Walter O. Simmons

Does Government Spending Crowd Out Donations of Time and Money

The authors examine data on giving and volunteering to determine whether public provision of social services and other public goods affects donations of time and money and provides evidence of crowding out. They find a negative and statistically significant relationship between government spending and donations of money and time. They also find that volunteers have demographic and other characteristics that are associated with high values of time and money.

Male‐female giving differentials: are women more altruistic?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to offer two empirical analyses of differences in the donations of money and time between males and females based on the impact of identical variables on the donation of money and time. Analysis was made of not only how a persons giving patterns are determined for both sexes, but also what portion of differences in giving patterns can be explained by observable and unobservable characteristics between men and women. Design/methodology/approach - The US dataset Findings - It was found that, on average, women are predicted to donate more of both money and time. Variables affecting money donations are significant and robust for both males and females, whereas the variation in time donation is poorly explained by the same variables. A substantial portion of the money and time donation differential gap (over 85 percent in time donation) is unexplained by mean levels of characteristics such as, wage, age and experience. Practical implications - While the issue of whether altruism is innate or the product of socialization is not addressed, these results imply that women bring an extra willingness to give and to volunteer than do men. As women gain economic power in the marketplace, this may result in even more giving and volunteering, creating a windfall to organizations that rely on such donations. Originality/value - Organizations that rely on women for donations of time and money may find these results interesting. They imply that women are motivated by forces not easily captured by a traditional wage equation, especially when looking at donations of time.

Obesity and motor vehicle deaths in the USA: a state‐level analysis

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the linkage between obesity and motor vehicle deaths. Design/methodology/approach - The paper specifies a model that explains highway fatalities, which accounts for obesity in its set of potential determinants. State-level data are utilized in this paper. The values for all variables are for the year 2005. They correspond to 46 of the contiguous states for all measures. The model is estimated by multiple regressions. Findings - The paper finds that the motor vehicle death rate (fatalities per million vehicle miles) has a statistically significant positive relationship with the percentage of the population that is obese. The death rate also has significant positive associations with the percentage of elderly male drivers, per capita alcohol consumption, and temperature; and it has significant negative relationships with per capita income, the percentage of elderly female drivers, seat belt use, and precipitation. Practical implications - The estimates of this paper have various policy implications. For example, the findings pertaining to occupant body weight imply that efforts leading to a decline in the prevalence of obesity will also lower the highway death risk. Results suggest that obesity increases this death risk by contributing to more accidents. If so, measures that reduce obesity-related unsafe driving behaviors (e.g. increased chance of falling asleep while driving) could save lives. Originality/value - The paper adds to the research on the relationship between highway safety and obesity. The papers unique contributions include estimating the linkage between obesity and motor vehicle deaths by regression analysis on US state-level data for 2005 within a model that controls for economic conditions and other considerations such as driver and passenger characteristics, locational factors, government regulations, and weather conditions.

The black earnings gap: discrimination or culture

Abstract This paper explores the earnings gap between West Indians and African Americans that cannot be explained by observable characteristics and is often interpreted as a measure of discrimination or unobservable cultural endowments. The earnings gap advantage has lead to many perceptions and some unsubstantiated implications as to the reasons why West Indians perform better than African Americans in the labor market. This is an attempt to sort out the implications and to put the West Indian/African American earnings difference in prospective.

More Than Altruism: What Does the Cost of Fringe Benefits Say about the Increasing Role

Previous research has found that nonprofit organizations pay lower wages than do other organizations. This has been attributed to altruism on the part of workers who are willing to donate some of the value of their time to organizations that support causes in which they believe. This paper extends that analysis to the cost of fringe benefits. Do nonprofit organizations spend less on fringe benefits than do other organizations? Utilizing a data set containing information on wages and fringe benefits in the nonprofit sector we estimate a standard wage equation to test for such a relationship. We find that not only are nonprofit organizations spending less on fringe benefits than are other organizations, but that they are spending significantly less than would be predicted by the previous research on nonprofit wage differentials.

Purchasing Power Parity in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union

There is increasing interest in regional trade, investment, and currency blocs, and in the optimal public policies for such blocs. There is also much managerial interest in the co-movement of exchange rates in a region. The Eastern Caribbean Currency Bloc is one of only three (and one of the longer lasting) multi-country common central banks in the world and is the only such bank in which member countries pool all their foreign reserves. While it is an important economic region especially for the United States, most studies of regional exchange rate relationships have not examined the nature of Caribbean exchange rates. This paper documents for the first time that purchasing power parity holds for each exchange rate and many real exchange rates are cointegrated and move in a bloc in the Eastern Caribbean region over the 1980s and 1990s.

Reward for being an immigrant: Earnings gap between immigrant and native-born West Indians

Motivated by recent findings of a diminishing earnings gap between the West Indians and other black workers, this study examines the earnings processes of immigrant and native-born West Indians in an effort to find the role of culture traits in their earnings. The decomposition of the earnings difference between immigrant and native-born West Indians indicates that a significant amount of the gap is unexplained by the observable labor market characteristics. Most of the observable human capital endowments of the immigrants are treated unfavorably by the market compared to those of the native-born West Indians. The earnings advantage of immigrants attributable to unobserved factors, however, turns out to be more than sufficient to overcome their market treatment adversity.

What Have Remittances Done to Development? Evidence from the Caribbean Community and Common Market

This paper analyzes the long-run impact of remittances on socio-economic development in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) between 1970 and 2013. We find that remittances have improved the health indicators, reducing infant and child mortality, and food deficit and improving life expectancy, and sanitation and water sources, especially in the rural areas. However, remittance inflows have no significant impact on education and communication infrastructure. Neither do they contribute to any demographic changes.

The impact of globalisation on income inequality

This paper utilises a globalisation index measure to examine the relationship between globalisation and income inequality within developed and developing countries. Controlling for structural and social indicators, our results show that for developing countries, an increase in globalisation is associated with an increase in inequality. Our results also indicate that the impact of the globalisation index on income inequality is insignificant for developed countries. For all countries in our sample, the results indicate that a worsening of the globalisation index is associated with an increase in income inequality.

Male and Female Recoveries in Medical Malpractice Cases

This study analyzes male and female recovery resulting from medical malpractice injuries to discern the importance to the recovery differential of gender differences in recoveries for medical malpractice injuries. We find that the pattern of recoveries follows one similar to that found in studying wage differentials between males and females. Differences in the relative magnitudes of foregone earnings and nonmarket loses are reflected in the composition of recoveries. In addition, we find a recovery gap in which females receive substantially less in recoveries when they receive males average compensation for medical malpractice injuries. However, only a small portion of the male and female recovery differential is explained by the characteristics of the claims, leaving a substantial portion of the differential unexplained.