Economics Commons^™

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.

Combining Monotonicity And Strong Equity: Construction And Representation Of Orders On Infinite Utility Streams, Ram Dubey, Tapan Mitra

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper studies the nature of social welfare orders (SWO) on infinite utility streams, satisfying the efficiency principle known as monotonicity and the consequentialist equity principle known as strong equity. It provides a complete characterization of domain sets for which there exists such a SWO which is in addition representable by a real valued function. It then shows that for those domain sets for which there is no such SWO which is representable, the existence of such a SWO necessarily entails the existence of a non-Ramsey set, a non-constructive object.

Do All Constructive Strongly Monotone Inter-Temporal Orders Exhibit Impatience?, Kuntal Banerjee, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this paper we show that if a strongly monotone inter-temporal order exhibits no preference towards the advancement of timing of future utility on any infinite utility stream, then the existence of such an order must involve some non-constructive device.

Patent Quality And A Two-Tiered Patent System, Vidya Atal, Talia Bar

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this paper, we study the determinants of patent quality and volume of patent applications when inventors care about perceived patent quality. We analyze the effects of various policy reforms, specifically, a proposal to establish a two-tiered patent system. In the two-tiered system, applicants can choose between a regular patent and a more costly, possibly more thoroughly examined, 'gold-plate' patent. Introducing a second patent-tier can reduce patent applications, reduce the incidence of bad patents, and sometimes increase social welfare. The gold-plate tier attracts inventors with high ex-ante probability of validity, but not necessarily applicants with innovations of high economic value.

On Ramsey Equilibrium: Capital Ownership Pattern And Inefficiency, Robert A. Becker, Ram Dubey, Tapan Mitra

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We provide a sufficient condition on the production function under which eventually the most patient household owns the entire capital stock in every Ramsey equilibrium, called the turnpike property. This generalizes the result in the literature which establishes the turnpike property using the capital income monotonicity condition. We then provide an example of a Ramsey equilibrium in which the most patient household reaches a no capital position infinitely often. This is a strong refutation of the turnpike property on Ramsey equilibria. We also show that the constructed Ramsey equilibrium is inefficient in terms of the aggregate consumption stream that it …

On Construction Of Equitable Social Welfare Orders On Infinite Utility Streams, Ram Dubey, Tapan Mitra

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper studies the nature of social welfare orders on infinite utility streams, satisfying the consequentialist equity principles known as Hammond Equity and the Pigou-Dalton transfer principle. The first result shows that every social welfare order satisfying Hammond Equity and the Strong Pareto axioms is non-constructive in nature for all non-trivial domains, Y. The second result shows that, when the domain set is Y = [0, 1], every social welfare order satisfying the Pigou-Dalton transfer principle is non-constructive in nature. Specifically, in both results, we show that the existence of the appropriate social welfare order entails the existence of a …

South-South Relations And The English School Of International Relations: Chinese And Brazilian Ideas And Involvement In Sub-Saharan Africa, Anthony Petros Spanakos, Joseph Marques

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The rise of large developing countries has led to considerable discussions of re-balancing global relations and giving greater priority to understanding South-South relations. This paper, in exploring the central ideas of Chinese and Brazilian foreign policy and the behavior of these two rising Southern countries toward Sub-Saharan Africa, argues that the English School of International Relations is well suited to understanding the intentions and actions that characterize South-South relations.

Impatience Implication Of Weakly Paretian Orders: Existence And Genericity, Kuntal Banerjee, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We study order theoretic and topological implications for impatience of weakly Paretian, representable orders on infinite utility streams. As a departure from the traditional literature, we do not make any continuity assumptions in proving the existence of impatient points. Impatience is robust in the sense that there are uncountably many impatient points. A general statement about genericity of impatience cannot be made for representable, weakly Paretian orders. This is shown by means of an example. If we assume a stronger sensitivity condition, then genericity obtains.

