Mary G. McGarvey

Marketing Foods and Beverages in Schools: The Effect of School Food Policy on Students' Overweight Measures

Beginning with the 2006–2007 academic year, the U.S. government required that all federally funded schools have local wellness policies to promote healthful living and reduce obesity among their students; however, little evidence exists on which school food policies are effective. This article finds evidence that prohibiting à la carte junk food sales during meals reduces the likelihood that students will be overweight or obese by 18 percentage points. The data are merged student–parent–school survey responses collected from a small sample of schools in one Great Plains state. The estimation controls for students’ activity levels, genetics, and socioeconomic factors; parents’ activity levels and attitudes; and the overall mix of school marketing policies that promote healthful eating and drinking habits. The results indicate that banning à la carte junk food sales is a potentially effective policy to reduce the likelihood of students being overweight and obese.

Are Disagreements Among Male and Female Economists Marginal at Best?: A Survey of AEA Members and Their Views on Economics and Economic Policy

The authors survey economists in the United States holding membership in the American Economic Association (AEA) to determine if there are significant differences in views between male and female economists on important policy issues. Controlling for place of current employment (academic institution with graduate program, academic institution - undergraduate only, government, for‐profit institution) and decade of PhD, the authors find many areas in which economists agree. However, important differences exist in the views of male and female economists on issues including the minimum wage, views on labor standards, health insurance, and especially on explanations for the gender wage gap and issues of equal opportunity in the labor market and the economics profession itself. These results lend support to the notion that gender diversity in policy‐making circles may be an important aspect in broadening the menu of public policy choices.

The Interdependence of School Outcomes and School and Neighborhood Crime

In this paper, we estimate the effects of neighborhood crime and in-school crime on educational outcomes for elementary and secondary schools in the city of Atlanta over the period 1999 to 2002. We specify a model that accounts for the joint determination of both types of crime along with school outcomes. Despite the large empirical literature on both education production functions and crime incidence, there has been little empirical work on crimes effect on school outcomes. One exception is Grogger (1997) who used individual data from the High School and Beyond study to estimate the effect of school violence on measures of individual student performance. After controlling for individual and school characteristics, he found that moderate and severe levels of school violence had substantial negative consequences for school outcomes. Our study both updates and expands on his work, using current data and better measures of neighborhood violence.

The Persistence of Shocks to Macroeconomic Time Series: Some Evidence From Economic Theory

This paper presents new estimates of persistence of shocks to quarterly labor income, monthly Treasury bill yields, and annual real common stock dividends. The authors replace orthogonality conditions involving near unit root instruments with restrictions on innovation variances implied by a generalized version of the permanent income hypothesis, a term structure model, and constant discount rate efficient markets model. Conditional on these theories, they obtain precise estimates of persistence without imposing arbitrary restrictions on the magnitude of the largest root. Shocks are more persistent than indicated by unrestricted trend stationary models but less persistent than implied by unit root models.

LOCAL AND STATEWIDE SMOKE‐FREE LAWS IN NEBRASKA: THE EFFECTS ON KENO ESTABLISHMENTS

This study examines how smoke‐free laws influence cross‐border keno shopping in Nebraska. We exploit smoke‐free law variation in timing and location to identify keno revenue gains and losses between neighboring smoke‐free and smoke‐friendly areas. We find the Lincoln municipal smoke‐free law reduced keno revenue by 23.5% in Lincoln and increased keno revenue by 30.0% in smoke‐friendly Surrounding Lincoln counties. The Omaha municipal smoke‐free law reduced keno revenue by 14.8% in Omaha and increased keno revenue by 7.1% in smoke‐friendly Surrounding Omaha counties. Following the Nebraska statewide law, no Nebraska areas had a smoke‐friendly advantage and keno revenue fell by an insignificant 1.0% and 5.2% in the surrounding Lincoln and Omaha counties, respectively. Our results may be of interest to local policy makers interested in understanding the amount of business activity and tax revenue that may be migrating out of a community or even the state.

The Efficiency of Race- and Gender-Targeted Income Transfers

In this article, the authors quantify the potential efficiency gains from moving toward an income redistribution system that bases transfers on membership in demographic groups such as race and gender. They compute four measures of the marginal efficiency cost (MEC) of redistribution under a standard linear income tax and under a policy that tags specific demographic groups. The authors find that a tagging system can significantly lower the MEC of redistribution. At the margin, a system of tagging demographic groups achieves the goal of greater income equality at a significantly lower cost in terms of lost output.

Filtering as a Test of Specification

This paper generalizes the first differencing test proposed by C. I. Plosser, G. W. Schwert, and H. White to the case of finite one-sided polynomial filters. The authors demonstrate that the filtering test is asymptotically equivalent to a Hausman-Wu test. This provides a computationally simple way of performing the test and analyzing the tests power. The authors show that the choice of lag weights is nontrivial for filters of order greater than one. By examining the optimal choice of filter, the paper shows under what circumstances filtering tests will be powerful. Copyright 1992 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.