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Economic Effects Of Successful Sports Franchises On Local Economies, Joshua Goodrich

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of Biomass To Bio-Oils Reactor Systems: Direct Conversion Vs. Companion Coal Gasification, Alexandra Eicher

Honors Theses and Capstones

It is well known that the United States’ dependence on crude-oil negatively affects its economy, safety, and environment. To alleviate these negative consequences, a more economical and environmentally-friendly source of fuel, such as biomass, should be explored. The conversion of biomass to bio-oils involves the pyrolysis of biomass at about 500°C, thus requiring a great deal of heat. This heat source could be the excess waste heat from a coal gasifier.

As such, this report specifies the design of an industrial plant that produces bio-oils from biomass by using the waste heat from a coal gasifier. It is designed to …

Currency Risk And Imperfect Knowledge: Cointegrated Var Analyses With Survey Data, Josh R. Stillwagon

Doctoral Dissertations

Much progress has been made in understanding excess returns in the foreign exchange market through the use of survey data on traders' exchange rate forecasts. On the whole, this literature, which is reviewed in chapter 1, has found that excess returns derive from both violations of the rational expectations hypothesis (non white-noise forecast errors) as well as a time-varying risk premium. What this literature has not done however is to determine whether any of the existing models of the risk premium can account for the time-varying risk premium found in survey data. The second and third chapters use the Cointegrated …

Essays On Current Use Property Taxation, Darshana Udayanganie

Doctoral Dissertations

Conservation of agricultural and forestry land has taken on a new urgency as development patterns have exploded over the past few decades, due to demand for residential, industrial and commercial land uses in the U.S. As a result, numerous land conservation programs have been implemented over the years. Current Use Property Taxation is one of the land conservation programs that was initiated in the 1960s, introducing some property tax relief for landowners who wished to keep undeveloped productive land in current use without developing it for more urbanized uses.

The substantial property tax relief landowners receive by enrolling land in …

Nonlinear Markov Switching Analysis Of Economic And Stock Market Dynamics For Emerging Market Economies, Ismail Onur Baycan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a systematic and consistent analysis, for the first time, for a large and diverse group of emerging market economies to characterize the dynamics of their business and stock market cycles, the dynamic relationships between these cyclical interactions, and how different or similar the business cycles are among individual emerging market economies as well as between emerging markets and advanced economies. First, the study charecterizes and provides benchmark chronologies of business and stock market cycles for a diverse group of emerging market economies based on hidden Markov models that are robust to potential parameter instability. We identify three …

Essays On Valuing Non-Market Goods In Imperfectly Competitive Markets, Laura Beaudin

Doctoral Dissertations

Debates on climate change have conceded to most parties acknowledging the existence of negative impacts of changing weather patterns. However, these impacts have not fully been assessed. One way which changing climates can negatively impact an economy is by changing the market structures of its most influential industries; making these markets more imperfectly competitive and taking value away from consumers. This dissertation draws on this fact and suggests accurate ways to both identify and quantify the costs of climate change.

In the first chapter of this dissertation, the ski industry is used as a case study. A unique data set …

Balancing Ecological And Economic Values In Northern Hardwood Stands: What Are The Trade-Offs?, Daniel Woock Kilham

Master's Theses and Capstones

New England has 32 million acres of forested land, 27.5 million acres are private and 13.5 million of those private forests are family owned. Two of the main landowner objectives of privately owned forests in New England are generating income and promoting biodiversity and nature. Objectives were to develop a rapid ecological assessment method to aid management of private forests and to determine any trade-offs between economic and ecological values. We measured economic and ecological values in our study site in New Hampshire, and simulated four harvest treatments to determine the effects of different silvicultural approaches. Ecological values were measured …

The Association Between Sexual Orientation And Labor Market Outcomes, Justine A. Bulgar-Medina

Master's Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this research is to begin to describe various aspects of interactions with the labor market (e.g. employment status, individual income, household income) based on sexual orientation, using nationally representative data from the General Social Survey. Much of the previous research suggests that any observed differences can be attributed to employee choice of occupation or other voluntary aspects of employment. Furthermore, previous research has found wage premiums for gay women and penalties for gay men, with sexual orientation, not gender, as the lead cause. Based on this current data, I assert that any observed difference is an artifact …