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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Economics

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Bryant University

2021

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Understanding Real Estate Market Dynamics: The Covid-19 Effect, Faith Winslow Dec 2021

Understanding Real Estate Market Dynamics: The Covid-19 Effect, Faith Winslow

Honors Projects in Finance

The covid-19 pandemic has led to significant shifts in consumer trends, including in the real estate market. Through multivariable regression, this study investigates how covid-19 has impacted the demand as well as pricing for houses in the United States. The findings contribute to the literature in a few major ways. First, they provide a current look at the impact of covid-19 on the housing market by analyzing monthly, state-level data from before and during the pandemic. Secondly, they provide clarity and supplement journals and research currently in the works. This is the first national study that looks at the effect …

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Movin’ On Up? A Survey Experiment On Mobility Enhancing Policies, Jared Barton, Xiaofei Pan Dec 2021

Movin’ On Up? A Survey Experiment On Mobility Enhancing Policies, Jared Barton, Xiaofei Pan

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

We use a nationwide survey experiment in the United States to measure whether information on intergenerational economic mobility or policy-specific arguments influence support for six pro-mobility policies advocated by political entrepreneurs. We find the information treatments do not affect support, but the argument treatments significantly increase support for three of the policies. We also include a behavioral measure by allowing respondents the opportunity to write their U.S. Senators. We find argument treatments significantly increase the likelihood that letters address economic mobility and significantly promote advocacy for that policy in the letter, but no increase in advocacy from the information treatments. …

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The Effect Of Task Choice And Task Assignment On The Gender Earnings Gap: An Experimental Study, Kai Ou, Xiaofei Pan Jul 2021

The Effect Of Task Choice And Task Assignment On The Gender Earnings Gap: An Experimental Study, Kai Ou, Xiaofei Pan

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Previous studies explain the gender earnings gap by gender differences in choosing competitive and higher-paying jobs. However, little is known about whether and how women’s earnings are affected when they choose more challenging jobs. In this study, we use a novel identification strategy to investigate 1) how the gender earnings gap arises from individuals’ self-selecting into different tasks and 2) whether mobilizing women to work on the tasks typically preferred by men increases women’s earnings and decreases the earnings gap. Our results show that men who prefer the hard and higher-paid task are more likely to obtain higher earnings regardless …

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Does Student Performance In Introductory Economics And Business Courses Impact Ets Scores?, Peter J. Nigro, Laura Beaudin, David C. Ketcham, Michael A. Roberto May 2021

Does Student Performance In Introductory Economics And Business Courses Impact Ets Scores?, Peter J. Nigro, Laura Beaudin, David C. Ketcham, Michael A. Roberto

Finance Department Faculty Journal Articles

This study examines the impact of economics education on student performance on the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test in Business. We demonstrate that grades in introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics courses have a positive relationship with overall exam performance as well as sub-scores in most content areas of the test. Furthermore, we use a measure of “extranormal” ability in economics and demonstrate its positive relationship to test performance. “Extranormal” ability represents the portion of course grades that cannot be explained by prior academic achievement. Finally, we show that the relationship between “extranormal” ability and exam performance is much more limited …

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Go Books, Go Bulldogs, Go Women: Examining The Factors That Affect Female Enrollment At Undergraduate Schools, Sarah Desantis Apr 2021

Go Books, Go Bulldogs, Go Women: Examining The Factors That Affect Female Enrollment At Undergraduate Schools, Sarah Desantis

Honors Projects in Economics

This study investigates women's underrepresentation and the declining enrollment trend in undergraduate business programs by examining New England schools between 2015-2017. The study uses a linear regression model, testing a variety of variables including student characteristics and outcomes, college characteristics, funding and faculty, and women-related experiences measured against the dependent variable of percentage of women enrolled. The study found that (1) the presence of a women's center increases women enrollment; (2) the greater diversity representation on campus increases women enrollment; (3) women are more attracted to private universities and are less likely to attend with an increase in the undergraduate …

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Prediction Of Individual Income: A Machine Learning Approach, Michael Matkowski Apr 2021

Prediction Of Individual Income: A Machine Learning Approach, Michael Matkowski

Honors Projects in Economics

The use of machine learning models to improve prediction problems and handle increasingly large datasets is a rising trend in economics. Prediction plays a particularly important role in applied economics because it provides critical insights to assess market outcomes. This study builds on previous literature to showcase the relative power of these modelling methodologies in economics through the prediction of income. This research utilizes data from the Current Population Survey from 2017 – 2020, containing 467,811 observations and 264 variables. 2017-2018 data served as training data for the models and 2019-2020 served as data for the two testing sets. The …

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Trade Liberalization And Economic Performance: An Empirical Analysis, Brandon Fontaine Jan 2021

Trade Liberalization And Economic Performance: An Empirical Analysis, Brandon Fontaine

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

Trade liberalization has long been a debated topic; free traders will argue it makes all involved parties more prosperous while protectionists say that it costs jobs and hurts countries’ economies. This paper will study the relationship between a country’s trade freedom, as measured by the Heritage Foundations trade openness metrics, and the nation’s economic performance. This study will incorporate indicators such as gross domestic product, unemployment, and investment flows across 56 countries of different income levels to determine whether free trade policies lead to greater economic performance. The three income levels analyzed will be high-income, medium-income, and low-income. The empirical …

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The Effect Of Poor Working Conditions And Income Inequality On Gdp Growth, Trent Remillard Jan 2021

The Effect Of Poor Working Conditions And Income Inequality On Gdp Growth, Trent Remillard

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper looks to see if there is a relationship between poor working conditions and growth in GDP annually. Many nations have historically treated their workers very poorly, and offered little in support or protection to them. Consequently, many of these same nations have seen large boosts in annual GDP growth. This paper aims to see if there is a correlation between this treatment of workers, and these subsequent boosts of GDP growth, and if there is, is it possible to predict the expected level of growth based on these factors.

