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An Empirical Analysis Of The Effects Of Quality Factors On The Price Of Rough Rice In Louisiana., John Frederick Denison

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation analyzes the effects of quality factors on prices paid producers for long and medium grain rough rice in Louisiana. Rough rice prices, and other information surrounding quality, were collected for the study for the 1986/87 and 1987/88 marketing years from the Louisiana Farm Bureau Marketing Association in Crowley, Louisiana. The relationship between the price of rough rice, and its quality attributes or characteristics, was analyzed in a hedonic price framework. A conceptual model for the Louisiana rough rice market was constructed, and estimated premiums and discounts reported for a set of quality factors believed to influence producer prices. …

Toward The Inclusion Of Environmental Factors In The Concept And Measure Of National Income., George Edward Foy Jr

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation uses Sir John Hicks' concept of income as a guide to integrate environmental factors into the concept and measure of national income. Chapter 1 introduces Hicks' concept of income as the maximum amount which one can consume in a given period and still be as well off at the end of the period as he was at the beginning. This basic idea of sustainability requires accounting for the net depletion of all capital consumed in current production. Chapter 2 documents recent trends in natural resource use to demonstrate that exclusion of the depreciation of environmental capital from NNP …

Theories Of Economic Regulation And The Development Of The Doctrine Of "Conspiracies In Restraint Of Trade" In The Labor Market., Edd Sidney Noell

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the development of the doctrine of "conspiracies in restraint of trade" in the labor market by means of an application of two models of economic regulation. As heuristic devices, these models are utilized to explain the formation of English and American labor law in three different eras. The market failure model posits that labor market regulators seek to remedy unequal bargaining power and asymmetric information so as to achieve economic efficiency. This model's 'liberty and virtue' component emphasizes the normative end of character formation. According to the interest group model, organized labor …

The Macroeconomic Effects Of Fiscal And Monetary Impulses And Of Financial Crisis In The United States During The Interwar Period., Prosper Raynold

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation employs vector autoregressive techniques to improve our empirical understanding of fiscal and monetary policy and the effects of financial crisis in the interwar period. The issues investigated include: (a) the validity of the Ricardian equivalence and debt monetization hypotheses; (b) the effect of changes in the money supply on output, prices, and interest rates; (c) the impact of changes in average marginal tax rates and government expenditures on the macroeconomy; and (d) the effects of disruptions in financial intermediation and deterioration in the quality of private balance sheets on the macroeconomy. Two vector autoregressive models are estimated and …

Three Essays On The Determinants And Effects Of Public Sector Bargaining Laws., Melissa S. Waters

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The theoretical foundation of this model is the economic theory of regulation as developed by Stigler; in addition, modifications of the economic or special interest theory implied by the Public Choice school of thought are employed. A synthesis of these two theories of regulation, then, provides the framework upon which to develop a general model of the causes and consequences of laws regulating the bargaining rights of state employees. Topic One is devoted exclusively to the determinants of state-wide bargaining rights laws. The data are pooled over two years, and state laws are classified into one of three possible categories: …

The Impact Of Occupational Segregation On The Net Black-White Male Earnings Gap, Michael Greene

Doctoral Dissertations

Even after controlling for racial differences in human capital characteristics, a black-white male earnings gap continues to persist. There have been very few attempts, however, to empirically assess the extent to which occupational segregation can explain this remaining earnings differential.

Drawing on the 1980 Public-Use Microdata Sample (1/1000 C-Sample), multiple regression equations are estimated and employed to identify the impact of occupational segregation on the net black-white make earnings differential. The empirical evidence shows that, after controlling for racial differences in personal characteristics, a black-white male earnings gap of 10.6% continues to persist. Occupational segregation is found to explain almost …

Paul Volcker's Monetary Policy In Retrospect, Michelle C. Pisut

Honors Capstones

Monetary policy is a key factor in determining the course of economic history. Paul Volcker, who held the office of Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1979-1987, left his mark by adamantly fighting inflation throughout his term. He amply filled his role as an inflation fighter by using tight monetary policy to tame the rampant inflation of the late 1970s. Then he led the country into prosperity by implementing an expansionary policy from mid-1982 until the end of his term, still without re-inflating the economy. He stepped down from his office on 1987, leaving Alan Greenspan to lead perhaps …

Econometric Techniques Applied To The Relationship Between Education And Gnp, Diane S. Sly

Honors Capstones

The goal of this paper was to study the role of government expenditures on education. Data gathered on states’ GNP and their educational budgets were statistically analyzed. Laboratory work, in the analysis of the data, was performed on Superwylbur’s SAS package. Procedures such as the econometric technique of Wiener-Granger’s Causality testing were also implemented. The major finding was that the direction of causation was not in the direction that most studies concluded, ED->GNP. The results showed causation from GNP->ED. The study was limited to six states due to time and knowledge. Readers should not be discouraged by the …

