Digital Commons Network^™

Behavioral Public Finance And Budgeting: New Approaches To Old Questions?, Salvador Espnosa, Kenneth A. Kriz, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) The growing interest in the use of behavioral insights in the study of public administration and policy is contributing to the emergence of behavioral public administration (James et al., 2017). This subfield focuses on the “analysis of public administration from the micro-level perspective of individual behavior” (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017, p. 45). For some scholars, this approach offers interesting opportunities to further the study of perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of citizens, public sector staff, or public managers (Tummers, et al., 2016). The combination of behavioral theory and experimental approaches can improve the standing of the field of public …

In-Flux: Economic And Community Adaptations Of Former Timber Mill-Towns In The American West, Cherilyn P. Ashmead

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Once built around natural resource extractive industries, rural communities’ economies are changing as the United States is transitioning away from its industrial past. While much research has focused on rural economic shifts from natural resource production toward amenity-driven economies (Morzillo et al., 2015; Winkler et al, 2007), less research has explored the economic and demographic trends in areas pursuing new modes of production. This two-part study focuses on an understudied region with historic ties to timber in dry mixed-conifer forests, much of which are under federal land management. With few natural amenity draws, the region has largely maintained production-based sectors. …

Japan's Stock Market Performance: Evidence From Toda-Yamamoto And Dolado-Lutkepohl Tests For Multivariate Granger Causality, Kishor K. Guru-Gharana, Matiur Rahman, Anisul M. Islam

Faculty Publications

This paper empirically examines the causal linkages of Japan's stock market (proxied by Nikkei 225 index) performance with selected key macroeconomic fundamentals. Relatively recent Toda-Yamamoto and Dolado-Lutkepohl, multivariate Granger causality tests are implemented. Monthly time series data from September 1974 to February 2017 with a large sample size of 510 monthly observations covering the floating exchange rate regime were utilized. The study documents some interesting and some unexpected results. Bi-directional causality is evidenced only between the stock market and the industrial production. Somewhat counterintuitively, unidirectional causality runs from stock market to money supply. Furthermore, unidirectional causality flows from interest rate …

Part 6: The Decline Of Local Journalism, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Local journalism is in peril. Newspapers all over the country are reducing coverage, cutting staff, abandoning physical newsrooms or shuttering operations altogether. The United States has lost fully one-fourth of its newspapers since 2004, including 70 dailies and more than 2,000 weeklies and other nondaily papers. Hampton Roads has not escaped these cutbacks. We discuss the future of local journalism in Hampton Roads.

Part 7: Securing Release: Cash Bail In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis & Policy

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

On any given day in 2019, on average, there were more pretrial inmates per 100,000 residents in Hampton Roads than in Virginia or the United States. To secure their release from jail, many inmates must provide collateral in the form of a secured bond. Now, with momentum building for reducing or eliminating cash bail in the Commonwealth, we estimate the costs and benefits of cash bail reform for cities and counties in Hampton Roads.

Threshold Effects Of Terms Of Trade On Latin American Growth, Andre C. Vianna, Andre V. Mollick

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This paper investigates nonlinear relationships between terms of trade volatility (totvol) and economic growth in 14 Latin American economies from 1997 to 2014. In the 2000s, Latin American countries experienced accelerated economic growth often attributed to commodity price booms. We split the sample into two regimes based on totvol thresholds determined by bootstrap techniques. Fixed-effects, instrumental variable and dynamic panel regressions address endogeneity in trade-growth, subject to traditional economic channels such as domestic investment, population growth, exchange rate, government size, and institutions. We find statistically significant thresholds and stronger trade-growth links during the 2000s commodity boom and in larger economies.

