 1 the 20 increase in teen births was unexplained

family planning in a life cycle model with income risk several us states have recently restricted the access to abortions we study fertility intentions and how family planning and abortions are used as mechanisms to control fertility among couples facing income risk we formulate and estimate a life cycle consumption saving model with uninsurable income risk and imperfect contraceptive control that matches fertility behavior in the british household panel survey bhps well we use the estimated model to investigate how family planning and abortions are used to control fertility in our model our simulations suggest that income risk affects family planning and that abortion is used to control fertility due to the presence of income risk this indicates that the availability of abortions might play a role as an insurance mechanism

provider availability race and abortion demand variations in the availability of abortion providers may impact the demand for abortions since greater provider availability reduces the travel cost associated with obtaining an abortion this paper applies a fertility control model to estimate the responsiveness of abortion demand to travel cost variations using individual data from all births and abortions of women over age 20 in the state of texas for 1993 the probability that a pregnant woman chooses an abortion appears to be sensitive to availability induced variations in the travel cost of abortion services controlling for the endogeneity of travel distance the results suggest that pregnant women who reside in counties with longer travel distances to the nearest abortion provider have lower probabilities of aborting their pregnancies than women in counties closer to abortion providers simulations show that changes in travel distance will have relatively large impacts on overall abortion rates and furthermore that these effects vary across race in addition these simulations show substantial differences by race in the effects of changes in other explanatory variables

alternative paths to parenthood ivf or child adoption this article analyzes the effects of child adoption on the utilization of assisted reproductive technology art in the united states using state level longitudinal data for 1999 2006 we show that art use is responsive to changes in adoption markets after controlling for state specific fixed effects our estimates reveal that a 10 increase in adoptions leads to a 1 3 1 5 decrease in the number of art cycles performed the responsiveness is higher when we consider infant adoptions adoptions by older women and international adoptions while there is no substitutability between art and adoption of related children jel i11 j13 j18

habit persistence and teen sex could increased access to contraception have unintended consequences for teen pregnancies we develop a dynamic discrete choice model of teen sex and pregnancy that incorporates habit persistence habit persistence has two sources here the first is a fixed cost of having sex which relates to a moral or psychological barrier that has been crossed the first time one has sex the second is a transition cost whereby once a particular relationship has progressed to sex it is difficult to move back we estimate significant habit persistence in teen sex implying that the long run effects of contraception policy may be different from their short run counterparts especially if the failure rate of contraception is sufficiently large programs that increase access to contraception are found to decrease teen pregnancies in the short run but increase them in the long run

regulation and the optimal size and type of abortion provider between 1973 the year the supreme court ruled in roe v wade that women have the right to decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancies and 1982 the number of abortion providers increased by 81 per cent however between 1982 and 1992 a period of increasing state level abortion regulation the number of abortion providers decreased by 18 per cent we know very little about the factors that influence the willingness and ability of hospitals clinics and physicians to provide abortion services over time based on state data from 1978 to 1992 the results of this paper suggest that large abortion providers are better able to compete and survive in the market also clinics and physicians offices appear to be gaining market share relative to hospitals further this paper includes analysis of the impact of state level medicaid funding regulations on the number size and type of abortion provider these results have important implications for women s access to abortion services and thus have impor

can beer taxes affect teen pregnancy evidence based on teen abortion rates and birth rates economists have investigated the effects of increased alcohol taxes on various alcohol related phenomena like traffic fatalities but to my knowledge this study is the first to investigate the effects of beer taxes on teen pregnancy outcomes namely abortion and birth rates the study employs statelevel data for 15 19 year old women for the years 1985 1988 1992 and 1996 the smallness of the panel imposes some constraints on the statistical methods used results indicate that higher beer taxes have statistically significant negative effects on teen abortion rates though the magnitudes of the effects are quite small effects on birthrates are statistically insignificant this suggests that increased beer taxes may help prevent some unwanted pregnancies that would typically be terminated via abortions rather than culminating in live births however the small magnitudes of the effects strongly caution against relying on increased beer taxes to noticeably reduce teen pregnancy rates

