Economics Commons^™

Do Gasoline Prices Affect Residential Property Values?, Adele C. Morris, Helen R. Neill

Brookings Mountain West Publications

This paper estimates the effect of gasoline prices on home values and explores the degree to which the relationship varies across a city. Using data from 930,702 home sales in Clark County, Nevada, from 1976 through 2010, we find that gasoline prices have significantly different effects on the sales price of homes in different neighborhoods. A ten percent increase in gasoline prices is associated with changes in location-specific average home values that span a range of over $13,000. This suggests that energy policies may affect household housing wealth via gasoline prices, a heretofore unrecognized distributional outcome.

Hispanic Entrepreneurship In Nebraska: Trends And Economic Profile, Lissette Aliaga-Linares

Latino/Latin American Studies Policy Briefs

The growth of the Hispanic population in Nebraska was accompanied by a significant increase in Hispanic entrepreneurship at the beginning of the 2000s. From 2002 to 2007, the 3,065 Hispanic-owned businesses constituted a small but dynamic and resilient segment of business growth in the state. Did participation in self-employment decrease for Hispanics after the economic crisis of 2008? What are the characteristics of Hispanic-owned businesses and Hispanics business-owners in Nebraska? Do some of these characteristics reveal social or economic barriers that could prevent these businesses from succeeding?

The Vientiane Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growt, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Laos is a small, landlocked, mountainous country in Southeast Asia. As a country, it shares borders with Myanmar and the People’s Republic of China to the Northwest, Vietnam to the East, Cambodia to the South and Thailand to the West.

The Dili Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Timor-Leste, Asia’s newest nation, is located in Southeast Asia, on the southernmost edge of the Indonesian archipelago. The country was colonised by the Portuguese for over 450 years, occupied by the Indonesians for 24 years and administered by the United Nations for two and a half years. As a nation, Timor-Leste has had a very traumatic birth.

Mountain Monitor - 3rd Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

As a group, the 10 major metro areas of the Mountain West outperformed the national economy during the third quarter of 2014 on all four indicators of economic vitality measured by the Mountain Monitor: employment growth, output growth, unemployment, and house prices. In the three months ending in September, the country’s large metropolitan areas were anticipating the rapid uptick in national economic growth that took hold at the end of 2014. Mountain region metro areas led the way.

All but two major metro areas in the region added jobs, and six did so at a faster rate than the …

Whose Success? The State–Foreign Capital Nexus And The Development Of The Automotive Industry In Slovakia, Petr Pavlinek

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Using the case study of Slovakia, this article considers the role of the state in the rapid growth of the automotive industry in integrated peripheral markets of the global automotive industry. Although this growth has been mainly driven by the investment strategies of automotive lead firms, the state has played an important role by accommodating the strategic needs of foreign capital through neoliberal economic policies. In addition to secondary sources, the empirical research is based on a 2010 survey of 299 Slovak-based automotive firms with a response rate of 44% and on 38 on-site firm-level interviews conducted between 2011 and …

El Recuperador Urbano Reconstruido: Una Perspectiva Crítica Sobre La Gestión De Residuos Urbanos En Buenos Aires Y La Nuevas Políticas Públicas De "Ciudad Verde" / The Urban Recycler, Reconstructed: A Critical Perspective On The Waste Managementprocesses Of Buenos Aires, And The New Public Policies Known As “Green City”, Mira Korber

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Historically, a survival method for the most impoverished populations of developing countries has been the collection, accumulation, and sale of recycled materials accessible in the urban waste generated by large metropolitan areas. After Argentina’s economic crisis of 2001, the number of people who participate in this informal sector of work in Greater Buenos Aires boomed due to the financial recession that devastated the country. In the last fourteen years, the population of urban recyclers, colloquially called cartoneros or cirujas, has not diminished. Various advances have been made towards the legitimation of their work as environmental protection and recycling through their …

El Modelo Médico, El Capitalismo Y La Acción Pública: Un Estudio Sobre Discapacidad Y Empleo En La Argentina / The Medical Model, Capitalism And Public Action:A Study Of Disability And Employment In Argentina, Zoe Zakin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

