Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

7 Million Americans Can’T Escape ‘Dead End’ Jobs, Patrick Gillespie

Capstones

Involuntary part-time is one of the worst problems in the labor market today. These are people who want full-time work, but for a collage of reasons, can only obtain part-time work (35 hours a week or less). There are about 7 million Americans stuck in involuntary part-time work. At the start of the recession, there were about 3.5 million. Although the economy shows signs of improvement, involuntary part-time workers express little hope in their future. Many don't have healthcare, About 75 percent of IPT workers are either below the poverty line or in low income ($36,000 for a family of …

The Coops After The Storm, Caroline Lewis

Capstones

For many, Hurricane Sandy is either long forgotten or brings to mind thoughts of loss and destruction. But in Far Rockaway, there is a lingering struggle to use the momentum generated by the unique Occupy Sandy disaster relief efforts to create a new cooperative economy. The project dovetails with a larger experiment in scaling up worker cooperatives in New York City and raises questions about what can come out of future storms if the Occupy Sandy model is replicated.

Heteroskedasticity Of Unknown Form In Spatial Autoregressive Models With Moving Average Disturbance Term, Osman Dogan

Economics Working Papers

In this study, I investigate the necessary condition for consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of spatial models with a spatial moving average process in the disturbance term. I show that the MLE of spatial autoregressive and spatial moving average parameters is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not considered in the estimation. I also show that the MLE of parameters of exogenous variables is inconsistent and determine its asymptotic bias. I provide simulation results to evaluate the performance of the MLE. The simulation results indicate that the MLE imposes a substantial amount of bias on both autoregressive and moving …

Toward A Quantitative Theory Of Food Consumption Choices And Body Weight, Sebastien Buttet, Veronika Dolar

Publications and Research

We propose a calibrated dynamic model of food consumption choices and body weight to study changes in daily caloric intake, weight, and the away-from-home share of calories consumed by adult men and women in the U.S. during the period between 1971 and 2006. Calibration reveals substantial preference heterogeneity between men and women. For example, utility losses stemming from weight gains are ten times greater for women compared to men. Counterfactual experiments show that changes in food prices and household income account for half of the increase in weight of adult men, but only a small fraction of women’s weight. We …

"My People Is A People On Its Knees": Mexican Labor Migration From The Montana Region And The Formation Of A Working Class In New York City, Rodolfo Hernandez-Corchado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the contemporary proletarianization via migration of the indigenous and mestizo people from the Montaña region, in the Mexican southern state of Guerrero, to New York City. The dissertation demonstrates how the region was transformed since the 1980s into a migrant labor supplier and how its inhabitants became proletarians, and a major pool of labor supplying the North American transnational migrant labor market.

Far from being homogenous, the people of the Montaña region are ethnically and class diverse. Based on the oral narratives of an indigenous Mixteco, and a mestizo teenager dweller of the city of Tlapa, the …

Regional Integration And National Social Policies, Mary Anne Madeira

Publications and Research

How does regionalization affect national social policies? Although there is an extensive literature on the effects of globalization on social protection, the literature on the impact of regional integration is much less developed. I argue that the distinctive nature of regionalization processes calls for rigorous empirical testing of the domestic policy effects of regional integration. To this end, using an innovative dataset that measures the degree to which countries are integrated into regional economic and political organizations, this article uses statistical analysis to consider the influence of regional integration on government social spending. The results are surprising: regionalization has a …

The ‘Mommy Tax’ And ‘Daddy Bonus’: Parenthood And Personal Income In The United States Between 1990 And 2010, Justine Calcagno

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines the relationship between parenthood and personal income by sex in the United States between 1990 and 2010.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The data analyzed in this report indicate three key trends. First, women who were parents had substantially lower median personal incomes than men who were parents. Second, men who were parents earned markedly higher personal …

Economic Dimensions Of The Foreclosure Crisis: A Focus On The New York City Msa, Sean P. Macdonald, Eric Doviak

