Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Three Essays In Economics, James R. Bland

Open Access Dissertations

How Many Games Are We Playing: An Experimental Analysis of Choice Bracketing in Games

A subject brackets two decisions if she "choose[s] an option in each case without full regard to the other" Rabin (2009). Although in most situations such behavior is unlikely to be optimal, it is well documented in experiments where subjects make decisions in the absence of strategic considerations. This paper uses an economic experiment to investigate whether subjects also bracket their decisions in games. Subjects played two Volunteer's Dilemmas at the same time, with the payoffs from both games added to their earnings. In a lottery …

State Based Financial Liberalization, Robert J. Kulzick

Open Access Dissertations

In the last 40 years, states around the globe have increased the role of markets in their financial systems. Using newly collected information on the educational backgrounds of Central Bankers, I demonstrate that the beliefs of state officials about the proper role of markets in the financial system influence the extent to which state's liberalize their financial systems. By tracing the liberalization experiences in both France and China through secondary sources, I show that bureaucrats within the state suggest reforms that conform to their neoliberal training when political leaders turn to them for solutions to what are perceived as technical …

Tail Risk In International Markets, Yanchu Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Tail risk, defined as extreme event risk in asset markets, is an important consideration for investors when making investment decisions. This paper empirically tests the role of tail risk in international market. Using sample of 40 countries from 1980 to 2014, I show that tail risk positively predicts future market returns. Across all countries, stocks with high sensitivity to past global tail risk on average will earn higher returns than stocks with low sensitivity. In addition, I show that tail risk act as a global transmission channel of contagion during crisis.

Essays In Experimental Economics On Contract Design, Jacob A. Brindley

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation contains three related essays which examine contracting environments with moral hazard. I use laboratory experiments to study how across treatment variations affect contractual outcomes including the types of contracts that principals design, the overall efficiency of the contractual relationship, and the surplus distribution between the principal and agent(s).

In the first chapter, which is joint work with Steve Wu, I investigate relational contracting within a bilateral relationship. Specifically, I explore how contracting is impacted by a reduction in the agent's market power as proxied by an exogenous decrease in the agent's expected outside option. Surprisingly, principals did not …

Essays In International Migration, Marcelo J. Castillo

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the effects of high-skilled immigration on various economic outcomes within the receiving country. In the first essay, I study how skilled immigrants affect wages and employment in US industries during 1995-2007, using novel microdata on approved H-1B visas. These data show that most H-1B employers specialize in the production of high-skilled services used as inputs by other businesses. In light of this, I consider the downstream effects of skilled immigrants on industry labor market outcomes: how wages and employment in an industry respond to immigration shocks to its suppliers. The identification strategy relies …

Essays On Health Insurance, Amanda C. Cook

Open Access Dissertations

Uninsured individuals receive fewer health care services for at least three reasons: higher prices, responsibility for the entire bill, and potential provider reductions for concern of non-payment. This study isolates differences in service levels between insured and uninsured individuals that are attributed to different effective prices; the uninsured pay the bill without a contribution from an insurance company. I capitalize on Maryland's highly regulated health care system, where prices are set by the state, are uniform across all patients, and hospitals are compensated for free care and bad debt, to isolate the difference in quantity demanded by the uninsured. While …

Demand Uncertainty And Investment In The Restaurant Industry, Jayoung Sohn

Open Access Dissertations

Since the collapse of the housing market, the prolonged economic uncertainty lingering in the U.S. economy has dampened restaurant performance. Economic uncertainty affects consumer sentiment and spending, turning into demand uncertainty. Nevertheless, the highly competitive nature of the restaurant industry does not allow much room for restaurants to actively control prices, leaving most food service firms exposed to demand uncertainty. To investigate the impact of demand uncertainty in the restaurant industry, this study focused on the implications of demand uncertainty for investment.

The first essay in chapter 3 examined the impact of demand uncertainty on investment and how the impact …

Essays In Labor Economics And Panel Data Analysis, Evan S. Totty

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three independent chapters. The first chapter studies the impact of minimum wage hikes on employment of low-skill workers in the United States. The second chapter studies the lasting impact of attending a higher value-added high school on college performance. The third chapter studies the impact of stuttering on labor market outcomes.

