Digital Commons Network^™

Technical Efficiency Of Farmers In Ethiopia: A Stochastic Production Frontier Approach, Askal Ayalew Ali

Masters Theses

This study is to investigate the farmer's efficiency in Ethiopia. The stochastic production function is applied to estimate the technical efficiency of farmers. Using 2006 survey data conducted by the World Bank in collaboration with Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute, shows that farmers produce under the production frontier, and the average technical efficiency of the farmers is 62.4 percent. Variation in efficiency comes from many factors, however, this study focuses on extension program participation, education, and land ownership. Lack of extension program and education cause inefficiencies of 59.8 percent and 60.21 percent respectively. Land ownership is found to have mixed …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Entrepreneurial Styles Of Second, Third, And Fourth Generation Overseas Chinese And Filipinos In The Philippines, Gerley Q. Po

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study used the multiple case study research approach and presents a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in entrepreneurship styles among second, third and fourth generation overseas Chinese and Filipinos in the Philippines. Specifically, it aimed to compare the entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial characteristics, leadership styles, and value orientation. The results indicate that the two groups are heterogeneous even though they operate business in the same country. However, slowly, the influence of Filipino culture is seen in the fourth generation overseas Chinese. The study hopes to provide new generation of entrepreneurs insights on entrepreneurial styles that need to change to …

Exploratory Market Survey Of Tuba In Tacloban City, Arturo Pacho

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This research note explores the market condition of tuba in Tacloban City in the Philippines. It examined the market viability of tuba as a source of income for small retailers as well as coconut farmers. To determine whether there is any commercial value to tuba, and to what extent, a survey was made on the type of tuba sold, the price it is sold for, the quantity sold, the age of tuba, and the source of tuba. This report provides basic information as to the commercial value of tuba to small store retailers in the city.

Can Markets Save Lives? An Experimental Investigation Of A Market For Organ Donations, Cary Deck, Erik O. Kimbrough

ESI Working Papers

Many people die while waiting for organ transplants even though the number of usable organs is far larger than the number needed for transplant. Governments have devised many policies aimed at increasing available transplant organs with variable success. However, with few exceptions, policy makers are reluctant to establish markets for organs despite the potential for mutually beneficial exchanges. We ask whether organ markets could save lives. Controlled laboratory methods are ideal for this inquiry because human lives would be involved when implementing field trials. Our results suggest that markets can increase the supply of organs available for transplant, but that …

Central Bank Independence: Rules, Practices, And Outcomes, Douglas Aaron Block

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In recent years interest has grown in central bank independence as research has shown that it may affect many important financial issues such as unemployment, inflation, and inflation variability, among others. However, empirical evidence regarding its effect has been inconclusive and there is low correlation among various legal central bank independence measures. In this thesis, I attempt to resolve these problems by generating a new measure of legal central bank independence that takes into account divergence between laws and practices. I then measure the impact that democracy and proportional electoral systems have on reducing this divergence and find that democracy …

Rights & Interests: Trade & Disputes, Howard Guille

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Trade Imbalance: The Struggle to Weight Human Rights Concerns in Trade Policy-Making. By Susan Ariel Aaronson & Jamie M. Zimmerman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 337pp.

and

Public Values & Public Interest: Counterbalancing Economic Individualism. By Barry Bozeman. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007. 219pp.

and

The Impact of the WTO: The Environment, Public Health & Sovereignty. By Trish Kelly. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2007. 220pp.

Public School Choice And The Public-Private School Decision, Kylie Goggins

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a compilation of three studies related to public school choice issues. Chapter 2 examines whether access to public schools of choice influences a household’s decision to choose private school for their child. I employ a multistate, individual-level data-set on students and their families — for which I have been granted access to restricted geo-code information. I supplement these data by matching students with their respective school districts using geographic information systems (GIS); I then examine whether relative measures of public school choice (PSC) in a school district influence the household’s public-private school decision. I find slight evidence …

Banking And Monetary Policy In 2010, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Pakistan faced serious economic difficulties in the last few years particularly in 2008 due to high inflation, large current account deficit, dwindling foreign exchange reserves and excessive borrowing by the Government from the Central Bank. Monetary policy was therefore tightened throughout 2009 to bring inflation under control. Policy rate was cut only when signs of moderation in inflation began to appear. It is only in the last few months that macro stability has been achieved with the assistance of the IMF. But paradoxically the global financial crises had very little to do with the domestic economic problems. The trouble inPakistanstarted …

Economy Of Pakistan: Challenges And Prospects, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Economy practically affects every single walk of life. This lecture provides an overview of the structure of Pakistan's economy since 1947, identifies key challenges such as low savings, trade imbalance, fiscal deficit, weak social indicators, and energy and water shortages, and offers prospects and solutions for improvement.

