Digital Commons Network^™

Essays On The Digital Divide - Explorations Through Global, National And Individual Lenses, Maria Skaletsky

2013

The Digital Divide has emerged as an important research and policy issue during the past thirty years. The divide exists at different levels, such as global, regional and individual levels. While extensive research already exists on this subject, the complexity of the issue presents opportunities for further research. In particular, there is ample scope for significantly contributing to the literature by leveraging recent analytics techniques, all the more since most of the literature on the Digital Divide relies on descriptive methods or on simple or multiple regression models. Therefore, the motivation for this study is two-fold. First, the Digital Divide …

Stewardship Of The Biosphere In The Urban Era, Michail Fragkias

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We are entering a new urban era in which the ecology of the planet as a whole is increasingly influenced by human activities (Ellis 2011; Steffen et al. 2011a, b; Folke et al. 2011). Cities have become a central nexus of the relationship between people and nature, both as crucial centres of demand of ecosystem services, and as sources of environmental impacts. Approximately 60 % of the urban land present in 2030 is forecast to be built in the period 2000–2030 (Chap. 21). Urbanization therefore presents challenges but also opportunities. In the next two to three decades, we have unprecedented …

A Synthesis Of Global Urbanization Projections, Michail Fragkias, Burak Güneralp, Karen C. Seto, Julie Goodness

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter reviews recent literature on global projections of future urbanization, covering the population, economic and physical extent perspectives. We report on several recent findings based on studies and reports on global patterns of urbanization. Specifically, we review new literature that makes projections about the spatial pattern, rate, and magnitude of urbanization change in the next 30–50 years. While projections should be viewed and utilized with caution, the chapter synthesis reports on several major findings that will have significant socioeconomic and environmental impacts including the following:

• By 2030, world urban population is expected to increase from the current 3.4 billion …

Ua3/9/3 President's Office-Ransdell Reading File, Wku Archives, Virginia Brothers, Aaron Shuford

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Reading file of outgoing correspondence regarding the administration of WKU, fund raising, thank yous and letters of condolence.

New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This paper explores knowledge services clusters (KSCs) as a distinct and increasingly important form of geographic cluster, in particular in emerging economies: KSCs are defined as geographic concentrations of lower-cost skills serving global demand for increasingly commoditized knowledge services. Based on prior research on clusters and services offshoring, and data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN), major properties and contingencies of KSC growth are discussed and compared with both high-tech clusters and low-cost manufacturing clusters. Special emphasis is put on the ambivalent effect of commoditization of knowledge work on KSC growth: It is proposed that KSCs attract most projects if …

Essays On Rethinking African Development: Contextual And Methodological Advances, Olumayokun Soremekun

2013

This research study sets out to provide analytical answers to the questions of African development and inequality. We examine various aspects of development from the issue of inequality among African countries to unravelling the synergies among the MDG goals and finally to investigating the progress if any that African countries have made towards attaining the MDG goals.

This research is broken down into three main studies: measuring inequality of opportunity, examining the synergies between the Millennium development goals at a particular point in time and lastly assessing the progress that has been made towards attaining the MDG goals in Africa. …

Security, Development, And (Im)Mobility: The Uneven Geography Of Migration And Border Management In Ukraine, Jonathan Austin Crane

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

As a country of origin, transit, and destination for migrants that now borders four European Union (EU) member countries, Ukraine has seen future integration possibilities with the EU become, in part, conditional upon its willingness to cooperate in controlling cross-border migration. The EU is now “externalizing” aspects of migration and border control to Ukraine through making investments in Ukraine’s capacity to selectively “manage” cross-border flows in line with EU security and economy priorities. In the context of this emerging spatial arrangement of EU externalization, this thesis analyzes how, by whom, and to what effect migration is being managed in and …

Unemployment Rates During The Not-So-Great Recovery: How Much Is Structural Versus Cyclical?, Nicole Appleton

CMC Senior Theses

This paper presents evidence that the majority of the high post-recession unemployment rates is the result of an increase in the natural rate, rather than cyclical deviations from it. Moreover, I discuss the likely causes of the recent increases in the natural rate. Since most of the theorized causes of increases appear transitory in nature, I expect that the natural rate will soon decline, followed closely by a decrease in actual unemployment rates.

