Digital Commons Network^™

Dialogues With The Informal City: Latin America And The Caribbean, Ariel C. Armony, Adib Cure, Carie Penabad

Center for Latin American Studies Publications

This publication, based on the symposium Dialogues with the Informal City: Latin America and the Caribbean, connects a range of fundamental themes affecting the current conditions and future of Latin America’s growing informal cities and, by extension, the rising global urban population. Informal cities can be described as settlements frequently characterized by organic physical patterns built incrementally over time as the needs and circumstances of a community change. While undeniably precarious in construction, informal cities exhibit underlying urban and architectural patterns of remarkable resilience; moreover, they reflect their inhabitants’ enduring cultural values. While seriously affected by poverty and violence, …

Exports, Imports, Government Consumption And Economic Growth In Upper-Middle Income Countries, Minh Dao

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Esfahani (1991) shows that the statistically significant correlation between export promotion and economic growth in semi-industrialized countries (SICs) has been mainly attributable to the role of exports in reducing import ‘shortages’, which have impeded output growth in these countries. As a result, export-promotion policies as a superior development strategy in SICs play an important role in those that cannot secure sufficient foreign aid or investment. Esfahani (1991) also develops a simultaneous equations model to address the simultaneity bias between GDP and export growth rates. In this article we extend the model developed by Esfahani (1991) by incorporating the contribution of …

Institutions And Economic Growth In Bric Nations, Doug Flink

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper looks at the impact of institutions on economic growth in the six largest countries in BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The study will us OLS to examine the time period between the years 2002 and 2011. More specifically, it will measure the effect of institutions through a variety of measures including democracy and regulatory related variables. Through ordinary least squares regression analysis, the variables for democracy and regulation will be significant and have a positive effect on economic growth. This study will show that quality of institution does in fact support economic growth.

Bankruptcy: The Divergent Cases Of The City And The County Of San Bernardino, Richard Callahan, Mark Pisano

Public and Nonprofit Administration

The cases are the two separate jurisdictions of the City of San Bernardino and the County of San Bernardino, California, U.S.A. The matched pair offers a unique opportunity for a research design that compares a bankrupt city government with a jurisdiction sharing the essential demographic, economic, and geographical features, though as a county a different level of government. The two cases offer insights into bankruptcy as not simply a function of economic forces or recent poor policy choices but as a result of a pattern of decision-making, a structure of government, and the constraints placed on leadership by structure and …

Trade Openness And Economic Growth, Anh Tung Dao

Mark A. Israel '91 Endowed Summer Research Fund in Economics

Trade liberalization has been central to the discussion of development policy in recent decades. In the 1990s, the Washington Consensus, a set of 10 major development policy recommendations from Washington-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), regarded trade openness as essential to the achieve higher economic growth. Trade policy, according to the Washington Consensus, should focus on lowering tariffs on imports, especially cheap intermediate inputs that give countries competitive edges in export industries. Although acknowledging the negative effects this type of policy could have on competing domestic industries, the Consensus believed that protection …

No. 67: Migrant Entrepreneurship, Collective Violence And Xenophobia In South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Sujata Ramachandran

Southern African Migration Programme

The remarkable growth of informal migrant entrepreneurship in South Africa since 1990 would have been much lauded had it not been for the striking detail that the actors in question are seen as “foreigners” or “outsiders”. As such, they are uniformly viewed as undesirable and disadvantaging poor South African citizens. The growing presence of migrants in the informal sector has created various tensions in South Africa, including in government circles, ignoring the fact that in the free market economy of South Africa, immigrants and refugees, like citizens and commercial enterprises, would otherwise enjoy the freedom to establish, operate and expand …

No. 66: Xenophobic Violence In South Africa: Denialism, Minimalism, Realism, Jonathan Crush, Sujata Ramachandran

Southern African Migration Programme

Violent xenophobia has become a regular feature of South African life. Everyday animosity frequently spills over into violence against individual migrants and refugees and their economic enterprises. Some of these incidents reach the scrutiny of the media and officialdom, but most remain invisible and unremarked. The fact that most of the violence occurs in marginal urban locations of informal settlements, townships and inner-city suburbs in South Africa has prompted intense debate over the nomenclature and identification of the underlying causes. Explanations for the large-scale anti-migrant violence that swept the country in May 2008, and continues in more isolated and sporadic …

2014 American Incentive System Almanac, Don P. Diffine Ph.D.

Belden Center Monographs

No abstract provided.

