Browsing by Author "Mushinski, David, advisor"
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Item Open Access Modeling tax competition in developing countries: a theoretical and empirical analysis(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Nguyen, Hiep Quang, author; Mushinski, David, advisor; Braunstein, Elissa, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee memberWhile much attention has been paid in the literature to tax competition in developed countries, little research has focused on tax competition among developing countries. These two groups of countries are very different, even opposite in many aspects of tax competition. One cannot apply research results in developed countries to developing countries. This dissertation fills that gap in current literature. The paper develops theoretical models of tax competition for developing countries and empirically tests the theoretical results using a sample of data from developing countries. The paper discusses an asymmetric tax competition model where countries are different in capital, labor, total factor productivity, investment in public inputs, unemployment rate and foreign aid. The paper provides insights into the existence of tax competition and the impact of the several variables on tax competition in developing countries. The empirical models test theoretical results with dataset from 63 developing countries. A spatial econometric model is used to estimate tax competition in developing countries. The paper found several theoretical and empirical results related to tax competition in developing countries that have not been addressed in previous literature. Unemployment rate and foreign aid affect tax competition in multiple ways. Foreign aid can create both tax competition and fiscal competition. Tax competition is stronger in high unemployment rate countries. The results also confirm the existence of tax competition in developing countries in both statutory and effective corporate tax rates. Countries compete differently over these two rates. Productivity, investment in public inputs, trade openness, education, exchange rate and population variables affect tax competition behavior in developing countries. With theoretical and empirical results, the paper presents several policy implications for governments in developing countries. Appropriate tax competition policies provide developing countries the opportunities to attract more investments and to gain faster economic growth.Item Open Access Pharmaceuticals, physicians and money(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Aleksanyan, Yeva, author; Zahran, Sammy, advisor; Mushinski, David, advisor; Pressman, Steven, committee member; Alves Pena, Anita, committee member; Stallones, Lorann, committee memberPharmaceutical companies have contributed tremendously to improving health and quality of life. Treatments unavailable decades ago now extend lives and eliminate the need for invasive medical procedures. New cures are developed every year through research and development. Pharmaceutical companies typically face high failure rates while investing in research and development, the size of which may reach as high as 2.56 billion dollars (Kakkar, 2015). To increase returns from the products that are finally in the market, pharmaceutical companies engage in medical marketing. Medical marketing, and particularly promotions to physicians, come with a hefty cost to a final consumer. Numerous studies have found associations between promotional payments and brand name prescribing (Yeh et al., 2016; Perlis and Perlis, 2016), even if equivalent low-priced products are available (Akande and Aderibigbe, 2007; Taylor et al., 2016). This dissertation explores pharmaceutical industry-physician relationships and examines the factors influencing the size and frequency of promotional payments to physicians. The dissertation also studies the behavior of physicians and considers why some physicians accept more in payments than others. Chapter one examines the behavior of pharmaceutical companies, the patterns of competition surrounding patent expiration, the generic entry, and the choice of promotional instruments. It discusses the strategies employed by pharmaceutical companies in their efforts to keep competition away from the market and enjoy longer periods of monopoly or duopoly power. The study argues that patent expiration and subsequent entry of generic competitors are strong predictors of promotional payments. Also, pharmaceutical companies drastically change the size and frequency of payments after FDA approval of new dosages or new uses of an existing drug for the purposes of shifting the market away from the generic competition and increasing revenues. Finally, the chapter discusses the issues surrounding the information and persuasion debate, showing that promotional payments serve both purposes. Chapter two examines the role of cultural norms and the regulatory environment in the acceptance of pharmaceutical promotional payments by foreign-trained internal medicine doctors. It shows that the home country's corruption norms and the host country's regulatory environment are both important predictors of corrupt behavior among foreign-trained physicians. In the absence of rules and regulations, physicians from different countries adopt somewhat similar behavior. However, the propensity to accept promotional payments decreases among physicians from less corrupt countries when a host country's regulatory environment restricts acceptance of such payments. The study also finds a strong relationship between tenure, physician gender, and propensity to accept promotional payments. It suggests considering different norms and cultural backgrounds when designing and integrating ethical training in the residency and fellowship curricula. It also recommends adopting more stringent conflict of interest policies in hospitals. Chapter three analyzes the relationship between medical school policies and the propensity of promotional payment acceptance later in a physician's career. It shows that some medical school policies affect the likelihood and the size of accepted promotional payment and interactions with the pharmaceutical representatives later in a physician's career. Restrictive medical school meal policies seem to be especially effective in reducing interactions and acceptance of food and beverage-related payments. The study also finds a strong relationship between tenure, physician gender, physician practice size, and propensity to accept promotional payments. It suggests adopting stringent medical school policies to influence payment acceptance behavior later in physicians' careers.Item Open Access The economic consequences of health shocks(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) McKee, Sophie, author; Zahran, Sammy, advisor; Mushinski, David, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Stallones, Lorann, committee memberThis dissertation is composed of three chapters which examine the extent of reverse causation or the causal pathway in going from health to financial components of social economics status (SES) on the heath-SES gradient in Western Europe. In Chapter 1, I construct two