Income Distribution Commons^™

Cuban Embargo: An Insufficient Measure To Encourage Us Foreign Policy Interests, Esme Jm Prowse

Major Papers

This major paper examines the Cuban embargo as an ineffective hard power policy and explores the potential of soft, hard, and smart power as alternative approaches to resolve the failures of the 60-year-old blockade. The paper analyzes the historical context and rationale behind the embargo and assesses its impact on Cuban-American relations, regional stability, and U.S. national interests. The study argues that the embargo has failed to achieve its intended goals and has instead perpetuated a cycle of hostility, isolation, and human rights abuses. By drawing on the theoretical frameworks of soft, hard, and smart power, the paper presents policy …

Heating Systems And Households’ Expenditure, Svitlana Holyk

Master's Theses

The heating energy expenditure has been frequently taken to the consideration across different studies of poverty reduction. However, there is an unresolved question related to understanding how households’ expenditures might be distinct due to the heating system characteristics. This research implements matching methods to investigate the causal effect of the heating system on households’ gas and electricity expenditure in Ukraine. The result indicates that there is a significant difference in the utility expenditure between the District heating system (DHS) and the Individual heating system (IHS) households. The inherited from the past the Soviet District heating system Model in Ukraine doesn’t …

Analyzing The Impact Of Automation On Employment In Different Us Regions: A Data-Driven Approach, Thejaas Balasubramanian

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Automation is transforming the US workforce with the increasing prevalence of technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. As a result, it is essential to understand how this shift will impact the labor market and prepare for its effects. This culminating experience project aimed to examine the influence of computerization on jobs in the United States and answer the following research questions: Q1. What factors affect how likely different jobs will be automated? Q2. What are the possible effects of automation on the US workforce across states and industries? Q3. What are the meaningful predictors of the likelihood of …

Two Essays In Human Capital, Illia Polovnikov

All Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of two essays on human capital. I analyze how early-life human capital boost shapes micro-level outcomes among disadvantaged children in the US. In the second chapter, I study the productivity convergence among OECD countries and evaluate to what extent the labor force’s sectoral allocation (due to different human capital profiles across countries) contributes to it. In the first chapter, which is joint work with Jorge Garc´ia and William Dougan, we analyze a large-scale trial of an early-childhood education program targeting premature, low-birthweight children, thereby oversampling twins. We find that failing to account for this oversampling obscures …

Income Inequality And Economic Growth: An Analysis, Nicholas Martin

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Income inequality and its relationship with economic growth has been a subject of debate in academia for decades. This paper examines the relationship the Gini index of five selected countries and four macroeconomic variables (GDP growth, unemployment rate, lending interest rate, and savings rate) for each country with two developed nations being represented (United States and Italy) and three developing nations being represented (Peru, Belarus, and Indonesia). After reviewing the literature on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, a multivariate regression analysis of each country is presented; first with GDP growth as the dependent variable, followed by a …

The Parental Labor Gap: The Impact Of Daycare Access On The Parental Labor Force During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Acacia Wyckoff

Honors Theses

In the two years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the landscape for work has shifted dramatically. Many companies and employers switched to telework when the pandemic hit, and many still do not require workers to come into the office. Research suggests these COVID-induced changes have led to a closing of the gap in childcare duties between men and women in households. Comparing parents in positions with telework eligibility versus in-person positions, Heggeness and Suri (2022) found that while telework improved the labor participation rate of mothers slightly, there was still a major gap in labor force participation between mothers and …

Perceptions Of Tourism And Quality Of Life: A Case Study In Savannah, Georgia, Marissa J. Renee

Honors College Theses

The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that Travel and Tourism accounted for 10.3% of the world economy in 2019 and ¼ of all net new jobs over the past five years. Savannah, Georgia has experienced huge growth in the last decade due to tourism, with visitor spending on lodging alone increasing from $466 million in 2009 to $1 billion in 2019. The current study examined differences in perceived impact of tourism on quality of life using established predictors of tourism sentiments. An online community survey was conducted in Chatham County, Georgia (N = 94) using the Tourism Quality of …

On Income Inequality And Poverty In Egypt: Is Prosperity Immoral?, Mohamed Karim Lotfy Abdelkhalek

