Research and Publications

Gender, Coauthorship and Academic Outcomes in Economics

Research from Wendy Stock examines determinants of coauthorship behavior and how coauthorship relates to research productivity and other career outcomes for academic economists. The study, "Gender, coauthorship and academic outcomes in economics," was published in Economic Inquiry in October.

For the study, Dr. Stock and co-authors Andrew Hussey and Sheena Murray supplement a unique dataset containing economics Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) graduates' demographic, Ph.D. program, advisor, and other characteristics with measures of their coauthorship behavior and research productivity.

Significant gender differences in the formation and effects of coauthorship are found. Students with female advisors and women from lower-ranked programs had a higher propensity to coauthor, and coauthorship is associated with more research output and more publications in top economics journals. However, women received less credit toward tenure when coauthoring with men or advisors.

Read the study at:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecin.13047 

Who Buys Crop Insurance?

Eric Belasco and Kate Fuller published, “Who buys crop insurance? Predictors of the participation gap between organic and conventional farms,” in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.

This study examines the participation gap in crop insurance between organic and conventional producers. To solicit input from producers of organic and diversified crop production systems, Dr. Belasco and Dr. Fuller developed a national survey through the Organic Agriculture Research and Education Initiative that resulted in over 1,000 valid responses, as well as data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey.

Results suggest a high degree of correlation between crop insurance participation with respect to the degree of commercialization of a farm. Additionally, small and diversified operations report that the complexity and record keeping associated with crop insurance is often not worthwhile. This paper concludes with a discussion regarding future risk management education programs and how they can be better targeted by combining the use of crop insurance in conjunction with improved record keeping and a better understanding of loan requirements and documentation.

Read the study at:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aepp.13187 

The Longer Term Labor Market Impacts of Paid Parental Leave

Wendy Stock and Myron Inglis (2017, DAEE Applied Economics Master's Program) published, “The Longer Term Labor Market Impacts of Paid Parental Leave,” in Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy.

Although paid family leave has the potential to improve labor market and other outcomes for mothers,there is also concern it might also lead to discrimination against women of childbearing age.

For the study, Dr. Stock and Inglis examined the impact of California's paid family leave law on labor market outcomes over time during the post-law decade, as well as the law's effect for groups with differing levels of education.

Results indicate the law had negligible impacts on young women's labor force participation, unemployment duration, and earnings, but persistent small negative impacts on their relative employment.

The negative employment impacts are concentrated among college-educated women, for whom the law is associated with a 2–3 percentage point decrease in laborforce participation and a 1–2 percentage point decline in employment. The California paid family leave law does not appear to have impacted the relative labor force participation, employment, unemployment duration, or earnings of less-educated young females.

Read the study at:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/grow.12486 

Food Aid Cargo Preference: Impacts on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Emergency Food Aid Programs

Research from Vincent Smith provides new evidence about the substantial adverse impacts of rent-seeking behavior by mercantile marine shipping companies on the availability of federal funds intended for the longstanding global humanitarian aid Food for Peace program that directly meets
the needs of desperately poor people suffering from natural and man-made catastrophes around the globe.

The study, "Food Aid Cargo Preference: Impacts on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Emergency Food Aid Programs," is forthcoming in the Journal of Law and Economics. Co-authors on the study are Philip Hoxie and Stephanie Mercier.

This study is the first to show that the costs of “Buy American” cargo preference laws are closely linked to the market power enjoyed by shipping companies eligible to carry cargo preference shipments. The analysis also provides evidence that many of the benefits that flow to U.S. subsidiaries with cargo-preference eligible vessels are, in fact, likely enjoyed by their parent companies whose headquarters are located in other countries such as Denmark.

Finally, the paper also provides new evidence that food aid cargo preference provides negligible potential benefits to the U.S. military in terms of access to transoceanic capacity for shipping materials that might be needed in times of war. Nor does the program provide much support for the U.S. domestic ship building industry. For example, among the 61 ships recently eligible to carry food aid under cargo preference, more (five vessels) were built in China than in the United states (four vessels) and more than 30 were built in South Korea.

