Income Distribution Commons^™

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. …

The Shrinking Geography Of Housing Opportunity In Mountain West Metros, 2022, Hira Ahmed, Joshua Padilla, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet examines data from the National Equity Atlas on the changing geography of opportunity across Mountain West metros. The original report includes data on the largest 100 metros in the United States. This fact sheet reports on the overall percentages of affordable zip codes in nine major metropolitan areas in the Mountain West and changes in affordable zip codes for Black, Latinx, and white households in Mountain West metros from 2013 to 2019. Data for nine Mountain West metros are included: Tucson, AZ; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ; Colorado Springs, CO; Denver-Aurora, CO; Albuquerque, NM; Las Vegas-Paradise, NV; Ogden-Clearfield, UT; Provo-Orem, …

Examining The Effectiveness Of Nba General Managers At Determining Value In The Nba Draft, And The Impact Of Drafting Team On Player Future Value, Benjamin S. Glass

CMC Senior Theses

This study examines the effectiveness of NBA general managers at accurately drafting in accordance with the future values of players. Using draft position as a metric representing perceived value at the time of the draft, and second contract size to represent value of a player at the time of free agency, I compare the effects of different draft positions on the expected size of a players second contract. By examining divergences in the expected negative linear trend, I can identify positions in the draft which are being over/undervalued. I additionally look at the effect of team on second contract size …

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 …

A Philosophical And Empirical Investigation Into Buddhist Economics, Hannah Doyle

CMC Senior Theses

There is a growing body of literature on Buddhist economics from a philosophical perspective; however, no work to date has sought to empirically validate it as an effective economic theory at a global scale. In my paper, I draw on the long history of Buddhist metaphysics to construct an account of Buddhist ethics and then proceed to derive a set of Buddhist economic principles. I draw on the World Happiness Report’s methodology to quantitatively demonstrate the relationship between Buddhist economic principles and the psychological wellbeing of a country’s citizens, as measured through their own evaluation of their quality of life …

Teacher Salaries In The Mountain West, 2019 - 2021, Corryn Richardson, Joshua Padilla, Hira Ahmed, Zachary Billot, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

K-12 Education

This fact sheet examines state-level data of teacher salary benchmarks from the National Education Association, a labor union representing public school teachers and other education faculty in the U.S. Data are presented on average teacher salaries, average teacher starting salaries, and teacher pay penalties in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah).

Mountain West States Most Dependent On The Federal Government, 2022, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet synthesizes data from the SmartAsset report, “States Most Dependent on the Federal Government – 2022 Edition.” This fact sheet explores federal government dependency for the following Mountain West states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

Growth In High-Paying Jobs: Mountain West Metros, Joshua Padilla, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data from a Stessa report titled, “U.S. Cities with the Largest Growth in High-Paying Jobs.” Data are presented for 25 metros in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah).

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 …

The Great Resignation Among Restaurant Workers: A Content Analysis Of News Sources’ Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage, Mackenzie M. Williams

The Cardinal Edge

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

In A Gig Economy, Do People Work More When Wages Rise?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Study finds that when wages go up, how the supply of labour changes can depend on how the change in pay is communicated

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 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 …

The Gender Wage Gap In The Mountain West, Annie Vong, Katie M. Gilbertson, Katie Lim, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data on the gender wage gap, or the discrepancy in pay between female and male workers, in Mountain West metros. The Pew Research Center report, “Young Women are Out-Earning Young Men in Several U.S. Cities,” includes data on the gender wage gap for people under the age of 30 in various metropolitan areas across the United States in 2019. The Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey explores male and female occupational earnings by job sector for workers 16 and over.

Does Microcredit Reduce Poverty? An Empirical Exploration In India, Aneel Karnani, Seema Sahai

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Microcredit has grown dramatically over the last few decades and its supporters have made extravagant promises about its potential impact on reducing poverty. However, much recent research has shown that microcredit has no significant impact on reducing poverty. In this exploratory study we interview 205 clients of for-profit microcredit to better understand the causes of why microcredit has not lived up to its promise. We find the basic problem is that the lending policies of the microcredit organizations are designed to lower the costs and risks, and hence increase the profits of the organization, and are not responsive to the …

Economic Mobility Index Of Public R1 Universities In The Mountain West, Peter Grema, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This fact sheet presents data on public R1 higher education institutions in the Mountain West from the “Economic Mobility Index,” crafted by higher education researchers at the think tank, Third Way. We summarize the rankings of eleven Mountain West R1 institutions in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

Does Fertility Matter For Middle Aged And Older Adults’ Risk Attitudes?, Christine Ho, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Joanne Tan, Eugene Rui Le Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Given that risk attitudes influence many decisions, it is important to understand the factors that shape such attitudes in late adulthood, when individuals face important risky decisions. While research finds that parenthood tends to correlate with lower risk tolerance in western countries, there is a lacuna on whether such associations persist in late adulthood, and are applicable to the Asian context, where children are conventionally considered a linchpin of old age support. Data for middle aged and older individuals come from the nationwide Singapore Life Panel (N = 6,740). Multivariate statistical analyses are employed to estimate the associations between willingness …

Strategic Parent Meets Detached Child? Parental Intended Bequest Division And Support From Children, Christine Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

Whereas the literature has found that elderly parents may use bequests to reward children who provide them with time support, there is limited evidence on whether younger less needy parents may base their intended bequest division on alternative forms of support from children. Using a large-scale dataset of middle-aged and older Singaporeans, I find that parents intend to leave larger bequest shares to coresident children and to children who provide greater material support. Parents also intend to bequeath more to children in whom they confide frequently while they bequeath more to children in whom they rarely confide when the latter …

The True Cost Of Auto Insurance In The Mountain West, 2022, Annie Vong, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Transportation & Infrastructure

This fact sheet examines data on average annual premiums, percent of income spent on auto insurance, and life events associated with the rising cost of auto insurance in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah). The original report includes data on national averages for auto insurance premiums for all fifty states.

Shortage Of Affordable Rental Homes In The Mountain West, Joshua Padilla, Kelliann Beavers, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet examines data from the 2022 report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), “The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes” for the Mountain West region. The original report includes data from 2016- 2020 American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) to help “determine the availability of rental homes affordable to extremely low-income households.”