The University of Massachusetts Amherst

Day: July 16, 2010

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Dube UMass Economics

Washington Post blog cites Dube’s research on San Fran’s health-reform

Arindrajit Dube

Research by Arindrajit Dube, UMass Amherst economics professor, and two other economists was recently cited in Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog.

A public option– and an employer mandate– are working in San Franciso
Ezra Klein
July 14, 2010

People don’t talk much about the health-care reforms San Francisco put into place in 2006, but Carrie Hoverman Colla, William H. Dow and Arindrajit Dube have looked into the early evidence, and it’s encouraging:

In 2006 San Francisco adopted major health reform, becoming the first city to implement a pay-or-play employer health spending mandate. It also created Healthy San Francisco, a “public option” to promote affordable universal access to care. Using the 2008 Bay Area Employer Health Benefits Survey, we find that most employers (75%) had to increase health spending to comply with the law, yet most (64%) are supportive of the law. There is substantial employer demand for the public option, with 21% of firms using Healthy San Francisco for at least some employees, yet there is little evidence of firms dropping existing insurance offerings in the first year after implementation.

 I guess in San Francisco, even the private businesses are run by socialists.

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wa Githinji

wa Githinji co-authors report on Kenya’s development blueprint, Vision 2030

Mwangi wa Githinji

A new report from the Society for International Development, co-authored by Mwangi wa Githinji, UMass Amherst economics professor, finds that while Kenya’s economy added jobs last year, the benefits of this growth were enjoyed only by a small fraction of the country’s population. The report found a widening inequality in incomes and a steady but inadequate job creation. (Business Daily, 7/13/10)

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Folbre PERI Pollin

Folbre blogs “Grow Green Jobs”

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre, economics professor, writing her weekly column in the Economix blog at the New York Times, discusses how to boost the sagging national economy by promoting green jobs. She notes that her UMass Amherst colleagues Robert Pollin, James Heintz and Heidi Garrett-Peltier have outlined how energy conservation in public buildings and private homes can generate jobs and save energy. (New York Times, 7/12/10)

July 12, 2010
Grow Green Jobs
By NANCY FOLBRE

But green jobs are definitely on the rise in the United States, as they are elsewhere. A recent Pew Foundation report estimates that the number of them grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007.

And as Professor Pollin and his co-authors James Heintz and Heidi Garrett-Peltier have shown, enormous scope remains for improvements in energy conservation in public buildings and private homes. Doing energy audits and retrofitting insulation require modest training, but no high-tech expertise. Such jobs could be widely distributed across communities.