still waiting for mister right asymmetric information abortion laws and the timing of marriage previous studies have suggested that more liberal abortion laws should lead to a decrease in marriage rates among young women as shotgun weddings are no longer necessary empirical evidence from the united states lends support to that hypothesis this article presents an alternative theory of abortion access and marriage based on the cost of search which suggests that more liberal abortion laws may actually promote young marriage an empirical examination of marriage data from eastern europe shows that countries that liberalized their abortion laws saw an increase in marriage rates among nonteenage women

children as income producing assets the case of teen illegitimacy and government transfers this paper develops a classical model of the teen fertility decision in the presence of public income transfers the theoretical model predicts that welfare payments will encourage fertility holding constant other economic opportunities and that better economic opportunities will discourage fertility considering the possible simultaneity of illegitimacy rates and benefit levels due to the collective choice process the authors confirm the theoretical models predictions with state level data from 1980 through 1990 the authors find that including fixed effects in the regression to control for unobserved differences between states does not sufficiently control for endogeneity after controlling for endogeneity real welfare benefits are strongly and robustly related to teen illegitimacy the point estimates of the elasticity with respect to changes in the illegitimacy rate are around 1 3 for white teens and 2 1 for black teens real wages for women with a high school education or less are negatively related to teen illegitimacy for white teens with an elasticity of around 0 4 finally male wages appear to have little effect on the illegitimacy rate for white teens but appear negatively correlated with the illegitimacy rate for black teens in some model specifications authors

abortion legalization and child living circumstances who is the marginal child weexaminethe impact ofincreased abortion availabilityon the averageliving standards of children through a selection effect would the marginal child whowas not born have grown up in different circumstances than the average child we use variation in the timing of abortion legalization across states to answer this question cohorts born after legalized abortion experienced a signiecant reduction in a number of adverse outcomes we end that the marginal child would have been 40 60 percent more likely to live in a single parent family to live in poverty to receive welfare and to die as an infant access to abortion is one of the most contentious public policy issues facing the united states today the period since the legalization of abortion under the roe v wade decision of 1973 has been marked by incessant debate over the appropriate government enancing and legal status of abortions meanwhile pregnancy resolution through abortion is a very common outcome in the united states roughly 25 percent of all pregnancies are aborted ventura et al 1995 as a result major changes in abortion access could have substantial effects on the birthrate indeed levine staiger kane and zimmerman end that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s led to an 8 percent reduction in the birthrate 1

state abortion rates the impact of policies providers politics demographics and economic environment abstract this paper uses data on abortion rates by state from 1974 1988 to estimate two stage least squares models with fixed state and year effects restrictions on medicaid funding for abortion are correlated with lower abortion rates in state and higher rates among nearby states a maximal estimate suggests that 19 25 of the abortions among low income women that are publicly funded do not take place after funding is eliminated parental notification laws for teen abortions do not significantly affect aggregate abortion rates a larger number of abortion providers in a state increases the abortion rate primarily through inducing cross state travel

an analysis of out of wedlock childbearing in the united states this paper relates the erosion of the custom of shotgun marriage to the legalization of abortion and the increased availability of contraception to unmarried women in the united states the decline in shotgun marriage accounts for a significant fraction of the increase in out of wedlock first births several models illustrate the analogy between women who do not adopt either birth control or abortion and the hand loom weavers both victims of changing technology mechanisms causing female immiseration are modeled and historically described this technology shock hypothesis is an alternative to welfare and job shortage theories of the feminization of poverty excerpt

an economic analysis of the demand for abortions research in estimating the demand for abortions is conducted by using an economic model and examining socioeconomic factors some suggest that a households fertility control decision is decided by a comparison of the costs and benefits of an additional child over a period of time therefore abortion is a choice related to the interaction of preference cost and income a womans marital status is another factor in the abortion decision an unmarried women may having a greater demand for abortion since the demands on her are greater another factor is a womans employment status an employed woman more likely having a higher abortion religious affiliation may be another determinant in lower demand for abortion since most religions oppose abortion however in surveys of catholic women 74 believed that a woman less than 3 months pregnant should make her own choice on abortion educational status was also thought to effect abortion demand but results showed no significance if the laws were changed abortion were illegal and the price increased 50 the abortion rate would drop by 40 5 the prohibiting of government funding for abortions would cause a 17 5 decrease future trends in abortion are likely to increase however due to the declining marriage rates and increased divorce rate other factors that will effect these trends include sexual behavior patterns contraceptive availability and the perceived risks involved in birth control

