Digital Commons Network^™

From Quasi-Private To Quasi-Public: The Development Of Local Libraries In The United States, 1870-1930, Michael Kevane, William A. Sundstrom

Economics

The period 1870-1930 witnessed the emergence of the local public library as a widespread and enduring American institution. During these years, access to free community-based library services spread to a much larger share of the U.S. population, while the institutional structure of local libraries underwent a transition from largely quasi-private, voluntary associations to the tax-supported public institutions familiar today. In this paper we describe this transition, and document the expansion of public libraries and library services in the United States over these years, using data drawn from library surveys conducted by the federal Bureau of Education. We then review some …

Nature In Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, Anand Silodia

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Half a century ago the novelist Ayn Rand [1], a Russian refugee who settled in America, gave us one of the most original and influential philosophies of individualism namely objectivism, which she advanced as 'a philosophy for living on earth.' First propounded through her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism has surpassed the test of time. In her objectivist philosophy, human-nature relationships are an important (indirect) concern although rarely discussed in an explicit manner in her humongous novels.

Understanding Louisiana Patent Production And The Role Of Knowledge Stocks On Economic Growth, Cynthia Ann Dubois

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Revitalizing Deteriorated Urban Neighborhood Real Estate Markets Through Concentrated Homeownership Development: Determining The Spillover Effects Of New Homes On The Value Of Surrounding Homes, Jerry Michael Hawkins

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Management

The promotion of homeownership opportunities represents an important approach used by localities to support the revitalization of deteriorated urban neighborhoods. Homeownership is associated with a variety of social and economic benefits to the homeowner including increased residential stability and equity accumulation. The introduction of new homeownership opportunities into a deteriorated urban neighborhood as part of local public policy is intended to capitalize upon the anticipated positive social and economic outcomes. Such new homeownership development also presents the opportunity to generate positive spillover effects on the adjacent existing properties in the neighborhood which may ultimately result in higher real estate tax …

Market Gap Analysis For The Greater Grand Rapids Area, George A. Erickcek, Brad R. Watts

Reports

No abstract provided.

Technium Pan-Wales: Impact Assessment, Gareth Davies, James Abbey

IPED Technical Reports

The purpose of this document is to present the findings of an investigation into the impacts and returns provided to Wales by the investment made in the Technium Centres established across the country.

The Effects Of Domestic Legal Institutions On International Trade Flows, Yu Wang

ExpressO

The effects of institutions on international trade relations are of theoretical and practical interest. By following the research perspective that interprets institutions as the “rules of the game”, I suggest and study three domestic legal institutions---tenure system for judges, precedent law, and judicial review that supposedly have significant effects on international trade flows. My empirical tests show that both precedent law and judicial review have independent effects on bilateral trade volume while the proposed independent effect of tenured judge is unsupported. Moreover, my empirical evidences suggest that precedent law introduces its effect in a monadic fashion while judicial review (measured …

An Analysis Of Attendance At Major League Baseball Spring Training Games, Michael R. Donihue, David Findlay, Peter Newberry

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the determinants of game-day attendance during Major League Baseball’s 2002 spring training season in Florida. Our model of game-day attendance includes location, quality of game, and time and weather variables. A censored Tobit estimation procedure is used to estimate our model. Our results indicate that the quality of the game, average ticket price, and several location-specific factors affect attendance. Specifically, our results suggest that changes in income have no effect on attendance while increases in ticket prices cause reductions in attendance. Furthermore, the estimated price elasticity of demand for Major League Baseball during the spring training season …

(Wp 2007-02) Valuing Environmental Quality: A Space-Based Strategy, John I. Carruthers, David E. Clark

Economics Working Papers

This paper develops and applies a space-based strategy for overcoming the general problem of getting at the demand for non-market goods. It focuses specifically on evaluating one form of environmental quality, distance from EPA designated environmental hazards, via the single-family housing market in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. A spatial two stage hedonic price analysis is used to: (1) estimate the marginal implicit price of distance from air release sites, hazardous waste generators, hazardous waste handlers, superfund sites, and toxic release sites; and (2) estimate a series of demand functions describing the relationship between the price of distance …

Annual Economic Outlook Conference 2007, University Of New Mexico Bureau Of Business And Economic Research

BBER Publications

The economic outlook conference report gives a well-rounded summary and future projections for the New Mexico economy. This paper is separated by national and state data, county and community data, county profiles of employment, industry and population, and taxation policy.

