Economics Commons^™

Spillover Effects In Police Use Of Force, Justin E. Holz, Roman G. Rivera, Bocar A. Ba

All Faculty Scholarship

We study the link between officer injuries-on-duty and the force-use of their peers using a network of officers who, through a random lottery, began the police academy together. We find that peer injuries-on-duty increase the probability of using force by 7%. The effect is concentrated in a narrow time window near the event and is not associated with significantly lower injury risk to the officer. Complaints of improper searches and failure to provide service also increase after peer injuries, suggesting that the increase in force might be driven by heightened risk aversion.

Examining Racial & Ethnic Disparities In The Reach Of The Medicare Shared Savings Program, Lindsey Arneson

Capstone Experience

It is important to understand the quality of health care for racial and ethnic minorities covered under the largest U.S. government-run insurance program, Medicare, because the demographics of the U.S. are becoming older and more diverse. A new value-based program under Medicare is the Shared Savings Program (MSSP), which creates incentives to improve care quality and health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with a specific focus on increasing the provision of preventive care services. This capstone project aims to understand the representation of racial/ethnic minority Medicare beneficiaries, namely African Americans/Blacks and Hispanics/Latinxs, that receive care from providers or facilities (i.e., Accountable …

The Rise Of Anti-Immigration Populist Radical Right Parties: The Effect Of The Syrian Conflict On Refugee Resettlement And Migration Policies In Germany And Austria, Sara Kouchehbagh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The effects of Syrian migration in Europe have revolutionized refugee resettlement globally. Most immigration and refugee problems have historically been settled similarly post WWII, however, Syria is the largest refugee crisis since WWII. It is important to learn how to respond to future conflicts with displacement and resettlement affecting Western countries that are unprepared to respond to a conflict of such magnitude. This thesis will compare previous conflicts and the Syrian conflict, while highlighting the resilient political momentum of reactionary new political groups in European states, particularly Germany and Austria.

The research and results from this study will include data …

Book Reviews, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Article Index, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Police Oversight On Crime And Allegations Of Misconduct: Evidence From Chicago, Bocar A. Ba, Roman G. Rivera

All Faculty Scholarship

Does policing the police increase crime? We avoid simultaneity effects of increased public oversight during a major scandal by identifying events in Chicago that only impacted officers’ self-imposed monitoring. We estimate crime’s response to self- and public-monitoring using regression discontinuity and generalized synthetic control methods. Self-monitoring, triggered by police union memos, significantly reduced serious complaints without impacting crime or effort. However, after a scandal, both civilian complaints and crime rates rise, suggesting that higher crime rates following heightened oversight results from de-policing and civilian behavior simultaneously changing. Our research suggests that proactive internal accountability improves police-community relations without increasing crime.

In-Group Bias And The Police: Evidence From Award Nominations, Nayoung Rim, Roman G. Rivera, Bocar A. Ba

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the impact of in-group bias on the internal dynamics of a police department. Prior studies have documented racial bias in policing, but little is known about bias against officers due to lack of available data. We construct a novel panel dataset of Chicago Police Department officers, with detailed information on officer characteristics and work productivity. Exploiting quasi-random variation in supervisor assignment, we find that white supervisors are less likely to nominate black officers than white or Hispanic officers. We find weaker evidence that male supervisors are less likely to nominate female officers than male officers. We explore …

Fiscal Citizenship: How Can Tax Efficiency And Isonomy Aid In The Promotion Of Economic Rights, Social Participation, Political Accountability, And Cultural Diversity?, Gustavo Voeroes Dénes

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

According to the World Inequality Report 2018 (WID 2017), Brazil is one of the few countries that has not recently displayed an increase in income inequality, having instead sustained it on persistently very high levels, actually composing the world’s “inequality frontier”. While such levels of inequality may be partly attributed to poor distribution of property rights, human capital endowments, and specificity of labor relations, a significant part of it is undoubtedly due the national fiscal system’s reduced distributive capacity, compromised by one the worst taxation systems in the world. Occupying the 184th position out of 190 countries in the World …