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #2: A Tale Of Many Cities: Economy, Crime, And Politics, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

This report examines regional and sub-regional measures of economy, crime, and politics perceptions from the 2014 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2014) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center.

Globalization And Income Convergence, Kaitlyn R. Wolfe, Andrew T. Young

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key amongst those characteristics. From a policy perspective this is disheartening because economists have little understanding of how to transplant those institutions to developing countries. Worse, good informal institutions seem to be a necessary condition for formal institutions to “stick”. However, to the extent that good institutions can arise as a “spontaneous order” from individuals interacting with one another, allowing for an “open society” may be an effective development …

Obedience And Income Levels, Kaitlyn Harger, Joshua C. Hall

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

We revisit the relationship between informal institutions and income levels. The empirical literature on institutions finds that indices of “informal institutions” such as trust, respect, respect, self-determination, and obedience are more important than “formal institutions” such as constitutional constraints in explaining income levels across countries. We add to this literature in two ways. First, we separate out the index of informal institutions into its component parts to see which informal institutions are primary. Second, we construct two new measures of obedience to test the robustness of obedience. Our reduced-form results indicate the primacy of obedience over other informal institutions

The Shale Revolution And Opec: Potential Economic Implications Of Shale Oil For Opec And Member Countries, Kyle Lemons

The Larrie and Bobbi Weil Undergraduate Research Award

No abstract provided.

History, External Influence And Political Volatility In The Central African Republic (Car), Henry Kam Kah

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

This paper examines the complex involvement of neighbours and other states in the leadership or political crisis in the CAR through a content analysis. It further discusses the repercussions of this on the unity and leadership of the country. The CAR has, for a long time, been embroiled in a crisis that has impeded the unity of the country. It is a failed state in Africa to say the least, and the involvement of neighbouring and other states in the crisis in one way or the other has compounded the multifarious problems of this country. Some of these states have …

New Evidence On Why Children's Food Security Varies Across Households With Similar Incomes, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Patricia M. Anderson, Kristin F. Butcher, Hilary W. Hoynes

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This project examines why very low food security status among children is different across households with very similar measured resources. Controlling for measures of income-to-needs, we examine whether elements in the!environment, household characteristics, or behaviors are systematically correlated with VLFS among children. We use different measures of income-to-needs, including those averaged across years to capture “permanent” income (or to average out measurement error) and measures that include income after taxes and transfers. Our analysis uses the Current Population Survey (across many years, matched December to March), the American Time Use Survey (matched to the December CPS), the National Health and …

Three Essays On Cross-Border Mergers And Acquisitions, Derrick T. Jenniges

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays on cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The first essay studies horizontal and vertical investments between Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, while the second essay examines how investment patterns vary by country development. The third essay estimates the effect of merger policy reform on cross-border M&A activity in Europe.

The first essay tests how well theories of horizontal and vertical foreign direct investment (FDI) explain observed patterns of cross-border M&As in OECD countries. Horizontal investment occurs when multinational firms produce in foreign countries to serve the foreign market, whereas vertical investment occurs …

An Integrated Environmental And Economic Modeling Framework For Technological Transitions, Randall Jackson

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

There is an increasing demand for models that address both environment and economy, and that also estimate or forecast the impacts of introducing new and markedly different technologies from those already existing in the systems under study. Because most conventional models are calibrated to recent data characterizing current economic structure and conditions, their standard turn-key operation will need to be replaced by more comprehensive algorithms and procedures designed to explicitly accommodate shifts in technology and economic structure. This paper lays out one viable alternative for integrating environmental and economic modeling frameworks, and focuses specifically on one of the major challenges …

Trade Liberalization In Mexico: An Analysis Of The Anti-Export Bias, Daniel J. Serra

CMC Senior Theses

Modern trade theory suggests that protectionist policies hinder exports by altering domestic prices and production incentives. This paper examines the effect of import tariffs on Mexican non-oil exports through a comprehensive analysis of the Mexican trade sector, including a breakdown of the most important free trade agreements for the Mexican economy, information on Mexican resource mobility and factor endowment, and analysis on Mexico’s tariff structure. The paper finds that import tariffs on both intermediate and final goods have a direct and significant effect on exports, alluding to the existence of an anti-export bias, and argues that free trade is the …

The Effect Of Informal Employment And Corruption On Income Levels In Brazil, Jamie Bologna

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

This paper exploits a unique dataset on corruption and informal sector employment in 476 Brazilian municipalities to estimate whether corruption impacts GDP or income levels once variation in informal economic activity is taken into account. Overall, I find that higher levels of corruption and a larger informal economy are generally associated with poor economic outcomes. However, only the size of the informal economy has a statistically significant effect. This effect is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls and fixed effects, as well as an instrumental variable analysis. Further, these effects are large in magnitude. For example, a …

Empirical Analysis Of Causes Of Income Inequality: A Level Playing Field For Children At The Start Of School Career, Ei P. Theint

Scripps Senior Theses

Numerous and countless factors have been theorized to be causes of inequality. This paper started with identifying the most important determinants of income inequality through theoretical research. Among the various theories of causes of inequality, I hypothesized creating a level playing for children at the very start of their career as students as an important determinant. In order to test the hypothesis that a level playing field is important to help fight inequality, a regression tailored for this question is created. I develop a regression model using the variable public expenditure on primary education as the variable to be tested …

Teaching An Old Profession New Tricks: An Analysis On The Effects Of The Flipped Classroom Model On Student Performance, Theresa K. Lomneth

CMC Senior Theses

Abstract

When traditional lecture methods prove ineffective, some professors turn to alternative teaching styles. In particular, a flipped or inverted classroom, where students watch conceptual videos before coming to class and use class time for application and fine tuning of these concepts has become popular in recent years. However, little consensus exists on the efficacy of these strategies. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a flipped classroom structure implemented in a medical school course successfully improved student performance. To do so, I analyzed exam data from the University of Nebraska Medical Center before and after implementation of …

Who Is The Customer? Identifying The Initial Adopters Of Formal Savings. Field Evidence From Malawi, Karan Saggi

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines household characteristics as determinants of formal savings accounts in rural Malawi. The main questions answered in this paper include the effects of household characteristics on the probability of having formal savings, the amounts saved in these accounts, and the probability of adopting formal savings. The central discussion aims to identify the initial adopters of formal savings accounts, using a marketing approach previously unapplied to this area of research. This paper also contributes to the dialogue of the household composition by considering three untried variables: number of adults, number of children, and literacy of all household members. Results …

Advancing The Empirical Research On Lobbying, John M. De Figueiredo, Brian Kelleher Richter

Faculty Scholarship

This essay identifies the empirical facts about lobbying which are generally agreed upon in the literature. It then discusses challenges to empirical research in lobbying and provides examples of empirical methods that can be employed to overcome these challenges—with an emphasis on statistical measurement, identification, and casual inference. The essay then discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and effective use of the main types of data available for research in lobbying. It closes by discussing a number of open questions for researchers in the field and avenues for future work to advance the empirical research in lobbying.

Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings, Relational Realignments, And Persistent Inequalities, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

In the context of shifting cultural anchors as well as unstable global economic conditions, new practices of intimacy and sexuality may become tactics in an individual’s negotiation of conflicting desires and potentials. This article offers reflection on the interface between global forces, powerful transcultural narratives, and state policies, on the one hand, and local, even individual, constructions and tactics in regard to sexuality, marriage, migration, and work, on the other. The article focuses on the life trajectory of Gudiya, an ambitious young Hindu woman who started out life with little social capital and few economic resources in a dusty corner …

From Social Media To Social Movement: Developing A Secondary Stakeholder Model For The Information Age – The Case Of Deepwater Horizon, Michele A. Jurgens

2014

Secondary stakeholders are thought to differ from primary stakeholders in that they interact with the firm mainly for the purpose of changing its ethical, societal, and environmental policies and practices. Research on secondary stakeholders has shown that they are successful in influencing their corporate targets despite the relative lack of power, legitimacy, and urgency of their requests. One explanation for the success of secondary stakeholders can be found in the `political process model' from the social movement literature. The political process model describes and predicts how social movements are formed and the conditions that are necessary for them being sustained …

Natural Phenomena As Potential Influence On Social And Political Behavior: The Earth’S Magnetic Field, Jackie R. East

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

Researchers use natural phenomena in a number of disciplines to help explain human behavioral outcomes. Research regarding the potential effects of magnetic fields on animal and human behavior indicates that fields could influence outcomes of interest to social scientists. Tests so far have been limited in scope. This work is a preliminary evaluation of whether the earth’s magnetic field influences human behavior it examines the baseline relationship exhibited between geomagnetic readings and a host of social and political outcomes. The emphasis on breadth of topical coverage in these statistical trials, rather than on depth of development for any one model, …

Quantifying The Impact Of Temperature And Wind On Nfl Passing And Rushing Performance, Max A. Zipperman

CMC Senior Theses

This paper utilizes NFL game data from the 2002-2013 seasons in an investigation into the effects of temperature and wind on NFL passing and rushing performance. There are three separate analyses: (1) the general effects of weather on performance and the advantages/ disadvantages of playing at home with respect to weather, (2) a comparison of how teams respond to weather when at home vs. on the road, and (3) an examination of the effect of transitioning weather conditions on visitor performance. Teams tended to have inferior passing success in low temperatures and consequently supplant passing attempts with rushing attempts in …

Social Security And Pension Reform: International Perspectives, Marek Szczepański Editor, John A. Turner Editor

Upjohn Press

Countries around the world are reforming their social security and pension systems. International studies often focus on social security reforms in Europe and North America, and may include Latin America. Reforms, however, are also occurring in Asia and Africa, and include reforms of voluntary and employer-provided pensions as well as social security programs. This book discusses both social security and employer-provided pension reforms, as well as reforms in most regions of the world.

Kebijakan Desentralisasi Fiskal, Pergeseran Sektoral, Dan Ketimpangan Antarkabupaten/Kota Di Sulawesi Tengah, Muhammad Amir Arham

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Fiscal decentralization can create efficiency and effectiveness to promote growth and change in economic structures as well as to reduce inequalities amongst regions. This study intends to find out whether the fiscal decentralization policies during 2001-2010 contribute to the shift of economic sectors and inequality rates amongst districts/municipalities in the Province of Central Sulawesi. By using econometrics of panel data, the study found that fiscal decentralization supports a shift in the economic sector where the role of primary sector gradually decreased and the secondary and tertiary sector tend to be increased since the implementation of regional autonomy. As a result, …

Hospital Treatment Rates And Spill-Over Effects: Does Ownership Matter?, Badi H. Baltagi, Yin -Fang Yen

Center for Policy Research

This paper studies the effect of hospital ownership on treatment rates allowing for spatial correlation among hospitals. Competition among hospitals and knowledge spillovers generate significant externalities which we try to capture using the spatial Durbin model. Using a panel of 2342 hospitals in the 48 continental states observed over the period 2005 to 2008, we find significant spatial correlation of medical service treatment rates among hospitals. We also get mixed results on the effect of hospital ownership on treatment rates that depends upon the market structure where the hospital is located and which varies by treatment type.

Sustainability Policy’S Inherent Dilemmas – Exemplified Via Critical Examination Of The Las Vegas Metropolitan Sustainability Campaign, Kathryn A. Zimmerman

All Master's Theses

In response to a dual problem of critical water scarcity and rapid population growth, leaders of metropolitan Las Vegas implemented a region-wide, internationally marketed sustainability campaign. Preliminary studies found that, while sustainability policy attains its rhetorical goals, solutions initiated not only perpetuate but also purposefully expand the original dual problem to justify continuous water resource acquisitions. To examine this sustainability conundrum constructed by leadership—problem-perpetuation rather than problem-resolution—a critical examination in resource management asked two basic questions: what is being sustained and by what means? Via this inquiry, specific processes by which leaders perpetuate problems can be identified; and, so-informed, new …