Have Bilateral Free Trade Agreements (BFTAs) been beneficial? Lessons learned from 11 U.S. BFTAs between 1992 and 2017.

This study analyzes aggregate data on trade flows to examine the performance of bilateral free trade agreements (BFTAs) between the United States and 11 BFTA nations in a two-dimensional approach. In line with the literature, this study applies the gravity model and analyzes the effect of the treatment using Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) panel data from 1992 to 2017. We use the PPML as an alternative methodology to an ordinary least squares model, as it can treat zero trade values and lead to unbiased estimates and different consistencies. We consider the trade in goods but excluded services because of the different nature of trade for services. Moreover, this study highlights the quantitative performance of BFTAs without considering the industry level to compare the overall benefits for the trade flows from the U.S. as an exporter to BFTA countries and vice versa. It thus adds to the debate on the effect of FTAs on trade flows and conducts pre-FTA and post-FTA analyses to compare the volumes of exports and imports during both periods. Findings vary according to the direction of trade; notably, some trading partners increased their trading volume to 388%. In sum, this paper provides a collective current state assessment to demonstrate the most plausible reasons for the effects of the 11 BFTAs, in addition to informing policymakers on the lessons learned from each BFTA.

Certificate-Of-Need Regulation and Healthcare Service Quality: Evidence from the Nursing Home Industry.

This quantitative study investigates the effect of certificate-of-need (CON) regulation on the quality of care in the nursing home industry. It uses county-level demographic data from the 48 contiguous US states that are extracted from the American Community Survey (ACS) and cover the years 2012, 2013, and 2014. In doing so, it employs a new set of service quality variables captured from a variety of county-level data sources. Instrumental variables results indicate that health survey scores for nursing homes that are computed by healthcare professionals are about 18-24% lower, depending on the type of nursing home under consideration, in states with CON regulation. We also find that the presence of CON regulation leads to a substitution of lower-quality certified nursing assistant care for higher-quality licensed practical nurse care, regardless of the type of nursing home under consideration.