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Addressing Perceived Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Attorney Discipline, Susan Saab Fortney, Heather Zirke Jan 2025

Addressing Perceived Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Attorney Discipline, Susan Saab Fortney, Heather Zirke

Faculty Scholarship

Perceived racial and ethnic disparities in attorney discipline threaten public confidence in the legal profession’s fairness and equity. This Article explores whether lawyers of color are subject to a disproportionate number of disciplinary actions. It draws on studies that reveal patterns of disparate outcomes tied to factors such as practice setting, representation during proceedings, and decision-maker bias. The authors assess how systemic issues may contribute to these disparities and highlights gaps in research and transparency. To address these challenges, the Article recommends a multi-faceted approach. This includes better collection and analysis of demographic data, procedural reforms to ensure equitable treatment, …

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Original Discontent, William Magnuson Jan 2025

Original Discontent, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

There are many theories of constitutional interpretation. Most, but not all, of them assert that, in interpreting the Constitution’s provisions, we should start by taking seriously the intentions of the enactors, meaning, roughly speaking, its drafters, defenders and ratifiers. This Article argues that, in doing so, judges, scholars and policymakers have underestimated an important feature of the process of constitution-making: the discontent of the enactors themselves with the Constitution they were enacting. Time and again, during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, during the penning of the Federalist Papers, and during the state ratifying conventions, the enactors expressed deep reservations about …

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Law, Conflict, And Hybrid Warfare: A Teaching Imperative For A Changing World, Cynthia Alkon, Andrea Kupfer Schneider Jan 2025

Law, Conflict, And Hybrid Warfare: A Teaching Imperative For A Changing World, Cynthia Alkon, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers increasingly find themselves at the frontlines of the battlefield, just not in the traditional sense. Hybrid warfare is a conflict form that combines traditional military offensive measures with nontraditional methods, including the harnessing of legal systems to achieve strategic goals. Lawyers have always been at the frontline of typical legal risk assessment, thinking about a client's risk of liability or regulation costs generally. Now, lawyers must stand at the ready for a lot more: lawyers must be prepared for cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns using artificial intelligence, the use of court systems to suppress reporting or shield bad actors, and so …

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The United States Healthcare System: From Medicare To Post-Pandemic Health Policy, William M. Sage Jan 2025

The United States Healthcare System: From Medicare To Post-Pandemic Health Policy, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

My purpose in this essay is to comment on national health policy in the United States over the past sixty years.  My conclusions are less optimistic than what I had hoped when I began my teaching and research career in the 1990s to be able to say in 2025.  In particular, the successful expansion of publicly supported health coverage via the passage of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or “Obamacare”) in 2010 seems to have triggered -- though I hesitate to say that it caused – a backsliding from broader commitments to clinical performance, population health, and social solidarity that …

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"Arbitration In Name Only": A Race Claims Mismatch, Michael Z. Green Jan 2025

"Arbitration In Name Only": A Race Claims Mismatch, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

With arbitration's meteoric rise as a tool in resolving statutory employment discrimination matters beginning in the 1990s, concerns about lack of employee bargaining power received little consideration when raised in court challenges to the enforcement of employer-mandated agreements to arbitrate those claims. Only in rare circumstances, when an employer appeared to go to extremes in using its overwhelming bargaining power to implement an arbitration process so clearly unfair would a court find the agreement created an unfair "arbitration in name only" that should not be enforced. 

Employers have become savvier in how they require employees to agree to resolve discrimination …

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Criminal Background Checks: Implications For Discrimination And Crime, Murat C. Mungan Jan 2025

Criminal Background Checks: Implications For Discrimination And Crime, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal background checks have recently attracted the attention of academics and policy makers alike. Recent laws and policies, like “ban the box” and expungements, focus on the availability of criminal background information as well as the permissibility of using this type of information. Quite surprisingly, policies about the content of the information –whose permissibility and availability are questioned by recent work– is not scrutinized as much.

