Digital Commons Network^™

Education And The Maternal Childcare Gap: Evidence From The Uk Covid-19 Pandemic, Lara Bakhaya

Honors Theses

This paper examines whether college education shapes working mothers’ access to remote work, flexible working, and childcare hours in the United Kingdom, and whether COVID-19 school closures amplified these inequalities. Using data from the UK Time Use Survey (2016–2021), a repeated cross-sectional diary dataset spanning the pre-pandemic period and five COVID-19 waves, this paper estimates weighted logistic and ordinary least squares regressions on a sample of married or cohabiting, employed mothers. School closures serve as a natural experiment, providing an exogenous shock to caregiving demands that affected all mothers simultaneously regardless of education level. College education significantly predicted working from …

Spillover Effects Of Medicare Advantage On Fee-For-Service Post-Acute Care Spending, Nyel Bangash

Honors Theses

Does the growth of Medicare Advantage reduce fee-for-service post-acute care spending through practice-pattern spillovers, or do observed spending differences primarily reflect favorable selection? Using a county-level panel of roughly 2,700 counties (2014–2023) and a two-way fixed effects specification, I find that a one percentage-point increase in MA penetration is associated with $9.54 less per-capita standardized FFS spending. Spending per episode falls while participation rates remain stable, consistent with practice-pattern spillovers rather than compositional changes from selection. Welfare indicators from County Health Rankings, CDC PLACES, and CMS Care Compare show no evidence that spending reductions harm health or care quality. The …

The Market Signal Of Climate Risk: Examining Disaster-Linked Insurance Costs And Home Values, Anika Donohue

Honors Theses

As natural disasters increase in frequency, the resulting rise in insurance premiums threatens a systemic housing affordability crisis across the United States. Leveraging a unique private insurance market dataset, this paper investigates the capitalization of rising premiums into home values and the resulting impact on housing affordability and underinsurance levels. Focusing on the impacts of Hurricane Florence (2018) in North Carolina, I employ a Difference-in-Differences framework to separately analyze the impacts of storm severity on property values and insurance premiums. I find that while property values decrease in proportion to storm severity, functioning as a primary risk signal, insurance premiums …

Mnes Vs. Local Firms’ Resilience To Global Shocks: Evidence From The 2008 Financial Crisis And Covid-19, Yijie Wang

Honors Theses

This thesis examines whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) are more resilient than domestic firms during major global shocks, using the 2008 Financial Crisis and COVID-19 as case studies. Although MNEs may benefit from diversification, internal capital markets, and foreign linkages, they may also face greater exposure to global demand shrinkage and supplychain disruption.

Using Compustat North America firm-level panel data from WRDS, this study analyzes publicly listed U.S. and Canadian firms across 2007–2013 and 2018–2024. Firm resilience is measured through net sales, net income, and gross profit using a two-way fixed effects panel model. Multinational status is identified through two different …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 10, Number 3, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Good Food In The Neighborhood: Localizing Nutritious Food Access, Joseph Pool

Honors Program Theses

Given contemporary changes to federal budget priorities and recent challenges to federal food access funding, this research explores the potential benefits of entrusting state-level and municipal-level policymakers with food access policy. More specifically, this research suggests that “localizing” food access has the unique benefit of not just addressing the affordability of food, but the physical accessibility of it. As observed in the previous literature and expounded upon here, food provisioning requires consideration of nutrition, physical accessibility, and financial affordability. Programs that only address one of these priorities fail to adequately help people receive the food they need. Through policy analysis …

Improving Maternal Health: Investigating The Early Impacts Of Medicaid Coverage Of Doulas In Oregon, Miriam Akhmetshin

Scripps Senior Theses

While the U.S. spends more per-capita than any country on healthcare, we experience the worst maternal health outcomes of high-income nations. In addition to hefty healthcare bills, an overwhelming majority of mothers experience pregnancy-related health issues that decrease productivity and utility. Thus, it is critical to research cost-effective solutions that can improve maternal health and promote equitable outcomes. Doulas are trained non-medical professionals who support mothers and families before, during and after birth. As a growing body of medical literature points to the role of doulas in decreasing costly medical interventions, insurance companies have begun covering their services. In 2014, …

From Touchbacks To Touchdowns: Analyzing The Impact Of The Nfl's New Kickoff Rule Changes, Joshua A. Klatt

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My proposal analyzes the impact of the NFL's new dynamic kickoff rule changes that were implemented in the Fall of 2024. I use a two-way fixed effects differences-in-differences model using FBS collegiate Division 1 football teams as the control group, and NFL teams as the treatment group. Three of the most important outcome variables I analyze are touchdowns per kickoff return, average yards per kickoff return, and the number of kickoff returns per game.