Pengaruh Variabel Sosio-Demografis Terhadap Mobilitas Ulang-Alik Di Jabodetabek, Rotua Y. Warsida, Sri M. Adioetomo, Elda L. Pardede

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This study aims to explain the effect of socio-demographic variables i.e. sex, wage, employment status, and marital status on commuting in Jabodetabek. The result of binary logistic regression using Sakernas 2012 shows that male are more likely to commute than female. Male in formal sector have the highest probability to commute while by marital status, unmarried male have the highest probability to commute. The level of wage is positively related with the probability to commute although at certain level of wage, an increase in wage increases probability to commute among male lower than probability to commute among female.

Stages Of Occupational Regulation: Analysis Of Case Studies, Morris M. Kleiner

Upjohn Press

Kleiner examines occupations that are at various stages of regulation to determine to what extent regulation has influenced the individuals in the occupations, consumers, and related occupational practitioners.

“Damning The Dams”: A Study Of Cost Benefit Analysis In Large Dams Through The Lens Of India's Sardar Sarovar Project, Evelyn Wong

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines the evaluation of the economic, environmental and social effects of dams, and lessons learned from previous dams. It then focuses on cost benefit analysis as a decision-making tool pre-project for evaluating the potential gains and losses of building a dam; and as a framework for evaluating dams in operation. It reviews the basic assumptions required for a legitimate cost benefit analysis, and the inherent limitations of this method. It uses the Sardar Sarovar dam as a case study for the use and abuse of cost benefit analysis in decision-making, interstate politics, propaganda and activism. It also illustrates …

Determinants Of Fdi Inflows Into South America, Dario Castro

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This study provides a panel data analysis of the key determinants of FDI as determined by the market such as market size, economic stability, trade liberalization, population, growth prospects, and exchange rates. Additionally, other variables such as physical infrastructure, quality of institutions and central bank exchange rate regimes. This paper seeks to show the major policy implications of variables that can be influenced through government intervention. The empirical research is conducted with focus on South American FDI inflows over the last three decades, due to the great presence of natural resources and cheap labor in the region which have contributed …

Disinvestment And Suburban Decline, Robert Streetar

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Beginning in the mid-1970s, U.S. suburbs started to experience many of the same problems typically associated with earlier inner-city decline including accelerating income decline, increasing family poverty, falling housing prices, growing income polarization, escalating crime, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity.

Conventional wisdom often lays the blame for neighborhood decline on who moves in and who moves out. This is understandable, as neighborhood migration is easily observable. It is the hypothesis of this research, though, that the less visible disinvestment of capital from suburban neighborhoods is an initial cause of suburban decline that precedes and coincides with the more observable …

Meta-Analysis Of Economics Research Reporting Guidelines, Tom Stanley, Hristos Doucouliagos, Margaret J. Giles, Jost Heckemeyer, Robert Johnston, Patrice Laroche, Jon Nelson, Martin Paldam, Jacques Poot, Geoff Pugh, Randall S. Rosenberger, Katja Rost

Research outputs 2013

Meta-regression analysis (MRA) can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research. Their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades. To improve transparency and to raise the quality of MRA, the meta-analysis of economics research-network (MAER-Net) has created the below reporting guidelines. Future meta-analyses in economics will be expected to follow these guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta-analysis must deviate from them.

Population Pressure And Family Planning In The Case Of Sub Saharan Africa's Demographic Transition, Jessica T. Ysunza

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Do Spatially Targeted Redevelopment Programs Spillover?, Andrew R. Hanson, Shawn Rohlin

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This paper estimates spillover effects from a spatially-targeted redevelopment program, the Federal Empowerment Zone (EZ), on neighboring and economically similar areas. EZs are a set of generous tax incentives and grants aimed at small, economically depressed areas of large U.S. cities. We find areas that border or are economically similar to EZ locations experience a decline in the number of establishments and employment compared to areas that border or are similar to rejected EZ applicants. We also demonstrate that using spillover prone areas to estimate program effects causes upward bias when the spillover is negative. We find that for many …

Creating Knowledge, Volume 6, 2013

Creating Knowledge

It is my great pleasure to introduce the sixth volume of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ “Creating Knowledge,” our undergraduate student scholarship and research journal. First published in 2008, the journal is the outcome of an initiative to enhance and enrich the academic quality of the student experience within the college. Through this publication, the college seeks to encourage students to become actively engaged in creating scholarship and research and gives them a venue for the publication of their essays.

