Digital Commons Network^™

Agency Mbs As Safe Assets, Zhiguo He, Zhaogang Song

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Measured as yield spreads against Treasury securities and AAA corporate bonds, the convenience premium of newly issued agency MBS averages more than half of the long-term Treasury convenience premium. The agency MBS convenience premium and issuance amount vary negatively with mortgage rate, consistent with a prepayment-driven channel. Placing agencies into conservatorship in 2008 and introducing liquidity regulations in 2013 significantly affected MBS convenience premium, consistent with government guarantee and regulatory treatment channels. Analyses of dispersion of dealers’ prepayment forecasts, seasoned MBS, and investors’ MBS holdings deliver further economic implications for agency MBS as safe assets.

Geospatial Analysis Of Urban Heat Islands And Heat Vulnerability In Chattogram, Bangladesh: Implications For Public Health Risks, Mst Sanjida Alam

Student Publications [Scholarly]

Rapid urbanization and land use change are intensifying the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and its associated health risks. It is the most common problem in the cities across the Global South. Chattogram the second-largest city in Bangladesh that has highly urbanized and experiencing transformation of croplands and vegetation into impervious surfaces. The changes contribute to the increase in the surface temperature and vulnerability of urban residents. This study aims to determine spatiotemporal patterns of UHI between 2011 and 2024 and the Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) for 2024 and its associated health risk of Chattogram District. The HVI was developed …

2026 February, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for February of 2026.

The Powerful Teacher: A Power Hypothesis For The Benefits Of Learning-By-Teaching, Sarah Shi Hui Wong, Stephen Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Why does teaching others enhance one's learning? This study advanced a novel power hypothesis of learning-by-teaching: When assuming the role of a teacher, students experience a heightened sense of power in influencing others, which increases their own learning. University students (N = 242) studied a scientific text using one of three learning methods: notetaking, explaining, or teaching. The notetaking group prepared to be tested and wrote study notes about the topic; the explaining group prepared to explain and wrote an explanation about the topic as how they would write a textbook for their peers; the teaching group prepared to teach …

How Consistent Friendlike Conversation With Ai Companions Influences Our Attitudes And Perceptions Toward Ai: An Exploratory Experiment, Qi Hui Jerlyn Ho, Meilan Hu, Adalia Yin Hui Goh, Emma Jane Pragasam, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite skepticism and distrust in artificial intelligence (AI), it is increasingly integrated into daily life, with its potential benefits drawing interest. Yet little is known about the attitudinal and psychological effects of human–AI interactions, and whether consistent interactions with AI chatbots can change users’ attitudes and perceptions. Our within-subjects experiment (N = 52) investigated how five days of socially oriented, friendlike interactions with an AI chatbot, versus a journaling control, influenced changes in attitudes and perceptions of AI. Participants’ attitudes towards AI, trust, perceived empathy, anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence and safety, dependency, and exploratory well-being indicators were recorded. Results …

Distribution Of Power In South Asia: Assessing Sino-Indian Conflict Propensity, Fatima Faisal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In international relations, the distribution of power is a key theme impacting the propensity for nations to break into wars; however, the vast academic literature is Eurocentric with a concentration on the United States and the Soviet Union. This paper shifts to the unexplored distribution of power in South Asian with a particular focus of Sino-Indian border conflicts namely the Sino-Indian War (1962), the Nathu La and Cho La clashes (1967), the Arunachal Ambush (1975), Sumdorong Chu standoff (1987), the Armed Confrontation (2013), and the Doklam Standoff (2017), and the Galwan Valley (2020) to determine if the region was more …

Mind The Gap: Morphological Defectivity And Suffixal Competition In Polish, Szymon E. Zuberek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigates morphological defectivity and suffixal competition in the genitive singular of Polish masculine inanimate nouns. Drawing on survey-based grammaticality judgments from native speakers, it examines how respondents select between the suffixes -a and -u or reject both as unacceptable, thereby signaling defectivity. Mixed-effects logistic regressions revealed that defectivity was rare overall but patterned systematically by age, education, and region, with additional baseline variability across lexical items. Suffix choice showed a strong preference for -a, modulated by age, education, and region, with additional baseline variability across lexical items. These findings inform our understanding of paradigm structure, sociolinguistic variation, and …

The Correlation Between Racial Inequality And Rent Stabilization Apartments In New York City, Juan G. Mayancela

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The federal, state, and local governments have enacted policies to address housing issues in New York City. But have African Americans and Latinos benefited from these policies? To explore this, we conduct a case study of the history of rent-stabilization policy and use data from New York City agencies to contextualize these developments. We also apply Claire Jean Kim’s racial hierarchy framework to examine how White supremacy has shaped housing policy and its effects on communities of color. Our analysis shows that African American and Latino communities face disadvantages both in the number of rent-stabilized units and in access to …

