Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Tourism Business Voices In Navigating Pandemic Crisis And Resilience-Building, Godwin Adiel A. Lema

Tanzanian Economic Review

COVID-19 challenged mobility, redefining crisis navigation and resilience. A modified Challenge Metamorphosis Model (CMM) is proposed to understand crisis navigating process in tourism business resilience-building. A pragmatic mixed-method design, involving 158 tourism-business respondents, multiple regions, interviews, and observation during June–November 2020, was applied. Impacts, challenges, opportunities, varied business responses and outcomes were mirrored. Immediate reactive closure and booking cancellation responses were distinguished from proactive adaptive business continuity measures with low visitors, postponement, few bookings and negotiable employment flexibility. Health, safety, and culturally embedded coping practices and their reinvention aided crisis navigation. Medium-term crisis navigating strategies were differentiated from long-term resilience-building …

Firm Level Labour Productivity Drivers And Export Status In Tanzania, Mgeni E. Msafiri, Vincent Leyaro, Rosemary Taylor

Tanzanian Economic Review

This study analysed the drivers of firm-level labour productivity by export status and estimated the counterfactual gains from exporting. Using the 2022 nationally representative Tanzania Enterprise Survey and an endogenous switching regression model, results revealed significant differences in the drivers of labour productivity between exporting and non-exporting firms. The productivity of exporting firms was positively associated with business linkages with small and medium-sized enterprises, foreign ownership, access to finance, and capital intensity. Similar factors were associated with labour productivity among non-exporting firms, alongside linkages with large firms. However, access to finance had asymmetric patterns: exporting firms benefited from greater financial …

Expanding The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform Through Artificial Influence Assessment (Aia): Rationale, Development, And Measurement Design, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping how individuals access information, make decisions, and interact with digital environments. The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform (C.A.S.) was developed to assess attention related harms, cognitive safety, digital autonomy, and platform influence across digital systems (Clark, 2026). However, the growth of generative AI, conversational agents, and algorithmic decision support technologies has introduced new forms of influence that may not be fully captured by existing assessment domains. This paper proposes the Artificial Influence Assessment (AIA) as an expansion of the C.A.S. framework designed to measure AI mediated influence on cognition, behavior, autonomy, and information processing. Drawing on …

Three Essays On Political Economy And International Trade, Shuo Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is composed of three papers that explore how institutions, globalization, and trade shocks affect individuals' political preferences and firms' behavior. The first paper studies how mass protest events drive political change among citizens. I exploit the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement (ANTI-ELAB protest) in Hong Kong and its impact on the subsequent 2019 Hong Kong District Council Election. Taking advantage of a granular dataset of organized events during the protest, I exploit spatial variation in protest intensity, as measured by the number of events, across Constituency Areas. Empirical results show that in Constituency Areas with higher protest …

Predicting Thoroughbred Yearling Auction Prices With Machine Learning: Evidence From The Keeneland September Sale, Yanchao Yang, John Clarke, Tapaan Madal '26, Thinh Nguyen '26, Trung Pham '25

Business Analytics Faculty Publications

We apply machine learning methods to predict Thoroughbred yearling auction prices at the Keeneland September Sale (2020–2024). Our sample includes 5,788 yearling prices with pedigree data. We use both linear and tree-based models to predict log prices. We use cross-validation to tune model hyperparameters and select Ridge regression (α = 1.451) as the primary model for interpretation given its stability and interpretability. The Ridge regression explains approximately 54% of out-of-sample variation (R2≈ 0.5403). Sire and Dam Reputation emerge as the dominant predictors. Results provide pricing benchmarks and show how reputation and session structure shape Thoroughbred yearling auction prices.

