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Publication How many people in the world do research and development?(Wiley Online Library, 2023-05-14) Ayan, Davut Emrah; Haak, Laurel L.; Ginther, Donna K.The traditional approach to comparing research and development (R&D) capacity across countries has been to compare Gross Domestic R&D expenditures (GERD). In this paper, we argue for an expansion of R&D capacity that includes people engaged in research and research and development activities (research human capital density, RHCD). To achieve this goal, we first discuss how to estimate counts of researchers and create a measure of researcher human capital density within a country. Next, we examine whether RHCD is a useful variable in models of innovation capacity. Finally, we consider whether RHCD has explanatory power for models of research outputs including patents and publications. We find that RHCD has more explanatory power than GERD in the production of patents and publications. We argue that surveys of individuals that include questions on R&D activities are useful for assessing innovation capacity, and, if adopted more broadly, can provide a strategic framework for countries and regions to develop human capital to support innovative activities.Publication The macroeconomic implications of deficit financing under present bias(Elsevier, 2023-06-30) Kim, Eungsik; Lee, DonghyunWe examine how present bias affects deficit, inflation, and welfare in an economy where the deficit is funded by a seigniorage tax. In a hyperbolic discounting economy, reduced money holdings due to the desire for immediate consumption cause a decline in the sustainable deficit limit. To meet the targeted deficit, the government must raise seigniorage tax collection, especially with present bias. This results in increased inflation rates and higher welfare costs associated with the deficit for hyperbolic discounting individuals.Publication Texas Senate Bill 8 significantly reduced travel to abortion clinics in Texas(Frontiers Media, 2023-03-20) Andersen, Martin S.; Marsicano, Christopher; Pineda Torres, Mayra; Slusky, DavidThe Dobbs v. Jackson decision by the United States Supreme Court has rescinded the constitutional guarantee of abortion across the United States. As a result, at least 13 states have banned abortion access with unknown effects. Using “Texas” SB8 law that similarly restricted abortions in Texas, we provide insight into how individuals respond to these restrictions using aggregated and anonymized human mobility data. We find that “Texas” SB 8 law reduced mobility near abortion clinics in Texas by people who live in Texas and those who live outside the state. We also find that mobility from Texas to abortion clinics in other states increased, with notable increases in Missouri and Arkansas, two states that subsequently enacted post-Dobbs bans. These results highlight the importance of out-of-state abortion services for women living in highly restrictive states.Publication Time-delay control for stabilization of the Shapovalov mid-size firm model(Elsevier, 2021-04-14) Alexeeva, T.A.; Barnett, W.A.; Kuznetsov, N.V.; Mokaev, T.N.Control and stabilization of irregular and unstable behavior of dynamic systems (including chaotic processes) are interdisciplinary problems of interest to a variety of scientific fields and applications. Using the control methods allows improvements in forecasting the dynamics of unstable economic processes and offers opportunities for governments, central banks, and other policy makers to modify the behaviour of the economic system to achieve its best performance. One effective method for control of chaos and computation of unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) is the unstable delay feedback control (UDFC) approach, suggested by K. Pyragas. This paper proposes the application of the Pyragas’ method within framework of economic models. We consider this method through the example of the Shapovalov model, by describing the dynamics of a mid-size firm. The results demonstrate that suppressing chaos is capable in the Shapovalov model, using the UDFC method.Publication Does Science Discriminate against Women? Evidence from Academia, 1973–97(2001-02) Ginther, Donna K.This study uses data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to evaluate differences in employment outcomes for academic scientists by gender. A decomposition of estimated salary differences shows that over time, gender salary differences can partly be explained by differences in observable characteristics for faculty at the assistant and associate ranks. Substantial gender salary differences for full professors are not explained by observable characteristics. Probit and duration model estimates indicate gender differences in the probability of promotion, making it less likely for women to be promoted to tenure. Between 1973 and 1997, very little changed in terms of gender salary and promotion differences for academics in