Working Papers
State Financing of Research Universities: The Role of State and University Characteristics
This study estimates the effect of underlying determinants on state funding of Doctoral/Research-Extensive Universities (DREU) in the U.S. Using panel data on 98 DREU over the period from 1987 to 2002, we estimate the effect of a variety of DREU and state characteristics while controlling for institutional level unobserved heterogeneity. Unlike previous studies, we focus […]
Read MoreThe Effect of Mandatory Employer-Sponsored Insurance (ESI) on Health Insurance Coverage and Labor Force Utilization in Hawaii: Evidence from the Current Population Survey (CPS) 1994-2004
Using data from the Current Population Surveys, we examine the impact of Hawaii’s mandatory employer-sponsored insurance on health insurance coverage and employment structure in Hawaii. We find empirical evidence of three phenomena. First, private employer-sponsored insurance coverage for full-time workers (more than 20 hours per week) is more prevalent in Hawaii, other things held constant, […]
Read MoreIdentifying Long-run Cointegrating Relations: An Application to the Hawaii Tourism Model
Cointegration analysis has gradually appeared in the empirical tourism literature. However, the focus has been exclusively on the demand side, neglecting supply influences and risking endogeneity bias. One reason for this may be the difficulty identifying structural relationships in a system setting. We estimate a demand-supply model of Hawaii tourism using a theory-directed sequential reduction […]
Read MoreEfficient Groundwater Pricing and Intergenerational Welfare: The Honolulu Case
Optimal water usage and pricing programs discussed in literature tend to take for granted the users’ willing to pay higher efficiency prices in order to obtain the resulting benefits. Yet proposals for marginal cost water pricing on Oahu have often been found to be politically infeasible because current users will have to pay a higher […]
Read MoreTax Incentives in Tourism: Hawaii’s Hotel Remodeling and Construction Tax Credits
Fiscal incentives are widely used by governments around the world to attract private investment in “preferred” industries, including tourism. Incentives are often granted to offset actual or perceived differences in the cost of doing business in different political jurisdictions whether the cost differences arise from tax differences or from differences in transportation, labor, or other […]
Read MoreEnvironmental Valuation and the Hawaiian Economy
Economic planning and policy analysis are commonly criticized for their failure to properly account for adverse effects of economic development on the environment and other interactions between nature and the market economy. The limited and piecemeal curbs on land development projects, e.g. as provided by environmental impact requirements, fail to diagnose the major negative impacts […]
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