Industrial Organization Commons^™

Empowering Voices: Exploring The Career Trajectories Of Women Of Color Hr Professionals Amid Disruptive Change, Brandi R. Muñoz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated strategies to enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives in organizational leadership, focusing on supporting women of color in the workplace. The specific problem addressed was the underrepresentation and barriers faced by women of color in leadership positions despite their potential contributions to organizational success. The study employed a qualitative approach, combining qualitative interviews with socioeconomic data analysis. Data collection methods included semistructured interviews with women of color and a survey to gather demographic and employment information. The sample consisted of 16 women of color human resource professionals working in various industries and organizational settings across the …

Essays On Market Inefficiencies Arising From Information Asymmetry And Market Power, Ming Ge

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three chapters that empirically investigate various kinds of market inefficiencies arising from seller misbehaviors. The first two chapters focus on physicians' overtreatment in healthcare markets. A standard reputation system falls short of effectively curbing overtreatment due to the credence-good nature of such a market: patients cannot tell whether a high-cost treatment recommendation (versus a less costly and complex treatment) is necessary even after the service is completed. In the first chapter, I propose a novel solution to reinstate the function of reputation by combining a reputation mechanism with patient search for second opinions. I conduct a laboratory …

Understanding Factors Influencing Electric Vehicle Adoption: Evidence From Panel Data Analysis, Ryker Brian

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

This paper investigates the factors influencing the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) using panel data from California. The analysis employs a panel data model with within effects to examine the relationship between EV adoption rates and various socio-economic factors. The continued analysis gives out-of-sample forecasted results for the 4 counties with the highest share of electric vehicles registered in 2021. Additionally, the paper explores the influence of supply-side issues and complementary infrastructure on EV adoption. An introduction to Hidden Markov Methods is then given as the next step in the research.

Intra-Firm Hierarchies And Gender Gaps, Nicolo Dalvit, Aseem Patel, Joanne Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study how changes in female representation at the top of a firm’s organisation affect gender-specific outcomes across hierarchies within firms. We start by developing a theoretical model of a hierarchical firm, where gender representation in top organisational layers can affect gender-specific hiring and promotion probabilities at lower layers. We then exploit a recent French reform that imposed gender representation quotas in the boards of directors and test the model’s predictions in the data. Our empirical results show that the reform was successful in reducing gender wage and representation gaps at the upper layers of the firm, but not at …

Essays In Advertising, Regulation And Consumer Naivety, Aastha Gupta

Economics Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays that focus on the theoretical analysis of regulation of firm’s communication regarding the quality of its product and the impact of such regulation on market outcome.

The first essay, “Advertising Through Influencers and Disclosure Regulation”, focuses on the recent FTC regulations which require mandatory disclosure of all paid advertising content through social media influencers. This chapter investigates the impact of this disclosure policy on market outcomes when the influencer has the expertise to evaluate product quality and influence the beliefs of both potential buyers as well as the firm. In markets where the influencers …

Are Nigerian Banks Vulnerable To Oil Price Shocks? A Stress Test Approach, A. T. Odu, A. R Sanusi

Economic and Financial Review

This study empirically examines the vulnerability of the Nigerian banking industry to extreme, but plausible, adverse oil price shocks. A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR-X) is adopted to achieve this objective. The study period covers 2007Q1 – 2020Q4. The simulations assess the asset quality performance of DMBs, using the NPLs, under three scenarios (baseline, adverse and severely adverse). The findings suggest that the entire banking industry, as well as individual DMBs, are vulnerable to adverse oil price shocks. Accordingly, the study recommends, strict compliance with the single obligor limit, by commercial banks, to mitigate adverse effects of volatilities in crude oil …

How The Level Of Job Complexity Impacts The Gender Wage Gap Across Occupations, Zytlaly Magaña Corona

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The present study focused on unpacking the social and structural aspects of job complexity to better understand its effects on the gender wage gap. Previous research on the job complexity-compensation dynamic has primarily focused on cognitive complexity. Job complexity across occupations were examined using work activity data from O*NET and merging it with the Current Population Survey data sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (N=67,003). Results revealed that higher complexity jobs in this study yielded greater wage disparities across different occupations as predicted. Furthermore, physical activities and gaining knowledge from the Generalized Work Activities were the two most …

