Digital Commons Network^™

The Economic Returns To Bilingualism In The U.S Labor Market, Mara Macdonald

All Theses

This paper uses pooled cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey to analyze the economic returns of bilingualism to adults in the U.S labor market. Bilingualism in the US is defined as English proficient individuals who also report speaking a foreign language “very well” or “well”. Using OLS Least Squares regression estimation where the dependent variable is the logarithm of earnings, I modify the Mincer earnings function to include foreign language skill variables and controls for observed demographic characteristics. Holding all levels of human capital constant, bilinguals earn 7.7% less than English monolinguals in the U.S labor market; however, this …

The 2021 Nba Rule Change: Analyzing Strategic Adjustments And Changes In Worker Productivity, Jeremy Long

All Theses

The NBA introduced a rule change for the 2021/22 season to stop shooters from drawing fouls from “non-basketball moves.” This paper seeks to determine how the 2021 Rule Change has impacted productivity in the NBA and investigate whether it has caused teams to make strategic adjustments. My analysis reveals evidence that the rule change has limited offensive players’ abilities to draw fouls on 3- point shots. While the rule change has rendered non-basketball moves ineffective, there is no evidence of strategic adjustments beyond this arena. I find only limited evidence that the rule change has impacted worker productivity. The findings …

A Quality Systems Economic-Risk Design Theoretical Framework, Abdallah S. Thefeid

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Quality systems, including control charts theory and sampling plans, have become essential tools to develop business processes. Since 1928, research has been conducted in developing the economic-risk designs for specific types of control charts or sampling plans. However, there has been no theoretical or applied research attempts to combine these related theories into a synthesized theoretical framework of quality systems economic-risk design. This research proposes to develop a theoretical framework of quality systems economic-risk design from qualitative research synthesis of the economic-risk design of sampling plan models and control charts models. This theoretical framework will be useful in guiding future …

The Cryptocurrency Participation Puzzle, Ran Duchin, David H. Solomon, Jun Tu, Xi Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that ongoing zero portfolio weights in cryptocurrency are surprisingly difficult to generate in a standard Bayesian portfolio theory framework. With ten years of prior data, equity market investors would need very pessimistic priors on mean returns to justify never having bought cryptocurrency: -10.6% per month for Bitcoin, and -19.6% per month for a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies. Moreover, most priors that involve never purchasing cryptocurrency imply that investors should short cryptocurrency. Optimal absolute weights are generally small but non-trivial (1-5%), frequently positive, and fairly smooth despite returns being volatile. Under a wide range of priors, the certainty equivalent …

When Do Security Markets Aggregate Dispersed Information?, Brice Corgnet, Cary Deck, Mark Desantis, Kyle Hampton, Erik O. Kimbrough

ESI Publications

We attempt to replicate a seminal paper that offered support for the rational expectations hypothesis and reported evidence that markets with certain features aggregate dispersed information. The original results are based on only a few observations, and our attempt to replicate the key findings with an appropriately powered experiment largely fails. The resulting poststudy probability that market performance is better described by rational expectations than the prior information (Walrasian) model under the conditions specified in the original paper is very low. As a result of our failure to replicate, we investigate an alternate set of market features that combines aspects …

Social Norms And Dishonesty Across Societies, Diego Aycinena, Lucas Rentschler, Benjamin Beranek, Jonathan F. Schulz

ESI Publications

Social norms have long been recognized as an important factor in curtailing antisocial behavior, and stricter prosocial norms are commonly associated with increased prosocial behavior. In this study, we provide evidence that very strict prosocial norms can have a perverse negative relationship with prosocial behavior. In laboratory experiments conducted in 10 countries across 5 continents, we measured the level of honest behavior and elicited injunctive norms of honesty. We find that individuals who hold very strict norms (i.e., those who perceive a small lie to be as socially unacceptable as a large lie) are more likely to lie to the …

Firms And Unemployment Insurance Take-Up, Marta Lachowska, Isaac Sorkin, Stephen A. Woodbury

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We use administrative data to quantify the firm role in unemployment insurance (UI) take-up. First, there are firm effects in both claiming and appeals, and, consistent with deterrence effects, these are negatively correlated. Second, low-wage workers are less likely to claim and more likely to have their claims appealed than median-wage workers, and firm effects explain a large share of these income gradients. Third, high-claiming and low-appealing firms are desirable firms: they are higher-paying and have lower separation rates. Finally, the dominant source of targeting error in the UI system is that eligible workers do not apply. Our findings emphasize …

