Economics Commons^™

Effects Of Foliar Application Of Zno Nanoparticles On Lentil Production, Stress Level And Nutritional Seed Quality Under Field Conditions, Marek Kolenčík, Dávid Ernst, Matej Komár, Martin Urík, Martin Šebesta, Ľuba Ďurišová, Marek Bujdoš, Ivan Černý, Juraj Chlpík, Martin Juriga, Ramakanth Illa, Yu Qian, Huan Feng, Gabriela Kratošová, Karla Čech Barabaszová, Ladislav Ducsay, Elena Aydın

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Nanotechnology offers new opportunities for the development of novel materials and strategies that improve technology and industry. This applies especially to agriculture, and our previous field studies have indicated that zinc oxide nanoparticles provide promising nano-fertilizer dispersion in sustainable agriculture. However, little is known about the precise ZnO-NP effects on legumes. Herein, 1 mg·L⁻¹ ZnO-NP spray was dispersed on lentil plants to establish the direct NP effects on lentil production, seed nutritional quality, and stress response under field conditions. Although ZnO-NP exposure positively affected yield, thousand-seed weight and the number of pods per plant, there was no statistically significant …

U.S. Policing As Racialized Violence And Control: A Qualitative Assessment Of Black Narratives From Ferguson, Missouri, Jason M. Williams

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

U.S. policing has long been captured within a master narrative of colorblind consensus; however, distinct lived experiences between community groups depict grave disparities in law enforcement experiences and perceptions. Orthodox conceptions of law enforcement ultimately silence marginalized voices disproportionately affected by negative contacts with law enforcement. Centering data in critical theory, this study will present thematic results from semi-interviews gathered in Ferguson, M.O., during a critical ethnographic research project. Themes reveal experiences and perceptions of racialized and violent policing, the unique position of Black officers, and regard for the impact police have on children. Results also help to foreground new …

Racial And Gender Discrimination Predict Mental Health Outcomes Among Healthcare Workers Beyond Pandemic-Related Stressors: Findings From A Cross-Sectional Survey, Rachel Hennein, Jessica Bonumwezi, Max Jordan Nguemeni Tiako, Petty Tineo, Sarah R. Lowe

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Racial and gender discrimination are risk factors for adverse mental health outcomes in the general population; however, the effects of discrimination on the mental health of healthcare workers needs to be further explored, especially in relation to competing stressors. Thus, we administered a survey to healthcare workers to investigate the associations between perceived racial and gender discrimination and symptoms of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and burnout during a period of substantial stressors related to the COVID-19 pandemic and a national racial reckoning. We used multivariable linear regression models, which controlled for demographics and pandemic-related stressors. Of the 997 participants (Mean …

Picking Up Where The Tmdl Leaves Off: Using The Partnership Wild And Scenic River Framework For Collaborative River Restoration, Alan R. Hunt, Meiyin Wu, Tsung-Ta David Hsu, Nancy Roberts-Lawler, Jessica T. Miller, Alessandra Rossi, Lee Lee

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects less than ¼ of a percent of the United States’ river miles, focusing on free-flowing rivers of good water quality with outstandingly remarkable values for recreation, scenery, and other unique river attributes. It predates the enactment of the Clean Water Act, yet includes a clear anti-degradation principle, that pollution should be reduced and eliminated on designated rivers, in cooperation with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state pollution control agencies. However, the federal Clean Water Act lacks a clear management framework for implementing restoration activities to reduce non-point source pollution, of which …

The Feasibility Of Renewable Natural Gas In New Jersey, Anneliese Dyer, Amelia Christine Miller, Brianna Chandra, Juan Galindo Maza, Carley Tran, Justin Bates, Vicky Olivier, Amy Tuininga

