Digital Commons Network^™

Dealing With Control Of The Farm/Ranch, Allan Vyhnalek

Cornhusker Economics

As I have traveled the state presenting farm and ranch succession/transition workshops, I’ve run into several family situations where the older generation is lucky enough to have the next generation come back to the farm. The younger generation, in some instances, is not that young anymore and have formed knowledgeable opinions about how the farm or ranch should operate. I wrote this article to challenge both the younger and older generations as they move their operation forward as a family.

Long term family cohesiveness can become challenging if there are control issues within the family. The younger generation often brings …

The Gtap Data Base: Version 10, Angel Aguiar, Maksym Chepeliev, Erwin Corong, Robert Mcdougall, Dominique Van Der Mensbrugghe

Department of Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

This paper highlights the numerous improvements to the Global Trade, Assistance, and Production (GTAP) Data Base, version 10 (also referred to as GTAP 10). The Data Base describes the world economy for 4 reference years (2004, 2007, 2011, and 2014) and distinguishes 65 sectors, up from 57 in the previous release, in each of the 141 countries/regions. The 121 countries in the Data Base account for 98% of world GDP and 92% of world population. For each country/region, the Data Base reports production, intermediate and final uses, international trade and transport margins, and taxes/subsidies. This Data Base underlies most, if …

Usmca: Challenges & Opportunities, Luz Maria De La Mora

Border Region Modeling Project

A presentation at the UTEP Library, June 2019

The Economic Impact Of Diabetes In Kentucky, Michael W. Clark, Jenny A. Minier, Charles J. Courtemanche, Bethany L. Paris, Michael T. Childress

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the Executive Summary:

The Kentucky Department of Public Health is responsible for improving the health and safety of Kentucky’s residents by preventing disease and injuries and encouraging healthy lifestyles. The department administers nearly 150 programs that address critical health issues affecting Kentuckians. These programs screen newborns for health problems, prevent the spread of infectious diseases, promote oral health, and provide numerous other services.

Diabetes represents a growing health concern for the nation and Kentucky. It is a chronic condition that causes blood sugar levels to rise and contributes to other serious health conditions such as heart and kidney …

Medical Innovation And The Employment Of Cancer Patients, R. Vincent Pohl

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Investing In Education: Impact Of Student Financial Stress On Self-Reported Health, Stephen Poplaski, Randy Kemnitz, Cliff A. Robb

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Through the lens of Human Capital theory, the role of financial aid (both amount and type) is explored in the context of student financial stress, and ultimately general student health. Data are taken from a sample of 232 students from a major Midwestern university who were surveyed about their financial attitudes, behavior and knowledge. The presence and amount of federal loans was associated with self-reported financial stress, and the validated stress measure was further associated with students’ self-reported health. A number of personal life events (i.e. job loss) were also associated with higher stress levels. Implications are discussed.

God And Governance: Reflections On Living In The Belly Of The Beast, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In this critical rage article, Peter McLaren unleashes his revolutionary critique aimed at capitalist injustice behind postdigital socio-technological developments, historical forms of injustice such as racism and colonialism, and recent political events and developments including but not limited to US interventions in Latin America and the presidency of Donald Trump. Rising from two important prongs of McLaren’s work—revolutionary critical pedagogy and liberation theology—the article connects myth, religion, science, politics, technology, and humanity. The article reveals McLaren’s most intimate thoughts and experiences and aligns them with sophisticated theory and philosophy. It dances between the individual and the collective, the realistic and …

Working Paper No. 16, Had We Paid Attention To Keynes?, Saidhbhe Quigley

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that a host of problems could have been averted had we paid attention to Keynes. In the view of Keynes (2013, pp. 23-28), the Versailles Treaty was unnecessarily punitive towards Germany. He explains that the terms negotiated during the Paris Peace Conference were at odds with the agreement that took place during the Armistice when both sides decided to lay down their weapons and end fruitless battling. Consequently, following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Germany registered as one of the most nations most tragically affected by the Great Depression. This is partially because of …

Working Paper No. 17, William Petty And Political Economy, Clarissa Allen

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that during the first part of the 1600s, William Petty generated original contributions to political economy. Subsequent to the Irish rebellion and in the wake of the English occupation of Ireland, Petty led a team of surveyors for measuring out areas of Ireland. The survey that he led mapped selected territories and detailed numerous characteristics, thus employing an early, rudimentary, but highly insightful census method. Petty sought to describe his world objectively and quantitatively through the use of numbers, weights, and measures – rather than subjectively. Petty developed a method of calculation still famously known …

Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: June 7, 2019, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

Consumer confidence rebounded in Nebraska during May 2019 and business confidence also improved. The Consumer Confidence Index – Nebraska (CCI-N) rose to 105.3 in May, above the neutral value of 100 and well above the April value of 95.6. The Business Confidence Index – Nebraska (BCI-N) rose 113.2 in May, well above the neutral level and up from 107.8 in April. When asked about the most important issue facing their business, 30 percent of respondents chose customer demand while 21 mentioned the quality and availability of labor and 18 percent mentioned competition from other businesses. Fifty-two percent of responding households …

The Effect Of Economic Downturns On Mortality Rates, Bethany Koch

Celebration of Learning

My research attempts to show the effect that economic downturns have on overall mortality rates in the United States. I compare mortality rates for several states from 2000 to 2010, attempting to find a pattern in the individual states of lower mortality rates subsequent to the 2008 recession. I do so by running a regression equation to find any sign of correlations.

