Private Enterprise Research Center (PERC)

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http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/199231

The mission of the Private Enterprise Research Center (PERC) is to provide Texas A&M University, the state of Texas and the Nation with analysis of important policy issues. PERC actively supports academic research and market oriented solutions to public policy problems.

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Browsing Private Enterprise Research Center (PERC) by Type "Research"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 45
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    Am I the Big Fish? The Effects of Ordinal Rank on Student Academic Performance in Middle School
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2019-06-28) Yu, Han
    The idea that through perseverance and hard work, one can achieve his or her dreams is a pervasive one. There is already an established literature that studies the link between relative achievement and individual outcomes, but findings on relative achievement in the classroom is rare. This article summarizes working paper 1811, where PERC Postdoctoral Associate Han Yu provides the first evidence from a developing country by studying the effects of academic class rank for 7th and 8th grade students from China. This paper also breaks new ground by providing the first direct evidence on the relationship between objective academic class rank and the rank perceived by students, as well as the impact of self-perceived rank on a student's future academic attainments.
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    Are Charters the Best Alternative? A Cost Frontier Analysis
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2016-09-01) Gronberg, Timothy J.; Jansen, Dennis W.; Taylor, Lori L.
    Texas has been part of the charter school movement since 1995, when the 74th Texas Legislature authorized the State Board of Education to establish open enrollment (OE) charter schools in the state. According to the Texas Education Agency, in 2010-11 there were 199 OE charter districts operating 482 campuses in Texas, serving 133,697 students, nearly 3% of public school students in the state. Despite the growing role of these alternative schools in the U.S. edcucational system, they are seldom studied. In Working Paper 1606, PERC Research Fellow Timothy J. Gronberg, PERC Jordan Professor Dennis W. Jansen, and Lori L. Taylor, provide the first careful empirical study of the costs of alternative education. Their results show charters to be more cost-efficient in providing alternative education compared to traditional public school districts
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    Coronavirus Economics: The Impact of Shutting Down Meatpacking Plants
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2020-10-01) Jansen, Dennis W.; Liu, Liqun; Rettenmaier, Andrew J.
    Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19 infections at meatpacking plants led to shutdowns across the United States. Beef became scarcer and with higher consumer prices, while ranchers received lower prices for their beef. Meanwhile, meatpacking plants that were still operational were reported to have been raking in vast profits. ​This issue of PERCspectives on Research summarizes working paper 2006, where authors Dennis Jansen, Liqun Liu, and Andrew Rettenmaier use a simple model to study the effects of meatpacking shutdowns while focusing on the decisions of meatpacking firms.
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    Disbursing Emergency Relief Through Utilities: Evidence from Ghana
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2022-09-30) Puller, Steven; Berkouwer, Susanna; Biscaye, Pierre; Wolfram, Catherine
    The first warnings from health officials of an oncoming wave of infections began in late 2019. As the Covid-19 public health crisis rapidly spread, it was often followed by deep economic downturns that disproportionately affected the world's poorest. Many governments responded by expanding or introducing social protection programs, or transfer programs, to provide for the needs of their residents. The aid provided by these transfer programs materialized in different forms, such as providing food or food subsidies, direct cash payments, or energy relief programs. This issue of PERCspectives on Research summarizes working paper 2108, where Steven Puller, PERC's Professor in Free Enterprise, along with coauthors Susanna B. Berkouwer, Pierre E. Biscaye and Catherine D. Wolfram, explore how program design affects the efficiency and distributional implications of these policies, as well as political popularity, by studying an electricity transfer program in Accra, Ghana.
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    Does Funding Create New Giving?
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2016-05-01) Meer, Jonathan
    Despite an extensive literature on the impacts of a variety of charitable fundraising tech-niques, little is known about whether these activities increase overall giving or merely cause donors to substitute away from other causes. Using detailed data from Donorschoose.org, an online plat-form linking teachers with prospective donors, I examine the extent to which matching grants for donations to certain requests affect giving to others. Eligibility for matches is determined in entirely by observable attributes of the request, providing an exogenous source of variation in incentives to donate between charities. I find that, while matches increase giving to eligible requests, they do not appear to crowd out giving to similar ones, either contemporaneously or over time.
