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7 Million Americans Can’T Escape ‘Dead End’ Jobs, Patrick Gillespie

Capstones

Involuntary part-time is one of the worst problems in the labor market today. These are people who want full-time work, but for a collage of reasons, can only obtain part-time work (35 hours a week or less). There are about 7 million Americans stuck in involuntary part-time work. At the start of the recession, there were about 3.5 million. Although the economy shows signs of improvement, involuntary part-time workers express little hope in their future. Many don't have healthcare, About 75 percent of IPT workers are either below the poverty line or in low income ($36,000 for a family of …

The Coops After The Storm, Caroline Lewis

Capstones

For many, Hurricane Sandy is either long forgotten or brings to mind thoughts of loss and destruction. But in Far Rockaway, there is a lingering struggle to use the momentum generated by the unique Occupy Sandy disaster relief efforts to create a new cooperative economy. The project dovetails with a larger experiment in scaling up worker cooperatives in New York City and raises questions about what can come out of future storms if the Occupy Sandy model is replicated.

Two Essays In Financial Economics, Line Valerie Goss

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Chapter 1 of this study investigates the link between a firm’s capital structure and their industry competitive behavior. Given the competitive behavior in certain markets, Cournot or Bertrand, we investigate if there are any inborn characteristics of these markets’ competitive behavior that would create an incentive for Cournot firms to have a different strategic debt level than Bertrand firms. Related theories argue that any industry’s competitive behavior, whether it is Bertrand or Cournot would typically consist of a certain type of debt and pursue a certain type of competitive strategy, based on its classification. In this study, we investigate the …

Task-Specific Human Capital Accumulation And Wage Outcomes Among Young Men: An Empirical Analysis, Morgan Holland

Theses and Dissertations

Existing literature suggests that investment in different kinds of task-specific human capital may have significant effects on wage outcomes and overall economic wellbeing of individuals. To examine this claim, the accumulation of task-specific human capital in young male workers with no college education and its effects on wages is measured. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth panel data merged with six task-specific human capital measures derived from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles task contents data, fixed effects regression was utilized to measure how workers’ taskspecific human capital develops over time. This process shows that among the task measures used, accumulation …

Determinants Of Product Upgrading In The Argentine Wine Industry, Lucas Marc Cyr

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the impact that a firm's connections and internal resources has on the firm's ability to develop new products. The capability to make improvements to products is crucial to the long term success and growth of a firm. By using structural equation modeling, I take a different approach to network analysis to analyze data from the Argentine wine industry. While I did not find strong evidence to support the hypothesis that the combination of external networks and internal knowledge are key drivers to product upgrading, there was strong evidence to support each individual determinant’s impact on …

Determinants Of Cross-Country Differences In The Equity Risk Premium: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, William John Arant

Theses and Dissertations

The equity risk premium (ERP) is a critical factor in financial decision-making and allocating capital for the future. The ERP can indicate the aggregate risk in an economy and thereby the price agents attach to that risk. Understanding the factors that determine ERPs across countries is important for understanding investors’ actions in a globalized environment. This study will focus on long-run measures of the ERP across countries while applying four common measures. Variations in the size of the ERP across countries and across measures will be examined. Then, country-specific determinants of the long-run ERP will be investigated. These determinants include …

A Comparison Of Clinical Trial And Model-Based Cost Estimates In Glaucoma – The Case Of Repeat Laser Trabeculoplasty In Ontario, Omar Akhtar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Background and objective: For cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) of glaucoma interventions to be of use they require valid and accurate cost and effectiveness data. Costs remain understudied relative to effectiveness. The impact of cost estimation methods on resultant estimates is unknown in glaucoma. Direct measurement of costs is labour-intensive and expensive. Decision-analytic modelling of costs using literature sources, expert opinion, institutional experience and assumptions provides a quicker, less laborious alternative to empirical costing. A lack of long-term effectiveness data in chronic diseases like glaucoma means that modelling is widespread and inevitable, both for CEAs and budget impact projections. The same problem …

Into The Red: A Look Into The Reasons Why Refugees Decide To Flee, Settle Or Migrate To And From Morocco, Fadeelah E. Holivay

