Digital Commons Network^™

Valuation Of Crypto Fintech Companies And Bitcoin, Clay Courtmanche

Honors Theses and Capstones

Companies like Coinbase, Robinhood, and MicroStrategy rely on Bitcoin as an integral part of their business model. My research speculates on reasons for the closely related price movement of Bitcoin and these three publicly traded financial technology firms. Bitcoin gradually has been integrating into our financial systems. This paper explores opportunities and threats to Bitcoin and crypto fintech firms, as well as their reaction to the current macroeconomic landscape. While Bitcoin faces major hurdles like volatility and media distrust, its’ persistence thus far has been driven by the disruptiveness of its’ underlying technology. As institutions begin to orient themselves towards …

Business Risk And Attest Service Fees: Understanding The Effect Of Low Fed Interest Rates On Bank Audit Fees, Lucas Erik Jones

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Tax Incentives On Business Location And Economic Growth, Sadie Xi Rose Mazzola

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Does The Emigration Of Skilled Labor From Hungary Merit Being Called A Brain Drain?, Alexa Marie Mayo

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

How Can An Economic Analysis Affect The Understanding Of A Court’S Decision?, Yanni N. Kakouris

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Price Prediction In The Sharing Economy: A Case Study With Airbnb Data, Brandon Mcneil

Honors Theses and Capstones

Many sharing-economy companies like Airbnb have their profits rely on the dynamic pricing market that they participate in. Airbnb hosts can set their own price based on what they deem the market will buy. Recent research argues that almost all hosts fail to maximize their potential profit due to poorly pricing their listing (Gibbs et al., 2018). While previous studies have looked at how specific variables effect the price of an Airbnb listing, this study aims to be the first to group variables separately into two distinct categories based on the host’s ability to control that variable. Looking at two …

An Analysis Of Excise Taxes On Wine In The United States, William A. Saunders

Honors Theses and Capstones

Excise taxes are a form of tax that are applied specifically to certain goods, and are charged by the wholesaler to the retailer; they are then usually passed onto the consumer through price increases. Throughout the history of the United States, this form of taxation has transformed and taken on a variety of different roles before arriving at its modern role; a tool to implement certain tax systems, such as the Pigovian system, as well as to influence consumer behavior. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the purpose of excise taxes on wine within the United States by …

The Effect Of Remittance Inflows To India: An Empirical Analysis, Justin Poisson

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper studies the relationship between remittance inflows and GDP in India. An empirical regression analysis is applied to India’s data to analyze the effect of remittance inflows to the level of GDP and GDP growth. Results show that remittance inflows have a positive and significant effect on the level of India’s GDP, and a positive but insignificant effect on GDP growth. Data used in this research come from the World Bank.

Labor Migration And Wage Effect On English Players, Matthew D. French

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Essays In The Economics Of Long-Term Care Utilization, Jonathan Robert Hurdelbrink

Doctoral Dissertations

This research examines three factors – macroeconomic conditions, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, and inter-vivos transfers – that influence both the availability of long-term care services and the use of these services. The first essay explores how changes in the macroeconomy, specifically the 2007-2009 “Great Recession,” affect the utilization of paid and unpaid long-term care services. It is theoretically unclear how long-term care use should be affected by such downturns, as an individual’s health status, wealth, insurance coverage and access to care are all likely to change during a significant downturn such as the “Great Recession.” Using data from …

Non-Market Valuation Methods: Evaluation And Applications, Wei Shi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the methodological development, evaluation and applications of non-market valuation techniques in environmental economics. The first essay reviews 38 studies on the valuation of beach proximity using hedonic property value models since the 1980s. I find that choice of control variables and site characteristics are significant determinants of the value estimates. Therefore, the meta-analysis benefit transfer that incorporates site characteristics is much more preferred than the other benefit transfer methods, such as the direct value transfer and function transfer.

The second essay seeks to address the sampling bias in the analysis of on-site survey data. I propose …

Three Essays In The Economics Of Child Health And Development, Jia Gao

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three independent essays that focus on the economics of child health and development.

The first chapter explores whether availability of the SBP has affected maternal labor supply by using variation in the SBP mandates within-state over time to identify the effect. To increase the availability of the School Breakfast Program (SBP), between 1989 and 2012, 21 states passed laws that require schools to provide the SBP if the fraction of students eligible for free or reduced-price breakfast in their school districts exceeds a certain threshold. Using the CPS Food Security Supplement data between 1995 and …

Education Production: Teacher Evaluation Models And Weekend Feeding Programs, Michael Kurtz

Doctoral Dissertations

Education production and, more generally, human capital production, is a significant driver of economic well-being both locally and nationally. This research informs policy decisions regarding how educational inputs are utilized and how those inputs can be influenced by the private sector. This dissertation, “Education Production: Teacher Evaluation Models and Weekend Feeding Programs,” is comprised of three chapters. The first addresses the rising issue in education policy of the measurement of student-test-based teacher evaluation. The second examines the scholastic effects of the relatively recent emergence of weekend feeding programs. The third uses the emergence and spread of the same weekend feeding …

Catch Share Management In The Northeast Multispecies Fishery: Implications For The Commercial Groundfish Fishery In New Hampshire, Rachel G. Feeney

