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Does Democracy Impact The Lives Of The Poor In Nicaragua?, Tanisha Shandie Brown Mitchel

Master's Theses and Capstones

Does democracy help the poor? Nicaragua, the emphasis of this study, will be used to analyze the impact democracy might be having on improving the lives of the poor. The World Development Indicators (World Bank) and the Human Development Index (United Nations) from 1992--2006 will be used in this study to measure economic growth in Nicaragua. The Latin America Public Opinion Project data on Latin America measures Nicaragua public opinion regarding democracy and economic growth in the country.

The graphs from the World Bank illustrate that the standard of living for the poor in Nicaragua is improving and that democracy …

Essays On Environmental Regulations And Performance Of Firms, Shrawantee Saha

Doctoral Dissertations

There has been a surge in the development of new, non-traditional and innovative approaches to address environmental problems in the last three decades of U.S. environmental policies. These new approaches affect polluting behavior via instruments other than taxes, permits or direct imperatives. They rely heavily on active engagement, collaboration and information sharing among firms and industry peers. This dissertation adds to our current understanding of these newer approaches by studying how external pressures and internal awareness affect a firm's polluting behavior. Two essays focus solely on the role of the print media, an external pressure to firms, under the U.S. …

Studies In Indian Informal Sector, Arpita Banerjee Chakraborty

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to the literature in two ways. It explores the link between the trade liberalization policies and the informal sector wages, and examines the economy of the self-employed sector of India. Specifically, this dissertation (i) develops a general equilibrium model incorporating the self-employed sector as a separate informal sector and demonstrates the connection between the trade liberalization policies and the informal sector wages; (ii) presents a system analysis for the economy of the self-employed sector; (iii) highlights the distinctive characteristics of the self-employed sector and generates a better understanding of the difference between the self-employed and the wage-working …

Community Change In The Northern Forest, Chris R. Colocousis

Doctoral Dissertations

In 2006, the pulp mill in Berlin, NH was closed and dismantled, marking an end to more than a century of dependence on the pulp and paper industry. The city's location in a high-amenity and recreation-dependent region suggests that the rebirth of the local economy would follow a general transition from a production orientation to consumption. Using in-depth interviews and other qualitative methods, survey work, and secondary quantitative data I chronicle a century change, focusing on how the industry has shaped the community and its present ability to reinvent itself. I analyze the ways in which patterns of change and …

An Initial Evaluation Of Market-Based Land Reform In Brazil: Can It Create Sustainable Communities?, Arthur Powers

Doctoral Dissertations

Land reform is a burning issue in Brazil. Redistribution of land through government expropriation has proven to be difficult and expensive as unwilling landowners can hold up the process for years, or defeat it, in the courts. In 1997, the World Bank, at the request of the Brazilian Government, approved Land Reform and Poverty Alleviation Pilot Project 4147-BR -- known in Brazil as the Cedula da Terra. This program instituted a market based approach to land reform through which eligible agricultural workers could form associations and obtain subsidized financing to purchase land from willing sellers. As there was no previous …

Instability Among Middle Class Families And The Impact Of Health Insurance, Sarah A. Savage

Doctoral Dissertations

What it takes to be middle class in the United States has changed dramatically from the post World War II period to the 1970s and the present. At the same time the requirements for attaining the income and assets associated with a middle class position changed, many financial protections available to the middle class weakened. The new economic landscape following a period of economic restructuring has made it harder to earn a position in the middle class while the changed political landscape has possibly made it harder to maintain one's position. This research examines the extent to which middle class …

The Puzzling Behavior Of Equity Returns: The Need To Move Beyond The Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model, Liping Zheng

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines returns in equity markets and the ability of extant models to account for their behavior. I first consider the so-called "expectations hypothesis" (EH) and find that it fails empirically even when structural change is incorporated into the analysis. I then examine the consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which has been the workhorse of financial economics for more than two decades. In its canonical version, researchers find that the model fails empirically along several dimensions. This failure has led them to explore several modifications, which they find perform better than the canonical model, although mostly in calibration …

Behavioral Responses To Public Insurance Programs: Three Essays, Timothy F. Page

Doctoral Dissertations

Evaluating the effectiveness of public programs requires an understanding of how these programs affect the choices of individuals and households. For example, the program design of Social Security and Medicare may affect how much people work. While these effects are not intended goals of the programs, proper evaluation of these programs requires analyzing costs and benefits from all sources, even those that may be unintended. Given the growing number of uninsured individuals, currently 47 million, policy makers are considering an expanded role for government in the provision of health insurance. With any expansion may come secondary effects, such as those …

The Fallacy Of Endless Growth: Exposing Capitalism's Insustainability, William S. Strauss

Doctoral Dissertations

What if we were to have 100 years of no growth? What if conditions were such that there is no future scenario under which growth will ever occur again? We might characterize this as impossible, as a vision that violates the outcome that we as innovative people must realize.