The Digital Divide In Political Redistricting: Ai's Impact On Minority Representation, Jaime Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Technology plays a significant role in people's daily lives worldwide. It has infiltrated many aspects of our lives, from education and healthcare to politics. With our increasing reliance on technology, artificial intelligence (AI) has become well-enmeshed in our political systems, affecting people everywhere, especially minority groups. This essay will investigate the potential effects of AI on the political influence of racial and ethnic minorities, specifically focusing on its role in altering voting district boundaries— a practice referred to as redistricting. There are several areas of concern under which AI could unintentionally worsen gerrymandering, impact equity in the representation of minority …

Dumatree: Free Online Education In Bridging The Migrant Digital Divide, Mia Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research Questions: This capstone project addresses two primary research questions. First, it examines the digital divide within the immigrant-serving non-profit sector, specifically investigating the lack of computer and digital skills training in organizations that serve refugees and migrants. Second, it asks: is it possible to build a scalable, professional-grade tech curriculum using only free, Wi-Fi-accessible online tools? To address the first question, 50 non-profit organizations serving refugees and migrants were reviewed to assess their technical education offerings. To address the second question, Dumatree.com was developed using universally accessible digital resources. A website was the most appropriate format for this project, …

Sometimes I Picture You Dreaming: How American Female Directors Use Women-In-Prison Films As A Pathway For Public Education And Activism In The Era Of Mass Incarceration, Nicolette Natale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the role of female directors in creating media that showcases how prisons perpetuate sexism or gender-based violence. As mass incarceration began to take off in the 1970s, this paper begins with an analysis of Jack Hill’s The Big Doll House (1971), which often served as the model for women-in-prison (WIP) exploitation films. While Hill perpetuated the white and male gaze in The Big Doll House, Stephanie Rothman subverts oppressive gazes in her WIP film, Terminal Island (1973), and demonstrates a concern with the historical gendered realities of prison – moving beyond representations of prison on the …

Somatosensory Cortex Responses To Illusory Touch In A Visual-Tactile Integration Task, Aditi Surendra Pawar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Perceptual illusions arising from multisensory integration reveal how the brain constructs subjective experience from sensory input, and provide a powerful means of allowing the investigation of neural processes that track perceptual interpretation rather than physical stimulation alone. While visual illusions induced by auditory or tactile stimuli have been fairly well studied, the neural mechanisms underlying visually-induced illusory touch remain unclear. This study investigated whether illusory tactile perception engages the somatosensory cortex in a manner similar to veridical touch. Twenty healthy adults participated in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study while performing a tactile numerosity judgment task. Each trial …

Molding The Mosaic: Progressive Coalition Formation In The 2021 New York City Council Elections, Sam Goodson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 2021 New York City Council primaries marked a decisive breakthrough for the city’s progressive left. A cohort of democratic-socialist and socialist-adjacent candidates won office across multiple boroughs, dramatically expanding the size and influence of the left flank of the council. This dissertation analyzes those victories and argues that they constituted a hinge moment in the construction of a progressive governing regime in New York City, with implications that extend beyond New York City politics to the study of social- democratic party families more broadly. Drawing on electoral returns, demographic data, campaign materials, and elite interviews, the project demonstrates that …

Towards Unbordered Worlds: Mutual Aid Amid Border Internalisation In New York City, Holly Maclean

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the relationship between mutual aid and border regimes through the case of Tompkins Distro, a mutual aid group that organises a weekly food distribution in the East Village of New York City. It focuses specifically on two forms of border internalisation that have shaped the emergence and context of Tompkins Distro: welfare state bordering and interior border enforcement. Drawing on four months of participant observations, interviews with core organisers, and documentary analysis, the study examines how Tompkins Distro meets people’s needs each week through a framework of collective care that actively rejects border logics of deservingness and …

Typeface: Machine-Viewing Gentrification On Storefront Imagery In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Alexander Mcquilkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gentrification—broadly, the replacement of a less powerful group by a more powerful one in an urban context—is oft-discussed in the popular press, but its definition is much-debated in the urban planning literature. Furthermore, academic treatments of displacement understandably focus on measurable yet fairly abstract indicators like changes in rent or income, whereas neighborhood change is often registered by residents on the ground using visual, but difficult-to-quantify markers like retail turnover. This project uses image recognition technology on a set of storefront photos to index the visual streetscape of a neighborhood, as well as to track changes to that portrait over …

