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Welcome Tilly Norwood: Forecasting Hollywood’S Ai Policy Futures, Samuel P. Rooker

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

In late 2025, weekly trade publication Variety Magazine reported on the announcement of a new acting talent in Hollywood: Tilly Norwood. Norwood is an industry outsider and the pet project of Eline Van der Velden, who unveiled the actress’ existence to the world at the Zurich Film Festival. The announcement quickly gained media coverage while Van der Velden has since faced cyclical backlash from Hollywood trade unions, which does not seem entirely without reason. Tilly Norwood is a digital persona, a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) program, designed by Van der Velden’s novel AI talent studio, Xicoia, to become the next …

The Effects Of Food Insecurity And Child Health On Educational Achievement In Virginia Counties, Peyton T. Randall

Honors Projects

This study examines the relationship between county-level socioeconomic and demographic factors and student performance on Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) math and reading assessments in 2023. Using data from 127 of Virginia’s 133 independent counties and cities, this study conducts an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The analysis shows a strong negative association between food insecurity, measured by the Identified Student Percentage eligible for free school lunch (ISP), and chronic absenteeism with SOL pass rates. These findings show food insecurity and absenteeism as key drivers for achievement disparities, suggesting a need for further interventions and broader research using school-level and …

Inflation, War Bonds, And Voter Backlash In The 1950s, Gillian Brunet, Eric Hilt, Matthew S. Jaremski

Economics: Faculty Publications

We study the role of war bonds and inflation in post-WWII federal elections. During WWII, the federal government conducted aggressive campaigns to convince Americans to invest their savings in war bonds. After the war, major bouts of inflation in 1946-48 and 1950-51 depressed the bonds’ real returns, provoking widespread frustration. In a difference-in-differences framework, we find that counties with higher war bond purchases shifted their votes towards the Republican Party in the postwar presidential elections. To address concerns related to the endogeneity of war bond purchases, we use an instrumental variables design, and obtain similar results. We also find that …

Upjohn Regional Economic Outlook, Iryna V. Lendel, Chloe Wieber, Sevrin Williams, Gerrit Anderson, Lee Adams, Emily Petz

Reports

No abstract provided.

Oer Review For Intermediate Microeconomics: An Open Resource, Naveen Sunders

Open Educational Resources Publications

This paper reviews Intermediate Microeconomics: An Open Resource, a freely accessible, instructor-developed textbook created over six years of teaching at Bentley University. Designed primarily for undergraduate business students, the resource integrates core topics such as consumer and producer theory, cost analysis, market structures, game theory, and welfare economics, balancing mathematical rigor with applied intuition. Built from evolving course materials, it is paired with a comprehensive suite of supporting resources, including lecture slides, videos, problem sets, quizzes, and interactive visualizations, forming a cohesive instructional package. The textbook’s modular structure allows flexibility in sequencing and adaptation across diverse instructional contexts, although …

Measuring The Exorbitant Privilege: A Unified Estimate Of The Financial Benefits Of Dollar Dominance, 1976–2024, Carson T. Weeks

Honors Theses

This paper constructs a unified annual time series of the major measurable components of the United States' exorbitant privilege from 1976 to 2024. Drawing on established econometric estimates from the literature, it measures three channels through which the international role of the dollar generates financial benefits for the United States: seigniorage from foreign holdings of physical currency, borrowing cost savings on federal debt arising from reserve-driven demand for Treasuries, and the return differential on the U.S. external balance sheet, covering both public and private holdings. All dollar figures are reported in real 2024 dollars, deflated by the Consumer Price Index. …

Solving Affordability Challenges In Education, Housing And Childcare, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams, Brian J. Asquith, Chloe R. Gibbs

Presentations

These three presentations emphasize that affordability challenges across education, housing, and childcare stem from structural market and policy frictions, and that effective solutions require coordinated public investment, simplified systems, and attention to both supply and demand. The first presentation argues that while college tuition growth has slowed and aid has increased, affordability challenges persist due to complexity, misperceptions, and uneven costs, and it advocates for simple tuition-free programs combined with investments in advising, streamlined pathways, and stronger school-to-work connections. The second presentation highlights a growing housing affordability crisis in the Rust Belt driven by aging housing stock and limited supply, …

Early Detection Of Alzheimer's Disease And Related Dementias From Spontaneous Speech Using Foundation Speech And Language Models: Comparative Evaluation, Jingyu Li, Lingchao Mao, Xi Mao, Hairong Wang, Zhendong Wang, Xuelei Sherry Ni

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Background: Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) are progressive neurodegenerative conditions where early detection is critical for timely intervention and care planning. However, current diagnostic methods are often inaccessible, costly, and delayed, especially for underserved populations. There is a growing need for scalable, noninvasive tools that can support timely diagnosis. Spontaneous speech contains rich acoustic and linguistic markers that can serve as noninvasive behavioral markers for cognitive decline. Foundation models, pretrained on large-scale audio or text data, generate high-dimensional embeddings that encode rich contextual and acoustic information.

