Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On Financial Frictions, Shipping Frequency And Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Md Deluair Hossen

Doctoral Dissertations

In three chapters of this dissertation, I examine financing frictions, shipping frequency, and exchange rate pass-through.

In the first chapter, I develop a model of importer-exporter procurement where the importer is procuring international inputs from the exporting firms located in developing countries. The exporters are credit constrained for working capital, incur the per-shipment fixed costs, and get paid after goods delivered to the importer. The model shows that for high financing costs in origin and destination, the shipping frequency increases. Furthermore, longer delivery times increase shipping frequency as well as procurement costs. The model also shows that the higher per-shipment …

Three Chapters On Environmental Regulation, Pollution, And Trade Liberalization, Tingsi Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation consists of three chapters in environmental economics and international trade. The first chapter identifies the effects of environmental regulation on Chinese manufacturing firms' markups. Difference-in-difference and triple-differenced estimates show that more stringent environmental regulation decreases firms' markups. Furthermore, environmental regulation has a significant impact on non-exporters' markups, but it has no impact on exporters. Examining pre-trends, we find that SOEs did not change their behavior in anticipation of environmental regulation, but non-SOEs started to adjust before the regulation was implemented. The second chapter evaluates how the market size affects the impact of environmental stringency on firms' economic activity. …

Three Essays On Behavioral Economics And Mechanism Design, Na Zuo

Doctoral Dissertations

My three essays on behavioral economics and mechanism design introduce two new microeconomic theoretical models.

In the first chapter, we develop an n-player theoretical model applying the concept of Virtual Bargaining to study cooperative behavior in public goods games characterizing team production. Virtual Bargaining is a modeling framework that characterizes how players may construct a tacit agreement to coordinate behavior in the absence of explicit communication. Players identify their worst-possible payoff outcome from any candidate agreement, and mutually best-respond with respect to maximization of their worst-payoff function. Players face uncertainties regarding whether other players will follow through on a candidate …

Three Essays In Public Finance, Md Sabbirul Haque

Doctoral Dissertations

The first chapter examines the long-run and short-run elasticity of income with respect to changes in tax rates. The Elasticity of Taxable Income (ETI) is a largely-debated parameter in both research and policy. Despite the growing importance of ETI, the literature has not fully considered the intertemporal impacts of taxation. I expand the literature by estimating short-run and long-run impacts of tax rate changes relying on the most recent estimation method and using appropriate lagged values of income when constructing the predicted net-of-tax rate instruments. The short-run ETI in the baseline specification is 0.69 whereas estimates for the Elasticity of …

Essays On Decision Making Under Risk And Uncertainty, Dong Yan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses economic theory, in tandem with experiments and other empirical methods, to better understand the role of information – for instance, missing information, conflicting information, and information overload – in determining outcomes in decision settings characterized by risk and uncertainty. In my first chapter, I use theory and experiments to compare market outcomes in a setting where the seller has better information on product quality than the buyer, and examine the effects of introducing a third-party who can credibly relay information on product quality. Under a range of conditions, I find market efficiency is higher when the information …

Investigating The Role Of Income Inequality In The Impact Of Natural Disasters In Lower Middle-Income Countries, Madison L. Graham

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Decline Of American Entrepreneurship: An Analysis Of Causes Of Macro Market Trends And A Changing American Economic System, Owen Flomberg

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Stand Up And Be Counted, Kimberly Smith

Black Issues Conference

“Stand Up and Be Counted”- The presentation spotlights the US Census over 200 years, the American minority by the numbers, and wielding the 2020 census as a tool for the next decade of minority political and social empowerment.

Presenter: Kimberly Smith, MBA

Company: US Census Bureau

This workshop is designed to improve the awareness of civic responsibilities and participation in the decennial 2020 census. The information discussed will educate the audience on the history and process of the census, as well as, the impact of census data on minority communities.

Format:

The presentation will begin with census introductory information and …

The Oppressive Pressures Of Globalization And Neoliberalism On Mexican Maquiladora Garment Workers, Jenna Demeter

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The international economic trends of globalization and neoliberalism have exposed and enabled the exploitation of Mexican workers, especially women in the maquiladora garment industry. During the 1950s, globalization gave rise to the new international division of labor and transnational corporations (TNCs) that have offshored labor-intensive phases of production to developing countries, many of which have pursued export-led industrialization. Export processing in Mexico was encouraged in the 1960s by Item 807 of the U.S. Tariff Code and Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program. Especially following the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, advanced capitalist countries and International Financial Institutions foisted neoliberal structural …