In the document that follows I will show you our world as it must be sometime in the future. I will describe a world in which the real growth of the world economy is zero and remains zero. I will tell a story of a world that is so different from …

Economic And Environmental Considerations For Construction And Demolition (C&D) Debris Management And Policy, Andria Vachon

Master's Theses and Capstones

Construction and demolition (C&D) debris is a significant part of the waste stream in the United States. Recycling is increasingly becoming a more popular method of disposal due to both market and regulatory forces; however, most of the debris is still landfilled. C&D debris facilities handle materials with low value and have few market opportunities. Limited recycling opportunities may be available for hazardous materials. A survey of mixed material C&D recyclers in the United States is analyzed in this paper. Some topics of interest covered in the survey included: end uses and markets for recycled materials; technological processes utilized by …

Limiting Exchange Rate Swings Under A Managed Floating Regime: Evidence From A Panel Of 24 Currencies, Nevin Cavusoglu Yalcin

Doctoral Dissertations

The monetary authorities of many open economies regularly intervene in foreign exchange markets with the aim of limiting swings in exchange rates. A survey of exchange rate models reveals, however, that the literature lacks a model that provides an explanation for exchange rate swings and at the same time offers a role for official intervention and parity announcement to affect exchange rate movements. Furthermore, empirical studies suggest that official intervention can have a significant effect on exchange rate movements, but only in the short run (up to 3 months). In this dissertation, I build on the premium model by Frydman …

Sustainability Of New Hampshire's Sawmill Industry And Its Forest Resource Base, Difei Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

Sustaining our forests is vital for a healthy ecosystem and for the future of forest industry. To sustain the regional sawmill industry as well as the associated forest resource base, the key is to track the consumption and inventory of eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.), the most dominant commercial species in New Hampshire. This research profiled the sawmill industry in New Hampshire and Vermont in terms of production, consumption, labor characteristics and regulating economic and policy issues. We examined the sustainability of the industry and its resource base; with a specific focus on the white pine sawmill industry and …

Spatial Aspects Of Infant Mortality And Informal Workers: The Case Of Ceara State -Brazil, Ricardo Soares

Doctoral Dissertations

High levels of infant mortality and high participation of informal workers in the labor market are living conditions faced by many developing countries. In Ceara State - Brazil, their trends during the last three decades have followed opposite directions. Whereas infant mortality has decreased substantially since the 1980s, suggesting that the country is on the right path to development, the labor market has presented increasing levels of informality, which challenges traditional theories of development. The essays of this thesis aim to investigate some aspects of these two phenomena. In particular, the first essay offers an approach to analyze if the …

The Economics Of Childbearing: Three Essays, Andrea Kutinova

Doctoral Dissertations

Expenditure programs, business cycles, and government interventions can affect many decisions surrounding the birth of a child. For example, public insurance programs such as Medicaid have the potential to increase the utilization of prenatal care. This, in turn, may lead to better infant and maternal health outcomes. Given the high and increasing number of pregnant women covered by Medicaid, the effectiveness of the program in promoting prenatal care use and improving health needs to be evaluated. Also, the impacts of business cycles on childbearing are of interest to policymakers. For example, does unemployment substantially affect the decision to conceive a …

Non-Linear Aspects Of Financial Integration: An Analysis Of The Real Interest Rate Parity For Southeast Asian Economies, Fabricio Linhares

Doctoral Dissertations

This study assesses the extent to which selected economies in Southeast Asia are financially integrated among themselves and internationally, and investigates whether financial integration in the region increased following the deregulation of their markets over the 1980's and early 1990's. The analysis is carried out by examining the relationship between ex post real interest rates over 1970-2005. Following the work of Meese and Rogoff (1988), countries are considered financially integrated based on the stationarity property of their real interest rate differentials. Conclusions are drawn from a confirmatory analysis, which contrasts results from unit root tests, with and without structural breaks, …

Family Structure, The State Children's Health Insurance Program (Schip) And Child Outcomes, Minghua Li