In this article, I investigate the informational quality of existing background checks. For this purpose, I review the history and evolution of traditional criminal background checks. These checks rely on ‘rap sheets’ –documents containing …

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Determinants Of Socially Responsible Ai Governance, Daryl Lim Jan 2025

Determinants Of Socially Responsible Ai Governance, Daryl Lim

Faculty Scholarship

The signing of the first international AI treaty by the United States, European Union, and other nations marks a pivotal step in establishing a global framework for AI governance, ensuring that AI systems respect human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. This article advances the concepts of justice, equity, and the rule of law as yardsticks of socially responsible AI—from development through deployment—to ensure that AI technologies do not exacerbate existing inequalities but actively promote fairness and inclusivity. Part I explores AI’s potential to improve access to justice for marginalized communities and small and medium-sized law firms while scrutinizing …

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Mind The Machine: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Ai Consciousness, Rachel Mesel Jan 2025

Mind The Machine: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Ai Consciousness, Rachel Mesel

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores existing tests for machine consciousness, specifically focusing on the AI Consciousness Test (ACT) proposed by Susan Schneider. I will begin by assessing why historic tests such as the Turing Test and subsequent modified versions of the Turing Test are not adequate for modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems given their limitations. Then, I will provide an analysis of the existing objections to the ACT which involve methodological concerns. Following this discussion, I will argue that though such methodological concerns are substantial, the most significant flaw with the ACT is Schneider’s lack of guidance on how the test ought …

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Taking Stock: Investigating The Relationship Between Stock-Based Compensation And Share Price Performance In Public Software Companies, Ethan Choi Jan 2025

Taking Stock: Investigating The Relationship Between Stock-Based Compensation And Share Price Performance In Public Software Companies, Ethan Choi

CMC Senior Theses

There has been considerable debate around the practice of compensating employees and executives using stock-based compensation (“SBC”). Studies point to a myriad of both benefits and drawbacks of SBC; while in practice, firms with high SBC intensity have harmed shareholders through share count dilution. One industry in particular has drawn sharp investor criticism for its SBC intensity: software. Despite the software sector’s growing importance to the economy and influence in the public markets, no academic literature has analyzed the impacts of SBC on software companies specifically. Filling the gap, investor literature has sought to examine this topic in the context …

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Move Fast And Get Sued: Uber's Entry Strategy And The Role Of City Regulation, Leonora Willett Jan 2025

Move Fast And Get Sued: Uber's Entry Strategy And The Role Of City Regulation, Leonora Willett

CMC Senior Theses

This paper investigates the impact of Uber's entry into U.S. cities on federal court case filings, particularly focusing on how this disruptive platform influenced litigation patterns and regulatory responses. My analysis seeks to understand whether Uber’s entry into cities significantly affected the frequency and types of legal cases filed, including personal injury, contract disputes, and labor claims. Using an event study model and federal court data from the Federal Judicial Center spanning 2009 to 2023, my analysis evaluates changes in case filings before and after Uber's entry. Additionally, I analyze the impact of city-level regulations in five major cities on …

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Polarization Nation: A Historical Comparative Analysis Of The American Media, Colin Scanlon Jan 2025

Polarization Nation: A Historical Comparative Analysis Of The American Media, Colin Scanlon

CMC Senior Theses

A common narrative that persists in our current political age is that the American public is more divided than ever before. Survey data and scholarship points to the mass media as being a driving force for increased polarization among Americans. However America has historically been a nation founded on division and partisanship, with a free press working in the backdrop since the founding. So what is it about the modern mass media that contributes to this narrative about record levels of polarization? Scholarship points to four key metrics of polarization to understand the modern media landscape and polarization– partisan rhetoric, …

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The Danger Of Deepfakes: Information Pollution And Epistemic Insecurity, Camille Doherty Jan 2025

The Danger Of Deepfakes: Information Pollution And Epistemic Insecurity, Camille Doherty

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the dangers of deepfakes to democratic stability, emphasizing their capacity to pollute our information ecosystem and undermine trust in media. Beyond the immediate political harms from deepfake incidents, deepfakes are troubling for their impact on our collective relationship to media, truth, and one another. As exposure to deepfakes becomes more common, discerning fact from fiction will become increasingly difficult. Over time, this could foster widespread skepticism of all media and, worse, apathy toward truth itself. With eroded trust and shared truths, democracies risk losing epistemic security – the foundation for informed deliberation, decision-making, and accountability in democratic …

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The Effect Of Variations In Us Policy Toward Taiwan On Us – China Relations, Thomas Cheah Jan 2025

The Effect Of Variations In Us Policy Toward Taiwan On Us – China Relations, Thomas Cheah

CMC Senior Theses

US foreign policy to Taiwan has been defined by strategic ambiguity ever since the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. However, changes and variations in the intensity of strategic ambiguity have come to the fore in recent years, specifically beginning under the first Trump Administration. This has undermined US China relations in certain cases.The findings reveal that while US actions, such as arms sales and symbolic gestures, provoke short-term tensions with China, the broader bilateral relationship remains defined by economic interdependence and strategic competition.