Women's Work And Wealth: Measuring The Impact Of Incremental Liberations, 1850-1870, Hannah Kelly

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Using a two-way fixed effects difference-in-difference model, this project analyzes data from the IPUMS Full Count census for 1850, 1860, and 1870 at a state level for 48 states. Four models assess the impact of property laws on women's real property holdings, labor force participation, household types, and real property values.

By quantifying the impact of various legal reforms on women's economic empowerment, this project fills a gap in the understanding of the intersection between law, society, and women's economic agency during a transformative period in pre-industrial American history. These impacts can implicate the effectiveness of legislative measures in advancing …

The Effect Of Minimum Wage On Household Debts And Delinquencies, Payton G. Rader

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper examines how increases in binding minimum wages affect various types of household debts and delinquency rates. Within this paper, household debt is defined as the combined sum of auto loans, credit card debt, mortgage debt, and student loan debt. The goal of the analysis is to conclude whether minimum wage increases are contributing to America’s growing debt crisis. The answer to this question likely relies on whether or not minimum wage increases cause unemployment. This is because unemployment can contribute significantly to debt levels when unemployed people rely on credit for day-to-day transactions or payments. Traditional economic theory …

Expanding State Tax Authority: Public And Private Sector Impacts Of Wayfair, Maxwell Pastoria

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The 2018 Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. (Wayfair) overturned the longstanding physical presence rule for state sales tax collection, enabling states to enforce tax obligations on remote sellers through marketplace facilitator and economic nexus laws (Oyez, 2018). This study investigates the effects of these two post-Wayfair tax laws on state sales tax revenues, entrepreneurship, and public expenditures across all 50 states. Using a two-way fixed effects difference-in-differences (TWFE DID) framework, this research analyzes how policy adoption influenced per-capita outcomes in tax revenue, firm formation, and government spending in social services, education, infrastructure, and …

Tariffs And The Progressive Fiscal Constitution, Lawrence J. Liu, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

For more than a century, progressive taxation has constituted the American fiscal state. A resurgent and expanding tariff regime, however, threatens that commitment to progressive distribution. Given the ongoing popularity of tariffs, this Article examines how they might be designed and administered in a way that mitigates their regressive distributive impact. The Article thus develops and assesses proposals to (1) vary tariff burdens in accordance with the consumption of imported goods, (2) reduce income- or payroll-tax burdens on lower-income households, and (3) earmark tariff revenue for specified spending programs. Although none is perfect, we seek to articulate possibilities and highlight …

Tail Dependence: The Impact Of Risk Spillovers On Real Estate Markets In Times Of Economic And Geo-Political Uncertainty, Stanimira Milcheva, Simon Stevenson, Lingshan Xie

Finance Faculty Publications

The first half of the 2020's has seen a degree of economic and geo-political uncertainty not observed since the 1970s. This paper looks at how listed real estate is exposed to capital market shocks by estimating Conditional Value-at-Risk (CoVaR), which captures the sensitivity of real estate returns to extreme movements in broader equity markets. We use threshold Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (tGARCH) and Copula co-dependency functions to accurately account for tail behavior and dependency structures. We find a significant increase in downside spillovers from capital markets to listed real estate during the Covid period across most countries. However, the response …

Human Rights Education For Children And Youth On Human Rights And Digital Technologies, Diane A. Desierto, Faisal Yamil Meneses, Notre Dame Global Human Rights Clinic

Journal Articles

AI Generated Summary

This document outlines the importance of human rights education for children and youth, particularly in relation to digital technologies, emphasizing the need for comprehensive, inclusive, and accessible educational frameworks.

C.A.S. Full Assessment Report: State Of Florida Government Portal, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the cognitive overhead, transparency, and attentional integrity of

official State of Florida digital interfaces using the Cognitive Attentional Standards (C.A.S.) platform.

While the Florida Digital Bill of Rights (FDBR) establishes strict regulatory guardrails for consumer data

transparency, tracking opt-outs, and attentional safeguards, the State of Florida explicitly exempts its own

government agencies, public universities, and non-profit entities from complying with these rules.

