Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Three Lumps Of Coal For The Working Poor, Evan Barrett

Highlands College

A Montana Public Radio Commentary by Evan Barrett.

Published newspaper columns written by Evan Barrett on this topic, which vary somewhat in content from this commentary, appeared in the following publications:

Missoulian, December 31, 2013

Montana Standard, February 7, 2014

Essays On State Fiscal Institutions, Todd Richard Yarbrough

Doctoral Dissertations

The following three essays investigate the effect various fiscal institutions have on state budgeting decisions. In the first essay, the impact of stringent balanced budget rules on a non-general fund expenditure category, environmental expenditure, is investigated. The essay finds that states with especially stringent balanced budget rules have lower average environmental expenditure than states absent stringent rules. Using a Fixed-Effects panel estimation, the paper finds that stringent balanced budget rules are associated with 1.55% lower per capita environmental expenditure than weak rules. Further, the presence of political interest groups in a state significantly mitigates this reduction, causing environmental expenditure to …

The International Monetary Fund, Power Politics, And The Changing Political Economy Of The Twenty First Century, Eduardo Flores

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The governance of the global economy is in a constant state of change. Since the creation of the Bretton Woods system, the International Monetary Fund has had to pursue a series of reforms to meet the changing demands of the international monetary system. At times, the Fund's institutional design has been adjusted to reflect the rise and decline in economic fortunes of member states. Other times the Fund has been resistant to change. However, the original design has proved to be durable and has overcome a number of historical challenges. Currently, two realities are challenging the institutional design of the …

A Note On The Synthesis Of The Satisficing Concept And The Neoclassical Theory, Sergey V. Malakhov

Sergey Malakhov

The development of the neoclassical theory of search bridges the gap between the assumption of the maximizing consumer behavior and the satisficing decision procedure. The paper argues that the consumer satisficing decision procedure results in the equality of the marginal costs of search with its marginal benefit.

What Do We Worry About When We Worry About Price Discrimination? The Law And Ethics Of Using Personal Information For Pricing, Akiva A. Miller

Akiva A Miller

New information technologies have dramatically increased sellers’ ability to engage in retail price discrimination. Debates over using personal information for price discrimination frequently treat it as a single problem, and are not sufficiently sensitive to the variety of price discrimination practices, the different kinds of information they require in order to succeed, and the different ethical concerns they raise. This paper explores the ethical and legal debate over regulating price discrimination facilitated by consumers’ personal information. Various kinds of “privacy remedies”—self-regulation, technological fixes, state regulation, and legislating private causes of legal action—each have their place. By drawing distinctions between various …

Valuing Beach And Surf Tourism And Recreation In Australian Sea Change Communities, David Anning, Dan Ware, Michael Raybould, Neil Lazarow

Michael Raybould

Many of Australia’s iconic sandy beaches are already under pressure due to coastal development and the impacts of severe storm or flood events. These impacts are likely to be exacerbated by projected climate changes such as elevated water levels and potentially increased storm intensity. Beaches provide important recreation services for both residents and tourists but few studies in Australia have attempted to place economic values on this service. Thus, coastal authorities that are forced to make investment decisions relating to beach protection and restoration have insufficient data to conduct cost-benefit evaluations of projects where recreation values are significant. This paper …

Identifying And Describing The Network Of Health, Education, And Social Service Non-Profit Organizations In Southern Nevada, Shannon M. Monnat, Anna Smedley

Lincy Institute Reports and Briefs

Many of the economic, social, and demographic issues facing southern Nevada are dynamic and interrelated, requiring a coordinated approach on the part of southern Nevada’s non‐profit community. The coordination of services, skills, and talents enables community needs to be addressed in ways that exceed the scope and capacity of any single organization. With the increasing desire of funding organizations to support collaborative efforts, maintaining sustainable connections between southern Nevada’s non‐profit organizations is needed now more than ever before.

This is the first comprehensive study of southern Nevada’s health, education, and social service non‐profit network. Via a web‐based survey of nearly …

Economic Prospects For A One-State Solution In Palestine-Israel, Leila Farsakh

Leila Farsakh

No abstract provided.

The Commons, Capitalism, And The Constitution, George Skouras

George Skouras

Thesis Summary: the erosion of the Commons in the United States has contributed to the deterioration of community and uprooting of people in order to meet the dynamic demands of capitalism. This article suggests countervailing measures to help remedy the situation.

