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Absentee Ownership And Rental Affordability: Evidence From Commuting Zones, Luke Petach

Funded Scholarship

In this paper, we examine the intersection of financialization, wealth inequality, and the housing market in the United States with an emphasis on the relationship between absentee ownership and declining rental affordability. At the same time as financialization has increasingly transformed the market for residential real estate into a vehicle for financial speculation, households at the bottom of the income distribution have been disproportionately affected by rising rents and declining housing affordability. Using data from the decennial Census and the American Community Survey from 1990 to 2020, we investigate the link between absentee ownership and rental affordability across US commuting …

Medical Expenditures And The Measurement Of Poverty In The United States, Luke Petach, David K. Wyant

Funded Scholarship

Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) we estimate the fraction of the US population that is health poor. A person is health poor if their income prior to paying health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket healthcare costs is above the poverty line, but their income net-of-premiums and out-of-pocket healthcare costs is below the poverty line. Because resources used to finance health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs are (A) lexicographically preferred and (B) cannot be used to maintain an individual’s standard of living, they should be excluded from official poverty estimates. Approximately 1% to 2% of the US population …

Part 1: As Good As It Gets? The Economy Of Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads’ economy was a study in contrasts in 2024. For the first time in almost two decades, the regional economy grew in four consecutive years. A record number of individuals were in the civilian labor force and employed, and employers reported a record number of jobs. Job growth, however, lagged our peers. Now is the time to invest in key industry clusters to spur private-sector job growth in the region and build upon our recent economic fortunes.

Part 2: Defense, The Port, And Tourism: The Pillars Of The Economy, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

There was (mostly) good news to report about the pillars of the Hampton Roads economy in 2024. More defense spending flowed into the region. While cargo traffic declined at the Port of Virginia in 2023, the declines were mainly driven by outbound cargo traffic. The declines at the Port were also proportionally less than many other ports across the nation. Nominal hotel revenues continued to climb, but real hotel revenues fell in 2023 as occupancy rates dipped slightly. The hotel industry, however, continued to outperform the state and the nation.

Front Matter: The State Of The Region, Hampton Roads 2024, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Cover, Front Matter, Table of Contents, Sponsors, and other materials for the 2024 The State of the Region Report authored by the Center for Economic Analysis and Policy at Old Dominion University.

The State Of The Region: Hampton Roads 2024, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University, Vinod Agarwal, Aliou Ousmane Ba, Elizabeth Janik, James V. Koch, Ria Kolarao, Steve Lawson, Feng Lian, Anna Makhorkina, Melody Nguyen, Mohamed Rahoui, Panagiotis Taoulas, Leiu Yuenyong

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

This is Old Dominion University’s 25th annual State of the Region Report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the university, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion, its president, Brian Hemphill, Ph.D., the Board of Visitors, the Strome College of Business, or the generous donors who support the activities of the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy.

The news, especially when compared to the previous decade, is mostly good. The region’s economy grew in 2023 and will likely grow for a fourth consecutive year in 2024. Even after …

Part 4: Public Libraries: Enriching Lives In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads is home to 63 public libraries across 13 library systems. These public libraries do much, much more than simply lending books. Access is free, and everyone is welcome. This chapter provides an overview of Hampton Roads’ public libraries—how they function and how they are funded, and the diversity of services and resources they offer to our residents. We focus on the innovative ways that public libraries have evolved to meet their communities’ changing needs.

Part 5: Are Disability Rates Rising In Hampton Roads?, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

In this chapter, we examine one particular corner of a much larger disability story – those individuals who have a work history and subsequently seek to receive income from the Social Security Administration because of that disability. Contrary to what many people believe, both the number of applications for worker disability and rates of approval of those applications have trended downward in recent years. We explore the differences in disability rates and workers across Hampton Roads.

Part 3: If You Zone It, They Will Come: Housing Supply In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

The recent rise in housing prices in Hampton Roads has priced many families out of the American dream of owning a home. Even though fewer houses sold in 2023, median single-family prices continued to rise. In this chapter, we discuss how policies and regulations may influence decisions to build and ask what can be done to increase the supply of housing in Hampton Roads.

