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Essays On International And Environmental Economics, Jacob Wibe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three chapters employing quantitative open economy models to study international trade transmission, the economic impacts of climate change, and remittance transfers.

The first chapter examines the role of production sharing and trade in the transmission of the 2008-2009 recession. In the model, production sharing is represented by a tradable sector that produces a composite good exclusively for the foreign market. The results suggest that trade transmission can account for 67% of the fall in output in Canada, 24% of the fall in output in Mexico, and about two-thirds of the fall in trade for both countries. …

Volatility, Duration, And Value-At-Risk, Pujun Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The thesis consists of three essays dealing with the modeling of volatility in financial markets, trade durations, and Value-at-Risk (VaR). The first essay models nonlinearities in the return series to estimate time-varying volatility by incorporating both regime changes and jumps. Two types of regime-switching GARCH-jump models with autoregressive jump intensity are presented. The first model follows the traditional Markov regime-switching model proposed in Hamilton (1989). As the unknown regimes in the Markov model lead to difficulty in forecasting, a threshold GARCH-jump model, in which regimes are known after observing the threshold variable in the previous period, is also proposed. The …

Blood, Organs And Other Tissues For Sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto A La Carne And The Afterwards Of The Neoliberal Development In Latin America., Wanda I. Ocasio- Rivera

Hispanic Studies Publications

Abstract

Blood, organs and other tissues for sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto a la carne and the afterwards of the neoliberal development in Latin America.

As Marx elaborated in Capital: Volume I at the moment human labour is sold, the subject participates in an ominous plot where she/he becomes a commodity. In a capitalist mode of production, the subject’s alienation from his/her humanity occurs because the individuals can only express labor through a privately-owned system of production in which he/she is an instrument, an object. This dehumanization process submits the subject under the exchange transactions of the market, where labor value …

Essays On Capital Gains, Household Consumption And Corporate Payout Policy, Chris Mitchell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation consists of three chapters related to accrued capital gains. The first essay is concerned with estimating the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of accrued capital gains on owner-occupied housing in Canada. Its main methodological contribution lies in using a hedonic price equation to value these gains. The results suggest that for every 1 dollar increase in expected housing capital gains households increase total consumption by approximately 8.2 cents, and increase non-durable consumption by 6.2 cents.

The second essay of this thesis proposes a model of economic behaviour that can explain why corporations pay dividends despite their tax …

Essays On Informal Labor Markets, Javier Cano Urbina

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three related papers. The first paper examines whether informal sector jobs are a source of training for young less-educated workers. Controlling for worker and job characteristics, it is found that in the early years of workers' careers in Mexico, wage growth in the informal sector is higher than in the formal sector. This result is consistent with general human capital investment on-the-job if the informal labor market is more competitive than the formal labor market due to frictions generated by labor regulations. These results motivate a deeper analysis of the informal labor market which is presented …

Essays On Financial Return And Volatility Modeling, Jing Wu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation consists of three essays focusing on modeling financial asset return and volatility.

The first essay proposes a threshold GARCH model to describe the regime-switching in volatility dynamics of financial asset returns. In the threshold model the switching of regimes is triggered by an observable variable, while volatility follows a GARCH process within each regime. We establish theoretical conditions, which ensure that the return process in the threshold model is strictly stationary, as well as conditions for the existence of finite variance and fourth moment. A simulation study is further conducted to examine the finite sample properties of the …

2012-3 The Role Of Production Sharing And Trade In The Transmission Of The Great Recession, Jacob Wibe

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2012-6 Today's Standards And Yesterday's Economics - Two Short Occasional Essays: Eliminating History From Economic Thought And Mark Blaug On The Quantity Theory, David Laidler

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Open Textbooks And Provincial Government Policy: A Look At The Issues, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Publications

In 2012, the British Columbia government announced a plan to fund a program that will result in the creation of open access textbooks for 40 lower-year university courses — the first such program in any of the provinces. This paper will argue that Ontario should follow British Columbia’s lead and invest in the development of a project to create and promote the use of open textbooks. The introduction will discuss the concept of open textbooks and the various initiatives and legislation that have been introduced in the United States, and British Columbia’s plan will be described in more detail. The …