Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

International Trade And Capital Flight From Africa: Challenges For Governance, Melvin D. Ayogu

PERI Working Papers

Capital flight constitutes a major constraint to Africa’s efforts to fill the large and growing financing gaps that hold back its progress towards achieving sustainable development goals. The mounting evidence on the unrecorded outflows of capital from Africa has spurred calls for strategies to curb the financial hemorrhage that is afflicting the continent. The existing evidence is still inadequate, however, on four fronts. First, the quantitative evidence is predominantly aggregate and does not furnish adequate country-specific information on the mechanisms of capital flight, its institutional contexts, and the role of domestic and foreign players in facilitating it. Second, the literature …

Magnitudes And Mechanisms Of Capital Flight From Angola, Côte D'Ivoire And South Africa, LéOnce Ndikumana, James K. Boyce

PERI Working Papers

This paper presents an updated methodology for estimation of capital flight, which is applied to the cases of Angola, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa. The results indicate that the three countries have experienced substantial capital flight over the past four decades, amounting to $103 billion in constant 2018 dollars for Angola (over 1986-2018), $55 billion for Côte d’Ivoire (over 1970- 2018), and $329 billion for South Africa (over 1970-2018). An important mechanism of capital flight is misinvoicing of exports and imports, especially in primary commodities. The fact that these outflows have persisted over a long period indicates that they are …

Dominance Of Majoritarian Politics And Hate Crimes Against Religious Minorities In India, 2009-2018, Deepankar Basu

PERI Working Papers

Using a novel state-level panel data set for the period 2009-18 on the incidence of hate crimes in India, and a difference in difference (DD) approach, this paper investigates the causal impact of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist BJP’s win in the 2014 national elections on hate crimes against religious minorities. Using 2009-13 (pre-election) and 2014-18 (post-election) as the before and after periods, I estimate a standard DD model, where the treatment group consists of states where BJP won the largest share of popular votes in 2014, to get an initial estimate of the causal impact. I strengthen this result with …

Revisiting India's Growth Transitions, Deepankar Basu

PERI Working Papers

This paper reconsiders two questions relating to India’s economic growth: structural breaks in growth and the impact of equipment investment on aggregate economic growth. First, statistical tests of structural change show that economic growth in post-independence India has witnessed four structural breaks: in 1964-65, in 1978-79, in 1990-91, and in 2004-05. However, substantial growth accelerations, i.e. increase of more than 1.0% per annum in the growth rate of per capita real GDP, occurred only at two points: 1978-79 and 2004-05. Second, to analyze the impact of equipment investment on growth, I use an ARDL bounds testing methodology. I find a …

Learning About ‘Home’/Teaching About Place: The Everyday Leisure Experiences Of Diaspora Tourism, Kelley A. Mcclinchey Phd

TTRA Canada 2019 Conference

No abstract provided.

The Revised U.S. Treasury Securities Standard System, Junji Tokunaga

PERI Working Papers

Michael Hudson has suggested that the global financial system since the post-Bretton Woods system could be regarded as the ‘US Treasury bill standard’ system, in the sense that monetary authorities in developed countries were, effectively, forced to buy US Treasury securities in the 1970s. Analogous to his view, the global financial system in the 2000s, characterized by emerging Asian official ownership of US Treasuries, could be called by ‘the revised US Treasury securities standard system’. The revised US Treasury securities standard system in the 2000s depends on not only foreign official demand for US Treasuries, but also, most importantly, a …

Modern Money Theory (Mmt) In The Tropics: Functional Finance In Developing Countries, MatíAs Vernengo, Esteban PéRez Caldentey

PERI Working Papers

Functional finance is only one of the elements of Modern Money Theory (MMT). Chartal money, endogenous money and an Employer of Last Resort Program (ELR) or Job Guarantee (JG) are often the other elements. We are here interested fundamentally with the functional finance aspects which are central for any discussion of fiscal policy and have received more attention recently. We discuss both the limitations of functional finance for developing countries that have a sovereign currency, but are forced to borrow in foreign currency and that might face a balance of payments (BOP) constraint. We also analyze the limits to borrowing …

Re-Imagining Banff: Poll Data In Support Of Transformation, Joe P. Pavelka

TTRA Canada 2019 Conference

Previously submitted

Structured Conflict: Changes In Federal And State Labor Laws And Strike Activity, 1950 To 2017, Mark Stelzner, Eric Hoyt, Toushita Ramchurn