Identifying Potential Pork-Barrel Legislation Using Machine Learning: A Preliminary Analysis, Sunil Green

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

Pork-barrel legislation has been criticized by some as an excessive and potentially corrupt use of Congressional appropriations. The task of finding the specific parts of legislation that have been “pork-barreled”, however, requires many hours of labor by policy researchers. Using data from government watchdogs and machine learning algorithms, the research explores the idea of creating a model to flag specific line items of appropriations bills for policy researchers to further explore as potential pork-barrel legislation. The model constructed uses data from the Earmark Database by Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the Congressional Pig Book by Citizens Against Government Waste to …

Conservatism, Collaboration, And Capacity: Political Explanations For Canada’S Shift In Immigrant Admissions Logic, Jaidyn Appel

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

Canada is often regarded as the United States’ friendlier neighbor to the north, but how welcoming is it really? A critical analysis of immigration and citizenship policy throughout Canadian history reveals that Canada may not be the inclusive member of the world community it is often conceptualized as. This paper examines some of the recent key changes in Canadian immigration policy and their broader contexts, while benchmarking the policies against two leading scholars' thoughts on how the relative presence of certain political ideologies in a country drives its immigration policies to the left or right of the political spectrum. As …

Studying The Economic Impact Of The Demonetization Across Indian Districts, Arnav Joshi

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

This thesis studies the economic impact of the Indian demonetization which was a unique monetary event that made 86.9 percent of the total currency in circulation illegal tender overnight. The decision to demonetize high-value currency notes was taken by the Indian government on November 8th, 2016, leading to a severe shortage of cash. This thesis tries to analyze how the impact of the demonetization differed across districts in India and how the characteristics of those districts pertaining to education, electricity and tap water access, employment, and technology access can help explain these differences. The thesis uses satellite data on human-generated …

“Pure People” And “Corrupt Elites:” Corruption Talk In The 2020 Election, Milan Loewer

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

The word “corruption” has two separate but interrelated meanings. The first kind of corruption refers specifically to an abuse of public office for private gain; the second is broader and indicates a disjunction between a political reality and the ideal to which that reality ought to conform. This paper explores the role of various forms of “corruption talk” in the 2020 presidential election. The first part of the paper examines the “supply side,” looking at the kinds of “corruption narratives” that politicians offered in 2020. Using natural language processing, I analyze how Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders spoke …

The Symbolic Work Of Prices, Akash Miharia, Jan Osborn, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We posit that prices are signs, not just signals, that work in the same symbolic way as words. Both are complex, generative systems of shared meaning that rely on a web of intricate symbolic references. Just like the meaning of a word is a product of our social and linguistic action, the meaning of a price is a product of our relationship to the physical world phenomena of people in markets. The fundamental conception of both is to communicate and construct worlds with ourselves and others, enabling us to act in the world. Prices, like words, do symbolic work.

An Investigation Into The Likelihood That A Centrally Planned Economy Can Provide Greater Economic Good Than Spontaneous Order Created By The Free Market, Douglas W. Cardell

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This paper will address whether it is possible for an economy, planned by experts, to result in greater economic good than can be achieved by spontaneous order created by the combination of individual choices that make up the free market? This paper approaches the question by studying the viability of economic forecasting because planning an economy requires making economic forecasts. There are at least three domains that impact forecasting: the nature of forecasting and modeling in general in a chaotic environment, the effect of asset bubbles, and the impact of black swan events. There is a great deal of research …

Open Innovation Trends, Issues And Policy Suggestions In Manufacturing Industry, Rongping Mu, Jingjing Guo, Jin Kang, Shuang Ma, Kangwei Chi

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

At present, the new technology revolution and industrial transformation are accelerately reshaping the international industrial division of labor. It is urgent to adhere to the basic principles of "open cooperation, green and low carbon, value co-creation, and codevelopment", promote open innovation and cooperation in key areas of the manufacturing industry, and improve the open innovation and development capability in the manufacturing industry. This study first summarizes the open innovation trends of global manufacturing industries. Second, it analyzes major countries' policies in promoting open innovation in the manufacturing industry. Third, the current situation and problems of China's manufacturing open innovation is …

Lessons Learned: Michael Silva, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Michael Silva was chief of staff to then-President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) Timothy Geithner from 2006 to 2009, including the early stages of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). As such, Silva was critical in the coordination of personnel and information during the GFC, specifically during the period when the FRBNY was addressing liquidity stresses in the bank sector, including the bailout of Bear Stearns, the failure of Lehman Brothers, and the rescue of American International Group. When Geithner became President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary in 2009, Silva became chief of staff to his successor at …

