Digital Commons Network^™

Analyzing Preparedness For Compliance With The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (Cbam) Across Member States Of The European Union, Vincent Pfattner

Politics Honors Papers

The European Union’s implementation of the CBAM is a climate change-driven initiative aimed at preventing carbon leakages. This thesis aims to investigate the underlying reasons for the variation in preparedness to comply with CBAM. Exposure to CBAM-covered Extra-EU imports serves as a proxy for preparedness, a measure of the economic constraints EU countries face. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, including Regression Analysis, Bayesian model averaging, and comparative case studies of EU countries. The results show a strong association between preparedness levels and institutional factors, particularly regulatory capacity. In contrast, political, financial, and geographical factors exhibit limited influence on a …

Ticking Time Bomb: The Economic Ramifications Of Mlb's Pitch Clock, Katie Ciuffreda

Business and Economics Honors Papers

In recent years, Major League Baseball has been challenged with declining engagement and attendance, particularly with younger audiences, with the long duration of games most commonly cited as the reason for disinterest. In response to this, MLB implemented a pitch clock that worked its way through the minor league system until it was introduced to the majors for the 2023 season. The goal for the clock was to reduce game times by increasing pace of play. While early evidence shows that the clock has been successful in that regard, its impact on player performance remains to be explored. This study …

The Impatience Of Winning: An Analysis Of Time Discounting, Predictive Modeling, And The Nba Draft, Alec R. Plante

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This paper examines whether NBA draft decisions can be better explained by incorporating non-geometric time discounting into a model of general manager decision making. Using a dataset of 285 NBA draft prospects over a 12-year period, the impact of college statistics on Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) is determined, and these impact values are then used to create a “predicted” VORP for the first 4 seasons of each player’s career: a projection of what a general manager might think of a prospect’s future value given their college statistics. Following this, geometric and hyperbolic time discounting models are applied to estimate …

The Impact Of Monetary Policy Announcements On Trading Reactions To Earnings Reports, Sean A. Maxfield

Economics Honors Projects

This paper examines trading reactions to quarterly earnings reports and the impact of recent monetary policy announcements by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). It argues that the market, as a product of rational and irrational investor behavior, interprets firms’ financial performance within a broader macroeconomic context, affirming the causal channels found in similar studies. This study differs from prior research by looking at the recent, not simultaneous, monetary policy announcement for each earnings announcement in order to understand if the two types of information remain complementary. By conducting an event study model, this study confirms that the interaction of …

Losses And Labor: Experimental Insights Into Worker Effort Supply And Behavioral Biases, Maia Lemov

Economics Honors Projects

Worker effort supply is influenced not only by rational expectations but also biases such as framing and numerical presentation of incentives. Identifying these effects is essential for designing effective incentives. To study left-digit manipulation, loss aversion, and loss aversion prediction, I conducted an experiment in an online labor market. Participants completed a real-effort typing task, a willingness- to-pay (WTP) task, and a self-reported loss aversion survey. Loss framing and left-digit manipulation had no statistically significant effects on effort, with no interaction effect, suggesting their influence on effort-supply may be overstated or highly heterogeneous. Despite null treatment effects, behaviorally elicited loss …

Information Aggregation In Decision Markets Under A Modified Hanson Market Maker, Leo Vershel

Behavioral and Computational Economics (MS) Theses

In this paper, we report the results of experiments where subjects participate in a prediction market utilizing the Hanson automated market maker. The key distinction of our environment when compared with previous studies in the prediction market space is in the introduction of a conditional market that allows subjects to make conscious decisions to infuence market outcomes, and thus it investigates the quality of the decisions made by the subjects as opposed to the accuracy of the market prices. Utilizing dispersed “not-state” information, we evaluate whether subjects can accurately infer true states and maximize organizational welfare. Our initial baseline results …

The Goad, The Bad, & The Ugly: The Livestreamed Vice Signaling & Body Fascism Of Clavicular & Asmongold, Jacob T. Fry

