Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Yang Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We document that the quality of roads and railroads vary substantially over time and space in China, and neglecting these variations biases the distributional impacts of transportation networks. To account for quality differences, we construct a new panel dataset and approximate quality using the design speed of roads and railroads that varies by vintage, class, and terrain at the pixel level. We then build a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model for multiple modes, transportation routes, and forward-looking migration decisions. Our findings demonstrate that disregarding quality differences leads to a median bias of approximately 31% in estimating real wage growth rates …

Crossover Youth: The Relationship Between Juvenile Dependency And Delinquency, Victoria Davenport

University Honors Theses

This literature review looks at the relationship between juvenile delinquency and juvenile dependency. Specifically, it evaluates the existence of "crossover youth", minors who have been involved with both systems in their lifetime. The review considers thirteen different studies, literature reviews, and databases to determine risk factors in maltreated youth that cause them to offend. The review also looks at the impact that second-generation parents have on likelihood of offending as juveniles, as well as the importance of welfare worker perception on parental involvement with dependency agencies. Finally, the review considers potential interventions to crossover youth, determining how to assist maltreated …

Welfare In Crisis: Labor And Social Protection In The Global South, Jake Lin, Dennis Arnold, Minh T. N. Nguyen

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Welfare expansion in the global South is partly in response to the social crises caused by neoliberal restructuring since the 1980s, with the 2008 global financial crisis escalating them, and the covid-19 pandemic further exposing the impact on the most precarious working populations. What are the new dynamics of labor struggles against these structural, industrial, and health crises under the expansion of social protection or the lack thereof? How do the state and non-state actors manage recurring and new capitalist crises by reconfiguring labor and social policies? The contributions in this special issue address these questions by engaging with workers’ …

The Slogans And Goals Of Antitrust Law, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a comparative examination of the slogans and goals most advocated for antitrust law today – namely, that antitrust should be concerned with “bigness,” that it should intervene when actions undermine the “competitive process,” or that it should be concerned about promoting some conception of welfare. “Bigness” as an antitrust concern targets firms based on absolute size rather than share of a market, as antitrust traditionally has done. The bigness approach entails that antitrust cannot be concerned about low prices, or the welfare of consumers and labor. Nondominant firms could not sustain very high prices or cause significant reductions …

Learning To Fly While Staying Grounded: How Forcibly Displaced Individuals Develop A Sense Of Belonging In Disempowered Cities, Janina L. Selzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite a growing interest in belonging, immigration and urban scholarship has yet to develop an empirically grounded, spatially sensitive, and complex theorization of the concept itself. Drawing on a comparative case study of two disempowered cities – Bielefeld, Germany, and Detroit, US, – this dissertation analyzes how and to what extent forcibly displaced Yazidi and Chaldean Iraqis develop a sense of belonging. By triangulating data from semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations, as well as a discourse analysis of policy documents, the following pages trace how politics of belonging are continuously produced, reproduced, and challenged through a spatially mediated and often contradictory …

Behavioural Normative Economics: Foundations, Approaches And Trends, Malte Dold

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

This article summarises the theoretical foundations, main approaches and current trends in the field of behavioural normative economics. It identifies bounded rationality and bounded willpower as the two core concepts that have motivated the field. Since the concepts allow for individual preferences to be context-dependent and time-inconsistent, they pose an intricate problem for standard welfare analysis. The article discusses the ways in which two prominent approaches - the preference purification approach and the opportunity approach - have tackled the problem. It argues that shortcomings in each of these approaches motivate an agency-centric perspective. The article presents two concrete policy proposals …

Reading “Socio-Democracy” Of Pancasila Through Gadamer's Hermeneutics, Toto Sugiarto, Naupal Asnawi

International Review of Humanities Studies

No abstract provided.

Foster Parent Knowledge And The Need For Information - Sharing Technology, Amy Lynne Averbuch

Dissertations

In 2023, the United States child welfare system suffers from disorganization, role ambiguity, and deficient transparency. With 12 contempt of court strikes for the system’s Director in 2022, it is clear why child welfare actors are unable to successfully perform. Foster parents, a key stakeholder in the proper care of children, report being unable to successfully perform because they are raising children with significant needs and trauma while having to locate and navigate child welfare system laws, policies, and procedures on their own. The purpose of this research project was to 1 ) identify whether foster parents know who is …

Search Models Of Money: Alternative Means-Of Payment And Consumer Behaviour With Credit, Kheng Tat Marcus Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation consists of three chapters on Search Models of Money.

