Abstract: The benefits of cover cropping can vary significantly based on soil type, climate condition, and farm management practices. Despite extensive research on cover crop benefits, relatively few studies focus on regions with hot and dry climates. We evaluated the impact of cover crops on soil carbon and nitrogen and the associated net benefits, using data from a randomized experiment on two organic vegetable farms in the arid subtropical Rio Grande Valley of deep South Texas. Our cover crop treatments included sunn hemp, cowpea, sudangrass, and a mixture of the three. We found higher soil carbon and nitrogen additions in the second year of implementing cover crops, with greater nitrogen benefits from legumes in wetter conditions. The economic value from improved soil carbon ranged from $320 to $4,364 per hectare and from added soil nitrogen ranged from $69 to $2,047. The per-hectare cost of cover crop ranges from $387 to $539. When comparing the benefits with costs, we observed a positive return in most cases. Our results indicate the long-term rate of return from implementing cover crops in irrigated organic vegetable systems can potentially be as high as 709% for carbon sequestration and 280% for soil nitrogen enhancement.
Abstract: This paper examines how housing wealth affects household consumption across the in- come distribution using Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data from 2001 to 2021. We apply fixed-effects threshold regression within a quantile regression framework to allow the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of housing wealth to vary both by income regime and across the consumption distribution. The analysis uncovers robust nonlineari- ties: households with annual incomes below approximately $60,000 consistently exhibit no significant consumption response to housing wealth gains, suggesting the presence of bind- ing liquidity constraints. Two distinct income thresholds are identified—around $59,230 and $131,570—segmenting the sample into low-, middle-, and high-income regimes. In the mean regression, the estimated MPC rises from around zero in the lowest regime to $1.00 in the mid- dle and $2.51 in the highest per $100 of housing wealth. Quantile threshold models reveal even sharper heterogeneity: the upper threshold shifts between $112,000 and $170,000 across quan- tiles, with MPCs reaching $2.53 to $3.42 among the highest-income and highest-consuming households. These findings show that the ability to convert housing wealth into consumption is concentrated among middle- and upper-income households, thereby reinforcing consump- tion inequality. The results call for distributionally aware macroeconomic models and policy interventions that expand credit access and liquidity options for lower-income homeowners.
Abstract: Involuntary Commitment law allows a person diagnosed with mental illness to receive treatment without personal consent. With implementation beginning in 1971, there are 37 states and US territories that have enacted this policy, while 16 have not. Thus, this study evaluates whether these laws have had an overall impact and whether they have had a differen- tial impact on the number of admissions for substance use disorder by race, ethnicity, gender, and employment types. To achieve these objectives, we used fixed effect regression and stag- gered difference-in-difference approaches, utilizing the Treatment Episode Dataset (TEDS-A), American Community Survey (ACS), and National Welfare datasets. The average treatment effect on the treated estimates indicates that males, Whites, and full-time workers experienced larger and more significant increases in admissions following IC law adoption, particularly in the unbalanced panel specification. While effects remain positive but smaller in the bal- anced panel, the direction of influence remains consistent, suggesting that IC laws may have a differential impact across gender, racial, and employment categories.
Abstract: Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora.