Digital Commons Network^™

Relative Responsiveness Of Trade Flows To A Change In Prices And Exchange Rate, Esmaeil Ebadi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes two essays in international trade. In my first essay I consider Orcutt’s (1950) hypothesis in which trade flows respond to changes in exchange rate more quickly than they do to changes in prices. There are several studies, which test the Orcutt’s hypothesis by imposing lag structure on both relative prices and exchange rate. I employ generalized impulse response analysis as an alternative approach to test Orcutt’s hypothesis using the sample of developed and developing countries. The empirical results do not support Orcutt’s hypothesis in most cases. In my second essay I investigate the effects of technological progress …

The Child Support "Tax" : Determining The Effect Of Child Support On The Income Growth Of Noncustodial Parents, Jesse Snook

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the role of child support in determining income growth. Using an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model with state-level fixed effects applied to panel data from the National Study of Families and Households (NSFH), I find that having a legal agreement to pay child support has a significant and negative effect on the income growth of the noncustodial parent. Specifically, after controlling for demographic variables and the respondent’s economic circumstances in the initial time period, the OLS model with state-level fixed effects finds that having a child support obligation is associated with a 17.73 percentage point decrease in …

The Innovation Makerspace: Geographies Of Digital Fabrication Innovation In Greater New York City, Kathryn Dickerson

Theses and Dissertations

Desktop digital fabrication technology has the potential to powerfully alter the economics, geography, and sociology of production. The desktop technology cannot reach its potential for widespread impact until it improves in quality and decreases in price. Makerspaces have emerged in the United States in the last eight years as informal social organizations where innovation in this technology may be occurring. This study examines whether innovation in digital fabrication technology has occurred, or has the potential to occur, at makerspaces in the New York City area.

The Doha Round And Globalization: A Failure Of World Economic Development?, William E. Keating

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the WTO’s Doha Round and its numerous developmental objectives, assess the major issues that led to its stagnation, as well as examine the economic prospects for developing nations and the potential future of international trade and development.

Transportation And Sanitation Drivers Of Land Use/Land Cover Change: Loss Of The Jamaica Bay Wetlands, Margaret Joy Cytryn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an analysis (1830-2014) of the historical events of land use/land cover change in the Jamaica Bay estuary, identification of the agents of change, and a perspective on the potential drivers of transportation and sanitation in land use/land cover change.

Examining The Effectiveness Of Monetary Policy, Omid Motavalizadeh Ardakani

Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of my dissertation is to examine the causal effect

of monetary policy. The first two chapters focus on the effectiveness

of inflation targeting considering the role of preconditions such as

institutional independence of central banks and a healthy financial

system. It also analyzes the time-varying behavior of the inflation

gap in all explicit inflation targeting countries and captures the

gradual transition of actual inflation to its target over time. The

last chapter examines monetary unification impact on bond markets before and after the European crisis.

Chapter 2 estimates the treatment effect of inflation

targeting for 27 explicit …

The Economics Of Crime, Bryan S. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Essay 1: “Can Safe Ride Program Reduce Urban Crime?” This paper evaluates the influence of a safe ride program at a public university on neighborhood crime in a major urban area. Using an hours of the week panel, the program's operation is associated with an approximate 14 percent reduction in crime. The program being open appears to have roughly similar influence in reducing violent and non-violent crime. Moreover, increases in rides (the intensity of the program) are also associated with reductions in crime. Such increases in program intensity are also associated with notably greater reductions in crime occurring on weekends. …

The Effects Of Nafta On Consumption, Income, And Employment, Warren Mills

Theses and Dissertations

A significant amount of concern exists in popular and political culture concerning the effects of trade liberalization on the domestic economy in the U.S. Difficulty exists in isolating the effects of a particular trade agreement due to unrelated trade policy changes that happen preceding, during, and following the signing of an agreement. This research seeks to do an analysis of the big picture involving consumption, income, and employment not with the intent of determining causation, which has proven highly problematic in previous research; instead, the focus is on whether we can exclude a negative effect by NAFTA on these measures …

Essays On Survey And Model Based Econoomic Forecasts, Mehdi Shoja

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays in the broad area of Information Theory, Bayesian econometrics and financial economics. The first essay (Chapter 1) is about measuring uncertainty and disagreement of economic forecasters within the context of the survey based method.