Master's Theses

This research paper explores some of the main reasons why refugees and asylum seekers, particularly from sub-Saharan African countries, embark on a journey and decide to settle, flee or migrate to and from Morocco. Because of this phenomenon, Morocco has seen a 96% increase of refugees migrating to the borders of Morocco each year for the past three years. Many say that this astonishing increase of migrants choosing Morocco is due to such factors as: wars breaking out regionally across central African and Middle Eastern countries causing them to flee; Morocco being a culturaly diverse francophone country whose laws and …

Combating Hiv/Aids In Marginalized Communities: Papua And West Papua Provinces, Indonesia, Bani Cheema

Master's Theses

My study focuses on foreign aid and local initiatives for HIV/AIDS prevention in eastern Indonesia using the provinces of Papua and West Papua as a case study. The two provinces are home to indigenous tribal groups that are socioeconomically marginalized and most affected by the epidemic. My research investigates behavior change communication as a principal strategy undertaken by multiple organizations for HIV/AIDS prevention in this region. I take a qualitative approach by examining the effectiveness of this strategy in local communities and by revealing social and cultural barriers that impede success. Obstacles that negatively impact prevention efforts include structural violence, …

Two Essays On Governance At The National And Corporate Level, Laura Savory Miller

HCBE Theses and Dissertations

ESSAY 1
We examine the effect of governance environment on the composition of a country's external capital structure, specifically foreign equity investment. In addition to the absolute quality of the host country's governance environment, we consider the host country's governance quality relative to that of the source (investor) country. Unlike previous studies, which utilize country totals, we examine foreign investment positions between pairs of individual countries. Our sample includes 3,891 bilateral investment positions among 49 source countries and 69 host countries for years 2009 through 2011. We find that relative governance, rather than absolute governance, plays a role in foreign …

Economic Analysis Of Michigan Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Strategies, Randy José Jorge Díaz

Masters Theses

Transportation infrastructure is an essential component of a nation’s success as it allows efficient transportation of goods to all economic markets, providing economic stability and ensuring trade competiveness. Nearly 70 percent of all of Michigan’s freight is shipped by truck and Michigan is ranked eighth in the USA in terms of the value of its exports with $50 billion per year. Unfortunately, commercial vehicles also contribute to the deterioration of pavement, reducing air quality and potentially influencing road safety. To enforce commercial vehicle laws and regulations, most states utilize fixed weigh stations supplemented with other enforcement strategies. Although fixed weigh …

Essays On Moral Hazard, Bank Size, Influence, And Risk At The Federal Home Loan Banks, James Cash Acrey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Two chapters of research on the Federal Home Loan Bank advances, bank risk, and influence are presented. Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances are a growing source of debt financing for US banks. FHLB advances are not priced according to bank credit risk, creating potential for moral hazard. FHLB advances are positively related to contemporary bank risk, but the relation between prior advances and subsequent risk varies between large vs. small banks depending upon the risk measure used. The relation between FHLB advances and various measures of bank risk varies between pre-crisis (2005-07), crisis (2008-09), and post-crisis (2010-12) periods differently …

Impact Of Monetary Uncertainty And Economic Uncertainty On Money Demand In Africa, Alice Kones

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role that economic uncertainties and monetary uncertainties play in the money demand function for 21 African countries. The Auto-regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) and F-test approach are employed using quarterly time series data covering the period from 1971I-2012IV. In particular, this paper aims to demonstrate both short and long-run relationships between the dependent variables, Real Money Aggregate (M2), and the independent variables that include real income (Y), inflation rate nominal effective exchange rate (NEX), output uncertainty (VY), and monetary uncertainty (VM). We apply GARCH methodology to approximate the uncertainty measures. The empirical results show that except for …

Price Discovery And Futures Spreads For U.S. And Chinese Rice Futures Market, Wei Yang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice, the primary staple food for more than half the world's population, is the second world's most consumed food grain. In recent years, world rice price has increased and become more volatile especially in the period 2007-2010. Rice price volatility has a huge impact on Asian countries, especially countries in Southeast Asia where rice is a staple food for millions of households. Private market tools to manage price risk and discover price such as futures markets have been analyzed and assessed as possible solutions to coping with rice price volatility issue. Two primary functions of agricultural commodities futures markets are …

