Business Commons^™

An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Democracy And Prosperity, Yujie Zhang

Masters Culminating Experiences (1993-2011)

Per capita wealth is far from evenly distributed in all countries of this world. For example, in 1992, real GDP per capita in Japan was about $15,105 (constant dollar using chain index). The corresponding measure for India was $1,282, or about 8.5% that of Japan. While the disparities are large in an absolute sense, they are small in comparison to the richest and poorest countries in the world. Are the rich countries and poor countries developing at the same rate? Have the poor countries shown any signs of catching up? What factors are correlated with the economic prosperity?

This paper …

Entrepreneurs And Entrepreneurial Development In State-Owned Enterprises Reform In China: Problems And Corruption, Baiwei Fu

Masters Culminating Experiences (1993-2011)

The report focuses on microeconomic reform in China, especially on entrepreneur problems and corruption in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). China has about 145,000 SOEs employing 113 million people. State enterprises account for 70 percent of fixed assets but only 34 percent of industrial output. The total state enterprise debt is greater than China’s bank deposit base. In some cases, SOEs are unable to afford to pay worker salaries or make pension payments. Reforms caused large-scale lay-offs and plant closures in recent years.

Entrepreneurs’ corruption contributes negative effects to SOE reform. Corruption is one way of getting around political control and poor …

Measuring Health Care Micro-Economic Efficiency: A Case Study Of Massachusetts Hospital's Quality And Value Measurement With Risk Adjustments, Yanling Zhang

Masters Culminating Experiences (1993-2011)

This report has four main parts: 1) Introduction: The healthcare phenomenon, considerations and economic implications; 2) A case study of measuring health care quality and value for methodology investigation; 3) conclusions and 4) policy implications. The principal aim of this report is to discuss methods of measuring microeconomic efficiency in healthcare. In the introduction, economic theories including elasticity, demand and supply, competition, market failure and so on are applied to healthcare. Next the role of this report is placed within the context of organization I worked for with a case study to show how to measure quality and value with …

Income Growth Across The U.S. States: An Empirical Analysis, Weixiong He

Masters Culminating Experiences (1993-2011)

The purpose of this study is to test the convergence hypothesis that prevails the neo-classical economic literature. In light of research on cross-country economic growth, the paper is adopting the same kind of methodology in studying income growth across U.S. states. The paper starts with a survey of literature in the study of growth of convergence. Then it tries to define the term of “convergence” in various economic implications, in particular the notion of “ð-Convergence” versus “ß-Convergence”, “conditional convergence” versus “absolute convergence”, and such popular notion as “club convergence”. The paper then goes into the quantitative analysis of U.S. per …

The Economic Development And Environment Degradation In China, Fei Luo

Masters Culminating Experiences (1993-2011)

This paper is mainly to present the interrelationship between economic growth and environment pollution in China. The past two decades of drastic economic development in China has caused many environment problems and inflicted great pressure on China’s further development. On the other hand, the deplete of natural resources and damages to environment quality have also cost China a big part of GNP growth and posed threat to Chinese people’s health and living standard.

This paper also illustrates the reasons for China’s current environment condition. It, by employing the theory of Sustainable Development and also analyzing the current global environment, criticizes …