Do Conditional Cash Transfers Increase School Enrollment? Evidence From Brazil, Jeanette L. Silvernale

Master's Theses

Conditional cash transfer programs have been widely deployed across the globe. They seek to bolster human capital by providing benefits contingent upon a variety of actions such as school attendance and regular health checkups. Bolsa Familia is the most extensive conditional cash transfer program, serving 46 million Brazilian citizens. Despite its expansive size, there have been seldom large-scale micro evaluations of the program. Limited data has resulted in small sample sizes drawn from a single point in time. Our study diverges from the rest and utilizes a novel administrative dataset with an overall sample of nearly 60 million and a …

Public Health Insurance And Pharmaceutical Innovation: Evidence From China, Xuan Zhang, Huihua Nie

Research Collection School Of Economics

Developing countries are characterized by low levels of pharmaceutical innovation. A likely reason is their small market size, which is not because of the population size but because of low levels of income and lack of health insurance coverage. This study exploits a natural experiment from the implementation of a public health insurance program for rural residents in China (New Cooperative Medical Scheme [NCMS]) to examine whether the pharmaceutical industry increases innovation regarding diseases covered by the NCMS that are prevalent in rural areas. We examine the 1993–2009 patent data to gauge pharmaceutical innovation in China. Diseases with a 10% …

Joint Tests For Dynamic And Spatial Effects In Short Dynamic Panel Data Models With Fixed Effects And Heteroskedasticity, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Simple and reliable tests are proposed for testing the existence of dynamic and/or spatial effects in fixed-effects panel data models with small T and possibly heteroskedastic errors. The tests are constructed based on the adjusted quasi scores (AQS), which correct the conditional quasi scores given the initial differences to account for the effect of initial values. To improve the finite sample performance, standardized AQS tests are also derived, which are shown to have much improved finite sample properties. All the proposed tests are robust against nonnormality, but some are not robust against cross-sectional heteroskedasticity (CH). A different type of adjustments …

Generalized Jump Regressions For Local Moments, Tim Bollerslev, Jia Li, Leonardo Salim Saker Chaves

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop new high-frequency-based inference procedures for analyzing the relationship between jumps in instantaneous moments of stochastic processes. The estimation consists of two steps: the nonparametric determination of the jumps as differences in local averages, followed by a minimum-distance type estimation of the parameters of interest under general loss functions that include both least-square and more robust quantile regressions as special cases. The resulting asymptotic distribution of the estimator, derived under an infill asymptotic setting, is highly nonstandard and generally not mixed normal. In addition, we establish the validity of a novel bootstrap algorithm for making feasible inference including bias-correction. …

Retirement Preparedness In Singapore, Junxing Chay, Seonghoon Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

This chapter presents empirical evidence on a variety of measures to assess the social and economic well-being of near-retirees and retirees in Singapore based on rich data from the Singapore Life Panel, a nationally representative monthly panel survey of 50- to 70-year-old adults in Singapore. Large differences in retirement behaviour and household financial conditions related to retirement preparedness across education and wealth groups are documented. This suggests the importance of a retirement-related policy that focuses on the low-skilled and low-wealth groups. In addition, we discuss and evaluate current public policy designed to increase the employment of older workers and propose …

Evaluating College Students' Attitudes And Understanding Of Recycling, Taylor Shipley

Honors Program Theses

Individuals have different habits, beliefs, and knowledge regarding recycling. These can be due to a variety of reasons such as peers, upbringing, accessibility of recycling, or prior knowledge of what can be recycled. A school setting, in particular, can be influential to a student’s motivation to recycle; schools can provide an environment for students to learn about the importance of recycling and other various sustainability initiatives. Like most campuses, students’ recycling behaviors on the University of Northern Iowa’s (UNI) campus are likely to be affected to some degree by the reasons listed above as well as other life experiences.

Recycling …

Competition And Technical Efficiency For General Medical And Surgical Hospitals In Georgia, Nathan Ekow Davies

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The primary aim of this study was to enhance understanding of the fundamental socioeconomic problem associated with inefficient hospital competition in the United States in terms of demand and supply of services as well as the efficiency of hospitals. The relationship between market competition and hospital efficiency was investigated among general medical and surgical hospitals in Georgia. The X-efficiency theory was used which defines efficiency as the degree of effectiveness that an organization can maintain while operating in imperfect competition. The theory is most applicable in terms of addressing imperfect market characteristics of the healthcare industry. Correlations between efficiency and …

An Examination Of The Effects Of Environmental Regulations On Retail Gasoline Price Seasonality, Michael C. Davis

