Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

November 2001, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Scale Economies In Public Education: Evidence From School Level Data, Ryan C. Bosworth

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The structure of school finance regimes in the United States has been a subject of much political and legal debate over the past three decades. Court rulings have required many states to restructure school financing methods in order to pursue some concept of equality. Achieving equality of spending is, of course, a simple matter. Developing a funding mechanism that provides for equality of educational opportunity. however, is difficult since such a system, by definition, must allow for cost differences across schools and districts.

Random Walks, Lemmings, And Behaviorism; The Search For A Market Lodestar, John Sondey

Economics Staff Paper Series

Random Walk: Burton Malkiel defines a random walk as "one in which future steps or directions cannot be predicted on the basis of past actions." Within the context of the stock market, a random walk for a stock's price means that it is as likely to fall as to rise, regardless of previous price performance (Malkiel, 1996). To hold the random walk hypothesis as truth is to foresake all punditry regarding fundamental and technical analysis and to abandon long-standing shibboleths such as evolving industries and sectoral rotation. Essentially, random walk implied that "winners" could not consistently be picked. The Wall …

April 2001, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Little Adam Smith Is A Dangerous Thing, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

Adam Smith was trying to counter medieval church theology, which held that any self-interested behavior was sinful and detrimental. Smith countered that self-interest could yield valuable outcomes for society as people pursued specialization and market trade. Much later these quotes would be used to justify the greedy and grasping personae of homo economicus, illustrating how a little Adam Smith can prove to be a dangerous thing. For example, Max Lerner in 1937 would say that Adam Smith "sanctified predatory impulses" and "gave a new dignity to greed." By the 1980s the movie Wall Street has the financial tycoon Gordon …

Does Free Trade Cause Hunger? Hidden Implications Of The Ftaa, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

Voluntary free trade has the potential, slowly and gradually over time, to create "general opulence" because it allows workers to acquire greater competency and specialization: in a word, workers become more productive. The creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would expand market areas and thereby potentially contribute to raising future living standards of workers. This paper seeks to analyze the theoretical basis for trade, provide an economic overview of FTAA countries, and analyze the winners and losers from trade.

The Market For Medical Ethics, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

At the core of Kenneth Arrow’s classic 1963 essay on medical uncertainty is a claim that has failed to carry the day among economists. This claim—that physician adherence to an anti-competitive ethic of fidelity to patients and suppression of pecuniary influences on clinical judgment pushes medical markets toward social optimality—has won Arrow near-iconic status among medical ethicists (and many physicians). Yet conventional wisdom among health economists, including several participants in this symposium, holds that this claim is either naïve or outdated. Health economists admire Arrow’s article for its path-breaking analysis of market failures resulting from information asymmetry, uncertainty, and moral …

Measuring The Cost Of Beach Retreat, George R. Parsons, Michael Powell

George Parsons