Toward Fair And Sustainable Capitalism: A Comprehensive Proposal To Help American Workers, Restore Fair Gainsharing Between Employees And Shareholders, And Increase American Competitiveness By Reorienting Our Corporate Governance System Toward Sustainable Long-Term Growth And Encouraging Investments In America’S Future, Leo E. Strine Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

To promote fair and sustainable capitalism and help business and labor work together to build an American economy that works for all, this paper presents a comprehensive proposal to reform the American corporate governance system by aligning the incentives of those who control large U.S. corporations with the interests of working Americans who must put their hard-earned savings in mutual funds in their 401(k) and 529 plans. The proposal would achieve this through a series of measured, coherent changes to current laws and regulations, including: requiring not just operating companies, but institutional investors, to give appropriate consideration to and make …

Token Representation?: Impact Of Female Reservations In Panchayati Raj Institutions In Elections To State And National Legislatures, Surbhi Bharadwaj

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

Reservations have long formed a fundamental tenet of affirmative action in India. Quotas for representation of various disadvantaged groups proliferate across public educational institutions and government jobs. However, elections to public office have largely escaped such quotas, except those that are caste-based. A shift in this status quo occurred in 1992 with the establishment of the Panchayati Raj system of grassroots governance. 34% of all seats under Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) were to be reserved for women under the 73rd amendment. Another constitutional amendment passed in September 2009 increased PRI quotas for women to 50%. This paper seeks to examine …

An Integrated Climate Science-Economic Model For Evaluating Adaptations To Sea Level Rise: A Prototype Model For Monterey, California, Charles S. Colgan, Fernando Depaolis, Philip King

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Preparing for flooding that will be exacerbated by climate change and sea level rise must take place in the context of "deep uncertainty". One strategy for dealing with that uncertainty is to convert unknown probabilities into know probabilities using techniques such as Monte Carlo analysis. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of creating a cost-benefit model for sea level rise adaptation options using an integrated climate change/sea level rise-weather-economic model. The model tests the probability of benefits exceeding costs for shoreline protection such as beach nourishment and armoring under multiple iterations of possible climate futures. It uses shoreline segments in Monterey, …

The Politics Of Where: The Federal Government And Canada's Urbanization, 1867-2017, Charles D. Crenna

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation responds to a single overarching research question: what is the nature and extent of the federal government’s influence on urbanization in Canada, both on its systems of cities and on their internal structure? Lessons learned regarding the federal role in Canada’s urbanization remain relevant and applicable to emerging conditions. They offer a sound, streetwise foundation for future urban policy development, based on understanding the vital politics of where.

Large, complex systems of cities are both self-organizing and responsive to strategic guidance by the federal government. Politically-difficult choices among competing urban locations can be made both by hiding …

Factors In Refugee Resilience Building During Humanitarian Response, Rachel Starner

Capstone Collection

If countries hosting refugees want to build resiliency and reduce dependency on foreign relief, humanitarian response and local development need to be addressed simultaneously, and collaboration at all levels of stakeholders needs to take place in planning and decision making. Additionally, innovation and strong leadership are strong factors in creating and leading new ideas as funding and world leadership dynamics change, especially with traditional leaders such as the US and the UN losing influence. Observations made at the Mahama Refugee Camp in Rwanda as well as existing document analysis reflect these traits by active efforts of camp administrators and humanitarian …

Planning For Industrial Land And Industrial Jobs: An Evaluation Of New York City's Industrial Business Zone Program, Jennifer Davis

Masters Theses

In recent years, industrial preservation policies, which aim to preserve urban industrial activity and industrial employment often through the preservation of industrial land, have emerged as a flashpoint in cities across the country that have implemented these policies. While critics contend that industrial preservation policies amount to smokestack chasing in “post-industrial” cities like New York City, industrial preservationists argue that such policies help to preserve well-paying, middle-class jobs and thus represent a tool to mitigate rising income inequalities in cities. Despite considerable attention to these policies, minimal research has evaluated the effectiveness of industrial preservation policies as land use and …

Public Interests And Economic Regulation Of Gambling, Rein Halbersma, Joost Poort

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

In the Netherlands, the Betting and Gaming Act from 1964 largely determines the current structure of gambling markets. The policy was to channel consumers to a limited number of licensed operators. This led to state-owned monopolies for lotteries, sports betting and casinos, a private monopoly for horse race betting, a limited number of privately owned charity lotteries, and a large number of private slot machines operators.

