Digital Commons Network^™

Activating Vacant Spaces: An Art And Environmental Justice Project - Assessment In Cleveland, Ohio’S Slavic Village Neighborhood, Patrick Connolly

Community Engagement Student Work

The overdevelopment of cities has caused residents to suffer from environmental and economic harm. Situated near a steel mill and a highway, and with less than 20% tree canopy, the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio is a community that may be in need of environmental justice. The movement to introduce green elements to urban environments is growing, and there are clear economic benefits to greening urban areas. Using art as a tool for education, this project proposes a series of six sustainable art installations that attempt to teach the community about environmental issues. Using this art project as a …

Prediction Of Individual Income: A Machine Learning Approach, Michael Matkowski

Honors Projects in Economics

The use of machine learning models to improve prediction problems and handle increasingly large datasets is a rising trend in economics. Prediction plays a particularly important role in applied economics because it provides critical insights to assess market outcomes. This study builds on previous literature to showcase the relative power of these modelling methodologies in economics through the prediction of income. This research utilizes data from the Current Population Survey from 2017 – 2020, containing 467,811 observations and 264 variables. 2017-2018 data served as training data for the models and 2019-2020 served as data for the two testing sets. The …

Go Books, Go Bulldogs, Go Women: Examining The Factors That Affect Female Enrollment At Undergraduate Schools, Sarah Desantis

Honors Projects in Economics

This study investigates women's underrepresentation and the declining enrollment trend in undergraduate business programs by examining New England schools between 2015-2017. The study uses a linear regression model, testing a variety of variables including student characteristics and outcomes, college characteristics, funding and faculty, and women-related experiences measured against the dependent variable of percentage of women enrolled. The study found that (1) the presence of a women's center increases women enrollment; (2) the greater diversity representation on campus increases women enrollment; (3) women are more attracted to private universities and are less likely to attend with an increase in the undergraduate …

Nebraska Recovers From The Pandemic Economy, Eric Thompson

Business in Nebraska

The COVID-19 Pandemic threw the United States economy into a severe and sharp recession during the first half of 2020. A combination of government “shutdown” restrictions and private actions led to a particularly severe decline in economic activity in late March and April. The lifting or reduction of government restrictions across the United States led to a fast recovery in subsequent months, especially as businesses and consumers learned to adapt to their new operating conditions. However, the rate of recovery has slowed recently as the spread of Covid-19 has accelerated and many businesses have curtailed travel, maintained “work from home” …

1st International Conference On Economics And Sustainable Development Conference Proceedings, Iba School Of Economics And Social Sciences (Sess), Center For Business And Economic Research (Cber)

Conference Proceedings

The IBA School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS) and the Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) organized the 1st International Conference themed "Economics and Sustainable Development", in the month of April, 2021. The conference brought together academics, practitioners and advocates to have a dialogue on creative ideas, local and global best practices, and evidence-based solutions for sustainable development.

Three Essays On Empirical Asset Pricing, Xueying Bian

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The dissertation consists of three essays on empirical asset pricing. The first chapter proposes a novel inter-firm link - similar employee satisfaction. Based on the employee satisfaction data on Glassdoor, the returns of similar employee satisfaction (SES) firms are documented to predict focal firm stock returns. A long-short portfolio sorted on the lagged returns of SES firms yields the Fama-French six-factor alpha of 135 bps per month. The observed predictability cannot be explained by risk-based arguments or subsumed by other known inter-firm momentums. According to the international tests, we observe stronger return predictability in countries with more flexible labor markets. …

The Lintheads' Demise: A Study In Economic Dependency For The Piedmont Region Of South Carolina, Jeremy Lewis Ward

Senior Theses

The decline of the Southern textile and apparel industries represent a unique and rich case study in rapid economic change. It is unique because of the speed and uniformity of collapse; rich, because of the geographic differences that exist even within the concentrated Piedmont textile cluster. Truly, globalization has hit this economic cluster with a brutal punch. And yet, not all cities and counties within the region have been equally harmed by the change.