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores the rhetorical, material, and symbolic implications of fascist livestreaming in the United States through two popular streamers: Clavicular and Asmongold. These two streamers represent a small slice of the rise of different reactionary rhetorics online and how the use of different masculine subcultures—in this case ‘Looksmaxxing’ or Gamer inspired rhetoric—are used as ideological texts for white male supremacy. Whether in front of the glow of their gaming monitor or the flashing lights of a nightclub, the livestreaming of the body, home, relationships, and lifestyles challenge rhetorical conceptions of style, the ‘public/private sphere,’ and political communication. As different …

Red, White, And Broke: A Call For Accountability In Government, Mary A. Scott

Honors Theses

This study examines the scale of waste, fraud, and abuse in U.S. federal spending. The purpose of this research is to clarify how fiscal management in the federal government is intended to operate versus how it actually functions. Using a combination of conceptual analysis, existing literature, case-based evidence, and data analysis, findings suggest that the persistence of oversight failures arises from weak implementation, limited enforcement authority of oversight bodies, and an emphasis on recovery rather than prevention practices. This study contributes to the broader discussion of public finance by providing an accessible framework to understand why the foundational federal principle …

Private Equity, State Enforcement, And Arbitration Outcomes Under The No Surprises Act: Evidence From Air Ambulance Disputes, Peter Readman

Theses and Dissertations

The No Surprises Act (NSA) removed patients from responsibility for out-of-network surprise medical bills. In its place, the NSA established an independent dispute resolution (IDR) process through which providers and insurers submit competing payment offers to an arbitrator, who selects one offer in full. Using the universe of federal air ambulance IDR disputes from Q1 2023 through Q2 2025 (57,368 dispute line items), I examine whether provider ownership structure and enforcement jurisdiction jointly predict arbitration outcomes. The two outcomes, whether the provider offer prevails, and how large that prevailing offer is relative to the benchmark payment rate, the Qualifying Payment …

Fascism Usa: Class And Identity Politics In The Age Of Trump, Marc Edelman

Publications and Research

This essay argues that Trump’s triumph in the 2024 presidential contest represents the consolidation of an oligarchical authoritarian project, backed by a multi-class and (surprisingly, for some) multi-racial electorate. It brought intensified state and freelance attacks on immigrants, labor unions, women, LGBTQ+ people, journalists, civil servants, assorted “political enemies,” and other groups that the MAGA movement targets. It is institutionalizing authoritarian governance structures in ways that will be exceedingly difficult to undo. The paper first addresses the experience of growing up in the shadow of fascism. It analyzes various sectors that supported Trump and the impacts of inflation, incumbency, economic …

Supply Constraints And Domestic Migration As Drivers Of U.S. Housing Price Appreciation, Vasu Patel

Economics

When the Federal Reserve raised rates from near zero to 525 basis points between 2022 and 2023, standard theory predicted a broad correction in U.S. housing market. In most metropolitan areas, that correction did not arrive. This paper examines why housing price appreciation persisted across cities with fundamentally different structural characteristics, and which factors best explain the cross-city variation in appreciation rates observed across the nation. Using a panel of 83 Metropolitan Statistical Areas across four symmetric 24-month periods from December 2017 through December 2025, each aligned with a distinct Federal Reserve rate period, the study estimates OLS models with …

Two Essays On Finance: The Dark Side Of The Ceo Inside Debt: Evidence From Stock Price Crash Risk And Cybersecurity Risk And Corporate Bond Yield Spreads, Amir Gholami

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises of two papers. In the first paper, I found that despite being thought of as a governance mechanism, CEO inside debt seems to distort firms’ information environment. My results indicate that the CEO inside debt creates an incentive for managers to hoard bad news to prevent technical defaults, leading to increasing stock price crash risk. My results are robust after addressing endogeneity using the instrumental variable (IV) approach, a difference-in-differences test based on the implementation of Internal Revenue Code Section 409A Final Regulations, and Oster’s omitted variable diagnostic test, and selection bias using the propensity score matching …

Position: The Pre/Post-Training Boundary Should Govern Ip In Industry–Academia Ml Collaborations, Dirk Bergemann, Soheil Ghili, Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Industry–academia ML collaborations routinely fail to launch—not for scientific reasons, but because academics must publish while companies must protect models trained on proprietary data, and no standard contract framework resolves this tension. Because contracts are negotiated by legal departments alone, many apparent legal disputes are incentive misalignment problems that only scientists at the table can correctly diagnose. We propose PBOS (Protect-the-Business / Open-Source-the-Science), a community-adoptable contract template anchored to a single technically-grounded boundary: pre-training artifacts (architectures, training code, benchmarks, untrained weights) are open science; post-training artifacts (weights trained on proprietary data) are business IP. This boundary is technically meaningful, legally …