children and their parents a review of fertility and causality childbearing decisions are not made in isolation they are taken in concert with decisions regarding work marriage health investments and stocks as well as many other observable and non observable considerations drawing causal inferences regarding the effect of additional children on family outcomes is complicated by these endogenous factors this paper lays out the issues involved in estimating the effect of additional child births on family outcomes and the assumptions underlying the range of estimators and methodologies proposed in the economic literature the common pitfalls of these estimators are discussed as well as their potential to bias our interpretation of the effect additional births have on children and parents both in the existing literature and in future work in the face of changing patterns of childbearing and child rearing

u s abortion policy and fertility as measured by the total fertility rate tfr fertility in the united states fell sharply beginning in the early 1960 s dropping to below the replacement level in 1972 and to well below the replacement level in the late 1970 s since then the tfr has hovered below replacement level also in the early 1970 s several states followed by the u s supreme court in its 1973 roe v wade decision legalized abortion this paper explores whether there is a connection between changes in abortion policy and u s fertility since the initial legislation legalizing abortion government abortion policies continue to change with government policies in general becoming less sympathetic to abortion this shift is most notable in states decisions to end federal funding for abortions through medicaid in the late 1970 s and most recently in some of the provisions of the federal 1996 welfare reform legislation specifically the personal responsibility and work opportunities act of 1996 prowra included illegitimacy bonuses for the five states that are most successful in reducing the number of out of wedlock births while decreasing abortion rates committee on ways and means 1996 proposals to further restrict abortion as well as proposals to liberalize abortion continue to receive active consideration despite large numbers of abortions more than one for every three live births the effect of abortion policy on the number of children born is not clear in the parallel debate about the oral contraceptive some claimed that the new contraceptive technology caused the decline in fertility in the mid 1960 s others claimed that the oral contraceptive simply made the decline less costly for couples in the

regulation imperfect competition and the u s abortion market the u s abortion market has grown increasingly concentrated recently while many states tightened abortion laws using data on abortion providers i estimate an equilibrium model of demand price competition entry and exit to capture the effect of regulation on industry dynamics estimates show regulations played an important role in determining the abortion market structure and evolution counterfactual simulations reveal increases in demand aimed regulation were the most important observed factor in explaining recent abortion declines simulating utah s regulatory regime nationally shows tightening abortion restrictions can increase abortions in equilibrium mainly through tilting the competitive landscape toward low price providers

the effect of medicaid abortion funding restrictions on abortions pregnancies and births this paper considers whether state medicaid abortion funding restrictions affect the likelihood of getting pregnant having an abortion and bearing a child we exploit a natural experiment afforded by supreme court decisions and employ more traditional multivariate models with alternative fixed effect specifications an analysis of 12 years of state level data indicate that restrictions are associated with a reduction in abortions and either no change or a reduction in births implying fewer pregnancies subsequent analysis of the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy is consistent with these findings and show the response is concentrated among the low income population

the supply of infants relinquished for adoption did access to abortion make a difference motivated by a theory of desired fertility i use three years of aggregate state level data to examine the impact of abortion access on the supply of infants relinquished for adoption i show evidence that abortion access affected the supply of infants relinquished during the 1980s in two different ways first the availability of abortion providers has the expected effect of reducing the supply of infants relinquished particularly relative to the demand for abortion second abortion law has an unexpected negative effect this suggests that as abortion laws become more restrictive the total number of unwanted births may decrease jel j13

the impact of legalized abortion on crime we offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion legalization the five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation which legalized in 1973 with roe v wade states with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s in high abortion states only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime