Digital Commons Network^™

Microfinance: A Tool For Financial Access, Poverty Alleviation Or Gender Empowerment ? - Empirical Findings From Pakistan, Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

In just 30 years microfinance has transformed from a credit-based rural development scheme that has claimed to reduce poverty and empower poor women, to a $70 billion financial industry. In the process, the traditional NGO-led model has given way to commercialized institutions, resulting in an increased emphasis on profitmaking. This has also led to confusion in the sector around its mission: is it to alleviate poverty and empower poor women or simply to provide the "unbanked" with access to formal sources of finance? This research considers the main debates in microfinance with regard to its mission and presents empirical evidence …

Dynamics Of Rural Labour Markets: Evidence From Longitudinal Panel Data In India, A Amarender Reddy

A Amarender Reddy

Given the slow structural transformation of employment in rural areas in India, this paper tries to probe into the structural transformation in semi-arid tropics of India, by using high frequency longitudinal panel data from 1975 to 2010. The results show that, up to early 1980s, structural transformation was very slow and most of the workers dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. Most of the workers are spent more days in self-employment in agriculture with very few days in paid work. Both men and women have more leisure time during the 1970s compared to early 2000s. However, from 2001 onwards, there …

Community-University Partnerships For Change In The Black Belt South, Rosalind Harris

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

This article explores issues related to community-university partnerships by examining

the unfolding of the Black Belt Initiative, a 21^st century mobilization within the Black Belt South to establish a Black Belt Regional Commission. The Black Belt Initiative provides an instructive and compelling case study. For instance, the very nature of the Black Belt Initiative’s beginnings through the provision of a grant by Senator Zell Miller of Georgia to the University of Georgia with the proviso that “poverty – not race be the guiding principle…” heightened the tension between historically black and white universities reflecting longstanding contestations around how problems …

Working Paper No. 32, Canada And The United States: A Comparison Of Their Philosophical Bases, Lorraine M. Hutton

Working Papers in Economics

Americans and Canadians seem similar in many ways; however, their dissimilar historical experiences have shaped very different attitudes and philosophies that underpin their institutions. Canadians promote equality and collective responsibility under a restrained, parliamentary state, whilst the Americans stress self-reliance, individualism and freedom. Canadians embraced the hierarchical structure of the British and French Empires and Americans revolted against all ties to it. What appear to be minor distinctions between the two countries and cultures are actually fundamental philosophies rooted in the past.

The Role Of Population Growth In An Emerging Multipolar Economic World., Casey C. Horner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

An empirical study presenting the social and economic proof of a global shift from a bipolar economic world to a multipolar economic world. The time period for data and projections is 2010 to 2050. The measurements used are population pyramids, total population, GDP per capita, and total GDP.

The Plight Of Kenyan Domestic Workers In Gulf Countries, Caroline Muthoni Gikuru

Master's Theses

Kenya’s economy remains the regional leader within the East African Community (EAC) and among East African countries at large. However, political instability such as the 2007 post-election violence and the region’s social and political instability trickling into Kenya, have negatively affected the country’s economic growth. To bridge the economic gap, Kenyan women are seeking employment in the domestic service sector in the Gulf Countries, with Saudi Arabia being the most popular destination. At their destination countries, some domestic workers are subjected to various forms of abuse by their employers, leaving the worker without recourse due to the lack of legal …

Our Town: A Neighborhood Assessment, Christina Davila, Ramya Kumaran, Calvin P. Lesueur, Brett Michaelson, Renee Petrucelli, Katie Raynor, Daniel Sheets-Poling, Katie Simpson, Matthew Tomlin, Rachelle Ann Wilson

Community Project Design and Management Reports - Sociology

This report addresses the question: What factors have the strongest impact on communal and individual well-being in different neighborhoods in McLean County? It is one part of the larger United Way of McLean County Community Assessment 2014, which will evaluate the assets and needs of McLean County by focusing on respondents’ experiences receiving health and human services. Our findings are based on data from five key informant interviews and four focus groups. This information was collected from four geographically and economically distinct neighborhoods: rural Lexington, East Bloomington, Normal, and West Bloomington. Common themes that emerged from these sessions are: the …

An Econometric Analysis Of The “Backward-Bending” Labour Supply Of Canadian Women, Adib J. Rahman

Undergraduate Economic Review

This econometric study investigates the labour supply behaviour of Canadian women at different composite hourly wages of all paid jobs. The objectives of this study are to test the canonical model of labour supply and to observe women's responsiveness to changes in the wage rate by using 2009 cross-sectional data. The results show a backward bending labour supply schedule for Canadian women, and thereby confirm the conclusions reached by the Nakamuras (1981), and Robinson and Thomes (1985).