Publications

With traditional natural gas being one of the top options for heating in the United States and the present threat of climate change, there is a demand for an alternative clean fuel source. A Renewable Natural Gas Implementation Decision-Making Conceptual Model was created to provide a framework for considering the feasibility of renewable natural gas (RNG) projects and applied to New Jersey, specifically investigating landfills and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Data from the US EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program and New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection Sewage Sludge databases were used to identify seven landfills and 22 WWTPs as possible …

Declining Co2 Price Paths, Gernot Wagner

Sustainability Seminar Series

Pricing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions involves making trade-offs between consumption today and unknown damages in the (distant) future. While decision making under risk and uncertainty is the forte of financial economics, important insights from pricing financial assets do not typically inform standard climate–economy models. Here, we introduce EZ-Climate, a simple recursive dynamic asset pricing model that allows for a calibration of the carbon dioxide (CO2) price path based on probabilistic assumptions around climate damages. Atmospheric CO2 is the “asset” with a negative expected return. The economic model focuses on society’s willingness to substitute consumption across time and across uncertain states of …

Long-Term Rates, Capital Shares, And Income Inequality, Edmond Berisha, John Meszaros

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Using Piketty and Zucman’s (Q J Econ 129(3):1255-1310, 2014) recently published capital share data, this paper uses structural VARs to understand the relationship between long-term interest rates, capital shares, and the distribution of income in the United States. The results indicate that increases in capital shares increase income inequality. Moreover, the relationship between the interest rate and capital shares is found to be negative and statistically significant. The results suggest that low long-term rates, through an equity and business investment channel, further increase the unequal distribution of income in the U.S. The results further illuminate the channels through which monetary …

Household Debt, Expected Economic Conditions, And Income Inequality, Edmond Berisha, John Meszaros

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The high level of debt among households outside the top end of the income distribution has led many economists to assert that household debt has been an important component of the increase in income inequality in the United States. In addition, the yield spread provides information about the overall condition of the economy and may also be tied into the distribution of income. The paper's results show that increases in the yield spread and household debt correspond with increases in top income shares, resulting in increases in income inequality. However, as household debt and income inequality increase, the yield spread …

Household Debt, Consumption, And Income Inequality, Edmond Berisha, John Meszaros

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Using the Johansen and Engle–Granger cointegration tests, we show that there is one cointegrating relationship between household debt, consumption, and income inequality in the United States for the period from 1929 to 2009. Given this result, we use a Vector Error-Correction model to further understand the dynamics among the three variables. Results indicate that increases in income inequality and consumption directly contribute to increases in household debt. Interestingly, the results reveal some feedback from household debt to income inequality. We also show that debt-driven consumption should be viewed with caution as the results show that increases in household debt correspond …

Income Inequality, Equities, Household Debt, And Interest Rates: Evidence From A Century Of Data, Edmond Berisha, John Meszaros, Eric Olson

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Using Philippon's (2015) recently published historical household debt data, this paper uses Diebold and Yilmaz's (2012) generalized variance decompositions and generalized impulse responses to understand the relationship between interest rates, the stock market, household debt, and the distribution of income in the U.S. The results indicate that increases in the stock market and household debt increase income inequality. Moreover, the relationship between the interest rate and income inequality is found to be negative and statistically significant. We interpret our results as suggesting that high income earners derive a larger portion of their income from interest rate sensitive assets.

Trickle Down? A Little Bit, Edmond Berisha

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The new tax plan approved by the U.S. Senate, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, claims to offer the largest benefits to individuals in the middle of the income distribution. In this article, I examine the impact exogenous tax changes have on income shares of individuals in the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution. The findings suggest that lower taxes, that are exogenous to fluctuations in business conditions, have minimal direct benefits for individuals in the bottom 50% of the income distribution. Claims that trickle-down economics lift all income shares through lower taxes are not supported by the empirical …

Say At Home, Or Stay At Home? Policy Implications On Female Labor Supply And Empowerment, Vidya Atal