Regional Economic Impacts And Emission Responses Under Solar Radiation Modification, Jenny Bjordal, Evelien Van Dijk, Henri Cornec, Anthony A. Smith Jr, Trude Storelvmo

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) has been proposed as a potential tool to limit increases in global or regional temperatures caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. While previous research has extensively examined the climate system’s response to various SRM strategies, as well as their aggregate economic consequences, the regional distribution of economic impacts has received less attention. In this study, we use NorESM2–DIAM—an Earth System Model coupled to a high-resolution integrated assessment model—to assess the economic impacts, measured in GDP per capita, in an idealised SRM scenario where incoming solar radiation is reduced by 1%. Our results suggest that, relative to …

Towards A Methodology For Measuring Rental Property Ownership In The United States, Stephanie Kestelman, Rebecca Diamond, John Eric Humphries, Kate Pennington, Winnie Van Dijk, John Voorheis

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Roughly one-third of U.S. households rent their homes, yet measuring who owns rental property is difficult: ownership is frequently obscured by LLCs, partnerships, and other intermediary entities that separate legal from economic control. We develop a method that traces ownership through administrative records—combining deeds and property assessments with the Census Bureau’s Business Register, IRS Schedule K-1 filings, and SEC filings on REITs—to identify ultimate owners and construct property portfolios across the full landlord size distribution. Applying the method to 11 large CBSAs, we find that individual landlords own a large majority of rental units, though their share varies meaningfully across …

Learning Through Imitation: An Experiment, Marina Agranov, Gabriel Lopez-Moctezuma, Philipp Strack, Omer Tamuz

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We compare how well agents aggregate information in two repeated social learning environments. In the first setting agents have access to a public data set. In the second they have access to the same data, and also to the past actions of others. Despite the fact that actions contain no additional payoff-relevant information, and despite potential herd behavior, free riding and information overload issues, observing and imitating the actions of others leads agents to take the optimal action more often in the second setting. We also investigate the effect of group size, as well as a setting in which agents …

Essays On High-Frequency Dynamics Of Asset Prices, Yuhong Zhu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies econometric inference for high-frequency financial data, with a focus on detecting nonstandard drift and volatility dynamics in continuous-time models.

The first chapter proposes a new framework for uniform inference on explosive drift in high-frequency data, where conventional Gaussian approximations can fail due to the non-Gaussian behavior of short-window spot statistics. Under fixed-window asymptotics, these statistics are coupled with dependent t variables, and their maximum converges to a Fréchet distribution. We establish an anti-clustering condition for dependent t-statistics under overlapping windows and develop a feasible coupling-based test. Simulation results demonstrate better size control, and the empirical findings suggest …

Trump Opportunity Zones In Louisville, Kentucky: A Look At The Results So Far., Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In 2017 the US Congress passes and President Donald J. Trump signs the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Part of the legislation allows states to create opportunity zones (OZs), census tracts which will be targeted for business investment and economic development through federal tax incentives. In Louisville, Kentucky, as in other jurisdictions throughout the US over the last several decades, special district “zones” have been used by local, state, and/or the federal government(s) to try to revive low-income, deteriorated, and blighted areas. These have been typically urban areas but sometimes have included semi-rural and rural areas. Whether named enterprise …

(Wp 2026-02) Behavioral Macroeconomics, Kaleckian Post-Keynesian Economics, And Stratification Economics: Incorporating Social Identity, John B. Davis

Economics Working Papers

Behavioral Macroeconomics draws on cognitive psychology’s errors and biases approach to argue that psychological factors acting on individual choice affect how the economy functions. Keynes drew on psychology in his ‘beauty contest’ account of convention to explain individual investor expectations in terms of the average expectation of all investors. This assumes individual investors identify with the group of all investors, anticipating social psychology social identity analysis. Kaleckian Post-Keynesian Economics focuses on distributional conflict between capital and labor. This also assumes individual capitalists and laborers identify with groups of capitalists and laborers. Stratification Economics makes social group identity the basis on …