The first chapter is a review of recent advances in Search Models of Money. It reviews the Lagos and Wright (2005) framework which is the workhorse of many modern search models with applications to models with Competing Media of Exchange to Fiat Currency, and models with Money and Credit. We trace the history of the development of search models of money from the first generation to present day. We highlight recent developments that address puzzles such as the coexistence of money in an environment where an asset serves as …

Education And Welfare: Their Impact On The Experience Of Poverty In India And The United States, Anushka Rajani

Senior Theses

The experience of poverty and chances of upward mobility is drastically different in India and the United States. The following thesis contends that this is largely due to the current educational and welfare policies in place in these two nations. Education allows for a higher possibility of financial upward mobility by allowing students to learn skills that prepare them for higher-paying career paths. High-quality welfare gives recipients aid for their necessities while providing them time for growth to pursue financial independence. The following thesis investigates these policies and how accessible they make education and welfare to poor populations in India …

Argument For H.R. 82 "The Social Security Fairness Act", Troy Domini M. Ayado

The Gettysburg Journal for Public Policy

This paper analyzes H.R. 82 "The Social security Fairness Act" of 2021 by using SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. The paper focuses on the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset provisions of the social security Act. When social security was initially passed, pension benefits were not extended to public sector employees until the reforms in 1950s. However, in the 1970s the Supreme Court declared that men were no longer required to prove that they were reliant on their spouses to be eligible for spousal or widower's benefits, thereby making thousands of male retirees eligible to receive benefits. …

Monitoring Welfare In Captive Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) Using Individual Positional Behavior And Substrate Use Profiles, Joseph Lara

Theses and Dissertations

The welfare of captive chimpanzees partly depends on the structural features present in their enclosure. An individual’s manner of expressing positional behaviors depends on these environmental characteristics and may be reflective of their physical and mental health. This thesis seeks to further the scientific understanding of the relationships between positional behavior, substrate use and captive chimpanzee welfare. In pursuit of this goal, I designed and installed a novel vertical climbing aid onto a climbable platform structure within an enclosure at the chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimp Haven, in an effort to encourage mobility and vertical space use in the enclosure’s residents. Additionally, …

The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Tang Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates the distributional impacts of transportation networks in China.We show that the quality of roads and railroads vary substantially over time and space, and ignoring these variations biases the estimates of travel time. To account for quality differences, we construct a new panel dataset and approximate quality using the design speed of roads and railroads that varies by vintage, class, and terrain at the pixel level. We then build a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model that allows for multiple modes and routes of transportation and forward-looking migration decision.We find aggregate welfare gain and less spatial income inequality led …

Free Money: The Feasibility Of Implementing A Universal Basic Income In The United States, Chase H. Dorn

Senior Theses

The objective of this thesis is to explore whether a universal basic income paid to all United States citizens is both economically possible and advantageous. A recent surge in popularity of the idea has led to a plethora of universal basic income experiments that have been or are being performed across the world, however there has yet to be a UBI implemented on a national level. Using data from these experiments and existing academic research into the policy, the first part of the thesis details the necessary components of a UBI, documents the history of the idea, notes the justifications …

A Tale Of Two Cities: The Divergence Of Social Housing In Berlin And Vienna, Ben Eibl

CMC Senior Theses

The industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Berlin and Vienna led both cities to initiate a social housing program to create affordable housing for the masses moving into the cities. The cities share many characteristics and developed in similar directions at their early stages. Nevertheless, a century later, their social housing systems look far apart. While Vienna’s system continues to thrive and withstand pressures from the international and federal level, Berlin’s citizens showed their resentment towards housing in their city in a radical referendum demanding the expropriation of several real-estate companies. This thesis argues that we …

Research Review: "Food Insecurity Among Veterans Examining The Discrepancy Between Veteran Food Insecurity And Use Of The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap)", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This research review addresses food insecurity among veterans, linking it to adverse health outcomes and increased suicide risk. Despite routine screenings by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, food-insecure veterans have lower enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) than nonveterans. The research examines nuanced reasons for veterans' SNAP participation, highlighting disparities in initiation, termination, and benefit utilization patterns. Older veterans and those with disabilities are identified as underserved groups, emphasizing the need to improve SNAP accessibility for them. The findings also stress the importance of early interventions to support at-risk service members. This IVMF review also provides valuable …