Synergies And Tradeoffs Among Sdgs And Policies (Syntrap) - June 2019, John A. Oldekop

Forest Collaborative Research

Presentation focuses on the following research questions:

1) Under what conditions do policies and programs aimed at achieving SDG 15—in particular by conserving or restoring forests—promote or inhibit achieving other SDGs?

2) Under what conditions do policies and programs aimed at achieving SDGs other than SDG 15 promote or inhibit achieving SDG 15?

3) Under what conditions do various policies and programs aimed at conserving or restoring forests (SDG 15) have synergies or tradeoffs with each other?

4) What policy lessons can be learnt from cases where synergies and tradeoffs have occurred, and how can these lessons be used to …

The Effects Of Traditional Cigarette And E-Cigarette Taxes On Adult Tobacco Product Use, Michael F. Pesko, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joanna Catherine Maclean

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

We study the effects of traditional cigarette tax rate changes and e-cigarette tax adoption on use of these products among US adults. Data are drawn from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and National Health Interview Survey data over the period 2011to 2017. Using a difference-in-differences model, we find that higher traditional cigarette taxes reduce adult traditional cigarette use and increase adult e-cigarette use, suggesting that the products are economic substitutes. E-cigarette tax adoption reduces e-cigarette use, with some heterogeneity across groups, and dilutes the own-tax responsiveness of traditional cigarettes.

Prevention And Mitigation Of Congenital Toxoplasmosis: Economic Costs And Benefits In Diverse Settings, Branko Bobić, Isabelle Villena, Eileen Stillwaggon

Economics Faculty Publications

Congenital toxoplasmosis (CT), the result of a primary infection of pregnant women with Toxoplasma gondii which was transmitted to the fetus, may result in mild to deep injuries occurring in the newborn or later in its development or in adolescence. The visual and cognitive impairment that can result imposes substantial economic costs on the individual and society. Numerous observational studies favor the conclusion that, with preventive measures currently available, it is possible to reduce the incidence of infections in pregnant women, the incidence of fetal infection by preventing transplacental transmission, and the gravity of injury in infected newborns. Treatment of …

Essays In The Application Of Machine Learning In Development Economics, Dweepobotee Brahma

Dissertations

This dissertation comprises four essays which apply Machine Learning (ML) techniques to examine India’s progress towards meeting several child-health targets under United Nation’s “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2030”. The application of novel ML techniques unmasks certain detailed empirical aspects of the road to meeting specific indicators of SDG - child mortality, malnutrition, immunization coverage and health-expenses.

The first essay employs multiple parametric and non-parametric Machine Learning (ML) techniques (LASSO, Classification Random Forest, Boosted Logistic Regression, Boosted Classification Trees) to build predictive models for the incidences of neonatal and infant mortality. A large national level household survey dataset is used. All …

Three Essays On Food Insecurity In Nigeria, Pimam Manzi Pidalatan

Dissertations

Households experience multiple shocks, among which health-related and agricultural-related shocks are the most frequent shocks in developing economies. Households’ exposure to shocks contributes more to the risk of being food insecure than a poor resource endowment (Azeem et al., 2016). Moreover, in low-income countries about 3.5 million mothers and children under the age of five die every year because they are undernourished FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP AND WHO 2017). Sub-Sahara Africa is the region with the highest prevalence of undernourished people (22 percent) and stunted children (30 percent) (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP AND WHO 2017). Three of the seventeen Sustainable …

Spending Where It Matters: Exploring The Relationship Between Institutional Expenditures And Student Retention Rates At The California State University, Matias Farre

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

It is anticipated that there will be a shortage of 1.1 million college-educated workers in California by 2030 (Johnson, Bohn, & Cuellar Mejia, 2016). Within this context, the California State University (CSU) is the principal source of skilled workers in the state, producing more career-ready candidates than any other single institution (“California State University 2018 Fact Book“, n.d.).