This sixth volume is, however, unlike the previous ones in one major respect: the papers in this …

A State-To-State Analysis Of Mexican Migration To The U.S., Avilia Bueno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The determinants of undocumented immigration flows from Mexican states to U.S. states utilizing data recently released by the Mexican consulate are analyzed. The impact of economic, demographic, and geographic factors on immigrant location choice in the year 2007 is analyzed using ordinary least squares, tobit, and two stage least squares to control for factors likely to be endogenous with immigration. The results generally support that immigrants tend to migrate towards states with higher Mexican immigrant populations, shorter distances, higher wages, and smaller populations. In addition, the relationship between undocumented immigration and economic freedom and the policy measures used to construct …

Religious Identity And The Provision Of Public Goods: Evidence From The Indian Princely States, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Religious identity affects preferences and can consequently affect policy. We propose two mechanisms through which a ruler's religious identity can affect public good provision: i) greater provision of goods in regions where more subjects are the ruler's co-religionists, and ii) lower provision of goods where private markets provide a substitute to the ruler's co-religionists. Empirically, identifying the causal effect of religious identity on policy is often impossible, since the religious identity of rulers rarely changes over time and place. We address this problem by exploiting the variation in the religion of rulers in the Indian Princely States in the early …

The Impact Of Competition On Prices With Numerous Firms, Xavier Gabaix, David Laibson, Deyuan Li, Hongyi Li

ESI Working Papers

We use extreme value theory (EVT) to develop insights about price theory. Our analysis reveals detail-independent equilibrium properties that characterize a large family of models. We derive a formula relating equilibrium prices to the level of competition. When the number of rms is large, markups are proportional to 1= (nF' [F^-1 (1- 1/n)], where F is the random utility noise distribution and n is the number of rms. This implies prices are pinned down by the tail properties of the noise distribution and that prices are independent of many other institutional details. The elasticity of the markup with respect to …

Routes Of Compromise: Road Building And Motor Transportation In Modern Mexico, 1920-1952, Michael K. Bess

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Routes of Compromise" studies the creation and function of the government bureaucracy that built motor roads and highways, and the everyday impact of those roadways on public life in Mexico. It covers roughly thirty years of construction efforts from 1920 to the early 1950s as foreign and domestic actors, working at the transnational, national, state, and local levels, established a series of policy and investment programs that became the primary model for infrastructure development in Mexico during the mid-twentieth century. Road building offers a unique perspective to the study of Mexican state formation, underscoring how the national government sought to …

Decomposition Of Ireland’S Carbon Emissions From 1990-2010: An Extended Kaya Identity, Tadhg O'Mahony

Articles

In recent decades, Ireland has been an important example of a development pathway where rapid economic growth was accompanied by rising energy demand and increasing carbon emissions. Understanding the driving forces of carbon emissions is necessary for policy formulation and decomposition analysis is widely used for this purpose. This study uses an extended Kaya identity as the scheme and applies the log mean Divisia index (LMDI I) as the decomposition technique. Change in carbon emissions is decomposed from 1990 – 2010 and includes a measure of the effect of renewable energy penetration. Results illustrate that scale effects of affluence and …

Strategic Interaction And Social Networks, Quqiong He

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays which investigate individuals’ interaction in different contexts using social network analysis. The first essay generalizes the models of link formation of Rogers (2005) by allowing that giving and asking choices can be made separately and simultaneously by each agent. We focus on two specifications of the relationship function: the concave specification and the linear specification. The second essay empirically tests how the pattern of village structure, in terms of lineage network composition, affects people’s reciprocal behavior, utilizing data from Chinese Household Income Project Survey 2002. The third essay demonstrates different types of asymmetries and …