Rising Costs, Stagnant Prices: How Video Game Companies Truly Earn Profit, Lucas Mcculloch

Senior Honors Projects

Despite being one of the youngest forms of entertainment, video games have grown from a relatively niche market into an economic juggernaut, easily eclipsing both film and music in market value. In particular, the global video games industry has doubled in value in under a decade, from an estimated global revenue of approximately $80 billion in 2012 to approximately $160 billion in 2020. In order to better understand the economic principles underlying the rise of the gaming industry over the past decade, this project includes an interview of game developer and industry insider Rami Ismail and an in-depth literature review. …

Hemp Production Network Effects: Are Producers Tipped Toward Suboptimal Varietal Selection By Their Neighbors?, Tanner Mccarty, Jeffrey Young

Journal of Applied Farm Economics

The 2018 farm bill removed industrial hemp from the Schedule 1 Controlled Substance List. In response, states scrambled to enact hemp legislation. Some hemp flower producers report their hemp fields were cross- pollinated by a neighbor growing a different hemp cultivar. For hemp flower crops, cross- pollination reduces cannabinoid concentration levels within the flower; these concentration levels dictate flower price. We show that in a repeated game, once a sufficiently large percentage of growers decide to plant hemp fiber/seed crops, cross-pollination forces flower growers to convert to fiber/seed to avoid the negative network externality. Over time, a stable, suboptimal Nash …

The Effects Of Racial Capitalism On Poor White Laborers, Amy Whittaker

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

While always remembering that racial capitalism’s very nature ensures that non-white Americans suffer incomparable racial oppression, this paper will endeavor to expose the devastation caused to American society as a whole by explaining the ways in which racial capitalism destroyed poor white labors ability to participate fully in the economic system and strangled its chances of living the American dream. It is my hope that by discussing the missing piece of the poor white laborers’ experience under racial capitalism will unite poor white laborers and poor black laborers to work together to end racial capitalism, policing, and the carceral system. …

Board Of Director Composition: An Examination Of How Director Age And Board Innovation Committees Impact Corporate Social And Financial Performance, Sami Ghaddar

2021

This dissertation explores how director age affects a firm’s social domain, and how board-level oversight of firms’ innovation activities affects financial performance. Specifically, the dissertation points to board configurations that can potentially improve social and financial performance. The first chapter reviews the literature by examining two research streams linking board composition to corporate social performance (CSP) and innovation. The chapter presents the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of these two streams. It details the descriptive and thematic findings and offers an understanding of the different contexts in which board composition relates to both CSP and innovation. This chapter also discusses inconsistencies …

Corporate Law For Good People, Yuval Feldman, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

This article offers a novel analysis of the field of corporate governance by viewing it through the lens of behavioral ethics. It calls for both shifting the focus of corporate governance to a new set of loci of potential corporate wrongdoing and adding new tools to the corporate governance arsenal. The behavioral ethics scholarship emphasizes the large share of wrongdoing generated by "good people" whose intention is to act ethically. Their wrongdoing stems from "bounded ethicality" -- various cognitive and motivational processes that lead to biased decisions that seem legitimate. In the legal domain, corporate law provides the most fertile …

Three Essays On Behavioral Economics And Mechanism Design, Na Zuo

Doctoral Dissertations

My three essays on behavioral economics and mechanism design introduce two new microeconomic theoretical models.

In the first chapter, we develop an n-player theoretical model applying the concept of Virtual Bargaining to study cooperative behavior in public goods games characterizing team production. Virtual Bargaining is a modeling framework that characterizes how players may construct a tacit agreement to coordinate behavior in the absence of explicit communication. Players identify their worst-possible payoff outcome from any candidate agreement, and mutually best-respond with respect to maximization of their worst-payoff function. Players face uncertainties regarding whether other players will follow through on a candidate …

Essays On Decision Making Under Risk And Uncertainty, Dong Yan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses economic theory, in tandem with experiments and other empirical methods, to better understand the role of information – for instance, missing information, conflicting information, and information overload – in determining outcomes in decision settings characterized by risk and uncertainty. In my first chapter, I use theory and experiments to compare market outcomes in a setting where the seller has better information on product quality than the buyer, and examine the effects of introducing a third-party who can credibly relay information on product quality. Under a range of conditions, I find market efficiency is higher when the information …

Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate the extent to which uncertainties about tax policies affect business activities. We develop a statewide tax-uncertainty measure (TU measure) and show that it captures state corporate tax uncertainty. By comparing adjacent counties across state borders, we show that increasing tax uncertainty by one standard deviation (a 30% increase in the TU measure) leads to a 0.17% point per-year decrease in the growth rate of establishments over two years. The result holds after conducting a variety of robustness checks and is not likely to be driven by general state-policy uncertainties.

Pro-Social Consumer And Firm Behavior In Imperfectly Competitive Regional Agricultural Markets, Jill Fitzsimmons

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I combine field research, econometric methods, and economic theory to analyze a market in which both firms’ and consumers’ choices are motivated by social preferences. This work contributes to the fields of behavioral economics, industrial organization, and local food systems economics. The dissertation expands the growing literature on social preferences to incorporate firms’ choices that are motivated by utility maximizing objectives in an environment that allows endogenous equilibrium prices and quantities. Firms with social preferences operate in a competitive environment in which they may face downstream market power. In particular, the research focuses on intermediated Farm to …

The Effects Of An Increasing Federal Minimum Wage On Federal Unemployment And Job Automation Levels, Kiana Krayeski

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The industrial revolution was the start of increasing technological advancements that are continuing to grow today. Technology improves accuracy, efficiency and is more productive in comparison to human labor as it does not require breaks and cannot violate any labor laws. With many innovations available today, firms have more options to choose from and can select the relatively cheaper solution. The push for a fifteen-dollar minimum wage affects the firm's options, and the use of technology might increasingly become the more viable choice. This study took data from the years 1993 to 2016 and created two regressions using the unemployment …

On The Relationship Between Household Wealth And Entrepreneurship, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

Motivated by a substantial number of startup owners with negative household net worth, I present a model that incorporates credit borrowing into Evans and Jovanovic [1989]. The estimated model generates no relationship between household wealth and the propensity for business entry. Ignoring credit borrowing for potential business owners substantially overstates the efficiency loss from financial constraints in business entry. However, the efficiency loss in investments by the entrants is large even if credit borrowing is allowed. Individuals who start a business once credit borrowing is available are those whose business ideas are of a high-enough quality to compensate high financing …

Conservatism And Switcher's Curse, Aaron Edlin

Aaron Edlin

Industrial Ecology Analysis Of The Potential For An Eastern Nebraska Industrial Symbiosis Network (Enisn): A Comparative Study, Bradley A. Behne

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The area of Eastern Nebraska north of Omaha, including the municipality of Blair is host to a collection of unique companies and industries. These industries, driven by the agricultural and urban economy of the area, as well as the geographic proximity to each other, make it an advantageous area to study the potential for a network where individual entities utilize the concept of industrial symbiosis. This potential network is referred to as the Eastern Nebraska Industrial Symbiosis Network (ENISN). Industrial symbiosis, a sub-set of industrial ecology, engages separate industries in a collaborative and collective approach, concerning itself with the flow …

Economic Impact Of Legalizing Retail Alcohol Sales In Crawford County, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

Converting from a dry county to wet county status would have a number of tangible and intangible economic benefits for Crawford County. Legal retail alcohol sales are a signal of a contemporary economic development environment. Quantifying the value of that perception is quite difficult, but it is entirely possible to estimate sales effects, tax collections, and other economic impacts of becoming a wet county. This study was conducted by the Center for Business and Economic Research to assess the magnitude of those economic effects.

Economic Impact Of Legalizing Retail Alcohol Sales In Randolph County, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

Converting from a dry county to wet county status would have a number of tangible and intangible economic benefits for Randolph County. Legal retail alcohol sales are a signal of a contemporary economic development environment. Quantifying the value of that perception is quite difficult, but it is entirely possible to estimate sales effects, tax collections, and other economic impacts of becoming a wet county. This study was conducted by the Center for Business and Economic Research to assess the magnitude of those economic effects.