No. 45: Medical Recruits: The Temptation Of South African Health Care Professionals, Christian M. Rogerson

Southern African Migration Programme

Health workers are one of the categories of skilled professionals most affected by globalization. Over the past decade, there has emerged a substantial body of research that tracks patterns of international migration of health personnel, assesses causes and consequences, and debates policy responses at global and national scales. Within this literature, the case of South Africa is attracting growing interest. For almost 15 years South Africa has been the target of a ‘global raiding’ of skilled professionals by several developed countries. How to deal with the consequences of the resultant outflow of health professionals is a core policy issue for …

Science, Technology And The Garden Of Maine: Industrial Farming In Aroostook County, 1850-1900, Thomas J. H. Reznick

Senior Scholars Papers in Computer Science

In the mid-nineteenth century, northern Maine farmers existed amidst tension between capitalist and non-capitalist forces. This conflict is best described in terms of recent discourse on the question of rural capitalism, a topic debated by such scholars as Allan Kulikoff and Christopher Clark. This is an intricate and nuanced debate that this paper does not intend to treat with. Suffice to say, Maine farmers were caught between traditional social institutions associated with their trade that did not entail market production, and the rise of rural capitalism associated with burgeoning new markets. However, by the turn of the century, northern Maine …

2007 American Incentive System Almanac, Don P. Diffine Ph.D.

Belden Center Monographs

No abstract provided.

A Spatial Model Of Regional Variations In Business Growth In Appalachian States, Gebremeskel H. Gebremariam, Tesfa Gebremedhin, Peter V. Schaeffer, Tim Phipps, Randall Jackson

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

In this study, a spatial growth equilibrium model of business growth is developed and empirically estimated by Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares (GS2SLS) estimator using cross-sectional data from Appalachian States counties for 1990-2000. Beside the existence of spatial spillover effects, the results suggest that agglomerative effects that arise from both the demand and the supply sides were active in contributing to business growth in the study area during the study period. The policy implications of these findings are: (1) Regional cooperation of counties and communities is advisable and may even in fact be necessary to design appropriate policies that encourage …

A Spatial Panel Simultaneous-Equations Model Of Business Growth, Migration Behavior, Local Public Services And Household Income In Appalachia, Gebremeskel H. Gebremariam, Tesfa Gebremedhin, Peter V. Schaeffer, Tim Phipps, Randall Jackson

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

In this paper we develop a spatial panel simultaneous-equations model of business growth, migration behavior, local public services and median household income in a partial lag-adjustment growth-equilibrium framework and utilizing a one-way error component model for the disturbances. This model is an extension of the “jobs follow people or people follow jobs” literature and it improved previous models in the growth-equilibrium tradition by: (1) explicitly modeling local government and regional income in the growth process; (2) explicitly modeling gross in-migration and gross out-migration separately in order to spell out the differential effects, which used to be glossed over under net …

Investigating Biodiversity: An Economic Analysis Of Global Endangered Species Loss, Kyle Baumgartner

Masters Theses

There has been a rapid increase in interest among economists to examine the economic causes of biodiversity loss. The goal of this thesis is to investigate biodiversity loss using percentage of endangered species across countries for a three year period of time. This is accomplished by developing a series of models to examine the impact of various economic factors on biodiversity loss, in this case using percentage of threatened species as a proxy.

The results indicate that the development of economic growth can impact endangered species loss. The results also demonstrate that there is a relationship between percentage of endangered …

Effective Foreign Aid, Economic Integration And Subsidiarity: Lessons From Europe, Abdur Chowdhury, Paolo Garonna

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

The paper shows that the question that is relevant for the debate on the efficacy of development assistance is not so much as an issue of how much, but rather for what. In view of the growing awareness of ODA’s inefficiency in achieving intended aims, this paper proposes an alternative approach to development assistance policies – economic integration and subsidiarity provides the conditions necessary for ODA to produce higher rates of economic growth on a sustainable basis. Europe is an excellent case in point, in this context. Europe has in the last decades experienced a number of success stories in …

Japan Pakistan Economic Relations: Challenges And Opportunities From Japan’S New Economy, Seiji Kojima

Business Review

I have various reasons to discuss the economic relations between Japan and Pakistan today. First, one of the most important and urgent tasks that the Pakistani Government faces is of course to achieve a robust and stable economic growth, thereby enabling to eradicate poverty from this country. As the largest bilateral donor and a major trade partner of Pakistan, it would be quite natural for Japan to place importance on the economic aspect of the relations with Pakistan. Second, this is an institute of business administration, and I imagine that the audience will show interest in the economic side of …

Cuba's De-Dollarization Program: Policy Measures, Main Objectives, And Principal Motivations, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo

Publications and Research

This paper examines the main characteristics of Cuba’s de-dollarization program, the objectives of these policy measures, and their principal causes and motivations. The paper is organized in three sections. The first section describes the policy measures associated with the process of de-dollarization, followed by a detailed account of their main objectives (section two), and an analysis of their principal causes and motivations (section three).

