BiblioVault - Books about Economic Analysis

Child Care Problem

An Economic Analysis

David M. Blau

Russell Sage Foundation, 2001

The child care system in the United States is widely criticized, yet the underlying structural problems are difficult to pin down. In The Child Care Problem, David M. Blau sets aside the often emotional terms of the debate and applies a rigorous economic analysis to the state of the child care system in this country, arriving at a surprising diagnosis of the root of the problem. Blau approaches child care as a service that is bought and sold in markets, addressing such questions as: What kinds of child care are available? Is good care really hard to find? How do costs affect the services families choose? Why are child care workers underpaid relative to other professions? He finds that the child care market functions much better than is commonly believed. The supply of providers has kept pace with the number of mothers entering the workforce, and costs remain relatively modest. Yet most families place a relatively low value on high-quality child care, and are unwilling to pay more for better care. Blau sees this lack of demand—rather than the market's inadequate supply—as the cause of the nation's child care dilemma. The Child Care Problem also faults government welfare policies—which treat child care subsidies mainly as a means to increase employment of mothers, but set no standards regarding the quality of child care their subsidies can purchase. Blau trains an economic lens on research by child psychologists, evaluating the evidence that the day care environment has a genuine impact on early development. The failure of families and government to place a priority on improving such critical conditions for their children provides a compelling reason to advocate change. The Child Care Problem concludes with a balanced proposal for reform. Blau outlines a systematic effort to provide families of all incomes with the information they need to make more prudent decisions. And he suggests specific revisions to welfare policy, including both an allowance to defray the expenses of families with children, and a child care voucher that is worth more when used for higher quality care. The Child Care Problem provides a straightforward evaluation of the many contradictory claims about the problems with child care, and lays out a reasoned blueprint for reform which will help guide both social scientists and non-academics alike toward improving the quality of child care in this country.

[more]

Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment

Edited by Edward L. Glaeser and James M. Poterba

University of Chicago Press, 2021

Policy makers often call for increased spending on infrastructure, which can encompass a broad range of investments, from roads and bridges to digital networks that will expand access to high-speed broadband. Some point to the near-term macroeconomic benefits, such as job creation, associated with infrastructure spending; others point to the long-term effects of such spending on productivity and economic growth.

Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment explores the links between infrastructure investment and economic outcomes, analyzing key economic issues in the funding and management of infrastructure projects. It includes new research on the short-run stimulus effects of infrastructure spending, develops new estimates of the stock of US infrastructure capital, and explores incentive aspects of public-private partnerships with particular attention to their allocation of risk. The volume provides a reference for researchers seeking to study infrastructure issues and for policymakers tasked with determining the appropriate level and allocation of infrastructure spending.

[more]

Economic Analysis of Accident Law

Steven Shavell

Harvard University Press, 1987

“[This] is certainly a masterpiece.”—Thomas S. Ulen, Journal of Economic Literature

“The strength of Shavell’s book is its lucid, structured development and explication of the economic model. It represents the best systematic presentation of the relevance of economic argument for issues of risk allocation.”—Jules L. Coleman, Yale Law Journal

“Steven Shavell…[has] drawn upon [his] previous path-breaking work to issue [one of] the most important books in the law and economics of tort law since the release in 1970 of Guido Calabresi’s The Costs of Accidents…The work is a masterful tribute to the power of economic modelling and the use of optimization techniques…I, for one, was immensely impressed by the richness of the insights that Shavell’s theoretical approach provided into the fundamental issues of tort law.”—John J. Donohue III, Harvard Law Review

Accident law, if properly designed, is capable of reducing the incidence of mishaps by making people act more cautiously. Scholarly writing on this branch of law traditionally has been concerned with examining the law for consistency with felt notions of right and duty. Since the 1960s, however, a group of legal scholars and economists have focused on identifying the effects of accident law on people’s behavior. Steven Shavell’s book is the definitive synthesis of research to date in this new field.

[more]

Economic Analysis of Product Innovation

The Case of CT Scanners

Manuel Trajtenberg

Harvard University Press, 1990

One of the most striking features of contemporary industrial economies is their ability to offer an ever-expanding and improving range of products. Personal computers, tiny pacemakers, digital watches, and VCRs simply did not exist, and were not even dreamt of, only a few decades ago. Such product innovations play an increasingly important role in modern economic growth, and it is therefore imperative that economists come to grips with them, just as they have done with traditional economic phenomena.

In this skillfully crafted and imaginative study, Manuel Trajtenberg develops the tools to quantify and analyze the notion of product innovation. He argues persuasively that the magnitude of an innovation should be equated with the social benefits that it generates. Drawing from the "characteristics approach" to demand theory and the econometrics of discrete choice, he presents an ingenious method to estimate the benefits from product innovations that accrue to the consumer over time. His method centers on consumer preferences for different product attributes -such as speed and size of memory in computers-and then uses those preferences to evaluate the changes in attributes.