Part 6: The Graying Of Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

In 2010, the median age of the resident population of Hampton Roads was 35.7 years. By 2019, the median age had increased to 36.8 years, rising to 37.1 years in 2021 and 37.3 years in 2022. The number of residents aged 65 and over continued to rise. How is Hampton Roads aging compared to Virginia and the United States? In this chapter, we explore how the region is aging, how it may age in the future, and how this may impact the region’s economic prospects.

The Effect Of Housing Burden And Access To Affordable Housing On Abortion Rates, Isabelle Huggard

Honors Theses

In the United States a household’s highest expenditure is housing. Low-income households feel this more acutely and have higher rates of housing burden. Past research documents a link between financial constraints and abortion. Three studies published in 1988, 2004, 2014 sought to understand the reasons women get abortions, and found that finances are a prominent reason given. If housing is a large share of household finances and finances play a large role in abortion demand, how might housing affect abortions? This study looks at the effect of three housing mechanisms on abortion rates: rent to income rate, mortgage to income …

The Impact Of U.S. News And World Report College Rankings On Prospective Students’ Decisions And Enrollment Outcomes, Camilla Schneider

Honors Theses

The following paper further expands on previous research using more recent data which is important given changes in the last decade. This paper will answer the question: How do U.S. News and World Report college rankings impact college application and enrollment decisions for prospective students within American public and private colleges and universities? Application decisions refer to the choice to apply to a school while enrollment decisions refer to the choice to attend a school after being accepted. This paper analyzes Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDs) admissions/applicant, fall enrollment, and financial data alongside historical USNWR rankings lists to investigate …

Trading Perspectives: The Impact Of Gender In Shaping National Trade Policies, Katherine Kwiatkowski

Honors Theses

Economic and political factors have been shown to influence the trade policy decisions of national leaders. The impact of a national leader’s gender on their trade policy preferences remains an underexplored area of research. The increasing share of female national leaders raises the question of whether their policy preferences vary from those of male leaders because of their gender. In this study, I utilize the gender of a nation’s leader to implement a two-way fixed effects regression that analyzes the impact of gender on a leader’s trade policy preferences. Controlling for factors that could also impact a leader’s trade policy …

Part 2: Virginia's Metropolitan Areas: Growth, Challenges, And The Road Ahead, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

In this chapter, we survey the performance of Virginia’s metropolitan areas this decade. We first discuss population trends and the demographic challenges facing metro areas. We then delve into measures of economic activity, including taxable sales and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We also discuss labor markets in each metro area. We conclude with thoughts about how Virginia can foster growth across its metropolitan areas.

2024 State Of The Commonwealth Report, Vinod Agarwal, James V. Koch, Feng Lian, Anna Makhorkina, Melody Nguyen, Terry Parker, Mohamed Rahoui, Jay Walker, Leiu Yuenyong

State of the Commonwealth Reports

This is Old Dominion University’s 10th annual State of the Commonwealth Report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the university, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion, its president, Brian Hemphill, Ph.D., the Board of Visitors, the Strome College of Business or the generous donors who support the activities of the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy.

Our work seeks to contribute to the conversation about how Virginia can foster growth across the Commonwealth without glossing over the challenges we face. We want to encourage difficult conversations to …

Part 3: Does It Still Pay To Attend College In Virginia?, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

In 2022, more than 1 in 5 college graduates across the United States found themselves earning less than the national median income for high school graduates in the same graduating class year. In the same year, on average, 19.9% of graduates from four-year Virginia institutions of higher education earned less than the typical high school graduate 10 years after entry into college or university. In this chapter, we ask whether attending college is a ‘good deal’ for many Virginians.