Declining Labour Use In Agriculture : A Case Of Rice Cultivation In Andhra Pradesh, Narasimha Reddy Duvvuri, Venkatanarayana Motkuri

Venkatanarayana Motkuri Mr.

The present paper examines the changing nature of labour use in rice cultivation in Andhra Pradesh. Rice production in India is, however, concentrated in a few pockets. A few states in India produce around two thirds of rice production. Andhra Pradesh is the third largest state in India with respect to rice production. In Andhra Pradesh too, rice is the single largest crops occupying around 30% of area cultivated. The state was one of frontrunners leading the Green Revolution, particularly in rice cultivation.

The study observed that there is a fast decline in labour use in respect of rice cultivation …

Women's Inheritance Rights And Intergenerational Transmission Of Resources In India, Klaus Deininger, Aparajita Goyal, Hari Nagarajan

Aparajita Goyal

We use inheritance patterns over three generations of individuals to assess the impact of changes in the Hindu Succession Act that grant daughters equal coparcenary birth rights in joint family property that were denied to daughters in the past. We show that the amendment significantly increased daughters’ likelihood to inherit land, but that even after the amendment, substantial bias persists. Our results also indicate a robust increase in educational attainment of daughters, suggesting an alternative channel of wealth transfer.

Promises And Expectations, Florian Ederer, Alexander Stremitzer

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We investigate why people keep their promises in the absence of external enforcement mechanisms and reputational effects. In a controlled laboratory experiment we show that exogenous variation of second-order expectations (promisors’ expectations about promisees’ expectations that the promise will be kept) leads to a significant change in promisor behavior. We provide clean evidence that a promisor’s aversion to disappointing a promisee’s expectation leads her to keep her promise. We propose a simple theory of lexicographic promise keeping that is supported by our results and nests the findings of previous contributions as special cases.

The Impact Of The Great Recession On Nevada’S Latino Community, John P. Tuman, David F. Damore, Maria J.F. Agreda

Brookings Mountain West Publications

The emergence of the Great Recession of 2008 had a profound impact in Nevada. The economic downturn generated high unemployment levels and led to turbulence in many sectors, particularly residential home construction and the hospitality industry. In the wake of the crisis, median home prices in Nevada plunged, while the residential foreclosure rate increased and remains one of the highest rates in the country. By 2009, it was evident that a tightening of commercial bank lending for new mortgages, combined with the impact of rising joblessness and plunging housing values, was hampering recovery efforts in the housing sector and Nevada’s …

Developing, Refining, And Validating A Survey To Measure Stereotypes And Biases That Women Face In Industry, Erin D. Webb

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Almost any woman who has worked in a male dominated industry has faced a gender stereotype or bias of some type. Some of these women have even developed coping mechanisms to counteract these biases and make day-to-day interactions at work tolerable. Gathering information to reveal these stereotypes and biases can pose a distinctive challenge. Many women do not want to reveal the challenges that they have faced in their careers, and the vastness of types of challenges makes asking the correct questions very difficult. Through testing, this study has developed a valid data collection instrument that can be used to …

Promises And Expectations, Florian Ederer, Alexander Stremitzer

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We investigate why people keep their promises in the absence of external enforcement mechanisms and reputational effects. In a controlled laboratory experiment we show that exogenous variation of second-order expectations (promisors’ expectations about promisees’ expectations) leads to a significant change in promisor behavior. We provide evidence that a promisor’s aversion to disappointing a promisee’s expectation leads her to behave more generously. We propose and estimate a simple model of conditional guilt aversion that is supported by our results and nests the findings of previous contributions as special cases.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program And Food Insecurity, Christian Gregory, Matthew P. Rabbitt, David C. Ribar

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This chapter reviews recent theory and empirical evidence regarding the effect of SNAP on food insecurity and replicates the modelling strategies used in the empirical literature. The authors find that recent evidence suggesting an ameliorative effect of SNAP on food insecurity may not be robust to specification choice or data. Most specifications mirror the existing literature in finding a positive association of food insecurity with SNAP participation. Two-stage least squares and control function methods do show that SNAP reduces food insecurity, but effects are not consistent across sub-populations and are not always statistically significant.

