Digital Commons Network^™

Near And Dear: How Proximity To Amenities Shapes Land Value In Maine, William Kopans

Honors Theses

Residential land values reflect the benefits of accessibility to amenities as well as the costs associated with commercial activity. This trade-off is particularly important in Maine, a predominantly rural state where most households rely on automobiles to access employment, retail, and civic amenities. Drawing on hedonic theory, I analyze how households value proximity to public and private amenities located within downtowns and shopping centers. Using parcel-level transaction data from ATTOM combined with amenity data from OpenStreetMap, I construct a novel approach that differentiates downtown and shopping center clusters across the state. The findings demonstrate that properties located immediately adjacent to …

From Coverage To Care: Evaluating The Effects Of Aca Medicaid Expansion On Birth Outcomes, Bailey R. Lengfelder

Economics Honors Projects

I examine the impact of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion on maternal and fetal health outcomes using National Center for Health Statistics Natality data from 2006 to 2023. I exploit staggered state adoption as a quasi-experiment, and the staggered differences-in-differences estimates indicate an increase in the share of Medicaid births but broadly no impact on maternal prenatal care, maternal health, and fetal health. The absence of statistically significant effects is consistent across heterogeneity groups. These null findings indicate that expanded insurance access through the Affordable Care Act may be insufficient to improve health outcomes. I do find a statistically …

Trade Openness And Economic Growth In Africa: Goods Or Services?, Fe Doukouré Charles

Journal of African Trade

This study examines the impact of trade openness in goods and services on economic growth across Africa, utilizing panel data for all 54 countries from 1980 to 2022. The analysis, conducted at both continental and regional economic community levels, finds that trade openness generally exerts a positive effect on economic performance. However, a significant regional heterogeneity emerges. Notably, a decoupling is observed between goods trade expansion and strong GDP growth in Central and East Africa, a weaker relationship in Northern and Southern Africa, and a similarly decoupled pattern for services trade and GDP growth in most regions, except for a …

But Who Are The Victims? Reassessing The 568 Higher Education Cartel, James V. Koch

Economics Faculty Publications

Thirty prestigious independent American institutions of higher education were at some time members of the 568 higher education group (often labeled a cartel). Seventeen of them were sued by the U.S. Government and representative students who alleged that their meetings and deliberations resulted in collusion that caused students to pay higher prices. Twelve of the seventeen institutions subsequently settled their cases and by 2024 collectively had paid $284 million to do so. However, an inspection of these institutions' pricing reveals that the median 568 Group institution lowered its average real net annual cost to its undergraduate students by 19.07% between …

The Environmental Justice Implications Of Industry Consolidation: Evidence From U.S. Landfills, Hui Zhou, Shan Zhang, Matthew D. Gordon

Economics Faculty Publications

Over the past three decades, the number of U.S. landfills has fallen by 41%, while average capacity has risen by 130%. This paper studies the distributional consequences of this consolidation. We show these changes coincide with waste disposal shifting toward locations with lower population density and higher shares of low-income, Black, and Hispanic residents. Event studies of landfill openings rule out large effects on migration, though new landfills are sited in places with fast-changing demographics. Using a novel measure of regulation built from large-language-model classifications of state statutes, we show evidence that increased state regulations may contribute to increasing disparities.

Representation Of Indigenous Spiritualities In The Ontario Grade 11 World Religions Curriculum: A Discourse And Textual Analysis, Katelin A. Chavez

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of The U.S. Student Loan Market And The Case For The Education Development Financial Institution, Ian Akers

CMC Senior Theses

The United States student loan market is shaped by a variety of market failures–credit constraints, positive externalities, behavioral frictions including myopia, debt aversion, and misperception–that together justify government intervention in the market. Yet the design of federal intervention is just as important as its existence. This thesis details the economic theory underpinning the market for student loans, evaluates three historical federal student loan programs (the Perkins Loan Program, the Federal Family Education Loan Program, and the Federal Direct Loan Program) through the lens of that theory. The thesis then proposes a novel institutional model as a targeted response to the …

Decomposing Carbon Intensity In U.S. Imports: Trade Composition Vs. Technological Change From 2000-2019, Alyssa K. Wong

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines whether the increasing share of U.S. manufactured imports from China between 2000 and 2019 affected the carbon intensity of U.S. consumption. Bilateral trade data from BACI are combined with emissions data from the OECD Inter-Country Input-Output framework to construct a measure of carbon intensity defined as emissions embodied per dollar of imports at a country level. Changes over time are decomposed into composition effects, driven by shifts in import shares, and technique effects, driven by changes in emissions intensity within exporting countries. Carbon intensity declines substantially over the period. While increased imports from China would have raised …