The Depressing Of China's Economy: The Effect Of Rural---Urban Educational Inequality And Absence Of Land Market, Huayong Zhou

All Dissertations

This paper argues that too many workers were placed in traditional agricultural sector in China's economy after 1978. I investigate two factors which hindered the labor mobility from agricultural and non-agricultural sector: (1) human capital dierence between rural and urban workers brought by China's urban oriented public educational policy; (2) absence of land property rights and a well functioning land market. I incorporate those two frictions into a two-sector dynamic macro model. I calibrate the model and show that it provides a good fit for the evolution of GDP per-capita and employment share in agriculture in the Chinese economy. I …

The Determinants Of The Salary In Nba And The Overpayment In The Year Of Signing A New Contract, Nuoya Li

All Theses

Based on lots of previous research, the salary in National Basketball Association is determined by both personal characteristics and on-court performance. However, which kind of performance seems more important? Furthermore, does signing a new contract have any incentive or effect on the player's performance which makes the player be overpaid or underpaid in the year of signing the contract? And which kind of contracts and what kind of players tend to be overpaid? In my paper I introduce the on-court performance, personal characteristics and salary. Then I build a connection between them and run 2 regressions to analyze the determinants …

The Path To The Top: How Career Paths Differ Between College And Non-College Major League Baseball Players, Gerald Arnette Iii

All Theses

In route to the Majors, there are two major pathways. Talented players may either sign with a Major League Team to start their careers in the in the Minor Leagues, or play NCAA Baseball. Using ordinary least squares (OLS), the career differences between NCAA and Minor League players will be examined. Major League players whose careers began after 1985 are included and are divided into quintiles by the player's career mean. Dividing the players into quintiles increases the accuracy of the analysis because the career path varies according to player ability. The College Players are divided into eras with particular …

Three Essays On Gender Differences On Risk Preferences And Credit Market Constraints, Jyoti Rai

Dissertations

The disadvantages that women face in the financial market hamper their social and economic well-being. These disadvantages may arise from their own risk preferences or from financial market. The aim of this dissertation is to examine different aspects of the disadvantages that women face in the U.S Financial Market. In that light, I present three essays that analyze gender differences in risk preferences and credit market constraints. I use the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) data for all my empirical analysis.

In the first essay, I examine whether women exhibit greater financial risk aversion than men using attitudinal and behavioral …

Predicting Employment Intention Of Ssa Beneficiaries: A Theory-Based Approach, James Mather Ii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Employment has become an integral aspect of American society. Each year, millions of Americans engage in job search as a result of economic conditions, involuntary job loss, completion of their education, or the desire to pursue a new career opportunity. However, the employment reality for persons with disabilities remains stark. In 2012 the employment rate of working-age people with disabilities was 32.7 percent, compared to 73.6 percent for those without disabilities. Given the long-standing employment gap between persons with disabilities and those without disabilities, this exploratory research utilizes the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to predict determinates of Social Security …

Essays In Public And Corporate Finance, Joseph Newhard

All Dissertations

Each of the three chapters of this dissertation makes a unique contribution to the fields of public finance or corporate finance. In chapter one I show that tax-price is increasing in workplace risk due to a positive wage-risk response that is observed in the labor supply price for hazardous industries. This result implies that, holding human capital constant, workers in more dangerous industries will demand a relatively smaller public sector. I test this with county-level data on fatality rates and support for the two major party candidates in the 2004 US Presidential election. Taking Republicans to represent the party of …

Assimilation Of Foreigners In Germany, Jan Schiebler

All Dissertations

The first chapter of this dissertation is using data from the German SOEP panel, and I analyze the assimilation of immigrants in terms of initial wage gap and assimilation rate. The analysis consists of a basic assimilation model, a cohort model, and a source country specific model. The source country specific model allows us to distinguish assimilation rates for different groups of immigrants. I find that despite having the highest education of all immigrants, East European immigrants have the largest wage gap. Secondly individuals immigrating from former East Germany have a larger wage gap than immigrants from Italy and Turkey. …

The Natural Resource Curse In Sub-Saharan Africa: Transparency And International Initiatives, Meaza Zerihun Demissie

