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Productivity As Social Imperative Automation And Transformations Of Labor In The United States And Germany, Anthony Jack Knowles Ii

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to illuminate the social, economic, and political dynamics shaping automation, labor transformations, and productivity development through a comparative historical analysis of the automobile industry in the United States and Germany from the turn of the 20th century to the present. I examine the US and Germany as two value regimes that represent two distinct models of political, economic, and social organization, focusing on three specific dimensions: (1) business structure and practice, (2) labor organizing and struggles, and (3) governments as they support industries and form the legal basis for industrial relations. Major productive developments …

Essays On The Economics Of Sports Wagering Markets, Jacob Lamb

All Dissertations

Economists have long been enamored with using wagering markets and sports data to answer various economic questions. Wagering market data are readily available to answer any number of questions relating to sports and economics. However, most studies surrounding wagering markets have focused on searching for inefficiencies and, consequently, profitable betting strategies against the house. This dissertation takes a different approach, focusing on the information that can be extracted from efficient wagering markets and using that information to answer economic questions. Rather than hunting for inefficiencies, this dissertation confirms the efficiency of wagering markets and uses wagering markets to answer questions …

Municipal Reform In The Progressive Era: Spatial Spread And Fiscal Outcomes Of The Commission Government, Daniel T. Hiller

Honors Theses

The Galveston-Des Moines Plan for commission government, seen as an important municipal reform during the Progressive Era meant to address corruption and inefficiency in many cities, was pitched by business elites and spread like wildfire in the 1910s. Is there a spatial component to the spread of the adoption of the commission form of government? What are the municipal fiscal outcomes of adoption? This paper shows that there was a spatial spread to its adoption using a lagged state adoption proportion variable. This paper also reveals that promises made by business elites such as increased efficiency and projects to improve …

From Soup To Nuts - The Efficiency Of Non-Profits: Evidence From U.S. Food Banks, Mary A. Mattingly

Masters Theses

Nonprofits are a growing part of America’s economy and play an import role in fulfilling the needs of society in addition to private firms and government agencies. Economists haven’t researched nonprofits as much as other firms in the past, but this is starting to change. This project looks at the efficiency of 20 food banks in the United States using Data Envelopment Analysis. The results show that American Food Banks appear to be using their funds efficiently, but others could learn to use their inputs and outputs in a more efficient manner. As more data becomes available, this area of …

The Effect Of Inputs On Poultry Production Output, Ty M. Wolaver

Masters Theses

To combat poverty and malnutrition, Feed the Future Tworore Inkoko, Twunguke (TI) has set out to teach Rwandan farmers how to grow broilers as additional income for the farmers and an additional protein source within the community to combat malnutrition. Throughout this program, the inputs and outputs of the farmers were recorded, and the goal is to determine an efficiency score for each flock raised and use that information to determine what factors contributed to a higher flock efficiency. A data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to determine the efficiency score of each flock. Using these efficiency scores, a regression …

Three Essays On The Economics Of Public Libraries, Amir Borges Ferreira Neto

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation explores empirical issues concerning public libraries in the United States. In particular, it analyzes the direct and indirect effects to and from public libraries, on different issues such as charitable donations, labor market outcomes, institutions and technical efficiency. Chapter 1 discusses the economics of public libraries and its relevance. In addition, it provides an outline of the dissertation and its main contribution to the literature. Chapter 2, analyzes the determinants of donations to public libraries testing the crowding effect from government funding of public libraries. I find suggestive results of a crowd in effect with an inverted U …

Is Microfinance The Best Tool For Empowerment? Analysis Of Efficiency Of Developing Economies’S Microfinance Institutions In Empowering Women Using Data Envelopment Analysis Meta Frontier Technology, Beryl Isiji

Honors Theses

Poverty is still prevalent in developing economies, although the proportion of people living below the international poverty line ($1.90 a day) decreased by 24.6% between 1990 and 2013 according to World Bank. Women are more likely than men to live in poverty due to minimal access to resources. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) lend small funds to women thereby empowering them, encouraging entrepreneurship and creating creditworthiness.

This thesis examines the effect of MFIs on gender inequality via women empowerment by calculating output-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis using the meta frontier technology, and relating the efficiency results to the Gender Inequality Index (GII) obtained …

Agricultural Input Intensification, Productivity Growth, And The Transformation Of African Agriculture, Didier Y. Alia

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This dissertation studies agricultural input intensification, defined as the increased use of modern inputs such as hybrid seeds, mineral fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide in African agriculture. It also analyses the potential of this intensification to accelerate productivity growth and tests the effectiveness of two policies, input subsidies and land reforms, in promoting it and consequently in increasing crop yield. In the first essay, we argue that to create the conditions for the emergence of a green revolution in Africa, modern agricultural technologies have to be adopted as a package, not in a piecemeal fashion. This argument is consistent with a …

Incidencia De Las Innovaciones Financieras En La Bancarización De Colombia : Un Análisis Descriptivo De Diagnóstico E Inferencia De Algunas Entidades Bancarias Entre 2008 Y 2012, Estefanía Torres Osorio, Vanessa Higuera Tobar

Finanzas y Comercio Internacional

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en determinar la incidencia de la innovación financiera en la eficiencia y cobertura de la bancarización, de las cinco entidades bancarias más representativas de Colombia en el periodo 2008 a 2012 a través del análisis de los estados de resultados y balances generales en dicho periodo. Mediante la utilización de un modelo de regresión por datos panel, se determinará qué variables son significativas para explicar el comportamiento de la bancarización teniendo en cuenta la relación directa entre ésta y las innovaciones financieras. Posteriormente con el Método Delphi dirigido a expertos bancarios, se corroboraran los …

