Digital Commons Network^™

Carolina African Runner Peanuts: Connecting African And Alabamian Agricultural History, Abby West, Gary Padgett, Matthew D. Campbell

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

Social Studies has the potential to impact STEAM education in unrealized ways. It can have this impact by being meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active. This article examines teaching about Carolina African Runner peanuts and the history of Alabama’s agriculture. The introduction of peanuts to Alabama and the enslavement of African people cannot be removed from a lesson such as this – nor should it. It is through value-based education that social studies contributes the most to STEM and STEAM lessons. This article is significant in that it demonstrates a history lesson that is active rather than passive. This article …

Inquiry: Tragic Journeys Of Enslaved African People Exposed Through Shipwreck Archaeology, Janie Hubbard

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

This article describes an inquiry lesson, recommended for upper elementary and middle level students. One primary aim of the lesson is to explore shipwreck archeology to focus on the overseas journeys of enslaved African people during the transatlantic slave trade. A second aim is for students to recognize how the slave trade’s exploiters caused sustained damage to the principles of Black equality, producing systemic racism for centuries and into contemporary times. In this lesson, students inquire and discover nuanced information about the historic slave trade by studying clues from sunken slave ships. Students begin by closely observing artifacts found in …

Neuroliberalism And Beyond, Neve Durrwachter

Anthropology Honors Papers

This paper evaluates the healthy lifestyle promotion corporation known as Blue Zones by focusing on their approach to behavioral modification. The analysis relies on popular theories of governmentality such as neoliberalism, libertarian paternalism, and neuroliberalism that seek to explain how personal forms of knowledge intersect with mechanisms of social control to influence the creation of policy. Through a content-analysis of the organization’s foundational text, I argue that Blue Zones is best understood as a form of neuroliberalism because it grants individuals the autonomy to be their own choice architects.

The Effect Of The Fresh Program On Fruit And Vegetable Consumption In Nyc, Haido Andrianos

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines whether the NYCEDC's FRESH Program has had an effect on the fruit and vegetable consumption of NYC residents. Using data collected by the NYC DOHMH, a difference-in-difference regression with fixed effects was run. Stratifications for race and sex were also performed.

Measuring Rental Affordability Dynamics For The Southern United States With Constant Quartile Mismatch, Bradley Curtis

Honors Theses

This project centers on the topic of rental housing affordability for southern metropolitan areas in the United States. In an attempt to understand how rents have changed in relation to incomes in cities throughout the American south, this study uses IPUMS data to compare changes in the distributions of rents and incomes from 2000 to 2019 for each of the geographies in question. The Constant Quartile Mismatch metric employed in this project was first implemented in the study "A constant quartile mismatch indicator of changing rental affordability in US Metropolitan areas, 2000 to 2016". This thesis hopes to extend the …

Air Quality-Related Health And Environmental Trade-Off Of Electrification: Evidence From Vietnam, Doan Thu Thuy Nguyen

Richard A. Harrison Symposium

Abundant evidence has shown that expanding access to electricity dramat- ically widens access to education, healthcare, and equality. However, the liter- ature on the direct impacts of electrification on air quality and health is still in its infancy. While electricity access can lead to higher outdoor air pollution due to increased reliance on fossil fuel combustion, its usage lowers indoor air pollution as households switch from burning solid fuels to using electricity and become distanced from the source of pollution. Contributing to the nascent lit- erature, this article represents the first quantitative examination of this trade- off between the overall …

Applied Microeconomics And Business Intelligence In The Digital Age, Thomas J. Weinandy

Dissertations

The Digital Age is defined by advances in big data, low-cost computing, and modern analytical methods. In three chapters, I apply microeconomic thought to the influence these digital technologies have on business and consumer decision-making.