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation tests theories about catch share approaches to fishery management, examining their validity and limits relative to the Northeast groundfish sector program, and potentially modifies them in light of research outcomes. Participants of the groundfish fishery based in New Hampshire are the particular focus of research, but broader impacts are considered. Studies of this catch share program have been limited to date, and studies of catch share programs generally have focused on a particular dimension (e.g., biological, social, economic) rather than integrate across dimensions, despite increasing needs to do so for management. Here, six key aspects of fishing are …

Waste Water Treatment In New Hampshire: Analysis Of Nitrogen Treatment In The Great Bay Community, Jessica I. Kaczynski

Honors Theses and Capstones

This thesis addresses and analyzes the challenge of high nitrogen levels in treated wastewater. As fresh water supplies are decreasing, demand for water usage is increasing, as are pollution levels. Wastewater treatment plants are designed to improve the quality of wastewater and allow for future reuse. Although reusing wastewater was initially an innovative solution, many of the treatment plants that were built thirty years ago are now reaching the end of their useful life. This research focuses on the Great Bay community in New Hampshire and analyses the existing systems and accomplishments. Future projects are identified, as well as proposals …

Alienation In Capitalism: Rediscovering Fulfillment, Gregory Lee Carter

Honors Theses and Capstones

Many Americans are pessimistic about their country's medium or long-term economic outlook. A century ago, Big Business was born as an economic force, but it has powerfully infiltrated the realm of politics now. The corporate scramble for natural resources has caused global disharmony and domestic economic conflict in the U.S. The capitalist system, which many have come to realize is unsustainable and oppressive, has thus come to fulfill some of the predictions made by earlier critics from Kierkegaard, Rousseau, to Marx. Each believed that a society which is forced to accommodate an oppressive system will inherently display alienation. That …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Asset Price Bubble Identification And Response, Paul Atkinson

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper investigates the existence of asset price bubbles. It first gives a history of financial crises and asset bubbles around the world throughout history as a background to the issue and then moves into finding the reason why they are able to exist in a market with both rational and irrational participants. Then by looking at the historical data for the United States housing and stock markets sets bubble identification rules based on standard deviation bounds. This method proves to be a very accurate way of identifying bubbles. The best response for both monetary policy authorities and market participants …

Valuation Of Ecosystem Services: The Case Of Orseg National Park, Hungary, Ildiko Losonci

Master's Theses and Capstones

A chronic lack of sufficient financial resources has prevented many protected area professionals from achieving adequate ecosystem protection. Using a case study of O&huml;rseg National Park in Hungary and the contingent valuation technique, we examined the relative importance of various ecosystem services to respondents, their WTP for these services, and the oath of honesty's effect on hypothetical bias.

Results from the intercept survey that was administered in the park in the summer of 2011 and filled out by 212 respondents show that visitors prefer the protection of the park's cultural monuments, and ecosystems services like local natural food, climate regulation …

Essays On The Economics Of Municipal And Household Solid Waste Disposal And Recycling, Christopher Wright

Doctoral Dissertations

The sustained increase of municipal solid waste generation is an ongoing management and environmental challenge confronting many local governmental units in the United States. The management problems associated with municipal solid waste generation are attributed to rising levels of solid waste, and the real costs to collect, transport, and dispose solid waste is increasing. The increase in landfill disposal costs, referred to as "tipping-fees", is partially attributed to the regulatory and technological requirements of landfill operations designed to reduce pollution from landfills. In response to these challenges, municipal solid waste managers are evaluating the benefits and costs of alternative programs …

Essays On Motor Fuel Taxation And Price Dynamics In The European Union, Aliya Sassi

Doctoral Dissertations

When the economic literature refers to characteristics of the motor fuel market in the EU, one has to be cautious in comparing indicators across time and space because of the ongoing enlargement of the Union. This dissertation contributes to a limited empirical literature on motor fuel fiscal competition and discussions on fuel tourism and fiscal policy coordination in Europe. The first essay provides an overview of the EU market from 1994 to 2010 for four major motor fuels and its evolution at every stage of EU expansion. It examines changes in the characteristics and taxation rates of the EU representative …

The Puzzle Of Long Swings In Equity Markets: Which Way Forward?, Nicholas J. Mangee

Doctoral Dissertations

The main purpose of this dissertation is to determine which class of models -- bubble or Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE) -- provides the better account of short-term stock price fluctuations -- and thus long-swings -- on the basis of empirical evidence. However, it is not clear how to test the bubble models' implication that pure psychological and technical momentum-related factors are the primary driver of stock price movements. Moreover, IKE models' implication that fundamentals are the primary drivers of stock price movements -- but that changes in this relation are non-routine -- is also problematic.

This thesis addresses these difficulties …

The Color Of Labor: The Changing Racial And Spatial Distribution Of Middle-Skill Employment, Justin R. Young

Master's Theses and Capstones

Research regarding the growing gap between rich and poor has not wholly considered the dissolution of America's middle-skill jobs (occupations that require training/education beyond the high-school level, but less than a four-year degree). I draw on data from the CPS (1990 to 2009) to uncover the extent to which low, middle, and high-skill employment are distributed among white and nonwhite workers in rural, suburban and urban regions, and how this distribution has changed since 1990. Blacks and Hispanics remain overrepresented in low-skill employment and underrepresented in high-skill labor, although blacks made the most significant percentage gains in high-skill employment since …