Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On Moral Hazard, Bank Size, Influence, And Risk At The Federal Home Loan Banks, James Cash Acrey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Two chapters of research on the Federal Home Loan Bank advances, bank risk, and influence are presented. Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances are a growing source of debt financing for US banks. FHLB advances are not priced according to bank credit risk, creating potential for moral hazard. FHLB advances are positively related to contemporary bank risk, but the relation between prior advances and subsequent risk varies between large vs. small banks depending upon the risk measure used. The relation between FHLB advances and various measures of bank risk varies between pre-crisis (2005-07), crisis (2008-09), and post-crisis (2010-12) periods differently …

Predicting Employment Intention Of Ssa Beneficiaries: A Theory-Based Approach, James Mather Ii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Employment has become an integral aspect of American society. Each year, millions of Americans engage in job search as a result of economic conditions, involuntary job loss, completion of their education, or the desire to pursue a new career opportunity. However, the employment reality for persons with disabilities remains stark. In 2012 the employment rate of working-age people with disabilities was 32.7 percent, compared to 73.6 percent for those without disabilities. Given the long-standing employment gap between persons with disabilities and those without disabilities, this exploratory research utilizes the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to predict determinates of Social Security …

Price Discovery And Futures Spreads For U.S. And Chinese Rice Futures Market, Wei Yang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice, the primary staple food for more than half the world's population, is the second world's most consumed food grain. In recent years, world rice price has increased and become more volatile especially in the period 2007-2010. Rice price volatility has a huge impact on Asian countries, especially countries in Southeast Asia where rice is a staple food for millions of households. Private market tools to manage price risk and discover price such as futures markets have been analyzed and assessed as possible solutions to coping with rice price volatility issue. Two primary functions of agricultural commodities futures markets are …

Cash On The Table? A Behavioral Analysis Of Refund Claimants And Annuitants In The Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, Martin F. Lueken

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation documents pension benefit choices made by public school teachers enrolled in the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), where they choose between taking a lump-sum withdrawal of their refundable contributions and deferring a pension benefit. The analysis explores the extent to which vested teachers enrolled in TRS separate from service with positive pension wealth, estimates how much money is "left on the table" at a conventional discount rate, and investigates what types of teachers display higher or lower discount rates as indicated by cashout patterns. To control for the relative attractiveness between choices, the analysis relies on three central …

Financial Crisis And The Supply Of Corporate Credit, Jorge Santiago Emmanuel Barraza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays that study the relationship between distress and credit and the role this relationship has in determining corporate investment and economic activity. The first essay studies the supply of credit during the recent financial crisis. It shows that distress in the banking sector led to bank credit rationing, which a portion of nonfinancial borrowers palliated by migrating to the public market for credit. The overall reduction in credit, however, was followed by a severe drop in corporate investment, which in time led to a fall in the levels of aggregate production.

The second essay examines …

Essays In Pro-Social Behavior, Joshua R. Foster

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines individuals' actions to improve social outcomes when unrecoverable investments are necessary. Situations involving non-pecuniary and pecuniary investments are considered. In the former, the prerequisite of real effort - a non-pecuniary, unrecoverable investment - is examined when said effort determines an individual's ability to procure their preferred social outcome. Theoretical predictions over an individual's effort provision are based on their revealed preferences for the social distribution of wealth according to the general axiom of revealed preference (GARP). Laboratory experiments reveal that individuals' effort provisions do not support the assumption of stable preferences (transitivity) of wealth distribution. Specifically, individuals …

Analysis Of The Bric Countries Technical Efficiency Patterns Using Stochastic Frontier Approach, Alla Akimova

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the technical efficiency of BRIC-countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) at the disaggregated level of six economic activities using stochastic frontier approach. Technical efficiency scores and efficiency externalities effects of international trade and foreign direct investment inflows are estimated based on the panel of sixteen countries - G20 members - over the period from 1995 to 2009. The results suggest that foreign direct investment is a conduit of the positive technological spillovers in all sectors under analysis. Once controlling for the domestic level of the human capital that captures technology absorptive capacity, the positive effect of the international …

The Effect Of School And Neighborhood Environmental Factors On Childhood Obesity, Yiwei Qian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of three chapters exploring the effect of school program and neighborhood environment on childhood obesity outcome using individual panel data set of Arkansas public schoolchildren.

The first chapter (Section 2) investigates how the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP), a program that provides funding for the distribution of free fresh fruits and vegetables to students in participating schools, affects childhood obesity. We combine matching methodology and difference-in-differences analysis to estimate the effect of the FFVP on childhood BMI outcomes. Estimates of the FFVP effect are sensitive to different matching methods. Methods that provide a good balance between …

Essays On The Changing Nature Of Business Cycle Fluctuations: A State-Level Study Of Jobless Recoveries And The Great Moderation, Jared David Reber

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The behavior of several important macroeconomic variables has changed dramatically over the past several business cycles in the U.S. These changes, which began around the mid-1980s, have been viewed as somewhat puzzling given the stark contrast they exhibit to earlier post-war data. The movement of output and employment has historically been highly correlated throughout the different phases of the business cycle. However, this changed with the economic recovery of 1991. Since then, periods of output recovery have been accompanied by periods of prolonged job loss. These periods have come to be known as "jobless recoveries". Several competing explanations for this …