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Fiscal Zoning Under Fire: A Case Study Of Local Land Use Politics In California, George Ashford Jan 2025

Fiscal Zoning Under Fire: A Case Study Of Local Land Use Politics In California, George Ashford

CMC Senior Theses

This paper interprets interviews with participants in a local land use controversy to explore the role of voters’ financial incentives in shaping local land use politics. Drawing on previous studies that characterize the politics of urban and suburban housing development as driven by the economic incentives of different groups, predominantly homeowners’ incentive to increase residential property values, the paper seeks to address a key puzzle for scholars and reformers: why homeowners do not support land use policy changes that would increase their property values. While the literature has evolved from modeling restrictive zoning as an efficient pricing scheme for local …

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National And Regional Bank Deposits And Their Relationship To The Stock Market, Joseph Zhong Jan 2025

National And Regional Bank Deposits And Their Relationship To The Stock Market, Joseph Zhong

CMC Senior Theses

Institutional investors started using bank deposits as a Leading Economic Indicator to predict stock market returns. I find that bank deposits lead stock market returns by 2 weeks at the national level. Examining the mechanism through which bank deposits affect stock market returns, existing literature postulates the Bank Deposit Lending Channel: increased bank deposits increase financial liquidity, powering and leading stock market returns. I do not find evidence for the Bank Deposit Lending Channel. In my regional analysis, I find that bank deposit behavior differs drastically between US regions. In general, regional bank deposits still lead stock market returns. In …

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Likes, Comments, And Rhetoric: Demagoguery In The Age Of The Internet And Social Media, Andrea Posada Jan 2025

Likes, Comments, And Rhetoric: Demagoguery In The Age Of The Internet And Social Media, Andrea Posada

CMC Senior Theses

As the internet and social media have created spaces for politics, they have also facilitated the opportunity for demagogic behavior to become accessible and widespread online. This thesis compares how Donald Trump and Kamala Harris utilized social media in their respective 2016 and 2024 campaigns. It examines why Donald Trump’s online use was demagogic and harmful to political practices. I begin by defining demagoguery, providing two case studies of how demagogic behavior has existed in politics, and explaining different constraints against demagoguery. Through a history of the impact of technology on politics, I describe how the internet has evolved to …

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Understanding The Ideological Transformation Of Farc In Colombia, Savannah Grier Jan 2025

Understanding The Ideological Transformation Of Farc In Colombia, Savannah Grier

CMC Senior Theses

In 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) agreed to a peace deal that led to their disarmament. The former guerrilla group, FARC, integrated into Colombian politics by forming a new party called Comunes. FARC, thus, has taken a similar route to other former rebel groups in Latin America by pursuing its agenda as a political party after demobilizing. This thesis examines the ideological transformation and political evolution of FARC, analyzing its transition from a Marxist-Leninist insurgent group to a political party within Colombia’s democratic system. By exploring FARC’s historical role in the Colombian conflict …

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A Wise Latina Or A Wise Judge?: Exploring How Social Identity Shapes Knowledge Acquisition, Maribella Munoz-Jimenez Jan 2025

A Wise Latina Or A Wise Judge?: Exploring How Social Identity Shapes Knowledge Acquisition, Maribella Munoz-Jimenez

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the intersection of epistemology and social identity through the contrasting arguments of Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice O’Connor’s claim that wisdom is universally accessible contrasts with Justice Sotomayor’s argument that social identities offer unique insights to decision-making. The analysis begins by defining traditional and contrasting it to standpoint epistemology, highlighting how social identity influences knowledge acquisition and supporting Justice Sotomayor’s argument (Chapter 1). It then critiques the potential pitfalls of standpoint epistemology, such as blind deference, through Dror’s weak inversion thesis and Táíwò’s perspective on how we often highlight a subsegment of marginalized voices …

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Terms, Conditions, And Responsibility: Who Is Responsible?, Dara Schoolcraft Jan 2025

Terms, Conditions, And Responsibility: Who Is Responsible?, Dara Schoolcraft

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis I explore the dynamics of responsibility in the context of terms and conditions agreements between corporations and consumers. I begin by highlighting how the burden of understanding terms and conditions has been shifted onto consumers and examine real-world conflicts arising from this shift, such as the wrongful death lawsuit involving Disney and data-sharing practices by General Motors. I argue that consumer responsibility, rooted in Kant’s Categorical Imperative, is not a reasonable solution due to barriers like low literacy levels and information asymmetry. Instead, I advocate for a corporate-centered approach, emphasizing the ethical duty of corporations to ensure …

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Sustainability Gaps: The Role Of Esg Disparities In M&A Performance During The Covid-19 Era, Anastasia Nikolaeva Jan 2025

Sustainability Gaps: The Role Of Esg Disparities In M&A Performance During The Covid-19 Era, Anastasia Nikolaeva

CMC Senior Theses

My thesis investigates the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) score disparities between acquirer and target companies on cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from 2018 to 2022, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Bloomberg and Refinitiv Eikon datasets, I explore whether the ESG delta between merging firms influences financial outcomes, hypothesizing that higher ESG alignment enhances CAR (cumulative abnormal return). My preliminary findings indicate that larger ESG disparities positively affect acquirer CAR but may reduce target CAR, suggesting that ESG alignment benefits vary by stakeholder and merger dynamics. These results highlight the evolving …

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Do Corporations Gain When They Leave California? Evidence From Equity Markets And Financial Statements, Stuart Mccallum Jan 2025

Do Corporations Gain When They Leave California? Evidence From Equity Markets And Financial Statements, Stuart Mccallum

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the whether a corporation materially gains when they relocate their headquarters from California to another state. The empirical evidence comes from an event study approach looking at the stock market reaction in the days after a public announcement was made as well as a financial statement analysis approach. The initial stock market reaction on the first trading day after the announcement is made is positive and significant, with an average abnormal return of 1.22%. The magnitude of the event study findings aligns with previous studies into corporate headquarter relocation announcements. However, unlike previous studies on the stock …

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Uncovering Earnings Management In The U.S. Tech Industry: Strategies To Meet Or Just Beat Analyst Eps Expectations, Morgan Schilling Jan 2025

Uncovering Earnings Management In The U.S. Tech Industry: Strategies To Meet Or Just Beat Analyst Eps Expectations, Morgan Schilling

CMC Senior Theses

This paper investigates earnings management practices within the U.S. tech industry, focusing on firms that meet or just beat analyst EPS expectations. I specifically built off the Stubben (2010) model that used discretionary revenue to identify potential mismanagement across multiple industries. The modified model incorporates deferred revenue as well as accounts receivable to identify revenue recognition practices in an industry where subscription based revenue is highly relevant. I hypothesize that tech firms with aggressive revenue recognition strategies, particularly those with higher levels of accounts receivable, are more likely to engage in earnings management in order to meet EPS targets. A …

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Exploring Unicorns Of India: What Are The Factors That Allow Them To Fly?, Tanisha Kejriwal Jan 2025

Exploring Unicorns Of India: What Are The Factors That Allow Them To Fly?, Tanisha Kejriwal

CMC Senior Theses

Over the past few decades, startups and entrepreneurial ventures have surged globally, with unicorns - private startups valued at over $1 billion - emerging as standout success stories. Today, India is home to the third largest number of unicorns in the world, and studying their success factors is becoming increasingly relevant. Using a novel dataset of 112 Indian unicorns, this paper studies economic, founder, regional and industrial factors influencing their valuation/revenue and valuation/profit ratios, in order to identify factors that lead to start-up success. I find that gender, age, total funding raised, and time taken to achieve unicorn status after …

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From Pixels To Proposals: Exploring The Effects Of Empathy And Immersion On Economic And Moral Decision - Making In Video Games, Alex Dien Jan 2025

From Pixels To Proposals: Exploring The Effects Of Empathy And Immersion On Economic And Moral Decision - Making In Video Games, Alex Dien

CMC Senior Theses

This study explores the role of immersive environments, specifically video games, in shaping empathy and decision-making during economic exchanges like the Ultimatum Game. Traditional economic models emphasize rationality, but more recent research highlights the influence of emotions and empathy on decision-making. Using a 2x2 between-subjects design, this proposed study will investigate how varying levels of immersion (active gameplay versus passive observation) and fairness of offers (fair versus unfair) affect participants' responses to non-human characters (NPCs). I plan to recruit eighty participants, aged 18-25, to engage with a video game, Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games, 2018) either through playing or …

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Unlocking Value Or Signaling Trouble? Exploring The Determinants Of Immediate Market Reactions To Underwater Employee Option Exchanges, Riley Lai Jan 2025

Unlocking Value Or Signaling Trouble? Exploring The Determinants Of Immediate Market Reactions To Underwater Employee Option Exchanges, Riley Lai