Financial Overconfidence, Borrowing, And Life-Cycle Outcomes, Jessica B. Parkinson

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This paper studies the effects of overconfidence in a lifetime consumption and savings model that allows for debt accumulation. Overconfidence, a well-documented behavioral bias, leads individuals to hold distorted perceptions of the different interest rates that they face on their savings and on their borrowings. While existing life-cycle models with overconfidence abstract from debt, I introduce a spread between the interest rates on savings and on borrowings, where the overconfident individual forms distorted perceptions of this spread. To model the actual and the perceived spreads, a continuously differentiable logistic function is utilized, and these spreads are incorporated into a standard …

Restorative Justice In Cache Valley: Building Community Resilience Through Restorative Practices, Rivkah Haubner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Restorative justice as a field of study is primarily applied to criminal justice proceedings or similar topics. As such, its use as a tool in political organizing is an underdeveloped field. Due to its Indigenous history, restorative justice has intrinsically ant-colonial, anti-imperial, and anti-racist roots and is therefore already situated within the ethos of many progressive movements. Historically, radical movements within the United States and across the world experienced both internal and external pressures that undermined their goals. Restorative justice offers a framework through which to understand political action as a whole and specific tools to address internal conflict within …

What Do Captains And Lieutenants Believe To Be The Most Effective Professional Development For Fire Officers?, Claudia Haley

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the professional development of fire officers through a blend of research methods and theoretical frameworks. The primary question driving this research is: "What do captains and lieutenants consider to be the most effective professional development for fire officers?" The framework employed to conduct this study was constructivist grounded theory. It was essential to consider the perspectives of those actively working in the industry when developing a professional development program for officers, as their expertise lends significant credibility to the study. The research utilized the Delphi method to identify and ensure the key elements that experts believe are …

Housing Markets In The American West: A Dynamic Time Warping Analysis Of Inter-City Relationships, Daniel Johnson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Housing markets revolve around perhaps the most consequential good to the average person, yet the relationships between local housing markets remain understudied. While major American cities appear to follow similar patterns, the nature of these connections is not fully understood. This project looks at housing markets across the western United States, using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to identify which cities tend to lead or lag others in price movements, and look at the overall similarity of their market movements. We also explore whether geographic distance, population growth, and income growth help explain why some markets are more similar than others. …

Geography, Income, And The Incidence Of A Massachusetts Carbon Tax, Susan Stratton Sayre

Economics: Faculty Publications

I use spatial microsimulation to estimate the geographic incidence of the consumer-facing portion of various revenue-neutral carbon tax designs in Massachusetts. I identify a substantial urban-rural disparity in impacts that is reduced, but not eliminated, by proposed revenue-targeting mechanisms. I further demonstrate that seemingly small variations in the definition of rural households can have substantial impacts on urban-rural equity and the distribution of gains and losses. Proposed policies are highly progressive in the aggregate with most low-income households receiving more in rebates than they pay in taxes, but notable numbers of low-income households are likely to experience significant losses. Methodologically, …

Improving Estimation Efficiency Via Regression-Adjustment In Covariate-Adaptive Randomizations With Imperfect Compliance, Liang Jiang, Oliver B. Linton, Haihan Tang, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study how to improve efficiency via regression adjustments with additional covariates under covariate-adaptive randomizations (CARs) when subject compliance is imperfect. We first establish the semiparametric efficiency bound for the local average treatment effect (LATE) under CARs. Second, we develop a general regression-adjusted LATE estimator which allows for parametric, nonparametric, and regularized adjustments. Even when the adjustments are misspecified, our proposed estimator is still consistent and asymptotically normal, and their inference method still achieves the exact asymptotic size under the null. When the adjustments are correctly specified, our estimator achieves the semiparametric efficiency bound. Third, we derive the optimal linear …

Long Run Effect Of Industrial Place-Based Policy On County Level Complexity, An Investigation Of The Tennessee Valley Authority, Anita Ifeyinwa Umunnah

