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Part 5: Strangers In A Strange Land: Finding Refuge In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

In 2021, a record breaking 90 million people were forcibly displaced, fleeing war, violence, human rights violations, and persecution. In early 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added to this toll, pushing the estimated number of refugees past the 100- million- person mark This chapter explores how all of these developments are affecting Hampton Roads, which has received more than 300 Afghans and other political refugees over the past eighteen months.

Part 2: The Rent Is Too Damn High: Housing In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Is Hampton Roads an affordable place to live? At first glance, median rents and housing values are below those of the closest major metropolitan areas. Comparing housing costs to household income yields a different conclusion: more than 1 in 3 households in Hampton Roads paid more than 30% of their income for housing and 1 in 7 households paid more than 50% of their income for housing. In this chapter, we explore housing affordability in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and the United States and ask what the region can do to make housing more affordable.

Part 1: Inflation, Drones, And The Economy Of Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

2022 may be characterized as the “best of times and worst of times.” Unemployment continued to fall, wages continued to rise, and homeowners experienced rises in property values. Hotels continued to rebound from the COVID-19 economic shock and the Port of Virginia experienced record volumes of cargo traffic. On the other hand, prices at the grocery store, gas station, and, it seems, almost everywhere else, continued to rise. Employers struggled to find the right employees at the right time and economic sentiment soured. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlighted the continuing revolution in military affairs brought about by drones and other …

Cafos And Surface Water Quality: Evidence From Wisconsin, Zach Raff, Andrew G. Meyer

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) – animal feeding operations with over 1,000 animal units in confined spaces – have proliferated over the past 30 years in the United States. CAFOs provide operational cost savings, but higher animal concentrations in confined spaces can generate external costs, e.g., non-point source water pollution. In this study, we improve on previous research designs to estimate the relationship between the growth in CAFOs and surface water quality using longitudinal data on a large spatial scale. We use a panel dataset from 1995-2017 that links CAFO intensity with nearby surface water quality readings in Wisconsin to …

Do Economic Conditions Affect Climate Change Beliefs And Support For Climate Action? Evidence From The Us In The Wake Of The Great Recession, Andrew G. Meyer

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

I show that climate skepticism increases with negative economic shocks and that the effects are concentrated among individuals in the labor force. I primarily employ a panel of US individuals in the period following the Great Recession, but also find consistent results with an alternative instrumental variables strategy. Among labor force participants, a one‐percentage point increase in the local unemployment rate leads to a three to five percentage point decrease in the probability of believing climate change is real and requires action. I conclude that support for climate change policies could depend on labor market conditions.

Part 3: Who's At The Bedside? Does Virginia Have Enough Nurses?, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

In 2021, nurses ranked again as the most trusted profession in the United States. Yet, even though many Americans view them favorably, nurses have been the target of conspiracy theories, verbal abuse, and physical violence. As more nurses report symptoms of burnout and some are quitting the profession entirely, we explore the coming shortage of nurses in Virginia and ask what factors limit the supply of nurses.

Front Matter: 2022 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 2022 State of the Commonwealth Report authored by the Center for Economic Analysis and Policy at Old Dominion University.

Part 5: A Deeper Dive Into The Blacksburg-Christiansburg Metropolitan Area, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

The Blacksburg-Christiansburg metropolitan statistical area includes the counties of Giles, Montgomery, and Pulaski as well as the independent city of Radford. Virginia Tech, with over 37,000 full-time equivalent students in the 2021–2022 academic year, is not only the largest employer in the metro area, but it continues to expand its reach across the Commonwealth. We highlight how the metro region has fared over the last decade and discuss the prospects for future growth.

2022 State Of The Commonwealth Report, Vinod Agarwal, Barbara Blake, Bojana Bolozan, Ashley Desilva, Nikki Johnson, James V. Koch, Timothy M. Komarek, Feng Lian, Sharon Lomax, Christian Manty, Janet Molinaro, Brendan O'Hallarn, Terry Parker, Matt Voegel, Suzanne Wright, Robert M. Mcnab

State of the Commonwealth Reports

This is Old Dominion University’s eighth 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 O. 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 over the coming decade without glossing over the challenges we face. Instead of …

Part 4: Virginia's Lawyers Confront Tougher Times, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