Consumption And Asset Returns In Artificial Economies, Richard Tiffany Macklem

Digitized Theses

This study examines the ability of dynamic, stochastic equilibrium models of consumer behavior to simultaneously mimic the salient features of U.S. consumption and asset return data.;Part one of the investigation focuses on the interaction between consumption choices for durable and non-durable goods, the real interest rate, and the rate of return on equity. A dynamic, stochastic, two-good general equilibrium model of consumer behaviour is constructed, and equity and a risk-free asset are priced in this economy. A discrete state space version of the model is then calibrated to U.S. data and solved numerically. Examination of the model's statistical properties are …

Dynamic Stochastic Analysis Of A Small Open Economy, Estrada Enrique Mendoza

Digitized Theses

This thesis consists of four essays that study the dynamic stochastic behavior of a small open economy. In the framework studied here, rational individuals formulate optimal intertemporal plans in an environment where domestic capital and foreign financial assets are used as alternative vehicles of savings, and where random disturbances affect the production technology or the international terms of trade. As demonstrated in the papers, the separation of savings and investment decisions that characterizes the individual's optimal plans in open economies has important implications for the evolution of macroeconomic aggregates.;The main contribution of this work is that it undertakes a quantitative …

Three Essays On The Acquisition Of Information, Jacques Robert

Digitized Theses

This thesis consists of three essays related to the problem of acquisition of information by economic agents.;The first essay, entitled "Bundled Insurance", considers the problem of screening good-and bad-risk individuals in an insurance market. Insurance markets under adverse selection are known to generate incomplete risk sharing. This essay shows that it is optimal, in the context of reactive equilibria, for a monopolist in some unrelated market to bundle its product with a compulsory insurance policy. This essay may help us to understand why employers often provide compulsory group insurance.;The purpose of the second essay, entitled "Search and Price Advertising", is …

Three Essays On Price Volatility And Trading Volume In Financial Markets., Percy Siuping Poon

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The objective of this dissertation is to examine the stock price volatility-volume relationship. The dissertation begins with an estimation of the time deformation market model in which stock contemporaneous trading volume is utilized as a proxy for the rate of information arrival. This local time market model is economically appealing because it is capable of explaining the observed heteroskedasticity and leptokurtosis in daily return data. With a sample of firms which have stock splits, it is shown that the inferences drawn from a modified event study which incorporates the local time market model are similar to those drawn from a …

The Macroeconomics Of Presidential Popularity., Susan Katherine Washburn

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines several issues dealing with the public's social preference function between inflation and unemployment. First, the preference function is estimated as a nonlinear function. Second, the thesis analyzes the ability of a presidential administration to improve its popularity level by exploiting a short-run Phillips curve. Finally, preference functions disaggregated by sex, race, political party, and geographical region are estimated. Presidential approval levels are proxied by monthly Gallup Poll approval data. Chapter One serves as an overview of the current body of literature. While theoretical analyses of macroeconomic policy have traditionally assumed that the public's social preference function is …

Essays On The Components Of The Bid-Ask Spread., Pei-Hwang Wei

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The presence of the bid-ask spread causes equilibrium prices to deviate from transaction prices. More importantly, the components of the spread--the order component, the inventory component, and the information component--have different impacts on transaction prices. In general, the order and the inventory components induce negative correlation in successive transaction price changes. On the other hand, transaction prices will form a martingale if only the information component exists. This dissertation is composed of three related essays that utilize this general relationship between transaction prices and the components of the spread. The first essay employs a cross-sectional analysis that relates components of …

Mortgage-Backed Securities And The Effect On Financial Firm Value., Krisandra A. Guidry

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

One of the most important financial innovations in the past few years has been mortgage securitization. This dissertation examines several motives for the issuance of mortgage-backed securities and how the issuance of mortgage-backed securities affects the value of a financial intermediary. Several studies suggest that there is some benefit to mortgage-backed security offerings. Possible reasons for securitization include diversification, funding, avoidance of regulatory taxes, creation of value, and portfolio reshuffling. Much of the empirical literature on the issuance of mortgage-backed securities has focused on depository intermediary risk. However, the effect of mortgage-backed securities on firm value is unclear. The principle …

Louisiana Agricultural Productivity: A Multi-Input Multi-Output Approach., Abiodun Ojemakinde

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Agricultural research and extension is an important contributor to Louisiana agriculture. However, there is no documented work investigating the impacts of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural production in Louisiana. This study investigates the impacts of public agricultural research and extension and other quasi-fixed factors on production choices of the Louisiana farmers. The specific objectives of this study are: (1) to estimate conditional output supply equations for Louisiana's main crops and livestock and input demand equations for fertilizer and labor, (2) to evaluate the impacts of public agricultural research and extension and other quasi-fixed inputs on the Louisiana agricultural …

Block Trades On The Major Canadian And Us Stock Exchanges: A Study Of Pricing Behavior And Market Efficiency, Michael John Robinson

Digitized Theses

Previous studies have found that block trades affect security prices in a different manner than non-block trades. Other studies have shown that certain types of investors may be able to earn excess returns by investing in securities following block trades.;This thesis used detailed trade to trade data to study the efficiency of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE), the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), with respect to block trades. Comparing the TSE with the U.S. exchanges, this thesis found no difference in the operational efficiency of these exchanges with respect to block trades. As well, …