The Iowa Department of Public Health has undertaken several independent projects to evaluate various aspects of the labor environment affecting Iowa healthcare over the recent past. This research expands upon the results of these efforts to estimate the effects of a number of wage and nonwage...

Across nine transition economies, it is the young, educated, English-speaking workers with thebest access to local telecommunications infrastructures that work with computers. Theseworkers earn about 25% more than do workers of comparable observable skills who do not usecomputers. Controlling...

A sample of Iowa farm couples is used to evaluate whether off-farm labor supply decisions respond to permanent and transitory components of farm income. Off-farm labor supply of both spouses declines in response to increases in permanent farm income. Farm wives also reduce off-farm labor supply...

This paper addressed the puzzling resistance of Presidents of southern African countries to food aid in 2002, given near certain starvation and long-term negative health effects of malnutrition of their constituents. First, I show that NGOs led by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are...

This paper examines the roles of specialized versus general skills in explaining variation in thereturns to an agriculture degree across majors inside and outside the agricultural industry. Thefocus on returns by sector of employment is motivated by the finding that most agriculturalmajors are...

In 2009 Iowa farmers had the opportunity to enroll in a new revenue support programcalled ACRE. A survey showed that those who did enroll desired more risk protection andbelieved that payments from ACRE would exceed the value of direct payments forfeited.Operators who did not enroll said the...

A framework is developed to examine the 2011 pilot program established by the RiskManagement Agency (RMA) to insure organic crops. Given that for insurance purposes RMAlinks organic crop prices to their conventional counterparts by a fixed percentage, we calibrateour model to reflect the organic...

The evidence strongly suggests a robust negative relationship between income and fertility, anda positive relationship between income and longevity. This is puzzling for standard dynamicmodels. For instance, altruistic models that use the most standard preferences in macro-timeseparable CRRA...

Using U.S. Census data from 1950 to 2000, this paper provides a framework to compare theresponses of immigrant and native population growth to the economic incentives offered by ruralcounties in the Midwest and the South. We find that in marked contrast to traditional destinationsfor new...

This paper examines the aggregate demand for inputs, including housework and otherservices, used by the US household sector to produce home goods that directly provide them utilityover the post-World War II period. By assuming that households produce a commodity called homegoods and that...