This report concentrates on examining the socioeconomic variations that have taken place in the thirteen foremost textile-producing counties in South Carolina since the collapse, as well …

The Beef Industry: The Social Costs From An Ecological, Economic, And Social Perspective, Timothy Keathley

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

Beef products are a staple of western diets and are quickly becoming normalized in more parts of the world. Americans from 1910 to present day have consumed an average of 60 pounds of beef each year, with total beef consumption annually over 27 billion pounds (Beef, 2005). Red meat is a tempestuous topic of discussion. Red meat is a product that has nutritional benefits, is a symbol of status, and has a favored taste for many of its consumers. It can also be said that red meat is associated with health issues, animal cruelty, and environmental sustainability concerns. Jochimsen said …

Reinvigorating Vacant Properties Through A Federal Jobs Guarantee, Derrick Busch

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

Dayton, Ohio is a city currently in transition; once a technological and business hub, Dayton has gradually lost private businesses and with business left jobs, one of the most recent hits being the closure of the General Motors plant just south of the city. Over the past couple of years, a cultural renaissance has emerged within the city, with thriving bar districts and countless commercial buildings becoming residential apartment and mixed use complexes. The city is now at historically low commercial vacancy rates, however, many of the scars of fleeing residents and private businesses still remain. This urban resurgence has …

Department Of Economics Newsletter, V25, Spring 2021, University Of Northern Iowa. Department Of Economics.

Department of Economics Newsletter

Inside this Issue:

--- Message from Shar
--- Open Access Week
--- Virtual Jepson Forum Discusses Health Inequality
--- Lawrence M. Jepson Student Awards
--- 2020-2021 Scholarship Winners
--- Difficulties in Decision Making During the Pandemic
--- The Labor Market Impact of COVID-19
--- GDP and Jobs Recovering from COVID-19
--- Ryan Rudderham Joins Economics Faculty
--- The Transition from Administration to Faculty
--- The Retirement of KenMcCormick
--- Bülent Uyar Retires (mostly)
--- Faculty and Staff Updates

Addressing The Energy Air Pollution Within The Ohio Area, Travis Mcconnell

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

Air pollution is the byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels and is a major issue within the Ohio area because of the lack of utilization of renewable and clean sources of energy. We emit tons and tons of pollutants into the environment each and every day, from when we hop in our cars or even when we simply turn on the lights in our homes. Essentially, anything that requires energy can be a cause of air pollution within the ecosystem. However, it may be the case that it is time that we change our ways and try to conserve …

Protecting Ohio’S Water Quality Through Wetland Remediation, Sarah Logel

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

Water reuse and reclamation is vital to the continuation of healthy crop yields, maintaining clean waterways, and for human use and consumption. Combined with the unrelenting ecological changes as a result of global warming, water stress has become ever prominent in the new age of climate change. Most often covered by news and media outlets are the rising sea levels which are undoubtably a dangerous threat. There is though, another menacing water issue, not so frequently discussed and it is the quality of water consumed by residents in America’s cities and towns and used by farmers for growing the very …

Inadequate Accounting, Commoditization, And Ceremonial Tools: The Department Of Defense’S Environmental Remediation Process, Jed Cooper

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

Water on the earth is a precious resource. However, over 99% of the water on the earth is not available as drinking water. Further issues such as uneven distribution, depletion and contamination of aquifers, excess demand, and climate change challenge the current scarce resources that are currently available to humans on the earth. Thus, humans have contaminated and polluted the limited freshwater available through toxic chemicals and human waste and in many parts of the world, leading to limited availability of clean water (Robertson, 2014). One of the biggest threats in the United States and globally the chemical contamination of …

Recycling Fashion, Haley Moeder

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

Americans tend to think of items they purchase as disposable, and when items become damaged or broken, they are thrown in the trash instead of being fixed or reused. Each year, Americans dispose of huge quantities of items in the trash and that trash is then sent to landfills. Ohioans alone disposed of 17.46 tons of waste in 2019 which then ended up in landfills or incinerated (Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, 2021). If more items were recycled, fewer items would be sent to landfills, creating more space, and reducing the chances of harmful chemicals leaking into the surrounding land. One …

Pengaruh Kebijakan Harga Obat Terhadap Peluang Peredaran Obat Substandar Dan Palsu, Rafika Agusriana, Uka Wikarya

Jurnal Kebijakan Ekonomi

The implementation of National Health Insurance (NHIS; or Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional/JKN)’s policy, increasing patient access to medicine while keeping its budget under tight control, has the potentiality to result in compromising the safety and efficacy of the medicine. Budget constraint and the existing asymmetry information in terms of quality and price of medicines could lead to a moral hazard situation where pharmaceutical companies may produce substandard and falsified medicines to secure their profit. The result of this research using logistic regression analysis showed that despite previous assumptions, medicines included in JKN list are actually having lower probability of falsified or …

Employment Trends And Poverty Status: Men And Women In The New York City Metro Area Between 2000 And 2017, Sarah Kostecki

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines employment trends and poverty status among men and women aged 25-54 in the New York City metropolitan area. The report assesses the characteristics of these persons, while examining trends and differences in poverty status by sex, race/ethnicity, and across the five largest Latino nationalities.