Open To The Public(S): Privatized Public Space, Technology, And Aspirational Wealth At Hudson Yards, Troy Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using the publicly accessible plaza at the Hudson Yards development in New York City as a backdrop, this dissertation provides an examination of mechanisms by which public spaces—already under pressure from a range of factors including privatization and securitization—are further transformed via processes associated with the notion of smart cities initiatives, or platform urbanism. Following a literature review and presentation of relevant contextual background related to the history and configuration of the site, the data chapters present a range of operational and material mechanisms that cumulatively establish a class-based strategic provision of narrow boundaries for visitor access and activities oriented …

Reimagining Safety And Justice: Experiences Of And Resistance To Police Sexual Violence In New York City, Priscilla Bustamante

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the era following both Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, police sexual violence (PSV) currently constitutes the second most commonly reported police complaint after excessive force. Police across the U.S. are caught for some form of sexual misconduct once every five days, with on-duty officers found to commit sexual assaults at more than double the rate of the general population. The gendered and racialized perpetration of sexual violence extends far beyond policing; however, it has been intensified within the masculine, militarized carceral structures designed to legally control and punish.

Accordingly, this dissertation utilizes an interdisciplinary, multi-method approach to offer what …

A Critical Lens On Emotions And Learning: Shame, Loneliness, And Alienation In Community College, Mike Rifino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how community college students make sense of and navigate their emotions related to learning. Community colleges are two-year public higher education institutions that primarily serve working-class and students of color, enrolling almost half of all current undergraduates in the United States, yet their experiences are rarely addressed by researchers. Drawing on critical theories (e.g., feminist politics of emotions, Black feminist/queer women of color theorizing), emotions in this study are conceptualized as socio-politically situated, shaped by institutions and ideologies distributed through power across intersecting social identities. Although emotion research in higher education has grown substantially in the past …

Precarious Status, Essential Work: Migrant Labor, Social Reproduction, And The Politics Of Regularization In Covid Quebec, Jessie Lauren Stein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how migrant justice struggles in Quebec during and immediately after the COVID‑19 pandemic challenged and reshaped the cultural politics of membership in a neoliberal welfare state under strain. The research is centered on an ethnography of the Status for All campaign, a coalition effort spearheaded in Montreal to secure permanent immigration status for all people with precarious status in Canada. I situate pandemic‑era regularization efforts within overlapping crises of border governance, social reproduction, and federal–provincial relations. I argue that Quebec’s growing reliance on migrants with precarious status to sustain essential public social reproductive functions in care work, …

Good Mothers: Black Disabled Mothers & The Family Policing System, Siobhan Pokorney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Good Mothers: Black Disabled Mothers & the Family Policing System is a qualitative study utilizing 16 in-depth individual interviews with mothers who broadly identified as Black, disabled mothers who had at least one interaction with the family policing system as adults in or around NYC. The study examines the work these mothers engage in to navigate their identities and strategically present themselves as good mothers while facing state surveillance and oppressive systems (specifically the family policing system) which automatically frame them as “unfit mothers.” It traces their experiences and the identity work that they engage in through the anticipatory trauma …

Calculated Risks: The Power Of Predictive Risk Models To Regulate Families Of Color, Ashleigh Washington

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines predictive risk modelling (PRM) in New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS), specifically exploring AI-enabled design features, practices, and encoded and racialized assumptions about risk in child welfare prevention services. Guided by Critical Race Theory and the Algorithmic Ecology framework, this study traces how PRM in ACS evolved from a service termination tool into a broader, largely internal surveillance apparatus that leverages families’ personal information, including health information, to assess risk of future maltreatment and to evaluate contracted service providers. Drawing on analysis of public records and in-depth interviews with Black parents, the findings describe how …

Roadmap To Implement Statewide Veterans Coordinated Care In New Mexico, Nosa Akol, Zachary Bridgewater, Vincent Delsignore, Emily Graham, Mary Rachel Keville

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

The New Mexico State Legislature is interested in building a statewide coordinated care network to better connect veterans and their families to service. This document translates community input into an actionable roadmap for implementation. This outlines key activities, objectives, and milestones across each phase of the project--designed to guide state leaders and implementation partners from design to launch to steady state operations.

Examining The Effect Of Newcomers’ Adaptability On Proximal And Distal Outcomes Of Organizational Socialization, Vahe Permzadian, Mishra Vipanchi

Psychological Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

We investigate the role of individual adaptability (I-ADAPT) in newcomer socialization by exploring its effects on the proximal and distal outcomes of the work-role transition process. Based on I-ADAPT theory, our study assesses how I-ADAPT affects the three key indicators of newcomer adjustment (i.e., role clarity, task mastery, and social acceptance) and, in turn, their effect on the distal socialization outcomes of job satisfaction, turnover intention, and work withdrawal. Using a 2-wave prospective design, we collected data from 280 newcomers recruited through Prolific. Results indicated that I-ADAPT dimensions differentially predict newcomer adjustment, with learning adaptability affecting role clarity, uncertainty adaptability …