Theses and Dissertations

There are varying perspectives on, and divergent solutions to, the phenomena of income inequality and poverty. There seems to be polarizing views on both of these sensitive topics. One side of the argument believes income inequality should in itself be mitigated through redistribution measures, while the other argues that this should not be the focus of policy makers, as it deters them from facing the more pressing issue facing society – which is absolute poverty. The relationship between income inequality, poverty, and citizen well-being in Egypt is one that warrants further research, and this paper aims to fill this lacuna. …

Did Demonetization Have A Bigger Impact On Ppis (Prepaid Payment Instruments) Or Mobile Banking In India?, Ansh Vora

CMC Senior Theses

On November 8, 2016, Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, tele-advertised the entire nation and announced that India's highest value banknotes, the 500 and 1000 rupee “Rs” notes would be demonetized and taken out of circulation, effective midnight. Modi stated that this is an effort to reduce the large economy of black money, transition India into a digital economy, abolish funding of terrorist groups and illicit circulation of counterfeit notes. In this study, I choose to analyze the impact of demonetization on two digital payment methods - Prepaid Payment Instruments, “PPI” and Mobile Banking. The data used in this study …

Finding Answers In Gaps: The Relationship Between Drugs And Mexico's Economy, Mariela Centeno

CMC Senior Theses

This paper sets out to understand the economic conditions that paved the way for the evolution and resilience of a powerful and resilient drug economy in Mexico. To do this, I examine the relationship between a proxy for drug movement from Mexico and large economic variables in the country. I use a dataset that incorporates the drug seizures from 1997 to 2022 to understand whether privatization and the resulting rising economic inequalities in Mexico paved the way for a growing drug economy. This paper builds on current literature regarding drug market estimates and drug economy interactions. Using an OLS regression …

Employer Power: Consequences For Wages, Inequality And Spillovers, Ihsaan Bassier

Doctoral Dissertations

In several countries, wages have stagnated and union membership declined, even as productivity has increased. The established view of employers helpless to the labor market's invisible hand has increasingly come under question. Attention has turned towards the power of employers to set wages; yet only recently have the data required to investigate this – observing workers at their employers – become available, and then mostly in richer countries. My first chapter, “Monopsony in Movers” (co-authored with Arindrajit Dube and Suresh Naidu), proposes a new credible estimation strategy to measure employer monopsony power. We build on the idea that employers with …

Essays On Inequality, Growth, And Economic Policy, Philipp E. Erfurth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study inequality and regional economics in a historical and development context.

The first chapter examines regional inequality among Habsburg regions from the 19th century to today’s EU by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to recreate historical regions in present-day projections. The findings suggests that regional disparities are markedly higher today than in the 19th century, despite rapid convergence in the past two decades. The study thus provides evidence of retrospective determinism in the study of the Habsburg economy and suggests that, although regional EU policy has been successful over the past two …

Essays On Social Mobility And Distribution, Luis A. Monroy Gómez Franco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters on the relationship between immutable characteristics of a person (also known as circumstances) and the intergenerational social mobility experienced by them, as well as their human capital accumulation. It pays particular attention to the role played by the economic resources of the household of origin in producing differences in the economic outcomes across persons.

In the first chapter, I show that the decomposition of intergenerational persistence indicators into their structural and positional components offers a clearer understanding of the determinants of heterogeneity in subnational mobility rates. The crucial element for the separate analysis of …

Essays On Intergenerational Mobility In Education, Ercio A. Munoz Saavedra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that investigate intergenerational mobility in education in Chile, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Chapter 1: In this chapter, I estimate intergenerational mobility (IGM) in education using data from 91 censuses that span 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) over half a century. I measure upward mobility as the likelihood of obtaining at least a primary education for individuals whose parents did not finish primary school, whereas downward mobility as the likelihood of failing to complete primary education for individuals whose parents completed at least primary school. In addition, I …

Inaccessible Interpolated Imagery: How Coffee Farmers In The State Of Chiapas Might Access Political Economic Opportunity Through Representation, Paolo Fiann Bicchieri

