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Corruption, Information, And Reelection Chances Of Incumbent Parties' Presidential Candidates In Developing Countries, Mavuto Kalulu
Corruption, Information, And Reelection Chances Of Incumbent Parties' Presidential Candidates In Developing Countries, Mavuto Kalulu
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
A large volume of literature shows that corruption affects economic growth through the lowering of the level investment. Slow economic growth is associated with high poverty levels. If corruption makes the voters economically and socially worse off, one expects the citizens to punish the corrupt politicians by not reelecting them. However, evidence shows that even in countries which are perceived to be highly corrupt, incumbents still do get reelected. Chad, for example, is ranked the third most corrupt country in Africa according to the 2010 Transparency International Report, and yet in 2011 presidential elections the incumbent was reelected. A possible …
Monetary Policy And The Housing Market During The Last Decade, Jing Zhang
Monetary Policy And The Housing Market During The Last Decade, Jing Zhang
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This paper examines how monetary policy influences the housing market in U.S. with a special emphasis on the recent financial crisis dating from 2007, which started from the burst of bubbles in the housing market. Using monthly U.S. data spanning over the period from January 2000 to July 2011, I estimate Vector Auto-regressive(VAR) models using data for each metropolitan statistical area (MSA) to analyze the interaction between local housing markets and monetary policy. Aggregate responses of housing variables to monetary policy are also estimated by adopting composite data. Empirical results show that employment and housing price index both respond negatively …
The Importance Of Housing Variables In Predicting Economic Fluctuations, Wenxian Xu
The Importance Of Housing Variables In Predicting Economic Fluctuations, Wenxian Xu
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This paper investigates the importance of housing variables in predicting the six recent recessions using factor analysis model. It shows that housing variables have great predictive power in forecasting the downturn of the economy, but little predictive power when the economy is steady or is expanding. The explanation is that housing variables match consumers' expectations of future income and employment, and consequently predict future economic downturn. By using Granger-Causality test and vector autoregression (VAR) model, combination of factor analysis and VAR model, and hard thresholding method to identify the importance of each housing variable, the results show that housing price …
Three Essays On Diversification Strategy, Diversification Performance, And Corporate Misconduct, Brandon Charles Lee Morris
Three Essays On Diversification Strategy, Diversification Performance, And Corporate Misconduct, Brandon Charles Lee Morris
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The first essay investigates the relationship between diversification strategy and firm performance in the U.S. property-liability insurance industry. Prior literature has evaluated the effect of total diversification on insurer performance; however, there is an absence of evidence on the effect of diversification strategy for multi-line insurers. Theory suggests that related diversifiers should benefit from economies of scope while unrelated diversifiers should benefit from uncorrelated earnings streams. We test for the net effect of diversification strategy and find that relatedness negatively impacts accounting performance. However, we find that the relatedness penalty is confined to stock insurers while mutual insurers' profitability appears …