Methods:

This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 5, Number 4, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton, Ana Gutierrez Zubiate, Ignacio Santana

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Shifts In Precipitation And Agricultural Intensity Increase Phosphorus Concentrations And Loads In An Agricultural Watershed, Donald M. Waller, Andrew G. Meyer, Zach Raff, Steven I. Apfelbaum

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Fertilizers and manure applied to cropland to increase yields are often lost via surface erosion, soil leaching, and runoff, increasing nutrient loads in surface and sub-surface waters, degrading water quality, and worsening the ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. We leverage spatial and temporal variation in agricultural practices and precipitation events to examine how these factors affect stream total phosphorus (TP) concentrations and loads in the Sugar River (Wisconsin), recently listed as impaired. To perform our analysis, we first collected water quality data from 1995 to 2017 from 40 sites along the Sugar River and its tributaries. Starting in …

Essays In Health And Behavior, Zehra Çagıl Valencia Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

I study decision-making in healthcare choices and competitions. In my analysis, I use both quasi-experimental and experimental methods. In the first chapter, I investigate the effects of C-sections on babies and their mothers. Using administrative data from South Carolina, I exploit the breech position to isolate variation in C-sections that is uncorrelated with the ex-ante health of the infant and mother. I find that a C-section increases the probability of abnormal conditions for babies immediately after birth. However, there are no significant effects on babies’ future health conditions after birth. Mothers who deliver by C-section are more likely to develop …

Selective Engagement? Future Path For Us-China Economic Relations And Its Implications, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The US-China economic interactions will have profound ramifications for the world. The article explores the following questions: what is the path forward for US-China economic interactions? What are its implications? It argues that selective engagement is the possible future path for US-China economic interactions. Selective engagement involves selective focuses, which currently are an unprecedented emphasis on market access, and delegalized implementation. Selective engagement contrasts sharply with deep free trade agreements that focus on regulatory disciplines and legalized dispute settlement. Selective engagement carries profound implications, ranging from rule vacuum and inconsistency, increased protection and economic disintegration, to the marginalization of multilateralism. …

A Hybrid Equity Release Plan For Retirement Financing, Koon Shing Kwong, Yiu Kuen Tse, Junxing Chay

Research Collection School Of Economics

There are two main equity release plans for retirement financing: reverse mortgage plan and home reversion plan. Both plans entitle the homeowners not only to release cash from their properties but also to allow them living there for life. In the lease buyback scheme (LBS) recently introduced in Singapore, the home owner sells the tail-end of the property lease to the government in exchange for a cash payment upfront. Unlike the two main equity release plans, the LBS only allows the owner to stay in the property for the front part of the lease but not for life.

In this …

The Evolution Of Income Risk And Consumption Insurance In South Korea Over The Last Two Decades, Taehyun Ahn, Chung Gu Chee, Seonghoon Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using data from the Korea Labor Income Panel Study, we study the evolution of income risk and consumption insurance against transitory and permanent income shocks in South Korea over the last two decades. We find a decreasing trend in both income and consumption risks. Furthermore, we estimate that 47.6% of permanent income shocks and 9.8% of transitory income shocks pass through to consumption. We also provide evidence of substantial improvements in consumption insurance among the less educated and the older cohort nearing retirement. Our results suggest that recent developments of social safety net and welfare system may have played an …

Government Management Capacities And The Containment Of Covid-19: A Repeated Cross-Sectional Study Across Chinese Cities, Wenchao Li, Jing Li, Junjian Yi

Research Collection School Of Economics

Objectives: Better understanding of the dynamics of the COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus disease) pandemic to curb its spread is now a global imperative. While travel restrictions and control measures have been shown to limit the spread of the disease, the effectiveness of the enforcement of those measures should depend on the strength of the government. Whether, and how, the government plays a role in fighting the disease, however, has not been investigated. Here, we show that government management capacities are critical to the containment of the disease. Setting: We conducted a statistical analysis based on cross-city comparisons within China. China …