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three separate but interrelated essays that investigate how family structure and public policy are linked to health and developmental child outcomes. Each essay employs two or three waves of the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) as the primary data source. The first essay broadly investigates how family structure, including the less typical non-traditional families such as single father and grandparent households, are related to a wide of array of child outcomes with a focus on the interplay of parent-child gender. The results from this study show that children in single father families have better health …

Incidence Of Ticket Taxes And Fees In United States Domestic Air Travel, Joakim Karlsson

Master's Theses and Capstones

The United States is currently witnessing a vigorous debate on public funding of air transportation and the role of taxes and fees levied on airline tickets. Yet, there is remarkably little economic literature on taxation in the U.S. airline industry. Analysis of a large sample of tickets for travel in the continental United States shows that the effective tax rate has increased from 11% in 1993 to 16% in 2005. While the tax structure and levels have changed over time, this increase is largely due to a historical decline.

The theory of tax incidence asserts that economic incidence is a …

Cape Wind: Public Values And Perceptions Application Of Contingent Valuation Method, Eric Steltzer

Master's Theses and Capstones

The Cape Wind proposal to build 130 turbines in Nantucket sound has been a central figure in development of renewable energy in New England. The aim of this study was two fold. First, the contingent valuation method was used to estimate an economic value the public has on policy for the preservation of Nantucket sound, within the scopes of the project. The second goal was to identify lessons that could be learned from the Cape Wind proposal and applied to future renewable energy projects in New England.

Results revealed that the public has a positive economic value for a policy …

Innovation And Institutions: Examining The Black Box, Edinaldo Tebaldi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to the literature by investigating the links between institutions and innovation from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint. Specifically, this dissertation (i) develops a theoretical growth model that explicitly accounts for the influences of institutions on technical innovation and output production; (ii) specifies an empirical model suitable to examine the affect of institutions on technical innovation based on a theoretical model; and (iii) tests if different measures of institutions (i.e., Control of Corruption, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Expropriation Risk) have differentiated impacts on innovation.

A major prediction of the theoretical model is that better …

A Unified Approach To Testing For Mean Reversion Of Exchange Rates And Prices: The Oecd And Latin American Cases, Flavio Vilela Vieira

Doctoral Dissertations

The present dissertation is a theoretical and empirical investigation regarding the existence of a long-run relationship between exchange rates and prices. It develops a unified approach to test for mean reversion of exchange rates and prices, bringing together the disequilibrium view and the long-run real exchange rate literatures in such a way that not only exchange rates and relative prices are considered, but also the role played by real factors in explaining long-run behavior of exchange rates and prices. In chapters 2 and 3 we developed some empirical tests for mean reversion of exchange rates and prices for OECD and …

Essays On Foreign Direct Investment And Growth In The United States, Timothy Champion Ford

Doctoral Dissertations

The period between 1978 and 1997 was characterized by a major influx of foreign direct investment (FDI to the United States. In 1997, foreign controlled firms accounted for 6.3 percent of US GDP, 4.9 percent of non-bank employment, 20 percent of US exports of goods, 30 percent of US imports of goods, and 12 percent of firm R&D. However, due to data limitations, previous research has examined the impact of FDI on growth only at the country level. By constructing a new stock measure of FDI---the employment measure---I am able to disaggregate FDI across states. This allows an examination of …

Property Tax Shifting Under Imperfect Competition: Theory And Application, Mustafa Oktem

Doctoral Dissertations

The objectives of this dissertation are to examine, using hedonic methods, whether site-specific environmental amenities can become sources of market power for property management firms that control them and the extent to which such market power, if present, affects property tax shifting from property owners to property renters. The specific market examined in this dissertation is the vacation rentals market. The key participants in this market are the property owners, the renters and a few property management firms that manage the rental units in return for a fixed percentage commission paid by the owner each time the unit is rented …

Estimating The Environmental Costs Of The Hydro Fuel Cycle Using Life Cycle Assessment Techniques And Economic Valuation, Benjamin Harwood Ellis

Doctoral Dissertations

A Life Cycle Assessment model, with an integrated impact assessment, is used to estimate average external economic damages from the hydro fuel cycle. Aggregated average damage assessments of the hydro fuel cycle are complementary to marginal and site specific assessments, and are useful for general energy policy planning. For the upstream inventory assessment, detailed material input data from the Morrow Point Dam is used to estimate material inputs at 174 New England, and 4 Quebec, concrete hydroelectric projects. LCNetBase input-output life cycle assessment software, developed by Dr. Gregory Norris at Sylvatica, is used to estimate upstream emissions associated with material …