This assessment serves to investigate the tension between legislative intent and government execution. By

analyzing public sector websites through the C.A.S. platform, this project will establish a “state-enforced vs.

state-executed” …

Essays In Housing And Consumer Finance, Spencer Stone

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I show how consumer left-digit bias affects borrowing costs in the US residential mortgage market. I find that the distribution of mortgage rates bunch at .99-ending rates just below left-digit changing thresholds, and that this bunching is greater in the distribution of rates selected by borrowers than those simply offered by lenders. Comparing observably similar borrowers within the same 1-bp interest rate band, selecting similar mortgage products, in the same census tract and origination month, I show that borrowers receiving .99-ending rates pay significantly more fees than borrowers receiving the nearest whole-number rate just above them, …

Teacher Education For Religious Diversity In British Columbia: Policy Recommendations For Sikh And Chinese Mahayana Buddhist Inclusion, Ashton Kemper

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Editors' Note, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Embarrassment As A Signal: Feminist Affects And The Commodification Of Love, Bianca L. Schmitt

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

The Kindness Of Strangers: Theory And Evidence On Spatial Distance And Giving, James Konow, Leonie Kuhl, Nora Szech

Economics Faculty Works

Arguments for directing charitable giving to distant beneficiaries for their greater benefits contradict actual charitable donations that go mostly to more proximate beneficiaries. Controlled studies reveal mixed results finding the giving-distance relationship to be direct, inverse, flat, or various combinations of the three. This paper reports a new theory of the distinctive relationship between giving and spatial distance and relevant results from four experimental studies. Two studies vary distances between donors and beneficiaries locally: a field experiment involves local refugees and a laboratory experiment local people in need. Both find significant inverse relationships between giving and spatial distance. Two other …

An Analysis Of How Adverse Weather Conditions Impact Concessions Revenue At Live College Sporting Events, Luke V. Eiermann

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Previous literature finds that weather affects consumer behavior, though these findings are conflicting among sports fans. While there have been some studies into weather’s effects on attendance, there has not yet been research into its effects on concessions revenue. This is a topic of interest as adverse weather is increasingly prevalent in consumers’ lives, and learning more about their behavior in response to adverse weather is becoming more important. I performed a fixed effects panel data regression, using weather data sourced from the NOAA and sports and population data sourced from various locations. I did not find significant results for …

The Impact Of Sports Betting Legalization On Marital Status, Hosea Gitonga Njogu

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the causal Impact of sports gambling legalization on marital stability in the United States using data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS-ASEC) and the American Community Survey (ACS) from 2013 to 2024. The analysis leverages variation in the staggered adoption of state-level sports gambling laws and applies two-way fixed effects, event-study, and the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) difference-in-differences estimators, controlling for geographic and individual characteristics. Legalization increases divorce rates by 0.42 percentage points in the CPS and 0.51 percentage points in the ACS, corresponding to increases of 2.4% and 2.6%, or approximately …

From Rocks To Rockets: How Mineral Wealth Fuels The Arms Trade, Samuel G. Majka

Theses and Dissertations

This study addresses a critical gap in the resource curse literature by examining how strategic mineral wealth, central to the global clean energy transition, influences international arms transfers. While the relationship between oil rents, militarization, and conflict is well-established, the role of non-hydrocarbon resources and conflict-related variables remains underexplored. This paper posits that mineral rents provide governments with unearned, discretionary income, relaxing fiscal constraints and creating powerful incentives for both resource-rich states and major power suppliers to increase arms flows to secure political control, suppress internal dissent, and maintain access to valuable deposits. Using a country-year panel dataset spanning 1990-2023 …

Impacts Of Spatial Intensity Policies On Jakarta Property Prices, Stevanus J. Manahampi, M. Halley Yudhistira

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This study examines the effects of floor area ratio (FAR) and building coverage ratio (BCR) on property prices in Jakarta. Using a hdonic price mdel with data from property listings and a geographical information system (GIS) analysis, it explores how these regulations influence values across regions and property types, accounting for access to amenities and infrastructure. Results show FAR lowers prices in dense areas like Central Jakarta but raises them in less developed regions like East Jakarta. BCR effects are mixed, positive where infrastructure is strong but negative where it is weak, underscoring the need for context-specific urban planning.