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Stricter environmental standards on gasoline have had impacts on the prices of gasoline including the seasonality of gasoline prices. Using both national data and individual station data, the paper tests for a possible explanation for this increase. Three theories are tested: that gasoline seasonality increases due to higher costs, due to greater market power because of segmented markets, or due to greater asymmetry because of greater inattention on the part of customers. The results suggest that gasoline price seasonality has increased both due to higher costs and greater market power with mixed results on the inattention of consumers.(JEL Q41, Q53, …

Identifying Consumer Preferences From User-Generated Content On Amazon.Com By Leveraging Machine Learning, Jikhan Jeong

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Inexperienced consumers may have high uncertainty about experience goods that require technical knowledge and skills to operate effectively; therefore, experienced consumers' prior reviews can be useful for inexperienced consumers. However, one-sided review systems (e.g., Amazon) only provide the opportunity for consumers to write a review as a buyer and contain no feedback from the seller's side, so the information displayed about individual buyers is limited. Therefore, this study analyzes consumers' digital footprints (DFs) for programmable thermostats to identify and predict unobserved consumer preferences, using a dataset of 141 million Amazon reviews. This paper proposes novel approaches (1) to identify unobserved …

The Influence Of Wildland Urban Interface Areas On Resource Assignments To Large Wildland Fires, Kurt Swimley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

We examine the relationship between U.S. wildfire resource assignments and fire proximity to inhabited areas. Climate change and previous vegetation buildup have enabled more severe fire seasons, while more structures are being developed near vegetated, wildland areas. These changes have contributed to a steep increase in the overall cost of wildfire management, the annual costs of which regularly rise into the billions (NIFC, 2021). Still, the extent to which each driver of suppression costs contributes to the increase in spending is not entirely understood. Previous studies have shown that more suppression resources are allocated to fires near inhabited areas, …

Online Retirement Planning Training: The Effects Of Usability On Cognitive Load And Retirement Planning Activity Levels, Natasha Hardy

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The shift from defined benefit to defined contribution retirement plans for the current generation of retiree planners, Generation X, has placed the onus on individuals to gather, comprehend, and utilize complex financial information in order to plan their own retirement. Low savings rates and retirement planning activity indicate that individuals are not up to the challenge. This research investigates the interplay of three facets of cognitive load, usability, tech and retirement anxiety and the effects of a usability intervention on retirement planning activity levels.

Study 1 used semi-structured interviews and cognitive task analysis to explore themes of computer and retirement …

Natural Resource Curse, Economic Freedom, Economic Growth And Development: Case Of Africa, Oluwatomisin Shalom Akinbo

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Over the years, there has been discord or lack of agreement on the effect that natural resources have on economic growth and development. This study adopts output approach to investigate the effect that natural resources and institutions (Economic Freedom) have on economic growth for the period of 1960 to 2020 using World Bank data. The analysis employs Multiple Regression Analysis based on augmented Ordinary Least Squares Regression methods. The results are mixed, as the outcome indicates that, while natural resources are positively related to economic growth, there exists a crowding out effect between natural resources and two sectors of the …

Is It Export- Or Import-Led Growth? The Case Of Kenya:, Peter Simiyu Wamalwa, Maureen Were

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

Regulating Financial Guarantors, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

To improve financial regulation, scholars have engaged in extensive research over the past decade to try to understand why systemically important financial firms engage in excessive risk-taking. None of that research fully explains, however, the unusually excessive risk-taking by financial guarantors such as bond insurers, protection sellers under credit-default-swap (CDS) derivatives, credit enhancers in securitization transactions, and even issuers of standby letters of credit. With tens of trillions of dollars of financial guarantees outstanding, the potential for failure is massive. This Article argues that financial guarantor risk-taking is influenced by a previously unrecognized cognitive bias, which it calls “abstraction bias.” …

Trade Costs And Demand-Enhancing Effects Of Agrifood Standards: Consequences For Sub-Saharan Africa:, Aristide Djimgou Tchakounte, Dela-Dem Doe Fiankor

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

Estimating The Effect Of Afcfta On Intra-African Trade Using Augmented Ge-Ppml:, Hippolyte Fofack, Richman Dzene, Omar A. Mohsen Hussein

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

Proving Hegel Wrong: Learning The Right Lessons From European Integration For The African Continental Free Trade Area:, Andrew Mold