Farming Alone? What’S Up With The ‘‘C’’ In Community Supported Agriculture, Antoinette Pole, Margaret Gray

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study reconsiders the purported benefits of community found in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Using an online survey of members who belong to CSAs in New York, between November and December 2010, we assess members’ reasons for joining a CSA, and their perceptions of community within their CSA and beyond. A total of 565 CSA members responded to the survey. Results show an overwhelming majority of members joined their CSA for fresh, local, organic produce, while few respondents joined their CSA to build community, meet like-minded individuals or share financial risk with farmers. Members reported that they do not derive …

Holding My Breath: The Experience Of Being Sikh After 9/11, Muninder Kaur Ahluwalia

Department of Counseling Scholarship and Creative Works

This article is based on the author’s experiences after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and the impact of the attacks on her life as a New Yorker, an academic, and a member of a Sikh family and community. To position the author’s narrative, her reflection integrates race-based traumatic stress (Carter, 2007), a model suggesting that individuals who are targets of racism experience harm or injury. The author outlines lessons learned that affect her both personally and professionally, including (a) Paralysis can happen but advocacy and allies are healing, (b) Trauma changes the work, and (c) …

On Equitable Social Welfare Functions Satisfying The Weak Pareto Axioma Complete Characterization, Ram Dubey, Tapan Mitra

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The present paper examines the problem of aggregating infinite utility streams with a social welfare function that respects the Anonymity and Weak Pareto Axioms. The paper provides a complete characterization of domains (of the one period utilities) on which such an aggregation is possible. A social welfare function satisfying the Anonymity and Weak Pareto Axioms exists on precisely those domains that do not contain any set of the order typeof the set of positive and negative integers. The criterion is applied to decide on possibility and impossibility results for a variety of domains. It is also used to provide an …

Fleurbaey-Michel Conjecture On Equitable Weak Paretian Social Welfare Order, Ram Dubey

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The paper examines the problem of explicit description of a social welfare order over infinite utility streams, which respects anonymity and weak Pareto axioms. It provides a complete characterization of the domains of one period utilities, for which it is possible to explicitly describe a weak Paretian social welfare order satisfying the anonymity axiom. For domains containing any set of order type similar to the set of positive and negative integers, every equitable social welfare order satisfying the weak Pareto axiom is non-constructive. The paper resolves a conjecture by Fleurbaey and Michel (2003) that there exists no explicit (that is, …

'Mainline' Telecommunications Infrastructure, Levels Of Development And Economic Growth: Evidence From A Panel Of Developing Countries, Chandana Chakraborty, Banani Nandi

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper assesses the growth impact of telecommunications infrastructure investment in developing countries by subjecting country-specific data on mainline tele-density and per capita growth to a Granger causality test within a panel cointegration framework. The results suggest that growth effects vary widely across country groupings reflecting different levels of development. Mainline tele-density and per capita growth strongly reinforce each other for countries that are relatively less developed. The reinforcement effect is even stronger for emerging countries that can be identified by their higher than average growth rates. In contrast, there is, at best, weak evidence of bi-directional causal links between …

China And Brazil: Potential Allies Or Just Brics In The Wall?, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Brazil is an increasingly important actor in global governance and for China specifically. Sino-Brazilian relations have deepened considerably but they remain concentrated in areas of trade and investment. There is also considerable overlap in interests between the two countries in other areas, such as diplomatic and political relations. At the same time, China must manage carefully important differences that exist over the enlargement of the UN and the potential challenge to the Brazilian industry.

Minerals-Supply Security And Mineral-Use Efficiency: Some Observations From The 1970–2005 Interval, Ira Sohn

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

As a consequence of the powerful changes that have occurred over the last three decades in the principal 'drivers' of economic change, there have been significant realignments in the global patterns of production and consumption of natural resources, as well as in the intensity of their use, in the quest to raise the level of material wellbeing throughout the world. In this paper, three large minerals-consuming (and -producing) countries are examined - the USA, China and Russia - and the story of a generation's economic progress (or decline, as the case may be) is seen through the lens of resource …

Where Concerned Citizens Perceive Police As More Responsive To Troublesome Teen Groups: Theoretical Implications For Political Economy, Incivilities And Policing, Christopher Salvatore, Ralph B. Taylor, Christopher Kelly