People with disabilities are one of the largest “minority” groups in the world, accounting for approximately 15% of the global population. They are still, however, denied most of their basic rights in countries around the world. While movements have been made around access to education, transportation, and health systems, people with disabilities are still culturally thought of as incapable of being able to work. By being characterized this way, people with disabilities are denied a most basic human right. In Argentina, there has been greater effort in recent years to provide services for people with disabilities, which are a growing …

Evaluating Current Management Of Drug-Resistanttuberculosis In Mumbai, India, Meryl Kus

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research was aimed at analyzing the current state of drug resistant tuberculosis in Mumbai and how effectively different actors in the realm of public health are managing DR-TB. The methods for this project involved a variety of semi-structured interviews as well as field observation. Key findings show a very present and largely negative private sector influence, effective NGO models for disease control, a burden of DR-TB/HIV comorbidity, and a rapid increase to transmission-based spread of DR-TB. Key implications of conclusions include the necessity of increasing the private sector’s compliance with WHO standards, adaptation of community and education based NGO …

Emil Salim [Indonesia, Minister Of Environment], Emil Salim

Digital Narratives of Asia

Emil Salim was part of the famed Berkeley Mafia who brought Indonesia out of its economic crisis in the mid-1960s. He later went on to become Minister of Environment in President Suharto's cabinet. He speaks to DNA about how he overcame obstacles in his career, even when he did have subject knowledge, and what it was like working with President Suharto.

An Alternative Framework For Sectoral Contributions To Gdp Level And Growth: Application To The Philippines, Jesus C. Dumagan

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

This paper applies relative price weights–where relative price is the ratio of a sector’s GDP deflator to the aggregate GDP deflator–to convert sectoral real GDP to homogeneous units using the economy’s GDP as “numeraire” in an alternative framework for GDP level aggregation and growth decomposition. This alternative and the “traditional” framework–without relative price weights–are compared and applied to Philippine GDP to show that the latter framework is deficient and misleading for its inability to determine the effects on GDP growth of changes and differences in sectoral relative prices that need to be taken into account.

Europe: Negotiating Changes Through Compromise, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Herman Van Rompuy, the outgoing President of the European Council, believes Europe can overcome its current challenges by doing what it does best: negotiate and compromise

Mind The Liquidity Gap: Building A Better Capital Market For You, Kaushik Rudra

Asian Management Insights

Asian banks in most jurisdictions are currently more than adequately capitalised with respect to Basel III. However, as they are called upon to support the region’s economic growth over the next decade, they are likely to run up against capital constraints.

Do Asian Conglomerates Offer Attractive Risk-Adjusted Returns?, Nandini Vijayaraghavan

Asian Management Insights

Research on a sample of seven Asian conglomerates shows that stocks of some of these companies not only outperformed the S&P 500, but also exhibited lower volatility.

It’S Not Will You Succeed? But Can You Afford To Fail?, Girija Pande

Asian Management Insights

With India and China’s economic ties no longer defined only by trade, the countries’ convergence is opening up new opportunities and challenges for businesses on either side seeking to cross the Sino-Indian border.

Unleashing Asean's Potential Through Aec, Michael Zink

Asian Management Insights

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has set an ambitious goal to integrate the economies of its ten members by 2015, a move that is aimed at boosting the bloc’s competitiveness and creating development across the region that is more equitable. With the target date for Southeast Asia's countries to create a single economic market just months away, increasing attention is being paid to the region's vast economic potential. If successful, the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) will not only create one of the world’s largest integrated economic spheres, but will add vastly to the appeal of …

Consistent Level Aggregation And Growth Decomposition Of Real Gdp, Jesus C. Dumagan

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

This paper formulates a general framework for consistent level aggregation and growth decomposition of real GDP. However, the focus is on US GDP in chained prices based on the Fisher index since this GDP motivated this paper’s purposes. These are to explain why problematic residuals‒in contributions to US GDP level and growth “not allocated by industry”‒ show up in the existing framework by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and, therefore, to propose an alternative framework for consistent level aggregation and growth decomposition where residuals cannot arise. This paper’s residual-free framework applies to real GDP regardless of the underlying indexes, i.e., …

Central Minnesota Economic And Business Conditions Report, Second Quarter 2014, Richard A. Macdonald, King Banaian

Central Minnesota Economic and Business Conditions Report

Central Minnesota business conditions are expected to improve over the next several months according to the predictions of the St. Cloud State University (SCSU) Central Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators. The leading economic indicator index (LEI) improved in the second quarter as improvements in durable goods orders, additional new business incorporations, and strength in a general measure of state business conditions helped drive the LEI higher. The SCSU Central Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators is now 7.95 percent higher than one year ago.