Master's Theses

Here is a useful parable to boil down the idea of this project and set the tone: when one goes to the bar to tell a story about a fight at the bar, they would never venture to place themselves as the hero of the brawl, taking out three drunkards in a single punch, unless they were really in the bar, at that time, fighting a good fight. One would never do this as the bartender, locals, and regulars would all know if this were the case or not. Yet transnational corporations, governments, and even consumers do this all the …

Degrowth And Catholic Social Thought: Rethinking Socio-Economics For A Planet In Crisis, Chad G. Baron

Master's Theses

It is assumed within both degrowth literature and the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (CST) that socio-economic transitions and transformations are needed due to the failings of the dominant capitalist paradigm. Both bodies of thought engage with issues of socio-economic transitions by considering what constitutes globally just development, and by outlining key principles they espouse to be foundational to global justice. By highlighting these principles, and locating the affinities between the two, these theories of socio-economic development can benefit from engaging with the other’s promoted framework. What could follow is a more coherent and holistic approach to development, …

Save, Gamble, Or Both? The Relationship Between Premium Bond Sales And Lottery Sales In The United Kingdom, Kaden Grace

Honors Theses

Four out of every ten Americans are unable to pay for an unexpected $400 bill out of their savings accounts. To ameliorate this problem, one policy to incentivize saving is a Prize-Linked Savings Account (PLSA). Unlike a traditional savings account that pays out a consistent rate of return, a PLSA pools the interest on all deposits and distributes the returns in randomly drawn prizes (similar to a lottery). However, PLSAs remain illegal in many areas due to a concern that the introduction of a private or public PLSA could cannibalize revenue from an existing state-sponsored lottery, thus restricting the state’s …

Success Factors For Promoting Living Wages In Richmond Virginia, Alison Kent

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Nonprofit Studies Capstone Projects

Advancing living wages helps reduce poverty, enable individuals to realize their full societal potential, and support overall economic growth. In this paper, I describe a research project I undertook in Richmond, Virginia to identify impactful actions that can be taken to promote living wages. I identified the roles of organizations across different sectors and subsectors and how these organizations collaborate to drive living wages. I define the model that has evolved in Richmond, Virginia and I compare it to models employed in other communities. I close by identifying those components which are unique and powerful in the Richmond model and …

The Leveling Spirit: Violence And Inequality In Postwar Iraq, Griffin Perrault

Honors Theses

The Iraq War (2003–2011) constitutes by some estimates one of the deadliest and most destructive conflicts of the 21st century (Hagopian et al., 2013). In addition to the disputed figures of excess violent civilian casualties––generally ranging from 180,000 to 210,000 deaths––the war has created one of the major refugee crises of modern times, with 1 in 25 Iraqis estimated to have been displaced from their homes by the 2003 invasion (Costs of War, 2021). While much of this violence has been wrought by American and Iraqi coalition troops, violence against civilians has also been perpetuated by insurgent groups and paramilitary …

Institutions, State Capacity, And Intra-State Conflict: Evidence From A Decade-Long Civil War In Nepal, Nishant Yonzan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

First, while mass armed civil conflicts predominantly occur in weak states, which are states that lack state capacity, it is unclear why not all weak states experience mass armed civil conflict. Second, political stability and highly unequal distribution of resources are opposing forces that are unlikely to coexist together. However, highly unequal societies have existed with relative stability. Indeed, cross-country literature on civil war finds little relationship between conflict and unequal distribution of resources. This dissertation attempts to address these issues using the Civil War in Nepal which lasted from 1996 to 2006.

Institutions are fundamental for the proper functioning …

An Inferentially Robust Look At Two Competing Explanations For The Surge In Unauthorized Migration From Central America, Nick Santos

Dissertations

The last 8 years have seen a dramatic increase in the flow of Central American apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol. Explanations for this surge in apprehensions have been split between two leading hypotheses. Most academic scholars, immigrant advocates, progressive media outlets, and human rights organizations identify poverty and violence (the Poverty and Violence Hypothesis) in Central America as the primary triggers responsible. In contrast, while most government officials, conservative think tanks, and the agencies that work in the immigration and border enforcement realm admit poverty and violence may underlie some decisions to migrate, they instead blame lax U.S. immigration …

Are Small Businesses The Framework For A Successful U.S. Economy?, Carson Clevenger

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will investigate the impact of small businesses on the United States’ economy. I will be assessing several impact areas including gross domestic product, employment, and local economy contribution. This thesis will cover a study from the time periods of 1998-2014 of the gross domestic product and employment levels and will use numbers from the years of 2018- present for other impact areas. Furthermore, I will be analyzing certain sectors of the economy, comparing small businesses contribution to corporate contribution, in order to discuss if small businesses are necessary for our country’s successful economy.