Hubungan Pertumbuhan Ekonomi Dengan Inflasi Di 90 Kabupaten-Kota Indonesia, Samsul Arifin, Hermanto Siregar, Lukytawati Anggraeni, Yeti Lis Purnamadewi

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This study aims to explain the relationship between economic growth and inflation in 90 Indonesian cities during the period 2018–2022 using the GMM estimator with Windmeijer - Sigmund robust standard errors. The author’s findings reveal that the two-way relationship between the two is that economic growth has a significant positif effect on inflation, while inflation has a negatif but insignificant effect. Through the results of this study, policymakers and stakeholders can consider priority objectives, namely achieving economic growth targets compared to inflation problems during the COVID-19 crisis and economic development during the future economic recovery.

Menilai Kembali Kapasitas Pajak Daerah: Mampukah Menggeser Sektor Terbelakang Menjadi Sektor Maju?, Oki Sakti Nugrahajati, Setyo Tri Wahyudi, Ahmad Ibnu Riza, Annisa Nurul Hakim

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Tulungagung Regency’s Locally Generated Revenue (PAD) remains concentrated in three main types of taxes, while levies contribute less than optimally. This study aims to analyze the potential and performance of regional taxes and levies as instruments of fiscal independence in Tulungagung Regency using overlay analysis. The analysis shows that several taxes with low contributions have experienced significant growth, indicating policy space for expanding the revenue base. This finding implies that the overlay analysis approach can guide the determination of more precise and contextual fiscal strategies, as well as contribute to the development of a regional fiscal evaluation framework and the …

Dampak Kebijakan Hilirisasi Nikel: Kuasi-Eksperimen Di Sulawesi, Siddiq Robbani, Uka Wikarya

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Studi ini menganalisis dampak kebijakan larangan ekspor bijih nikel (2014–2016) dan pembangunan smelter (2009–2021) terhadap PDRB per kapita dan konsumsi rumah tangga per kapita menggunakan data panel seimbang dari 81 kabupaten/kota di Sulawesi periode 2006–2021. Dampak kausal dan efek spillover dianalisis menggunakan metode Difference-in-Difference (DiD) dan Spatial Durbin Model (SDM). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan kebijakan larangan ekspor tidak berdampak pada kedua variabel. Pembangunan smelter justru berdampak negatif terhadap PDRB per kapita, tetapi menghasilkan efek spillover positif pada PDRBperkapita daerah tetangga dan efek spillover negatif terhadap konsumsi rumah tangga per kapita di daerah non-smelter.

Turning Local Strength Into Regional Change: An Operational Plan For Capacity Building In Virginia’S Tobacco Region, Ellie Plisko

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Virginia's Tobacco Region possesses meaningful community assets including committed local leadership, established social networks, and demonstrated resilience, yet many localities consistently struggle to translate those strengths into high-impact economic development projects. The gap is not one of vision or funding, but of organizational capacity: the ability to develop, manage, and implement complex projects over time.

This capstone plan was developed for the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission (TRRC) to address that gap directly. Drawing on semi-structured stakeholder interviews, document and case analysis, and comparative institutional assessment, the research identifies the structural, relational, and process-based conditions that distinguish successful projects from …

El Paso Business Cycle Downturn Analysis: 1991 – 2025, Steven L. Fullerton, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Border Region Modeling Project

Recession indicator research for the United States and other national economies has accelerated since 2019. Because of relative ease of implementation, these indices show much promise and expand the business cycle toolkit for applied economists, policy analysts, and business planners. From a regional perspective, a potentially attractive feature of these indices is fairly minimal data requirements. This study extends this branch of the business cycle literature into the realm of regional economics. An application of the framework is developed for El Paso, Texas, USA. That metropolitan economy is a natural candidate for this type of exploratory analysis because of the …

Envisioning The Role Of Community-Owned Stores & Aligning Federal Food Policies: A Participatory Approach To Food Security And Food Sovereignty In Sambaa K’E, Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada), Narayan Subramoniam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northern Indigenous communities have relied on traditional food systems for meaningful, nutritious diets since time immemorial. But many Indigenous communities in remote northern regions of Canada still face disproportionately elevated levels of food insecurity due to climate change radically altering the availability for traditional foods, colonial food policies imposing Western diets, and the high costs of transporting store-bought foods. Extreme weather events such as wildfires further isolate fly-in remote communities increasing both the costs of transporting store-bought foods and the difficulties of harvesting traditional foods. There are many examples of community-based initiatives for supporting traditional and locally grown foods, however, …