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Covid19 has created a care economy collapse. As a result of the pandemic, salary incentive programs have been created to encourage Licensed Vocational Nurses (LVNs) to participate in Covid related programs. Many of these programs pay significantly more than the typical salary for LVNs working in home care. As a result, there has become a storage of available LVNs to work with vulnerable populations that need in-home care. Diving into the reasons for the shortage, this study also points to a secondary cause in a salary analysis within Los Angeles County. Results indicate that the average salary LVN salary in LA County is unsustainable for a single parent home. Research has previously shown that keeping people with disabilities in the home results in better outcomes than institutional placement. We will examine what can be done to address the shortage of at home LVN support before there is forced institutionalization.

This paper studies the growth of Chinese imports into the United States from autarky during 1950–1970 to about 15 percent of overall imports in 2008, taking advantage of the rich heterogeneity in trade policy and trade growth across products during this period. Central to the analysis is an accounting for the dynamics of trade, trade policy, and trade-policy expectations. The analysis isolates the lagged effects of past reforms and the current effects of uncertainty about future reforms. It builds a multi-industry, heterogeneous-firm model with a dynamic export participation decision to estimate a path of trade-policy expectations. The findings show that being granted Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status in 1980 was largely a surprise and that, in the early stages, this reform had a high probability of being reversed. The likelihood of reversal dropped considerably during the mid-1980s, and, despite China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, changed little throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thus, although uncertainty depressed trade substantially following the 1980 liberalization, much of the trade growth that followed China’s WTO accession was a delayed response to previous reforms rather than a response to declining uncertainty.

Throughout the course of history, annexation has littered the international scene as major powers exert their force in the takeover of smaller lands. Sometimes these takeovers are violent and others are not, but what we undoubtably see is that annexation will be successful if economic indicators rise, post-acquisition. We will focus our attention to three prominent cases of annexation by major powers: Crimea, Kashmir and Hong Kong. We will briefly examine what our study suggests for Ukraine and Taiwan. Our first aim will be to arrive at a developed scenario analysis that identifies actions taken by governments to harmonize territorial integrity. The second aim is to identify the consequences of annexation from a financial pers. Results of this study suggest that financial conditions within the contested areas are an indicator of political stability and successful annexation. Regardless of external pressure from the international community, successful annexation can be achieved. Findings indicate that as overall GDPPC rises and property values rise, the contested area has support from local constituencies for annexation by the major power.

This paper studies the growth of Chinese imports into the United States from autarky during 1950–1970 to about 15 percent of overall imports in 2008, taking advantage of the rich heterogeneity in trade policy and trade growth across products during this period. Central to the analysis is an accounting for the dynamics of trade, trade policy, and trade-policy expectations. The analysis isolates the lagged effects of past reforms and the current effects of uncertainty about future reforms. It builds a multi-industry, heterogeneous-firm model with a dynamic export participation decision to estimate a path of trade-policy expectations. The findings show that being granted Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status in 1980 was largely a surprise and that, in the early stages, this reform had a high probability of being reversed. The likelihood of reversal dropped considerably during the mid-1980s, and, despite China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, changed little throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thus, although uncertainty depressed trade substantially following the 1980 liberalization, much of the trade growth that followed China’s WTO accession was a delayed response to previous reforms rather than a response to declining uncertainty.

Firms anticipate upcoming tariff changes by shifting their purchases to periods with lower costs. This paper shows that such anticipatory dynamics overstate the trade elasticity. Standard identification of the trade response to trade cost changes uses tariff variation from Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and assumes that trade flows equal their consumption. However, FTAs eliminate tariffs gradually through announced phaseouts. This allows firms to delay their purchases until tariff cuts are effective while consuming their inventories. Indeed, during NAFTA's staged tariff reductions, imports experienced sizable anticipatory slumps followed by liberalization bumps. To study the behavior of consumed imports we construct a measure that uses inventory-sales ratios to smooth out trade flows. Its application to the data yields that the annual trade-flow elasticity is 56% larger than the trade-consumption response and that the ratio of the long- to short-run elasticity increases from 2.3 with trade flows to 3.4 with consumed imports. The measure is validated through Monte Carlo simulations of a ( s _ , s ¯ ) ordering model that reproduces the observed trade pattern.