A Comparison Of Direct Methods For Valuing Environmental Amenities: A Case Study Of The White Mountain National Forest, Wendy Harper

Doctoral Dissertations

New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest is well known for its mountain scenery as well as its many recreational opportunities. Upcoming changes in the electric utility industry may work to change the average level of visibility in the White Mountain National Forest. While the contingent valuation method has been extensively used to value public goods (in instances such as the case above), some view the procedure with skepticism. As a result, alternative methods such as conjoint analysis have been receiving more attention. This dissertation presents the results of a face-to-face survey that attempted to directly compare conjoint analysis and contingent …

An Image Of Enduring Plurality In Economic Theory: The Root -Metaphor Theory Of Stephen C Pepper, Michael C. Daley

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation establishes an image of enduring plurality in economic theory based on four stable and adequate world hypotheses identified by philosopher of science Stephen C. Pepper. According to Pepper's metaphilosophy---a theory of philosophy---a world hypothesis is a conceptual system founded on a root metaphor. A root metaphor serves as a cognitive focal point or image that guides in the transformation of uncriticized, commonsense, evidence into criticized evidence and thought. A description of a world hypothesis is developed using the root-metaphor method, which derives a unique set of structural categories identified with each root metaphor. In Pepper's system, four sets …

On The Quest For Economic *Growth And Development: The Developing World, The Failures Based On Physical Capital Accumulation And International Rescuers, And The Emergence Of A New Perspective, Augusto Marcos Carvalho De. Sena

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis critically reviews the literature on economic growth and development focusing on the interconnections, strengthens and weaknesses of both branches. Questions arise if growth and development models have been of any relevance to developing countries. The experience with International Financial Institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank and the IMF, is also focused on to corroborate the assertion that the alternative answer based on stabilization-structural adjustments, sponsored by these agencies, has not been useful as a reasonable way to solve the most prominent problems of developing countries. It is concluded that both the World Bank and the IMF recipes …

Small Firms, Global Economies: The Economic Sociology Of The Northwest Atlantic Sea Urchin Industry, Sean Raymond Lauer

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the organizational dynamics of firms operating in the East Coast sea urchin industry. First, I examine the confluence of economic and political conditions under which the industry evolved. As a part of the export driven growth of the past decade in the US the East Coast sea urchin industry benefited from political conditions, which encouraged development of global markets for US products. Along with this, the Japanese have displayed a seemingly insatiable demand for sea urchin roe through the 1990s. In 1971 the governance of the international monetary system changed from a fixed to floating exchange rate. …

The Effects Of Medicaid And Maternal Depression On Prenatal Care And Infant Health, Lisa C. Defelice

Doctoral Dissertations

While in recent years, the infant health production function literature has expanded to incorporate behavioral inputs into the production of infant health current research fails to incorporate the Medicaid-private insurance choice into the mother's decision making process. This dissertation seeks to address this by treating private insurance and Medicaid as endogenous while considering the effects that the Medicaid eligibility rules have on both kinds of coverage. Medicaid and private insurance are entered directly into the health production function so that quality effects may be captured. In addition, a woman's state of mental health is also incorporated into the health production …

Timber Price Trends, Jack Lutz

Doctoral Dissertations

Timber price forecasts are important components of timberland investment analysis. Econometric models used in forecasting timber prices can be complex because demand for timber is derived through demand for other products such as paper and housing. In contrast to econometric methods, time series analysis or autoregressive techniques allow price forecasts to be made from the timber price series themselves.

A necessary condition for using time series techniques is that the timber price series be stationary or mean-reverting. The primary hypothesis in this study was that timber prices would not be stationary and time series techniques could not be applied to …

The Role Of Industrial Innovation In Growth And Convergence Across The United States States, Norman Henry Sedgley Iii.

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with testing economic growth theory using data from US States. Work on endogenous growth has recently been extended to determine the rate of technological change across economies where the incentive to innovate is linked to economic rewards. These models of endogenous innovation are on the cutting edge of theoretical advances in economic growth.

I extend the endogenous innovation literature to study the consequences of knowledge spillovers and the different industrial concentrations that clearly exist across states. This extension of the theory suggests it is reasonable to expect rates of innovation to differ across states if knowledge …