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper develops a theory of female labor supply in a general equilibrium framework in the context of a developing economy. In stage 1, men and women decide whether to get married foreseeing the power and market dynamics in stage 2. Single people make their own decisions whereas married couples make decisions together, the power distribution among partners is determined endogenously. It is shown that female labor supply can take different shapes due to structural differences between economies and multiple equilibria might occur, causing low female labor force participation trap. As for policy implications, we find that tax-break to the …

Yield Spread And The Income Distribution, Edmond Berisha

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The yield spread is known to be closely related with business cycles identified by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It is low near peaks and high near troughs. This paper builds on this known relationship and examines the response of the income distribution in the U.S. due to variation in the yield spread. The purpose is to identify the significance and sign of the impact changes in economic conditions have on the distribution of income over the period 1927–2011. Clark and McCracken's (2001) 1-step ahead encompassing tests from nested linear models are initially estimated to determine the predictive power …

From Land Grab To Agrarian Transition? Hybrid Trajectories Of Accumulation And Environmental Change On The Cambodia–Vietnam Border, Timothy Gorman, Alice Beban

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In recent years, thousands of Vietnamese migrant farmers have crossed the border into Cambodia and leased land for export-oriented rice and shrimp production. Based on case studies in two Cambodian border provinces, we argue that these land transfers represent an intersection of broader processes of agrarian change that is re-shaping the Cambodian borderlands into a hybrid socio-ecological zone. Cambodian landlords and intermediaries use unequal access to politico-legal authority and the exclusionary power of the border to leverage control over their migrant tenants, thereby capturing a significant portion of the surplus from the migrants’ high-value commodity production systems and potentially creating …

A Note On Social Welfare Orders Satisfying Pigou-Dalton Transfer Principle, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper studies the constructive nature of social welfare orders on infinite utility streams defined on X = Yℕ, satisfying the Pigou-Dalton transfer principle (PD), which are known to be representable (see Alcantud (2010) and Sakamoto (2012)). We describe the restrictions on domain Y for explicit representation or construction of the social welfare orders satisfying (i) PD and monotonicity; or (ii) PD only. We show that the restrictions on Y for either (a) construction; or (b) explicit representation of the social welfare orders are identical in both cases.

On Construction Of Social Welfare Orders Satisfying Hammond Equity And Weak Pareto Axioms, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper examines the constructive nature of a social welfare order that respects Hammond equity axiom and Weak Pareto axiom. It describes the domains (of the one period utilities) on which an explicit construction is possible. A social welfare order satisfying the Hammond equity and Weak Pareto admits an explicit construction if and only if the domain is a well-ordered set.

University Rankings: Evidence And A Conceptual Framework, Jonathan G.S. Koppell, Jacob Fowles, H. George Frederickson

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

University ranking has high public visibility, the ranking business has flourished, and institutions of higher education have not been able to ignore it. This study of university ranking presents general considerations of ranking and institutional responses to it, particularly considering reactions to ranking, ranking as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and ranking as a means of transforming qualities into quantities. The authors present a conceptual framework of university ranking based on three propositions and carry out a descriptive statistical analysis of U.S. and international ranking data to evaluate those propositions. The first proposition of university ranking is that ranking systems are demarcated …

Inequitable Chronic Lead Exposure: A Dual Legacy Of Social And Environmental Injustice, Tamara Leech, Elizabeth A. Adams, Tess D. Weathers, Lisa K. Staten, Gabriel M. Filippelli

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Both historic and contemporary factors contribute to the current unequal distribution of lead in urban environments and the disproportionate impact lead exposure has on the health and well-being of low-income minority communities. We consider the enduring impact of lead through the lens of environmental justice, taking into account well-documented geographic concentrations of lead, legacy sources that produce chronic exposures, and intergenerational transfers of risk. We discuss the most promising type of public health action to address inequitable lead exposure and uptake: primordial prevention efforts that address the most fundamental causes of diseases by intervening in structural and systemic inequalities.