Part 2: Feeling Pain: Regional Markets For Office And Industrial Space, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Vacancy rates are high, especially for industrial space, and lease rates have fallen. Times are tough and may remain so for the foreseeable future.

Part 8: Partisan Politics In Hampton Roads: Color Us Purple, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Once dominated by Democrats and more recently by Republicans, Hampton Roads has become a swing region politically. Currently, we are disadvantaged by an absence of legislator seniority in Richmond and Washington.

Part 1: The Hampton Roads Economy: Where We've Been, Where We're Going, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

We are slowly recovering from the worldwide recession. However, both the port and tourism are sputtering and defense spending may decelerate in the future.

Part 4: Light Rail: The Experience Of Other Cities And Implications For Hampton Roads, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Building The Tide hasn’t bankrupted Norfolk because of significant federal funding. Paying to operate The Tide, however, could be quite painful if the experience of other regions provides a clue.

Narrowing The Gap: New Evidence On Earnings Differentials Based On Sexual Orientation, Mikayla Lytton

Honors Papers

Using General Social Survey data from 1989 to 2008, I estimate earnings differentials between heterosexual and queer workers. When following the model specified in earlier studies, I find that queer men earn between 11.6% less than their heterosexual counterparts and that queer women earned approximately 11.6% more than their heterosexual counterparts. When respecifying the model to account for the gender composition of individuals’ occupations, I find that queer men’s earnings are not statistically different from straight men’s earnings, and the earnings advantage enjoyed by queer women drops marginally, to 10.5%. This addition significantly improves upon the explanatory power of the …

Microenterprises Performance Under Consulting Services And Clustering: A Study Of Egypt And Turkey, Ahmad Zia Wahdat

Honors Papers

Besides access to credit, the presence of consulting services and formation of clusters play an important role in microenterprises performance. I analyze the impact of consulting services and clustering on microenterprises' profits and assets in Egypt and Turkey, using a unique dataset on medium and small enterprises in both countries. I find that use of consulting services, and clustering, positively affect the profits and assets of microenterprises.

Reconciling The Science And Economics Of Climate Change, Eban Goodstein

Clemens Lecture Series

No abstract provided.

Citizenship In The Humanities And Social Sciences: A Selective Bibliography, 2000-2009, Wayne State University School Of Library And Information Science, Winter 2010 Lis 7160, James E. Van Loon, H.G.B. Anghelescu

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

Citizenship in the Humanities and Social Sciences is a selective bibliography consisting of citations to works published during the years 2000-2009 on citizenship-related topics in the humanities and social sciences. Primarily consisting of books/chapters and scholarly journal articles, the bibliography also includes other materials (case studies, reports, dissertations, and working papers) for which scholarship, authority and relevance have been established. Most cited works are published in the English language, although articles published in other languages using a Latin alphabet are also included. Citations were retrieved during January-March 2010 from a variety of aggregated databases accessed through the Wayne State University …

A Winning Proposition: The Economic Impact Of Successful National Football League Franchises, Michael C. Davis, Christian M. End

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Research has demonstrated that a Super Bowl victory increases the personal income of the individuals in the metropolitan area from which the winning teams come. We argue that the economic benefits should extend beyond just the championship team's city to the cities of teams that experience seasonal success, and thus, the winning percentages of National Football League teams were included in our model. When controlling for sources of bias, winning percentage of the local professional football team had a significant positive effect on real per capita personal income. Explanations for these conclusions are offered from a psychological perspective. © 2008 …

Enhancing Income Opportunities, Rashiel Verlarde, Tomoki Fujii, Ulrich Lächler

Research Collection School Of Economics

Accelerating growth is essential for poverty reduction. As argued earlier, poverty has failed to decline significantly since the East Asian Crisis due to insufficiently dynamic growth, a high degree of income inequality that reduces the income elasticity of poverty reduction, and an apparent worsening of the income distribution. The first step toward addressing this failure is to accelerate growth, which will not be easy in the short run while the global slowdown continues to run its course. Moreover, even though the global crisis is gradually bottoming out, the post-crisis external environment is likely to be much less favorable than before, …

Cost And Price Increases In Higher Education: Evidence Of A Cost Disease On Higher Education Costs And Tuition Prices And The Implications For Highes Education Policy, Jerry Trombella

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

.

Is There Monopsony In The Labor Market? Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Douglas O. Staiger, Joanne Spetz, Ciaran S. Phibbs

Dartmouth Scholarship

Recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models. We use an exogenous change in wages at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market. We estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic, with short-run elasticity around 0.1. We also find that non-VA hospitals responded to the VA wage change by changing their own wages.