science. After evaluating potential explanations, the author concludes that gender discrimination similar to that observed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accounts for unexplained gender disparities.Publication Does Marriage Matter for Children? Assessing the Causal Impact of Legal Marriage(2007-11) Björklund, Anders; Ginthe, Donna K.; Sundström, MarianneThis paper examines whether parental marriage confers educational advantages to children relative to cohabitation. We exploit a dramatic marriage boom in Sweden in late 1989 created by a reform of the Widow’s Pension System that raised the attractiveness of marriage compared to cohabitation to identify the effect of marriage. Sweden’s rich administrative data sources enable us to identify the children who were affected by parental marriage due to this marriage boom. Our analysis addresses the policy relevant question whether marginal marriages created by a policy initiative have an impact on children. Using grade point average at age 16 as the outcome variable, we first confirm the expected pattern that children with married parents do better than children with cohabiting parents. However, once we control for observable family background, or use instrumental-variables estimation to compare the outcomes for those children whose parents married due to the reform with those children whose parents remained unmarried, the differences disappeared. A supplementary sibling difference analysis also supports the conclusion that the differentials among children of married and cohabiting parents reflect selection rather than causation.Publication Does Marriage Lead to Specialization? An Evaluation of Swedish Trends in Adult Earnings Before and After Marriage(2010-07-13) Ginther, Donna K.; Sundström, MarianneWe examine whether marriage leads to specialization in Sweden by implementing a model that differentiates specialization in the household by cohabitation and marriage. Our paper evaluates this model using panel data to analyze trends in earnings before and after marriage between 1985 and 1995 for married and long-term cohabiting Swedish couples with children. To identify the effect of marriage on earnings we use the reform of the widow’s pension system that resulted in a marriage boom in Sweden in 1989 and difference-in-difference estimation. Our results show that most of the male marriage premium can be explained by positive selection whereas the female marriage penalty reflects increased specialization in home production and childcare. The findings suggest that the positive selection of men into marriage translates into the increased specialization of women. We also find evidence that marriage facilitates specialization in the few couples where mothers earn more than fathers, resulting in a marriage premium for women and a marriage penalty for men. Finally, we find that the net effect of marriage on family earnings is zero because the male marriage premium is offset by the female marriage penalty. Our results show that specialization results from the legal arrangement of marriage, not from the living arrangement of the household.Publication Diversity in Academic Biomedicine: An Evaluation of Education and Career Outcomes with Implications for Policy(2009-09-22) Ginther, Donna K.; Schaffer, Walter T.; Schnell, Joshua; Masimore, Beth; Liu, Faye; Haak, Laurel L.; Kington, Raynard S.Currently, the U.S. population is undergoing major racial and ethnic demographic shifts that could affect the pool of individuals interested in pursuing a career in biomedical research. To achieve its mission of improving health, the National Institutes of Health must recruit and train outstanding individuals for the biomedical workforce. In this study, we examined the educational transition rates in the biomedical sciences by gender, race, and ethnicity, from high school to academic career outcomes. Using a number of educational databases, we investigated gender and racial/ethnic representation at typical educational and career milestones en route to faculty careers in biomedicine. We then employed multivariate regression methods to examine faculty career outcomes, using the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that while transitions between milestones are distinctive by gender and race/ethnicity, the transitions between high school and college and between college and graduate school are critical points at which underrepresented minorities are lost from the biomedical pipeline, suggesting some specific targets for policy intervention.Publication An Evaluation of the Kansas Bioscience Authority Economic Impact Measures(2012-06) Ginther, Donna K.; Oslund, Patricia; Kennedy, Emily J.In the fall of 2011, the Kansas Bioscience Authority (KBA) requested that the University of Kansas Center for Science, Technology & Economic Policy at the Institute for Policy & Social Research provide a review of KBA’s Direct Outcomes Description and Measurement Policy. This policy informs KBA's