population health metrics for survey-based data suitable for analysis across time and populations. To do so, I combine objective health indicators with the information available in the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset regarding health functioning and prognosis, and develop a strategy to assess and quantify a multidimensional concept of health that minimizes the influence of subjective factors (country, wave, age, and labor status) in the assessment process. The first variable, Health Stock, is an objective comprehensive health metric, which is a composite of an individual's level of function at a point in time as well as their expected transition to other levels of health in the future. The second variable - referred to as Functioning Stock – is restricted to the objective measures of an individual's level of function. In Chapter 2, I investigate the short term impacts of negative health shocks on the labor outcomes of working individuals across levels of education and country of residence in Western Europe. I propose a new definition of negative health shock as the onset of a decrease between two consecutive periods in the Functioning Stock, whose magnitude exceeds a given threshold (in percentage terms). The analysis identifies three countries (Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain) that are best at mitigating the occurrence of negative health shocks, other things held equal. I then show that on average in the European countries examined, labor outcomes are dose-responsive with the intensity of the health shock, and that the impact of a health shock is "U-shaped" across levels of education: compared to workers with a medium or high levels of education, the probability of having work as the only source of personal income ("working only") for low-skilled workers and for college-educated workers is less affected by the occurrence of a health shock. Assuming the loss of earned income is not fully compensated by benefits, we could infer that in the short term, reverse causation for negative health shocks could be steepening the slope of the SES-Wealth gradient for workers with the middle range level of education. I then investigate the cross-country variation in the magnitude of the impact of a health shock on the probability to continue "working only". First, we find that the rates of people left without labor income or benefits are extremely low in every country considered, indicating that social safety nets are effective. Without delving into the complexities of the country-specific social insurance systems and the associated variation in benefit generosity, it is impossible to conclude on the relative magnitude of reverse causation across countries. However, two groups of countries stand out by the way workers maintain a connection to employment following a decline in health. In Switzerland, where health impaired workers have the highest probability to continue working, the short term impact of reverse causation is smallest. A hybrid labor force status is prevalent in Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and to a lesser extent in France and Denmark, where a substantial fraction of health impaired workers start receiving benefits but do not sever ties completely with work. In Chapter 3, I investigate the determinants of the probability of working in the second period for middle-age male individuals in Western Europe, examining in particular the weight of their work force status in the first period. I show that the impact of the initial work force status is magnified in the case of an improvement in health: individuals whose mental or physical capacities improve and who were working while receiving benefits are about 25% more likely to have work as their only source of income in the following two-year period than comparable individuals whose health did not improve. By contrast, these numbers hover around zero for males who had severed all ties with work, confirming the existence of a benefit trap. Flexible benefit schemes that enable work and the receipt of benefits appear to perform the dual function of catch and release: such schemes cushion individuals from the impact of a decline in health with the receipt of benefits while maintaining an attachment work, allowing closer alignment of the individual’s work trajectory with their preferences and capacities. As European populations age and become more frail, results from this dissertation suggest that the impact of reverse causation should steepen the health-wealth gradient, particularly for individuals with secondary school education. To limit this effect, public policies should (1) mitigate the occurrence of health shocks in the first place, (2) support individuals who wish to continue working as long as they are physically and mentally able, and (3) offer hybrid solutions that incentivize work together with the receipt of benefits to health impaired individuals. Other European countries could draw on the experiences of Switzerland and Sweden, who have proven to be most successful at implementing such policies.Item Open Access Three essays about substance use and addiction in economics(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Perry, Teresa, author; Mushinski, David, advisor; Fremstad, Anders, committee member; Pressman, Steven, committee member; Bernasek, Alex, committee member; Prince, Mark, committee memberThis dissertation includes three papers on substance use and addiction in economics. Chapter 1 explains the different theories of addiction within economics with a particular emphasis on the rational addiction model. Once these theories are defined I present a historical overview of the different theories of addiction. Classical economists such as Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and others are incorporated into the paper as a critique to the rational addiction model. After the historical analysis Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 present a quantitative analysis about how community level events impact substance use. Chapter 2 models the impact of community level violence using the National Health and Nutrition Survey (ENSANUT) to examine how an exogenous measure, kingpin captures, impacts cigarette use. The results indicate that, in the short run, the number of current smokers increases for adults in areas of high levels of increased violence and that the consumption of cigarettes among current smokers increases for adolescents when violence increases in their municipalities or federal entities. Chapter 3 models the impact of the 2016 election on individuals based on their race, ethnicity, and gender by using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance system data set and a difference-in-differences estimation strategy. There results indicate that there has been an increase in cigarette use for Hispanic individuals after the 2016 election. Each chapter uses an interdisciplinary approach and incorporates literature and theories outside of economics to better understand the research question. Each chapter also expands on ways in which substance use can be studied within economics.Item Open Access Three essays on welfare, well-being, and