Did I Do That? Group Positioning And Asymmetry In Attributional Bias, Brian Gunia, Brice Corgnet

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A laboratory experiment examined whether one structural feature of groups—members’ physical positioning—may produce asymmetry in their perceived contribution to a task. In particular, we investigated asymmetry in group members’ (often excessive) claims of credit for collective tasks ("the self-serving attributional bias"). Consistent with the availability account of this bias, group members located in the middle of a group, with easy visual access to their partners’ contributions, demonstrated less bias than outside members (who demonstrated bias consistent with prior research)—but no less satisfaction. Further analyses suggested that these results reflected bias reduction among middle members and did stem from visual availability. …

Pricing In Matching Markets, George J. Mailath, Andrew Postlewaite, Larry Samuelson

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Different markets are cleared by different types of prices — a universal price for all buyers and sellers in some markets, seller-specific prices that are uniform across buyers in others, and personalized prices tailored to both the buyer and the seller in yet others. We introduce the notion of premuneration values — the values in the absence of any muneration (payments) — created by the buyer-seller match. We characterize the premuneration values under which uniform-price and personalized-price equilibria agree. In this case, we have efficient allocations, including pre-match investment decisions, without the costs of personalized pricing. We then examine the …

Personality And The Consistency Of Risk Taking Behavior: Experimental Evidence, Cary Deck, Jungmin Lee, Javier Reyes

ESI Working Papers

Researchers have found that an individual’s risk attitude is not stable across elicitation methods. Results reported by Deck et al. (2009) suggest that personality may help explain the apparent inconsistency, offering support to Borghans et al.’s (2008) argument that economists should consider a multi‐domain approach to measuring risk attitudes. This paper uses laboratory methods to compare risk attitudes as measured by the Holt and Laury (2002) procedure under two different frames. We find that, as in Deck et al. (2009), one’s willingness to take financial risks (as measured by Weber et al. 2002) significantly affects behavior; however the effect is …

Domestication Alone Does Not Lead To Inequality: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission Among Horticulturalists, Michael Gurven, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Paul L. Hooper, Hillard Kaplan, Robert Quinlan, Rebecca Sear, Eric Schniter, Christopher Von Rueden, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

We present empirical measures of wealth inequality and its intergenerational transmission among four horticulturalist populations. Wealth is construed broadly as embodied somatic and neural capital, including body size, fertility and cultural knowledge, material capital such as land and household wealth, and relational capital in the form of coalitional support and field labor. Wealth inequality is moderate for most forms of wealth, and intergenerational wealth transmission is low for material resources and moderate for embodied and relational wealth. Our analysis suggests that domestication alone does not transform social structure; rather, the presence of scarce, defensible resources may be required before inequality …

Club Goods And Group Identity: Evidence From Islamic Resurgence During The Indonesian Financial Crisis, Daniel L. Chen

Faculty Scholarship

This paper tests a model in which group identity in the form of religious intensity functions as ex post insurance. I exploit relative price shocks induced by the Indonesian financial crisis to demonstrate a causal relationship between economic distress and religious intensity (Koran study and Islamic school attendance) that is weaker for other forms of group identity. Consistent with ex post insurance, credit availability reduces the effect of economic distress on religious intensity, religious intensity alleviates credit constraints, and religious institutions smooth consumption shocks across households and within households, particularly for those who were less religious before the crisis.

Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Sprigman

Faculty Scholarship

In this article we report on the results of an experiment we performed to determine whether transactions in intellectual property (IP) are subject to the valuation anomalies commonly referred to as “endowment effects”. Traditional conceptions of the value of IP rely on assumptions about human rationality derived from classical economics. The law assumes that when people make decisions about buying, selling, and licensing IP they do so with fixed, context-independent preferences. Over the past several decades, this rational actor model of classical economics has come under attack by behavioral data showing that people do not always make strictly rational decisions. …

Making Mountains Of Debt Out Of Molehills: The Pro-Cyclical Implications Of Tax And Expenditure Limitations, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ellen Moule

Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents evidence that property tax limits have detrimental effects on state and local revenues during recessions. Property tax limits cause states to rely on income–elastic revenue sources, such as the income tax or charges and fees. Greater reliance on these revenue sources results in greater revenue declines during economic downturns. We present analysis of time–series, cross–sectional data for the U.S. states for each of these conclusions. Our results suggest that states would have fewer and more modest financial problems during economic downturns if they did not enact property tax limitations.

5th Annual Economic Outlook Conference_Jan 13, University Of New Mexico Bureau Of Business And Economic Research

BBER Publications

This report presents the University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research's assessment of New Mexico's economy during the Great Recession, including forecasts for employment, income, and industry growth through 2014. It also provides extensive county-level demographic and economic statistics, maps, charts, and data source references for researchers and policymakers.

5th Annual Economic Outlook Conference_Jan 13 (2), University Of New Mexico Bureau Of Business And Economic Research

BBER Publications

This report presents the University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research's assessment of New Mexico's economy during the Great Recession, including forecasts for employment, income, and industry growth through 2014. It also provides extensive county-level demographic and economic statistics, maps, charts, and data source references for researchers and policymakers.