This study examined the relationship between student retention rates and institutional expenditures across the different functional categories of instruction, student services, academic support, and instructional support at the CSU. With the exception of student grants and scholarships, these selected expenditures represent the …

The Sensitivity Of Sector Stock Returns To Exchange Rate Risks In Nigeria, M. A. Adebiyi, M. O. Abeng

Economic and Financial Review

Exchange rate exposure has been identified in the literature as one of the standard metrics for measuring the performance of stock returns in both advanced and developing economies. This study adopts the capital market approach in investigating the effects of exchange rate exposure on stock returns in Nigeria, using monthly data spanning 2009 to 2018. The findings show that three sector stock returns, namely the NSE30, pension and banking indices, were significantly vulnerable to nominal effective exchange rate and bilateral exchange rates shocks. The non-significance of energy sector, proxied by the oil and gas, to exchange rate risk, is puzzling, …

Current Account Balance And Economic Growth In Nigeria: An Empirical Investigation, G. K. Sanni, A. U. Musa, Z. Sani

Economic and Financial Review

This study examined the relationship between current account balance and economic growth in Nigeria. Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds Testing methodology was employed to investigate the relationship, using annual data spanning from 1970 – 2016. The study found a long-run relationship between the current account balance, the real gross domestic product (GDP) growth and bilateral real exchange rate in Nigeria. The positive relationship between real GDP growth and the current account balance implies that increase in real GDP growth would lead to an improvement in the current account balance. However, the study found a negative relationship between real exchange …

Impact Of Climate Change On Wildfire Across China, Based On Plot-Level Data From National Forest Inventory - June 2019, Shilei Liu, Jintao Xu

Forest Collaborative Research

Presentation focus on the impact of climate change on wildfires across China.

Forests And Health In Mexico: Preliminary And Pre-Preliminary Work - June 2019, Alejandro López-Feldman

Forest Collaborative Research

Presentation focuses on subjective wellbeing and natural protected areas in Mexico

The Nepal Community Forestry Program And Member Mental Health - June 2019, Randall Bluffstone

Forest Collaborative Research

This presentation asks - Do Community Forestry's (CFs) and better forest quality yield mental health benefits?

Connecting Forests And Human Health Using The Demographic And Health Surveys (Dhs), Ranaivo Rasolofoson

Forest Collaborative Research

Presentation focuses on the relationships between ecosystem alteration and human health.

Indonesia, Forest Fires, Haze, Height: Case For Planetary Health Economics - June 2019, Subhrendu K. Pattanayak

Forest Collaborative Research

Presentation focuses on environmental health economics in low and middle income countries.

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 3, Number 6, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton, Ana Gutierrez Zubiate

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Essays On Human Capital, Growth And Innovation: Political Economy Perspective, Di Sima

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The dissertation explores the role of human capital, education, and political institutions in the process of economic and political development. The first chapter shows that economic development such as secondary school enrollment rates during the democratization period exerts long-lasting effects on growth, possibly by giving permanent birthmarks to newly minted democratic institutions. Specifically, democracies born in weak development tend to have weak institutions and slow growth, while in contrast, those with adequate development at the political transition time establish strong institutions and achieve faster growth. The second chapter explores the effect of curriculum control in schooling on national innovation and …

Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate the extent to which uncertainties about tax policies affect business activities. We develop a statewide tax-uncertainty measure (TU measure) and show that it captures state corporate tax uncertainty. By comparing adjacent counties across state borders, we show that increasing tax uncertainty by one standard deviation (a 30% increase in the TU measure) leads to a 0.17% point per-year decrease in the growth rate of establishments over two years. The result holds after conducting a variety of robustness checks and is not likely to be driven by general state-policy uncertainties.

Marginal Cost Of Risk-Based Capital And Risk-Taking, Tao Chen, Jing Rong Goh, Shinichi Kamiya, Pingyi Lou

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore the impact of capital adequacy requirements on financial institutions' risk-taking behavior from a novel perspective. Specifically, we show that an important feature of the risk-based capital (RBC) system a built-in diversification benefit in aggregating risk categories induces moral hazard. We find that insurers that face lower marginal RBC costs of fixed-income (FI) investment tend to purchase riskier Fl securities. This relationship holds even when lower marginal RBC costs result from increased risk in other risk categories, which is an unintended consequence of the RBC's square root rule. Using Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy as exogenous shocks to the RBC …

The Aging Of A Young Nation: Population Aging In Singapore, Rahul Malhotra, Andre M. Muller, Su Aw, Gerald Choon Huat Koh, Yin-Leng Theng, Stephen James Hoskins, Chek Hooi Wong, Chunyan Miao, Wee-Shiong Lim, Chetna Malhotra, Angelique Chan

Research Collection School Of Economics

The juxtaposition of a young city-state showing relative maturity as a rapidly aging society suffuses the population aging narrative in Singapore and places the “little red dot” on the spotlight of international aging. We first describe population aging in Singapore, including the characteristic events that shaped this demographic transition. We then detail the health care and socioeconomic ramifications of the rapid and significant shift to an aging society, followed by an overview of the main aging research areas in Singapore, including selected population-based data sets and the main thrust of leading aging research centers/institutes. After presenting established aging policies and …

Review Of Creditworthy: A History Of Consumer Surveillance And Financial Identity In America, Lynne Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A book review of Josh Lauer's Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America.