Trajtenberg applies his approach to the study of one of the most remarkable innovations in medical technology--Computed Tomography (CT) scanners. He assembled for that purpose an impressive set of data on every aspect of the new technology, from qualities and prices, patents and research, to details on virtually every sale in the United States during the decade following the introduction of CT in 1973. This close-up view of an innovation, quite rare in economic literature, offers valuable insights on the nature of the innovative process, the interaction between innovation and diffusion, the effects of uncertainty about quality, and the implications of changing preferences.

[more]

The Economic Analysis of Substance Use and Abuse

An Integration of Econometric and Behavioral Economic Research

Edited by Frank J. Chaloupka, Michael Grossman, Warren K. Bickel, and Henry Saffer

University of Chicago Press, 1999

Conventional wisdom once held that the demand for addictive substances like cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs was unlike that for any other economic good and, therefore, unresponsive to traditional market forces. Recently, however, researchers from two disparate fields, economics and behavioral psychology, have found that increases in the overall price of an addictive substance can significantly reduce both the number of users and the amounts those users consume. Changes in the "full price" of addictive substances—including monetary value, time outlay, effort to obtain, and potential penalties for illegal use—yield marked variations in behavioral outcomes and demand.

The Economic Analysis of Substance Use and Abuse brings these distinctive fields of study together and presents for the first time an integrated assessment of their data and results. Unique and innovative, this multidisciplinary volume will serve as an important resource in the current debates concerning alcohol and drug use and abuse and the impacts of legalizing illicit drugs.

[more]

Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy

Edited by Avi Goldfarb, Shane M. Greenstein, and Catherine E. Tucker

University of Chicago Press, 2015

As the cost of storing, sharing, and analyzing data has decreased, economic activity has become increasingly digital. But while the effects of digital technology and improved digital communication have been explored in a variety of contexts, the impact on economic activity—from consumer and entrepreneurial behavior to the ways in which governments determine policy—is less well understood.

Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy explores the economic impact of digitization, with each chapter identifying a promising new area of research. The Internet is one of the key drivers of growth in digital communication, and the first set of chapters discusses basic supply-and-demand factors related to access. Later chapters discuss new opportunities and challenges created by digital technology and describe some of the most pressing policy issues. As digital technologies continue to gain in momentum and importance, it has become clear that digitization has features that do not fit well into traditional economic models. This suggests a need for a better understanding of the impact of digital technology on economic activity, and Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy brings together leading scholars to explore this emerging area of research.

[more]

Foundations of Economic Analysis

Enlarged Edition

Paul Samuelson

Harvard University Press, 1983

Although his classic work has gone through many reprintings and translations, only now has Paul A. Samuelson added new material to his 1947 treatise. A new introduction portrays the genesis of the book and analyzes how its contributions fit into theoretical developments of the last thirty-five years. A new and lengthy mathematical appendix gives a survey of the following post-1947 breakthroughs in political economy, in relation to the methodology of Foundations: linear programming and comparative statics; nonlinear programming, dynamic and stochastic; modern duality theory; the testable content of the neoclassical money model; probabilistic decision making, with new slants on the dogma of Expected-Utility maximizing; and portfolio and liquidity preference analysis by general methods that transcend mean-variance approximations.

[more]

Foundations of Economic Analysis

First Edition

Paul Samuelson

Harvard University Press

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.

[more]

Risky Behavior among Youths

An Economic Analysis

Edited by Jonathan Gruber

University of Chicago Press, 2001

Every day young people engage in risky behaviors that affect not only their immediate well-being but their long-term health and safety. These well-honed essays apply diverse economic analyses to a wide range of unsafe activities, including teen drinking and driving, smoking, drug use, unprotected sex, and criminal activity. Economic principles are further applied to mental health and performance issues such as teenage depression, suicide, nutritional disorders, and high school dropout rates. Together, the essays yield notable findings: price and regulatory incentives are critical determinants of high-risk behavior, suggesting that youths do apply some sort of cost/benefit calculation when making decisions; the macroeconomic environment in which those decisions are made matters greatly; and youths who pursue high-risk behaviors are significantly more likely to engage in similar behaviors as adults.

This important volume provides both a key data source for public policy makers and a clear affirmation of the usefulness of economic analysis to our understanding of risky behavior.

[more]

United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corporation

An Economic Analysis of an Anti-Trust Case

Carl Kaysen

Harvard University Press

Carl Kaysen offers a penetrating economic analysis of the issues in the civil antitrust suit brought by the United States Government against the United Shoe Machinery Corporation under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Kaysen, who served as clerk to Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr. of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts for this case, provides background material on the technique of shoe machinery and shoe manufacture, on the history of the United Shoe Machinery, and on the Anti-Trust Laws.

[more]