Cletus C. Coughlin

Location Determinants of New Foreign‐Owned Manufacturing Plants

Manufacturing employment in the United States has tended to fall since 1979. Geographically, the Northeast and Mideast regions have incurred the brunt of this decline and, except in the Southwest region, urban countries have tended to fare worse than rural countries. Meanwhile, foreign-owned manufacturing has been playing a larger role in the U.S. economy, especially in the Great Lakes and Southeast regions. The current research explains the pattern-among regions as well as between rural and urban countries-of new foreign plant location. Proxies measuring economic size, labor force quality, agglomeration and urbanization economies, and transportation infrastructure are found to affect the location of new foreign-owned plants positively, while proxies for unit labor costs and taxes are found to deter the location of new plants. The key advantages of the Great Lakes region stem from relatively low unit labor costs and high manufacturing density, while high manufacturing density and low taxes are the key advantages of the Southeast region. Comparing urban with rural countries, nearly all the explanatory variables possess average values for urban countries that are more favorable to foreign direct investment. For example, the labor force is relatively more productive and skilled in urban than in rural countries.

Ethnic Networks and US Exports

This paper provides new estimates of the effects of ethnic networks on US exports. In line with recent research, our dataset is a panel of exports from US states to 29 foreign countries. Our analysis departs from the literature in two ways, both of which show that previous estimates of the ethnic-network elasticity of trade are sensitive to the restrictions imposed on the estimated models. Our first departure is to control for unobserved heterogeneity with properly specified fixed effects, which we can do because our dataset contains a time dimension absent from previous studies. Our second departure is to remove the restriction that the network effect is the same for all ethnicities. We find that ethnic-network effects are much larger than has been estimated previously, although they are important only for a subset of countries.

Size Matters: Asymmetric Exchange Rate Pass-Through at the Industry Level

Changes in costs faced by firms have direct implications for their price-cost margins. Knowing how prices respond to such cost changes is crucial for understanding how individual markets function and, in turn, for understanding the macroeconomy. We analyze exchange rate pass-through into U.S. import prices for 30 industries to address two questions related to this issue. First, does the direction of a change in the exchange rate affect pass-through? Second, does the size of a change in the exchange rate matter for pass-through? We find that firms in over half the industries studied respond asymmetrically to appreciations and depreciations, but the direction of asymmetry varies. Likewise, most firms respond asymmetrically to large and small changes in the exchange rate with pass-through positively related to the size of the change. When taking into account both direction and size effects we find that the size effect dominates.

Spatial Dependence in Models of State Fiscal Policy Convergence

We apply spatial econometric techniques to models of state and local fiscal policy convergence. Total tax revenue and expenditures, as well as broad tax and expenditure categories, of state and local governments in each of the 48 contiguous U.S. states are examined. We extend work by Scully (1991) and Annala (2003) in much the same way that Rey and Montouri (1999) extended the literature dealing with income convergence among U.S. states. Our results indicate that most fiscal policies have been converging and exhibit spatial dependence. A more specific interpretation of our general spatial results is that the finding of spatial dependence indicates that the growth paths of state and local fiscal policies are not independent. In addition, we find that total expenditures have been converging faster than output, whereas total tax revenues have been converging slower that output. Our models further demonstrate that state expenditure growth is dependent upon expenditure growth in economically and demographically similar states, while output growth and revenue growth in a state are dependent on output growth and revenue growth, respectively, in contiguous states.

Inter-Temporal Differences in the Income Elasticity of Demand for Lottery Tickets

We estimate annual income elasticities of demand for lottery tickets using county–level panel data for three states and find that the income elasticity of demand (and, thus, the tax burden) for lottery tickets has changed over time. This is due to changes in a state’s lottery game portfolio and the growth in consumer income more so than competition from alternative gambling opportunities. Trends in the income elasticity for instant and online lottery games appear to be different. Our results raise doubts about the long–term growth potential of lottery revenue and have policy implications for state governments and those concerned about regressivity.

Ethnic networks and trade: intensive vs. extensive margins

Ethnic networks—as proxies for information networks—have been associated with higher levels of international trade. Previous research has not differentiated between the roles of these networks on the extensive and intensive margins. The present paper does so using a model with fixed effects, finding that ethnic networks increase trade on the intensive margin but not on the extensive margin.

Changing Noise Levels and Housing Prices Near the Atlanta Airport

Using hedonic models, we analyze the effects of proximity and noise on housing prices in neighborhoods near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport during 1995-2002. Proximity to the airport is related positively to housing prices. We address complications caused by changes over time in the levels and geographic distribution of noise and by the fact that noise contours are measured infrequently. A general decline in noise boosted housing prices during 1995-2002. After accounting for proximity, house characteristics, and demographic variables, houses in noisier areas sold for less than houses subjected to less noise. Also, the noise discount is larger during 2000-2002 than 1995-1999.

Income and Lottery Sales: Transfers Trump Income from Work and Wealth

Previous studies have examined the effect of income on lottery ticket expenditures using an aggregate measure of income, usually personal income. Reasons exist, however, for believing that lottery expenditures do not respond equally to all sources of income. This paper examines the propensity to purchase lottery tickets from separate types of income, namely income from earnings, transfer payments, and wealth. Using county-level data for five states, we find evidence that lottery expenditures respond differently to changes in each income type, and that ticket purchases are most strongly influenced by changes in transfer payments. Several policy implications follow from our results.

An Examination of State Foreign Exports and Manufacturing Employment

Exports assist economic development via the creation of jobs. The present study specifies and estimates a time-series model in order to quantify relationships between state exports and employment. The export elasticities of employment in both the short run and the long run are estimated on a state basis. The results suggest that state government policies that affect state exports will ultimately affect state employment. Further, the results indicate there is much diversity among states for the relationships estimated.

Extensive and intensive trade margins: a state-by-state view

This paper examines a topic of increasing interest, the potential determinants of extensive (i.e., number of firms) and intensive (i.e., average exports per firm) trade margins, using state-level trade to 190 countries. In addition to distance and country size, other factors affecting trade costs and export demand are explored. In state-by-state regressions, these other factors exhibit more consistent and statistically significant effects on the extensive than on the intensive trade margin. One noteworthy finding is that U.S. foreign direct investment has a positive effect on both margins. In regressions using all state-level data simultaneously, some factors affect both margins, but not necessarily in the same way. For example, the impact of the communications infrastructure in the importing country affects the extensive margin positively and the intensive margin negatively. Finally, reasons for differences across states, such as state size and trade missions, are identified.