Pending legislation proposes an online market without a limit on the number of operators. Furthermore, state ownership will be phased out, and introduced legislation to privatizing and expanding the number of casinos. The current …

What Is A Game Of Chance? An Application To Loot Boxes, Wessel Oomens

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

The traditional landscape of games of chance such as lotteries, betting, casinos and slots has become intertwined with complex financial products as well as digital games with elements of chance.

The Netherlands Gambling Authority has issued a guidance paper outlining a five-step decision process in order to determine whether a game classifies as gambling:

• Threshold: is the number of providers, players and the amount money involved considerable enough to warrant spending resources in assessing the game?
• Overlap: is there potential overlap with other rules and regulations, in particular those governing financial products?
• Prize: does the game award its winners with …

Local Food Policy & Consumer Food Cooperatives: Evolutionary Case Studies, Afton Hupper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Darwin’s theory of natural selection has played a central role in the development of the biological sciences, but evolution can also explain change in human culture. Institutions, mechanisms that govern behavior and social order, are important subjects of cultural evolution. Institutions can help stabilize cooperation, defined as behavior that benefits others, often at a personal cost. Cooperation is important for solving social dilemmas, scenarios in which the interests of the individual conflict with those of the group. A number of mechanisms by which institutions evolve to support cooperation have been identified, yet theoretical models of institutional change have rarely been …

The Controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: America's Most Expensive Weapons System And Its Global Impact, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

Presentation describing my 2019 Palgrave Macmillan book Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It describes this aircraft and places particular emphasis on the government information resources from multiple countries used in writing this book.

Capturing Regulatory Agendas?: An Empirical Study Of Industry Use Of Rulemaking Petitions, Daniel Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

A great deal of skepticism toward administrative agencies stems from the widespread perception that they excessively or even exclusively cater to business interests. From the political right comes the accusation that business interests use regulation to erect barriers to entry that protect profits and stifle competition. From the political left comes the claim that business interests use secretive interactions with agencies to erode and negate beneficial regulatory programs. Regulatory “capture” theory elevates many of these claims to the status of economic law. Despite growing skepticism about capture theory in academic circles, empirical studies of business influence and capture return ambiguous …

The Tcja And The Questionable Incentive To Incorporate, Part 2, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has put the question should a business be organized as a passthrough entity or as a corporation at center stage. The TCJA eliminated much of the tax disadvantage from using the corporate form, but did Congress go so far that it advantaged corporations relative to pass-through entities? Some prominent commentators say yes. They argue that the federal income tax now encourages individual owners of pass-through businesses to restructure their business as subchapter C corporations, and they predict that the TCJA will lead to a cascade of incorporations. The principal driver of the shift …

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy H: The Global Contagion, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, it was the largest such filing in U.S. history and a huge shock to the world’s financial markets, which were already stressed from the deflated housing bubble and questions about subprime mortgages. Lehman was the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank with assets of $639 billion and its operations spread across the globe. Lehman’s clients and counterparties began to disclose millions of dollars of potential losses as they accounted for their exposures. But the impact of Lehman’s demise was felt well beyond its counterparties. Concern regarding its real estate assets, its large …

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy G: The Special Case Of Derivatives, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

When it filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2008, Lehman Brothers was an active participant in the derivatives market and was party to 906,000 derivative transactions of all types under 6,120 ISDA Master Agreements with an estimated notional value of $35 trillion. The majority of Lehman’s derivatives were bilateral agreements not traded on an exchange but in the over-the-counter (OTC) market. Because derivatives enjoyed an exemption from the automatic stay provisions of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, parties to Lehman’s derivatives could seek resolution and self-protection without the guidance and restraint of the bankruptcy court. The rush of counterparties to novate …

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy E: The Effects On Lehman’S U.S. Broker-Dealer, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

Lehman’s U.S. broker-dealer, Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI), was excluded from the parent company’s bankruptcy filing on September 15, 2008, because it was thought that the solvent subsidiary might be able to wind down its affairs in a normal fashion. However, the force of the parent’s demise proved too strong, and within days, LBI and dozens of Lehman subsidiaries around the world were also in liquidation. As a regulated broker-dealer, LBI was required to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission financial-responsibility rules for broker-dealers, including maintaining customer assets separately. However, the corporate complexity and enterprise integration that characterized the Lehman …