There were 1,370 new business filings with the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State …

Northeast Minnesota Economic And Business Conditions Report, Second Quarter 2014, Richard A. Macdonald, King Banaian

Northeast Minnesota Economic and Business Conditions Report

Northeast Minnesota business conditions are expected to improve over the next several months according to the predictions of the St. Cloud State University (SCSU) Northeast Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators. The leading economic indicator index (LEI) improved in the second quarter as increases in Duluth/Superior Area (MSA) residential building permits, additional filings for new business incorporations, improvements in a general measure of state business conditions, gains in a supply managers’ survey index and lower initial jobless claims all drove the LEI higher.

There were 548 new business filings with the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State in Northeast …

Northwest Minnesota Economic And Business Conditions Report, Second Quarter 2014, Richard A. Macdonald, King Banaian

Northwest Minnesota Economic and Business Conditions Report

Northwest Minnesota business conditions are expected to improve over the next several months according to the predictions of the St. Cloud State University (SCSU) Northwest Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI). The macroeconomic environment for rural America has improved and consumer sentiment has strengthened in recent months. A rise in new business formation along with an increase in residential building permits in Northwest Minnesota’s two major metropolitan areas also helped drive the LEI higher in the second quarter. The SCSU Northwest Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators is now 1.4 percent above its level one year ago as it …

Southwest Minnesota Economic And Business Conditions Report, Second Quarter 2014, Richard A. Macdonald, King Banaian

Southwest Minnesota Economic and Business Conditions Report

Southwest Minnesota business conditions are expected to slow over the next several months according to the predictions of the St. Cloud State University (SCSU) Southwest Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI). Despite improvements in the general outlook for rural economies, an increase in new regional business formation and rising Mankato area residential building permits, the LEI is little changed from its strong reading in this year’s first quarter. Holding back the regional economic outlook is a recent rise in initial jobless claims in the Southwest Minnesota planning area. The SCSU Southwest Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators increased by …

Twin Cities Minnesota Economic And Business Conditions Report, Second Quarter 2014, Richard A. Macdonald, King Banaian

Twin Cities Minnesota Economic and Business Conditions Report

Twin Cities business conditions are expected to pick up over the next several months according to the predictions of the St. Cloud State University (SCSU) Twin Cities Index of Leading Economic Indicators. The leading economic indicator index (LEI) was lifted by a rise in new filings for business incorporations and limited liability companies (LLC) in the Twin Cities. Improvement in two general measures of statewide business conditions also contributed positively to the Twin Cities outlook. Lower initial jobless claims further enhanced projected economic growth in the seven-county metro area. The Twin Cities index increased 5.38 points in the second quarter …

Workforce Housing Design Charrette In York, Maine, Workforce Housing Coalition Of The Greater Seacoast, Maine Community Foundation

Maine Sea Grant Publications

The Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast organized a workforce housing design charrette in the community of York, Maine. The event was held over a two-day period, October 15 and 17, 2014. The process included a site walk, community dialogue session, and design workshop, culminating in a design reveal on October 17, 2014. This, the Coalition’s fifth annual design charrette, produced conceptual designs for the development of workforce housing opportunities on the subject sites located in the U.S. Route 1 and Vacation Drive vicinity of York, Maine.

The Yangon Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Since its independence from British rule in 1948, Myanmar has struggled with multiple obstacles, including a series of violent internal ethnic and sectarian conflicts, isolationist fiscal policies instituted by an increasingly distrustful military government and international sanctions and condemnation following government crackdowns in 1988 and 2007. In spite of all these setbacks, President Thein Sein’s decision in 2011 to liberalise the country’s political and economic systems has created a new wave of optimism for what was once commonly regarded as a failed state.