collection of economic impact data and frames KBA’s policies more generally in light of technology evaluation. This report responds to KBA's request and addresses the following topics: 1) general challenges of technology evaluation; 2) the scope of KBA’ technology programs; 3) the contributions of KBA’s current measures to overall program evaluation; 4) measures that might be added or enhanced in the future; and 5) a comparison of this review to other efforts to evaluate KBA. This report discusses the inherent difficulty of measuring long‐term scientific investments with short‐term indicators of future economic impact. KBA has several programs designed to increase bioscience research, foster commercial development, and attract new ventures to the state of Kansas. Each of these activities requires different metrics to evaluate its overall impact. We reviewed these metrics and compared them to those being collected by similar state agencies as well as the federal STAR METRICS program. Our review shows that KBA collects more metrics than agencies reviewed in other states. KBA also collects many of the indicators used in the federal STAR METRICS program. We recommend that KBA enhance its measures by including additional STAR METRICS measures such as patent citations, scientific publications, and workforce development indicators including students trained in bioscience on KBA funded projects. Although, KBA has been reviewed on two previous occasions, this report provides new information on the quality of the economic impact data they collect. Overall, we find that KBA collects a comprehensive set of outcome measures that span the scope of KBA’s mission and provide the basis for understanding the economic impact of their scientific investments.Publication The Impact of Postdoctoral Fellowships on a Future Independent Career in Federally Funded Biomedical Research(2018-04) Heggeness, Misty L.; Ginther, Donna K.; Larenas, Maria I.; Carter-Johnson, Frances D.The Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) program is a major research training program administered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with funds appropriated each year by Congress. This study examines the impact of NRSA postdoctoral fellowships on subsequent research-related career outcomes using NIH administrative records on applicants who applied for a fellowship between 1996 and 2008. We find that postdoctoral fellowships increased the probability of receiving subsequent NIH research awards from 6.3 to 8.2 percentage points and of achieving an NIH-funded R01 award, an indication of an independent research career, from 4.6 to 6.1 percentage points. Our findings demonstrate that the NRSA postdoctoral fellowship awards have the potential to promote retention of scientists in NIH-funded research and in the biomedical workforce pipeline.Publication Fathers' Multiple-Partner Fertility and Children's Educational Outcomes(Duke University Press, 2022-01-13) Ginther, Donna K.; Grasdal, Astrid L.; Pollak, Robert A.Fathers' multiple-partner fertility (MPF) is associated with substantially worse educational outcomes for children. We focus on children in fathers' second families that are nuclear: households consisting of a man, a woman, their joint children, and no other children. We analyze outcomes for almost 75,000 Norwegian children, all of whom lived in nuclear families until at least age 18. Children with MPF fathers are more likely than other children from nuclear families to drop out of secondary school (24% vs. 17%) and less likely to obtain a bachelor's degree (44% vs. 51%). These gaps remain substantial—at 4 and 5 percentage points, respectively—after we control for child and parental characteristics, such as income, wealth, education, and age. Resource competition with the children in the father's first family does not explain the differences in educational outcomes. We find that the association between a father's previous childless marriage and his children's educational outcomes is similar to that between a father's MPF and his children's educational outcomes. Birth order does not explain these results. This similarity suggests that selection is the primary explanation for the association between fathers' MPF and children's educational outcomes.Publication Association Between State Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Policies, Child Protective Services Involvement, and Foster Care in the US, 2004-2016(American Medical Association, 2022-07-13) Johnson-Motoyama, Michelle; Ginther, Donna K.; Oslund, Patricia; Jorgenson, Lindsay; Chung, Yoonzie; Phillips, Rebecca; Beer, Oliver W. J.; Davis, Starr; Sattler, Patricia L.Importance: Public assistance policies may play a role in preventing child maltreatment by improving household resources among families of low incomes. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the largest public assistance programs in the US. However, the association of state SNAP policy options to Child Protective Services (CPS) outcomes has not been rigorously examined. Objective: To model the association of state SNAP policies with changes in CPS and foster care outcomes in the US over time. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used panel data to examine the association between SNAP policy options and study outcomes from 2004 to 2016 for 50 US states and the District of Columbia in 2-way fixed-effects regression models. The count of SNAP policies was used as an instrument for SNAP caseloads in instrumental variables models. Data analysis was conducted in November 2021. Exposures: The adoption of 1 or more state SNAP income generosity policies that improves or stabilizes household resources for SNAP participants. Main Outcomes and Measures: Reports of child maltreatment accepted for CPS investigation, children in substantiated reports, and children receiving foster care services for all forms of maltreatment, and specifically for child neglect per 100 000 child population. Results: The mean (SD) number of SNAP income generosity policies increased from 1.47 (0.95) in 2004 to 2.37 (0.94) in 2010, to 2.49 (0.86) in 2016 across states; the median increased from 1 to 3 (range, 0-4) over the same period. A count of state income generosity policies was associated with large reductions in reports accepted for CPS investigation (–352.6 per 100 000 children; 95% CI, –557.1 to –148.2). Income generosity policy was associated with –94.8 (95% CI, –155.6 to –34.0) fewer substantiated reports and –77.0 (95% CI, –125.4 to –28.6) fewer reports substantiated for neglect per 100 000. Each additional income generosity policy adopted by a state was associated with –45.1 (95% CI, –71.6 to –18.5) to –42.3 (95% CI, –64.8 to –19.8) fewer total foster care placements per 100 000 children. Conclusions and Relevance: State SNAP policies that improve and stabilize household resources appear to be associated with reductions in CPS involvement and use of foster care. The number of policies implemented had cumulative outcomes beyond individual policy outcomes.Publication Reflections on race, ethnicity, and NIH research awards(American Society for Cell Biology, 2021-12-23) Ginther, Donna K.It has been a decade since “Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards” was published. Receiving the American Society for Cell Biology Public Service Award allows me to reflect on this research and its impact. In this essay, I share the story of how my research interests and professional networks provided the opportunity to do this important work. I also make the case for improved data and mentoring to address race and ethnic disparities in NIH funding.Publication Hurdles And Steps: Estimating Demand For Solar Photovoltaics(Wiley Open Access, 2019-01) Gillingham, Kenneth; Tsvetanov, TsvetanPublication Antitrust analysis with upward pricing pressure and cost efficiencies(Public Library of Science, 2020-01-08) Dutra, Jéssica; Sabarwal, TarunWe investigate the accuracy of UPP as a tool in antitrust analysis when there are cost efficiencies from a horizontal merger. We include merger-specific cost efficiencies in a tractable manner in the model and extend the standard UPP formulation to account for these efficiencies. The efficacy of the new UPP formulations is analyzed using Monte Carlo simulation of 40,000 mergers (8 scenarios, 5,000 mergers in each scenario). We find that the new UPP formulations yield substantial gains in prediction of post-merger prices, and there are substantial gains in merger screening accuracy as well. Moreover, the new UPP formulations outperform the standard UPP formulation at higher thresholds for all the standard cases in the paper. The results are robust to several additional analyses. The results show that including cost efficiencies in a manner guided by the theoretical model may yield substantial improvements in accuracy of UPP as a tool in antitrust analysis.Publication Publications as predictors of racial and ethnic differences in NIH research awards(Public Library of Science, 2018-11-14) Ginther, Donna K.; Basner, Jodi; Jensen, Unni; Schnell, Joshua; Kington, Raynard; Schaffer, Walter T.This research expands efforts to understand differences in NIH funding associated with the self-identified race and ethnicity of applicants. We collected data from 2,397 NIH Biographical Sketches submitted between FY 2003 and 2006 as part of new NIH R01 Type 1 applications to obtain detailed information on the applicants’ training and scholarly activities, including publications. Using these data, we examined the association between an NIH R01 applicant’s race or ethnicity and the probability of receiving an R01 award. The applicant’s publication history as reported in the NIH biographical sketch and the associated bibliometrics narrowed the black/white funding gap for new and experienced investigators in explanatory models. We found that black applicants reported fewer papers on their Biosketches, had fewer citations, and those that were