Read the working paper at:  https://bit.ly/3IE8qb4 

Seasonal Farm Labor and COVID-19 Spread

Research from Diane Charlton examines the relationship between influxes of migratory agricultural workers and COVID-19 in agricultural counties by looking at month-to-month variations in agricultural employment and confirmed cases.

The study, "Seasonal Farm Labor and COVID-19 Spread,” was published in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy in
September.

The analysis found that counties where 100 additional workers in fruit, vegetable and horticultural production were employed had 4.5% more COVID-19 cases, or around 19 additional positive cases per 100,000 residents. Migration might help explain the association between farm employment and COVID-19 incidence, and Charlton notes several potential contributing factors.

Those factors include the fact that many migratory farm workers live below the poverty line, reside in densely populated quarters and often lack access to health care or health insurance. Many farm workers report working even while ill, perhaps because they fear losing hours of pay or because they simply feel well enough to keep working, posit the authors. Surveys suggest that there is a higher hesitancy to seek public services or potentially to get vaccinated since many are
undocumented immigrants.

Farm work itself does not necessarily increase the spread of COVID-19, Dr. Charlton said. The paper notes that there is no statistically significant association with COVID-19 incidence when it comes to crops that are harvested mechanically, such as grains and oilseed, or in livestock agriculture. Fruit and vegetable crops, which are mostly harvested by hand, showed greatest positive association with COVID-19 incidence.

“Understanding which commodities or agricultural activities are most highly associated with COVID-19 spread can help producers and managers throughout the food supply chain prepare for and mitigate losses and future risk,” Dr. Charlton wrote. “The findings from this paper can help inform which agricultural industries were most exposed to coronavirusrelated risks in worker health and labor supply in 2020 and determine priority strategies for managing potential disruptions to farm labor supply in the future.”

Read the study at:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aepp.13190 

— Reagan Colyer, MSU News Service

Seasonal Agricultural Activity and Crime

Diane Charlton and Brock Smith, along with Alexander James of the University of Alaska, co-authored a study that combines data on local criminal activity and seasonal demand for farm labor in counties across the nation that have high rates of agricultural production from 1990 to 2016.
“Seasonal Agricultural Activity and Crime” appeared in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics in September.

Dr. Charlton and Dr. Smith decided to collaborate on the topic after they saw newspaper articles suggesting many U.S. residents assume that migratory agricultural workers increase local crime rates.

“To our knowledge we are the first to examine how seasonal labor-intensive agricultural activity impacts local crime rates,” they wrote. “An estimated 38% of seasonal fruit, vegetable and horticultural workers were classified as migratory from 1990 to 2016, and approximately 48% were unauthorized immigrants over the same span.”

After analyzing 27 years worth of data, Dr. Charlton and Dr. Smith concluded that the increase in agricultural labor force reduces property and violent crime rates, and possibly the number of property crimes. The paper attributes these findings to the fact that harvests enhance opportunities in the local labor market, thereby reducing the incentive to commit crimes. It also notes that previous research generally has found that foreign-born immigrants are no more likely than natural-born citizens to commit crimes.

“While economic shocks that attract new workers to the region are sometimes associated with increased crime rates, positive economic shocks can also deter crime by providing alternative economic opportunities,” said Dr. Charlton. “The effects of seasonal agricultural labor booms on local crime rates is not obvious.”

Read the study at:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajae.12260 

— Reagan Colyer, MSU News Service

Special Education Funding and Teacher Turnover

Wendy Stock and Danielle Carriere co-authored a study that builds on existing research examining the impact of special education funding reforms on special education enrollment.

“Special Education Funding and Teacher Turnover,” was published in the journal Education Economics in April.