Testing Tenure: Let The Market Decide, Michael Shermer

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Tenure debates and disputes are often irresolvable because of the complex and multivariate nature of contractual relationships between faculty and administration, and the nuanced and varying beliefs about tenure held by the professoriate. The Ceci et al. study leads this commentator to suggest a simple solution - allow individual institutions to define the parameters of tenure according to their unique core values.

Housing Affordability For Households Of Color In Massachusetts, Michael E. Stone

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

While housing is deeply significant for all of us, in our society it tends to pose particular challenges to many, if not most, people of color. For one thing, households of color continue to have considerably lower incomes, on average, than White-headed households. This means that households of color can, on average, afford less and therefore have fewer housing choices available, just for economic reasons alone. Yet we are not in a world where differential housing choices are determined only by ability to pay. Residential segregation by race persists and is not merely a consequence of unacceptable practices of the …

Economic Wellbeing And Where We Live: Accounting For Geographical Cost-Of-Living Differences In The Us, Leah Beth Curran, Harold L. Wohlman, Edward W. Hill, Kimberly Furdell

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

Regional cost-of-living differences affect the quality of life that individuals and families experience in different metropolitan areas. Yet, lack of metropolitan cost-of-living indexes has left analysts without the ability to make accurate cost-of-living adjustments to measures of economic wellbeing. This paper evaluates alternative approaches to cost-of-living measurement and then applies the ACCRA cost-of-living index to various US metropolitan area datasets, including median household income, the number of people living in poverty, and family eligibility for the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch and Head Start programes to illustrate some of the policy impacts of adjusting economic indicators of wellbeing for …

Determinants And Consequences Of Workers’ Remittances, Carlos Ivan Vargas-Silva

Dissertations

In this dissertation we study the determinants and consequences of workers' remittances. It is important for developing countries to have a clear understanding of the motivations that migrants have to remit money home, in order to increase remittances inflows. It is also important to understand the impact of remittances in the receiving countries in order to develop policies that can maximize the benefits of remittances, while minimizing any possible detrimental effects. In this dissertation we concentrate on the relationship between remittances and macroeconomic variables in the receiving countries. To this end we use both individual and aggregate level data.

In …

Conceptual Framework For An Optimal Labour Market Information System: Final Report, James F. Woods, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

How Much Does Violence Tax Trade?, S. Brock Blomberg, Gregory Hess

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

We investigate the empirical effect of violence, as compared to other trade impediments, on trade flows. Our analysis is based on a panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 1999, which brings together information from the Rose data set, the iterate data set for terrorist events, and data sets of external and internal conflict. We explore these data with traditional and theoretical gravity models. We calculate that, for a given country year, the presence of terrorism together with internal and external conflict is equivalent to as much as a 30% tariff on trade. This is …

Agri-Environmental Policy Options For Working Lands In The Next United States Farm Bill, Thomas L. Dobbs

Economics Commentator (1972- 2016)

No abstract provided.

Malaysia In The Global Economy: Crisis, Recovery, And The Road Ahead, Daniel E. Charette

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article offers an analysis of contemporary economic development in Malaysia, focusing especially on the causes and consequences of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Malaysia offers an excellent case study in international development due to its role as an export-dependent developing country with a high degree of integration in the global economy. In attempting to determine why Malaysia was enveloped by a financial crisis in July of 1997, a two-level political economy approach is used to separate international policy influences from domestic influences. My findings suggest that a combination of ill-advised, full capital account liberalization (Washington Consensus / international influence) …

Manufacturing Brief: Trends In Manufacturing Industries In Northeast Ohio, Ziona Austrian

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Offshore Strategies In Global Political Economy: Small Islands And The Case Of The Eu And Oecd Harmful Tax Competition Initiatives, Richard Woodward

Articles

This article investigates how recent attempts by the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to clamp down on harmful tax competition will affect small island economies with offshore financial centres (OFCs). It argues that although there are legitimate concerns about the initiatives, the likelihood that small island OFCs will disappear is remote. A confluence of factors have forced the EU and OECD to dilute their original proposals to the extent that while some marginal OFCs may be driven out of existence, more sophisticated OFCs will be unharmed and may even benefit from this supposed …

On Joint Modelling And Testing For Local And Global Spatial Externalities, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper concerns the joint modeling, estimation and testing for local and global spatial externalities. Spatial externalities have become in recent years a standard notion of economic research activities in relation to social interactions, spatial spillovers and dependence, etc., and have received an increasing attention by econometricians and applied researchers. While conceptually the principle underlying the spatial dependence is straightforward, the precise way in which this dependence should be included in a regression model is complex. Following the taxonomy of Anselin (2003, International Regional Science Review 26, 153-166), a general model is proposed, which takes into account jointly local and …