Objective: This study benchmarks open-source foundation language and speech models to evaluate their …

Centralization Vs. Decentralization: First Evidence From The Laboratory, Gabriele Camera, Gary Charness, Nir Chemaya

ESI Working Papers

The future architecture of financial systems is a subject of contention, with centralized and decentralized governance proponents. Here we ask: would the architecture affect the quality of decision-making? We propose a game where financial network participants demarcate the ownership of claims to income. This governance task can be decentralized (shared authority), centralized (single authority), or hybrid (alternating authority). Without communication all architectures supported poor outcomes. With communication, decentralization ensured good governance and maximum profits, while centralization did not—lowering communication’s potency in promoting socially optimal decisions. This indicates there is scope for decentralization in innovating financial institutions.

Undertaking Short-Term Finance Transactions In Brazil - An Historic And Modern Look At The Brazilian Economy And Associated Risks, Shawn M. D'Aversa

Student Research

The following report discusses the risks and construction of a hypothetical short-term trade finance transaction involving the five parties: Citibank N.A., Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), Banco Do Brasil, Paracatu Gold Mine and EXIM Bank. Fair warning: this is a long paper for a short-term transaction.

For the deal, Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) has approached Citibank N.A. in New York regarding a financing transaction for five 797F-400 short-ton haul trucks. The trucks are worth $5mn each, including the costs of training and spare parts, for a total of $25mn. Put simply, the trucks are beasts for mining. They will then be shipped to …

Climate Policy Uncertainty And Housing Prices: Analyzing Bidirectional Transmission Across U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Sourav Batabyal, Alper Gormus

Finance and Economics

This study examines the relationship between climate policy uncertainty (CPU) and residential housing prices across U.S. metropolitan areas using the U.S. CPU index developed by Gavriilidis in 2021 and monthly S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, covering January 1991 to May 2024. Employing a Fourier-augmented Toda–Yamamoto causality framework that accounts for both abrupt and gradual structural breaks, we document significant CPU → housing prices transmission in multiple metropolitan markets, with bidirectional transmission dynamics emerging in Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco, as well as at the U.S. national level. The results reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity across various …

Resilience In Place Names: German-Hehe War Memories And Cultural Identity In Iringa Toponyms, Claudio G. Kisake, Sophilini M. Yisega, Spemba E. Spemba

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Toponyms, or place names, act as vital markers of historical memory, cultural identity and resilience. In Iringa, Tanzania, toponymy offers valuable insights into the enduring impacts associated with the German-Hehe War (1890–1898), and colonial encounters on indigenous communities. This study explores how place names—such as Kitanzini (‘a place with a noose for hanging people’), Ilundamatwe or Lundamatwe (‘a collection of slaughtered heads’), and Gangilonga (‘the speaking stone’)—convey narratives of Hehe war superiority, resistance, and survival. Using a qualitative approach, the research incorporates archival sources, oral histories, and linguistic analysis to investigate the stories behind naming and renaming, the role of …

A Sturdy Future: Mangrove Restoration Against Climate Extremes, Gabriella Marie Siasoco

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper addresses the impacts of climate change on natural disasters and examines how rehabilitation of mangrove forests in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean can mitigate those effects. Rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures contribute to higher sea levels and more severe hurricanes and tropical storms, characterized by increased frequency, duration, and intensity in peak winds, storm surges, and rainfall. Mangrove ecosystems act as vital buffers against coastal disturbances such as tsunamis and extreme storms, while contributing to climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. Additionally, they improve water quality by filtering nutrients, preventing eutrophication. Despite their ecological and economic value, mangroves in …

Solid Waste Management In Greater Khartoum City, Sudan, Roba Mahmoud

Student Theses 2015-Present

This study investigates the rising solid waste management (SWM) dilemma in Greater Khartoum City (GKC), a critical environmental and public health issue caused by fast urbanization and inadequate infrastructure, with historical linkages to Sudan's colonial and postcolonial growth. Chapter 1 describes the current problem using quantitative and qualitative data, demonstrating that GKC produces approximately 3,340 tons of waste each day, with 56% organic matter, 8% plastics, and 16% paper. Collection efficiency remains severely poor, at 31.5%. Informal recyclers known as Nakasha or Barkata collect approximately 7% of total waste, supporting roughly 3,900 people, whereas filthy open dumps and unsorted medical …

Perception Of Asset Price Bubbles In Graphical Data, Cooper P. Vining

Honors Theses

This thesis studies how individuals judge asset price paths and bubbles from graphical data. It primarily investigates whether individuals can differentiate simulated asset price paths that are generated from pure random walks, and graphs that have a bubble element. This question is important because inventors and ordinary people often interpret price paths visually.

