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Essays On Sub-National Economic Growth: Evidence From A Global Sample, Dachao Ruan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I make three important contributions to the literature on regional economics. In Chapter 2, I construct a measure of early development, urban population density (urban population relative to total land area), that is novel to the growth literature, and apply GIS techniques to define and locate regions/cities and obtain geographic and historical measures across regions and cities. Chapter 3 investigates the persistence in sub-national development over the past 150 years. I find that regions that had a relatively higher urban population density in 1850 tend to be relatively more developed today. Geographic and climatic characteristics are significantly …

O Espaço Como Palavra-Chave / Space As A Keyword, David Harvey

Publications and Research

Neste artigo, David Harvey discute teoricamente “espaço” como uma palavra-chave, associando a visão tripartite espaço absoluto-relativo-relacional com a leitura lefebvreana dos espaços percebido, concebido e vivido (também denominados espaços material ou experimentado, conceitualizado e da representação).

David Harvey in this article discuss theoretically “space”as a keyword, by associating the tripartite approach absolute-relative-relational space with Lefebvre’s view of perceived, conceived andlived spaces (also called material or experienced space, conceptua-lized space and spaces of representation

The ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ In Emerging Markets: The Productivity-Transparency Tradeoff In It Adoption, K. Sudhir, Debabrata Talukdar

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Firms make investments in technology to increase productivity. But in emerging markets, where a culture of informality is widespread, information technology (IT) investments leading to greater transparency can impose a cost through higher taxes and need for regulatory compliance. This tendency of firms to avoid productivity-enhancing technologies and remain small to avoid transparency has been dubbed the “Peter Pan Syndrome.” We examine whether firms make the tradeoff between productivity and transparency by examining IT adoption in the Indian retail sector. We find that computer technology adoption is lower when firms have motivations to avoid transparency. Specifically, technology adoption is lower …

New Environmental Demands And The Future Of The Helsinki−Tallinn Freight Route, Olli-Pekka Hilmola, Harri Lorentz, Dawna L. Rhoades

Publications

The environmental friendliness of short sea shipping has been justified in Europe by the ensuing lower congestion at hinterlands and unneeded large-scale infrastructure investments on roads and railways. However, the attractiveness of short sea shipping is about to change. This is because of increasing environmental regulations (International Maritime Organization (IMO) sulfur regulation in the Baltic Sea and planned CO2 emissions trading) and increased world market oil prices. In this research, we analyze this potential change using data envelopment analysis on the existing transportation chain alternatives in the Helsinki (Finland)−Tallinn (Estonia) short sea route (chains using either roro, ropax or container …

Introduction: Toward Voice And Reflexivity, Olivier De Schutter, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

In their introductory chapter, De Schutter and Pistor argue that in light of increasing absolute and relative scarcity of land and fresh water there is urgent need to improve the governance of these and other essential resources. Emphasizing “essentiality” shifts the debate from allocative efficiency to normative concerns of equity and dignity. Essential resources are indispensable for survival and/or for meaningful participation in a given community. Their allocation therefore cannot be left to the pricing mechanism alone. It requires new parameters for governance. The authors propose Voice and Reflexivity as the key parameters of such a regime. Voice is …

Determinants Of Product Upgrading In The Argentine Wine Industry, Lucas Marc Cyr

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the impact that a firm's connections and internal resources has on the firm's ability to develop new products. The capability to make improvements to products is crucial to the long term success and growth of a firm. By using structural equation modeling, I take a different approach to network analysis to analyze data from the Argentine wine industry. While I did not find strong evidence to support the hypothesis that the combination of external networks and internal knowledge are key drivers to product upgrading, there was strong evidence to support each individual determinant’s impact on …

Into The Red: A Look Into The Reasons Why Refugees Decide To Flee, Settle Or Migrate To And From Morocco, Fadeelah E. Holivay

Master's Theses

This research paper explores some of the main reasons why refugees and asylum seekers, particularly from sub-Saharan African countries, embark on a journey and decide to settle, flee or migrate to and from Morocco. Because of this phenomenon, Morocco has seen a 96% increase of refugees migrating to the borders of Morocco each year for the past three years. Many say that this astonishing increase of migrants choosing Morocco is due to such factors as: wars breaking out regionally across central African and Middle Eastern countries causing them to flee; Morocco being a culturaly diverse francophone country whose laws and …

The Vientiane Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growt, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Laos is a small, landlocked, mountainous country in Southeast Asia. As a country, it shares borders with Myanmar and the People’s Republic of China to the Northwest, Vietnam to the East, Cambodia to the South and Thailand to the West.

Two Essays On Governance At The National And Corporate Level, Laura Savory Miller

HCBE Theses and Dissertations

ESSAY 1
We examine the effect of governance environment on the composition of a country's external capital structure, specifically foreign equity investment. In addition to the absolute quality of the host country's governance environment, we consider the host country's governance quality relative to that of the source (investor) country. Unlike previous studies, which utilize country totals, we examine foreign investment positions between pairs of individual countries. Our sample includes 3,891 bilateral investment positions among 49 source countries and 69 host countries for years 2009 through 2011. We find that relative governance, rather than absolute governance, plays a role in foreign …

Hits And Runs: Determinants Of The Cross-Country Variation In The Severity Of Impact From The 2008-09 Financial Crisis, Shane Dwyer, Chih Ming Tan

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

Recent empirical work on the 2008-09 financial crisis has found mixed results on the usefulness of indicators to explain the cross-country variation in the incidence of the crisis in non-originating countries. While some authors have found success with various indicators, Rose and Spiegel (2009a,b) find that almost no indicators are robust. We employ Bayesian model averaging (BMA) to verify Rose-Spiegel’s conclusions under model uncertainty, confirming their findings. We then employ latent class models (LCM) to check the data for parameter heterogeneity. We find that there is substantial evidence of heterogeneity in the relationship between various indicators and crisis impact, both …

The $10.10 Minimum Wage Proposal: An Evaluation Across States, Andrew R. Hanson, Zackary Hawley

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This paper offers state-level estimates of job loss from increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour in 2016. Given the vast differences in nominal wages across geography, a federal increase in minimum wage that is not indexed to local wage levels will have a differential impacts across states. The proposed minimum wage would be binding for between 17 and 18 % of workers nationally. We estimate coverage rates ranging from just 4 % in Washington D.C. to as high as 51 % in Puerto Rico, with 13 states having at least 20 % of the employed population covered …

Sources Of Productivity Spillovers: Panel Data Evidence From China, Badi H. Baltagi, Peter H. Egger, Michaela Kesina

Center for Policy Research

This paper assesses sources of productivity spillovers in China's electric and electronic manufacturing industry using a rich panel data-set of 25,360 firms observed over the period 2004-2007. This industry is characterized by its important reliance on technology. In particular, the paper focuses on the role of other firms' productivity as well as productivity shifters in affecting own firm-level total factor productivity. In addition, this paper examines the possible difference between spillovers from foreign-owned units and from units which participate at global markets through exporting in comparison to domestically-owned and non-exporting units. We find evidence of stronger spillovers from exporting firms …

Whose Success? The State–Foreign Capital Nexus And The Development Of The Automotive Industry In Slovakia, Petr Pavlinek

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Using the case study of Slovakia, this article considers the role of the state in the rapid growth of the automotive industry in integrated peripheral markets of the global automotive industry. Although this growth has been mainly driven by the investment strategies of automotive lead firms, the state has played an important role by accommodating the strategic needs of foreign capital through neoliberal economic policies. In addition to secondary sources, the empirical research is based on a 2010 survey of 299 Slovak-based automotive firms with a response rate of 44% and on 38 on-site firm-level interviews conducted between 2011 and …

Nexus Of Exchange Rate Deregulation And Agricultural Share Of Gross Domestic Product In Nigeria, Oyakhilomen Oyinbo, Falola Abraham, Grace Z. Rekwot

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

The kernel of this study was to examine the causal relationship between exchange rate deregulation and the agricultural share of gross domestic product in Nigeria from an econometric perspective using time series data spanning a period of 26 years (1986 – 2011). Data on exchange rate and gross domestic product were analysed using augmented dickey fuller unit root test, unrestricted vector autoregression, pairwise granger causality and vector error correction model. The results showed the existence of unidirectional causality from exchange rate to agricultural share of gross domestic production and also, exchange rate deregulation had negative influence on agricultural share of …

Autism Spectrum Disorder In An Indian Context: Impact Of Socioeconomic Factors On The Experiences Of Individuals With Asd And Their Families, Kendall Harman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

While Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a condition that appears in comparable rates across social, ethnic and geographic groups, the quality and quantity of ASD-related resources and services is significantly lower in developing countries, including India. Moreover, sociocultural factors play a major role in the experiences of people with ASD. Yet, the bulk of ASD-related research has been conducted in developed countries. This study aimed to examine how social, cultural, political and economic factors impact the experiences of people with ASD living in India and their families. Seventeen parents of children with ASD were interviewed, and semi-structured observations of different …

It’S Not Will You Succeed? But Can You Afford To Fail?, Girija Pande

Asian Management Insights

With India and China’s economic ties no longer defined only by trade, the countries’ convergence is opening up new opportunities and challenges for businesses on either side seeking to cross the Sino-Indian border.

Do Asian Conglomerates Offer Attractive Risk-Adjusted Returns?, Nandini Vijayaraghavan

Asian Management Insights

Research on a sample of seven Asian conglomerates shows that stocks of some of these companies not only outperformed the S&P 500, but also exhibited lower volatility.

Raising Wisconsin's Minimum Wage: Who Would Be Helped? Who Would Be Hurt?, Andrew R. Hanson, Ike Brannon

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Optimal City Hierarchy: A Dynamic Programming Approach To Central Place Theory, Wen-Tai Hsu, Thomas J. Holmes, Frank Morgan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Central place theory is a key building block of economic geography and an empirically plausible description of city systems. This paper provides a rationale for central place theory via a dynamic programming formulation of the social planner's problem of city hierarchy. We show that there must be one and only one immediate smaller city between two neighboring larger-sized cities in any optimal solution. If the fixed cost of setting up a city is a power function, then the immediate smaller city will be located in the middle, confirming the locational pattern suggested by Christaller. We also show that the solution …

Refining Workforce Education Supply And Demand Analysis: Final Report, Brad J. Hershbein, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Laboratories And The Value Stream Of Next-Generation Public Health, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Public health laboratories are the information engines for public health agencies and delivery systems. Measuring the value stream that flows from this information can support objective assessments of the health and economic benefits attributable to laboratory infrastructure and information.

Women Write About Che, Nancy Stout

Library Staff Publications

In the last five years, three women have written biographies of Ernesto "Che" Guevara after decades of his life story being solidly in the hands of men. The question is: do women write biography differently?

The Effect Of Income On Health After Hurricane Katrina, Jang Wook Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is a large literature that documents a positive correlation between income and a variety of measures of good health. This correlation may reflect causality in both directions and may also reflect omitted "third variables" that are positively related to income and health. In my dissertation, I employ an exogenous negative shock to income due to a natural disaster to estimate the true causal impact of income on health. The shock I will use is Hurricane Katrina, which severely damaged counties in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in August 2005. I use these treatment counties and a variety of alternative sets …

Utopias Misplaced: The Cost Of Outsourcing Dystopian Poetics To North Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I'm sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the "uncanny body politic," the uncanny valley, "dystopian poetics," what it means to outsource dystopian poetics, the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Authors/artists mentioned include: Thomas Hobbes, Mary Shelley, David Mitchell, Marjane Satrapi, Song Byeok, Sun Mu, Masahiro Mori, Andy Warhol. The talk also discusses the James Bond film Die Another Day.

Complementarity In Institutional Quality In Bilateral Fdi Flows, Pao Li Chang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops a theory on the complementarity in institutional qualities between the home and host countries in bilateral FDI. Firms ‘born’ in countries with poorer institutions tend to invest more in informal institutions to mitigate political risk. The marginal advantage of higher informal institution endowment is bigger when the political risk at the FDI destination is higher. Thus, all else being equal, the ranking of the MNE’s home institutions predicts the ranking of the institutional qualities of their FDI destinations. I find robust empirical evidence for this theoretical prediction using bilateral FDI for 219 economies during year 2001-2010.

"My People Is A People On Its Knees": Mexican Labor Migration From The Montana Region And The Formation Of A Working Class In New York City, Rodolfo Hernandez-Corchado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the contemporary proletarianization via migration of the indigenous and mestizo people from the Montaña region, in the Mexican southern state of Guerrero, to New York City. The dissertation demonstrates how the region was transformed since the 1980s into a migrant labor supplier and how its inhabitants became proletarians, and a major pool of labor supplying the North American transnational migrant labor market.

Far from being homogenous, the people of the Montaña region are ethnically and class diverse. Based on the oral narratives of an indigenous Mixteco, and a mestizo teenager dweller of the city of Tlapa, the …

Essays On Robust Estimators For Non-Identically Distributed Observations In Spatial Econometric And Time Series Models, Suleyman Taspinar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis proposal consists of three essays on the estimation methods and applications of spatial econometric models and one essay on the generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH)-type models in financial time series. The first essay discusses the heteroskedasticity robust generalized method of moments estimator (RGMME) for the spatial models that allow for spatial dependence in both the dependent variable and the disturbance term (SARAR(1,1)). First, we show that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is generally inconsistent in the presence of unknown heteroskedasticity. Then, we extend robust GMM approach in Lin and Lee (2010) to SARAR(1,1). The large sample properties are …

Planetary Improvement: Discourses And Practices Of Green Capitalism In The Cleantech Space, Jesse Adam Goldstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is money to be made in saving the planet. A whole host of actors, such as investors, entrepreneurs, engineers, and policy makers have mobilized around our ecological problems, seeking to innovate new `green' and `clean' technologies that can serve a rapidly changing environment. The presumption that such technologies are both necessary and necessarily profitable anchors visions of a `green' capitalism that can and must be brought into existence.

However, just as free markets have never been all that free, why should we presume that green capitalism would be all that green? Instead of attempting to arbit whether or not …

Land Rights Among Subsistence Farmers: An Examination Of Madagascar’S Land Reform And Prevailing Systems Of Land Tenure In Betafo, Taylor Crowl

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In Madagascar, legal systems of land tenure have been inaccessible for the vast majority of the rural population. This has stranded millions of subsistence farmers in a sense of insecurity, as they lack legal rights for the property that they have farmed for generations. Madagascar’s land reform, launched in 2005, attempted to change these exclusionary tenure practices. This reform —known as the Plan National Foncier—created land certificates and local land offices in an attempt to make legal land tenure financially, geographically, and logistically accessible to the local population. This study discusses the successes, failures, and unforeseen consequences of Madagascar’s land …

Technical Document For Price Adjustment, Zheng Tian, Mulugeta Kahsai, Randall Jackson

Regional Research Institute Technical Documents

This document presents the basis for the price adjustment mechanisms in a time series IO model. The essentials of the price adjustment and price change propagation algorithms are presented, along with a matrix permutation algorithm that facilitates the implementation of the price adjustment mechanism. The Matlab function is provided.