Digital Commons Network^™

Revisting The Domestic Labor Debate: Toward A Critique Of Workerist Feminism, Alice Feng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The extremely high presence of housewives in Italy during the 'miracle years,' of 1950-1963, seemingly suggested that an unprecedented number of women were unemployed after their expulsion from large-scale industry. This phenomenon inspired debate among feminists on questions such as the contribution of housewives to the reproduction of labor-power, the character of reproductive labor and the relation between the participation of women in waged labor and unwaged domestic labor. In revisiting this phenomenon, this thesis argues that, contrary to the appearance of women being unemployed, a significant number of women, along with children, were irregularly engaged in undeclared forms of …

Essays On Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Michael Malenbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the degree to which the prices of imports to the United States respond to changes in bilateral exchange rates. The first chapter provides a review of the literature on exchange rate pass-through and outlines how research on the topic has changed over the past forty years. The next two chapters focus individually on specific questions that are important to the pass-through literature. These topics include the impact of imperfect competition and varying market shares on pass-through rates, as well as the decline in pass-through to import prices and the possible effects of China's increased role in trade …

Essays On The Economic Analysis Of Transportation Systems, Hyoungsuk Shim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of four essays on the economic analysis of transportation systems. In the first chapter, the conventional disaggregate travel demand model, a probability model for the modeling of multiple modes, generally called random utility maximization (RUM), is expanded to a model of count of mode choice. The extended travel demand model is derived from general economic theory -- maximizing instantaneous utility on the time horizon, subject to a budget constraint -- and can capture the dynamic behavior of countable travel demand. Because the model is for countable dependent variables, it has a more realistic set of assumptions to …

Optimal Targeting Regimes And Instrument Rules In The Basic New Keynesian Model, Luc Marest

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first chapter, the objective is to measure the value of commitment in executing monetary policies in the context of the New Keynesian model and with value that is represented by the standard quadratic welfare function containing weighted output gap and inflation variances. It is found that there is a substantial potential for improvement of welfare under commitment, but this depends on some key parameters in the model. The range of parameter calibrations most often found in the literature, however, suggests the improvements will be large. We then consider specific monetary policies akin to Taylor rules. From the optimality …

Essays In The Economics Of Education And Health, Jesse Margolis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this work, I study several aspects of the economics of education and health. The first chapter focuses on education, analyzing the New York City Teacher Bonus Program. Recent reviews of the program have found lower student test scores at schools randomly chosen to receive performance pay than at control schools not eligible for bonuses. Several studies have suggested lower intrinsic motivation among teachers at treatment schools as a possible mechanism driving these surprising results. The program was abruptly ended after three years, allowing me to use post-trial data to study the program's persistent effect on intrinsic motivation absent any …

Basic Cable: A Reluctant American Perspective On The Arab Spring Through Revolutionary Art, Philip Ayoub

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Supported by a critical component that traces back the Egyptian revolution of 2011 to its roots in the post-Nasser era when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces assumed nearly complete political and economic control over the country, this novella, based in New York City, looks at the crisis through an American lens. As the story progresses the protagonist learns that the conditions which precipitated the events in Egypt can be viewed at once as both a product of American capitalism and Egyptian complicity, as well as act as a mirror, albeit on a magnified scale, of the changing socio-economic …

Essays In Health Economics Of Cigarette Consumption, Yan Song

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1, the primary focus of this essay is to use a long time series of state cross sections for the 1955-2009 time period in the United States in order to predict cigarette consumption. This essay updates estimates of the rational addiction model of cigarette consumption obtained by Gary Becker, Michael Grossman, and Kevin Murphy in their seminal 1994 American Economic Review paper. By using two types of prices, the cigarette price and the cigarette tax, and employing a cigarette demand function, I verify that smoking is a rationally addictive form of behavior. This is based on the theory that …

Labor Market Trajectories Of Black Women In The United States, 1980 To 2010, Danielle Jackson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In light of several trends among Black women in the U.S., including rising levels of college degree attainment, immigration, and household headship, scholars have begun to more thoroughly explore the factors impacting Black women's labor market outcomes (e.g., employment status, earnings, and occupational prestige). Focusing on the 30-year period of 1980 to 2010, this dissertation applies theories of social and cultural capital, intersectionality, and social mobility to the examination of Black women's labor market trajectories according to their nativity (U.S.- vs. foreign-born status) and level of educational attainment (college-educated vs. non-college-educated). Additionally, this dissertation examines recent national data to determine …