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    Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2020-04-30) Hoekstra, Mark; Sloan, CarlyWill
    What role does race have in cases of police use of force? This issue of PERCspectives on Research summarizes the paper by Rex B. Grey Professor Mark Hoekstra and Graduate Student Fellow CarlyWill Sloan, which examines how the race of officers and the race of civilians affect police use of force by using a location-by-time �xed effects approach to randomize the race of officers dispatched to over two million 911 calls in two cities. Results show white officers use force 60 percent more on average than black officers, and use gun force twice as often. Findings also show that while white and black officers use gun force at similar rates in white and racially mixed neighborhoods, white officers are �ve times as likely to use gun force in predominantly black neighborhoods. Similarly, white officers increase use of any force much more than minority officers when dispatched to more minority neighborhoods
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    Does Strategic Ability Affect Efficiency?
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2017-05-01) Puller, Steven; Luco, Fernando; Hortacsu, Ali; Zhu, Dongni
    Even within the same market, firms vary across a number of dimensions:structure, production capacity, market experience, and general core competency. If you go as far as to observe individual managers, you will find resumes with differing academic training and experience. It is easy to imagine how these differing backgrounds play a role in strategic decision making. In this study, the authors ask whether strategic ability affects efficiency.
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    Dropouts Need Not Apply? The Minimum Wage and Skill Upgrading
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2021-09-21) Meer, Jonathan; Kahn, Lisa; Clemens, Jeffrey
    In the United States, politicians and the public alike have again sounded the call to raise the federal minimum wage, citing unlivable earnings and high consumer prices due to rising inflation, but would an increase actually benefit lower-skilled workers? In this summary of the working paper by Jonathan Meer, the Mary Julia and George R. Jordan, Jr. Professor of Public Policy, along with coauthors Lisa Kahn and Jeffrey Clemens, the authors explore whether minimum wage increases result in substitutions from lower-skilled to higher-skilled labor.
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    The Effect of Open-Air Waste Burning on Infant Health: Evidence from Government Failure in Lebanon
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2021-05-14) Hoekstra, Mark; Mouganie, Pierre; Ajeeb, Ruba
    An estimated 40 percent of the world's garbage is burned in open-air fires, which are responsible for as much as half of the global emissions of some pollutants. However, there is little evidence on the health consequences of open-air waste burning, especially for infants. In this issue of PERCspectives on Research, PERC’s Rex B. Grey Professor Mark Hoekstra, along with coauthors Pierre Mouganie and Ruba Ajeeb, estimate the effect of in-utero exposure to open-air waste burning on birth outcomes by examining the consequences of increased open-air waste burning due to the Lebanese garbage crisis of 2015.
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    The Effect of Own-Gender Juries on Conviction Rates
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-07-11) Hoekstra, Mark; Street, Brittany
    The right to an impartial jury is the cornerstone of the U.S. justice system and is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but are these juries truly impartial, or do they favor defendants who are similar to themselves? In PERC working paper 1803, PERC’s Rex Grey Professor Mark Hoekstra and co-author Brittany Street study whether gender matches between jurors and defendants affect criminal conviction rates.
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    Effects of Mandatory Energy Efficiency Disclosure in Housing Markets
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2020-02-25) Puller, Steven; Myers, Erica; West, Jeremy
    Policymakers are increasingly using mandated information disclosures as a way to increase market efficiency by providing information on quality to buyers. In the housing market in Austin, Texas, home sellers are required to perform a standardized energy audit and provide home efficiency information to prospective buyers. In working paper 1916, Steven Puller, PERC’s Professor of Free Enterprise, along with coauthors Erica Myers and Jeremy West investigate whether the audit and disclosure policies mandated by the City of Austin have the intended effect of improving the energy efficiency quality of homes. To read a summary of this working paper in the Winter 2020 issue of PERCspectives on Research, click on View or Download below.
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    Fear the Machine?
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-07-11) Jansen, Dennis W.; Bradley, Michael D.
    How do the technological changes caused by increased automation and A.I. affect workers’ wages and jobs? This article summarizes PERC working paper 1801, PERC’s Director Dennis W. Jansen and co-author Michael D. Bradley study the effects of automation and artificial intelligence on employment and labor income over multiple gen-erations.