Reflections On “Personal Responsibility” After Covid And Dobbs: Doubling Down On Privacy, Susan Frelich Appleton, Laura A. Rosenbury

Scholarship@WashULaw

This essay uses lenses of gender, race, marriage, and work to trace understandings of “personal responsibility” in laws, policies, and conversations about public support in the United States over three time periods: (I) the pre-COVID era, from the beginning of the American “welfare state” through the start of the Trump administration; (II) the pandemic years; and (III) the present post-pandemic period. We sought to explore the possibility that COVID and the assistance programs it inspired might have reshaped the notion of personal responsibility and unsettled assumptions about privacy and dependency. In fact, a mixed picture emerges. On the one hand, …

Staff Perceptions Of Responsibility And Implementation Of Cognitive Enrichment For Non-Human Primates In Zoo Settings, Ember Nevada Toth

All Master's Theses

In zoos, caregivers have considered enrichment as vital for their animal collections’ physical health and development. Since primate species are endangered and continue to decline in numbers in their natural habitat, zoos are steadily becoming the only places we can view and learn about them. In today’s zoos, cognitive enrichment—which falls into overlapping categories of enrichment and does not yet have a universally accepted definition—is either absent or inconsistently offered. Providing challenges to stimulate cognitive well-being has been found to influence the overall welfare of captive primates. Cognitive enrichment is considered very important according to zookeeper surveys but is not …

Tanf Work Policy Influences On Family Behaviors And Child Development, Robert William Sturgill Jr

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There has been a lack of research on how work participation policies have impacted child development through their influences on family decisions. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the perspectives of families toward TANF work participation policies, discover how those policies have influenced family behaviors, and analyze how those policy-behavior phenomena have impacted child development. First, the literature review showed that families with chronic welfare dependency had negative impacts on child development. The research showed that when TANF work participation policies were unenforced or income limits were too low, some recipients worked less and persisted in …

A Welfare Comparison Of Historical Cost And Fair Value Accounting Regimes, Palmer Edholm

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

With ongoing controversy concerning fair value and historical cost accounting, existing accounting theory is focused on intra-firm decision making and is thus deficient in addressing the issue of maximizing social welfare. I propose models of historical cost and fair value accounting regimes which are embedded in models of monopoly and oligopoly. This allows for social welfare implications. I find that historical cost results in greater expected profits for both monopolists and oligopolists. However, if the market is elastic enough, a fair value regimes is welfare enhancing. Whereas, if the market is inelastic enough, historical cost is welfare enhancing.

Welfare And Welfare Statism, Christopher Adepoju

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

As was famously stated by Margaret Mead, “Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts”. The contemporary discourse surrounding welfare and welfare statismis the fruit of a long history whose roots can be traced back through different societies in addressing the universal questions of care and provision. This article is an account of the diverse origins of modern Welfare discourse, as well as a normative overview of the varying arguments in favour of, and against it

Coverage Impacts Of Work Requirements From The Arkansas Medicaid Program, Brett D. Huettner

ETD Archive

I examine changes in Medicaid coverage and insurance status surrounding a work requirement policy implemented within the Arkansas Medicaid demonstration waiver. The policy applied to able-bodied, childless adults, aged 30 to 49, not enrolled as students, and was effective from 2018 to 2019. Eligibility was conditional on policy compliance. Taking a sample from the IPUMS American Community Survey database, I use triple-differences modeling to compare Arkansans subject to the policy with unaffected Arkansans and individuals from a set of control states. I find that the policy pilot group in Arkansas was less likely to be insured or have Medicaid coverage …

Is Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes) Wounding Frequency Affected By The Presence Versus Absence Of Visitors? A Multi-Institutional Study, Robin Elana Salak, Christina Cloutier Barbour

Student Published Works

Visitor effect studies have had inconsistent results, due in part to the inability to control for all confounding variables such as time of day, seasonal weather patterns, and so forth. This study represents the first instance where chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) wounding frequencies were investigated across extensive time periods in the presence and complete absence of visitors, thus eliminating many visitor-related variables. Additional variables were eliminated through the zoo selection process, based on institutional responses to a 29-question survey, providing a novel approach to the question of visitor effects. The aim of this study was to determine if visitors …