While movies and television shows portray lawyers as members of high society, with expensive cars and tastes, the reality is grittier. In 2021, more than 90% of law students took out a loan to enable them to pay their costs, and the typical law school graduate owed $165,000 in loans. The crucial point of this report, however, is that significant proportions of law school graduates are destined to be disappointed if they pursue a career in law believing they will earn lots of money. In this chapter, we explore the supply of lawyers in Virginia and whether we are producing …

Part 2: Another Year In Recovery: Virginia's Metropolitan Areas, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

If Virginia is to continue its recovery from the pandemic economic shock of 2020, this growth will largely come from Virginia’s metropolitan areas. We ask whether Virginians have returned to the labor force in the aftermath of the pandemic and explore how unemployment rates may not reflect the availability of labor. Lastly, we examine how population change may influence the future of Virginia’s metro areas.

Part 1: Inflation, Uncertainty, And Volatility Undermine Virginia's Recovery, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

If the story of 2020 was the pandemic and the tale of 2021 was the recovery, then rising inflation and interest rates dominated the narrative of 2022. The economic recovery remained incomplete, with jobs returning to pre-pandemic levels but some Virginians remaining outside the labor force. Now, with the possibility of a recession in 2023 looming, we ask how Virginia fared over the last 12 months and what are the prospects for future growth?

The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Government Debt In Pakistan, Ateeb Akhter Shah Syed, Kaneez Fatima, Junaid Kamal

Business Review

This paper examines the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis for Pakistan using a vector error-correction model. The sample period extends from June 2002 to January 2020. The results are reported using variance decompositions and impulse response functions. The base model contains six variables and is estimated with 4 lags. We find support for the idea that wealth does not increase as government debt increases; Hence, it proves the fact that economic agents are rational actors and foresee current expansionary actions of the government that result in accumulation of debt as the present value of future taxation that they have to pay and …

Empirical Evidences On Pricing Mechanism In Pakistan: A Duration Analysis, Fauzia Sohail, Ambreen Fatima

Business Review

This study evaluates the price setting behavior across main cities of Pakistan by employing the micro data from retail price survey. The most contemporary research technique of Duration Analysis is employed where survivor functions are estimated by most illustrious nonparametric Kaplan-Meier and Nelson-Aalen Estimators. Hazard Functions for various product groups are also estimated by employing parametric Weibull Hazard Model. Results confirm that perishable food items have shortest duration of one week for most of the spells, where government regulation caused prices to change more frequently. It is found that on average small cities faced lower hazard and thus comparably lesser …

Dynastic And Generative Intent For First-Generation Black Wealth Creators In A Modern Racial Enclave Economy, Latanya White

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study explores the underlying causes of the racial wealth gap between Black and White Americans: the absence of intergenerational wealth transfers in Black business families. As American wealth becomes concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, the data reveal that one third of the 400 wealthiest Americans inherited their wealth from the entrepreneurial endeavors of earlier generations in their family, some creating entrepreneurial dynasties. An important aspect of succession planning is the construct of generativity. Generativity is practiced through leading, nurturing, promoting, and teaching the next generation to create things to “move down the generational chain and connect to a …

Rational Choices And Welfare Changes In Philippine Family Energy Demand: Evidence From Family Income And Expenditure Surveys, Jesus C. Dumagan, Michael Rm Abrigo

Ateneo School of Government Publications

This study found Philippine family demands for (1) electricity, (2) gas and liquid fuels, (3) solid fuels, (4) food, and (5) others—based on Family Income and Expenditure Surveys (FIES) in 2009, 2012, and 2015—are rational (i.e., expenditure minimizing). Specifically, all own-price elasticities are negative (downward sloping demand curves). Cross-price elasticities between (1), (2), and (3) are positive (substitutes) while cross-price elasticities of (1), (2), and (3) with (4) or (5) are mostly negative (generally complements). Income elasticities are positive (normal goods), except for (3), comprising “fuelwood, charcoal, and biomass residues” that are consumed less at higher incomes (inferior goods). These …

Teaching Income Inequality With Data-Driven Visualization, Sang T. Truong, Humberto Barreto