Part 5: An Older Commonwealth, A Better Commonwealth, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

In this chapter, we examine how the population of Virginia has changed over time, with a specific focus on the resident population aged 65 and above. We break down the population aged 65 and above by sex and race and ask how these differences may impact the Commonwealth over time. We explore the characteristics of this population and discuss how Virginia is aging compared to its neighbors. We conclude with thoughts on how the ‘graying’ of Virginia may influence the demand for public goods and services in the future.

Part 1: Virginia's Economy Grows, Will Consumers Remain Unhappy?, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

By many measures, Virginia will set several records in 2024. Economic activity across the state will surpass that observed in 2023 and will represent the fourth consecutive year of economic growth. More Virginians will have been at work or looking for work than in any other year. Yet, if one asks Virginians about the state of the economy, their views are decidedly more pessimistic.

Front Matter: 2024 State Of The Commonwealth Report, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

Cover, front matter, table of contents, sponsors, and other materials for the 2023 State of the Commonwealth Report authored by the Center for Economic Analysis and Policy at Old Dominion University,

Part 4: Rising Disability Rates (Or Not): A Sign That We Care Or An Epidemic Problem In The Commonwealth?, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

In this chapter, we examine one particular corner of a much larger disability story --- those individuals who have a work history and subsequently seek to receive income from the Social Security Administration because of that disability. Contrary to what many people believe, both the number of applications for worker disability and rates of approval of those applications have trended downward in recent years. We examine how worker disability rates have changed over time across the nation and Commonwealth.

Neoclassical Production, Scarcity Of Skills And Pareto Distributions, Armando R. Lopez-Velasco

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

The distribution of top earnings follows a “power-law”: the top tail of the distribution is thick relative to other distributions and is approximately Pareto-distributed. There are different mechanisms proposed in the literature that yield Pareto distributions and power-laws. This paper shows that a simple general equilibrium model where aggregate production is assumed of the constant-elasticity-of-substitution (CES) type over multiple labor inputs generates distributions in earnings and wages that follow power-laws. The finding is very general as the distribution of the skill-types is irrelevant for the shape parameter (the Pareto exponent) of the power-law. The model displays a tight relationship between …

Endogenous Immigration Policy In A Stylized Political Economy, Armando R. Lopez-Velasco

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• A Political Economic Model of Immigration

  • The economic environment

  • Preferences of the old

  • Preferences of the young

  • Types of equilibria

• Applications and Extensions

  • Aging

  • The model under periodic fertility rates: Baby booms and baby busts

  • Immigration and dynamic efficiency

• Conclusions

• References

• Appendix

  • The indirect utility function of the young as a function of wt, Rt+1 and bt+1

  • Proof that b t + 1 R t + 1 is given by τ ( 1 − α ) α s t

  • Derivation of the young agent’s indirect utility function (Equation …

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Late-Arriving Votes And Electoral Fraud: A Natural Experiment And Regression Discontinuity Evidence From Bolivia, Diego Escobari, Gary A. Hoover

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This paper uses a unique data set and a natural experiment to test if electoral fraud can exist in late-arriving votes. On the night of the 2019 Bolivian elections, the official vote counting system that was expected to publish the results real-time, suddenly stopped. When it resumed, the results had flipped. We estimate several difference-in-differences specifications using a 2016 referendum and the votes of other political parties. We find that the extent of the fraud is 2.51% of the valid votes, sufficient to change the outcome of the election. Our results are robust to polling-station-level shocks common across 2019 and …

Economic Growth Before And After The Fiscal Stimulus Of 2008–2009: The Role Of Institutional Quality And Government Size, André Varella Mollick, Andre Coelho Vianna

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Governments implemented fiscal stimulus packages to alleviate the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. Using annual data from 1996 to 2019, we investigate economic growth in a large sample of countries for pre-and post-Global Financial Crisis years. Our approach analyzes the interaction between institutional quality and government size (government expenditures as share of GDP), reinforced by threshold estimations. We document that economies react to government size depending on the quality of the institutions in question. First, fixed effects models indicate higher institutional quality has positive effects on growth, while government size—and its interactions with institutional quality—has negative effects. Second, the coefficients …