CMC Senior Theses

Whether employee option exchanges are an effective process to ensure a firm’s future outlook is vital for companies to consider. Evaluating the impact of these exchanges on firm value and shareholder wealth can provide insights for companies to align employee incentives with shareholder interests. This paper seeks to determine a definitive correlation between employee option exchange announcements and positive or negative abnormal returns over the announcement window. The focus is on the regulatory environment post-Section 409A, a provision in the Internal Revenue Code that prohibits the issuance of in-the-money employee stock options. This paper fills a significant gap in the …

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“Google Is Free:” The Harm In Deferring To Information Technology And The Reimplementation Of Interpersonal Connection As A Solution, Nicole Cepeda Jan 2025

“Google Is Free:” The Harm In Deferring To Information Technology And The Reimplementation Of Interpersonal Connection As A Solution, Nicole Cepeda

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I confront the phenomenon that is information technology and the epistemological issues that it raises. I address how we should engage with the online resources allotted to us by media conglomerates, given both the variety of epistemic perspectives that they relay back to the user, from disenfranchised affinity to fake news, and the respective biases of the user. I propose that by reintroducing an interpersonal communicative framework, we are able to create a system that allows users to work deconstruct their biases and learn new information more effectively, all while users are able to flag information as …

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A Guide To Creating Trans And Gender Variant Inclusive Film Sets: For Directors And Department Heads On Non-Union/Low Budget Film Sets, Perce Alvarez Jan 2025

A Guide To Creating Trans And Gender Variant Inclusive Film Sets: For Directors And Department Heads On Non-Union/Low Budget Film Sets, Perce Alvarez

CMC Senior Theses

The following thesis explores transgender and gender-variant inclusivity practices in film production. It conducts an overview of information on lgbtq+ and transgender populations, discrimination, and filmmaking practices. From there, a baseline of definitions for terms and worldviews adopted by transgender and gender-variant communities is established. Primarily, this thesis focuses on establishing reasoning for and presenting practical applications of transgender inclusivity that can be implemented throughout the film production process. It accomplishes this by focusing on specific parts of the production process and how the leaders of those subprocesses can put these inclusivity practices into action.

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The Rationality Of Cooperation In One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemmas: A Defense Of David Gauthier's Constrained Maximization, Carlos Hernandez Jan 2025

The Rationality Of Cooperation In One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemmas: A Defense Of David Gauthier's Constrained Maximization, Carlos Hernandez

CMC Senior Theses

For moral skeptics and self-interested individuals, it is difficult for them to recognize the need and benefit for cooperation. That is, there is an intrinsic conflict in claiming that constraining one’s self-interest when cooperating with others serves to promote an individual’s self-interest. Even so, David Gauthier provides constrained maximization as a rational choice theory that addresses this conflict and balances the concepts of rationality and morality. Constrained maximization demonstrates to the moral skeptics and self-interested individuals that cooperation is in their self-interest when using the situation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Yet, as Holly Smith highlights, constrained maximization does not provide …

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Should Students Pull The Plug?: How Ai Redefines Creativity In The Classroom, Labiba Hassan Jan 2025

Should Students Pull The Plug?: How Ai Redefines Creativity In The Classroom, Labiba Hassan

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines how artificial intelligence (AI) tools, specifically ChatGPT as a tutor for students (ChatGPTt), reshapes creativity in the classroom. Does AI undermine or enrich creativity by altering its relational and self-disclosive dimensions? Engaging with Lindsay Brainard’s critique that AI erodes creativity by disrupting human connection and self-expression, I argue for a redefinition of creativity as a dynamic process sustained by emotion, intention, novelty, risk, and spontaneity — conditions adaptable to AI-mediated contexts. The paper challenges the premise that creativity depends on interpersonal connection, showing that self-disclosure can emerge through meaningful engagement with external systems, such as ChatGPTt. By …

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China’S Economic Slowdown: How Does It Affect New Zealand’S Economy?, Haven Qin Jan 2025

China’S Economic Slowdown: How Does It Affect New Zealand’S Economy?, Haven Qin

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the impact of China’s economic slowdown on New Zealand’s economy, focusing on sector-specific linkages across real estate, the stock market, exports, and import prices. As a small open economy, New Zealand’s deep integration with global markets makes it particularly vulnerable to external shocks from its largest trading partner. Employing OLS regression models and monthly economic data, this study reveals the nuanced pathways through which China’s economic conditions influence New Zealand. Key findings include the sensitivity of New Zealand’s housing market to Chinese property investments and Chinese stock market performance, the influence of Chinese financial market performance on …

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