PERI Working Papers

Through looking at state adoption of right-to-work laws, state embrace of social equity between employees of different racial and ethnic groups, and federal adjudication and administration of the National Labor Relations Act, we seek to better understand how state and federal intervention in labor-management relations have contributed to income inequality across regions and overtime in the United States. As we will see, both state and federal support of employers’ prerogatives and of racially biased institutions are associated with weaker worker power. For example, change in adjudication and administration of the National Labor Relations Board to the benefit of the employer …

Unpaid Family Caregiving And Retirement Savings, Christian E. Weller, Michele Tolson

PERI Working Papers

Workers face regular economic challenges from caring for children and adult relatives and friends. These challenges pose additional demand on their time and finances. As a result, many caregivers, especially women could end up with fewer retirement savings. They earn less, work fewer hours, and face greater emotional and physical demands from care. All of these factors can translate into a lower likelihood of participating in a 401(k) plan, contributing to such a plan and saving for one’s own retirement. We use nationally representative data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances to estimate the impact of potentially caring …

Why Do Firms Impose Vertical Restraints? Evidence From Franchise Contracts, Brian Callaci

PERI Working Papers

Franchising is a business form in which one firm (the “franchisor”) licenses an- other firm or individual (the “franchisee”) to operate businesses using the franchisor’s trademarks and proprietary business methods. Vertical restraints—contractual controls imposed by an upstream firm on the operations of a downstream firm, such as price, supplier and customer restrictions—are the essential features of franchise contracts. The presence or absence of particular vertical restraints determine which business decisions the franchisor seeks to control, and which it seeks to delegate to local managers. There are several theories seeking to explain why firms impose vertical restraints. One explanation focuses on …

Industry Concentration And Technological Progress In U.S. Industries, ArmağAn Gezici

PERI Working Papers

This paper analyzes the impact of increasing concentration on the pace of technological progress in the U.S. economy. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the U.S. economy has been in a period of slower capital accumulation marked by lower aggregate productivity growth, while concentration ratio in most industries has increased. Studies analyzing the consequences of increasing concentration provide firm-level evidence that new-technology-induced productivity gains are an important driver behind increasing market power. Motivated by the lack of macro- level evidence for such productivity gains, this paper investigates the relation between new technologies and increasing concentration by focusing on industry-level measures …

Competition And Monopoly In The U.S. Economy: What Do Industrial Concentration Data Tell?, Leila Davis, ÖZgüR Orhangazi

PERI Working Papers

A recent series of academic studies, think-tank reports, and news articles shows widespread attention to rising industrial concentration and market power in the U.S. economy. In this paper, we focus on concentration in the U.S. nonfinancial corporate sector to make three contributions to this literature. First, we trace the theoretical origins of the debate on industrial concentration, and show that there is a certain degree of ambiguity surrounding the expected consequences of concentration and monopolization for nonfinancial firms. Second, we use industry- level concentration data to describe recent trends in average concentration. We show that, while concentration increases across the …

Crowding And Congestion In Banff Alberta Canada, Joe P. Pavelka

TTRA Canada 2019 Conference

The paper decribes research to determine ways residents and visitors cope with crowding and congestion in Banff Alberta Canada. The research is based on the recreation coping model and will be carried out in the summer of 2019

Tourism Operators On Trial: Pushing The Animal Justice Agenda Forward In Tourism In Spite Of Theory, David Fennell, Val Sheppard

TTRA Canada 2019 Conference

Abstract:

Justice tourism is emerging to be a topic of considerable interest as scholars strive to emphasise several important themes around the fair distribution of resources and benefits between and within societies (Mihalic & Fennell, 2014; Smith & Duffy, 2003). There is the belief that tourism must be ethical, share equity, underscore solidarity between hosts and guests, and place emphasis on respect, self-determination, as well as benefits on many different social, economic, and cultural levels (Scheyvens, 2002). An example of this type of research comes from Jamal and Camargo (2014), who discuss how limited distributive justice can be within destinations …

Effects Of Carbon Mitigation On Co-Pollutants At Industrial Facilities In Europe, Klara Zwickl, Simon Sturn, James K. Boyce