United States: Main Street Lending Program, Steven Kelly

Journal of Financial Crises

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic caused slowdowns and disruptions to economic activity, businesses faced disruptions to their revenues and experienced increased demand for credit. Yet, as the pandemic worsened the economic outlook, banks tightened credit. Starting on March 17, the Federal Reserve rolled out several emergency programs aimed at capital markets. Most of these programs tended to benefit relatively large companies. On March 23, the Fed said it would introduce a program targeting small and mid-sized companies. On April 9, 2020, the Federal Reserve announced its first design iteration of the novel Main Street Lending Program (MSLP). The …

United States: Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility Ii, Lily S. Engbith

Journal of Financial Crises

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 caused widespread economic uncertainty, prompting government officials to act swiftly to combat potentially severe fallout. On March 23, 2020, the Federal Reserve announced a series of monetary policy measures and established several emergency lending facilities to assist the US economy. Among these, the Fed revived the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), a Global Financial Crisis (GFC)-era facility that used a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to encourage the issuance of asset-backed securities (ABS). Its main purpose was to restore the flow of credit to households and businesses. TALF II made $100 …

United Kingdom: Covid Corporate Financing Facility, Adam Kulam

Journal of Financial Crises

During the COVID-19 crisis, sterling-denominated money markets froze, and otherwise-healthy companies were shut out of short-term, wholesale funding markets. To unfreeze these markets, the UK government announced a series of corporate funding measures. One of the measures was the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), which enabled the Bank of England (BoE), acting on behalf of Her Majesty's Treasury's, to purchase commercial paper (CP) on primary and secondary markets from eligible dealers. The purpose of the CCFF was to provide stopgap wholesale funding to large, financially healthy firms while preserving British banks' capacity to serve small and medium-sized companies. Under the …

United States: New York Clearing House Association,The Panic Of 1907, Corey N. Runkel

Journal of Financial Crises

Signs of financial panic had marked the months leading up to mid-October 1907 when depositors began to run on banks and trust companies across New York City, most notably the Knickerbocker Trust Company, then New York City’s third largest, on October 22. Cash injections from the US Treasury and from leading banker J.P. Morgan failed to reassure depositors and investors. On October 26, the New York Clearinghouse (NYCH), whose membership included most banks in New York, voted to issue clearinghouse loan certificates (CLCs) to help stabilize the financial panic. CLCs were collateralized by securities and could be used among members …

United States: Aldrich-Vreeland Emergency Currency During The Crisis Of 1914, Sean Fulmer

Journal of Financial Crises

As geopolitical tensions in Europe began to devolve into World War I, international investors began selling stocks and securities on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), converting the proceeds into gold. A massive outflow of gold from the United States would have likely sparked a banking panic. To avert this, the Treasury secretary pushed for the closure of the NYSE and authorized banks to issue emergency currency at the start of August 1914 under powers granted by the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908. This move allowed national banks to issue additional bank notes against privately issued assets such as commercial paper, …

Hong Kong: Private Emergency Loans, 1965, Benjamin Hoffner

Journal of Financial Crises

In 1965, new prudential regulations and a real estate downturn triggered deposit runs in the British colony of Hong Kong that impacted local Chinese banks with large exposures to unfinished real estate projects and other illiquid assets. As a result of authorities’ laissez-faire approach to the banking system, Hong Kong had no central bank or any other formal lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) policy when the crisis unfolded. Instead, two private British banks, Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Chartered Bank, provided emergency loans at market rates for commercial banks facing deposit withdrawals. Following each bank run, either HSBC or Chartered …

European Central Bank: Term Refinancing Operations, Corey N. Runkel

Journal of Financial Crises

During the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the European Central Bank (ECB) expanded the frequency, maturities, size, and set of eligible collateral for several of its standing term refinancing operations (TROs). Changes started in August 2007, when the European interbank market tightened, and the ECB supplemented its monthly longer-term refinancing operations (LTROs) with another three-month-maturity tender each month. Another encounter with market turbulence in March 2008 brought six-month LTROs. The largest expansion came after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008: the ECB enlarged its set of eligible collateral, added 12-month LTROs, and added special-term refinancing operations (STROs) that matured …

United States: Temporary Guarantee Program For Money Market Funds, Ezekiel Vergara