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy D: The Role Of Ernst & Young, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Rosalind L. Bennett, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

For many years prior to its demise, Lehman Brothers employed Ernst & Young (EY) as the firm’s independent auditors to review its financial statements and express an opinion as to whether they fairly represented the company’s financial position. EY was supposed to try to detect fraud, determine whether a matter should be publicly disclosed, and communicate certain issues to Lehman’s Board audit committee. After Lehman filed for bankruptcy, it was discovered that the firm had employed questionable accounting with regard to an unorthodox financing transaction, Repo 105, which it used to make its results appear better than they were. EY …

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy C: Managing The Balance Sheet Through The Use Of Repo 105, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

The Lehman Brothers court-appointed bankruptcy examiner produced a 2,200-page report detailing possible claims that the estate might pursue. The most surprising revelation of the report was that during its last year Lehman had relied heavily on an unusual financing transaction—Repo 105. The examiner concluded that Lehman’s aggressive use of Repo 105 transactions enabled it to remove up to $50 billion of assets from its balance sheet at quarter-end and to manipulate its leverage ratio so that it could report more favorable results. This case considers in-depth Lehman’s questionable use of Repo 105 transactions and its impact.

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy A: Overview, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Thomas Piontek, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, sought Chapter 11 protection, initiating the largest bankruptcy proceeding in U.S. history. The demise of the 164-year old firm was a seminal event in the global financial crisis. Under the direction of its long-time Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, Lehman had been very successful pursuing a high-leverage, high-risk business model that required it to daily raise billions of dollars to fund its operations. Beginning in 2006, Lehman began to invest aggressively in real-estate-related assets and soon had significant exposures to housing and subprime mortgages, just as these …

The Tcja And The Questionable Incentive To Incorporate, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has put the question should a business be organized as a passthrough entity or as a corporation at center stage. The TCJA eliminated much of the tax disadvantage from using the corporate form, but did Congress go so far that it advantaged corporations relative to pass-through entities? Some prominent commentators say yes. They argue that the federal income tax now encourages individual owners of pass-through businesses to restructure their business as subchapter C corporations, and they predict that the TCJA will lead to a cascade of incorporations. The principal driver of the shift …

Analyzing The Interplay Between Public Pension Finances And Government Finances: Lessons From Linking An Economic Model To A Pension Fund Model, Yimeng Yin, Donald Boyd

Public Administration and Policy Faculty Scholarship

Public pension funds invest in stock, bonds, and other assets in an effort to keep the costs to governments of funding pensions low. Researchers have examined the investment-related risks to public pension funds, to the governments that contribute to them, and to stakeholders in pension funds and governments, using stochastic simulation models of pension fund finances.

These models generally use simple investment return assumptions, such as that returns are drawn from a normal distribution, are independent from year to year, and are not correlated with the governmental tax revenue needed to pay pension contributions. Because investment returns and tax revenue …

The Impact Of The Durbin Amendment On Banks, Merchants, And Consumers, Vladimir Mukharlyamov, Natasha Sarin

All Faculty Scholarship

After the Great Recession, new regulatory interventions were introduced to protect consumers and reduce the costs of financial products. Some voiced concern that direct price regulation was unlikely to help consumers, because banks offset losses in one domain by increasing the prices that they charge consumers for other products. This paper studies this issue using the Durbin Amendment, which decreased the interchange fees that banks are allowed to charge merchants for processing debit transactions. Merchant interchange fees, previously averaging 2 percent of transaction value, were capped at $0.22, decreasing bank revenue by $6.5 billion annually. The objective of Durbin was …

Slogans Appropriate To The Legacy Of Martin Luther King Jr., Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

For printing signs, banners, posters, tee shirts, and bumper stickers (and for preaching sermons) that are appropriate to the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., please consider the following slogans: ABOLISH WAR, ABOLISH POVERTY, AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, SUPPORT AN ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS, JOBS FOR ALL, GUARANTEED INCOME FOR ALL, SUPPORT UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME, and GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR - Luke 4:14-19.