How Global Is Globalization?, Jac C. Heckelman, Andrew T. Young

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

We examine a balanced panel of globalization indices for 129 countries over the years 1991- 2010. We report evidence of cross-country sigma convergence in the overall globalization index. Sigma convergence also holds for each of the economic, political, and social globalization indices, as well as each sub-index within these indices. However, the evidence for stochastic convergence, based on panel unit root tests, is only strong for the political globalization index. Regarding the economic and social dimensions of globalization, respectively, we find evidence for stochastic convergence only in the flows and cultural proximity sub-indices. For the OECD subsample, evidence supports stochastic …

Testing For Indirect Reciprocity In Charitable Activities, Christine Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a test of indirect reciprocity using US data on charitable activities in terms of both time and money. We find that expecting help from friends or relatives in the future positively affects the probability and the amount of charitable activities performed.

The Wage Gap Vs. The Total Compensation Gap, Kevin F. Hallock

Economics Faculty Publications

Clearly, most organizations seek to have fair and objective pay practices. And, as a check, they sometimes take a data-driven look inside their companies to consider whether employees of different demographic characteristics are paid similarly or if there is some pay gap. But most organizations only consider wages or salaries in looking for such gaps. Existing research on pay preferences, however, shows that employees can value differently different kinds of pay. There are many massive demographic surveys of individuals which record, along with wage and salary earnings, information on individuals' schooling, gender, race, work hours, occupation, geographic location, etc. These …

Measurement Of Working Experience And Education Level In Earning Models Among African-American And Whites, Zhuang Zheqi

All Theses

Labor market attachment differs significantly between African-American males and white males; there are various reasons that account for the wage differential. It has long been agreed that the Mincer equation method, which analyzes earnings by using experience and education levels, is very reliable. Is it only these two variables that account for the wage inequality? For instance, does discrimination exist in the labor market? And is there any improvement in the measurement of experience variables that will affect the result? In this paper, I will generate accumulated experience variables in order to compare them to potential experience variables. I will …

Mental Healthcare And Violent Crime: A Case Study Of New York State, Juliana Carattini

All Theses

New York State has been among the leaders of mental healthcare since the 19th century and today the state continues to promote innovative thinking in this system. Due to budgetary concerns across the nation New York has compiled a three-year plan to decrease Inpatient costs and increase community-based care. This is the second wave of rapid deinstitutionalization that has occurred in the state and the effect of deinstitutionalization on violent crime is still a major concern to the public. In the past the connection between mental illness and violent crime has at best been established as weak association and is …

Can Higher-Achieving Peers Explain The Benefits To Attending Selective Schools?: Evidence From Trinidad And Tobago, Clement (Kirabo) Jackson

C. Kirabo Jackson

Using exogenous secondary school assignments to remove self-selection bias to schools and peers, I obtain credible estimates of (1) the effect of attending schools with higher-achieving peers, and (2) the direct effect of peer quality improvements within schools, on the same population. While students at schools with higher-achieving peers have better academic achievement, within-school increases in peer achievement improve outcomes only at high-achievement schools. Estimates suggest that peer quality can account for over half of school value-added among the top quartile of schools, but little value-added for other schools. The results reveal some large and important differences by gender.

Essays On Worker Promotion And Wage Growth, Hugh Cassidy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three chapters in the field of labor economics related to worker promotion, hierarchical levels, and wage growth.

Chapter two examines the impact of the skill requirements of an occupation on the likelihood that a worker receives a promotion. Promotion data are taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, while skill requirements data come from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. I find that the higher the cognitive skill requirement of an occupation, and the lower the motor and strength skill requirements, the higher the probability that the worker receives a promotion. Introducing skill requirements reduces …

Student Performance In A Principle Of Microeconomics Course Under Hybrid And Face-To-Face Delivery, P. Verhoeven, T. Rudchenko

Faculty Articles

Designing a hybrid course entails the challenge of choosing learning activities for each of the face-to-face and online environments--and sequencing and coordinating the activities across the two environments--to promote student attainment of the course’s learning objectives. This paper presents a study comparing student performance in an undergraduate Principles of Microeconomics course taught by the same instructor under hybrid (n = 51) and face-to-face (n = 24) delivery. The percentage of hybrid students completing the course (71%) was not significantly different (chi-square = .61, p = .433) than that (79%) of the face-to-face students. A regression analysis controlling for student GPA …