Economic Impact Of Legalizing Retail Alcohol Sales In Independence County, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

Converting from a dry county to wet county status would have a number of tangible and intangible economic benefits for Independence County. Legal retail alcohol sales are a signal of a contemporary economic development environment. Quantifying the value of that perception is quite difficult, but it is entirely possible to estimate sales effects, tax collections, and other economic impacts of becoming a wet county. This study was conducted by the Center for Business and Economic Research to assess the magnitude of those economic effects.

Economic Impact Of Legalizing Retail Alcohol Sales In Little River County, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

Converting from a dry county to wet county status would have a number of tangible and intangible economic benefits for Little River County. Legal retail alcohol sales are a signal of a contemporary economic development environment. Quantifying the value of that perception is quite difficult, but it is entirely possible to estimate sales effects, tax collections, and other economic impacts of becoming a wet county. This study was conducted by the Center for Business and Economic Research to assess the magnitude of those economic effects.

Economic Impact Of Legalizing Retail Alcohol Sales In Johnson County, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

Converting from a dry county to wet county status would have a number of tangible and intangible economic benefits for Johnson County. Legal retail alcohol sales are a signal of a contemporary economic development environment. Quantifying the value of that perception is quite difficult, but it is entirely possible to estimate sales effects, tax collections, and other economic impacts of becoming a wet county. This study was conducted by the Center for Business and Economic Research to assess the magnitude of those economic effects.

The Bidder's Curse: Comment, Henry S. Schneider

Henry S Schneider

The prices of auctions on eBay often exceed eBay’s fixed-price “Buy-It-Now” prices. I investigate the causes of this overbidding, focusing on the interpretation in Malmendier and Lee (2011) that the observed overbidding cannot be explained “without allowing for nonstandard preferences or beliefs” and that the “strongest direct evidence points to limited attention.” Using data from their study and new data from eBay, I provide evidence that a key condition for identifying nonstandard behavior may not have been met, and that the observed overbidding is not inconsistent with standard behavior once we allow for the likely presence of search costs.

Firms' Decisions To Enter A Market Of Highly Differentiated Products: Apparel Industry And New York Fashion Week, Yoko Katagiri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation deals with economic aspects of the fashion industry. It begins with a discussion of the complex industrial organization aspects of the industry. A wealth of information in this area has been assembled and is presented for the first time. The focus is on the high-end fashion market: how it started, how it works, New York Fashion Week, and its significance for the industry. Then a comprehensive review of the economics literature as it pertains to the industry is presented, also for the first time. The empirical sections of the dissertation contain estimates of demand functions for apparel and …

Nonstandard Bidder Behavior In Real-World Auctions, Joseph U. Podwol, Henry S. Schneider

Henry S Schneider

Empirical work on auctions has found that bidders deviate from standard behavior in important ways. We investigate a range of these behaviors, including nonrational herding, auction fever, quasi-endowment effect, and escalation of commitment. Our innovations are to more completely control for unobservables by using new data from a field experiment on eBay, and by accounting for censoring of bids below the starting price. Consistent with standard auction theory and in contrast to the predictions of the nonstandard behaviors, we find that auction starting price has no effect on bidder willingness to pay in a private-values setting. We conclude that there …

Wintertime For Deceptive Advertising?, Jonathan Zinman, Eric Zitzewitz

Dartmouth Scholarship

Casual empiricism suggests that deceptive advertising about product quality is prevalent, and several classes of theories explore its causes and consequences. We provide unusually sharp empirical evidence on its extent, mechanics, and dynamics. Ski resorts self-report substantially more natural snowfall than comparable government sources. The difference is more pronounced on weekends, despite third-party evidence that snowfall is uniform throughout the week—as one would expect given plausibly greater returns to exaggeration on weekends. Exaggeration is greater for resorts that plausibly reap greater benefits from it: those with expert terrain and those not offering money back guarantees. (JEL D83, L15, L83, M37, …

Opec, The Seven Sisters, And Oil Market Dominance: An Evolutionary Game Theory And Agent-Based Modeling Approach, Aaron Wood, Charles F. Mason, David C. Finnoff

Charles F Mason

No abstract provided.