Journal of Financial Crises

On September 16, 2008, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Reserve Primary Fund “broke the buck,” meaning that its net asset value (NAV) fell more than 0.5% below the $1 per share target value maintained by money-market funds (MMFs). When the Reserve Primary Fund could not restore the NAV, investors began withdrawing funds from MMFs, leading to a $439 billion run on the MMF market. To stop this run, the US Department of the Treasury established the Temporary Guarantee Program for Money Market Funds (the Guarantee Program), which insured investors’ holdings in participating MMFs. The Guarantee Program was designed …

Market Support Programs: Covid-19 Crisis, June Rhee, Lily S. Engbith, Greg Feldberg, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

This paper is an analysis of important considerations for policymakers seeking to establish a market support program (MSP). Our main purpose is to assist policymakers who have already made the decision to use an MSP in designing the most effective program possible. Our insights derive from 23 case studies the Yale Program on Financial Stability produced and existing literature on the topic.

By the onset of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), market-based finance and traditional banking systems were significantly intertwined, and the panic in market-based finance threatened to spread quickly to both traditional banks and the real economy. In response, …

Essays On Opioid Related Issues, Minglu Sun

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Strong empirical evidence points towards a significantly higher prevalence of opioid consumption among people receiving disability benefits (DB) than in the general population of the United States. However, no previous research established a causal relationship between the decision to award DB to applicants and their subsequent opioid use. We aim to contribute towards filling this gap. There are channels through which awarding DB may both increase and depress opioid consumption, and thus, ex-ante, the sign of a potential causal relationship is ambiguous. To correct for the treatment endogeneity, since an individual’s age at the time of the decision on an …

Common Ownership In Labor Markets, José Azar, Yue Qiu, Aaron Sojourner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In this paper, we study common ownership in U.S. labor markets, and document that common ownership more than doubled over the period 1999–2017. To identify the causal effects of common ownership on labor market outcomes, we use a firm’s addition to the S&P 500 index as a shock to the common ownership of its competitors in local labor markets. Using a matched difference-in-differences analysis, we find that, after a firm enters the S&P 500 index, the average annual earnings per employee of its local competitors decrease relative to the counterfactual. The effect of S&P 500 index additions on employee earnings …

Three Essays On Student Enrollment Responses To General Household And Education-Specific Assistance Programs, Usamah Wasif

Economics ETDs

Greater educational attainment is associated with an increase in expected income, lowering of internal discount rates, and improved financial and health literacy. Income transfers have the potential to positively impact educational attainment by either reducing the direct cost of college attendance or by inducing an income effect that nudges students to decrease labor supply and devote greater time to studies. Whether assistance leads to more education depends on the circumstances, particularly the educational stage and assistance type. High school students may react differently to assistance relative to college students and both may react differently to general household income transfers compared …

Estimating An Optimal Macroeconomic Uncertainty Index For Australia, Havvanur Feyza Erdem, George Tawadros

School of Business and Leadership Working Papers

In this article, an optimal macroeconomic uncertainty index is constructed for the Australian economy. This index is derived from a small structural macroeconomic model. The structural model is first estimated using GMM to extract the parameter estimates, which are then used to initialise maximum likelihood techniques in order to obtain the optimal coefficient values for the relevant variables. The relevant variables are then weighted by the obtained optimal coefficients and, finally, are aggregated to produce the optimal macroeconomic uncertainty index for Australian economy. The empirical results show that the uncertainty index constructed is a good indicator of the optimal economic …

Project Cash-Flow Risk Resolution And Project Value, Ralph W. Sanders Jr.

School of Business and Leadership Working Papers

I examine the effects of cash-flow risk resolutions on project valuation by deriving risk-resolution-scenario-specific "families" of capital structure relations (i.e., equations for the value of the levered firm, return on levered equity, and marginal cost of capital). Although I obtain Modigliani and Miller’s family of relations only as highly constrained special cases reflecting "risk-free" cash flows, I find that their qualitative insights into firm value and leverage in the presence of corporate taxes are robust across the cash-flow risk resolution scenarios examined. More practically, I find that analysts will correctly value a scale enhancing project (i.e., a project of the …

An Exploratory Study On The Work Life Balance Of Married Indian Working Women In Bahrain, Elizabeth M Samuel

Arab Economic and Business Journal

This paper is an attempt to explore the challenges faced by Indian working women in safeguarding equilibrium between their personal and professional life. The various factors affecting the work –life balance of married Indian working women have been examined in this study. 120 Indian working women have substantiated their work life, which is evident in this research. This in turn signifies that the problems faced by the Indian working women are considerably low. The conclusions highlights the fact that the people's work-life balance has an impact on their quality of life.