Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Hyperbolic Memory Discounting And The Political Business Cycle, T. Scott Findley

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

The vintage political business cycle framework of Nordhaus (1975) represents the idea that the macroeconomic business cycle is manipulated opportunistically by an incumbent government to achieve re-election. A key assumption in this prototypical framework is that voters discount their memories about unemployment and inflation at a constant rate. Yet starting with Ebbinghaus (1885) and Jost (1897), a large body of research in psychology documents an empirical regularity that has come to be known as Jost's Second Law of Forgetting-individuals discount recent memories at a higher rate compared to the rate at which they discount older memories. I find that incorporating …

The Unemployment And Reemployment Experiences Of Displaced Workers Resulting From The Shutdown Of Two Utah Mines: The Park City Ventures And The Burgin Mine, Richard A. Davidson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this paper is to study the unemployment and reemployment experiences of displaced workers. Two mines were shut down in 1978 in Utah: the Park City Ventures Mine located in Park City and the Burgin Mine located in Eureka. Data were collected from questionnaires mailed to all the displaced workers of both mines and from personal interviews conducted with mine officials, officials of formal job-search agencies, and union representatives.

The shutdown at Park City Ventures affected 350 workers, and the shutdown at the Burgin Mine affected 153. Both mines qualified for and were certified for Trade Readjustment Act …

An Evaluation Of The Dichotomy Between Structural Versus Deficient-Demand Unemployment, Carl D. Parker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis is addressed to the theoretical controversy which revolves around the explanation of the higher unemployment rates that prevailed after 1957. The debate that has been generated concerning the causes of this unemployment problem is usually referred to as the "structural" versus "deficient-demand" debate. An attempt is made to present a representative view of both sides of the debate as well as a critical evaluation of both positions. Care is taken to keep both positions separated for each leads to entirely different policy recommendations. A more general theoretical structure is presented which will be useful in analyzing the relevance …