Teaching In The Right Context: Textbook Supply Program, Language, And Vocabulary Ability In Vietnam, Tomoki Fujii, Maki Nakajima, Sijia Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

While past two decades have witnessed a remarkable educational progress in Vietnam, ethnic minority children consistently lagged behind ethnic majority children in academic performance. The government of Vietnam has stepped up efforts to assist ethnic minority students in their learning by lowering the linguistic and cultural barriers they face. Among such efforts is the textbook supply program, and we examine its impact on the learning of children proxied by vocabulary test. We apply difference-in-differences estimation to four rounds of the Young Lives data between 2006 and 2015 in order to investigate how the textbook supply program narrowed the gap between …

Institutional Stretching: How Moroccan Ngos Illuminate The Nexus Of Climate, Migration, Gender And Development, Shelby Mertens

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The global migration crisis the world has experienced thus far is only the tip of the iceberg. As the earth’s temperature continues to warm and extreme weather conditions worsen, millions of people across the globe will be displaced, and women in particular will face more difficult challenges. What the climate migration literature fails to study is these longer-term impacts beyond sudden onset disasters. Governments and institutions will be forced to respond and adapt to the new reality resulting from the climate crisis. This research provides a case study of Morocco and, by using institutional ethnography, investigates how NGOs working in …

The Poverty In Usa: An In-Depth Analysis Of The Last Two Decades, Sara Negri

Economics Theses & Dissertations

Poverty is a global problem that affects not only the undeveloped states but also the most developed ones. This research paper will analyze this problem in depth, trying to summarize several definitions, several causes that can lead to an increase in the poverty rate, and policies implemented by the government in order to reduce the total number of poor people. The author analyzed the poverty rate in each state of the United States from 1990 to 2019 using a panel data analysis. She found out that California is the state with the highest value of poor people in the U.S. …

Cannabis Capitalism In Colorado: An Ethnography Of Il/Legal Production And Consumption, Lia Berman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coloradans have changed their fundamental views on illegal substances since the decriminalization of cannabis in Colorado. Since the legalization of medical cannabis in 2014, state-sold dispensary cannabis products have straddled the line between legal and illegal network systems in a hybridized “il/legal” market system, a term designed to be ambiguous of the formal and informal economies that it represents (Nordstrom 2007, xxvii). The cannabis commodity chain has proved both familiar and strange when it comes to its production, consumption, and distribution of a federally illegal substance. Colorado’s history as a pioneer in culture and legislature has been repeated with cannabis …

Essays On Snap Participation, Bmi, And Food Purchasing Decisions, Samaneh Ghadyani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation estimates the SNAP-eligible individuals’ Body Mass Index (BMI) changes by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) in Chapter 1. It also examines whether the food packages’ nutrition fact tables’ refinements improve SNAP-recipients’ healthy food purchasing decisions in Chapter 2. Below, the summary of these chapters are provided:

• Chapter 1: The Effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on the Body Mass Index (BMI) of SNAP-Eligible Individuals
• Chapter 2: Do Changes in the Nutrition Facts Labels Affect SNAP-Participants’ Food Purchasing Decisions?

Chapter 1 studies the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act …

Monetary And Fiscal Policies In The Covid-19 Crisis. Will They Work?, Daniel Lacalle

Journal of New Finance

The spread and mortality rate of the COVID-19 virus has created enormous strains on global healthcare systems and driven governments to take extreme measures to contain the virus, including the lock down of most citizens and shutting down most economic sectors. Due to these unique challenges and coming from an economy that was weak already in 2018 and 2019, the world faces a global crisis of unprecedented impact and high uncertainty about the recovery process. In this paper, we analyze how the world economy is addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. We start with the situation of the main economic regions at …

Public-Private Partnerships In Transportation Infrastructures: A Tool To Overcome The Post-Covid-19 Economic Crisis In Spain, José-María Rotellar-García, Mario González-Medrano

Journal of New Finance

An indicator of the economic crisis generated by COVID-19, provided by the National Institute of Statistics is the decrease in the numbers of passengers in collective transport and international tourists arriving in Spain in 2020. To overcome this economic crisis, this paper analyzes, by using exploratory research methodology, the implementation of new passenger transportation infrastructures through public-private partnerships. With this approach, it will be possible to mobilize private capital, create jobs, obtain tax return and generate economic activity. We propose that priority actions related to the areas of collective public transport, urban mobility and road safety on conventional roads, should …