The Economic And Health Impacts Of Community Gardens On Refugee Populations: Cric Garden Case Study, Joseph Montoya

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this paper is to examine the economic benefits of community gardens and incubator farms, both of which support the populations they serve from an economic viewpoint as well as socially, and as a benefit to public health and nutrition. The findings were gathered from the large body of research concerning the benefits of community gardens as well as program evaluation responses conducted with gardeners at the Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection (CRIC) garden in Logan, Utah in 2020. They are also informed by experiences had and lessons learned while working as the garden manager. There is a …

Income Inequality In America: Conclusions From 100 Years Of Income Tax Data And Cross-Country Comparisons, Noriel Campos

Master's Theses

In 1913, taxation of income was permanently introduced in the United States. Other similarly developed countries soon followed suit. From there, income inequality in the United States dropped significantly, and the decline in Europe was even more dramatic. First, this paper considers the changes over time of the share of national income gained by the top 1% of income earners in seven countries going back to World War Two. A second analysis considers the impact that tax policy may have had on the share of income accruing to the top 1% of U.S. income earners between 1980 and 2014, a …

Estimating Treatment Effect Heterogeneity In A Comprehensive Microenterprise Intervention, Mary Gathungu

Master's Theses

Do cash transfer programs have heterogeneous treatment effects within the treatment group? Why do some households in these interventions seem to benefit more than others? What is the overall treatment effect of the Microenterprise Intervention? I address these questions through the study of a comprehensive microenterprise intervention program carried out in Kenya, Africa by a non-profit organization called the Village Enterprise Organization and I obtain economic outcome data from a randomized control trial that gives out conditional cash transfer that is conditional on business formation. The Microenterprise Intervention combines cash grants and mentorship and training to achieve long term economic …

Investigating The Role Of Income Inequality In The Impact Of Natural Disasters In Lower Middle-Income Countries, Madison L. Graham

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Decline Of American Entrepreneurship: An Analysis Of Causes Of Macro Market Trends And A Changing American Economic System, Owen Flomberg

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Alternative Subsistence Farming Practices In Dangriga, Belize, Alexander Johnson

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Subsistence farming, also referred to as backyard farming, is an important opportunity for families in areas of low economic status. Small scale poultry farming is another practice often used by families in similar situations because of the financial and nutritional benefits provided. By combining the two practices in a process where they each benefit from the other, a sustainable system can be created. The poultry-garden system can provide a source of food for the household and, if run effectively, supplemental income can be generated through the sale of excess poultry, eggs, or vegetation. This project attempted to take the concept …

Growth Convergence Across Countries And Regions In The Long Run: An Empirical Study Using Panel Analysis (1980-2018), Portia Mensah

Masters Theses

With the emergence of new superpowers, the changing landscape of the global economy, and the heterogeneity of growth experiences being discovered in recent times, the concept of growth convergence must be revisited. This study examines whether developing countries are catching up with the advanced countries in terms of their per capita income. The study uses a panel analysis of 69 countries over a period of 39 years spanning from 1980 to 2018 to test for growth convergence (both absolute and conditional) among countries based on the Augmented Solow model. The countries were further divided into three regions namely, Europe, Asia, …

Healthy And Unhealthy Responses To American Democratic Institutional Failure, Thomas D'Anieri

CMC Senior Theses

I have set out on the hunch that politics in America “feels different,” that we are frustrated both with our institutions as well as with one another. First, I will seek to empirically verify this claim beyond mere “feelings.” If it can be shown that these kinds of discontent genuinely exist to the extent that I believe they do, I will then explain why people feel this way and why things are different this time from the economic, political, and social points of view. Next, I will examine two potential responses, what I will call the populist and the institutional …