Economics Commons^™

Rationality, Revisions, And Real-Time Data, Jason Hall

Honors Theses

Revisions to macroeconomic variables are a significant part of the process by which researchers, the general public, and the government get information about the state of the United States' economy. They are also substantial: this can have large implications for forecasting, macroeconomic research, business decisions, and monetary and fiscal policy. In this paper, I examine the cyclicality of various aggregate variables in U.S.data, and determine that of the major NIPA variables analyzed, only consumption andreal imports revisions display a large degree of cyclicality. I also examine the rationalityof the same set of variables under different definitions of the final value, …

Tmi : An Examination Of Excess Returns Surrounding Phase Iii Fda Approvals, Luke Chiotelis

Honors Theses

Over the past three decades, the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical industry has had the largest growth rate of any sector in the U.S. economy. Currently, the largest 10 companies have a market cap of over 700 billion dollars. In the past 20 years, Biotech has outperformed the Standard and Poor’s 500 index earning superior returns for those willing to invest in this risky, high growth industry (Bloomberg L.P.). This upward trend is expected to continue as both institutional and private investment in biotech continues to soar.

A better understanding of the FDA approval process and the way a company’s stock price …

What Should We Teach In Intermediate Macroeconomics?, Dean D. Croushore

Economics Faculty Publications

The major focus of a course in Intermediate Macroeconomics is building and understanding macroeconomic models and how they work. The course is the most analytical course in the curriculum and should lead students to embark on deep thinking about models and equilibrium. Students learn the essentials of a model and develop the concept of how to simplify a model to understand key concepts. Once the core of a model is developed, additional model features can be added to increase realism. Perhaps the most important macroeconomic concept in the course is that of general equilibrium—students learn to go beyond examining initial …

50 Years Of Economic Instruction In The Journal Of Economic Education, Gail M. Hoyt, Kimmarie Mcgoldrick

Economics Faculty Publications

With 2019 marking the fiftieth year of publication of the Journal of Economic Education (JEE), it seems fitting to examine the evolution of economic instruction as portrayed in the Journal. Born of the American Economic Association (AEA), and first edited by members of the AEA’s Committee on Economic Education (Saunders 2012), it is not surprising that the Journal’s focus as chronicler, proponent, and outlet for economic education activity reflects the educational component of the American Economic Association’s mission. The creation of the Journal signaled a self-awareness in the discipline that we needed to be more deliberate in …

Learning Effects Of The Flipped Classroom In A Principles Of Microeconomics Course Running Header: Flipped Principles Of Micro, Erik Craft, Maia K. Linask

Economics Faculty Publications

The authors of this article estimate the learning effects of the flipped classroom format using data from 16 sections of principles of microeconomics over a 4-year period. The experimental design is unique in that two treatment and two control sections were taught during the fall semester in four consecutive years. Further, the instructor switched the time of day when the treatment and control sections were taught each year. Controlling for gender, ACT score, a normed high school GPA, Pell Grant award, time of day, and initial knowledge of economics, the authors find no evidence of increased learning using end-of-semester measures …

On The Widely Differing Effects Of Free Trade Agreements: Lessons From Twenty Years Of Trade Integration, Scott L. Baier, Yoto V. Yotov, Thomas Zylkin

Economics Faculty Publications

We develop a novel two stage methodology that allows us to study the empirical determinants of the ex post effects of past free trade agreements (FTAs) as well as obtain ex ante predictions for the effects of future FTAs. We first identify 908 unique estimates of the effects of FTAs on different trading pairs for the years 1986-2006. We then employ these estimates as our dependent variable in a “second stage” analysis characterizing the heterogeneity in these effects. Interestingly, most of this heterogeneity (∼ 2/3) occurs within FTAs (rather than across different FTAs), with asymmetric effects within pairs (on exports …

Switching Majors – Into And Out Of Economics, Tisha L. N. Emerson, Kimmarie Mcgoldrick

Economics Faculty Publications

Using student transcripts from six institutions over a 23-year timespan, the authors investigate the movement of students into and out of the economics major. Considerable movement between majors occurs with 83 percent of economics graduates switching in after their first principles course. These eventual majors come from a variety of sources, but primarily from business, engineering, science & math. In an absolute sense, weaker students (as measured by cumulative GPA) switch into economics. However, students appear to move to disciplines of relative academic strength (as indicated by relative grades). While females from other majors are less likely to switch into …

Fiscal Forecasts At The Fomc: Evidence From The Greenbooks, Dean D. Croushore, Simon Van Norden

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper examines fiscal policy forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee and its influence on U.S. monetary policy. The forecasts contain useful information beyond that in the CBO’s forecasts. Fiscal forecast errors are only weakly correlated with forecast errors for inflation and output growth, but those for the budget surplus are highly correlated with those for the unemployment rate and the output gap. Some fiscal variables can also account for a significant fraction of the “exogenous” changes in the federal funds rate target that Romer and Romer (2004) studied, consistent with the board’s statements on the importance of …

The High Costs Of Large Enrollment Classes: Can Cooperative Learning Help?, Tisha L. N. Emerson, Linda K. English, Kimmarie Mcgoldrick

Economics Faculty Publications

We examine the potential for cooperative learning activities to offset costs of large enrollment courses. We use a quasi-experimental research design to examine achievement and course perceptions in small and large enrollment sections of microeconomic principles. While large enrollment sections attain lower levels of achievement (measured by course score) than those with smaller enrollments, this effect is partially mitigated by use of cooperative learning. Furthermore, while students in large enrollment sections report lower levels of satisfaction and learning than students in smaller sized classes, the use of cooperative learning eliminates the negative effects of increased class size on student perceptions.

A Study Of Long-Lived Asset Impairment Under U.S. Gaap And Ifrs Within The U.S. Institutional Environment, Philip K. Hong, Daniel Gyung Paik, Joyce Van Der Laan Smith

Accounting Faculty Publications

This paper explores whether differences in accounting standards influence reporting behavior within the U.S. institutional environment where both IFRS and U.S. GAAP are used for reporting purposes. We focus on the accounting for impairment of long-lived assets, an area where significant differences exist between U.S. GAAP and IFRS. We identify all U.S.-listed firms who have recognized long-lived asset impairment losses during the 2004–2012 period. From these firms, we identify firms following IFRS, then develop a matched sample of U.S. GAAP firms, using a propensity score matching procedure. We examine the relation between impairment loss and unexpectedly high or low earnings …

Measuring Faculty Teaching Effectiveness Using Conditional Fixed Effects, Maia K. Linask, James Monks

Economics Faculty Publications

Using a dataset of 48 faculty members and 88 courses over 26 semesters, the authors estimate Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) ratings that are conditional on a multitude of course, faculty, and student attributes. They find that ratings are lower for required courses and those where students report a lower prior level of interest. Controlling for these variables substantially alters the SET ratings for many instructors. The average absolute value of the difference between the faculty ratings controlling just for time effects and fully conditional ratings is nearly one-half of a standard deviation in the students’ rating of how much …

The Role Of Teaching And Teacher Training In The Hiring And Promotion Of Ph.D. Economists, Sam Allgood, Gail Hoyt, Kimmarie Mcgoldrick

Economics Faculty Publications

Surveys suggest that a majority of graduate students seek academic positions after completing their degree. We survey groups involved in the job market to determine the roles of teaching and research in hiring and the subsequent success of new faculty. We find that while characteristics that signal research potential are highly valued by both graduate directors and department chairs, there are significant discrepancies in the extent that teaching is valued in the hiring process across institution types. Furthermore, although new faculty devote half of their time to teaching, only half of them agree that graduate school prepared them to teach.

The Association Between Audit Fees And Accounting Restatement Resulting From Accounting Fraud And Clerical Errors, Daniel Gyung Paik, Taewoo Kim, Kip Krumwiede, Brandon B. Lee

Accounting Faculty Publications

Restatements of financial reporting arise from many sources including changes in accounting rules, changes in reporting entity, accounting errors, and fraud (or “irregularities”). Theory predicts that audit effort (measured by audit fees) and financial report restatements should be negatively associated because more audit effort means that auditors should be more likely to find errors or other issues that could lead to later restatement (Shibano 1990; Matsumura and Tucker, 1992; Lobo and Zhao, 2013). However, other studies have found either a positive association or no association between audit fees and subsequent restatements (Kinney et al., 2004; Stanley and DeZoort, 2007; Cao …

Distance In Diocese : Annual Appeal Giving In The Catholic Church, Elaine Wissuchek

Honors Theses

The distance between a donor and a charity is hypothesized to affect charitable giving for self-regarding and altruistic reasons. Distance increases transaction costs, reducing the potential extrinsic benefits received by donors; it decreases social pressure for giving, and limits the ability of donors to monitor the charity’s management. Donors also have intrinsic preferences for proximity. This study does not find the hypothesized negative correlation between distance (measured as driving time) and donations to annual appeals for Catholic dioceses.