labor(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Chin, Sayorn, author; Zahran, Sammy, advisor; Mushinski, David, advisor; Miller, Ray, committee member; Bayham, Jude, committee memberThis dissertation explores several topics in welfare, well-being, and labor economics, with a focus on: (1) health, wealth, and racial and ethnic welfare inequality; (2) the natural environment and well-being; and (3) whether labor markets place a wage premia for jobs that require workers to consume disamenities. To achieve these goals, the study utilizes three distinct datasets and applies a range of machine learning and econometric techniques, including natural language processing algorithms, as well as dynamic panel data estimators, natural experiments, and microsimulations. In Chapter 1, titled "Beyond Income: Health, Wealth, and Racial/Ethnic Welfare Gaps Among Older Americans'', we estimate racial and ethnic disparities in well-being among the older U.S. population using an expected utility framework that incorporates differences in consumption, leisure, health, mortality, and wealth. We use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) supplemented with data from the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS). Together, these provide a long and rich panel (1992-2016) for our analysis. Our measure broadly indicates that racial and ethnic inequality is larger than suggested by other welfare metrics such as income or consumption. We also find health, mortality, and wealth gaps are important in explaining the level of racial and ethnic welfare inequality among the older Americans in our sample, with leisure playing a comparatively minor role. Our decomposition exercises show that a majority of the estimated welfare gaps are determined by age sixty initial conditions as opposed to racial and ethnic differences in dynamic processes after age sixty. Our morbidity counterfactuals further suggest that eliminating common heath risk factors such as hypertension or diabetes in late-life only marginally closes overall welfare gaps. These simulations suggest that policies aimed at closing racial and ethnic gaps in late-life may be more successful and efficient if targeted earlier in the life-cycle. In other words, outside of direct wealth transfers, it may largely be too late to target such interventions directly at older populations. In Chapter 2, titled "The Morning Advantage: Differential Returns to Sunlight Exposure on Well-Being'', we estimate the effect of sunlight exposure on well-being by mimicking a natural experiment that utilizes the transition to daylight savings time as an external shock to the reallocation of sunlight between the morning and evening induced by differences in sunrise and sunset times across space, and time. We combine a collection of geolocated and timestamped tweets from Twitter with Natural Language Processing algorithms to create a comprehensive panel dataset of well-being (2014-2022) for the United States. Our findings show that the returns to sunlight on sentiment are stronger in the morning than in the evening. These results contribute significantly to the ongoing debate about whether to continue or abandon the practice of daylight savings. Specifically, the positive turn of sentiment in the morning highlights the underappreciated benefits to human well-being. Therefore, the potential shifting to darker mornings and brighter evenings following the proposed Sunshine Protection Act may do more harm than good. In Chapter 3, titled "The Compensation of Conscience: Evidence from the U.S. Labor Market'', we investigate compensating differentials in the U.S. labor market related to the degree of moral compromise required in different occupations. Specifically, we explore whether jobs that require workers to compromise their moral values offer higher compensation to compensate for the disamenities that contradict their moral beliefs. To conduct our analysis, we utilize data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and supplement it with data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) job descriptor, which allows us to develop a continuous measure of moral index across occupations. This data provides a rich and extensive panel spanning from 1997 to 2017 for our analysis. Our findings, obtained through the use of two-ways fixed-effects and first-difference models, indicate that jobs that require workers to compromise their moral principles are associated with higher compensation. This suggests that there is indeed a compensating differential for engaging in disamenities that conflict with a worker's moral values. Additionally, we observed that workers with a college education receive higher pay in jobs that require moral compromise, indicating that individuals with a college degree may have more employment opportunities and greater bargaining power, influencing their compensation preferences. Furthermore, we discovered evidence supporting an asymmetric relationship between changes in the occupational moral index and total hourly compensation. This relationship appears to be responsive to the intensity of moral compromise in the job.Item Open Access Welfare reform, child care considerations, and migration decisions(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Kepner, Valerie K., author; Mushinski, David, advisorThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), passed in 1996, instituted a new welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), with an emphasis on working for one's benefits and a five-year lifetime limit on benefits whereby benefits are withdrawn no matter one's financial or employment circumstances-thereby putting an end to the "enabling" aspect of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Given the changes to the welfare system, the research conducted here is done in an attempt to determine the migration effects (both the welfare magnet effect and the effect of social capital on migration) of the new work incentives arising out of PRWORA. Regarding the welfare magnet effect, the empirical results suggest that more aggressive state TANF programs effectively deter migration. In one way, this implies that states need only toughen their stance on welfare benefits and work requirements to stop the flow of potential welfare recipients into their states. On the other hand, the results also suggest that welfare recipients already living within the more aggressive states are not moving to find employment and, therefore, may not be behaving in ways that would make available sufficient employment opportunities. Regarding the effect of social capital on migration patterns, the empirical results suggest that some welfare-receiving mothers are not responding to TANF incentives by moving. More specifically, if welfare-susceptible mothers reported using their access to social capital (i.e., relatives) to provide care for their children, they were less likely to have moved recently. It may then be proposed that many single mothers are not poor because they choose to be but because their choice sets (at least in their eyes) are such that self-sufficiency is unattainable and financial and emotional help is a necessity, whether it comes from the government or friends and family.