To test this, the project creates simulated asset price paths using random walks and bubble multipliers. The survey has four types of graphs: pure random walks, random walks with a 25% bubble, random walks with a 50% bubble, and random walks with a 75% bubble. The graphs …

Controlling Fiscal Destiny: Evaluating The Effect Of State Tax Composition On Resilience During Defined Shock Period, Calloway R. Bills

Honors Theses

State governments operate under strict fiscal constraints that limit their ability to respond to economic downturns through borrowing or monetary policy, making tax composition a key determinant of fiscal stability. This paper evaluates how variation in state tax revenue composition affects fiscal resilience during economic shocks, focusing on the Great Recession. While prior research shows that individual tax instruments differ in cyclicality, less is known about how overall tax structure shapes revenue performance during and after shocks. Using a panel dataset of U.S. states from 1988 to 2024, this study measures resilience through two outcomes: the magnitude of revenue decline …

Assessing College Tuition And Wage Prospects For Careers In Archaeology, Angelina H. Gutierrez

Honors Capstones

The pressures of rising college tuition are raising questions about whether a degree in higher education is worth the return on investment in today's society and economy. This study aims to acknowledge the issues of affording college and the opportunities granted in the face of college wealth premiums from the perspective of the field of archaeology. The college wealth premium is understood as additionalopportunities and increased salaries offered to those with a degree in higher education compared to those without. Using the Midwestern United States as a case study, I discuss the gender/race wage gap, college debt, loan inequity, and …

Party, Place, And Pocketbooks: What Shapes Americans’ Trust In Political Institutions, Hwayong Shin

Weidenbaum Center Survey (WCS) Reports

Evidence from the Weidenbaum Center Surveys (Waves 6–8) suggests that trust in institutions has not simply evaporated. Instead, it is being sorted along several cleavages, such as partisanship, geography, and personal economic security. While trust in the federal government remains relatively low yet stable from May 2025 to March 2026, trust in specific institutions varies across partisan, geographic, and economic cleavages. This fragmentation of trust points to a potential challenge to the stability of American democracy.

How Changes In Mexican Immigration To The United States Affect Mexican Labor Markets, Gonzalo Ares De Parga-Regalado, Marta Prato

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

How Do Minimum Wages Affect Workplace Injuries?, Michael Davies, R. Jisung Park, Anna Stansbury

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Empirical Results From The Eliminations Of Municipal Minimum Parking Requirements, David A. Griffith

Honors Theses

Minimum Parking Requirements (MPR) are municipal zoning ordinances mandating a set number of off-street parking spaces for new developments. Since the 1950s, MPR has been the near-universal way American municipalities supply parking, though growing criticisms since the late 1990s have targeted the policy for distorting development patterns, imposing high costs, and subsidizing personal vehicle use. Beginning in the early 2010s and increasingly in the early 2020s, cities and counties across the United States have moved to reform or eliminate MPR. This paper is the first empirical study of the economic effects of these removals. Using a two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences OLS …

Ai Is Taking Over!: A New Generation Of Unemployment Fears, Amaya V. Hepburn

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The growing panic surrounding AI taking over the workforce is strong in a distinct group of demographics, in contrast to the fear of computers taking over the workforce that was seen in previous generations. This suggests that AI developments have sparked a wave of fear that is unlike the fear of tech developments in the past. I have discovered that this fear is prevalent across several demographics: age, employment, and income. By cross-analyzing through the 2017 and 2025 fear surveys, I discovered that fear of AI is more prevalent in younger generations and is more threatening to students entering the …

The Marginal Sexual Equality Game: Defining The Incentives For Sexual Equality Using Economic Game Theory And Butler’S Gender Trouble, Blaise Bowers

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project takes an interdisciplinary economic and gender studies approach to explain subversion, sexual equality, and the marginal nature of sexual rights. The project uses advanced economic game theory to derive the Marginal Sexual Equality Game Formula. The formula explains the various political-economic incentives for a minority gender/sexual identity’s subversion of dominance, a dominant sex's incentive to suppress, the impact of cooperation versus division among minority genders/sexual identities, incentives and impacts of cooperation between sects of minority genders/sexual identities and the dominant gender/sexual identity, and the various consequences of various social mobility and elasticity. Additionally, the formula proves and showcases …