Essays On The Economics And Methodology Of Social Mobility, Benjamin Zweig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays which aim to extend the methodology and analysis of the study of social mobility. In the first essay, differences in intergenerational mobility across race and across the parent's earnings distribution are explored through a nonparametric framework. Components of mobility are differentiated and analyzed separately in order to get a comprehensive account of heterogeneities in mobility. Several important differences are found including higher expected mobility for white households, higher idiosyncratic mobility for black households, larger disparities in expected mobility at the high end of the earnings distribution, and much higher rates of overall intergenerational persistence …

Three Essays On Income And Wealth Inequality, Damir Cosic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays on income and wealth inequality. The essays examine various aspects of this complex feature of the economic system.

The first essay shows that the distribution of firm sizes in an economy is an important determinant of wage distribution. I use data from the U.S. Current Population Survey and the ExecuComp between 1992 and 2012 to construct a new dataset and estimate wage distribution and various measures of wage inequality. I decompose differences in wage inequality across firm sizes and over time by using semi-parametric methods. In 1992, wages were distributed more unequally in small …

The Impact Of Technology On Consumerism, David Naranjo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

E-commerce is shifting the way people purchase their goods and services and affecting the relationship between technology and society. Consequently, traditional retailers, aware of the inevitable change, have developed strategies to keep up with the continuously evolving marketplace. These strategies vary from creating virtual stores (i.e., websites) and developing digital social networks to data mining and spamming.

Therefore, from a historical point of view, this thesis will analyze the impact of technology on commerce and how the creation of new virtual marketplaces had affected consumers' behavior. This thesis will explore the origins of e-commerce, the technologies that made possible its …

Essays On The Impacts Of Quantitative Easing On Financial Markets, Joanne Guo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Due to the severity of the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve had attempted a variety of unconventional monetary policy to support the U.S. financial markets at the verge of collapse. The most well-known of the Fed's unconventional monetary policy is quantitative easing, in which it purchased a large amount of government securities from the markets in order to lower longer term interest rates and mortgage rates. The several rounds of quantitative easing had different impacts, intended as well as unintended, on U.S. financial markets and foreign markets. The purpose of this paper is to fully explore the effects, …

Essays On Spatial Econometrics: Estimation Methods And Applications, Osman Dogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of four essays on the estimation methods and applications of spatial econometrics models. In the first essay, we consider a spatial econometric model containing spatial lags in the dependent variable and the disturbance terms with an unknown form of heteroskedasticity in the innovations. We first prove that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not taken into account in the estimation. We show that the necessary condition for consistency of the MLE depends on the specification of the spatial weight matrices. Then, we extend the robust generalized method of moment (GMM) estimation approach …

It-Enabled Coordination In Electronic Markets: An Experimental Investigation Of The Effects Of Social Communication On Group Buyers, Alexander Pelaez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coordination, and the mechanisms by which coordination occurs, represents a significant area of study for economic research, and information technology. Technology enhances communication in both speed and quantity of information and when aligned with appropriate tasks can improve decision-making and task performance. Examining the effect of technology based coordination mechanisms on market platforms provides insight into outcomes as represented by buyer surplus and task completion as well as behaviors, such as network structure and emotional attitudes in economic experiments. Drawing on theory from economics and information systems, larger buyer groups should be able to obtain better prices and extract higher …

Does Financial Openness Affect Economic Growth In Asian Economies? A Case Study In Selected Asian Economies, 1980-2010, Hsinrong Wei

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, financial liberalization has been one of the most important strategies for Asian countries to promote growth. However, debate emerges following several financial crises on whether liberalizing financial markets and allowing for free access to international capital markets, would benefit or impede economic development. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of financial openness on selected seventeen Asian economies and answer the three questions: 1. Is there any linkage between financial openness and economic growth for these seventeen Asian countries? 2. Does any of the financial openness pose positive or negative effects? 3. If no …