Passed Through Or Pushed Back? Exchange Rate Effects On Manufacturing Trade Prices In Indonesia And The Asean Plus Three, Fatikha Rizky Kurnia, Miguel Angel Esquivias, Wee-Yeap Lau, Unggul Heriqbaldi

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This study analyzes the Exchange Rate Pass-Through (ERPT) on export and import prices in Indonesia’s manufacturing trade with ASEAN Plus-three countries (China, Japan, and South Korea) using monthly data from 2016 to 2022. Employing the Nonlinear (NARDL) models, we examine the degree and asymmetry of ERPT across five key manufacturing sectors for each partner. The NARDL model confirms asymmetric price responses to currency appreciation and depreciation in several sectors. The findings reveal significant sectoral and country-specific variations. Some export sectors experience complete pass-through in the short term but shift to negative complete passthrough in the long run. Meanwhile, imports from …

Expansion, Diversification, And Delinquency In Indonesian Fintech Lending Platforms, Muhammad Miqdad Robbani, Megat Nagainaka, Mahanani Margani

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This study examines the impact of loan expansion and diversification strategies on credit risk in Indonesia’s fintech lending sector using panel data from 102 registered platforms between 2022 and 2025. Employing fixed-effects regression models, we analyse how loan growth and diversification influence delinquent loans. The findings reveal a non-linear relationship between loan growth and delinquent loans, implying that while moderate expansion reduces risk, excessive growth is associated with increased credit defaults, and diversification is not significant. These findings emphasise the importance of prudent growth and targeted risk management to ensure the sustainability of the fintech lending ecosystem.

Does Green Electricity Mitigate Carbon Emission Externalities? Industry-Specific Effects On Firm Profitability, Operational Efficiency, Valuation, And Market Risk In Taiwan Listed Companies, Mutiara Eka Puspita, Wei Hwa Pan, Bon Long Hsia, Huynh Phu Tan

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

his study explores the relationship between carbon emissions and firm financial performance across industries and how green electricity adoption moderates this effect. Using 9,925 firm-year observations from the Taiwan Economic Journal, we estimate panel regressions and compare Fixed Effects robust and Driscoll-Kraay (1998) standard errors to ensure robustness. Two-way and three-way interaction models reveal a green electricity paradox: biotech firms benefit, while financial and high-tech sectors decline. These findings highlight the need for sector-specific ESG investment models and tailored policy support to ensure an equitable green transition. The study contributes by integrating environmental-financial dynamics with industry heterogeneity in emerging markets

Millennials Will Pay The Price: Demographic Imbalance And Reform Inertia In Canada’S And Spain’S Pension Systems, Javier E. Burgos Oliva

Journal of New Finance

This paper examines how demographic imbalance and policy inertia undermine intergenerational equity in Canada’s partially funded and Spain’s pay-as-you-go pension systems. Despite structural differences, both nations transfer financial risks to Millennials and Gen Z due to aging populations, low fertility, and political resistance to reform. Using a comparative political economy framework and a stylized hyperbolic discounting model, the study shows institutional design alone cannot prevent unsustainability when incentives favor short-term gains. Policy recommendations include automatic adjustment mechanisms, independent fiscal councils, and private pension incentives.

The Other Side Of Peruvian Private Pension System, Paolo Daniel Jara

Journal of New Finance

Between 2020 and 2025, Peru's Congress authorized eight extraordinary withdrawal rounds from the Private Pension System (SPP), liquidating USD 38 billion. This paper argues that the trajectory is the empirical convergence of two analytically distinct failures. The first, from below, reflects the mismatch between the system's behavioral assumptions and a heterogeneous, predominantly informal workforce. The second, from above, reflects short-cycle electoral incentives, institutional asymmetry between Congress and the regulator, and slippery-slope dynamics. The paper proposes a reform combining free disposal of pension funds with individual fiscal responsibility, mediated by a binding waiver of the state-funded solidarity pension.

Retirement At Risk: The Political Economy Of Public Pension Governance, Allen Mendenhall, Dan Sutter

Journal of New Finance

State public pension systems manage over $6 trillion in assets while facing approximately $1.3 trillion in unfunded liabilities, raising fundamental questions about governance effectiveness and fiduciary accountability. This Article examines these challenges through the analytical framework of governance, applying insights from public choice, principal-agent models, and corporate governance to argue that details in implementation significantly impact outcomes.  We offer Ohio’s State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) as a case study. Recent governance reforms in Ohio—including legislative restructuring of the STRS board and enactment of fiduciary standards legislation modeled on the American Legislative Exchange Council’s framework—suggest the potential for earlier governance problems. …

Education For Sustainable Economic Development – Insights From Brazil, Ozéias Rodrigues Da Rocha

Doctoral

Purpose: This doctoral thesis examines the impact of Education for Economic Sustainable Development (ESD) in the municipality of Turmalina-MG, Brazil, with a focus on how primary education contributes to sustainable economic growth, environmental sustainability, and social equity. The research is guided by the central question: What is the impact of Education for Economic Sustainable Development (ESD)? The study also evaluates the extent to which local educational initiatives align with specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).