PERI Working Papers

In addition to global climate benefits, carbon mitigation improves local air quality by reducing emissions of hazardous co-pollutants. Using data on large industrial point sources in Europe, we estimate how changes in carbon dioxide emissions affect emissions of the three co-pollutants SOX, NOX, and PM10 for samples of 727 to 2,653 facilities for the years 2007 to 2015. We find substantial and significant co-pollutant elasticities of 0.7 for SOX and NOX, and 0.5 for PM10, which are robust to different estimation approaches. Large CO2 emitters and the energy sector are characterized by higher-than-average co-pollutant elasticities. For climate policy induced CO2 …

Structural Change In India And China: External Sustainability And The Middle-Income Trap, Suranjana Nabar-Bhaduri, MatíAs Vernengo

PERI Working Papers

This paper focuses on the different development strategies of China and India, particularly regarding the role of manufacturing and services, for long-run productivity growth, external competitiveness and financial fragility. The findings appear to support the argument that productivity improvements in manufacturing drive productivity improvements in other sectors. They also substantiate previous findings that the Indian services-led growth trajectory has had limited success in transferring surplus labor from agriculture to other sectors. Furthermore, the trajectories have affected the export performances of the two countries with the Indian trade balance and current account revealing persistent deficits, compared to China's surpluses. The paper …

Sunset Park, Brooklyn: Reclaiming An Urban Industrial Area And Creating Community, Yincheng Zhang

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Like many metropolises around the world, urban renewal in New York dominates the process

of urban development due to the scarcity of urban land resources and the ever-expanding population of New York. In the history of New York’s urban expansion, with the continuous expansion of the city’s outer edge and industrial relocation, industrial land originally on the edge of the city is gradually surrounded by residential areas.

The large area of vacant land and building also limits the further development of the region.

How to reuse the existing infrastructure and brownfield with the highly degraded environment is

particularly important for …

Uncovering The Potential Of Peabody's Hidden North River: A Greenway For Social And Ecological Connectivity, Mitch Johnson

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Project Goal Demonstrating the opportunity to strengthen both urban and ecological qualities, this project has the goal to transform an old industrial corridor in downtown Peabody into a green corridor integrating stormwater management, habit restoration, recreational, and catalyst for urban development.

The site’s location at the downstream end of existing creeks combined with its proximity to the Salem Sound makes this an extremely sensitive area to flooding events. This design proposal transforms this risk into an opportunity by restoring this former industrial site to its former function as a floodplain within the existing North River Watershed. In a phased process, …

The Art Of Healing The Landscape: Creating A Sense Of Place With Phytotechnology, Tia Novak

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This project builds on previous work completed as part of a masters project by Matt Hisle under the guidance of Frank Sleegers in Hadley, Massachusetts at an abandoned Getty gas station. The previous project sought to integrate phytotechnology into a “comprehensive experience that provided connectivity and educational purposes” and used Phyto by Kate Kennen and Niall Kirkwood as a framework for applying six phytotechnology typologies (referred to as phytotypologies) in the design (Sleegers & Hisle, 2017).

This project also explores the site’s historical, social, and ecological sense of place and the application of phytotechnology as garden art to create a …

Informality, Inequality, And Feminization Of Labor, Ceyhun Elgin, Adem Yavuz Elveren

PERI Working Papers

Using two novel datasets of the size of the informal economy and income inequality, this study provides evidence on the nexus of informality and inequality with particular attention to the feminization of labor, a phenomenon closely related to labor market informalization. Using annual cross-country panel data from 125 countries for 1963-2016, the study reveals a relationship between the size of the informal sector and income inequality, which is more likely to be negative in richer countries and positive in poor ones. It also shows that, while higher women’s labor force participation is associated with lower income inequality, this negative correlation …

The Persistence Of Racial Inequality: The Earnings Gap Among Women From 1979-2016, Jeannette Wicks-Lim

PERI Working Papers

This study identifies a significant racial earnings gap among women that has persisted, essentially unchanged, from 1979 to 2016, using annual earnings data from the Annual Social and Economic supplement of the Current Population Survey. Different from past studies, I integrate into this study’s method of analysis how racism has caused Black and White women to interact with the labor market in profoundly different ways. In particular, Black married women have historically been much more active in the labor force than White married women. To account for this expression of White privilege—distinctive in this period to married mothers in particular—I …