A Study Of Household Finance In China, Zhen Huang

Lingnan Theses

The emerging field of household finance, which studies the welfare benefits of financial markets for households and how effectively households use this market, is of significant importance for both academics and policy makers. However, studies in this new field remain scarce. Using data from a national representative survey that is unique for its combination of abundant household characteristics and heterogeneous individual preferences, attitudes and believes, and for its inclusion of investment behaviour and performances, this thesis pioneers a positive household finance study in developing countries by systematically investigating Chinese householders’ investments in the stock market. Moreover, this is the first …

Immigration And African American Wages And Employment: Critically Appraising The Empirical Evidence, Patrick Leon Mason

Patrick L. Mason

This paper critically assesses the empirical evidence on the relationship between immigration and African American employment. Studies using various methodologies and data are reviewed: natural experiments, time series, and cross-sectional studies of local labor markets and intertemporal changes in the national labor market. We find that for African Americans as a whole, immigration may have little effect on mean wages and probability of employment. However, there is some evidence that immigration may have had an adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of African Americans belonging to low education-experience groups. However, even this modest conclusion must be qualified: the literature …

(Wp 2013-08) Economic (In)Security And Gender Differences In Trade Policy Attitudes, Jeffrey Drope, Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Working Papers

Over time and across countries, researchers have noted frequent and mostly unexplained gender differences in the levels of support for policies of free or freer trade: women tend to be less favorable toward policies of liberalizing trade than men. Yet, no well substantiated theoretical or empirical account of the gender component of trade attitudes has emerged. Using an economic security explanation based principally on a mobile factors approach, we find that it is not women generally who are more negative toward trade but particularly economically vulnerable women – i.e. women from the scarce labor factor. We utilize recent survey data …

The Beartooth Highway: 2012-2013 Economic Impacts, Use, And Destination Image, Jake Jorgenson, Norma P. Nickerson, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

The purpose of this study was to assess the economic impacts and visitor use of the Beartooth Highway. Data was collected from visitors during the 2012 summer and 2012-2013 winter seasons. In total, over 4,000 summer visitors and 1,600 winter visitors were intercepted during the study. This report is a compilation of three separate studies conducted along the Beartooth Highway with a summary and researcher observations in the introductory pages.

Urban Responses To Climate Change: Theories And Governance Practice In Cities Of The Global South, Dirk Heinrichs, Kerstin Krellenberg, Michail Fragkias

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cities around the world have recently started to become ‘proactive’ initiators of climate strategies containing both mitigation and adaptation elements. The experience of these first movers has been studied and documented both empirically and, to a lesser extent, theoretically, primarily for cities in the global North. This symposium addresses related knowledge gaps by exploring case studies of urban regions in the global South confronting their projected climate change challenges, showcasing the experiences of Delhi, Santiago de Chile and Bogotá. Its specific aim is to explore the urban social response to nature change, the adaptation challenges faced by cities across the …

Fairness Through The Lens Of Cooperative Game Theory: An Experimental Approach, Geoffroy De Clippel, Kareen Rozen

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper experimentally investigates cooperative game theory from a normative perspective. Subjects designated as Decision Makers express their view on what is fair for others, by recommending a payoff allocation for three subjects (Recipients) whose substitutabilities and complementarities are captured by a characteristic function. We show that axioms and solution concepts from cooperative game theory provide valuable insights into the data. Axiomatic and regression analysis suggest that Decision Makers’ choices can be (noisily) described as a convex combination of the Shapley value and equal split solution. A mixture model analysis, examining the distribution of Just Deserts indices describing how far …

Employee Choice Over Pay Mix, Kevin F. Hallock

Economics Faculty Publications

Suppose the company set the level of pay and then let employees choose the fractions they wanted as guaranteed salary, stock options and at-risk bonus. The fraction in at-risk bonus was capped at 20% of total pay and the payout was between 0 and 2.5 times the amount put at-risk and was a function of individual and group performance. This is not a theoretical example; it's real. And, it is interesting for a variety of reasons, including that it is so extreme and because the organization invited some researchers inside to study the fascinating choices made by employees. They were …