Does Winning Eurovision Impact A Country's Economy?, Kendall Bard

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationship that winning Eurovision has on several different economic metrics in a particular country. Drawing between 100 and 600 million viewers every year, The Eurovision Song Contest is the longest-running televised singing competition in the world, and has occurred annually since 1956. Furthermore, Eurovision is the most popular international televised event, other than sporting events such as the Olympics and the World Cup. Despite this, limited research has been completed on Eurovision’s economic impact specifically. For this thesis, data on various economic indicators was collected through the World Bank’s World Development …

The Pricing Impact Of The Decreasing Competitiveness Of The Health Insurance Market, Lauren N. Patterson

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

The Affordable Care Act created the national insurance exchanges of qualified health plans to encourage a higher insured rate, larger risk pools, and lower prices for quality health coverage. Consolidation of insurers can have opposing effects. The insurers’ risk pools will grow, allowing insurers to better hedge for risk. However, consolidation decreases the prevalence of competition in the market, and past research shows that insurer consolidation decreases market competition and increases prices.

I examine how the number of plans offered in a set market, pricing components, and county health variables impact the monthly premium pricing of plans sold on the …

Who Benefits From The 2016 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’S Screening Mammography Recommendations? An Empirical And Philosophical Evaluation Of Screening Mammography Guidelines Focused On Reducing False Positive Incidence, Avanti N. Nitin

Haslam Scholars Projects

Detecting breast cancer in its earliest stages significantly increases the likelihood of being completely cured of the disease. Early detection via cancer mammogram screening is central to breast cancer diagnosis. There is significant controversy, however, surrounding the 2016 mammogram screening recommendation issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). Why? The revised recommendation cuts the frequency of screening in half and advises women to begin routine screenings 10 years later than what previous guidelines recommended. The justification for this change was that the benefits of screening mammography increase with age, while the harms—especially the risk of a false positive …

Who Benefits From The 2016 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’S Screening Mammography Recommendations? An Empirical And Philosophical Evaluation Of Screening Mammography Guidelines Focused On Reducing False Positive Incidence, Avanti N. Nitin

Baker Scholar Projects

Detecting breast cancer in its earliest stages significantly increases the likelihood of being completely cured of the disease. Early detection via cancer mammogram screening is central to breast cancer diagnosis. There is significant controversy, however, surrounding the 2016 mammogram screening recommendation issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). Why? The revised recommendation cuts the frequency of screening in half and advises women to begin routine screenings 10 years later than what previous guidelines recommended. The justification for this change was that the benefits of screening mammography increase with age, while the harms—especially the risk of a false positive …

Does Winning Eurovision Impact A Country's Economy?, Kendall Bard

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Cost Of Child Care On Female Labor Force Participation, Richard Joseph Goyette

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Pricing Impact Of Decreasing Competitiveness Of The Health Insurance Market, Lauren N. Patterson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Visegrád-Russia Connection: Understanding The Political And Economic Ramifications Of Sanction Policies Four Years Later (Preface), Eric S. Peters

Select or Award-Winning Individual Scholarship

In 2014 the European Union, in concert with a number of other nations, enacted multiple rounds of sanctions against the Russian Federation. These sanctions were implemented due to the perceived role of the Russian Federation in the Ukrainian Euro Maiden Revolution of February 2014, and the subsequent annexation of the Crimean region. The following work investigates the resulting impacts of these sanctions on V4 (Czech, Hungarian, Polish, & Slovak) economies before ultimately concluding sanctions did not result in long term economic harm to the respective nations. The work is divided into 6 essays (Econometric Analyses, Energy, Financial …

Essays In Behavioral Economics, Jing Li

Doctoral Dissertations

In chapter one, I propose a model consolidating the norm- and preferences-based approaches to explain laboratory bargaining outcomes. Social norms are identified by the axioms of cooperative bargaining theory, and other-regarding preferences are captured using Fehr and Schmidt's inequity aversion utility function. The model applies to bargaining situations where other-regarding agents abide by social norms in their decision-making. Preferences and norms interact to determine bargaining outcomes, and their interaction undermines the recoverability of the other-regarding preference parameters based on observations from the lab.

In chapter two, I employ a lab experiment to study whether men receive lucrative tasks more often …

Automation, Work, And Ideology: The Next Industrial Revolution And The Transformation Of "Labor", Anthony Jack Knowles Ii

Masters Theses

Over the last several decades, scholars and commentators from a variety of different fields, expertise, and ideological positions have written on automation technologies and their potential to cause technological unemployment. As a sociological analysis and critical examination of how experts ideologically frame these issues, this thesis demonstrates that ideology plays a crucial role in the revived debate over automation and technological displacement. Weberian ideal types are developed to demonstrate how three major ideological positions—liberal, conservative, and radical—approach and frame the link between automation, technological displacement, and the potential for technological unemployment. The qualitative tools of ideal type construction and theme …

Essays In Applied Health Economics, Bongkyun Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

I study how change in environmental factors and information provision about environmental risk effect on human capitals and individuals' behavior.