Evaluación De Indicadores De Profundización En Los Mercados De Valores Pertenecientes Al Mila 2008 – 2013: Una Propuesta Estratégica Desde El Estudio Comparativo Con El Mercado De Valores De Estados Unidos, Julián Rodríguez Téllez, Diana Carolina Silva Rodríguez

Finanzas y Comercio Internacional

El objetivo principal de la presente investigación es generar propuestas estratégicas para el desarrollo de los indicadores de profundización de los mercados de valores pertenecientes al MILA, a partir del estudio comparativo con el mercado de valores de Estados Unidos específicamente el NYSE, para ello se realiza una revisión y evaluación de los principales indicadores que influyen dentro de la profundización de los mercados y a través de una matriz Peyea se identifican los escenarios en los que más dificultades se encuentran para el desarrollo de los mercados de valores. Se concluye que como consecuencia de los bajos niveles de …

Developing An Efficient High-Trust Model Within Audit Teams, Julian James L. Laguisma

CMC Senior Theses

An examination into dyadic trust relationships within an audit engagement team and development of a model to efficiently optimize trust.

Testing The Efficiency Of The Nfl Point Spread Betting Market, Charles L. Spinosa

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the efficiency of pricing in the NFL point spread betting market, as hypothesized by the Efficient Market Hypothesis, through both statistical and economic tests. This market provides a simpler framework to test such economic hypotheses than conventional financial markets. Using a larger sample size than past literature, this paper finds that while the market is efficient in the aggregate sense, there are still some profit opportunities which imply pricing inefficiencies.

Essays On Health Trends And Health Care Efficiency, Richard Gearhart

All Dissertations

This dissertation encompasses three papers. The first paper explores health outcomes in the United States, measured by the obesity rate and the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes, which have been worsening over calendar time. I extend the model by Grossman (1972a, 1972b) to derive how the demand for preventive and reactive medical care is changing over calendar time and the impacts these changes will have on the health of an individual. Assuming that reactive medical technology's effectiveness in curing individuals of illness has increased over time, I find results that are consistent with observed health trends in America. Based on …

Essays On Social Networks, Emre Unlu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The first chapter provides a way of evaluating a player's contribution to their team and relates their effort to their market values. We extend the work of Ballester et al. (2006) by incorporating a network outcome component in the players' payoff functions. As an illustration of the theory, we create a unique data set from the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. To capture the interaction between players, we create the passing network of each team. This all allows us to identify the key player and key groups of players for both teams in each game. We then use our measure to …

Efficiency Gains From Transferable Water Rights, Joseph Ziska

All Theses

In times of drought, mandatory water restrictions are a popular option for local governments to prevent water shortages. The state of South Carolina has had mandatory water restrictions in various counties for nearly a third of the past decade. If there are heterogeneous consumers with varying marginal valuations for water, these mandatory restrictions may be economically inefficient. I calculate what welfare gains could be achieved for the state by allowing prices to fluctuate instead of imposing mandatory restrictions.
To perform this calculation, I assume a basic quadratic demand function for water with constant income elasticity. The water restrictions force all …

Consumers' Willingness To Pay For Energy Labels On Household Appliances, David O. Ward

Masters Theses

Voluntary environmental labeling or certification programs provide information about the environmental characteristics of one or more aspects of a product’s life cycle to consumers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy were among the first governmental agencies in the world to adopt environmental information programs. This study examines two U.S. programs – Energy Star, an energy efficiency labeling program, and Green Power Partnership (GPP), a green energy purchasing program, and estimates how much consumers are willing to pay for refrigerators that have been awarded these labels and what factors motivate that willingness to pay. The data were obtained …

Essays On The Political Economy Of Taxation, Raul A. Ponce Rodriguez

Economics Dissertations

In this dissertation we analyze the role of parties’ electoral competition in aggregating voters’ preferences over policy and its impact on tax design. The representation of voters’ interests is central for the analysis of public finance since the issue of aggregation is closely linked to the tradeoff between efficiency and redistribution, and the size and composition of public spending. Parties’ aggregation of preferences is related to the mechanism in which policy makers (parties) weigh the relative merits of competing goals of the tax system (in our analysis, redistribution versus efficiency), and reveals the welfare calculus throughout parties identify groups of …

The Efficient-Market Hypothesis During A Recession, Jill Marie Williams

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The phrase, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" may make a portfolio manager shudder. I first learned about this theory while reading a book of the same name by Burton G. Malkiel. I saw the last four years crashing down around me as I read about the competition I would be facing upon graduation–a blindfolded chimpanzee.

The random walk theorizes that the stock market is so efficient that a blindfolded chimpanzee can throw darts at the Wall Street Journal to select a portfolio of stocks that will perform equally as well as those managed by the experts. Unfortunately for the …

Essays On Scale Economies And Efficiency In Public Education, Kalyan Chakraborty

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Efficiency in public education is a significant issue in the United States. Nationwide, real expenditure per student increased 8% per year between 1960 and 1993, but output as measured by standardized test scores has not increased and in some cases (i.e., the verbal SAT [Scholastic Achievement Test] score) has declined. One explanation is that resources are not being utilized efficiently either in the technical or allocative sense. Also, the issue is important because substantial savings are possible by consolidation of schools and/or districts.

This dissertation explores efficiency by measuring technical efficiency at the school district level from four perspectives. The …

Economic Efficiency Of Grazing Systems, Muhammad Nazir

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Benefits and costs of implementing the specialized grazing systems on federal rangelands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) were studied. First only the direct benefits and costs were used to determine the internal rates of return on the Bureau of Land Management investments in grazing systems. Secondly, the effects of these systems on profits of private ranchers were determined. Finally the benefits and costs stream on the Bureau of Land Management and the changes in ranchers' profits were brought together to find out the net gain to society from investing the federal funds in specialized grazing systems.

The …