Higher Gasoline Taxes: Elitist Or Equitable?, Barry Bluestone, Stephanie Pollack

Stephanie Pollack

No abstract provided.

Building On Our Heritage: A Housing Strategy For Smart Growth And Economic Development, Edward C. Carman, Barry Bluestone, Eleanor White

Barry Bluestone

No abstract provided.

Chapter 40r: School Cost Analysis And Proposed Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement, Edward C. Carman, Barry Bluestone, Eleanor White

Barry Bluestone

No abstract provided.

Higher Gasoline Taxes: Elitist Or Equitable?, Barry Bluestone, Stephanie Pollack

Barry Bluestone

No abstract provided.

Women And Power In The United States: A Geographic Analysis Of Government, Work, And Economic Status, Kylie Stackis

Earth and Environmental Sciences Presentations

This geographic analysis investigates the different ways that women hold power across the United States, primarily through government, work, and economic status. Political power is in this case represented through government representation at the national and state level. Economic power considers employment, income, occupation (specifically traditionally male fields of business and science), hours worked, and Forbes lists of the richest 400 people in the United States as well as the 500 CEOs of influential companies. Education was a third variable in the analysis since it exemplifies the power of knowledge and lends itself to the potential for political and economic …

Economic Effects Of Successful Sports Franchises On Local Economies, Joshua Goodrich

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Stories Economists Tell: Studies In Christianity And Economics, By John P. Tiemstra, Paul R. Koch

Faculty Scholarship – Economics

A review of the book Stories Economists Tell: Studies in Christianity and Economics by John P. Tiemstra (Pickwick Publications, 2012).

Contract Law And Modern Economic Theory, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

From Plastic Trees To Arrow's Theorem, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

Lessons From Metaethics, Cognitive Neuroscience, Moral Psychology, And Behavioral Economics: The Use Of Ethical Intuition In Legal Compliance For Business Entities, Eric C. Chaffee

Eric C. Chaffee

This article challenges the widely held view in legal education and in practice that what lawyers should be doing in providing legal advice consists solely of engaging in legal research and analytic reasoning. This article suggests that ethical intuition—i.e., the unconscious recognition that a specific action is good, evil, or morally neutral—may have a useful role to play in making legal compliance decisions for business entities.

Although largely ignored by the legal academy, scholars in numerous disciplines have acknowledged the role that intuition plays in decision making. Philosophers and religious scholars initially recognized role of intuition in moral decision making …

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 …

U.S.-Latin American Free Trade Agreements And Access To Medicine, Dominique Lochridge-Gonzales

Dominique Lochridge-Gonzales

U.S.-Latin American Free Trade Agreements and Access to Medicine analyzes the effects of FTA provisions on access to medicine. Access to medicine lies at the heart of the crossroads between the international human right to health and international intellectual property law delineated in TRIPS. True availability of essential medicines to millions of people depends on a balance between the formations of these medicines in the first place (through rewarding innovation) and promulgating rules that allow for practicable access to those medicines. FTAs provide a method for implementing the right to health by fostering practicable access to essential medicines in the …

A Market For Tax Compliance, Walter E. Afield Iii

Walter E Afield III

It is becoming increasingly clear that, due to political realities and budgetary constraints, the IRS is going to have to attempt to enforce the tax laws by doing more with less. Current enforcement efforts have yielded a tax gap (i.e., the difference between the amount of taxes that should be paid and the amount that are collected) of roughly $450 billion annually. Faced with this task, one of the steps that the IRS has recently taken is to try to improve the quality in services performed by paid tax preparers, a group that historically has been subject to little IRS …

The Cost Of Conscience: Quantifying Our Charitable Burden In An Era Of Globalization, Frank A. Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Development economists have long debated the proper targets for foreign aid contributions from wealthy countries. Philosophers like Peter Singer and Peter Unger now suggest that these countries' citizens have a parallel moral responsibility to tithe a portion of their income directly for the relief of the suffering of the poorest. These thinkers would prefer a systematic global redistribution of income - some public mechanism for accomplishing worldwide what the tax systems of egalitarian social democratic states accomplish. But they all realize that such global governance is unlikely to come about in any of our lifetimes. So they turn their attention …

Licensure Of Health Care Professionals: The Consumer's Case For Abolition, Charles H. Baron

Charles H. Baron

While state medical licensure laws ostensibly are intended to promote worthwhile goals, such as the maintenance of high standards in health care delivery, this Article argues that these laws in practice are detrimental to consumers. The Article takes the position that licensure contributes to high medical care costs and stifles competition, innovation and consumer autonomy. It concludes that delicensure would expand the range of health services available to consumers and reduce patient dependency, and that these developments would tend to make medical practice more satisfying to consumers and providers of health care services.