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

An Impact Evaluation Of Covid-19 Training Program: Knowledge And Awareness Of Public Health Professionals Of Province Five, Nepal, Alok K. Bohara, Swati Thapa, Siobhan K. Yilmaz, Spencer H. Mcbee

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

With the declaration of a worldwide pandemic in March 2020 (World Health Organization 2020), COVID-19 has become a primary focus of governments and public health systems across the world with increases in infection and death rates. By mid-April 2020, more than 80% of countries had imposed containment and mitigation measures. But for developing nations, the threats of this global pandemic are more acute given the lack of resources and the capacity to deal with a shock of this magnitude (Loayza 2020). Despite calling for a lockdown on March 24th, 2020 (Pradhan 2020), Nepal faces several public health challenges including limited …

Common Currency And Intra-Regional Trade In The Central African Monetary Community (Cemac):, Divine Ngenyeh Kangami, Oluyele Akinkugbe

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

A Contemporary Study On The Impact Of Regulations On Business Performance, Brian C. Mulligan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines Nobel Prize Laureate Hayek's ominous warning that economic liberty in the U.S. is at risk, due to regulations, of becoming an unplanned administrative state. The research seeks to understand the effects of regulations on business performance and how to right-size them for a healthy business environment. These objectives are accomplished with two papers: (1) a macro cross-discipline literature review and call for research on the impact of regulations on business performance, and (2) a qualitative grounded theory study from interviews from elite business executives on their perspectives on the impact of regulations on business performance. The findings …

Ethical Judgment And Decision-Making Among Tax Volunteers: A Case Study Of The University Indonesia Tax Administration’S Vocational Education Program, Elsie Sylviana Kasim, Yulial Hikmah

Jurnal Administrasi Bisnis Terapan

No abstract provided.

Evaluasi Pelayanan Posbindu Penyakit Tidak Menular Di Wilayah Kerja Puskesmas Jagasatru Kota Cirebon Pada Era Pandemi Covid-19, Ari Nurfikri, Supriadi Supriadi, Badra Al Aufa

Jurnal Administrasi Bisnis Terapan

This study evaluates the Non-Communicable Disease Posbindu services in the Jagasatru Public Health Center in Cirebon City during the Covid-19 pandemic era seen from the aspects of communication, resources, disposition, and bureaucratic structure. The method used is a qualitative analysis method, with a case study design. The research subjects were eight cadres of Posbindu Non-Communicable Diseases using random sampling technique; data collection was done by in-depth interview technique. This study's results indicate that the evaluation of services from the aspect of communication to the target of the analysis is correct, but has not yet reached the mark of productive age. …

Sustainable Development In The Aspect Of Auditing In Condition Of Transformation Of Social Insurance System, Muqadamkhon Zokirkhonovna Abdurahmonova

Journal of Environmental Science and Sustainable Development

In the modern condition of economy transformation, in the result of reformation of social insurance system appeared different problems. In the result of previous research about the transformation of social insurance system we defined some disadvantages of this sphere expressed in candidate dissertation on theme “Features of development and modernisation of social security system in the national economy of Tajikistan”. The problems regarding to amount of social insurance influenced to the research in the aspect of auditing. So, just by controlling and revision procedures determines economic based decisions for decreasing problems. Methods. In the process of our research, we used …

Evaluation Of Maxillary Impacted Teeth And Their Relationship With Adjacent Teeth And Anatomic Structures With Cone Beam Computed Tomography, Emre Köse, Emin Murat Canger

Journal of Dentistry Indonesia

Objective: This study aimed to examine the cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images of impacted maxillary canines and mesiodentes. Methods: This retrospective radiographic study was performed on 177 patients with 200 impacted maxillary canines and 12 mesiodentes. Using CBCT images, the unilateral/bilateral occurrence, presence of root dilaceration, mesio-distal and buccopalatal location, impaction condition, contact region of adjacent teeth, presence and degree of root resorption of adjacent teeth, dental follicle width, closest distance to the nasal cavity, nasopalatinal canal, and maxillary sinus were assessed. For mesiodentes, the types, follicle width, direction, and relationship with anatomical structures were evaluated. Results: No statistical …