Authoritarian Development & Political Economy Of East Asia: The Making Of South Korea’S Developmental Regime, Christopher J. Chung

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the historical evolution of South Korea's developmental trajectory during the Park Chung-hee era (1961-1979), a period that left an indelible mark on the country's political economy and industrial landscape. Rather than treating Park's regime as its own starting point, this thesis situates it within a longer historical arc beginning with Japanese colonial rule and continuing through Syngman Rhee's aid-dependent republic, arguing that Korea's developmental success was neither institutionally inevitable nor externally engineered, but the product of a historically specific and ideologically driven state-building project. Four primary questions guide this research: what historical conditions shaped the institutional landscape …

Ceo Linguistic Stress And Abnormal Stock Returns Evidence From S&P 500 Earnings Conference Calls, Yiqi Sun

CMC Senior Theses

Stress is pervasive among corporate executives, yet its effect on firms' future abnormal return remains largely unexplored. This paper examines whether CEO's Linguistic stress exhibited during earnings conference calls predicts future abnormal stock returns. I provided a Large Language Model (Claude Sonnet 4.6) psychology-backed prompts to analyze CEO stress from linguistic patterns in 7491 earnings call transcripts from 470 companies in the S&P 500 during 2020-2024. I found three main results. First, the CEO linguistic stress is negatively and significantly associated with the immediate market reaction, with a one-unit increase in stress score associated with a 0.9% decrease in the …

The Jamaica That Dreams: A Normative Application Of Developmental Theory, Tamoy Pitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines Jamaica’s persistent underdevelopment through Martha Nussbaum's normative application of the capabilities approach as per her conception in Creating Capabilities. Through this approach, the paper will argue that Jamaica’s underdevelopment is a result of the failure of its domestic institutions to provide all citizens with the substantive freedoms and capabilities necessary to live lives of dignity. Originally detailed by Amartya Sen in his book Development as Freedom, the capabilities approach posits freedom as both the means and ends to development while rejecting contemporary approaches to development such as GDP, Utilitarianism, or Rawlsian resource-based approaches as insufficient frameworks for …

Partisipasi Pendidikan Menengah Atas Dan Perkawinan Remaja Perempuan 16–18 Tahun Di Indonesia, Herjuno Bagus Wicaksono, Diahhadi Setyonaluri

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This study examines the relationship between upper secondary education participation and early marriage among women aged 16–18 in Indonesia. Using district-level panel data for 2014–2023, the analysis applies a fixed effects regression to estimate the association between the female net enrollment rate and marriage prevalence among adolescent women. The results indicate that higher participation in upper secondary education is associated with lower early marriage rates. Socioeconomic factors and the implementation of the Marriage Law Reform are also relevant contributors. These findings suggest the importance of expanding access to upper secondary education as part of broader efforts to reduce early marriage.

The American Anomaly: Feasibility Of Universal Healthcare, William Bernstein

Student Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Economic Inequality And Family Formation In The United States, Elizabeth S. Krause

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation evaluates economic inequality and family formation in the United States in three essays. In Essay 1, I estimate the effect of providing subsidized access to immediate postpartum contraceptives on birth spacing and infant health among low-income teen mothers. The intent-to-treat estimates indicate a 20% reduction in the monthly short-interval birth rate among teens 12-14 months after policy enactment. I also find evidence that the policy increased the average interval between births and reduced preterm and low-birth weight births and NICU admission rates. In Essay 2, I provide evidence that single mothers and single women without children are important …

Volatility Modeling With An Application To Risk Parity Portfolios, Kenneth Hou

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis studies volatility modeling in the context of risk parity portfolio construction. I compare three risk parity portfolios that differ only in their underlying volatility model: a historical covariance baseline, a Bayesian stochastic volatility model, and a GRU–GARCH hybrid neural network. Using daily returns on Kenneth French’s five industry portfolios from January 2016 through December 2025, I construct monthly rebalanced portfolios under each model, with the SV and GRU forecasts embedded in hybrid covariance matrices that combine forecasted volatilities with rolling historical correlations. The results document a divergence between forecast accuracy and portfolio performance: the SV model is the …

Diplomatic Gaps And Global Finance: How U.S. Ambassadorial Vacancies Affect Bilateral Portfolio Investment Positions, Tianning Qin