Methodology: Data were collected from one dominant primary school in Turmalina-MG through semi-structured …

From Innovation To Speculation: Ai And The Magnificent Seven, Rerotlhe B. Basele, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shuping Shi

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The AI boom has driven the Nasdaq and the Magnificent Seven tech stocks to record highs. But how much do these new records reflect underlying value, how much is speculation, and how vulnerable are these stocks and the wider market to a major downturn? Our evidence and analyses show clear signs of bubble exuberance in most of these stocks, concentrated in a few names like Nvidia, leading to latent risks for investors who assume their index funds are safely diversified and supported by wider economic fundamentals.

Trade Liberalization & Local Labor Markets: Evidence From The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, Josephine Jungha Lee

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper examines the local labor market effects of tariff reductions under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). While free trade agreements are often evaluated through aggregate gains, their adjustment costs may be concentrated in specific industries and local labor markets. This paper constructs a shift-share measure of KORUS exposure by combining national industry-level tariff reductions with pre-KORUS commuting zone (CZ) industrial composition, then estimates how more exposed CZs changed after implementation. The results show that greater KORUS exposure is associated with statistically significant declines in employment, employment-to-population ratios, labor force participation, and working-age population, alongside increases in unemployment. These …

Congestion Pricing: A Comprehensive Look At International Congestion Pricing Models And Applying Them To The United States, Ian Ertel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Urban traffic congestion imposes large costs through wasted time, excess fuel consumption, air pollution, and lost productivity. Although congestion pricing has been recognized as the economically efficient remedy since Pigou and Vickrey, implementation has been rare. This thesis examines the conditions under which congestion pricing succeeds by analyzing three pioneering cases: London, Singapore, and New York City. Across all three, charges reduced traffic volumes and improved speeds within the priced zones. Benefits extended beyond cordon boundaries, with measurable improvements on untolled suburban roads. The distributional effects depended on how revenues were recycled rather than on the charge itself. Political viability, …

Testing Potential Correlations Between Childhood Lead Exposure And Authoritarianism In Adulthood, Kragen Anderson

University Honors Theses

A significant body of research links lead exposure during childhood to negative effects ranging from increased impulsivity to societal level effects such as an increased likelihood of committing violent crime in adulthood. Due to exposure vectors such as lead water pipes, lead solder, lead based paints, and leaded gasoline there was significant lead exposure during childhood for large portions of the American population. This paper tested and found a statistically significant association between average population level lead exposure in childhood and likelihood of voting for candidate Trump later in life.

The Case For The Exclusion Of Exclusion: Intellectual Property, Masculine Legal Reason, And The Ethics Of Care, Ragya Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that current legal ideals of objectivity and neutrality are historically gendered and inseparable from the development of capitalist property relations and imperial expansion. It traces origins that begin with early modern witch hunts and Francis Bacon’s empiricism, where a new “scientific rationality” emerges alongside intensified patriarchal violence. The thesis then examines John Locke’s labour-based justification of property and the figure of the rational individual, showing how this framework legitimizes enclosure, dispossession and colonial appropriation under the guise of improvement and development. Building on this foundation, the analysis turns to moral psychology and how its allegedly universal stage …

Distance And Trade Elasticity: The Red Sea Crisis As A Natural Experiment, Felix C. Feldman

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper exploits the 2023 Houthi attacks on shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea and the subsequent mass rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope to estimate modern-day elasticities with respect to effective trade cost. This event is unique among chokepoint disruptions as it did not lead to a complete blockage. Instead, many ships voluntarily rerouted away the area, but not all. This paper uses a structural approach to infer unobservable costs incurred by inframarginal Red Sea shippers. This paper combines a reduced-form gravity specification with a discrete route-choice model where ships select …