For their research, Dr. Stock and Dr. Carriere exploited differences in state special education funding systems based on special education enrollment (bounty systems) or on total student enrollment (census systems) to assess whether funding systems impact teacher turnover, teacher specialty, special education enrollment, state education spending, average class sizes, and teacher effort.

Like earlier research, they found that census funding decreases special education enrollment. Consistent with a resulting reduction in relative demand, census funding increases turnover among special education teachers, but not among general education teachers. In particular, relative to their counterparts in other states, special education teachers in census-funded systems are 5 percentage points more likely to change schools after the implementation of census funding.

The researchers also found that census funding increases the probability that teachers move out of special education and into general education teaching by 18 percentage points.

The impacts on turnover are larger among males and smaller when the incomes of special education teachers are higher.

Their results are robust to alternative model specifications, to the inclusion of other factors potentially linked to teacher turnover, and to alternative constructions of their key policy variable.

Read the study at:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09645292.2021.1914001 

Child Access Prevention Laws and Juvenile Firearm-Related Homicides

Research from Mark Anderson that examines the efficacy of child-access prevention laws on juvenile firearm-related homicides was published in Journal of Urban Economics in November. Co-authors on the study are Joseph Sabia and Tekin Erdal.

From the paper: One of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history recently intensified public discussion over the safe storage of firearms after it was learned that the guns were taken from the shooter's home and belonged to his father. This comes at a time of rising youth gun violence and increasing public support for gun restrictions. For instance, a 2017 U.S. survey found that approximately 60 percent of gun owners backed safe-storage requirements for guns in households with children. As states grapple with decisions on gun control, Americans prefer child access prevention laws to more divisive policies such as bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

To date, the existing literature provides no evidence that these laws are effective at deterring gun crime, a conclusion that has prompted the National Rifle Association to assert that such regulations are “unnecessary” and “ineffective.” For this study, Dr. Anderson and his co-authors use data from the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports for the period 1985–2013, and find that child access prevention laws are associated with a 17 percent reduction in firearm-related homicides committed by juveniles.

The estimated effect is stronger among whites than nonwhites and is driven by states enforcing the strictest safe-storage standard. The researchers find no evidence that CAP laws are associated with firearm-related homicides committed by adults or with non-firearm-related homicides committed by juveniles, suggesting that the observed relationship between CAP laws and juvenile firearm-related homicides is causal.

Read the study at:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2021.103387 

Trends in US Agricultural Policy since 2000 and Implications for the Next 20 Years

Vince Smith and Joseph Glauber published, “Trends in U.S. Agricultural Policy since 2000 and Implications for the Next Twenty Years,” in the August 2021 issue of EuroChoices.

Over the past 20 years, U.S. agricultural policy has primarily served the interests of farm organizations whose members operate relatively large enterprises, and the concerns of environmental and conservation lobbies about soil, water quality, wildlife quality and access to public lands.

This paper examines how, while maintaining the same underlying focus, U.S. agricultural policy has shifted from providing “decoupled” subsides not linked to current production or prices to subsides that are tied to current market conditions and agricultural output.

In the study, Dr. Smith and Dr. Glauber especially note the importance of the explosive growth of federal crop insurance program subsidies after passage of the 2000 Agricultural Risk Protection Act through which government borrowing and tax revenues provide over 60% of all premiums associated with the insurance policies US farmers buy.

In addition, they show how, since 2018, the Trump Administration’s trade war compensation payments to farmers, which are widely viewed as far larger than any actual impacts on farm incomes, and subsequent COVID-19 compensation payments in 2020 increased subsidies to more than three times their average levels between 2000 and 2017.

Glauber and Smith then assess likely future policy innovations in the run up to a new Farm Bill in 2023. They offer evidence that the Biden Administration’s proposals for new agricultural subsidy programs targeted to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and giving more help to minority and low-income farm households are likely to have no impacts on funding for current programs that, for the most part, benefit large scale privately owned and commercial farms.

Read the study at:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1746-692X.12329