Dissertations

The Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region has become a classic case of the resource-curse phenomenon characterized by the abundance of natural resources, low economic development, and misuse of natural resources. Economic-development experts debate ways to overcome or avoid the resource curse to advance SSA countries into developed countries. Only one natural resource-rich country in the region, Botswana, has succeeded in becoming an upper middle-income country using its natural resources, making the possibility of replication of this achievement difficult. The literature aligns in the belief that the economic and political well-being of resource-rich nations depends highly on the actors involved. National and …

Corruption And Productivity, Chris Kelly

All Theses

Corruption is suggested to have a negative impact on productivity and thus growth. Several studies have studied the relationship closely, including Hall and Jones (1999) and Lambsdorff (2003). This paper seeks to build on their foundation and specify a new and robust model by looking at the effect of corruption controls on total factor productivity through a two-stage least squares regression. Since it is through public institutions that corruption manifests, also examined are differences between `inclusive' and `extractive' institutions. Also important is the degree to which a state is centralized. Extraction by way of corrupt institutions differs in highly centralized …

An Empirical Analysis Of Consumer Behavior In The Online Auction Marketplace, Calvin Salter

All Theses

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a unique data set pertaining to eBay auctions, in particular auctions of the first generation iPad. This analysis will give some interpretations about consumer behavior in the consumer electronics market on eBay, especially how the reputation of sellers and the shipping price that sellers charge affects the final selling price of an item. Other economics variables are analyzed to provide a broader picture of pricing determinants. Reputation is an important mechanism to consider in any market. However, reputation in the eBay market is particularly important because buyers do not interact with the …

Does Health Insurance Have Influence On Obesity?, Wenyao Zhou

All Theses

Obesity in the United States has been continuing increasing and cited as a major health issue in recent decades. Many researchers have studied its socio-economic cause, but very few studies center on the potential influence that health insurance has on obesity. In our common sense, health insurance reduces the money that we pay for health care and makes many treatments' cost affordable which we may choose to give up originally due to our financial situation. However, everything has two sides. The benefits from insurance also can lead people to change their choices and behaviors. As an insured, people may take …

Male Marriage Wage Premium And Marriage Market Competition, Da Deng

All Theses

Three main hypotheses are proposed to explain the male marriage premium. They are marriage selection hypothesis, male-female labor specialization hypothesis and simply discrimination. This paper tries to test if marriage selection hypothesis explains the male marriage premium. The effect of marriage selection, which means males with higher productivity have higher possibility to be chosen into marriage, should be positively correlated to the marriage market competition level in the area and thus in area with higher marriage market competition, a higher density of high productivity males should be observed among married males. On the other hand, the labor specialization is a …

An Examination Of The Correlation Between Educational Attainment And Upward Economic Mobility Within And Without ‘High Tech Clusters’ In The Us In 2012, Hannah Cecilia Oakley

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A Study On Employee Turnover In Shanghai’S Fine Dining Restaurants, Yang Liu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

No abstract provided.

International City/County Management Association 1999 Revenue Estimation Survey Revisited, Benjamin Bond

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 1899 the National Municipal League declared that it was the duty of the Mayor to submit to the Council the annual budget of current expenses of the city, for almost as long, the budgeting process has been researched (Hou, 2006). Researching budgets is important and needed but comparatively little attention has been paid to revenue forecasts or to those responsible for the generation of revenue forecasts. Professional public administrators responsible for generating revenue forecasts have largely been overlooked in research. Judging by the lack of scholarly material available in academic journals, it appears the political process in which budget …

Maritime Piracy And Armed Robbery Confrontations Across The Globe: Can Crew Action Shape The Outcomes?, Justin Stewart Lewis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Abstract

The recent tightening of military budget constraints has called into question the feasibility of costly multilateral naval intervention used to combat maritime piracy off the eastern coast of Africa. Though past studies agree that the transformation of the Somali economy and government is crucial for a long-term solution to piracy in this part of the world, short to medium-run solutions are needed to bridge the gap. Such solutions should be fiscally sensible and serve as effective deterrents, as well as be applicable in addressing the problem of piracy and maritime armed robbery in other parts of the globe.

In …