Project Selection: Commitment And Competition, Vidya Atal, Talia Bar, Sidartha Gordon

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We examine project selection decisions of firms constrained in the number of projects they can handle at once. A new project opportunity arises every period. Taking on a project requires a commitment of uncertain duration, preventing the firm from selecting another project in subsequent periods until the commitment ends. In our dynamic game, when two firms are free of commitment, they move sequentially in random order. Symmetric pure strategy Markov perfect equilibria always exist. In equilibrium, the first mover strategically rejects some projects that are then selected by the second mover, even when the value of the project is the …

Open Questions In Open Source: Exploring Incentives, Licensing And Competition, Vidya Atal, Kameshwari Shankar

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Open Source Software (OSS) has grown in importance over the last few decades and now constitutes an important part of the software market particularly in mobile and web technology. In this paper, we provide a preliminary theoretical framework for analyzing currently unexamined issues regarding developer participation in OSS and competition between open source and proprietary software. We start by looking at the upstream market where developers voluntarily contribute effort into the development of OSS without claiming any copyright for their contributions. We explore the relationship between open source licensing and developers' effort provision and suggest an empirical test of developer …

Income Inequality And Household Debt: A Cointegration Test, Edmond Berisha, John Meszaros, Eric Olson

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article employs the Johansen and Engle–Granger methodology to determine if there is a cointegrating relationship between household debt and income inequality as measured by Atkinson, Piketty and Saez (2011). The results suggest a cointegrating relationship between the two series. A vector error correction model is estimated showing that a shock to household debt has statistically significant effects on income inequality in the United States over the time period 1919–2009.

Ramsey Equilibrium With Liberal Borrowing, Robert A. Becker, Kirill Borissov, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper considers a multi-agent one-sector Ramsey equilibrium growth model with borrowing constraints. The extreme borrowing constraint used in the classical version of the model, surveyed in Becker (2006), and the limited form of borrowing constraint examined in Borissov and Dubey (2015) are relaxed to allow more liberal borrowing by the households. A perfect foresight equilibrium is shown to exist in this economy. We describe the steady state equilibria for the liberal borrowing regime and show that as the borrowing regime is progressively liberalized, the steady state wealth inequality increases. Unlike the case of a limited borrowing regime, an equilibrium …

Upending The Social Ecological Model To Guide Health Promotion Efforts Toward Policy And Environmental Change, Lisa D. Lieberman, Shelley D. Golden, Kenneth R. Mcleroy, Lawrence W. Green, Jo Anne L. Earp

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Efforts to change policies and the environments in which people live, work, and play have gained increasing attention over the past several decades. Yet health promotion frameworks that illustrate the complex processes that produce health-enhancing structural changes are limited. Building on the experiences of health educators, community activists, and community-based researchers described in this supplement and elsewhere, as well as several political, social, and behavioral science theories, we propose a new framework to organize our thinking about producing policy, environmental, and other structural changes. We build on the social ecological model, a framework widely employed in public health research and …

The Effect Of Active Video Games On The Heart Rate Of Older Adults, Yeon Bai, Shahla M. Wunderlich, Diane M. Hanel

Department of Nutrition and Food Studies Scholarship and Creative Works

Background: Heart rate is used as a health biomarker. This aim of this study was to investigate the effects of playing active video games on the heart rate of older adults, in comparison to the heart rate after common table recreational activity.

Methods: An experimental study with 40 participants was conducted: a control group (n=20) participated in common Pokeno® card games; an experimental group (n=20) played WiiTM bowling. The participants’ pre- and post-activity heart rates were measured and compared between and within groups using t-tests.

