Steven P. Cassou

The Demand for Employment-Based Health Insurance Plans

We estimate the demand for health plans by employees in 17 Minneapolis firms. The data set has approximately 900 employees who chose a single-coverage health plan and 2,100 employees who chose family coverage. A nested logit model is empirically shown to be the right approach for modeling health plan choice, with freedom to choose your own doctor being the variable that distinguishes health plan nests. Our estimates show that employees are very sensitive to the out-of-pocket premium for each plan, controlling for other plan characteristics. These results are important both for public policy and for employers who offer multiple health plans.

Optimal Fiscal Policy, Public Capital and the Productivity Slowdown

This paper develops a quantitative theoretical model for the optimal provision of public capital. We show that the ratio of public to private capital in the U.S. economy since 1925 evolves in a manner that is broadly consistent with an optimal transition path derived from a simple growth model. The model is used to quantify the conditions under which an increase in the stock of public capital is desirable and to investigate the degree to which non-optimal fiscal policies can account for the U.S. productivity slowdown.

The link between tax rates and foreign direct investment

This paper investigates the impact of tax policy on foreign direct investment flows between the US and other countries using a panel data empirical approach. Using panel data is an attractive alternative to using single time series data because it provides greater statistical power and offers greater flexibility in terms of explanatory variables. This study finds many significant factors influencing the transfer of funds component of foreign direct investment. Most noteworthy is that, in addition to host and home country corporate tax rates having a significant effect on investment flows, the host and home country income tax rates are also significant.

A normative analysis of public capital

A normative analysis of short-term public capital investment is carried out using cost benefit analysis. This cost benefit approach explicitly incorporates the durability of capital into the computation and thus include an aspect of public capital omitted from previous studies which focus on productivity. Estimation methods used else where have been improved by properly handling several concerns that have been raised. In addition, this behavioural model yields many structural equations suitable for estimation which results in highly efficient parameter estimates. Although a small elasticity is found for public capital, the benefit is greater than the cost.

Growth Effects of a Flat Tax

A presentation of a quantitative general equilibrium model showing that a revenue-neutral flat tax can permanently boost per capita growth by 0.18 to 0.85 percentage point annually, and that the lower marginal tax rate and the full investment write-off are both important contributors to the increased growth.

On public capital analysis with state data

Abstract Based on state production models with fixed effects, recent studies have argued public capital is not productive. We show multicollinearity is a potential problem and caution is warranted in interpreting estimation results for models with public capital and fixed effects.

Industry estimates of the elasticity of substitution and the rate of biased technological change between skilled and unskilled labour

We estimate the elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled labour and the pace of skill-biased technological change at the industry level. The data is compiled from the March extract of the Current Population Survey (CPS) from 1968 to 2006. Industry information provided by the survey is used to group workers into 13 industry categories and education levels are used to dichotomize workers as skilled or unskilled. We construct measures of the ratio of skilled to unskilled employment and the ratio of skilled to unskilled wages in each industry. Using a relationship implied by profit maximizing behaviour on the part of representative firms, this data generates estimates of structural parameters. We find considerable differences across industries in the elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled labour. Furthermore, while most industries have experienced skill-biased technological change, the pace of this change has varied widely across industries.

Optimal tax rules in a dynamic stochastic economy with capital

Abstract This paper investigates optimal taxation in a disaggregated neoclassical growth model. Optimal tax rules for a government, which must finance an exogenous stochastic stream of spending, are investigated. Many locally optimal rules are found and two principles, which provide useful guidance into interpreting them, are described. These principles state that high steady state investment and small investment volatility are desired. A persistent income tax policy suggested by Judd (1989) is found to be among the best policies. Although some policies with complicated dynamic implications have similar welfare levels, because of its simplicity, the persistent income tax rule is recommended.

Industrial Dynamics and the Neoclassical Growth Model

This paper studies industry-level dynamics and demonstrates the ability of a modified neoclassical growth model to capture a range of empirical facts. The paper begins by using U.S. data to document skilled and unskilled labor trends within industry sector classifications as well as industry sector output trends. Using Current Population Survey data from 1968 to 2004, it is shown that the ratio of skilled workers to unskilled workers employed has risen in all industries. The absolute increase in this ratio was larger in the more skilled industries, while the growth rate was larger in the less skilled industries. Furthermore, using national income account data, it is shown that relatively high-skilled industries have accounted for an increasing share of output over time. A version of the neoclassical growth model is then constructed to match these observations. One important feature of this model is a structure that introduces new goods into the economy at each moment of time. The model is able to capture a rich set of labor market movements between sectors and between skill levels as well as changes in the relative output shares across industries, yet preserves many nice features of the neoclassical growth model.(JEL E13, J20, 030)

Time variation in an optimal asymmetric preference monetary policy model

Abstract This paper considers a time varying parameter extension of the Ruge-Murcia’s (Ruge-Murcia, F. J. 2003. “Does the Barro-Gordon Model Explain the Behavior of us Inflation? A Reexamination of the Empirical Evidence.” Journal of Monetary Economics 50: 1375–1390; Ruge-Murcia, F. J. 2004. “The Inflation Bias When the Central Bank Targets the Natural Rate of Unemployment.” European Economic Review 48: 91–107.) model to explore whether some of the variation in parameter estimates seen in the literature could arise from this source. A time varying value for the unemployment volatility parameter can be motivated through several means including variation in the slope of the Phillips curve or variation in the preferences of the monetary authority. We show that allowing time variation for the coefficient on the unemployment volatility parameter improves the model fit and it helps to provide an explanation of inflation bias based on asymmetric central banker preferences, which is consistent across subsamples.