Medical Paternalism And The Rule Of Law: A Reply To Dr. Relman, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

In this Article, Professor Baron challenges the position taken recently by Dr. Arnold Relman in this journal that the 1977 Saikewicz decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts was incorrect in calling for routine judicial resolution of decisions whether to provide life-prolonging treatment to terminally ill incompetent patients. First, Professor Baron argues that Dr. Relman's position that doctors should make such decisions is based upon an outmoded, paternalistic view of the doctor-patient relationship. Second, he points out the importance of guaranteeing to such decisions the special qualities of process which characterize decision making by courts and which are not …

Too Complex To Perceive?: Drafting Cash Distribution Waterfalls Directly As Code To Reduce Complexity And Legal Risk In Structured Finance, Master Limited Partnership, And Private Equity Transactions, Ralph Carter Mayrell

Ralph Carter Mayrell

The intricate procedural and data-driven decision trees that play a critical role in complex financial contracts like cash distribution waterfalls in structured finance agreement indentures (e.g., collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)), master limited partnership agreements, and private equity fund agreements are inefficiently depicted as written contracts. As Professor Henry Hu explains in Too Complex to Depict?, the difficulty of translation—or depiction—between original mathematical models, plain English prospectuses, legal contracts, and programmed execution means that often the written depictions that form the basis of disclosures do not accurately define the act of execution. To overcome this, the SEC proposed an amendment to …

Moving Money: International Financial Flows, Taxes, Money Laundering & Transparency, Richard Gordon, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P Morriss

Recent publicity over enormous estimates of “missing” wealth and the use of sophisticated tax strategies by companies like Apple, Google, and Starbucks have produced a demand that the wealthy pay a “fair” amount of tax regardless of their compliance with the letter of tax laws. In particular, the Tax Justice Network’s claim that $21-$32 trillion of “hidden” wealth remains untaxed has garnered considerable attention. In this paper we argue that these claims rest on poor data and analysis and mistakes about how financial transactions work. We further argue that the disputes are about fundamentally conflicting visions of how financial transactions …

Welcome To The Amazon: Leading Online Retail From Local Tax Avoidance Into Your Backyard, Sherry Tehrani

Sherry Tehrani

Online sales in the United States have increased by over 250 percent in the last ten years, reaching over 250 billion dollars in 2012.[1] Spearheaded by Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”), online retailers have fed off their competitive advantage of avoiding local sales tax, and have grown to capture roughly 7 percent of the retail market.[2] The juxtaposition of this upsurge of untaxed online sales and our nationwide recession has prompted state governments with crushing deficits to take on the tax loophole.

Local governments across the U.S. have passed legislation to enforce online sales tax collection, referred to as “Amazon …

Will The Income-Based Repayment Program Enable Law Schools To Continue To Provide "Harvard-Style" Legal Education?, Greg Crespi

Greg Crespi

ABSTRACT Legal education provided in the prevailing “Harvard-style” now costs students on average between $160,000 and $250,000 for their three years of study, the precise amount depending on the law school attended, the alternative employment opportunities foregone, and the amount of scholarship assistance provided. However, the median starting salary for full-time, entry-level legal positions has declined in recent years to only $60,000/year, and upwards of 45% of recent law graduates are now unable to obtain full-time legal employment within 9 months of their graduation, and this dismal employment situation is unlikely to significantly improve over the next few years. While …

The Underutilized Foreign Investor, Griffin Weaver

Griffin Weaver

For most states, if not all, the push for economic advancement is at the front of every administration’s agenda. This is especially true for developing countries in the Middle East whose standard of living and international power is largely tied to its economic condition. An important indicator, if not condition, of a state’s economic health is the level of foreign direct investment (FDI) received by the state. This inflow of money is essential for the growth and stability of a state’s economy. As one U.S. official once noted, the United States “need[s] a net inflow of capital of $3 billion …