Food Price Volatility And Household Welfare: A Case Study Of Major Cities Of Pakistan, Nigar Zehra, Ambreen Fatima

Business Review

The purpose of this paper is to find the impact of food price volatility on the welfare of urban households of Pakistan. Food price volatility in monthly prices of major food commodities for main cities of Pakistan is calculated through standard deviation method. Moreover, the study adopts the methodology provided by Alkire and Foster 2007, and Alkire and Santos 2010 to develop Household Deprived Welfare Index (DWI) for major cities of Pakistan. Following Deaton 1985, the study uses pseudo panel approach. Fixed Effect technique is applied to estimate the impact of volatility on household welfare. The results generated from pseudo …

Overconfidence And Welfare In A Differentiated Duopoly, Jean-Baptiste Tondji

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

We examine whether owners' decisions to delegate corporate responsibilities to overconfident managers improve welfare. We develop a dynamic model with product differentiation, where firms compete in cost-reducing research and development (R&D) and output. Before firms compete, each owner makes a strategic decision whether to hire an overconfident manager. The results reveal that when R&D technology is less productive, owners hire overconfident managers who overinvest in cost-reducing R&D. These strategic decisions improve welfare when spillovers are small and R&D productivity is low, or spillovers are large, or product differentiation is strong.

The Gatt/Wto Welfare Effects: 1950–2015, Pao-Li Chang, Wei Jin, Kefang Yao

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates the welfare effects of GATT/WTO-induced reductions in tariffs, vari-able and fixed trade costs, based on identified direct effects of membership indicators on trade flows via nonparametric matching estimations. The identification does not require the use of tariff data, which permits a comprehensive evaluation of the welfare impact of GATT/WTO for a long panel since its inception (1950–2015) of as many as 180 economies. The results indicate substantial (but highly dispersed) welfare gains across members of different development stages and increasing welfare losses of nonmembers in later decades by staying outside the system. An extensive set of robustness …

The Value Of Arbitrage, Eduardo Dávila, Daniel Graves, Cecilia Parlatore

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper studies the social value of closing price differentials in financial markets. We show that arbitrage gaps (price differentials between markets) exactly correspond to the marginal social value of executing an arbitrage trade. We further show that arbitrage gaps and measures of price impact are sufficient to compute the total social value from closing an arbitrage gap. Theoretically, we show that, for a given arbitrage gap, the total social value of arbitrage is higher in more liquid markets. We apply our framework to compute the welfare gains from closing arbitrage gaps in the context of covered interest parity violations …

Transformaciones De Los Regímenes De Bienestar En Colombia, Bairon Otálvaro Marín

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

El artículo muestra el proceso de evolución de tres modelos referenciales de política social y de régimen de bienestar en los albores del siglo XXI en Colombia. Se acude al método de análisis cognitivo en políticas públicas, como estrategia para la construcción de datos, evidencias y argumentos que permiten describir e interpretar los diversos enfoques y tipos de política social implementados en contextos territoriales caracterizados por un aumento de relaciones de exclusión y desigualdad. Los resultados evidencian que los enfoques más desarrollados en Colombia son asistenciales, neo asistenciales (protección social) e inclusivos, miradas que han ido construyendo una forma de …

The Science Of Animal Sentience And The Politics Of Animal Welfare Should Be Kept Separate, Marian Stamp Dawkins

Animal Sentience

Although linked historically by Rowan et al., the scientific study of animal sentience and political campaigns to improve animal welfare should be kept separate, for at least two reasons. First, the separation makes it clear that standards of evidence acceptable for ethical or political decisions on animal welfare can be lower than those required for a rigorously scientific approach to animal sentience. Second, it helps to avoid confirmatory bias in the form of giving undue weight to results that are in line with pre-conceived ideas and political views.

Decapods As Food, Companions And Research Animals: Legal Impact Of Ascribing Sentience, Jonathan J. Cooper, Ambrose Tinarwo, Beth A. Ventura

Animal Sentience

This commentary provides an overview of the practical implications of attributing sentience to protect decapods as food, companion and research animals in the UK context. Recognising their capacity to suffer has implications for humane slaughter in farming and fishing sectors. It should also place a greater duty of care on owners of captive decapods, considering their needs and avoiding unnecessary suffering. The recognition of decapod sentience should also have an impact on their protection as research animals, although research with a potential to cause suffering may be needed to better understand decapods’ capacity to suffer.