A General Limit Theory For Nonlinear Functionals Of Nonstationary Time Series, Qiying Wang, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

New limit theory is provided for a wide class of sample variance and covariance functionals involving both nonstationary and stationary time series. Sample functionals of this type commonly appear in regression applications and the asymptotics are particularly relevant to estimation and inference in nonlinear nonstationary regressions that involve unit root, local unit root, or fractional processes. The limit theory is unusually general in that it covers both parametric and nonparametric regressions. Self-normalized versions of these statistics are considered that are useful in inference. Numerical evidence reveals interesting strong bimodality in the finite sample distributions of conventional self-normalized statistics similar to …

Are Cities Losing Innovation Advantages? Online Versus Face-To-Face Interactions, Ruben Gaetani, Naqun Huang, Jing Li, Yanmin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

How did COVID-19 affect the innovation advantages of dense locations? Using data on the universe of U.S. patent applications, we find that the density premium in the production of novel inventions declined by 18.5%-22.9% in 2020-2021 relative to its pre-pandemic level. Smartphone data on local mobility suggest that the drop in the frequency of local interactions can explain a significant portion of this effect. While COVID-19 resulted in a temporary setback in the innovation advantages of dense locations, the role of urban density in facilitating the exchange and recombination of ideas is unlikely to be persistently replaced by online communication.

Removed: When Taxi Drivers Meet Dynamic Pricing: A Lesson From Singapore's Justgrab Program, Shih-Fen Cheng, Wen-Tai Hsu, Jing Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies how dynamic pricing influences taxi drivers’ behaviors using a unique event, the inception of the JustGrab program in Singapore in 2017, which introduces dynamic pricing to some, but not all, taxi drivers. This is the first time in history that traditional taxi drivers have access to dynamic pricing. Using data covering the universe of taxi trips before and after the inception of JustGrab, we find that there is spatial reallocation that directs more taxi drivers to the previously less-served areas, that there is also a temporal reallocation that directs more taxi drivers to rush hours, as well …

Efficient Bilateral Trade With Interdependent Values: The Use Of Two-Stage Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Efficient, voluntary bilateral trades are generally not implementable in an interdependent values environment with two-sided asymmetric information. To obtain more positive results, we consider two-stage mechanisms in which (i) the outcome (e.g., allocation of the goods) is determined first; (ii) the agents partially learn the state via their own outcome-decision payoffs; and (iii) transfers are finally made. We propose the approximate shoot-the-liar (AS) mechanism and identify Assumption 1, under which “approximately” efficient, voluntary trades are implementable. We further illustrate the permissiveness of the assumption, and characterize it in terms of the nature of interdependence in valuation functions – delineating the …

Dynamic Spatial Panel Data Models With Interactive Fixed Effects: M-Estimation And Inference Under Fixed Or Relatively Small T, Liyao Li, Ke Miao, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose an M-estimation method for dynamic spatial panel data models with interactive fixed effects based on (relatively) short panels. Unbiased estimating functions are constructed by adjusting the concentrated conditional quasi scores, given the initial values and with the factor loadings being concentrated out, to account for the effects of conditioning and concentration. Solving the estimating equations gives the M-estimators of the common parameters and common factors. Under fixed T, n-consistency and joint asymptotic normality of the M-estimators are established. Under T = o(n), the M-estimators of the common parameters are shown to be nT-consistent and asymptotically normal. For inference, …

Brand Switching Or Behavior Change: The 2023 Bud Light Boycott's Impact On Alcohol Purchases, Aljoscha Janssen

Research Collection School Of Economics

I study how the 2023 Bud Light boycott affected overall alcohol demand using household-level panel data and a set of difference-in-differences designs. Focusing on households that, before April 2023, regularly purchased Bud Light, I find a large drop in Bud Light volume (34%–37%), partial switching into other beer (＋70 to ＋90 ounces per month), and a net decline in total ethanol purchases of about 3–4 fl-oz per month, or roughly 5.5%–7.5% of pre-boycott intake. I detect no compensatory increase in wine or spirits. Scaled nationally, the quantity response is equivalent to roughly 150 million standard drinks per year; using CDC …

The Uncomfortable Truths About Inclusive Growth In Singapore, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Economics (Education) Ho Kong Weng said that the Ministry of Finance’s Occasional Paper provides food for thought on the way forward on social mobility, growth and redistribution. Assoc Prof Ho stated that these macro statistics suggest Singapore’s socioeconomic compact has performed well, and suggests that sustaining inclusive growth is a multifaceted effort that cannot be boiled down to one single metric, whether income, wealth, inequality or mobility. He noted that pursuing ever-lower Gini coefficients through heavy regulation risks deadweight losses without guaranteeing better mobility outcomes. He added that Singapore’s approach of tempering market-driven …