Chapter One considers how Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft impact the relationship between the quantity of car service trips and fuel prices. I find that a single day 1% increase in fuel prices is associated with a 0.367 to 0.486% decrease in the number of TNC trips and a 0.033 to 0.088% increase in the number of taxi trips, even though the …

The Impact Of Covid 19 On The Selected Turkish Financial Indicators: Empirical Evidence From Toda Yamamoto Causality Test, Sabri Burak Arzova, Bertaç Şakir Şahin

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Humanity has suffered from COVID 19 since December 2019. A global pandemic was declared by World Health Organization on 11 March 2021 (WHO, 2019). Pandemics such as bleeding fever, cholera, SARS, MERS, and swine flu have affected humanity throughout history. During pandemic periods, the measures, panic, decline in labor power, and consumption cause economic crises. Like other pandemics, COVID 19 has negative effects on countries, businesses, and households economically (Eichenbaum, Rebelo, and Trabandt, 2020: 1). Many studies have found a statistically significant relationship between public health variables (life expectancy, maternal mortality, etc.) and the economy (Bloom and Sachs, 1998; Robalino …

Deconstructing Urban Sprawl: Differing Perspectives On A Pervasive Problem, Angela Simonetti

Honors Scholar Theses

Urban sprawl, broadly defined, describes the uncontrolled geographic expansion of cities and towns, oftentimes resulting in haphazard developments with relatively low-density land use and heavy dependence upon automobiles. This is, however, only one of many definitions, as urban sprawl, while an increasingly popular term in many disciplines, does not seem to have a standard definition. This poses numerous problems for those who wish to delve deeper into understanding it and its implications. Consequently, this project offers a discussion and analysis of the various conceptions of urban sprawl throughout an array of different academic disciplines with an emphasis on the environmental, …

Census Tracts, Racial Separation, And The Landscape Of Higher Education, Aaron Scholl

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation centers on research at the intersection of labor, public, and urban economics. Chapter 1 details the role, process, and history of census tract delineation prior to each Decennial Census, and investigates short- and long-run implications of neighborhoods that receive further delineation, or become “split”. Using a difference-in-differences empirical design, I exploit Decennial Censuses from 1980 to 2010 to find that “split” census tracts increase in their proportion of Black residents and these effects persist decades. Further evidence suggests that the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program may play a role in concentrating residents in areas with greater census tract …

Brain Drain In Mississippi, Clifford Adam Conner

Honors Theses

Brain drain is the out-migration of educated individuals from an area. It is a problem with which Mississippi is overly familiar. This thesis uses data gathered from a survey of 965 respondents to identify who is leaving the state and for what reasons. The data gathered suggest confirmation that brain drain is an issue for the state, with roughly two-thirds of respondents having left the state or seriously considering doing so. The impetus for this varies with each individual, but respondents underscore economic and societal factors within Mississippi as pushing them away from the state. Quality of life factors are …

From Self-Sufficiency To Import Dependence In The Republic Of The Marshall Islands: Data Issues And Challenges, Debra L. Claypool

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Although it appears likely that the profoundly asymmetrical political and economic relationship between the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has contributed to the abandonment of traditional agriculture, import-dependency, and a decrease in quality of life for the citizens of the RMI, limits in existing quantitative data make it impossible to model exactly how this occurred. Therefore, rather than seek to model this causal relationship, the researcher employed three existing ethnographic studies to establish a quantitative measure of the transformation itself. Using additional government documents to supplement the existing data, a measure of relative percentage of …

Two Essays On Innovation And Growth In China, Qiugu He

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies China’s economic growth from a perspective of industry dynamics. In chapter 1, I introduce the background and policies relating to China’s economic growth after 1978. In chapter 2, I find that the elasticity of the average R&D expenditure of firms on competition is -0.29 in weak-IPR (intellectual property right) provinces, and -0.06 in strict-IPR provinces. Next, I use the Schumpeterian growth model to explain this finding: When the market becomes more competitive, a firm prefers imitation to innovation to a larger extent, as a means of getting new technology. Due to enforcement of IPR laws, the imitation …

Modeling The Us Beef Industry’S Response To Covid-19, Owen Michael Fleming

Undergraduate Economic Review

To understand the beef industry’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I proposed a three-sector model of the beef supply-chain and estimated it econometrically. Based on their definitions, it is found that panic, stay-at-home procedures, and expectations are not significant explanatory variables. However, there is strong evidence that COVID-19 spread in a set of counties with large meatpacking plants has the effect of increasing wholesale beef prices, while country-wide spread has the effect of reducing wholesale prices. The results further imply differences in competition across the market levels, with wholesalers responding as if they face less competition than retailers and farmers.