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The current investigation extends previous work on citizens' perceptions of police performance. It examines the origins of between-community differences in concerned citizens' judgments that police are responding sufficiently to a local social problem. The problem is local unsupervised teen groups, a key indicator for both the revised systemic social disorganization perspective and the incivilities thesis. Four theoretical perspectives predict ecological determinants of these shared judgments. Less perceived police responsiveness is anticipated in lower socioeconomic status (SES) police districts by both a political economy and a stratified incivilities perspective; more predominantly minority police districts by a racialized justice perspective; and in …

Why Economic Performance Has Differed Between Brazil And China? A Comparative Analysis Of Brazilian And Chinese Macroeconomic Policy, Fernando Ferrari-Filho, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper addresses a specific question: why has China grown so rapidly and Brazil not? To answer this question, it (i) establishes the basis for comparison between China and Brazil by contextualizing these countries within the BRICs concept, and (ii) presents a comparative analysis of Brazilian and Chinese reforms focusing only on the issue of macroeconomic policy, especially the monetary and exchange rate regimes, and its effect on growth.

Leadership Styles Of Nursing Home Administrators And Their Association With Staff Turnover, Christopher Donoghue, Nicholas G. Castle

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between nursing home administrator (NHA) leadership style and staff turnover.

Design and Methods: We analyzed primary data from a survey of 2,900 NHAs conducted in 2005. The Online Survey Certification and Reporting database and the Area Resource File were utilized to extract organizational and local economic characteristics of the facilities. A general linear model (GLM) was used to estimate the effects of NHA leadership style, organizational characteristics, and local economic characteristics on nursing home staff turnover for registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and nurse’s aides (NAs).

Results: …

Can Non-State Certification Systems Bolster State-Centered Efforts To Promote Sustainable Development Through The Clean Development Mechanism, Jonathan G.S. Koppell, Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

Increasing economic globalization has coincided with the emergence and escalating influence of non-state actors and organizations in domestic and international policymaking, from shaping policy agendas to promoting private authority. The latter phenomenon has arisen, at least in part, from a critique of states' failures to adopt effective and enduring environmental policies. Rather than contest "command and control" institutions, non-state strategies embrace market approaches built around incentives and price mechanisms. Several forms of non-state authority have emerged, including corporate social responsibility, provision of information through labeling, and self-reporting.

Bonds, Stocks Or Dollars? Do Voters Care About Capital Markets In Brazil And Mexico, Anthony Petros Spanakos, Lucio Remuzat Renno Junior

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

How does vote intention in presidential elections vary according to the economic conditions of a country, especially indicators of the financial market? Does the state of the economy, both its fundamentals as well as capital market, affect variation in candidates’ percentage of vote intention in national polls? This paper tests how economic indicators influence vote intention in presidential elections in two emerging markets: Brazil and Mexico. The presidential elections of 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006 in Brazil and 2000 and 2006 in Mexico are analyzed using all poll returns for each electoral period and corresponding economic data. The paper finds …

Elections And Economic Turbulence In Brazil: Candidates, Voters, And Investors, Tony Petros Spanakos, Lucio R. Renno

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The relation between elections and the economy in Latin America might be understood by considering the agency of candidates and the issue of policy preference congruence between investors and voters. The preference congruence model proposed in this article highlights political risk in emerging markets. Certain risk features increase the role of candidate campaign rhetoric and investor preferences in elections. When politicians propose policies that can appease voters and investors, elections may have a limited effect on economic indicators, such as inflation. But when voter and investor priorities differ significantly, deterioration of economic indicators is more likely. Moreover, voter and investor …

Economic Reforms, Fdi, And Economic Growth In India Sector Level Analysis, Chandana Chakraborty, Peter Nunnenkamp

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Booming foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-reform India is widely believed to promote economic growth. We assess this proposition by subjecting industry-specific FDI and output data to Granger causality tests within a panel cointegration framework. It turns out that the growth effects of FDI vary widely across sectors. FDI stocks and output are mutually reinforcing in the manufacturing sector, whereas any causal relationship is absent in the primary sector. Most strikingly, we find only transitory effects of FDI on output in the services sector. However, FDI in the services sector appears to have promoted growth in the manufacturing sector through …