School of Business and Leadership Working Papers

The distribution of household income is a central concern in economics due to its strong influence on society’s well-being and social cohesion. Yet, non-expert audiences face serious obstacles in understanding conventional measures of inequality. To effectively communicate the extent of income inequality in the United States, we have developed a novel technique for visualizing income distribution and its dispersion over time by using U.S. household income microdata from the Current Population Survey. The result is a striking dynamic animation of income distribution over time, drawing public attention and encouraging further investigation of income inequality. Detailed implementation is available at https://github.com/sangttruong/incomevis. …

Negotiating The Bbnj Agreement : Exploring The Caribbean Community's Engagement From A Blue Economy Perspective With Special Focus On Environmental Impact Assessment Provisions, Kahlil Hassanali

World Maritime University Ph.D. Dissertations

The countries of the world are engaged in negotiations to develop an international legally binding instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (The BBNJ agreement). In the BBNJ process, the member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) participate as a regional bloc and have been actively involved in the negotiations. This thesis applies an action research methodology along with a mix of methods, including the reading of primary, secondary and grey literature; document content analysis; interviews and informal conversations; …

The Industry Expertise Of Sell-Side Equity Analysts, Matthew Louis Dearth

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Institutional investors, the most important consumer of analyst research, consistently rank industry knowledge as the most important attribute of analysts. Despite this, little is known about how investors measure industry knowledge since analyst output which can be evaluated objectively is usually associated with firm-level outcomes such as earnings forecasts or price targets. Comprehensive data are recently available for analyst forecasts of key performance indicators (“KPIs”), firm-performance metrics specific to a particular industry. Whereas reactions to earnings forecasts and other firm-level outputs only inform us about analyst skill in firm-level predictions, stock-price reactions to forecast revisions of industryspecific KPIs can proxy …

Rethinking The Role Of Employment Barriers In Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence From A Fixed Effects Analysis, Jian Qi Tan, Irene Y. H. Ng, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using a panel dataset from a five-wave survey of participants in Singapore’s Work Support Programme (WSP) from 2010 to 2016, we quantify the cumulative negative impact of facing multiple employment barriers and demonstrate the association between the individual stressors and labor market indicators. Using a fixed effects model to reduce the confounding effects of unobservables, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the number of employment barriers brings about a 2.7 to 3.5 percentage point increase in the probability of being unemployed and a 58 SGD to 78 SGD decrease in individual earnings.

Does A District Mandate Matter For The Behavior Of Politicians? An Analysis Of Roll-Call Votes And Parliamentary Speeches, Andreas Born, Aljoscha Janssen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In most democracies, members of parliament (MPs) are elected either through a party list or by a district. We use a discontinuity in the German electoral system to investigate the causal effect of a district election on an MP’s conformity with the party line. A district election does not affect roll-call voting behavior causally, possibly due to overall high adherence to party-line voting. Analyzing the parliamentary speeches of each MP allows us to overcome the high party-line discipline with regard to parliamentary voting. Using textual analysis and machine learning techniques, we create two measures of closeness of an MP’s speeches …

Sustainable Strategies For Mass Rapid Transit Ppps, Sock Yong Phang, Bin Chye Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Mass rapid transit (MRT) PPPs have proliferated in the past two decades. This chapter provides a framework to categorise and understand alternative PPP designs. As MRT systems are inherently large, unprofitable and risky projects, PPP design is critical to project success and sustainability. We study the experiences of MRT PPPs in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing to understand factors underlying success and failure and to arrive at policy recommendations for PPPs. Policymakers need to have additional governance improvement and risk mitigation measures in place when tied supply chains are utilised. Hong Kong’s experience illustrates that ‘Rail plus Property’ strategy …

Are Simple Mechanisms Optimal When Agents Are Unsophisticated?, Jiangtao Li, Piotr Dworczak

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the design of mechanisms involving agents that have limited strategic sophistication. We define a mechanism to be simple if—given the assumed level of strategic sophistication—agents can determine their optimal strategy. We examine whether it is optimal for the mechanism designer who faces strategically unsophisticated agents to offer a simple mechanism. We show that when the designer uses a mechanism that is not simple, while she loses the ability to predict play, she may nevertheless be better off no matter how agents resolve their strategic confusion

Uniform Nonparametric Inference For Spatially Dependent Panel Data: The Xtnpsreg Command, Jia Li, Zhipeng Liao, Wenyu Zhou

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this article, we introduce a command, xtnpsreg, that implements a uniform nonparametric inference procedure for possibly unbalanced panel datasets with general forms of spatio-temporal dependence. We demonstrate how to apply this command in several use cases, including (i) the nonparametric estimation of conditional mean function and its marginal response; (ii) the construction of uniform confidence bands for these nonparametric functional parameters; (iii) specification tests for parametric model restrictions; and (iv) the estimation and uniform inference for functional coefficients in semi-nonparametric models.