The first chapter resolves issues in the minimum wage-employment debate by using factor model econometric methods to address concerns related to unobserved heterogeneity. Recent work has shown that the negative effects of minimum wages on employment found using traditional methods are sensitive to the …

Collaboration In Scientific Digital Ecosystems: A Socio-Technical Network Analysis, Philip Mutuma Munyua

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand the formation, operation, organizational (collaboration) and the effect of scientific digital ecosystems that connect several online community networks in a single platform. The formation, mechanism and processes of online networks that influence members output is limited and contradictory. The dissertation is comprised of three papers that are guided by the following research questions: How does online community member’s productivity (or success) depend upon their ‘position’ in the digital networks? What are the network formation mechanism, structures and characteristics of an online community? How do scientific innovations traverse (diffuse) amongst users in online communities? A combination …

Electric Power And The Global Economy: Advances In Database Construction And Sector Representation, Jeffrey C. Peters

Open Access Dissertations

The electricity sector plays a crucial role in the global economy. The sector is a major consumer of fossil fuel resources, producer of greenhouse gas emissions, and an important indicator and correlate of economic development. As such, the sector is a primary target for policy-makers seeking to address these issues. The sector is also experiencing rapid technological change in generation (e.g. renewables), primary inputs (e.g. horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing), and end-use efficiency. This dissertation seeks to further our understanding of the role of the electricity sector as part of the dynamic global energy-economy, which requires significant research advances in …

Communication, Home Bias And Social Capital, Sharon Raszap Skorbiansky

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays on the effects of communication, home bias and social capital. The first study analyzes three different laboratory treatments that determine if policies that introduce and improve communication are beneficial to a market. The control treatment has no communication. Then, two different types of communication mechanisms are introduced: cheap communication, where subjects are able to lie, and truthful communication, where only honest messages may be sent. The results demonstrate that truthful communication dramatically improves subjects' ability to trade efficiently, ultimately leading to higher social surplus and lower income inequalities. Cheap communication does not produce the …

Energy Production, Distribution, And Pollution Controls: Combining Engineering And Economic Analysis To Enhance Efficiency And Policy Design, David F. Perkis

Open Access Dissertations

Three published articles are presented which focus on enhancing various aspects of the energy supply chain. While each paper adopts a different methodology, all three combine engineering data and/or techniques with economic analysis to improve efficiency or policy design within energy markets. ^ The first paper combines a chemical engineering plant design model with an economic assessment of product enhancements within an ethanol production facility. While a new chemical process is shown to achieve greater ethanol yields, the animal feed by-products are denatured and decrease in value due to the degradation of a key nutritional amino acid. Overall, yield increases …

Strategic Flexibility, Kihyung Kim

Open Access Dissertations

A flexible system is defined as one that can change the entity's stance, capability or status reacting to a change of the entity's environment. Flexibility has gathered the attention of academic researchers and industry practitioners as an efficient approach to cope with today's volatile environment. As the environments become more unpredictable and volatile, it is imperative for a flexible system to respond quickly to a change in its circumstance. How much flexibility is embedded into the system also has a critical impact on the long-term effectiveness of the flexible system. Moreover, this research focuses on the strategic environment where a …

Experimental Studies Of Arbitration Mechanisms And Two-Sided Markets, Daniel Mihai Nedelescu

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay is an experimental study that examines a relative new type of arbitration called α-Final Offer Arbitration. The second is a theoretical study that introduces inequality aversion as a new explanatory factor for low agreements rates during disputes under arbitration mechanism. The final essay analyzes the effects of different polices on the price stricter in a two-sided market monopoly.

Promising results to improve arbitration used in the field are obtained from Amended Final Offer Arbitration (AFOA), which outperforms Final-Offer Arbitration (FOA) and weakly outperforms Conventional Arbitration (CA). The first essay presents an …

The Political Economy Of Cultural Production: Essays On Music And Class, Ian J. Seda Irizarry

Open Access Dissertations

Overview

As an activity that produces wealth, musical production and its effects have largely been neglected by the economics profession. This dissertation seeks contribute to a small but growing literature on the subject by analyzing musical production through a particular class analytical lens of political economy.

A first problem that has encountered many within political economy, specifically within its radical variant of Marxism, is how to understand music in relation to the social totality. In the first essay of this work I provide a critical review of the literature that approaches music through the "base-superstructure metaphor", a tool of analysis …

The Economics Of Same-Sex Couple Households: Essays On Work, Wages, And Poverty, Alyssa Schneebaum

Open Access Dissertations

Since Badgett's (1995a) landmark study on the wage effects of sexual orientation, interest in and production of scholarly work addressing the economics of sexual orientation has grown tremendously. Curious puzzles have emerged in the literature on the economics of same-sex couple households, three of which are addressed in detail in this dissertation.