Uncertainty is an intangible concept and its value is not observable, so in order to deal with the causes and consequences of economic uncertainty we need to have a proper measurement method. Survey based methodology is one of the prominent approaches in the literature. Survey of professional forecasters (SPF) is one of the important surveys that economists use to measure …

Three Essays On Innovation In An Open Economy, Saleh Sahabehtabrizy

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine selected open economy determinants of innovation input and output. One chapter explores the linkages between relative national prices and R&D expenditures, and two other chapters look specifically at trade in innovative tasks.

In the first chapter of my dissertation, entitled "Industrial Research and Development and Exchange Rate Depreciation in a Small Open Economy," I examine the effect of the changes in relative national prices, as measured by industry-specific real exchange rates, on industrial R&D expenditures in a small open economy. Previous findings put emphasis on sectoral heterogeneities that are driven merely by R&D or exporting …

Essays On Environmental Policy And Technological Change, Sahar Milani

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three empirical essays on technological change. The first chapter examines how industrial R&D intensities respond to environmental regulations when considering specific industry characteristics such as pollution intensity and immobility. Specifically, I study the impact of environmental regulations on R&D intensities in 21 manufacturing industries in 28 OECD countries from 2000-2007. I consider pollution intensity and the relative ease of relocation (immobility) as industry characteristics that determine the optimal industry response to increased environmental policy stringency. I find that more pollution intensive industries innovate less as regulatory environments become more restrictive relative to less pollution intensive …

Earnings Risk And The U.S. Housing Market, Phillip Oberg

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to develop, refine, and employ empirical measures of earnings risk—especially permanent risk—and determine their effect on behavior, with applications specific to the recent mortgage bubble.

Chapter 1 aims to identify covariates of risks associated with permanent and temporary earnings shocks. The distinction is significant both because permanent shocks are more consequential and because measurement error would contaminate only measures of temporary risks. Generalizing methods used in previous work, we allow risk to vary both across individuals and over individuals’ careers, so they could be used to study behavioral responses to risk even with individual …

Formation Of U.S. State Department Economic Foreign Policy For The Occupation Of Postwar Germany, 1939-1948, Rick Jeffers

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how a firm belief in the economic doctrine of multilateralism triggered a powerful policy-determining crusade within the U.S. State Department. This doctrine was fundamental to the establishment of postwar foreign policy toward Germany. It was present in 1939 during early planning meetings and lasted through to the 1948 division of Germany. The equitable application of multilateralism as a basis for foreign policy determination was not initially accepted by other sectors of the U.S. Government; but over the course of this period State Department officials were able to overcome intergovernmental resistance. Motives for postwar planning for Germany were …

Essays On Current Account Imbalances In European Countries, Jerome Kueh Swee Hui

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters in exploring the current account imbalances in the European countries. The first chapter investigates the effect of household indebtedness on the Twin Deficits phenomenon in European countries. Annual data from 1981 to 2012 for 28 European countries are used. Panel regression with fixed effects and General Method of Moments (GMM) approaches are adopted to examine the standard determinants of the current account imbalances and the effect of household indebtedness on the Twin Deficits hypothesis. Empirical findings indicate the existence of positive co-movement between the fiscal balance and current account balance, thus indicating the presence …

Three Essays On Railroad Cost, Azrina Abdullah Al-Hadi

Theses and Dissertations

The railroad industry has traditionally been a major source for transporting bulk products in the United States. Prior to deregulation this industry faced fairly stringent economic regulation and stringent work-rules. However, with passage of the Staggers Act in 1980, railroad carriers now had greater opportunity to legally abandon unprofitable short-haul service. Carriers were also able to negotiate more flexible work-rules as well as take advantage of greater freedom setting competitive shipping rates. These policy changes facilitated significant changes to the cost of providing shipping service in the railroad industry. This dissertation examines three different aspects of railroad cost in the …