The Dynamics Of Alcohol Consumption In The Russian Federation: Implications Of Using Price Related Policies To Control Alcohol Use, Arseniy Pavlovich Yashkin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation models the dynamics of alcohol use in the Russian Federation with an emphasis on identifying policy implications most likely to be effective at controlling alcohol use. Utilizing data from The Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, models of alcohol consumption are estimated using both myopic and rational specifications via ordinary least squares, fixed effects two stage least squares and, the focus of this study, two-step system generalized method of moments. Alcohol consumption is studied both as a composite good and as a distinct beverage category (wine, beer, and hard liquor). Furthermore, equations stratified by gender and rural status are included …

Access Versus Choice: Testing The “Food Desert” Construct In Champaign, Il, Rhiannon L. Jerch, Kathy Baylis, Sahan T.M. Dissanayake

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

How does one’s food environment affect food purchase decisions? Food access has received significant political and academic attention, particularly under the Obama administration. Existing literature on food access and “food deserts” mainly focuses on geographic distance or the retail of fresh fruits & vegetables versus fast food within a neighborhood to determine and identify inequitable access. In this paper I attempt to develop an endogenous measure of food access by asking how geographic placement of food retail affects food expenditure, particularly of fruits & vegetables. I use novel data on 886 households matched to food prices from a census of …

Returns To Schooling: A Quantile Regression, Arman Oganisian

Economics Student Scholarship

This paper contributes to the large body of economic literature that attempts to estimate the returns to schooling. It uses quantile regression to estimate the effect of an additional year of education on monthly wage for earners in different quantiles. Using data from the young men’s cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey, the paper attempts to control for ability, family background, geography, and race, and finds that the returns to schooling is approximately 3.49% for men. Furthermore, the paper finds that while the effect of education on earnings is not significantly different from quantile to quantile, the significance of education …

Agrarian Reform And Rural Reconstruction In The Philippines = 菲律宾土地改革与农村重建, Isagani R. Serrano

South South Forum 南南論壇

Agrarian reform is at the heart of rural reconstruction and both are essential to achieving sustainable development. It includes not only land redistribution but also empowerment of peasants as key actors in building the rural economy. Land is not only an asset to be owned and accessed but also as a natural resource with multiple uses for both economic development and protection of ecosystems. Land ownership has hitherto been a centerpiece question in Philippine development, indeed, in nation building. Land monopoly on one side and landlessness on the other have defined to a large extent the history and political economy …

Linking Food Systems And Human Health : Geographic Variations In China = 链接食物系统与人类健康：中国城乡之间的差别, Anthony M. Fuller

South South Forum 南南論壇

This paper is exploratory. It seeks to link the two dominant food systems of Chinawith impacts on human health, as measured by the increasing but differential incidence of non-communicable chronic diseases. China is passing through the Nutrition Transition where traditional diets are being replaced by high fat and meat diets, high calorie snacks and meals with high protein and oil intakes.The argument is constructed on the basis that in general urban citizens increasingly consume processed foods manufactured by the industrial food system. Rural people on the other hand remain consuming their traditional diets. Process foods derive from industrial agriculture while …

Modernization, Sexual Risk-Taking, And Gynecological Morbidity Among Bolivian Forager-Horticulturalists, Jonathan Stieglitz, Aaron D. Blackwell, Raúl Quispe Gutierrez, Edhitt Cortez Linares, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Sexual risk-taking and reproductive morbidity are common among rapidly modernizing populations with little material wealth, limited schooling, minimal access to modern contraception and healthcare, and gendered inequalities in resource access that limit female autonomy in cohabiting relationships. Few studies have examined how modernization influences sexual risk-taking and reproductive health early in demographic transition. Tsimane are a natural fertility population of Bolivian forager-farmers; they are not urbanized, reside in small-scale villages, and lack public health infrastructure. We test whether modernization is associated with greater sexual risk-taking, report prevalence of gynecological morbidity (GM), and test whether modernization, sexual risk-taking and parity are …

The Future Of State And Local Economic Development Policy: What Research Is Needed?, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.