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines how the absence of U.S. ambassadors impacts bilateral portfolio investment positions held by investors in the United States and counterpart countries. The panel dataset spans 2001 to 2019, covering 56 counterpart countries in terms of portfolio investment positions held by foreign investors in U.S. securities and 102 counterpart countries in terms of portfolio investment positions held by U.S. investors in foreign countries. Using the instrumental variable approach, the results show that a prolonged vacancy lasting at least three months in a year causes sizable and significant reductions in portfolio investments held by foreign investors in U.S. securities. …

Bitcoin And The American Conflict Over Money And Property, Jacob Smagula

CMC Senior Theses

I argue that Bitcoin is the latest expression of the recurring American conflict over who controls the terms of money and property, and that the political coalition formed around Bitcoin shares the same characteristics as earlier coalitions formed around this struggle. I review three historical cases that each produced a coalition opposing the existing monetary order: the Bank War of the 1830s, the Free Silver movement of the 1890s, and the populist backlash against the Federal Reserve during the 1979 Farm Crisis and the 2008 Great Recession. I find that Bitcoin’s architecture, which allows for self-custody, permissionless access, and an …

The Zoom Town Effect Of Remote Work On Rural Housing Markets, Luc R. Fabing

CMC Senior Theses

I study the impact of remote work on rural housing markets, highlighting the moderating role of outdoor recreation amenities. Using panel data from the American Community Survey and Zillow (2010–2024), I employ a Two-Way Fixed Effects model and a shift-share instrumental variable strategy to estimate the effect of work-from-home (WFH) rates on home prices. I find that higher WFH rates are strongly associated with higher home prices in high-recreation counties, but that the association is weak or negative in counties lacking significant recreation amenities. These findings point to amenity migration as a key mechanism through which remote work impacts rural …

Procedural Rhetoric And Prosociality: How Game Mechanics Shape Altruistic Decision-Making, Elijah Emory-Muhammad

CMC Senior Theses

This study investigates how different prosocial video game designs influence subsequent altruistic behavior, specifically comparing interactive narratives with procedural rhetoric. While prior research demonstrates that prosocial games can prime helpful behaviors, less is known about the underlying mechanical structures driving these effects. Fifteen participants engaged with either an Interactive Narrative Game (ING) or a Procedural Rhetoric Game (PRG) before completing a resource allocation task (Dictator Game). Results revealed no statistically significant differences between the two conditions in promoting sacrificial altruism or satisfying basic psychological needs. Instead, participants across both groups demonstrated a strong adherence to an equality-seeking norm, consistently choosing …

From Collective Punishment To Collective Action, Samuel N. Johnson-Saeger

CMC Senior Theses

Regime change may be sought in two primary ways, absent a turn to internal or external violence: through nonviolent resistance, from within, and sanctions, from abroad. This paper is about how those two pathways are intertwined. I challenge two different strands of the existing literature. First, I show that Liou et al. (2022)'s finding that sanctions increase the predicted probability of nonviolent resistance movement progress is subject to substantial upward bias from country heterogeneity. Incorporating country fixed effects, I show that sanctions, on average, have no statistically significant effect on resistance outcomes. Second, I challenge Chenoweth and Stephan (2008)'s argument …

Trading Volume And Forecast Accuracy In Kalshi Prediction Markets, Nicholas Smole

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the accuracy of Kalshi prediction markets and how different measures of trading volume shape their calibration and predictive power. Expanding upon previous models, use nonparametric calibration curves, pseudo-likelihood regressions, and Brier-score regressions on a large panel of Kalshi contracts to compare the effects of ex-post total volume and cumulative trading volume on market accuracy. Markets are typically well-calibrated near expiration; however, at longer horizons, low-volume markets exhibit substantially more miscalibration. Holding time to expiration fixed, greater cumulative volume is associated with higher accuracy. In comparison, higher ex-post total volume is associated with lower accuracy, highlighting the importance …

Demographics, Macroeconomy, Or Monetary Policy: What Drives Japan’S Short Run Economic Movements Since 1991?, James Ac Raymond Ii

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how Japan’s post-1991 macroeconomy behaves by analyzing quarterly inflation, money growth, and equity returns, with a focus on whether demographic change, macroeconomic indicators, or monetary policy better explains short run movements. Using Newey West regressions, the results show that demographics exert almost no influence at short horizons, while major Bank of Japan policy regimes such as QQE, NIRP, and YCC strongly shape liquidity conditions and dominate both money growth and equity performance. The findings suggest that demographic change matters primarily as a long run force that creates a low-rate environment, while short run dynamics are driven almost …

