Digital Commons Network^™

The Catalyst Effect Of Historic Preservation: A Spatial Analysis Of The Impact Of Historic District Designation On Housing Renovations In New York City, Ali R. Mostafa

Theses and Dissertations

The constraints on property use along with the economic merits of historic districts are critical points in the debate over preservation policies. Improving the existing housing stock is a substantial economic activity and a significant part of the nation’s overall construction industry. The purpose of this study is to present an empirical analysis of the relationship between historic district designation and renovation decisions. The results of the analysis found that historic preservation does not inhibit the renovation activity of single-family homeowners. However, contrary to the claims made by proponents, it does not give a powerful incentive for owners in undesignated …

Puerto Rico: Two Years After Hurricane Maria, Center For Puerto Rican Studies

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

Two years since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, between 220,000 to 255,000 residents of the island have relocated to the United States. This exodus represents one of the most significant movements of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland in the island’s history in terms of both volume and duration. Two-years post-Hurricane Maria, we expect that an estimate of 60,000 to as high as 78,751 left the Island in 2019. One year since Hurricane-Maria, emigration estimates — of 159,415, with an upper bound confidence interval of 176,603 — is as high as the net migration …

Resilience And The U.S. Labor Market: A Cross-Scale Analysis On The Role Of Industrial Diversity And Specialization, Christian D. Sprague

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the effects of industrial diversity and specialization vary across geographical scales and classification levels. The notion of a robust institutional design, in conjunction with a regional resilience framework, is used to model how diversity and modularity affect unemployment through-out economic cycles. We use fixed effects models on employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau in all available U.S. counties from 1998-2015. Key results suggest the optimal structure of industrial composition varies across scale, namely, that fine levels of industrial diversity are beneficial at higher levels of geographical scale (regions), whereas a broad …

Striking A Balance: A National Assessment Of Economic Development Incentives, Mary Donegan, T. William Lester, Nichola Lowe

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The use of incentive packages has intensified as local governments compete for new plants and corporate relocations, and as private firms increasingly demand a deal. While incentives promise jobs and tax revenue, scholars and practitioners criticize their high cost and limited accountability. Through a comparison of matched establishments, this paper explores how governmental incentive-granting strategy impacts incentive performance. We examine the overall impact of incentives and whether incentives granted to smaller firms perform better. Using economic development budget data, we also assess the state’s overall approach to economic development to determine which strategies are prioritized through funding. By showing that …

The Occupational Structures Of Low- And High-Wage Service Sector Establishments, Eliza C. Forsythe

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The occupational structure of an establishment provides a description of its production process by detailing the distribution and relative intensity of tasks performed. In this paper, I investigate whether there are substantive differences in the occupational structures of low- and high-wage service sector establishments. I show that low-wage establishments organize production to use less labor in professional occupations compared to high-wage establishments operating in the same local-labor market and industry. In addition, low-wage establishments employ fewer individuals in information technology occupations, employ fewer managers, and have substantially wider supervisory spans of control. These results indicate that, despite operating in the …

Can Network Theory-Based Targeting Increase Technology Adoption?, Lori Beaman, Ariel Benyishay, Jeremy Magruder, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

In order to induce farmers to adopt a productive new agricultural technology, we apply simple and complex contagion diffusion models on rich social network data from 200 villages in Malawi to identify seed farmers to target and train on the new technology. A randomized controlled trial compares these theory-driven network targeting approaches to simpler strategies that either rely on a government extension worker or an easily measurable proxy for the social network (geographic distance between households) to identify seed farmers. Our results indicate that technology diffusion is characterized by a complex contagion learning environment in which most farmers need to …

Has The Development Gap Between The Ethnic Minority And Majority Groups Narrowed In Vietnam?: Evidence From Household Surveys, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using household data for rural northern Vietnam between 1993 and 2014, we find that the ethnic minority group continued to lag behind the majority group in various development indicators despite the overall improvement in living standards. Our regression and decomposition analyses show that the structural differences between the two groups are an important cause of persistent development gap. However, the nature of structural differences changed over time and no single source of structural difference explains the persistent gap. We argue that more minority‐appropriate policies are needed to lift poor minority households out of poverty further and reduce the development gap.