Most studies of the wages of women in same-sex couples versus different-sex couples find that the former earn more, even controlling for differences in present labor market supply, education, experience, area of residence, and occupation. However, most previous studies of the sexual orientation wage gap omit the role …

Seeds Of A New Economy? A Qualitative Investigation Of Diverse Economic Practices Within Community Supported Agriculture And Community Supported Enterprise, Ted White

Open Access Dissertations

Amidst widespread feelings that capitalism is a deeply problematic yet necessary approach to economy, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has emerged as both an alternative model for farming and as an increasingly visible and viable model for alternative economy. Using qualitative methods, this doctoral research explores and documents how CSA has become a productive space for economic innovation and practice that emphasizes interdependence, camaraderie and community well-being rather than hierarchical control and private gain. This study also examines how the many participants of CSA have built an identity for CSA--branding it via autonomous and collective efforts. This has resulted in CSA …

A Knife Hidden In Roses: Development And Gender Violence In The Dominican Republic, Cruz Caridad Bueno

Open Access Dissertations

On September 30, 2012, Jonathan Torres stabbed his wife, Miguelina Martinez, fifty-two times in a beauty salon in Santiago, Dominican Republic. Ms. Martinez, 33 years-old, went to the district attorney's office eighteen times in the two weeks prior to her murder to report that because of her husband's violent threats she left her home. He killed her because she no longer wanted to be with him; the knife he used was hidden in a bouquet of roses.

This three-essay style dissertation interrogates the state of development and gender violence in the Dominican Republic. The first chapter examines the implications of …

Essays On The Rising Demand For Convenience In Meal Provisioning In The United States, Tamara Ohler

Open Access Dissertations

Household food budgets offer a window on consumers' demand for convenience. During the 1980s and 1990s, three shifts likely promoted an increase in the share of the food budget devoted to convenient meal options, namely meals out and prepared foods: the growing number of hours that women spent in paid work, the growing opportunity cost of women's time spent doing housework, and the drop in the price of food relative to all other goods. I test whether the impact of these economic trends (on food budget allocation) was mediated by a change in the impact of children on household meal …

Social Emulation, The Evolution Of Gender Norms, And Intergenerational Transfers: Three Essays On The Economics Of Social Interactions, Seung-Yun Oh

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I develop theoretical models and an empirical study of the role of social interactions, the evolution of social norms, and their impact on individual behavior. Although my models are consistent with individual utility maximization, they generally emphasize social factors that channel individual decisions and/or shape individuals' preferences. I apply this approach to three different issues: labor supply, fertility decisions, and intergenerational transfers, generating predictions that are more consistent with observed empirical patterns of behavior than standard neoclassical approaches that assume independent preferences, perfect information, and efficient markets.

In the first essay, I explain the long-run evolution of …

Organic Farming And Rural Transformations In The European Union: A Political Economy Approach, Charalampos Konstantinidis

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the impact of organic farming for achieving the environmental and social objectives of sustainability in Europe over the past 20 years. Organic farming is considered the poster child of rural development in Europe, often seen as a model of the integration of small-scale production with environmental considerations. Since this model runs counter to the logic of developing capitalist structures in agriculture, I revisit the Marxian predictions regarding the "agrarian question". Furthermore, I trace the discursive changes in support of small-scale production in the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and assess whether small farms have improved their situation …

The Sources Of Financial Profit: A Theoretical And Empirical Investigation Of The Transformation Of Banking In The Us, Iren G. Levina

Open Access Dissertations

The last thirty years in the US have been characterized by rising financial profits as a share of total profits and the growth of banking activities yielding non-interest income. These developments pose two questions. First, what are the social relations enabling and sustaining financial profits and what are their macroeconomic sources? Second, what do these trends imply for the nature of banking and what kind of theory of banking can capture them? This study addresses these questions and makes four contributions. First, a Marxist theory of banking is developed to capture the transformation of banking drawing on two characteristics: first, …

The Relationship Between Mass Incarceration And Crime In The Neoliberal Period In The United States, Geert Leo Dhondt

Open Access Dissertations

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past 35 years. This dissertation looks at the impact this growth in incarceration has on crime rates and seeks to understand why this drastic change in public policy happened.