The Effects Of Perceived Quality On Tuition And Net Tuition, Isabella Xianxin Thomas

Honors Theses

This paper examines the effects of perceived quality on tuition and net tuition utilizing both direct and indirect measures to account for quality and the U.S News and World Ranking to measure perceived quality. Tuition is the sticker price, whereas net tuition is the sticker price less discounts. Judgments of quality will be more apparent in tuition, therefore perceived quality and tuition should have a larger relationship than net tuition and perceived quality. When regressed with quality variables held constant on tuition and net tuition, effect of reputation on prices is captured. The coefficient for perceived quality on tuition had …

Acute Illness And Job Lock, Lauren Passero

Honors Theses

This paper assesses if the experience of an acute illness generates decreased job mobility among workers with employer-sponsored health insurance. An acute illness may increase the perceived value of health insurance and “lock” workers into jobs that provide health insurance as compensation. Using difference-in-difference tests, I evaluate the presence of job lock among workers impacted by acute health problems in Panel 19 of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The results provide inconclusive evidence of job lock related to the experience of an acute illness. Further research on acute illness-related job lock can explore the potential long-term impact of job lock …

How Applying Instrumental Stakeholder Theory Can Provide Sustainable Competitive Advantage, Thomas M. Jones, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Will Felps

Management Faculty Publications

Instrumental stakeholder theory considers the performance consequences for firms of highly ethical relationships with stakeholders, characterized by high levels of trust, cooperation, and information sharing. While research suggests performance benefits, an obvious question remains: If instrumental stakeholder theory–based stakeholder treatment is so valuable, why isn’t it the dominant mode of relating to stakeholders? We argue that the existing instrumental stakeholder theory literature has three shortcomings that limit its ability to explain variance in performance. (1) Little theory exists around how instrumental stakeholder theory–based stakeholder management could provide sustainable competitive advantage. (2) The literature has largely neglected the potential downsides (i.e., …

Market Ambiguity And Individual Investor Information Demand, Rajib Hasan, Abdullah Kumas, Joyce Van Der Laan Smith

Accounting Faculty Publications

We examine whether ambiguity in the market leads to an increase in information demand by individual investors. Drawing on the asset-pricing model proposed by Mele and Sangiorgi (2015), which incorporates market ambiguity, we measure individual information demand using daily Google searches and measure market ambiguity using a metric based on the market trades of institutional investors. We find that individual investors increase their information demand during periods of greater market ambiguity. We also provide evidence that information demand from individual investors spikes around earnings announcement days primarily when market uncertainty is driven by net-selling activity. Overall, these results suggest that …

[Chapter 1 From] Re-Examining The History Of The Russian Economy: A New Analytic Tool From Field Theory, Jeffrey K. Hass

Bookshelf

This book explores the application of field theory (patterns of interaction) to Russian economic history, and how social and political fields mediate the influences of institutions, structures, discourses and ideologies in the creation and dissemination of economic thinking, theory and practice. Using focused cases on Russia's economy from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Hass and co-authors expand the empirical basis of field studies to provide new material on Russian economic history. The cases are divided into two complementary halves: i) The role of fields of institutions, discourses, and structures in the development of Russian economic thought, especially economic theories …

The Effectiveness Of Promotions In Minor League Baseball : A Study Of The Eastern League, Collin R. Zucker

Honors Theses

Minor League Baseball (MiLB) is comprised of 247 teams playing in 17 leagues at six different levels. Every team in these leagues is an affiliate of a Major League Baseball (MLB) team, but many are privately owned and are therefore financially independent. While MiLB primarily serves as a development environment for future MLB players, profit maximization is still a goal of various front offices. Minor League Baseball has existed for over a century but only recently have teams been regarded as profitable investments. In Forbes’ “Most Valuable Minor League Teams” list published in 2016, the average value of the top …

An Analysis Of Skill-Biased Technical Change Across Demographic Groups, Madison Lindsay

Honors Theses

I adopt a measure of task-based routineness from Autor and Dorn (2013) to investigate the effects of routineness on various demographic groups. I analyze data from the Current Population Surveys between 1976 and 2017 to determine which groups, separated by race, gender, and age, are most strongly affected by routine-biased technological change. My findings suggest that women are most negatively affected by occupational routineness. Further, both women’s concentration in highly routine occupations and women’s educational attainment trends from 1976 to 2017 could explain women’s increasing susceptibility to changes in routineness.

The Effect Of Bike Lane Infrastructure On Urban Housing Markets, Bracken Woolley

Honors Theses

Across the United States, cities are increasing their level of investment in bicycle infrastructure. The environmental and health benefits of this infrastructure are clear, but less research has been conducted on its economic impacts. This study examines the effect of bicycle infrastructure, specifically bike lanes, on New York City housing markets. Specifically, I look at the impact of bike lane length on median rent and percent vacancy in a given census tract. In addition to the independent variable of focus, bike lane length, census-based data was used to control for other economic and demographic factors that could impact property values. …

The Gender Gap In Economics Degrees: An Investigation Of The Role Model And Quantitative Requirement Hypotheses, Tisha L. N. Emerson, Kimmarie Mcgoldrick, John J. Siegfried

Economics Faculty Publications

Using a panel of 159 institutions over 10 years, we investigate the role model effect of women faculty and quantitative requirements on the female proportion of undergraduate economics majors. We find no evidence that female faculty attract female students. Calculus, however, does matter. A one semester calculus requirement is associated with more female majors at institutions offering business degrees and liberal arts colleges. A second semester calculus requirement deters women from majoring in economics at Ph.D.–granting universities, but is associated with more female majors at liberal arts colleges. Econometrics requirements are unrelated to the gender gap in economics majors.

