Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On The Impacts Of Extreme Natural Events On Health, Moumita Ghorai

Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three chapters that examine how extreme events impact health outcomes such as short-term illness, body mass index, probability of pre-term birth, and mortality. The study reveals the severe consequences of these events and shows that certain groups within a particular country are affected disproportionately.

The first chapter examines whether National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), India’s flagship workfare program, mitigates adverse health outcomes of a drought. This paper contributes to a growing area of research on adaptations to climate change. Using Indian Human Development Survey (2004-2005 and 2010-2011), a nationally representative panel data set, and high resolution …

The Asymmetric Effect Of Sentiment On Equity Returns, Mishal Ahmed

Dissertations

In the first chapter titled “The Asymmetric Effect of Sentiment on U.S. Equity Returns”, we test the asymmetric impact of investor sentiment, proxied by the Baker-Wurgler (2007) investor sentiment index, on expected stock returns in the U.S. We regress sentiment on market and economy-wide fundamentals, use the residuals as a measure of excess sentiment and estimate long-horizon return regressions using positive and negative components of excess sentiment as predictors. We hypothesize that excessive optimism leads investors to make significant portfolio changes whereas excessive pessimism makes investors more cautious about investing, due to loss aversion. Primary results confirm our hypothesis with …

Essays On Climate Change-Related Extreme Events, Alvin E. Harris

Dissertations

There are increasing and urgent calls for global economies to join in the fight against the impacts of climate change (World Bank, 2020). With reports such as the World Bank (2020) of climate change costing billions of dollars in losses for economies, the purpose of my dissertation is to examine the effects of climate change-related extreme events and their potential economic effects in three areas: agriculture, migration, and the labor market.

My first essay focuses on the factors that influence farmers’ perception of risk and adaptive strategies against the effects of climate change-related extreme events. I examine whether farmers’ social …

Three Essays On Financial Markets And Monetary Policy, Abeba Siraj Mussa

Dissertations

The global financial crisis triggered by fallout from the sub-prime mortgage market in the U.S. has led economists to focus attention on the role of monetary policy in the crisis. The question of how monetary policy affects the financial sector is the key to the current debate over the role financial stability should play in the monetary policy decisions. As a contribution to this debate, my dissertation examines the link between monetary policy and three main financial sectors - the banking sector, the stock market, and the housing market.

The first essay examines whether the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) …