Simultaneity between prison populations and crime rates makes it difficult to isolate the causal effect of changes in prison populations on crime. This dissertation uses marijuana and cocaine mandatory minimum sentencing to break that simultaneity. Using panel data for 50 states over 40 years, this dissertation finds that the marginal addition of a prisoner results in a higher, not lower, crime …

Money, Reality, And Value: Non-Commodity Money In Marxian Political Economy, Joseph Thomas Rebello

Open Access Dissertations

My dissertation offers an advancement of the Marxian theory of money, motivated by a methodological critique of monetary theory in general. As such, my dissertation is located within the philosophy and methodology of economics and the history of monetary thought, in addition to Marxian political economy. This intermingling of fields reflects both my research interests and my argument with respect to the current state of scholarship on Marx and money. Despite increasing acceptance of the compatibility of non-commodity money and Marxian political economy, a dualist social ontology has stunted attempts to theorize the relationship between money, value, and class. I …

Essays On Urban Sprawl, Race, And Ethnicity, Jared M. Ragusett

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the economic consequences of urban sprawl for US minorities. Each essay focuses on a key empirical debate related to that relationship. The first essay establishes a set of attributes and empirical measures of sprawl based upon a comprehensive review of the literature. I define sprawl as a multi-faceted pattern of three land-use attributes: low density, deconcentration, and decentralization. I then resolve several methodological inconsistencies in the measurement of sprawl. Extensive analysis of spatial and economic data finds that metropolitan areas do not commonly exhibit high-sprawl (or low-sprawl) features across multiple measures. Instead, they often exhibit unique combinations …

Fair Trade, Agrarian Cooperatives, And Rural Livelihoods In Peru, Noah Enelow

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the fair trade (FLO) certification system for agricultural commodities in the context of the global coffee crisis and its deleterious effects on rural livelihoods, focusing on the northern Peruvian Amazon. I begin the dissertation in my introduction by outlining my theoretical framework, which analyzes markets as bundles of institutions. The dissertation proceeds to analyze the key institutions of the fair trade coffee chain: certifications, commodity trade, cooperatives, and smallholder farming communities. In my second chapter, I explain the history of the FLO certification system, examine the dynamics of certifications in general, and point out the incentive problems …

Three Essays On Oil Scarcity, Global Warming And Energy Prices, Matthew Riddle

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three essays. In the first essay, I construct a supply and demand model for crude oil markets. I then fit the model to historical price and quantity data to be able to project future oil prices. Ex-post forecasts using this model predict historical price trends more accurately than most oil forecasting models. The second essay incorporates the supply and demand model from the previous paper into a complex systems model that also includes oil futures markets. Adaptive-agent investors in futures markets choose from a set of rules for predicting future prices that includes the rational …

A Minskian Approach To Financial Crises With A Behavioural Twist: A Reappraisal Of The 2000-2001 Financial Crisis In Turkey, Mathieu Perron-Dufour

Open Access Dissertations

The phenomenal financial expansion of the last decades has been characterised by an exacerbation of systemic instability and an increase in the frequency of financial crises, culminating in the recent meltdown in the US financial sector. The literature on financial crises has developed concomitantly, but despite a large number of papers written on this subject, economists are still struggling to understand the underlying determinants of these phenomena. In this dissertation, I argue that one of the reasons for this apparent failure is the way agents, as well as the environment in which they evolve, are modelled in this literature. After …

Knowledge, Gender, And Production Relations In India's Informal Economy, Amit Basole

Open Access Dissertations

In this study I explore two understudied aspects of India's informal economy, viz. the institutions that sustain informal knowledge, and gender disparities among self-employed workers using a combination of primary survey and interview methods as well as econometric estimation. The data used in the study come from the Indian National Sample Survey (NSS) as well as from fieldwork conducted in the city of Banaras (Varanasi) in North India.

The vast majority of the Indian work-force is "uneducated" from a conventional point of view. Even when they have received some schooling, formal education rarely prepares individuals for employment. Rather, various forms …

Agriculture And Class: Contradictions Of Midwestern Family Farms Across The Twentieth Century, Elizabeth Ann Ramey

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation I develop a Marxian class analysis of corn-producing family farms in the Midwestern United States during the early twentieth century. I theorize the family farm as a complex hybrid of mostly feudal and ancient class structures that has survived through a contradictory combination of strategies that includes the feudal exploitation of farm family members, the cannibalization of neighboring ancient farmers in a vicious hunt for superprofits, and the intervention of state welfare programs. The class-based definition of the family farm yields unique insights into three broad aspects of U.S. agricultural history. First, my analysis highlights the crucial, …