Does A District Mandate Matter For The Behavior Of Politicians? An Analysis Of Roll-Call Votes And Parliamentary Speeches, Andreas Born, Aljoscha Janssen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In most democracies, members of parliament (MPs) are elected either through a party list or by a district. We use a discontinuity in the German electoral system to investigate the causal effect of a district election on an MP’s conformity with the party line. A district election does not affect roll-call voting behavior causally, possibly due to overall high adherence to party-line voting. Analyzing the parliamentary speeches of each MP allows us to overcome the high party-line discipline with regard to parliamentary voting. Using textual analysis and machine learning techniques, we create two measures of closeness of an MP’s speeches …

Forecasting Equity Index Volatility By Measuring The Linkage Among Component Stocks, Yue Qiu, Tian Xie, Jun Yu, Qiankun Zhou

Research Collection School Of Economics

The linkage among the realized volatilities of component stocks is important when modeling and forecasting the relevant index volatility. In this article, the linkage is measured via an extended Common Correlated Effects (CCEs) approach under a panel heterogeneous autoregression model where unobserved common factors in errors are assumed. Consistency of the CCE estimator is obtained. The common factors are extracted using the principal component analysis. Empirical studies show that realized volatility models exploiting the linkage effects lead to significantly better out-of-sample forecast performance, for example, an up to 32% increase in the pseudo R2. We also conduct various forecasting exercises …

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #3: Economy & Employment, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

Life in Hampton Roads 2022 - Economy & Employment

Hampton Roads residents had mixed perceptions of the economy but showed some optimism about their own financial situation. Less than half (42.4%) of those surveyed rated the economic conditions in Hampton Roads as excellent (3.1%) or good (39.3%). A similar percentage (42%) rated economic conditions as fair and 14.6% rated them as poor. Interestingly, despite the impacts of COVID-19, these ratings are not much different than in past years of the survey, during or prior to the pandemic. For example, in 2021, 47.5% rated economic conditions as excellent or good and …

The Effect Of Magnitude And Probability On Plea Bargain Decision-Making, Megan L. Small

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Decision-making is studied in various aspects of life and can be especially vital in the context of the criminal justice system, such as plea bargains. Previous research in this area used a less commonly used task (fill-in-the-blank) in addition to a student sample (Falligant & Pence, 2019). The current study uses probability discounting to study the choice between accepting a plea bargain for a shorter incarceration sentence or risking a trial with a longer sentence on a sample of adults with experience in the criminal justice system. Three sentence durations, or magnitudes, were used (1 year, 5 years, and 25 …

Mathematics Of Generalized Versions Of The Melitz, Krugman, And Armington Models With Detailed Derivations, Edward J. Balistreri, David G. Tarr

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

We provide detailed textbook style mathematical derivations of an extended version of the heterogenous firms model of Melitz (2003), as well as the Armington (1969) and Krugman (1980) models. Our model of heterogeneous firms extends the model of Melitz (2003) by allowing multiple sectors, intermediates, heterogeneous regions based on data, labor-leisure choice, initial heterogeneous tariffs, multiple factors of production, the possibility of sector-specific inputs and trade imbalances based on data, and we incorporate global and unilateral tariff policy shocks. Although the models in this paper are extensions in numerous directions of the Melitz trade model of heterogeneous firms, the pedagogical …

The Predictive Ability Of Stock Market Factors, Fatma Ahmed, Mohammed Elgammal Elgammal, David Gordon Mcmillan

Economics

Purpose – This paper aims to ask whether a range of stock market factors contain information that is useful to investors by generating a trading rule based on one-step-ahead forecasts from rolling and recursive regressions. Design/methodology/approach – Using USA data across 3,256 firms, the authors estimate stock returns on a range of factors using both fixed-effects panel and individual regressions. The authors use rolling and recursive approaches to generate time-varying coefficients. Subsequently, the authors generate one-step-ahead forecasts for expected returns, simulate a trading strategy and compare its performance with realised returns. Findings – Results from the panel and individual firm …