Master's Theses

This paper studies the long-term effects of large federal investments in place-based industrial policies on regional economic development, contributing new evidence on how industrial policies shape regional local productive capabilities over time. While extensive research show that industrial policies impact regional development by advancing productive technology (capabilities), the fundamental question remains how to measure this technological transformation. The study employs the use of Economic Complexity Index (ECI) as a measure of “technological advancements” resulting from large federal investments in place-based industrial policies. Previous evaluations of such investment were based on livelihood, employment and income outcomes, with productive capability of receiving …

Tourism, Institutions, And The Paradox Of Inclusion: How Institutional Quality Moderates Tourism’S Impact On Inclusive Growth In High-Income European Countries, Saqib Munir, Abdul Ghaffar, Mushab Rashid

Arab Economic and Business Journal

Inclusive economic growth in high-income European economies remains contested despite strong institutions and advanced tourism sectors, with limited understanding of how institutional quality and gender-inclusive governance condition the tourism–inclusivity nexus. This study examines the independent and interactive effects of tourism development, institutional quality, gender-inclusive governance, digital infrastructure, environmental sustainability, and income inequality on inclusive economic growth across 15 European countries over 2000–2024. Using World Bank and WGI data, a panel ARDL framework, supported by FMOLS robustness checks is applied to capture dynamic long- and short-run relationships among mixed-order integrated variables. Results indicate that tourism development (β = 5.351, p < 0.001) and institutional quality (β = 8.029, p < 0.001) decisively enhance inclusive growth, yet their interaction exerts a significant negative effect (β = –5.271, p < 0.001), suggesting over-regulation may dampen tourism’s inclusivity potential. Environmental sustainability also contributes positively (β = 0.164, p < 0.001), while income inequality shows a counterintuitive long-run positive association (β = 0.026, p < 0.001). Gender-inclusive governance has a small but significant positive effect (β = 0.005, p = 0.004), whereas digital infrastructure is statistically insignificant. These findings extend institutional economics and endogenous growth theory by revealing governance flexibility as critical to unlocking inclusive tourism benefits, and they inform SDG 8 and 10 policies by advocating balanced regulatory frameworks, renewable energy investment, and targeted redistributive mechanisms in advanced economies.

State-Level Analysis Of Minimum Wage And Teen Employment Across The U.S. In 2024, Owen Siegel

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

This study examines whether differences in state minimum wage levels are associated with variation in teen employment across U.S. states in 2024. Using a cross-sectional regression framework, the analysis estimates the relationship between minimum wage policy and the employment rate of individuals aged 16–19 while controlling for educational attainment, demographic composition, income, and regional differences. The results indicate that higher minimum wages are associated with lower teen employment rates. Specifically, a one-dollar increase in the minimum wage is associated with an estimated 0.87 percentage-point decrease in teen employment, holding other factors constant. This result is statistically significant and economically meaningful, …

Understanding Statutory Corporate Tax Rates And Corporate Tax Revenue: Evidence From Oecd Countries, 2015–2023, Carter Johnson

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

This paper analyzes the relationship between statutory corporate tax rates and corporate tax revenues among the OECD countries from 2015-2023. Since the 1980’s, statutory corporate tax rates have been gradually declining, however, the relationship between rate and revenue remains unclear. The Laffer Curve helps motivate the relationship between rate and revenue within the theoretical model. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Real GDP are included as control variables, along with incorporating inflation and per capita measurements. The fixed effects panel regression findings conclude there is no direct relationship between corporate tax rate and revenue. However, FDI and Real GDP were found …

Micro-Ct Evaluation Of Root Canal Transportation And Centering Ability In Mesial Canals Of Mandibular First Molars, Selen Ince Yusufoglu, Esma Saricam, Mert Ocak, Ferhat Geneci, Burak Bilecenoğlu

Journal of Dentistry Indonesia

Background: This study aimed to evaluate canal transportation, centering ability, structure model index (SMI), surface area, and root canal volume changes in the mesial canals of mandibular first molars using micro-CT.

Methods: Twenty-four mandibular first molars with two separate mesial canals and moderate curvature were included. Teeth were scanned using micro-CT before instrumentation and randomly divided into three groups (N = 8). Root canals were prepared using OneShape, OneCurve, and Rotate file systems, followed by post-instrumentation micro-CT scanning (10µm/pixel resolution). Changes in canal volume, surface area, transportation, centering ability, and SMI were analyzed at the apical, middle, and …