Zona Libre: Conservatism, Urban Growth, And The Rise Of The New Economy In The San Diego Borderlands, Daniel Elkin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Both the rise of conservatism as well as the neoliberal turn of the twentieth century have received much scholarly attention in recent decades. Often, these two subjects are examined separately, with the former focusing on questions of party realignment in the United States and the latter on global economic shifts toward privatization, finance, and the segregation of labor types across international boundaries. As a result, efforts to trace the dual movement between questions of domestic politics and international economy are left underdeveloped. “Zona Libre: Conservatism, Urban Growth, and the Rise of the New Economy” remedies this gap by exploring the …

Grafting Democracy: British Policy In The Burma Independence Process, Kylan Rutherford

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis investigates—through a case study of the independence process in Burma—what, if any, specific policies the British established and followed in granting independence to their former colonies. The author investigates the development of institutions in the first Burma constitution through primary source documents. Statements of policy found indicate that the British strove to create a policy of protection and representation of minorities, encouragement of democracy mirroring Western constitutions, and a desire to establish stability in the region and preserve self-interests. Documents indicate a large disparity between policy and practice. The author concludes that this disparity is caused primarily by …

Review Of Demographics And The Demand For Higher Education, By Nathan Grawe (2018), Michael T. Catalano

Numeracy

Nathan D. Grawe. 2018. Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press). 175 pp. ISBN 9781421424132.

Grawe introduces the Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI), a new probabilistic model designed to produce more nuanced forecasts of college attendance in the US than one-dimensional predictions based on the declining number of 18 year-olds. Using HEDI, Grawe confirms that nationwide attendance at both 2-year and 4-year schools is likely to decline over the next decade, but that the nature of this decline will vary by type of institution, geography, race and ethnicity, and parental income and education levels; some …

Understanding And Modifying Health Behaviors, Kristina N. Piorkowski

Economics ETDs

This dissertation explores two drivers behind the spread of non-communicable diseases – sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and youth tobacco use – in order to improve policies tailored to mitigate these behaviors. Chapter 2 uses primary survey data to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for a tax on sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) in New Mexico. Traditional contingent valuation regression methods were reformulated as a three-equation system. Results indicate that respondents who have healthier eating habits have statistically significantly higher preferences for SSB taxes. The estimated individual median WTP 95% confidence interval was 0.002-0.961 pennies-per-ounce. Chapter 3 continues the exploration into SSB …

Internal Borders And Migration In India, Zovanga L. Kone, Maggie Y. Liu, Aaditya Mattoo, Caglar Ozden, Siddharth Sharma

Economics: Faculty Publications

Internal mobility is a critical component of economic growth and development, as it enables the reallocation of labor to more productive opportunities across sectors and regions. Using detailed district-to-district migration data from the 2001 Census of India, the article highlights the role of state borders as significant impediments to internal mobility. The analysis finds that average migration between neighboring districts in the same state is at least 50% larger than neighboring districts on different sides of a state border, even after accounting for linguistic differences. Although the impact of state borders differs by education, age and reason for migration, it …

A Key Currency View Of Global Imbalance, Hiro Ito, Robert N. Mccauley

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study divides the world into currency zones according to the co-movement of each currency with the key currencies. The dollar zone groups economies that produce well over half of global GDP. The euro zone now includes almost all of Europe and some commodity producers, but remains less than half the size of the dollar zone. The dollar zone share has shown striking stability despite big shifts across zones over time. These include the demise of the sterling zone and the expansion of the DM/euro from northwestern Europe to Europe and beyond. Global imbalances look very different from a currency …

Income Inequality, Productivity, And International Trade, Wen-Tai Hsu, Lin Lu, Pierre Picard

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper discusses the effect of income inequality on selection and aggregate productivity in a general equilibrium model with non-homothetic preferences. It shows the existence of a negative relationship between the number and quantity of products consumed by an income group and the earnings of other income groups. It also highlights the negative effect of a mean-preserving spread of income on aggregate productivity through the softening of firms’ selection. This effect is however mitigated in the presence of international trade. In a quantitative analysis, it is shown that an excessively large mean-preserving spread of income may harm the rich as …

Resident Travel In Montana, Kara Grau, Norma P. Nickerson, Jeremy L. Sage, Megan Schultz

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

The purpose of the study was to estimate annual resident travel within Montana, the spending volume of resident visitors to counties outside their residence (50 miles or more away from home), and to map the flow of resident travel within Montana. Montana residents took 13,547,000 day trips spending $1,662,620,000 and 4,013,000 overnight trips spending $1,206,970,000 for a total of nearly $2.87 billion on travel in Montana.