Why Brazil Has Not Grown: A Comparative Analysis Of Brazilian, Indian, And Chinese Economic Management, Fernando Ferrari, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper does not aim to dispute that Brazil would benefit from reforms in any or all of these areas. Rather, the paper offers a skeptical perspective on reform menus and proposes an alternative explanation for the faster growth of Brazil’s peers India and China2. The paper begins by introducing (section 1) the idea of the BRICs countries, to establish the basis for comparisons of most similar cases. It then surveys the results of a generation of Washington Consensus era growth (section 2). Although there is a considerable amount of divergence over what causes growth, it seems that something approaching …

Women, Re-Entry And Everyday Life: Time To Work?, Dina R. Rose, Venezia Michalsen, Dawn Wiest, Anupa Fabian

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study focuses on women at various stages of re-entry into the community after involvement with the criminal justice system. In particular, it takes a close look at how the participants in the study manage their time in the face of the types of competing demands that are all too common to most people.

Reviewed Work: Understanding Institutional Diversity By Elinor Ostrom, Jonathan G.S. Koppell

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

No abstract provided.

Reform In Lieu Of Change: Tastes Great, Less Filling, Jonathan G.S. Koppell

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

In this response to Light, Koppell argues that the increasing frequency of reform may reflect Congress's inability to make significant changes to the substance of entrenched government programs. Moreover, he observes that the more profound evolution in government has been the movement toward the market-based provision of services, which has created a demand for new competencies in the public sector.

Long-Term Outcomes Of An Abstinence-Based, Small-Group Pregnancy Prevention Program In New York City Schools, Lisa D. Lieberman, Heather Gray, Megan Wier, Renee Fiorentino, Patricia Maloney

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Context: Despite drops in U.S. teenage birthrates, questions continue to arise about how best to reduce the country's adolescent birthrate. School-based programs continue to be considered one of the best ways to reach adolescents at risk of early sexual activity.

Methods: A total of 312 students completed a pretest, a posttest and a follow-up one year after the posttest: 125 who had participated in a 3-4-month-long abstinence-based small-group intervention led by trained social workers, and 187 in a comparison group that received no special services.

Results: There were few significant differences between the intervention and comparison groups at posttest. At …

The Challenge Of Administration By Regulation: Preliminary Findings Regarding The U.S. Government's Venture Capital Funds, Jonathan G.S. Koppell

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

This article assesses the ability of elected officials to control public policy as implemented by public/private hybrid organizations, specifically, government venture capital funds. The study reveals greater control over OPIC investment funds than Enterprise Funds despite the existence of more traditional administrative tools of control for Enterprise Funds. This finding suggests that the regulatory infrastructure for hybrid organizations is more determinative of control than the existence (or lack) of traditional administrative control tools. Thus the challenge of hybrid government centers on the development of regulation as a substitute for administration.

The 1994 Aca Model Legislation For Licensed Professional Counselors, Harriet L. Glosoff, James M. Benshoff, Thomas W. Hosie, Dennis R. Maki

Department of Counseling Scholarship and Creative Works

Model legislation seeks to facilitate uniformity of counselor licensure laws and promote accepted professional standards. The text of the model bill as endorsed by the 1994 American Counseling Association Governing Council is provided with commentary accompanying those sections in which significant changes have occurred. The article concludes with 15 specific suggestions based on experiences gained in the development and implementation of previous legislation for licensed professional counselors.

Using The Analytic Hierarchy Process To Select Investment In A Heterogenous Environment, Nick Bahmani, David Yamoah, Potkin Basseer, Farahmand Rezvani

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this paper is to apply the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model in selecting an investment. The selection process takes into account the following factors: the investors' characteristics, the investments' characteristics and the investment alternatives. The set of investors' characteristics consists of: wealth, experience, age and the concept of utility functions. When we speak of the investments' characteristics we are referring to such items as: liquidity, taxability, minimum requirement, transaction cost and yield or rate of return. The other set of characteristics are the investment alternatives which include: the Money Market Fund, Government and Municipal Bond Fund, Balanced …