Bicycle Infrastructure And Traffic Congestion: Evidence From Dc's Capital Bikeshare, Timothy L. Hamilton, Casey J. Wichman

Economics Faculty Publications

This study explores the impact of bicycle-sharing infrastructure on urban transportation. We estimate a causal effect of the Capital Bikeshare on traffic congestion in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. We exploit a unique traffic dataset that is finely defined on a spatial and temporal scale. Our approach examines within-city commuting decisions as opposed to traffic patterns on major thruways. Empirical results suggest that the availability of a bikeshare reduces traffic congestion upwards of 4% within a neighborhood. In addition, we estimate heterogeneous treatment effects using panel quantile regression. Results indicate that the congestion-reducing impact of bikeshares is concentrated in highly …

Teacher Training For Phd Students And New Faculty In Economics, Sam Allgood, Gail Hoyt, Kimmarie Mcgoldrick

Economics Faculty Publications

Past studies suggest that a majority of economics graduate students engage in teaching-related activities during graduate school and many go on to academic positions afterwards. However, not all graduate students are formally prepared to teach while in graduate school nor are they fully prepared to teach in their first academic position. The authors characterize current teaching experience and training of graduate students from the point of view of directors of graduate studies and of newly minted academic economists. The authors also query department chairs and new faculty about teacher training, support available for new faculty, and the degree to which …

The Ethics Behind Efficiency, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

The normative elements underlying efficiency are more complex than generally portrayed, and rely upon ethical frameworks that are generally absent from classroom discussions. most textbooks, for example, ignore the ethical differences between Paretto efficiency (based on voluntary win-win outcomes) and the modern Kaldor-Hicks efficiency used in public policy assessments (in which winners gain more than losers lose). For the latter to be ethically palatable, society must have in place basic institutions of justice, transparency, and accountability. Normative economics thus requires a pluralist approach that includes considerations of virtue and duty, closer to Adam Smith's Enlightenment conceptions. This surprising finding should …

[Introduction To] Escape From Democracy: The Role Of Experts And The Public In Economic Policy, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Bookshelf

The orthodox view of economic policy holds that public deliberation sets the goals or ends, and then experts select the means to implement these goals. This assumes that experts are no more than trustworthy servants of the public interest. David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart examine the historical record to consider cases in which experts were trusted with disastrous results, such as eugenics, the regulatory use of security ratings, and central economic planning. This history suggests that experts have not only the public interest but also their own interests to consider. The authors then recover and extend an alternative …

The College Admissions Problem: Effects Of Income And Ability Of Postsecondary Education Outcomes, Martha Whamond

Honors Theses

This paper examines the effects of students’ pre-college income on student outcomes and college admissions decisions. Under the assumption that colleges maximize utility by maximizing student outcomes, a two-stage regression model for student outcomes is building using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the 1997 National Youth Longitudinal Survey (NLSY97). The first stage estimates a model for college quality using the IPEDS dataset. The college quality estimates are then used as independent variables in the second stage. The second stage estimates student outcomes as a function of pre- college income, ability, college quality, and demographic characteristics …

The Ethics Behind Efficiency, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

The normative elements underlying efficiency are more complex than generally portrayed, and rely upon ethical frameworks that are generally absent from classroom discussions. Most textbooks, for example, ignore the ethical differences between Pareto efficiency (based on voluntary win-win outcomes) and the modern Kaldor-Hicks efficiency used in public policy assessments (in which winners gain more than losers lose). For the latter to be ethically palatable, society must have in place basic institutions of justice, transparency, and accountability. Normative economics thus requires a pluralist approach that includes considerations of virtue and duty, closer to Adam Smith’s Enlightenment conceptions. This surprising finding should …

The Ethics Problem: Toward A Second-Best Solution To The Problem Of Economic Expertise, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The collective action problem of economic experts was diagnosed acutely by Knight and Pigou in the 1930s. The interest of economists as a group is in pursuing the public good of truth; the interest of an individual economist is in pursuing the private good of happiness. Pigou’s example is the pursuit of political influence. Deviation from truth-seeking devastates the theory of governance as objective inquiry laid out by Knight and John Rawls, as we saw in the eugenic era. We reformulate the Knight–Rawls position as truth-seeking contingent on a presupposed system. The best case for the Knight–Rawls position is transparency, …