Contemporary Economic Policy

This paper explores empirically the relationship between infrastructure and economic growth by including the data of expenditure in infrastructure as a share of GDP in traditional growth cross‐country regressions. Since results are inconclusive, the paper elaborates some new indicators of investment in infrastructure employing physical units of infrastructure. They are positively and significantly correlated with growth in two different samples of countries.

The effect of nonheterosexuality on individual income is estimated using 1991–1996 General Social Survey data. Other researchers have concluded that homosexuals earn less than similarly qualified workers, in contrast to the popular perception that homosexuals are more affluent than nonhomosexuals. Using improved statistical techniques, this article finds noticeable earnings effects that go in opposite directions across genders. Nonheterosexual men earn 22% less than heterosexual men, and nonheterosexual women earn 30% more than heterosexual women. These findings, viewed together with previous empirical work on this topic, help narrow the field of theories that can explain the sexual‐orientation earnings gaps present in the data.

An important human welfare implication of climate involves effects of interannual variation in temperature and precipitation on agriculture. Year‐to‐year variations in U.S. climate result from El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a quasi‐periodic redistribution of heat and momentum in the tropical Pacific Ocean. The study described here represents a preliminary assessment of the value to the entire U.S. agricultural sector of improved ENSO forecasts in the southeastern United States. This interdisciplinary assessment combines data and models from meteorology, plant sciences, and economics under a value of information framework based on Bayesian decision theory. An economic model of the U.S. agricultural sector uses changes in yields for various ENSO phases to translate physical (yield) effects of ENSO changes into economic effects on producers and on domestic and foreign consumers. The value of perfect information to agriculture is approximately $145 million. The economic value of an imperfect forecast is $96 million. These results suggest that increases in forecast accuracy have substantial economic value to agriculture.

Mangroves line one quarter of the world's tropical coastlines, and approximately 117 countries and territories have mangrove resources within their borders. Although over recent years mangrove deforestation has occurred at a phenomenal rate worldwide, there have been few economic studies of the underlying causes. The article attempts such an analysis and particularly examines the role of economic development, with specific reference to those activities that may result in mangrove deforestation, in determining the area of mangrove left within a country. The article develops a model of economic activity and mangrove conversion. From this model, a relationship is established between remaining mangrove area, economic activity, and other important causative factors. The mangrove area relationship is estimated empirically for a cross‐section of 89 countries. Results show that shrimp aquaculture and agriculture are significantly associated with mangrove loss across all countries, whereas the higher the level of GDP per capita the more mangrove area remains. The number of protected areas, length of coastline and political stability were also important in determining the remaining mangrove area of a country. (JEL O13, Q22, Q23, Q24)

Using independent data from the Centers for Disease Control, the author tests a key assumption of previous research on gay and lesbian incomes: that same‐sex unmarried partner households are, indeed, gay or lesbian. The author shows that this independent data suffers from less severe underreporting of same‐sex unmarried partner households than the 1990 Decennial Census. Furthermore, individual level information on sexual behavior and family planning is used to show that these households exhibit sexual behavior that is systematically different from married and different‐sex couples and that is consistent with a large body of public health and HIV literature on gay men and lesbians. Finally, the author replicates, confirms, and extends previously published Census‐based results on the household income penalty faced by gay male couples, showing that these results are not an artifact of deficient data. He finds similar results for lesbian couples. (JEL J1, J3)

Trong bài phân tích về tác động của đầu tư nước ngoài đến năng suất của Trung Quốc, bài báo này phát triển hai mô hình thực nghiệm: một sử dụng năng suất lao động và một sử dụng năng suất tổng hợp các yếu tố (TFP). Sử dụng dữ liệu các tỉnh về các ngành công nghiệp của Trung Quốc cho các năm 1993, 1994, và 1997 để hồi quy các mô hình thực nghiệm, kết luận rằng tác động của đầu tư khác nhau tùy thuộc vào nguồn gốc của chúng, với các doanh nghiệp Hoa kiều ở nước ngoài đóng góp vào hiệu ứng lan tỏa tại các khu vực có khoảng cách công nghệ cao, trong khi đó đầu tư từ các doanh nghiệp nước ngoài khác có xu hướng cải thiện năng suất và TFP chủ yếu tại các khu vực có khoảng cách công nghệ thấp. (JEL D24, F13, F15, L60)

This study associates levels of exposure to ozone and fine particulate matter in the South Coast Air Basin of California with resident income, race, age and education. A Regional Human Exposure Model provides the basis for estimating exposure not only on location or residence, but also on mobility within the Basin and time spent in various activities indoors and outdoors. The results are consonant with earlier research in most respects, except that population density is negatively related to exposure. Ethnic minorities and children receive the greatest exposure levels. The highest income group exhibits a strongly negative association with exposure.

This article seeks to investigate whether the renminbi (RMB) has become grossly undervalued by empirically estimating China's equilibrium real exchange rate for the period 1978–2002. A reduced form based on Edwards's (1989, 1994) developing‐country model is estimated using the Engle‐Granger two‐step method. The results reveal that government expenditure, productivity, and the degree of trade restrictions in the economy affect the RMB. From these variables, the authors then derive the equilibrium rate and the degree of misalignments from it. The investigation shows that there is no evidence that the RMB is significantly undervalued in the last few years of the sample period. (JEL F31, F33, F42)

With a parallel increase in the consumption of food away from home, particularly fast food, and the obesity prevalence in the United States, evidence on the potential effectiveness of fiscal pricing policies to curb obesity is needed. We estimate changes in the dispersion of the entire conditional distribution of body mass index (BMI) associated with changes in fast food prices for adults using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 in cross‐sectional and longitudinal quantile regression models. We find that the ordinary least squares estimate for men underestimates the negative relationship of fast food prices with BMI at the 50th and upper quantiles in cross‐sectional models although the statistical significance disappears in the longitudinal individual fixed effects quantile regression. Among subpopulations, we find that a 10% increase in the price of fast food is associated with 0.9% and 0.7% lower BMI for low‐income women and women with any children, respectively, at the 90th quantile in a longitudinal individual fixed effects model. Our results imply that fiscal pricing policies such as fast food taxes might have a greater impact on the weight outcomes of low‐income women or women with children in the upper tail of the conditional BMI distribution (JEL I00, I19).