Southeast Minnesota Economic And Business Conditions Report, Second Quarter 2014, Richard A. Macdonald, King Banaian

Southeast Minnesota Economic and Business Conditions Report

Southeast Minnesota business conditions are expected to remain strong over the next several months according to the predictions of the St. Cloud State University (SCSU) Southeast Minnesota Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI). Improvements in consumer sentiment, an increase in new filings for business incorporation and limited liability company (LLC), a rise in the Minnesota Business Conditions index, and increasing Rochester metropolitan area residential building permits all helped lift the second quarter LEI by 5.42 points. The only component of the LEI that served as a drag on the leading index was initial jobless claims. The Southeast Minnesota Index is …

Land Rights Among Subsistence Farmers: An Examination Of Madagascar’S Land Reform And Prevailing Systems Of Land Tenure In Betafo, Taylor Crowl

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In Madagascar, legal systems of land tenure have been inaccessible for the vast majority of the rural population. This has stranded millions of subsistence farmers in a sense of insecurity, as they lack legal rights for the property that they have farmed for generations. Madagascar’s land reform, launched in 2005, attempted to change these exclusionary tenure practices. This reform —known as the Plan National Foncier—created land certificates and local land offices in an attempt to make legal land tenure financially, geographically, and logistically accessible to the local population. This study discusses the successes, failures, and unforeseen consequences of Madagascar’s land …

Massachusetts On The Move: The Intersection Of Talent, Transportation, And Housing, Richard Boyajian, Juleen Freitas, David Mahoney, Karen Ng, Robert Woods

Emerging Leaders Program Team Projects

The Massachusetts Business Roundtable (MBR) collaborated with a team from the Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) from the University of Massachusetts Boston to interview business leaders to explore the important intersection of talent, transportation, and housing on the state’s economy. The ELP Team obtained the insights of 15 key business leaders, industry experts as well as public policy organizations on these important issues and their impact across the Commonwealth. This research seeks to capture the views of stakeholders throughout Massachusetts. The ELP Team surveyed the landscape by reviewing trends and current research on these policy issues.

Economic Impact Of The Arkansas Research And Technology Park, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

Construction of the Arkansas Research and Technology Park (ARTP) began in 2003 and operations commenced in 2004. For ten years, the ARTP has been impacting the economy of the state of Arkansas in two primary ways. First, the operation of the ARTP enabled the business expenditures of its tenants. Second, there were direct expenditures on one-time construction activities in building the infrastructure of the ARTP. This report considers the overall impact of the ARTP from the beginning of construction to 2014. Over that period, the ARTP impact has been more than a half billion dollars in the Arkansas economy.

Microfinance Et Développement Au Cameroun : L’Efficacité De La Mc2 Dans La Communauté Agricole De Batoufam, Elisabeth Hansen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The agriculture sector in Cameroon remains underdeveloped, and many farmers continue to suffer a lack of means. Given the debate concerning the efficacy of microfinance as a solution,this study aimed to examine the efficacy of a microfinance institution, La Mutuelle Communautaire de Croissance (MC²) in Batoufam, a rural agricultural village in Cameroon. In recent years, MC²s have become very popular in Cameroon; however, there is not yet a thorough study on the efficacy of the MC² of Batoufam. Through interviewing farmers, the Chief of Batoufam, the employees of MC² and of the NGO Appropriate …

Informal Transportation In Uganda: A Case Study Of The Boda Boda, Bradley Raynor

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In Uganda’s capital city of Kampala, the closest mode of transport to mass transit that citizens have access to is the 14-seater taxis which fill the streets of Kampala, create traffic jams, and are unable to fulfill the transportation needs of the city’s growing population. In response, motorcycle taxis, called Boda Bodas, which are able to navigate traffic jams, access remote locations where taxis don’t go, and deliver passengers to their destinations in a timely manner, filled the gap in public transportation. Unfortunately, while many riders have organized themselves in associations, the industry remains largely unregulated by the Kampala …