Ronald P. Wilder

Maternal smoking during pregnancy and birthweight - A propensity score matching approach

There is accumulated evidence of the existence of a deleterious effect of smoking on birth outcomes. Understanding the effect of smoking on pregnancy is a critical issue because of the public policy implications for dissuading maternal smoking. We explore this issue by using the propensity score method and compare that with parametric estimators. First we estimate the treatment effect of smoking during pregnancy on different birth outcomes, by race. Then, we extend the method to the case of the multi-treatment “intensity of smoking.” The deleterious effect of smoking is found robust to the different estimation methods used.

Firm and Industry Effects in Industrial Economics

The traditional view in industrial economics suggests that high concentration leads to tacit collusion, poor performance, and elevated profit. Followers of the traditional view relied upon the empirical relationship between profit rates and market concentration to justify the highly activist antitrust policy of the 1945-1980 period. The activist antitrust era reached its zenith with the nearly per se prohibition of horizontal mergers as outlined in the 1968 merger guidelines issued by the Justice Departments Antitrust Division. The 1980s have witnessed the emergence of the revisionist school as the dominant view in the field of industrial economics. The revisionists contend

Pricing behavior of non-profit agencies : The case of blood products

In this study we examine the pricing behavior of a non-profit agency, the American National Red Cross blood service units. Two alternative hypotheses are presented: one in which the agency maximizes profits,, and one in which output is maximized subject to a breakeven constraint. Following a general approach developed by Eckstein and Fromm , pricing equations for separate blood products are applied to cross-sectional data from Red Cross blood centers to determine the impact of demand, cost, competition, and subsidy variables. The impact of these variables, in particular the impact of the fixed subsidy on price, is shown to be consistent with the output-maximizing model.

Alternative profitability measures and tests of the structure-performance relationship

This paper compares the inferences gained when alternatively specifying Census-based price-cost margin and IRS-based accounting rate of return as the dependent variable in conventional structure-performance models. We find important differences between the structure-performance inferences of the alternative specifications of the profit measure. Further, the alternative profit measures are not highly correlated.

Household Life-Cycle Effects on Consumer Wealth and Well-Being for the Recently Retired

The present research tests a series of predicted relationships regarding the e fects of household life-cycle variables, as well as other important consumer characteristics, on both wealth and perceived well-being among retired households. Toward that objective, separate samples of retired married households (n = 1,938) and retired single-person households (n = 855) from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) of the University of Michigan were analyzed in an investigation of the e fects of household marital and parenthood characteristics on both accumulated wealth and perceived well-being. After controlling for education, race, gender, and health e fects, the results demonstrate significant life-cycle e fects of marital status and number of children on consumer wealth. In addition, wealth at retirement age is found to be a significant predictor of overall well-being. The implications of these findings, as well as a series of suggestions for future research regarding the study of important changes in life-cycle circumstances, are discussed.

Tax Rates in Small and Large Firms

This study examines the relationship between firm size and tax rates. Contrary to other recent studies, these findings demonstrate that corporations in the smallest size group pay the highest effective corporate tax rates. 1 It is suggested that the higher tax rates of small firms can be explained in terms of selling, general and administrative expenses. Selling, general and administrative expenses as a ratio to sales are more than 50% higher for small corporations than for the largest firms in the non-durable manufacturing industry group.

Wage determination in U.S. manufacturing 1958–1976: A collective bargaining approach

This paper presents a cross-section collective bargaining approach to the analysis of inter-industry wage movements of production workers in U.S. manufacturing over the period 1958–1976. A Hicksian model is used to classify the determinants of wage change according to their likely influence on the concession and strike costs of management and unions. Three variables which are classified as management concession and strike costs are consistently significant in empirical testing: change in value productivity, labor intensity, and the profit rate. On the basis of this finding it is suggested that inter-industry wage changes are generally a function of management concession costs.