Sourcing internationally entails additional costs due to larger per inventory holdings. When firms switch toward foreign sources, these unobserved costs increase. This paper revisits the effect of trade liberalization on firms’ productivity taking into account the inventory premium of importing and input cost heterogeneity. Through model simulations, the paper shows that in the presence of inventory holding costs, their omission in revenue-based productivity measures leads to a systematic overestimation of the elasticity of productivity to input tariffs. Controlling for the firm’s import intensity and inventory usage in the estimation of productivity corrects for the bias. The paper studies the relevance of this potential bias during India’s trade liberalization in the early 1990s. First, it documents that inventory holdings of intermediate goods increased significantly with import intensity and input tariffs. Second, it extends a standard productivity estimation procedure with a control function of the various firm-level input costs. The mismeasurement channel accounts for around 35 percent of the estimated productivity gains. Consistent with the gradual adjustment to the tariff reductions, the bias in the response of firm-level productivity is backloaded.

This paper studies the effects on international trade from the annual tariff uncertainty about China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) status renewal in the United States prior to joining the World Trade Organization. The paper makes four main findings. First, in monthly data trade increases significantly in anticipation of uncertain future increases in tariffs and falls upon renewal. Second, the probability of a tariff increase was perceived to be relatively small, with an average annual probability of non-renewal of about 4.5 percent. Third, what matters more is the expected future tariff rather than the uncertainty around it. These effects are identified using within-year variation in the risk of trade policy changes around the renewal vote and trade flows. An (s,S) inventory model generates this behavior and that variation in the strength of the stockpiling in advance of the vote is increasing in the storability of goods. Fourth, the costs associated with within-year trade policy induced stockpiling reduce entrants’ incentive to operate in a market with tariff uncertainty. The results explain why trade may hold up in advance of a prospective policy change, such as Brexit or the US-China escalating tariff war of 2018-19, but may fall sharply even if expected tariff increases do not materialize.

This paper studies the effects on international trade from the annual tariff uncertainty about China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) status renewal in the United States prior to joining the World Trade Organization. The paper makes four main findings. First, in monthly data trade increases significantly in anticipation of uncertain future increases in tariffs and falls upon renewal. Second, the probability of a tariff increase was perceived to be relatively small, with an average annual probability of non-renewal of about 4.5 percent. Third, what matters more is the expected future tariff rather than the uncertainty around it. These effects are identified using within-year variation in the risk of trade policy changes around the renewal vote and trade flows. An (s,S) inventory model generates this behavior and that variation in the strength of the stockpiling in advance of the vote is increasing in the storability of goods. Fourth, the costs associated with within-year trade policy induced stockpiling reduce entrants’ incentive to operate in a market with tariff uncertainty. The results explain why trade may hold up in advance of a prospective policy change, such as Brexit or the US-China escalating tariff war of 2018-19, but may fall sharply even if expected tariff increases do not materialize.

Helplines provide time-limited help and orientation to callers who are suicidal or experiencing self-reported emotional distress, but there is no evidence regarding the efficacy of helplines in low-to-middle income countries like Lebanon. The Embrace Lifeline is Lebanon’s national and only helpline for emotional support and suicide prevention, operating since 2018. We accessed anonymous data of 4657 calls received between February 2018 and February 2020. We analysed caller characteristics and predictors of distress and evaluated the immediate outcome of calls by examining the difference in caller distress from beginning to end of call, using a repeated-measures design. The helpline received calls from a majority Lebanese sample that was diverse in terms of age, location, education, employment status and sexual orientation. We found a significant and large (d = 1.94 and 1.99, respectively) decrease in subjective levels of distress among those calling for emotional distress only, and those with additional suicide-related behaviour. The most distressed callers were likely to be female, in a relationship (as opposed to not), and experiencing at least one risk factor, and while everyone showed improved distressed, those with at least one risk factor showed the most decrease. The helpline is effectively reducing distress and suicidal ideation, across a wide sample of callers. Future studies need to investigate long-term sustenance and circumvent limitations related to data collection capture.