Publications and Research

Employing Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data on loan originations from 2004 – 2010 and 2010 New York State preforeclosure filing notices, this study seeks to identify the correlation between some characteristics of census tracts and the distribution of pre-foreclosure filing notices and high cost loans within the New York City metropolitan area from 2006 through 2012. The findings are examined within the context of the census tracts within which borrowers resided. American Community Survey data on employment-population ratios, poverty rates, and median household income were then matched to our HMDA-PFF dataset to obtain a measure of the relationship of particular …

Essays On Savings Behavior Of Low-Income Households In Colombia, Luz M. Salas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I designed and implemented a Randomized Controlled Trial to study whether relatively simple modifications to how a commitment savings product was framed and labeled could affect savings accumulations and other outcomes of low-income individuals in newly formed Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) in Colombia. Motivated by hypotheses from behavioral economics, the experiment tests hypotheses that behavioral responses should vary depending on whether subjects are led to label and create `mental savings accounts' in private or public ways. Individuals in the private-labeling treatment groups were led to label their savings as earmarked for a particular purpose and to state savings …

The Concentration Of Household Income In The United States By Race/Ethnicity And Latino Nationalities, 1990 - 2010, Justine Calcagno

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines demographic and socioeconomic factors concerning Latinos in the United States between 1990 and 2010 – particularly the concentration of household income.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The data indicate a growing concentration of income among upper-earning households in the U.S. total population, among the wealthiest earners in each major race/ethnic group, and among the five largest Latino …

The Effect Of Income On Health After Hurricane Katrina, Jang Wook Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is a large literature that documents a positive correlation between income and a variety of measures of good health. This correlation may reflect causality in both directions and may also reflect omitted "third variables" that are positively related to income and health. In my dissertation, I employ an exogenous negative shock to income due to a natural disaster to estimate the true causal impact of income on health. The shock I will use is Hurricane Katrina, which severely damaged counties in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in August 2005. I use these treatment counties and a variety of alternative sets …

Essays On Robust Estimators For Non-Identically Distributed Observations In Spatial Econometric And Time Series Models, Suleyman Taspinar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis proposal consists of three essays on the estimation methods and applications of spatial econometric models and one essay on the generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH)-type models in financial time series. The first essay discusses the heteroskedasticity robust generalized method of moments estimator (RGMME) for the spatial models that allow for spatial dependence in both the dependent variable and the disturbance term (SARAR(1,1)). First, we show that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is generally inconsistent in the presence of unknown heteroskedasticity. Then, we extend robust GMM approach in Lin and Lee (2010) to SARAR(1,1). The large sample properties are …

Planetary Improvement: Discourses And Practices Of Green Capitalism In The Cleantech Space, Jesse Adam Goldstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is money to be made in saving the planet. A whole host of actors, such as investors, entrepreneurs, engineers, and policy makers have mobilized around our ecological problems, seeking to innovate new `green' and `clean' technologies that can serve a rapidly changing environment. The presumption that such technologies are both necessary and necessarily profitable anchors visions of a `green' capitalism that can and must be brought into existence.

However, just as free markets have never been all that free, why should we presume that green capitalism would be all that green? Instead of attempting to arbit whether or not …

The Politics Of Transportation Megaprojects, Patrizia Christa Nobbe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Large infrastructure investment decisions, especially for mega-projects defined as costing more than one billion U.S. dollars, are largely based on complex, unclear and non-transparent decision criteria. The project's specific context and a variety of actors and interests add to the complexity of the decision processes. All projects deviate, to a certain degree from a "rational" decision-making process, are politically motivated and subject to multiple interests. Cost-benefit analyses are conducted for about half of the projects. In this work I hypothesize that the politics of project decision-making is comparable across countries, relative to their nature, form of involvement and impact on …

Committee Decision Making In Monetary Policy, Hyungju Cha

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One reason of the criticism about Taylor rule would be that the rule could not provide a micro foundation about the decision-making mechanism. because it is simply describing the policy process in terms of the short-term nominal interest rate. In order to reconcile the tension between critics and supporters of Taylor rule, chapter I employs the theory of team, which investigates how members in a team interact to determine optimal decisions. Using team theory, it is shown how optimal monetary policy is results from committee members' interactions.

