A large and growing share of international trade is carried on airplanes. Air cargo is many times more expensive than maritime transport but arrives in destination markets much faster. We model firms' choice between exporting goods using fast but expensive air cargo and slow but cheap ocean cargo. This choice depends on the price elasticity of demand and the value that consumers attach to fast delivery and is revealed in the relative market shares of firms who air and ocean ship. We use US imports data that provide rich variation in the premium paid for air shipping and in time lags for ocean transit to identify these parameters and extract consumer's valuation of time. By exploiting variation across US entry coasts we are able to control for selection and for unobserved shocks to product quality and variety that affect market shares. We estimate that each day in transit is equivalent to an ad-valorem tariff of 0.6 to 2.3 percent and that the most time-sensitive trade flows are those involving parts and components trade. These results suggest a link between sharp declines in the price of air shipping and rapid growth in trade as well as growth in world-wide fragmentation of production. Our estimates are also useful for assessing the economic impact of policies that raise or lower time to trade such as security screening of cargo, port infrastructure investment, or streamlined customs procedures.
Most countries promote exports. This paper answers two questions: Does export promotion improve firm performance, and do any benefits outweigh costs? We solve self-selection problems by accounting for an extensive set of firm characteristics. In addition, we distinguish firms that self-selected into promotion services from firms the Danish Trade Council approached based on observed information. We find that export promotion increases sales, value added, employment, and value added per worker. For small firms, summing expenditures on export promotion, subsidies, and tax distortions, the gain in value added is roughly three times higher than the direct costs of export promotion. (JEL D22, F13, F14, L25, L53)
In 1995In , 2000, and 2010 national surveys of U.S. academic economists were conducted to investigate how economics is taught and assessed in four different types of undergraduate courses. In this paper we present the first basic results from the 2010 survey to identify persistent patterns and a few gradual changes in teaching and assessment methods. Despite calls for economists and other post-secondary instructors to make greater use of active, studentcentered learning methods over the past two decades, "chalk and talk" has remained the dominant teaching method in all types of undergraduate economics courses. But there is evidence of slow drops in mean (though not median) values for those variables, and of gradual growth in the use of some new teaching methods, including instructor-directed class discussions and computer-generated displays (such as PowerPoint). More instructors provided students with a prepared set of class notes, computer lab assignments were increasingly common in econometrics and statistics courses, and Internet database searches were used by a growing (though still small) minority of instructors in all types of classes. Classroom experiments are used by a small share of instructors in introductory courses, but almost never in other kinds of courses. Calculus is still not viewed as important by a majority of economics instructors in any of the four types of courses, but for the 2010 survey these ratings were higher in intermediate theory and statistics and econometrics courses than in the earlier surveys.Key words: teaching methods, undergraduate economics.JEL code: A22 * This order for authors is used only to make links to earlier administrations and repots of this survey more transparent. Both authors contributed equally to the paper and project. Watts is a professor of economics at Purdue University (e-mail: mwatts@purdue.edu). Schaur is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Tennesse -Knoxville (e-mail: gschaur@utk.edu). We thank April Fidler for assistance with the 2010 survey administration and data entry. Teaching and Assessment Methods in Undergraduate Economics:A Fourth National Quinquennial Survey (1996, 2001a, and 2001b) and Watts and Becker (2008).Part of what initially prompted these surveys were frequent calls by prominent economists and other academics for college instructors to devote more time to teaching, and to make greater use of active, student-centered learning methods, with less use of direct instruction that is not student centered ("chalk and talk"). A number of books, journal articles, training programs, and web sites on alternative teaching methods were published/posted over this period, as detailed in the papers on earlier administrations of this survey but not repeated here.In the five-page survey respondents are asked to provide information for up to four different kinds of undergraduate courses, but only for courses that they have recently taught. Part I of the survey features questions on: (1) classroom presentation styles (e.g., ...
Occupational safety and health is an important determinant of workers' welfare. Our theory predicts that firms facing greater shut down risk reallocate resources to improve productivity at the expense of safety. Therefore, at firms facing the greatest shutdown risk due to import competition, safety conditions worsen following an import shock but firm productivity increases. We provide empirical evidence that the growth in Chinese imports in the years 1996-2007 significantly increased injury rates in the competing US manufacturing industries over the short to medium run, particularly at smaller establishments. Back of the envelope calculations show that the increase in injury risk at the smallest firms costs workers the equivalent of a 1 to 2 percent reduction in annual wages.JEL: F16, F66, J81, J32, L60
We provide evidence that average mental, physical, and general health worsens for employed workers in local U.S. labor markets exposed to greater import competition from China. The effects are greatest for mental health. Moving a region from the 25th to 75th percentiles of import exposure corresponds to a 7.8% increase in the morbidity of poor mental health, adding about 3 days of poor mental health per year for the average adult. Concurrently, the ability to afford health care decreases. Our results complement documented consequences of import competition on labor markets and temporary business cycle shocks on health outcomes.
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