Psychological maternal stress is thought to be a factor in poor infant health, but direct evidence is difficult to obtain. In first chapter, we posit that the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California provides a natural test of the effect of mothers' stress on infants' birth weight and gestation. The Northridge disaster featured a low rate of injury and a quick recovery, but long-lasting and well documented consequences for mental health. Difference-in-difference results show that infants born closest to …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Bilal Celik

Doctoral Dissertations

First chapter studies the impacts of large natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and storms have on economic activity by using nighttime light intensity data. On a local level, using the data of three large earthquakes within a 200-mile radius from the earthquake’s epicenter, I found that when the distance from the epicenter increases, the nighttime light intensity decreases. By using the synthetic control approach, on a national level, I found that while three of nine large natural disasters have a positive impact on economic activity, one natural disaster has a negative impact. When aggregating all nine large natural disasters, …

Excessive Acquisition: What Is It? What Makes It Happen?, Melanie Doss

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study draws on the philosophical concept of hermeneutics and theories of the self and self-regulation to investigate the underlying meanings expressed and experienced by the self and the other in the behavior of excessive acquisition. In accordance with the methods outlined by the phenomenological and grounded theory traditions, data were collected from 15 persons afflicted with excessive acquisition, defined as the self and 12 persons afflicted by excessive acquisition, defined as the other. The data content collected from in-depth interviews, field notes, observations, and electronic messages formulated the emergent Parent Themes of Emotion, Space, Economics, and Time. …

Analysis Of A Market For Tradable Credits, Policy Uncertainty Effects On Investment Decisions, And The Potential To Supply A Renewable Aviation Fuel Industry With An Experimental Industrial Oilseed, Evan Lawrence Markel

Doctoral Dissertations

This research is aligned with identifying barriers throughout the alternative jet-fuel supply chain. Prices are analyzed in the market for tradable credits known as renewable identification numbers (RINs). The RIN market is a key policy instrument used in the implementation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). The program is highly complex and drivers of RIN price are not always clear. RIN prices also exhibit multiple regimes where the price of nested RINs converge. Therefore, a smooth transition autoregressive model is employed to examine drivers of RIN price and to identify drivers of price regime change. Through research in the RIN …

Mass Migration: Examining Factors That Contribute To An Individual's Propensity To Migrate, Bryson A. Lype

Haslam Scholars Projects

No abstract provided.

Economic Forecasting With Many Predictors, Fanning Meng

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation is focused on the analysis of economic forecasting with a large number of predictors.

The first chapter develops a novel forecasting method that minimizes the effects of weak predictors and estimation errors on the accuracy of equity premium forecasts. The proposed method is based on an averaging scheme applied to quantiles conditional on predictors selected by LASSO. The resulting forecasts outperform the historical average, and other existing models, by statistically and economically meaningful margins.

In the second chapter, we find that incorporating distributional and high-frequency information into a forecasting model can produce substantial accuracy gains. Distributional information is …

Effects Of The Great Recession On American Retirement Funding, Tanner G. Hamil

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

An Inquiry Into The Effect Of The 2014 Russian Sanctions On European Gasoline Markets, Eric S. Peters

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Does Globalization Improve Quality Of Life?, Laura E. Hirt

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Does Increased Globalization Improve Citizens' Quality Of Life?, Laura E. Hirt

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Countries are more open than ever to the outside world, however research is still undecided about what effects it will have on the country’s culture and way of life. In a world where many policy makers are worried about the expansion of free trade and cheaper foreign labor, we are not certain how a country’s strivings to reach this goal of more “open” economy will or will not give their citizens a better quality of life. I will attempt to gain insight into that question using the United Nation’s millennium goals; my research uses econometric techniques to tease out possible …

Factors Influencing Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Land Use, Land-Use Change, And Forest Activities, Pattarawan Watcharaanantapong

Doctoral Dissertations

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a major global issue because of their effects on climate and the resulting environmental and human impacts. The primary greenhouse gases (GHGs), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O), are emitted into the atmosphere from a myriad of human activities such as energy supply, manufacturing, transportation, commercial and residential buildings, and waste. Additionally, management activities on agricultural and forest lands can influence GHG emissions substantially. Even though GHGs can be released into the air via the sectors mentioned, GHGs, especially CO₂, can be removed from …