In chapter II, if the government cannot recognizes that the monetary policy can …

Our Day Has Finally Come: Domestic Worker Organizing In New York City, Harmony Goldberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation tells the story of Domestic Workers United (DWU), an organization of Latina and Caribbean nannies, housecleaners and elder care providers based in New York City. I trace DWU's efforts from its campaign to win basic employment protections for domestic workers in New York State through its efforts to enforce those new rights and to raise working standards above the minimum.

The driving motivation behind this work is the search for new paradigms for worker organizing that respond to the political and economic challenges of our times. I argue that domestic workers and other low-wage workers of color are …

Engines Of Liberation Redux When Home Appliances Prices Are Endogenous, Sebastien Buttet, Veronika Dolar

Publications and Research

We propose a model of the household where the transmission mechanism between home appliances and women’s labor supply is identical to the one in Greenwood et al. (2005b) with one important exception.We explicitly model firms’ pricing and output choices in the appliances sector and thus, the price of home appliances is determined endogenously by the laws of supply and demand rather than being taken exogenously from outside the model.We use this new framework to characterize the general equilibrium effects of rising household wages on the price of home appliances, and thus ultimately women’s labor supply. The ratio between the price …

State Revenue Forecasting Accuracy, Dan Williams, Joseph Ononchie

Publications and Research

This paper examines forecasting accuracy of state revenue forecasting for 50 states using data published on the National Association of State Budget Officer’s (NASBO) website (www.nasbo.org). The data shows four categories of revenue: sales tax, corporate income tax, personal income tax, and all other (as a residual from total taxes). It shows some evidence that forecast bias reflects a hedge against uncertainty; however, there is also evidence that there is a counterbalancing preference to find the money needed to provide the services demanded.

Adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo Sampling And Estimation In Mata, Matthew J. Baker

Economics Working Papers

I describe algorithms for drawing from distributions using adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, introduce a Mata function for performing adaptive MCMC, amcmc(), and a suite of functions amcmc *() allowing an alternative implementation of adaptive MCMC. amcmc() and amcmc *() may be used in conjunction with models set up to work with Mata's [M-5] moptimize( ) or [M-5] optimize( ), or with stand-alone functions. To show how the routines might be used in estimation problems, I give two examples of what Chernozukov and Hong (2003) refer to as Quasi-Bayesian or Laplace-Type estimators - simulation-based estimators employing MCMC sampling. …

From Antipolitics To Post-Neoliberalism: A Conversation With James Ferguson, Nils Gilman, Miriam Ticktin, James Ferguson

Publications and Research

Humanity co-editors Nils Gilman and Miriam Ticktin spoke with James Ferguson on May 31, 2013, at Stanford University.

The Economic Causes And Consequences Of Overweight And Obesity In The United States, David Alan Lempert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Obesity is a serious public health issue, associated with increased risks of premature death, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, breathing problems, arthritis, reproductive complications, and other diseases. There are economic causes and consequences of overweight and obesity. Researchers have recently suggested that the inability of Body Mass Index to appropriately distinguish between body fat and non-body fat components may lead to inaccurate results when analyzing the economics of obesity. I use Percentage Body Fat, defined as Body Fat divided by the sum of Fat-Free Mass and Body Fat, as the primary measure of body composition.

A growing body of literature explores …

Design And Use Of Rubrics In Undergraduate Economics Courses, Sebastien Buttet, Veronika Dolar

Publications and Research

The purpose of this paper is threefold; first we explain how rubrics can be used in undergraduate economics courses not only as an assessment tool, but also as an effective teaching and learning tool. Next, we show how to design a rubric, using a simple production possibilities frontier (PPF) example with a four-step method that can be applied to any short- answer assignment or exam question. Finally, we provide three additional examples of short- answer questions with accompanying answers and rubrics that instructors can study and use, in order to develop and improve their own rubric-writing skills.

