David Mushinski

An analysis of offer functions of banks and credit unions in Guatemala

Economists have sought to identify institutions which might fill the gap in household access to credit arising from rationing by formal lenders. Credit unions have been identified as institutions which might use informational and monitoring advantages to fill that gap. Using information on household perceptions of their access to credit, this article analyses the impact of certain credit unions on the access to credit of households in Guatemala. Regression results indicate that credit unions serve markets unserved by formal lenders and that information on household perceptions of their access to credit is important in making inferences about lender lending activities.

A Note on the Geographic Interdependencies of Retail Market Areas

Central place theory describes an orderly hierarchy of places, with particular retail services developing for lower-ordered places as they reach a threshold. Yet it is likely that nearby areas could serve simultaneously as a source of demand and a source of competing supply for retail stores in a place. This paper contributes to the understanding of local economic development by modeling and estimating the geographic interdependence between a place and its neighboring areas. The simultaneous equation Tobit results suggest that such geographical interdependence exists for most retail industries, with spatial competition on the supply side being particularly important.

Inequality in Income Distributions: Does Culture Matter? an Analysis of Western Native American Tribes

Social theorists have postulated a relationship between the cultural characteristics of a society and resource distributions in its community [Flanagan and Rayner 1988, 2,13; Leacock 1978, 227]. For example, more hierarchical societies might be expected to exhibit greater income inequality [Britan and Cohen 1980, 26]. Despite these observations, standard economic analyses have ignored the impact of cultural characteristics on income inequality in a society. This paper combines data from the United States Census with measures of North American tribal cultural characteristics developed by Joseph Jorgensen [1980] to determine the impact of cultural factors on income inequality. Standard analyses of inequality in income distributions have ignored the social organization and cultural contexts from which income distributions arise. Some economists have long recognized that analyses should interpret economic transactions in light of the social organization and cultural context in which they arose [Neale 1957; Colin and Losch 1994, 332; Stanfield 1986, 56-58]. Indeed, they argue that analyses of economic transactions should start with an evaluation of the cultural context in which economic transactions take place [e.g., Mayhew 1987; Jennings and Waller 1995]. David Hamilton [1991] has argued that market interactions should be analyzed from a cultural perspective, as they are products of cultural

Identifying Export Industries Using Parametric Density Functions

In this article, the authors present a new way of identifying the set of industries that may constitute a region’s economic base. The authors focus on the differences among regions in their regional employment shares (the percentage of total employment in a particular region attributable to a particular industry). They find that the distribution across regions of regional employment shares can be characterized by what they call a mixed-exponential distribution for industries that are easy to classify as being export industries—such as automotive manufacturing—while the distributions of regional employment shares for some easy-to-classify local industries tend to be normal. The authors then attempt to classify each of the remaining industries as being either export or local to determine whether the empirical distribution of employment shares in each industry is more like the mixed-exponential distribution or more like the normal distribution. The attempt is partially successful.

Assessment of the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Flint, Michigan

Significance Unresolved is the etiology of the 2014–2015 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Genesee County, MI. Flint is the most populous city in Genesee County, and the outbreak coincided with damaged water infrastructure and the subsequent Flint water crisis. The unprecedented disturbance in water quality within Flint’s drinking water distribution system allowed the evaluation of the statistical relationship between free chlorine residual and Legionnaires’ disease risk within a full-scale drinking water system. Through the integration of multiple datasets, results from numerous causal inference tests implicate changes in water quality, as reflected by changes in free chlorine residual, in the City of Flint as responsible for the outbreak. These findings provide public health professionals and engineers unparalleled scientific evidence to reduce waterborne disease. The 2014–2015 Legionnaires’ disease (LD) outbreak in Genesee County, MI, and the outbreak resolution in 2016 coincided with changes in the source of drinking water to Flint’s municipal water system. Following the switch in water supply from Detroit to Flint River water, the odds of a Flint resident presenting with LD increased 6.3-fold (95% CI: 2.5, 14.0). This risk subsided following boil water advisories, likely due to residents avoiding water, and returned to historically normal levels with the switch back in water supply. During the crisis, as the concentration of free chlorine in water delivered to Flint residents decreased, their risk of acquiring LD increased. When the average weekly chlorine level in a census tract was <0.5 mg/L or <0.2 mg/L, the odds of an LD case presenting from a Flint neighborhood increased by a factor of 2.9 (95% CI: 1.4, 6.3) or 3.9 (95% CI: 1.8, 8.7), respectively. During the switch, the risk of a Flint neighborhood having a case of LD increased by 80% per 1 mg/L decrease in free chlorine, as calculated from the extensive variation in chlorine observed. In communities adjacent to Flint, the probability of LD occurring increased with the flow of commuters into Flint. Together, the results support the hypothesis that a system-wide proliferation of legionellae was responsible for the LD outbreak in Genesee County, MI.