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    Generosity Across the Income and Wealth Distributions
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2020-10-01) Meer, Jonathan; Priday, Benjamin A.
    Discussing how the rich spend their income is a topic of popular interest among the public and policymakers, yet little evidence exists that the wealthy are less likely to donate than other income groups, and the results of those studies that do are dubious due to questionable methodology and use of data. This issue of PERCspectives on Research summarizes working paper 2007, where Jonathan Meer, along with co-author Benjamin A. Priday, estimate the relationship between pre-tax income, wealth, and charitable giving to definitely answer whether the wealthy embody the stingy stereotype or are due more credit for their generosity.
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    Has the Information Channel of Monetary Policy Disappeared? Revisiting the Empirical Evidence
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2020-04-30) Sekhposyan, Tatevik; Hoesch, Luka; Rossi, Barbara
    Does the Federal Reserve have an “information advantage� in forecasting macroeconomic variables beyond what is known to private sector forecasters? And are market participants reacting only to monetary policy shocks or also to future information on the state of the economy that the Federal Reserve communicates in its announcements via an“information channel?� This issue of PERCspectives on Research discusses the paper by PERC Professor Tatevik Sekhposyan, Lucas Hoesch, and Barbara Rossi, which investigates the evolution of the information channel over time. Although the information channel appears to be important historically, we find no empirical evidenceof its presence in the recent years once instabilities are accounted for.
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    Household Debt and the Effect of Fiscal Policy
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2022-02-08) Zubairy, Sarah; Alpanda, Sami; Song, Hyunji
    Since the Great Recession, policymakers have increasingly relied on fiscal policy to stabilize and stimulate the economy. This Winter 2022 issue of PERCspectives on Research summarizes a paper by PERC’s Shirley A. Lynch Fellow Sarah Zubairy, along with co-authors Sami Alpanda and Hyunji Song, that investigates how the effects of government spending policy shocks depend on the balance sheet position of households by examining spending by householdsthat rent, hold a mortgage, or own their homes.
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    Household Debt Overhang and Transmission of Monetary Policy
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2018-10-09) Zubairy, Sarah; Alpanda, Sami
    During past recessions like the Great Recession, policy makers sought to boost the economy through fiscal and monetary policy changes. Taking into account the economy’s slow recovery, how effective were the monetary policy changes? This article summarizes working paper 1806, where PERC professor Sarah Zubairy and coauthor Sami Alpanda investigate whether the prevailing level of household debt can lower the effectiveness of the transmission of monetary policy.
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    How Do Peers Influence BMI?
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2017-10-01) Meer, Jonathan; Lim, Jaegeum
    Childhood obesity is a growing public health concern among many industrialized countries. Authors Meer and Lim present a clear view on the effect of social networks on BMI for adolescents from randomly-assigned seventh grade classrooms in Korea.
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    Illegal Immigration, State Law, and Deterrence
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2016-09-01) Hoekstra, Mark; Orozco-Aleman, Sandra
    Can state and federal policies deter undocumented workers from entering the U.S.? In Working Paper 1604, PERC's Rex Grey Professor Mark Hoekstra, and Sandra Orozco-Aleman, address this timely and critical immigration policy question. Focusing on Arizona SB 1070, arguably the most restrictive and controversial immigration bill ever passed by a state, the authors examine whether the law deterred unauthorized entry into Arizona. They find the passage and announcement of SB 1070 significantly reduced the flow of undocumented workers into Arizona (relative to other states) from Mexico, suggesting that undocumented workers are responsive to changes in state immigration policy.
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    Impact of China's Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance on Heath Care Expenditures and Health Outcomes
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2015-05-01) Gan, Li; Huang, Fen
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    The Impact of College Diversity on Behavior Toward Minorities
    (Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University, 2017-10-01) Hoekstra, Mark; Carrell, Scott E.; West, James E.
    For decades, colleges and universities have focused on increasing racial diversity on college campuses through targeted policy efforts. Authors Hoekstra, Carrell and West investigate whether diversity causes members of the majority to change their subsequent behavior toward minorities by studying squadrons of freshmen at the United States Air Force Academy.