Determinants Of The U.S. Experience Economy: A Macroeconomic, Demographic, And Technological Analysis, 1984–2023, Chloe Ross

CMC Senior Theses

Pine and Gilmore et al. 1999 examine American consumers’ preferences for experiences over durable goods. Since then, there has been a multitude of research on the psychology behind this shift in consumption preferences, and there has been an abundance of media coverage of the new “experience economy.” This thesis goes beyond psychology and examines the macroeconomic, demographic, and technological determinants of experiential spending in the United States from 1984 to 2023. I use annual data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) and variables from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), US …

Medical And Recreational Cannabis In Colorado: Evidence From County-Level Sales And Medical Cards, Ethan Sattley

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how Colorado’s cannabis market transitioned after recreational legalization by analyzing county-level medical card registrations and the medical share of cannabis sales from 2010–2020. Using an event-study design, I find that medical participation remained stable for several years after recreational sales began in 2014, but then declined sharply, by roughly 50–60 cards per 10,000 residents, about ten quarters after legalization. Using annual sales data, I show that the medical share of total cannabis revenue collapsed much more quickly, falling by more than half between 2014 and 2015 and converging near zero in most counties by the late 2010s. …

Macroeconomic Resilience And Sentiment Dynamics In The Global Luxury Fashion Industry, Mehr Gupta

CMC Senior Theses

The global luxury fashion industry is often viewed as a sector where broad economic conditions intersect with individual spending behavior. Yet despite this common assumption, it remains unclear whether macroeconomic fluctuations meaningfully shape luxury firms’ financial performance. This thesis examines the relationship between four key macroeconomic indicators - consumer sentiment, disposable income, unemployment, and exchange rates - and firm-level quarterly revenue for twelve publicly listed luxury companies from the early 2000s through 2024. Firm financial data from S&P Capital IQ are matched with macroeconomic measures from the Federal Reserve (FRED), and the analysis employs a two-way fixed-effects framework with firm …

Factors Correlated With State-Level Variation In Grocery Consumption Changes During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sun Young Byun

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I employ a two-part empirical strategy to explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on grocery consumption across U.S. states. First, I use the United States Department of Agriculture's Weekly Retail Food Sales data from 2018-2023 to estimate a time-series panel model. I use the results to test three hypotheses regarding state-level variation in consumption changes and impacts in the initial pandemic period, the remaining pandemic period, and the post-pandemic period. Second, I use the estimated state-level effects as dependent variables in cross-sectional regressions to test three hypotheses linking variation in state-level consumption patterns to economic, demographic, …

The Lipstick Effect Across Economic Crises: An Empirical Study Of Cosmetics And Luxury Spending From 2004 – 2023, Richard M. Sweeney Iii

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines whether consumers shift toward lower-cost beauty products during periods of economic uncertainty and whether this behavior moves with financial market volatility. Using household-level microdata and aggregate monthly expenditure data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Surveys (2004–2023), the study evaluates how cosmetics spending changes relative to jewelry across two major economic crises: the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Across both datasets, cosmetics consistently become a larger share of discretionary spending when economic conditions deteriorate, supporting the presence of a lipstick-effect pattern. At the macro level, cosmetics spending is generally inversely related to market …

Maternity Leave And Women’S Leadership In A Changing Work Environment: Global Evidence, Josefine Byström

CMC Senior Theses

Family leave policies play a central role in shaping women’s participation and advancement in the labor market. This study investigates whether the relationship between maternity leave duration and women’s labor outcomes has changed before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a cross-country panel spanning multiple years with fixed effects, this study examines two related outcomes: women’s labor force participation and representation in leadership. Prior to 2011, maternity leave duration displayed opposite non-linear patterns across these outcomes: an inverted U-shape for labor force participation, peaking at moderate leave lengths, and a U-shape for women’s leadership, which improved only at longer durations …

The Tcja And Shareholder Payouts, Carson T. Bloom

CMC Senior Theses

Abstract

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provided corporations an estimated $233 billion in tax savings, yet relatively little is known about how firms allocated this cash windfall. This study examines whether growth and mature firms differed in whether they used these tax savings to distribute dividends and repurchase shares. Using panel data on publicly traded North American firms from 2016–2019, I classify firms as either growth or mature based on their cash-flow patterns and estimate the effects of the TCJA on their behavior using a difference-in-differences design.

The results indicate that mature firms increased shareholder payouts significantly more …