Unionization Rates And Wage Growth: Trade, Transportation And Utilities, Nathaniel V. Thomas

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This research examines how unionization rates influence wage growth in the United States’ transportation, trade, and utilities sector. Drawing on secondary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the study compares union and non-union wage trends while taking in factors like industry characteristics. By using historical and comparative analyses across multiple industries, it aims to determine if higher union density consistently translates into stronger wage gains. Prior research in both U.S. and international contexts shows that union presence can positively affect wages, but this influence varies by sector, labor strength, and political backdrop

Transmission Of Firm-Level Demand Shocks To Stock Returns: Evidence From 10-K Text Analysis, Dylan Gunjan Parikh

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

Industrial organization and corporate finance papers that measure firm-level demand characteristics employ price, quantity, and product characteristic data that is unavailable in public financial disclosures. As a result, cross-sectional asset pricing literature attention to demand-side factors is limited. This paper constructs a demand shock measure from natural language processing of 28,263 publicly disclosed 10-K filings from 2001 to 2020. I find that a 1SD demand shock increases contemporaneously predicts a 1.8% increase (SE = 0.4%) in returns. Long-short portfolio sorted on demand shock generates 8.5% alpha (SE = 1.9%) against combined Fama-French and Q-factor models and a 0.91 sharpe ratio …

Offsetting Carbon With Lemons: Adverse Selection And Certification In The Voluntary Carbon Market, Vahideh Manshadi, Faidra Monachou, Ilan Morgenstern

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

To meet voluntary climate targets, firms often complement internal decarbonization efforts by purchasing carbon credits in the voluntary carbon market (VCM), which finance projects that reduce emissions elsewhere. However, these emissions reductions are difficult to verify, and growing evidence of overcrediting has cast doubt on the VCM's potential to genuinely offset emissions. We investigate how the VCM's defining features shape its climate effectiveness. Our model captures three central elements: adverse selection, as high-quality projects that truly reduce emissions are costlier yet difficult to distinguish from low-quality ones; imperfect third-party certification, as projects are screened based on a noisy signal of …

Many Hands Make Light Work: Restoring Edu-Economical Debts For Black Males, Joyice Robinson Myers

VA Engage Journal

A college degree is closely linked to economic stability, yet only 20% of Black men in the United States hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. These disparities are not accidental; they are the cumulative result of systems that have systematically denied Black males equitable access to educational and economic opportunity across generations. This systematic review examines the compounding relationship among family structure, educational attainment, and economic standing for Black males, and considers what restoring that relationship could look like in practice. I integrate three theoretical frameworks—Education Debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006), African American Male Theory (Bush & Bush, 2013), and the R³ISE …

Policy Whiplash: Tariffs And Uncertainty Among Firms And Investors In 2025, Boau Lilly Shepherd

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a series of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners, set to be implemented on April 9, 2025, a day he referred to as “Liberation Day”. Although these tariffs were paused almost immediately, they were subsequently renegotiated and revised throughout the summer of 2025. This paper finds evidence that Liberation Day caused a spike in uncertainty among firms and a spike in volatility among investors, while the subsequent summer revisions reduced uncertainty and volatility, despite tariff levels remaining substantially higher than those at the start of the year. These findings suggest that firms …

Towards An Inclusive Labour Market: Skills For The Future, Eva Erjavec

Economic and Business Review

In the transition to a knowledge-based society, human capital has become a key driver of economic growth, innovation, and social progress. As industries evolve and new technologies reshape labour markets, the development of future skills plays a crucial role in ensuring workforce adaptability, productivity, and long-term competitiveness. A bibliometric analysis aims to examine the importance of human capital for economic growth and the transition to a knowledge economy, synthesizing existing research and academic discussions. By systematically reviewing the literature, this paper seeks to provide insights into how skills and education contribute to sustainable economic development and social resilience. Furthermore, it …

The Nexus Between Economic Growth, Energy Consumption, Technology Innovation, And Co2 Emissions In Vietnam, Ha Thi Thu Nguyen