reported appeared in journals with lower impact factors. Incorporating these measures in our models explained a substantial portion of the black/white funding gap. Although these predictors influence the funding gap, they do not fully address race/ethnicity differences in receiving a priority score.Publication Confidently Accessing Research in a Turbulent Time(2019-04-23) Shulenburger, David E.This paper examines the insidious, largely ingrown, practices that have turned our most useful tool for sharing the fruits of our research, the scholarly communications system, into a bit of a mess. It reviews the development of the system, considers shocks to the system that have occurred and details seven problems that have developed with scholarly communications. The state of the system is compared with what happened to existing industries (printing, transportation communications and the internet network when they experienced network expansions and suggests that scholarly communications is reacting similarly. The paper concludes with four recommendations for repairing the system.Publication Publications as predictors of racial and ethnic differences in NIH research awards(Public Library of Science, 2018-11-14) Ginther, Donna K.; Basner, Jodi; Jensen, Unni; Schnell, Joshua; Kington, Raynard; Schaffer, Walter T.This research expands efforts to understand differences in NIH funding associated with the self-identified race and ethnicity of applicants. We collected data from 2,397 NIH Biographical Sketches submitted between FY 2003 and 2006 as part of new NIH R01 Type 1 applications to obtain detailed information on the applicants’ training and scholarly activities, including publications. Using these data, we examined the association between an NIH R01 applicant’s race or ethnicity and the probability of receiving an R01 award. The applicant’s publication history as reported in the NIH biographical sketch and the associated bibliometrics narrowed the black/white funding gap for new and experienced investigators in explanatory models. We found that black applicants reported fewer papers on their Biosketches, had fewer citations, and those that were reported appeared in journals with lower impact factors. Incorporating these measures in our models explained a substantial portion of the black/white funding gap. Although these predictors influence the funding gap, they do not fully address race/ethnicity differences in receiving a priority score.Publication Estimating the Output Gap for Saudi Arabia(Canadian Center of Science and Education, 2017) Alkhareif, Ryadh M.; Barnett, William A.; Alsadoun, NayefThe objective of this paper is to estimate annual potential output growth and the output gap for the Saudi economy over the period 1980 to 2015, looking at both total output and non-oil output. The focus on the latter is so that the progress in diversifying the economy might be examined and the possible impact of diversification on potential output might be measured. We use three methods for estimating potential output proposed in the macroeconomic literature. The methodologies include the Hodrick-Prescott filter, Kalman filter, and the production function approach. We compare the three over the entire sample and the last five years. Our findings suggest that the output gap (the difference between actual and potential output, as measured by real GDP) is positive on average over the entire period (i.e., actual output has on average exceeded potential); however, the gap has turned negative and has shrunk in recent years, as fiscal expenditures, particularly in infrastructure, have acted to better align actual and potential. Our analysis also indicated that growth in both potential GDP and total factor productivity have accelerated in the 2011-2015 period. In contrast, growth in these factors has slowed in many other countries, particularly the advanced economies. This better performance of the Saudi economy is possibly due to the development of a resilient financial sector in the Saudi economy.Publication Has the Dollar Peg Served the Saudi Economy Well?(Macrothink Institute, 2017) Alkhareif, Ryadh M.; Barnett, William A.; Qualls, John H.There are three major objectives of this paper: first, to examine the various exchange rate regimes and arrangements that have emerged over the last 40 years since the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement, focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of each, particularly as they relate to inflation and real economic growth, second, to analyze the historical relationship between the Kingdom’s various exchange rate regimes and the performance of its non-oil private sector, and third, to compare Saudi Arabia’s economic performance since 1986 (when the riyal was firmly pegged to the US dollar) with a number of other developed and developing countries that have followed different exchange rate arrangements. The findings of this paper confirm that the dollar peg has served Saudi Arabia well.