Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Economic Writing On The Pressing Problems Of The Day: The Roles Of Moral Intuition And Methodological Confusion, Julie A. Nelson Dec 2010

Economic Writing On The Pressing Problems Of The Day: The Roles Of Moral Intuition And Methodological Confusion, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

Economists are often called on to help address pressing problems of the day, yet many economists are uncomfortable about disclosing the values that they bring to this work. This essay explores how an inadequate understanding of the role of methodology, as related to ethics and human emotions of concern, underlies this reluctance and compromises the quality of economic advice. The tension between caring about the problems, on the one hand, and writing within the existing culture of the discipline, on the other, are illustrated with examples from U.S. policymaking, behavioral economics, and the economics of climate change and global poverty. …


Economic Writing On The Pressing Problems Of The Day: The Roles Of Moral Intuition And Methodological Confusion, Julie A. Nelson Nov 2010

Economic Writing On The Pressing Problems Of The Day: The Roles Of Moral Intuition And Methodological Confusion, Julie A. Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

Economists are often called on to help address pressing problems of the day, yet many economists are uncomfortable about disclosing the values that they bring to this work. This essay explores how an inadequate understanding of the role of methodology, as related to ethics and human emotions of concern, underlies this reluctance and compromises the quality of economic advice. The tension between caring about the problems, on the one hand, and writing within the existing culture of the discipline, on the other, are illustrated with examples from U.S. policymaking, behavioral economics, and the economics of climate change and global poverty. …


Frameworks For Systemic And Structural Analysis Of Financial Innovations In Infrastructure, Ali Mostafavi, Dulcy M. Abraham Nov 2010

Frameworks For Systemic And Structural Analysis Of Financial Innovations In Infrastructure, Ali Mostafavi, Dulcy M. Abraham

Infrastructure System-of-Systems (I-SoS ) Research Group

Financial innovations have emerged globally to close the gap between the rising global demand for infrastructures and the availability of financing sources offered by traditional financing mechanisms such as fuel taxation, tax-exempt bonds, and federal and state funds. The key to sustainable innovative financing mechanisms is effective policymaking. This paper discusses the theoretical framework of a research study whose objective is to structurally and systemically assess financial innovations in global infrastructures. The research aims to create analysis frameworks, taxonomies and constructs, and simulation models pertaining to the dynamics of the innovation process to be used in policy analysis. Structural assessment …


The Mysteries Of Trend, Peter C.B. Phillips Sep 2010

The Mysteries Of Trend, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Trends are ubiquitous in economic discourse, play a role in much economic theory, and have been intensively studied in econometrics over the last three decades. Yet the empirical economist, forecaster, and policy maker have little guidance from theory about the source and nature of trend behavior, even less guidance about practical formulations, and are heavily reliant on a limited class of stochastic trend, deterministic drift, and structural break models to use in applications. A vast econometric literature has emerged but the nature of trend remains elusive. In spite of being the dominant characteristic in much economic data, having a role …


Does Race Based Redistricting Matter For Policy?, Ebonya Washington Aug 2010

Does Race Based Redistricting Matter For Policy?, Ebonya Washington

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

During the 1990 congressional redistricting many states were mandated to create additional majority minority-resident districts in order to elect more minorities to Congress. Civil rights groups and Republicans cheered. The Party views Democratic districts stripped of Black voters as opportunities to repaint blue districts red. The academic literature agrees, attributing the Republican return to House control in 1994 to race based redistricting. However, this literature generally focuses on the district as the unit of analysis, a focus that is too narrow, as some districts gain Black residents while others lose them. I focus on states, the level at which redistricting …


Testing Conflicting Political Economy Theories: Full-Fledged Versus Partial-Scope Regional Trade Agreements, Xuepeng Liu Jul 2010

Testing Conflicting Political Economy Theories: Full-Fledged Versus Partial-Scope Regional Trade Agreements, Xuepeng Liu

Faculty and Research Publications

We apply a duration analysis to test the conflicting predictions of the median voter model and the lobbying model using panel data on regional trade agreement (RTA) formation. Our results show that the pro-labor prediction of the median voter model is supported by the full-fledged free trade areas and customs unions (FTAs/CUs), while the pro-capital prediction of the lobbying model is supported by the partial-scope preferential trade arrangements among developing countries. This finding holds better for the country pairs with more different capital-labor ratios as a result of the stronger distributional effects of RTAs. The support for the median voter …


Risk And Prices: The Role Of User Sanctions In Marijuana Markets, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Beau Kilmer, Michael Grossman, Frank Chaloupka Dec 2009

Risk And Prices: The Role Of User Sanctions In Marijuana Markets, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Beau Kilmer, Michael Grossman, Frank Chaloupka

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

User sanctions influence the legal risk for consumers who engage in illegal drug markets. If a reduction in user sanctions leads to an increase in consumption, drug prices will rise unless supply is perfectly elastic. In equilibrium, a change in consumption associated with decreasing user sanctions could be relatively small if supply is upward sloping. Using a novel dataset with rich transaction-level information, this paper evaluates the impact of recent changes in user sanctions for marijuana on marijuana prices. The results suggest that lower legal risks for users are associated with higher marijuana prices in the short-run, which ceteris paribus, …