Tax Structure And Revenue Instability: The Great Recession And The States, Howard Chernick, Cordelia Reimers, Jennifer Tennant

Publications and Research

The Great Recession had the most severe impact on state tax revenues of any downturn since the Great Depression. We hypothesize that states with more progressive tax structures are more vulnerable to economic downturns, and that progressivity and income volatility may interact to amplify the recession’s fiscal impact. We find that, while potential revenue exposure is greater in more progressive states, the most important source of variation was differences in income concentration and capital gains shares in the top 5 percent of taxpayers. Though the interaction between income volatility and high tax burdens at the top did produce large decreases …

Sovereign Debt And Tax Collection Dynamics In Argentina, Kyle Royal Bauser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This manuscript examines how the dynamic macroeconomic effects from shocks to taxes and inflation differ between the United States and Argentina. On the fiscal side, wages, private capital, and consumption tax cuts have long-run revenue growth effects (in both countries) that mitigate initial tax receipt losses. These growth effects, however, are larger in Argentina - a country where both the consumption tax rate and sensitivity to wage changes are higher. Specifically, Chapter 2 finds that growth from a U.S. capital tax cut pays for roughly 60% of the initial static loss, whereas the corresponding effect in Argentina is 80%. On …

Essays On Financial Market Volatility: Applications Of Time-Varying Dynamics, Emily Johnston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines time-variation in asset volatility surrounding periods of financial market distress. In the first chapter we give a brief introduction of the overall theme of the project, and we outline the models used. The next chapters individually focus on the application of time-varying volatility to important themes in the literature. These include: the behavior of investor risk preferences across periods of stability and distress; inconsistencies in options pricing with regard to the behavior of the underlying asset; and the characterization of time-varying volatility dynamics in equity returns.

The second chapter of this dissertation examines the impact of changing …

Dollar Democracy: The Politics Of Dollarization In Latin America, Cori Madrid

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The state's right to print money and control monetary policy is among its most powerful abilities: it allows the state to manage the economy, raise revenue, and reward political allies. Since the establishment of the Westphalian state system, the state's monopoly of money within its borders has been a source of wealth and within the last century, influence over the macroeconomy and local actors. Nevertheless, in the year 2000, Ecuador and El Salvador surprised the world by announcing that they would officially dollarize their economies, replacing their national currencies with the dollar. What can explain why countries, such as Ecuador …

For Right And Might: The Militarization Of The Cold War And The Remaking Of American Democracy, Michael Brenes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how Cold War defense spending shaped the evolution of American political culture and public policy from the 1940s until the 1990s. It argues that the Cold War economy contributed to the realignment of American politics in the postwar era. The fight against global communism abroad altered the structure, purpose, and public perception of the federal government following World War II, but also subsidized corporations, suburban communities, and individuals affected by defense spending. The militarization of the Cold War therefore created various dependents of America's military and defense apparatus that continuously pressed for more defense spending during the …

Feisty Kids On The Conservative Block: How Business Mobilized Against Organized Labor In The Seventies, Ryan Eustace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Fiscal Policy On Savings And Investment, Andrew A. Bossie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation contains three essays exploring the effect of fiscal policy shocks on savings and lending behavior of the private economy. Two essays focus on World War II and one essay focuses on the entire postwar period. Essay I looks at the response of monetary policy to fiscal policy shocks and the effect of fiscal policy on the private sector's balance sheet over a period that covers 1954 and 2007. I find a minimal response of the Federal Reserve to fiscal policy shocks. I also find the the main response of the private sector to fiscal policy shocks manifests itself …

Fiscal Decentralization: Does The Source Of Revenue Matter?, Pallavi Jain Govil

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fiscal Decentralization: does the Source of Revenue Matter?

Evidence from Rural India

Pallavi Jain Govil

Adviser: Professor Timothy J. Goodspeed

Is the pattern of expenditures of village governments related to their sources of revenue? Do village governments use own-source revenues more efficiently than transfer grants to provide public services to their constituents?

This paper begins with the premise that local governments are more participative, more acceptable, and more accountable and hence, deliver better. I use a policy change introduced in 1997 in province of Madhya Pradesh in India, whereby the power to collect royalty and lease rents on minor mineral …