A Multidimensional Approach To Gender Gap In Poverty: An Application For Turkey, Hasan TekgüÇ, Bengi Akbulut

PERI Working Papers

Income or expenditure data are collected at household level and are silent about within household inequalities. As an alternative, employing counting-based double cut-off method allows education, health, household living conditions to be measured separately and a deprivation score for each person is calculated based on pre-determined weights of each dimension. Individuals whose deprivation scores are above a pre-determined threshold are deemed multidimensionally poor. In this study, we calculate multidimensional poverty for Turkey in four equally weighted dimensions using Survey of Living Conditions 2006-2015: education, health, employment and household’s living conditions. First, we find improvement in household’s living conditions across the …

From Trilemma To Dilemma: Monetary Policy Effectiveness After The Bretton Woods World, Hasan CöMert

PERI Working Papers

Many argue that the concept of the trilemma, referring that out of independent monetary policy, free capital movement and fixed exchange rate regime only two can exist at the same time, is a potent tool to explore the effectiveness of monetary policy during the Bretton Woods (BW) regime and afterward. However, under this regime, besides capital controls, regulated domestic financial markets and diversity in central bank instruments contributed to the existence of the independent monetary policy. After the collapse of the BW system, capital controls were lifted, domestic financial markets were deregulated, remaining regulations were not implemented properly, and short-term …

The Institutional, Empirical And Policy Limits Of ‘Modern Money Theory’, Gerald Epstein

PERI Working Papers

Modern Money Theory (MMT) economists acknowledge a number of empirical and institutional limitations on the applicability of MMT to macroeconomic policy, but they have not attempted to explore these empirically nor have they adequately addressed their implications for MMT’s main macroeconomic policy proposals. This paper identifies some of these important limitations, including those stemming from modern international financial markets, and argues that they are much more binding on the policy applicability of MMT than many of MMT’s advocates appear to recognize. To address these limitations, MMT analysts would have to enter the messy institutional, policy and empirical realms that undermine …

From The Classical To Empiricists: A Review Of The Terms Of Trade Controversy, Shouvik Chakraborty, Prabirjit Sarkar

PERI Working Papers

Contrary to the classical position, the works of Prebisch and Singer in the middle of the last century launched the controversial hypothesis of a long-term decline in the terms of trade of primary products vis- ́a-vis manufactures and a corresponding decline in the terms of trade of the developing countries vis-a-vis the advanced ones. The present study traces the origin and evolution of the hypothesis and reviews the related statistical debate. It also reviews the theoretical support for the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis. It’s an exercise in the history of economic thought to trace how the controversies surrounding the terms of trade …

Fair Use, Laura Quilter

New England Copyright Boot Camp

No abstract provided.

Open Access, Nonexclusive Licensing, Author Rights, Kyle K. Courtney, Laura Quilter

New England Copyright Boot Camp

An overview of copyright in relation to author contracts, a hands-on exercise reviewing an author publication agreement, and pointers about talking with authors about their publication agreements.

Also includes an overview of Creative Commons licensing and how open access policies can change the copyright default for authors and provide a legal mechanism for institutions to share author works.

Drawing The City, Sandy Litchfield

Sustainability Education Resources

How do we represent the spatial and social complexities of contemporary urban environments? And why is this important for artists, designers, planners, architects, and landscape architects?

Twenty-first century cities are complex, messy and wicked. They can be dazzling, magnificent and aweinspiring, full of diverse culture, creative activity, architectural marvels, and cutting-edge innovation. But they are also facing some of the most challenging problems in history– unprecedented economic inequality, sea level change, unpredictable weather events and severe pollution to name just a few. In trying to understand such a complicated system, we need to develop and hone new and distinctive methodsforrepresentation …

Environmental Decision-Making (Nrc 494 Ei), Ezra Markowitz

Sustainability Education Resources

Over the past 30 years, there has been a growing recognition amongst environmental advocates, resource managers, policymakers and researchers that the underlying cause of most environmental, conservation and sustainability issues is human behavior. As NRC and ENVIRSCI majors, you have received extensive technical training in how natural systems operate yet relatively little training when it comes to influencing or understanding how people make environmental decisions that affect those natural systems. Recognizing the fundamental role that human decision-making plays in shaping the environment reveals a new set of tools and approaches for both understanding the challenges we face and confronting those …