Economics Commons^™

Economic Analysis Of The Critical Habitat Designation Process For Endangered And Threatened Species Under The Endangered Species Act Of 1973, Katherine Fosburgh

Honors Projects

Habitat destruction is the leading cause of biodiversity loss in the US. Under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), habitat deemed essential to endangered and threatened species recovery is proposed as critical habitat (CH). CH areas are subject to regulations that could alter land development plans or increase costs. The potential economic opportunity cost created by CH regulations may lead to the exclusion of land proposed for CH designation, thereby reducing the conservation benefits of the CH rule. In this paper, I use a unique dataset collected from Federal Register (FR) documents to estimate the reduction in CH acreage from proposed …

Meta Analysis Of Rct Interventions, Ayo Ellis

Master's Theses

External validity of an RCT intervention enables understanding of where interventions are successful.

Meta-analysis allows for more generalized statements to be made on the effectiveness of RCTs across countries of different geographic and national income profiles. By comparing the findings from similar studies carried out in different settings I seek to describe whether RCTs in certain sectors are more sensitive to high GDP growth or higher levels of GDP. I consider 402 health, education, and industry development RCT studies done between 1980 and 2015 in 201 countries compiled by development non-profit Aidgrade. I find no significant effect of income level …

Investigating The Effects Of Student Debt On Career Outcomes: An Empirical Approach, Gideon Moore

Honors Projects

High student debt has been hypothesized to affect career choice, causing students to desire stable, high paying jobs. To test this hypothesis, I rely on plausibly exogenous variation in debt due to a federal policy shift. In the summer of 2007, the Higher Education Reconciliation Act (or HERA) expanded the cap for federally subsidized student loans. I examine how variation in debt affects career choice and eventual salary of students using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult Cohort of students who were of college age during the implementation of the policy. I find …

Identifying Gentrification: The Case Of Portland, Lindsey M. Buck

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Portland, Oregon has been considered a candidate for gentrification in recent media due to its changing populations, businesses, and landscapes. Authors have worked to study the effects of gentrification across the United States, focusing on large cities such as Detroit and San Francisco. While these results are increasingly interesting, they tend to focus on census data many years in the past. There is also a gap within the literature: west cities that are not coastal cities. This is extremely important; many people are being displaced or seeing their neighborhoods change character and composition due to gentrification. Using census tract data …

Desarrollo De Las Capacidades De La Población De Niños Y Niñas De La Localidad De Barrios Unidos: Caso De Los Comedores Comunitarios, Paola Andrea Murcia Rojas, Juan Sebastián Fuentes Castro

Economía

No abstract provided.

Contracting Institutions And Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence From The U.S. Mulitnationals, Gregory Phelan

Economics Theses

Development Economics studies have highlighted the importance of both property rights and contracting institutions for attracting foreign direct investment. However, to the best of our knowledge, none of the previous studies has examined the separate FDI impacts of these institutions. Using country level data, this thesis examines the effects that both contracting and property rights institutions have on United States multinationals' foreign direct investment decisions. We control for potential endogeneity by using indigenous population density and country latitude, along with a British legal origin dummy variable as instruments for property rights and contracting institutions, respectively. We find strong evidence that …

Too Big To Fail: Economic Voting And The 2008 Election, Aman Batheja

Economics Theses

The onset of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression just months before the 2008 presidential election is thought to have played a significant role in voting behavior. Yet the extent to which voters followed traditional economic voting patterns in choosing between Barack Obama and John McCain is less clear. Using exit poll data merged with state-level aggregate economic data, we search for evidence that negative shifts in economic status made voters more likely to support Obama. After controlling for various demographic, partisan, and geographic variables, we find that voters who believed that the economy was the top issue …

The Integration Of The Economics Profession Across Countries : Evidence From Paper Citations, Minjie Guo

Economics Theses

By relating country-level journal article citation patterns to country-level proxies for various policies, the current project attempts to uncover possible causal relationships between them. The paper measures patterns of knowledge flows across counties and over time using the citation information from the Social Sciences Citation Index for 174 Economics journals from 1975 to 2006. The results indicate evidence that economic openness and the adoption of the Internet have a positive effect on the spread of knowledge.

Changes In Tests Of Patentability And The Effects On Return To Patenting Of Business Method Patents, Darren Sheets

Economics Theses

In the past decade there has been a surge of business method patents granted, due in large part to court cases that have redefined the tests for determining patentability of these inventions. This is of interest for several reasons such as the legality of these patents and their role in promoting innovation. Rather than promoting innovation as desired, they may be used to block rival firms from competing or used as bargaining chips in negotiations. This research focuses on the relationship between firm value and the importance of a firm's patent portfolio. To measure the strength of a patent portfolio …

The Effects Of Community Uninsurance On Health Care Quality For The Insured Population, Tuan Anh Nguyen

Economics Theses

An important aspect of the ongoing health care reform of 2010 is to provide health coverage to the uninsured, the rising population of which has remained a significant challenge to overcome. Previously, efforts to reduce the number of people without health insurance have been centered on a moral rationale that providing care for the medically indigent was "the right thing" to do. However, recent evidence suggests that it might be in the best interest of people who are already insured to be concerned about the rate of uninsurance in their communities because of a potential negative spillover effect. Using four …

What Are Country-Level Determinants Of Economic Research Productivity?, Hoa Nguyen

Economics Theses

Economics research productivity is an emerging concern because it determines education system's quality and it can help improve economic welfare. This study seeks to investigate country-level determinants of research productivity in the Economics discipline. The main variables of interest are the use of the Internet and personal computers, economic openness and higher education. I hypothesize that Internet and PC use can lower the collaboration cost and searching cost resulting in increased marginal productivity from Internet adoption and positive cross productivity effects. Therefore, if people can access Internet more, their productivity will increase. In addition, economic openness, especially greater labor mobility, …

Creative Destruction In The Pharmaceutical Industry, Darshak Patel

Economics Theses

Pharmaceutical firms usually patent any new innovation in terms of the chemicals they use. These innovations are then developed in to drugs which are marketed once approved by FDA. These patents have made and receive citations. Citations made by patents granted today are backward citations and citations a patent will receive in the future are forward citations. This research shows that these patent citations on have a positive effect on market value of Pharmaceutical firms related to the patent. Backward citations do not destroy company rents. In fact, backward citations, illustrate the importance of the cited patent. Multiple citations imply …

The Market Return To Pharmaceutical Product Approval, Imtiaz Ahmed

Economics Theses

Does the public announcement of approval of New Drugs affect the market valuation of the sponsoring pharmaceutical company? This study will try to find out the technically and intuitively acceptable answer of this question using event study methodology. Relatively smaller number of previous studies on this issue found the mixed answers of this question using well-tested methodology of event study. Basing on the notion that the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is in effect in the pharmaceutical industry, stock and securities market should ideally react quickly (i.e., efficiently) in response to the public announcement of approval of new drug by the …

Peer Effects In Sports: Evidence From Ncaa Relay Teams, Lisa Elin Haglund

Economics Theses

This paper investigates whether disparity in team member quality impacts team production using NCAA 4x400m relay teams. As a measure of quality I use the team member's individual rankings. The net peer effects are estimated on a team level rather than on an individual level, and are found to have both an absolute and relative negative effect on the team performance. This paper is differentiated from the existing literature by using a direct measure of quality compared to other indirect measures of worker quality such as wages. The evidence provided herein shows that a greater disparity in team member quality …

Evidence Of Competition Between Law Schools, Naushaba Zaman

Economics Theses

The purpose of this paper is to measure how competition affects tuition rates of law schools. I hypothesize that the tuition rates will go up as concentration of law schools increase. To examine how tuition varies with competition, I need to measure market structure. A variety of measures are available, such as C4, C8, and HHI; all of which have some relationship to the degree of competitiveness in an industry. I primarily use HHI as the concentration measure in this paper. I make two models for my thesis. In my first model I use a statewide measure of competition, assuming …

School Responses To High-Stakes Testing, Mishuk Anwar Chowdhury

Economics Theses

This paper analyzes school's responses to high stakes testing. Using a grade level panel dataset from Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) for reading and math tests for 2003 through 2006, to find schools responses to failure. I find that there is a tendency for schools to shift resources from subjects that they pass to subjects that they fail. I classify schools' responses as either substitution responses or scale responses. A school has a substitution response if, when it fails to meet the state's required passing rate threshold for one subject for one cohort of students, it shifts resources …

Do Aid Donors Reward Institutional Reforms?: A Panel Study On Aid-Receiving Countries, Wairimu R. Mugo

Economics Theses

Foreign aid is an important component of financial flows to many developing countries. This study seeks to investigate how foreign aid flows are influenced by two factors: the gross domestic products (GDP) per capita of the recipient countries, and changes in institutional and economic factors. For example, do increases in the GDP per capita of recipient countries attract more foreign aid in support of the on going economic and institutional reforms, or does this send a signal to the donors that these countries are doing well, and do not need as much aid? The question is whether aid donors reward …

The Introduction Of The Reserve Clause And Its Impact On Baseball Salaries During The 1880s: A Panel Estimation, Jennifer Ashcraft

Economics Theses

One of the most frequently studied areas in professional baseball is the Reserve Clause. Originally introduced in 1879 by the National League, the Reserve Clause indefinitely tied a player's services to his current team and was implemented in an attempt to prevent baseball salaries from increasing and reduce team expenses. However, it was also used to control player mobility as well. While the majority of economic research on the Reserve Clause focuses on the post-Reserve Clause era, this paper analyzes the Reserve Clause during its infancy in the 1880s, a period when professional baseball was just beginning, and its impact …