Economic and Business Review

Vietnam's rapid economic growth has intensified environmental pressures, heightening concerns about the country's ability to decouple growth from rising CO₂ emissions. Although green policies and initiatives have been introduced, questions remain regarding their effectiveness and the extent to which technological innovation and renewable energy can mitigate environmental degradation. This study applies the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) framework and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to investigate the short- and long-run impacts of economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), technological innovation, renewable energy consumption, and forest area on CO₂ emissions in Vietnam, using annual …

Incentives, Evidence, And Reminders For Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers To Policy Scale Up, Patrick Agte, Daniel R. Morales, Christopher Neilson, Sebastian Otero, Guatam Rao

Discussion Papers

Scaling up effective policies often requires the attention of frontline bureaucrats with many competing responsibilities. Even when policymakers adopt effective programs, implementation may not follow. In a nationwide experiment in the Dominican Republic, we test interventions to increase school principals' implementation of an educational program proven effective in a previous RCT. Only 37% of control schools verifiably implemented the intervention when ordered to by the Ministry of Education, compared with 83% in the original trial. Implementation was no higher among schools that previously implemented the program in the RCT, suggesting that fixed costs of adoption do not explain non-adoption. We …

(Wp 2026-03) Fomc Forecasts, Constant-Gain Learning, And Optimism/Pessimism, Stephen J. Cole

Economics Working Papers

This paper uses an adaptive learning framework to study FOMC forecasts from the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) dataset. FOMC expectations are modeled as the sum of two components: (1) an endogenous learning part and (2) a sentiment part capturing waves of optimism and/or pessimism. The results include key policy takeaways. FOMC forecasts are responsive to incoming macroeconomic information, consistent with adaptive learning, while sentiment is persistent, correlated across GDP growth and inflation forecasts, and becomes quantitatively more important during and around recessions. FOMC participants also rely more on their endogenous/learning model to form expectations, but sentiment plays a larger …

Social Media Is A Juggernaut: Lagged Correlation Analysis Using Ngram Data On “Internet” And “Social Media” With Amplification By The Advent Of The “Iphone”, William Zywiak, Gao Niu, Nicolas Petrell, Victoria Nichele, Kirsten Hokeness

Mathematics and Economics Faculty Journal Articles

The amount of new information transmitted per day can be overwhelming. The data available through Ngram Viewer allows statistical examination to determine the most salient topics, as well as lagged correlation and lagged variance to support possible causal connections between concepts. Using this database, we determined that COVID, crypto, microplastics, and especially social media are important topics of the last few years. We also present results that suggest the development of the internet and the iPhone fueled the prominence of social media, and the access of the iPhone also increased access to the internet.

“Megadeal” Subsidies, Local Spillovers And Corporate Innovation, Yoojin Lee, Shaphan Ng, Aruhn Venkat

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether the largest place-based, firm-specific corporate subsidies (“Megadeals”) awarded by state and local governments affect local firms’ innovation. First, we document that 1) subsidy firms innovate in the subsidized county and 2) subsidy firms bring inventors from other counties into the subsidized county, consistent with subsidy firms generating new knowledge locally. In our main test, we use a stacked cohort design with stringent fixed effects to document that local firms increase patenting following a Megadeal. Cross-sectionally, effects are increasing 1) in subsidy firm innovativeness, 2) in the technological closeness of subsidy firms and local firms, 3) when subsidy …

The Cleansing Effect Of Technological Investment: An Empirical Analysis Of Episodic Labor Market Polarization (2000–2010), Adam Murphy

University Honors Theses

This paper investigates the episodic nature of labor market polarization in the United States between 2000 and 2010. While the Skill-Biased Technological Change (SBTC) framework may have successfully explained the rise of inequality in the 1980s, it struggled to account for the wage stagnation and hollowing out of the middle class that followed in the 1990s and 2000s. Utilizing Task-Biased Technological Change (TBTC) as a primary lens, this study examines how the codification of routine tasks allowed for the widespread substitution of middle-skill labor by technological capital. By synthesizing IPUMS-CPS occupational data with Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) investment statistics, …