Results: The findings signified an 11.9% increase (p

Conclusions: The inclusion of active video games …

Developers' Incentives And Open-Source Software Licensing: Gpl Vs Bsd, Vidya Atal, Kameshwari Shankar

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

One of the puzzling aspects of open-source software (OSS) development is its public good nature. Individual developers contribute to developing the software, but do not hold the copyright to appropriate its value. This raises questions regarding motives behind such effort. We provide an integrated model of developers' incentives to describe OSS development and compare restrictive OSS licenses that force all modifications to be kept open with non-restrictive OSS licenses that allow proprietary ownership of modified works. Different incentives govern effort provision at different stages of the software development process. We show that open-source licenses can provide socially valuable software when …

A Characterization Of Ramsey Equilibrium In A Model With Limited Borrowing, Kirill Borissov, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper considers a one-sector economic growth model with several infinitely-lived heterogeneous households, who differ both in the discount factors as well as preferences over consumption. Unlike the extreme form of borrowing constraint observed in the classical Ramsey model, recently surveyed in Becker (2006), we allow limited borrowing by the households and prove the existence of a perfect foresight equilibrium. We also show that irrespective of production technology employed by the firms, the capital stock sequence converges to the steady state stock and from some time onward all impatient households are in the maximum borrowing state, whereas the most patient …

Ordering Infinite Utility Streams: Efficiency, Continuity, And No Impatience, José Carlos R. Alcantud, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We study two related versions of the no-impatience postulate in the context of transitive and reflexive relations on infinite utility streams which are not necessarily complete. Both are excluded by the traditional (weak) anonymity axiom. We show explicit social welfare relations satisfying Strong Pareto and the weaker version of no-impatience that are compatible with continuity in all the traditional topologies in this field. However the stronger version of no-impatience is violated by all lower semi-continuous (in the sup or Campbell topologies) social welfare relations satisfying the Weak Pareto axiom.

Open Source Software: Competition With A Public Good, Vidya Atal, Kameshwari Shankar

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper looks at price and quality competition in software markets under two different forms of competition—one where two proprietary firms first choose quality and then engage in price competition, and second where a proprietary firm faces competition from an open source software (OSS) firm that allows its users to determine quality level and provides the software at zero price. We find that OSS competition never improves quality for consumers who value quality highly. However, it may provide greater quality to users with a low valuation for quality. In addition, we find that although OSS has a zero market price, …

Arizona's Vulnerable Populations, Jonathan G.S. Koppell, Warren Prostollo, Jay Kittle, Arlan Colton, Kim Demarchi, Darryl Dobras, Susan Goldsmith, Billie Fidlin, Jim Holoway, Tara Jackson, Rita Maguire, Elizabeth Mcnamee, Patrick Mcwhortor, Ray Newton, Pat Norris, Steve Pedigo, Scott Rhodes, Fred Rosenfed, Chad Sampson, David Snider, Bob Strain, Marissa Theisen, Devan Wastchak, Terri Wogan, Larry Woods, Antonia Adams-Clement, Nina Babich, Andrea Banks, Eric Bjorklund, Luke Black, Luis De La Cruz-Parra, Richard Fabes, Felicia Ganther, Joseph Garcia, Maria Harper-Marinick, Kevin Hengehold, Lane Kenworthy, Julie Knapp, Kelly Mcgowan, Ray Ostos, Kathleen Perales, Suzanne Pfister, Michael S. Shafer, Julia Grace Smith, Ed Strong, Cynthia Zwick

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

Arizona’s vulnerable populations are struggling on a daily basis but usually do so in silence, undetected by traditional radar and rankings, often unaware themselves of their high risk for being pushed or pulled into a full crisis. Ineligible for financial assistance under strict eligibility guidelines, they don’t qualify as poor because vulnerable populations are not yet in full crisis. To be clear, this report is not about the “poor,” at least not in the limited sense of the word. It is about our underemployed wage earners, our single-parent households, our deployed or returning military members, our under-educated and unskilled workforce, …

Affirmative Action And Empowerment: Friends Or Foes?, Vidya Atal, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We consider effects of quota or "affirmative action" for women at work-places on the societal outcomes. A simple model of household decision making with production and endogenously determined female power is studied. We show that even under standard economic modeling specifications, as a result of affirmative action, it could turn out to be the case that female labor force participation and social welfare rise but at the cost of diminished female power and wider male-female wage-gap.