Gender And Grades: The Gap In How Men And Women Fear Economic Collapse, Riley O'Connor

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Due to prescribed gender roles in society and wage gaps, historically, women have had to rely on spouses and family for economic survival. Now, with access to higher education and increased salaries, their economic fears are shifting. In this paper I analyze the extent of the gender gap in the fear of economic and financial collapse of Americans. Using the Chapman Survey of American Fear, an original data set surveying the degree to which American adults fear incidents collected in spring of 2025, men and women of the same education fear economic collapse differently, signifying men fear economic collapse less …

The Economics Of Technical Debt: Venture Capital, Cybersecurity, And Engineering Quality, Joao Henrique Avila Alves Dimas

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies the economic consequences of technical debt—the accumulated cost of expedient engineering decisions in a firm’s software codebase—and how external forces shape it. Using direct codebase analysis of over 80,000 monthly snapshots from 600+ open-core technology firms (2010–2025), I develop the first dollar-denominated measure of technical debt in the finance literature and apply it across two empirical settings. Chapter 1 examines whether venture capital monitoring extends to firms’ technical practices. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design around first VC entry (225 treated firms, 330 controls, 85 cohorts), I find that VC-backed firms reduce critical code defect density by 24% …

Essays In Empirical Asset Pricing, Songrun He

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines several empirical asset pricing questions using around-the-clock high-frequency data, financial text, and AI methods. The first chapter studies systematic jump risk in equity markets by linking around-the-clock market jumps to contemporaneous news narratives identified with a reasoning large language model, and finds substantial heterogeneity in risk premia across jump types. The second chapter addresses lookahead bias in financial text analysis by developing chronologically consistent language models and showing that they perform well in both standard language tasks and asset pricing applications. The third chapter studies cryptocurrency perpetual futures, derives no-arbitrage benchmark prices under realistic payoff assumptions, and …

The Effects Of Government Policies On The Stock Market, Samruddhi Somani, Dr. Holger Kern

Caravel Undergraduate Research Journal

What is the most effective government policy to boost stock returns and, subsequently, to foster economic growth, especially during an economic crisis? This paper examines the effects of various government actions on stock market performance during the global financial crisis of 2007. As expected from rational investors, nearly all of the variation in index levels is explained by the variation in index futures levels, which reflect market expectations. Index and future levels were collected for June 2007-December 2009 using Bloomberg, which tracks data for various financial instruments. The financial crisis timeline furnished by the New York Federal Reserve Board on …

Analyzing Preparedness For Compliance With The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (Cbam) Across Member States Of The European Union, Vincent Pfattner

Politics Honors Papers

The European Union’s implementation of the CBAM is a climate change-driven initiative aimed at preventing carbon leakages. This thesis aims to investigate the underlying reasons for the variation in preparedness to comply with CBAM. Exposure to CBAM-covered Extra-EU imports serves as a proxy for preparedness, a measure of the economic constraints EU countries face. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, including Regression Analysis, Bayesian model averaging, and comparative case studies of EU countries. The results show a strong association between preparedness levels and institutional factors, particularly regulatory capacity. In contrast, political, financial, and geographical factors exhibit limited influence on a …

What Is Happening In Major League Baseball? A Structural Snapshot In An Evolving Economic Landscape: A Case Study, Max K. Shilstone

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This qualitative case study examines the most visible business and economic factors currently impacting Major League Baseball (MLB). Specifically, it analyzes how current labor and collective bargaining issues, the changing media and broadcasting landscape, and the league’s reliance on locally generated revenue are shaping the league’s current and future business environment. Using a multi-method qualitative approach, this case study draws from academic scholarship, contemporary industry reporting, league documents, existing interviews, and six semi-structured interviews with professionals working in or around MLB. The evidence was analyzed through thematic coding and triangulated across sources to identify recurring themes and validate emerging findings. …

Ticking Time Bomb: The Economic Ramifications Of Mlb's Pitch Clock, Katie Ciuffreda

Business and Economics Honors Papers

In recent years, Major League Baseball has been challenged with declining engagement and attendance, particularly with younger audiences, with the long duration of games most commonly cited as the reason for disinterest. In response to this, MLB implemented a pitch clock that worked its way through the minor league system until it was introduced to the majors for the 2023 season. The goal for the clock was to reduce game times by increasing pace of play. While early evidence shows that the clock has been successful in that regard, its impact on player performance remains to be explored. This study …