Economy
Are Recessions Bad for Your Health?
By Tim Halliday Our work indicates that a bad economy can kill you. Specifically, we show that over the ten years from 1984 to 1993 that a one-percentage point rise in the unemployment rate increased the risk of dying within the subsequent year by 6% for working-aged men. This translates to roughly 24 more deaths […]
Read MoreUHERO 101.11: Hawaii Health Insurance Premiums, Oligopolies, and the Affordable Care Act
By Inna Cintina Earlier this year the Federal Department of Health and Human Services (FDHHS) issued a summary report on the health plan choices and premiumsacross the country that will be available in the Health Insurance Marketplace. This report focuses on assessment of the plans with the lowest premiums in each state, as those are […]
Read MoreIntergenerational Equity with Individual Impatience in an OLG Model of Optimal and Sustainable Growth
Among the ethical objections to intergenerational impartiality is the violation of consumer sovereignty given that individuals are impatient. We accommodate that concern by distinguishing intra- and inter-generational discounting in an OLG model suitable for analyzing sustainability issues. Under the assumption of constant elasticity of marginal felicity, the optimum trajectory of aggregate consumption is guided, via […]
Read MoreUHERO 101.9: Who’s hiring? Who knows!
By Carl Bonham and James Jones Beginning in July 2013, the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR) discontinued the regular monthly publication of industry payroll job counts for Kauai County, Maui County, and Hawaii County citing budgetary constraints. These statistics provided the most comprehensive and timely assessment of labor market conditions and served […]
Read MoreNow and Later: The Impact of the Government Shutdown
By Peter Fuleky There are about 34,000 civilian federal jobs in Hawaii, a fraction of which were deemed essential and have therefore not been furloughed. Many of the 18,000 Department of Defense employees were ordered back on the job after the first week of the shutdown, and they are expected to be paid on time. […]
Read MoreThe UHERO Dashboard Project Jobs Explorer: Occupations in Hawaii
The Hawaii Jobs Explorer, the first interactive tool to be released as a part of the ongoing UHERO Dashboard Project, is now available for public use. The Hawaii Jobs Explorer is a thorough examination of occupations and salaries in the state of Hawaii, presented in a visual, easy-to-navigate context. The data-rich design allows users to […]
Read MoreInvestigating the Effects of Furloughing Public School Teachers on Juvenile Crime in Hawaii
By Tim Halliday What happens to crime when 180,000 DOE students and all of their teachers are given the day off? When a fiscal crisis led to 17 “Furlough Fridays” during the 2009/2010 school year, we found ourselves in a unique position to find out. While it is tempting to imagine streets being flooded with […]
Read MoreDecline in Pacific Currencies: Crisis or More Adjustment to Come? : Pacific Beat Interview
By Sumner La Croix 1. The last few months have seen 10-20 percent declines in the exchange rates of many Pacific countries against the US dollar. The decline in the value of Indonesia’s currency has been particularly notable. Why is this happening? Each country has its own story, but the driving force behind the decline […]
Read MoreThe Unintended Consequences of Affordable Housing Policy
By Carl Bonham Honolulu City Council Resolution 13-168 would amend the percentages of affordable housing units that developers must provide to receive authorization for housing projects. Current city policy requires that 10% of a development’s units must be affordable for households earning no more than 80% of the HUD median income for Honolulu. Another 10% of units in […]
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