Estimating State-Industry Employment, With An Application To Industrial Localization, Andrew J. Cassey, Ben O. Smith

Economics Faculty Publications

We describe a method to construct an industry-by-state repeated cross-section of employment at the most disaggregated level publicly available, covering 1963–2012. Nondisclosed data are estimated with a procedure using the hierarchical information structure. To illustrate the usefulness of the procedure, the resulting estimated data are tested to determine if industrial localization of the processed food sector has changed over the last 50 years in the United States. Our findings suggest it has not changed systemically despite variation in levels of localization within industries.

International Energy Geopolitics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Overview of international energy geopolitical trends. Emphasizes the importance of the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, East China Sea, Russia, and the Arctic to U.S. and international economic and strategic developments. Stresses the continuing importance of fossil fuels in domestic and international energy consumption, the variety of energy sources being used by various global regions, the potential for military conflict over access to natural resources, and how emerging energy leaders will determine global energy, environmental, and international security developments.

Book Review: Fundamentals Of International Aviation, Alan Bender

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Not applicable.

An Analysis Of The Bizx Commercial Trade Exchange: The Attitudes And Motivations Behind Its Use, Ján André Montoya

Dissertations and Theses

The Global Financial Crisis underscored both the complexity and brittleness of the global financial system, especially for small to medium enterprises dependent on the current banking regime for credit. More than ever, we have also begun to see the disentanglement of small businesses from traditional banks at the local and regional level in the form of CDFIs, fintech alternative lending, and now complementary currencies. Through interviews with the management and members of the BizX complementary currency this study asks what the attitudes and motivations are behind its offering and use. In addition, it inquires into the economic and psychological benefits …

Globalization, Conflict, And The Effects Of The Rate Of Change Of Globalization: An Empirical Analysis, Ashley Stephens

Honors Projects

The world is becoming increasingly more interconnected with technological advances leading to more and more globalization. It is important to see how globalization affects society, especially in the lesser developed post-conflict regions of Africa. The theories of liberalism, Marxism, and realism all offer plausible, yet strikingly different theories on the relationship between globalization and conflict. This paper conceptually examines the dominant theories of globalization and conflict, then uses open-source panel data on globalization and conflict in Africa to empirically test which theory is supported by the data, then tests if there is a correlation between the rate of globalization and …

Implicit Regional Economic Goals And Objectives: A Study Of U.S. Development Programs, Peter V. Schaeffer, Randall Jackson, Eric Bowen

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

At the present time, U.S. regional economic development policies tend to be focused on sectors, infrastructure, human capital, innovation capability, or to be problem oriented, and only a few programs can be described as being place-based. In this paper, we are looking at major federal regional development programs to deduce their combined implicit place-based goals and objectives. Because the U.S. seems to be relatively unique among OECD countries in its scant use of place-based policies, we compare the United States to, in particular, Canada to gain further insights into the reasons for and potential effects of such policy differences.

Economic Impacts Of The Marcellus Shale Energy And Environment Laboratory (Mseel), Caleb Stair, Randall Jackson

Regional Research Institute Resource Documents

No abstract provided.

Macroeconomic Implications Of Trade Diversification In Nigeria, Lukman O. Oyelami, Philip O. Alege

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study seeks to examine the effects of trade diversification on macroeconomic performance in Nigeria. To achieve this, the study employs bound test of ARDL to determine the existence of cointegration between trade diversification and key macroeconomic variables. We further estimate the short-run and long-run effects of Intensive and Extensive trade diversification on Economic growth and exchange rate movements. The results from bound tests confirm co-integration between trade diversification and economic growth on one hand and trade diversification and exchange rate movements on the other hand. Similarly, the results from our estimations show that trade diversification can propel economic growth …

Upward Mobility In The American Mountain West, Richard Reeves

Brookings Mountain West Publications

Upward economic and social mobility is an intrinsic element of American society. Data from the Equality of Opportunity Project (EOP) demonstrates that upward mobility is a critical issue for our nation’s metros. An analysis of Mountain West metros and the performances of colleges and universities in this region reveal how the differing economic, demographic, and social characteristics affect mobility. This brief explores upward mobility rates, measures of diversity, levels of domestic and foreign migration, and students’ family household income and their eventual individual incomes. The comparison of postsecondary institutions in Mountain West metros serves as a microcosm to better understand …

Impact Of Energy Consumption On Poverty Reduction In Africa, Innocent Okwanya, Patricia O. Abah

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study investigates the impact of energy consumption on poverty reduction in a panel of 12 African countries over a period of 1981-2014. Using the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) method, the study shows that a long-run negative relationship exists between energy consumption and poverty level, which underscores the importance of energy in poverty reduction in the selected African countries. The result also indicates that other variables such as capital stock and political stability have significant effect on poverty implying that these factors play critical role in reducing poverty. Furthermore, the granger causality test shows that a short-run unidirectional …

Three Essays On Panel Structure Models, Wuyi Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In panel structure models, individuals can be classified into different groups with the slope parameters being homogeneous within the same group but heterogeneous across groups, both the number of groups and each individual’s group membership are unknown. This dissertation proposes some methods to identify the panel structure models under different specifications, namely, developing a Lasso-type Panel-CARDS method in the linear panel, constructing two sequential binary segmentation algorithms in the nonlinear panel, and using K-means algorithm in the spatial panel.

Chapter 2 studies the estimation of a linear panel data model with latent structures. To identify the unknown group structure of …

Occupational Shortage And Labor Market Adjustments: A Theory Of Islands, Joanne Tan, Riccardo Zago

Research Collection School Of Economics

Human Resources officers report occupational shortage to be the main cause of unfilled vacancies. Yet, it is not clear whether these are empty complaints or actually lead to effective wage and employment adjustments over time. By crossing data from the UK Employer Skill Survey with the UK Labor Force Survey, we show that shortage only leads to wage and employment adjustments for non-routine occupations in England, while no such adjustment occurs for routine occupations. This result is robust to several empirical specifications and varying levels of aggregation. Moreover, firms facing routine occupation shortage are more likely to outsource these vacancies, …

Rethinking The Fiscal Relationship Between Public Lands And Public Land Counties: County Payments 4.0, Mark Haggerty

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In 1908, Congress authorized payments to local governments, including counties and school districts, to compensate for the non-taxable status of the newly established forest reserves within their boundaries. The original program shared revenue generated from commercial activities on public lands, e.g. timber harvesting, not anticipating the major changes in the volume and types of activities on National Forest lands, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, that have played out over the past century. Two subsequent reforms – the appropriated Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) in 1976 and ‘transition’ payments made between 1990 and 2018, including payments associated with the Northwest …

Female Labor Force Participation And Tertiary Education: A Case Study Of India And Brazil, Consuelo Alina Bills

Senior Theses

Female labor force participation (FLFP) is important for the socio-economic development of a nation because it promotes efficiency and equity. Generally, high female participation in the labor market implies: advancement in the economic and social standings and empowerment of women. These things promote equality and utilize all available human capital, which create a greater capacity for economic growth and poverty reduction. Understanding women's decision to partake in the labor market, as well as the factors that encourage to either participate in or refrain from the workforce, is imperative for policy makers to create legislation to help an economy develop and …

The Significance Of Mongolia's Foreign Policy And Security Apparatus On A Global And Regional Scale, Bolor Lkhaajav

Master's Projects and Capstones

Mongolia, land-locked between two politically, economically, and militarily powerful nations — Russia and China — often must balance its foreign and security policies with its two neighbors and countries beyond. When discussing Mongolia’s foreign policy and security apparatus, historians and scholars look at the international relations of East Asia as a whole. This is the case not because Mongolia’s foreign policy is insignificant but because greater powers impose greater influence on smaller states. Mongolia’s partial involvement in World War II (WWII), and the Cold War introduced new challenges as well as opportunities for Mongolia to modernize its foreign policy principles …