Using Immersive Data Visualization To Highlight Changing Travel Patterns In Maine Due To Covid 19, Colleen Metcalf, Charlotte Aucoin

Thinking Matters Symposium

The impacts of COVID 19 are of top concern to tourism policy makers and stakeholders across Maine, as tourism plays a vital role in the state’s economy. This project shows the value of the Storymap to present, in an accessible and visually appealing way, the continuing research on how volunteered geographic information from social media can track changes in tourist’s movement and spending in Maine. The metadata from Flickr photos was used to examine where visitors spent time in the summer of 2020, revealing new patterns of tourism activity due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. In addition, we incorporate the results …

Mapping Renewal: How An Unexpected Interdisciplinary Collaboration Transformed A Digital Humanities Project, Elise Tanner, Geoffrey Joseph

Digital Initiatives Symposium

Funded by a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations Grant, the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture’s “Mapping Renewal” pilot project focused on creating access to and providing spatial context to archival materials related to racial segregation and urban renewal in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, from 1954-1989. An unplanned interdisciplinary collaboration with the UA Little Rock Arkansas Economic Development Institute (AEDI) has proven to be an invaluable partnership. One team member from each department will demonstrate the Mapping Renewal website and discuss how the collaborative process has changed and shaped …

An Assessment Of The Economic Conditions In The City Of Battle Creek, Kathleen Bolter, Jim Robey, Gerrit Anderson, W.E. Upjohn Institute For Employment Research

Reports

The City of Battle Creek offers current and future residents many benefits including a lower cost of living, growing health care and manufacturing sectors, and relatively high wages for the region. At the same time, the City of Battle Creek, like many small-sized midwestern cities, faces many challenges. Its workforce is shrinking and aging. Residents lack the educational attainment needed to compete in the twenty-first-century economy. And, economic, social, racial, and ethnic divisions exist within the city. Together, these issues could risk the ability of the City of Battle Creek to reach a new level of competitiveness and attract new …

Community Health Assessment: Kalamazoo, Kathleen Bolter, Jim Robey, Gerrit Anderson, W.E. Upjohn Institute For Employment Research

Reports

No abstract provided.

Curse Of Democracy: Evidence From 2020, Yusuke Narita, Ayumi Sudo

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Countries with more democratic political regimes experienced greater GDP loss and more deaths from Covid-19 in 2020. Using five different instrumental variable strategies, we find that democracy is a major cause of the wealth and health losses. This impact is global and is not driven by China and the US alone. A key channel for democracy’s negative impact is weaker and narrower containment policies at the beginning of the outbreak, not the speed of introducing policies.

America's Best Cities: Mountain West Cities, Katie M. Gilbertson, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr., Fatma Nasoz

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet reports the rankings of Mountain West cities, based on perceived desirability for living, visiting, and investment. Resonance Consultancy’s “America’s Best Cities 2020,” report examines the nation’s largest cities on six key metrics: “Place,” “Prosperity,” “People,” “Product,” “Programming” and “Promotion.” Nine Mountain West cities are ranked within the top 100 in the United States.

The Lintheads' Demise: A Study In Economic Dependency For The Piedmont Region Of South Carolina, Jeremy Lewis Ward

Senior Theses

The decline of the Southern textile and apparel industries represent a unique and rich case study in rapid economic change. It is unique because of the speed and uniformity of collapse; rich, because of the geographic differences that exist even within the concentrated Piedmont textile cluster. Truly, globalization has hit this economic cluster with a brutal punch. And yet, not all cities and counties within the region have been equally harmed by the change.

This report concentrates on examining the socioeconomic variations that have taken place in the thirteen foremost textile-producing counties in South Carolina since the collapse, as well …

Global Studies Initiative Faculty Report: Interdisciplinary Collaborations, V. Andreea Chiritescu

Global Studies Initiatives in Social Sciences 2020 - 2021

No abstract provided.