Midas’ Children: Affluent White Families And The Effects Of Parental Bias On Child Outcomes, J. Sema Bruno

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Navigating parental biases within White affluent homes assumes family dynamics as yet unexplored within family therapy praxis. This dissertation examines parental biases directed toward domestic laborers employed in affluent White homes and how these biases might affect the parent-child relationship and the emerging values of children in these homes. Research from other fields demonstrates that domestic laborers experience social bias within the workplace; what this highlights is the likelihood that children in these settings are navigating unspoken subtleties of racism and classism in the context of developing socio-emotional maturity and family relationships. The first article within this dissertation critically reviews …

Reverse Technological Spillovers From Outward Fdi On Home Countries’ Total Factor Productivity: Does The Mode Of Investment Matter?, Ayesha Ashraf, Federico Carril-Caccia, Nadia Doytch

Ateneo School of Government Publications

We examine the effect of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on total factor productivity (TFP) of home (source of FDI) countries in a global sample of 85 economies, distinguishing between outward greenfield FDI (OGFDI) and outward cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) purchases. The goal of the study is to test for reverse technological spillovers to the FDI source country. The hypothesis is that OGFDI and M&As have different capabilities of carrying out reverse technological spillovers, which would affect the TFP of home countries differently. We apply a two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) to deal with possible endogeneity and …

Anglo-Saxon Res Judicata Culture For Civil Law Systems, Cesare Cavallini

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

One traditional aspect distinguishing the common law system from the civil law one lies in the perceived disparities in the inspiration of the law-making process. The Anglo-Saxon system typically grounds its rules in explicit and discernible policies spanning social, anthropological, and economic realms directly relevant to the circumstances. In contrast, the civil law tradition frequently necessitates a fixed conceptual framework, sometimes detached from the practical needs of society. Or, at least, this dynamic persisted until recent changes prompted by the “doing business” model, which has timidly ascended to the forefront of the State agenda, particularly across Europe, notably in Italy. …

Essays On Public Finance And International Finance, Deepti Sikri

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The first chapter examines New York State's Fiscal Score Monitoring program to find the effect of two quality labels on school district outcomes: fiscal stress scores, reflecting the budget solvency, and environmental stress labels reflecting economic and demographic conditions. Using the NYS school district data from 2013-22, I employ the regression discontinuity design to find the effect of stress labels, in response to the political pressure on district finances, housing, and school outcomes. I find the effect of fiscal stress label is limited, leading to a decrease in the fund balance ratio and an increase in the tax rate. However, …

A Stock Optimization Problem In Finance: Understanding Financial And Economic Indicators Through Analytical Predictive Modeling, Aditya Chakraborty, Chris Tsokos

Epidemiology, Biostatistics, & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Given the significant impact of healthcare stock changes on the global economy, including its GDP and other financial factors, we endeavored to create an analytical prediction model for forecasting the annual percentage change of these stocks. Our model, which is nonlinear, incorporates five key discoveries. We focused on predicting the average weekly closing price (pWCP) of AbbVie Inc. (North Chicago, IL, USA)'s healthcare stock (ABBV) from 1 August 2017 to 31 December 2019. The stock was chosen based on the low beta risk, high dividend yield, and high yearly percentage return criteria. Alongside predicting the weekly stock price, our model …

Betting On The Market: The Influence Of Match-Day Odds On Price Reactions Of European Football Clubs, Pascal Alterauge, Marc Mehlhorn

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

This research investigates the relationship between football match outcomes, betting odds and the stock prices of publicly traded European football clubs, spanning from 11 February 2004 to 7 April 2022. Drawing data from 12 major European and publicly traded clubs, the study utilised betting odds as a key metric. These odds, aggregated from the Odds Portal, serve as a gauge for expected versus unexpected match outcomes. Preliminary findings showed a market value increase of 0.44% after a win and a decrease of 1.08% post-defeat. Moreover, deviations from betting odds predictions significantly influenced stock prices, with unexpected wins and losses resulting …