Cannabis Capitalism In Colorado: An Ethnography Of Il/Legal Production And Consumption, Lia Berman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coloradans have changed their fundamental views on illegal substances since the decriminalization of cannabis in Colorado. Since the legalization of medical cannabis in 2014, state-sold dispensary cannabis products have straddled the line between legal and illegal network systems in a hybridized “il/legal” market system, a term designed to be ambiguous of the formal and informal economies that it represents (Nordstrom 2007, xxvii). The cannabis commodity chain has proved both familiar and strange when it comes to its production, consumption, and distribution of a federally illegal substance. Colorado’s history as a pioneer in culture and legislature has been repeated with cannabis …

Essays On Snap Participation, Bmi, And Food Purchasing Decisions, Samaneh Ghadyani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation estimates the SNAP-eligible individuals’ Body Mass Index (BMI) changes by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) in Chapter 1. It also examines whether the food packages’ nutrition fact tables’ refinements improve SNAP-recipients’ healthy food purchasing decisions in Chapter 2. Below, the summary of these chapters are provided:

• Chapter 1: The Effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on the Body Mass Index (BMI) of SNAP-Eligible Individuals
• Chapter 2: Do Changes in the Nutrition Facts Labels Affect SNAP-Participants’ Food Purchasing Decisions?

Chapter 1 studies the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act …

Trade Clusters And Usa Southern Border Transportation Costs: 1995-2015, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Ernesto Duarte Ronquillo

Border Region Modeling Project

Fixed effects panel regression analysis is used to examine the impact of trade clusters on transportation costs along the southern border of the United States. CIF/ FOB ratios are utilized as the transportation cost measures. Grubel-Lloyd and Herfindahl- Hirschman indexes are utilized to identify trade clusters in the sample. Data are assembled for four custom districts (El Paso, Laredo, Nogales, and San Diego) during a 20-year period between 1995 and 2015. Because cross-sectional residual dependence is present, parameter estimation is carried out using Driscoll-Kraay robust standard errors. 9/11 terrorist attack effects are taken into account in the fixed effects model. …

Institutional Stretching: How Moroccan Ngos Illuminate The Nexus Of Climate, Migration, Gender And Development, Shelby Mertens

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The global migration crisis the world has experienced thus far is only the tip of the iceberg. As the earth’s temperature continues to warm and extreme weather conditions worsen, millions of people across the globe will be displaced, and women in particular will face more difficult challenges. What the climate migration literature fails to study is these longer-term impacts beyond sudden onset disasters. Governments and institutions will be forced to respond and adapt to the new reality resulting from the climate crisis. This research provides a case study of Morocco and, by using institutional ethnography, investigates how NGOs working in …

Barriers To Post-Secondary Success, Douglas Swanson, Najeana Henderson, Maritza Sloan

Dissertations

This study reviews factors that prior studies have identified or failed to consider as barriers to post-secondary success. The three main areas include academic success for Latinx students after high school, organizational systems and their impact on African-American students’ postsecondary readiness, and what workers think of their high school education with regards to career preparedness.

Five factors are identified as major barriers for Latinx students to continue in a higher education system. A survey of former students from Saint Louis, Missouri, and Dallas, Texas, metroplex area identified 56 Latinx students that participated in an initial survey. This led to a …

Editorial - Subsistence Marketplaces: Journal, Knowledge-Practice Portal, And Organization, Madhu Viswanathan

Subsistence Marketplaces

Subsistence Marketplaces: Journal, Knowledge-Practice Portal and Organization

Nevada Population Density Maps, 2015 - 2019, Jaewon Lim, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet reports the population distribution for the 687 census tracts in the State of Nevada between 2015 and 2019. Mapping population distribution by census tract can misrepresent population density. Oftentimes, in rural regions with low population density, large census tracts are home to a small number of people. Likewise, urban cores have many small census tracts, each with high population density. Using a method for constructing density-equalizing projections, or cartograms (i.e. maps that show statistical information in diagrammatic form) by Mark Newman and Michael Gastner at the University of Michigan, the constructed maps in this fact sheet better …

Pornography: Social, Emotional And Mental Implications Among Adolescents, William Kelly Canady

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

This presentation will explain the historical development of pornography. It will highlight four segments: 1- Porn’s impact on brain development of reward pathways, ultimately increasing the appetite for more porn. 2- Porn can be a false substitute for real intimacy, resulting in decreased sexual satisfaction with a real person and increased verbal and physical aggression. 3- Porn promotes sex trafficking, promotes multiple sex partners and reduced STD prevention. 4- A review of interventions available to assist clients in navigating a lifestyle away from pornography.