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Foreign Direct Investment And Economic Growth: A Panel Data Analysis, Yuan Yao Jan 2021

Foreign Direct Investment And Economic Growth: A Panel Data Analysis, Yuan Yao

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the influences of FDI on economic growth of selected Latin American and Asian countries both directly and indirectly through factors such as technology, knowledge transfer, and trade openness. The study uses the growth regression to examine and identify not only the relationship between the FDI and economic growth of the underlying countries but also the interaction effects of FDI with human capital and trade openness on the economic growth based on the statistical performance of the interaction terms in the model. The evidence from the study shows that FDI does have an impact on economic growth both …

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Macroeconomic Drivers Of Reit Stock Prices, Nicholas Mulligan Jan 2021

Macroeconomic Drivers Of Reit Stock Prices, Nicholas Mulligan

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates several variables as potential drivers of REIT stock performance. The results show that four of the six independent variables, all of positively correlated ones, were significant. The combination of variables proved to be very predictive, yielding an R-squared of 0.9712. The two variables that were added in this study versus the benchmark Morgan Stanley study proved to be highly significant. The two negatively correlated variables proved to be insignificant.

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A Time Series Analysis Of Determinants Of Pce Inflation In The United States, Elliot Charron Jan 2021

A Time Series Analysis Of Determinants Of Pce Inflation In The United States, Elliot Charron

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the factors contributing to the PCE inflation rate in the United States. The study incorporates economic determinants in a time series analysis to examine the influence of economic variables on the PCE Inflation rate in the United States. The economic variables include the unemployment rate, wages, inflation expectations, the federal funds rate, the money supply, import prices, and the labor force participation rate. The ADF unit root test shows that the first difference is stationary while the Johansen test of cointegration shows that there is cointegration of 7 and that a vector error correction model (VECM) must …

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Star Player Bias In The Nba: A Quantile Regression Approach, Daniel Barrett Jan 2021

Star Player Bias In The Nba: A Quantile Regression Approach, Daniel Barrett

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the impact of an NBA player’s salary on the number of fouls drawn by them in a season. NBA referees have complete discretion in making calls of whether a player does or does not commit a foul in game, with decisions susceptible to bias, favoring certain players with more fouls called in their favor than another player. The study uses salary to determine a player’s value, using a panel dataset of all players from the 2015-16 NBA season through the 2018-19 NBA season for salary and game statistics. The impact of salary is determined using a quantile …

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Comparing Machine Learning Techniques For Predicting Bank Failure, Armen Eghian Jan 2021

Comparing Machine Learning Techniques For Predicting Bank Failure, Armen Eghian

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

The study of machine learning has helped create and refine many types of predictive models. These models have been applied to countless problems, but the importance of banking stability has led many researchers to create models predicting if a bank will be active in future years. Neural networks, support vector machines, and traditional regression models, have been used to predict bank failure, but random forests have not been fully explored. This paper shows random forests can offer prediction power greater than neural networks and logit models when used to predict bank failure. This aligns with work comparing random forests and …

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Student Achievement In Rhode Island Charter Schools: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, Edward Golas Jan 2021

Student Achievement In Rhode Island Charter Schools: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, Edward Golas

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

Using standardized test results from the school year 2018-19 this study compares the performance of 3rd through 8th graders in Rhode Island charter schools to their peers in traditional public schools (TPSs). This study also uses OLS techniques to test if Rhode Island charter schools help to bridge the achievement gap between minority (black and Hispanic) students and white students. The results show that in approximately ¾ of comparable instances, Rhode Island charter schools outperform TPSs on both English and math standardized tests. Additionally, it was found that Hispanic students attending a charter school are predicted to score higher on …

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The Relationship Between Transportation Accessibility And Economic Development, Abigail Kiggen Jan 2021

The Relationship Between Transportation Accessibility And Economic Development, Abigail Kiggen

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the possible relationship between transportation infrastructure accessibility and economic development in a given region. The study will incorporate data from counties in the state of Massachusetts to compare development from previous studies in the New York area. The independent variable will be transportation infrastructure accessibility, and the dependent variable will be measures of economic development. The results show that there are generally not correlations between better accessibility and economic development in a given region.

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Quality Analysis Of Lift Ticket Prices In The United States Using Logistic Regression, Jared Murphy Jan 2021

Quality Analysis Of Lift Ticket Prices In The United States Using Logistic Regression, Jared Murphy

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the possibility of a relationship between Lift Ticket Prices and quality of resorts in the United States of America. The study incorporates information from a number of past research papers analyzing the price of lift tickets and the individual characteristics of the ski area. In recent years, the price of lift tickets has increased far greater than the rate of inflation. With over 350 companies operating in the industry in the United States, they combine for annual revenue greater than $2 billion. Consumers who enjoy the sport have seen a sharp increase in prices throughout the past …

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Economic Determinants Of Within-Country Political Instability And Violence: A Panel Data Examination Of Central And South America, Michael Biskupic Jan 2021

Economic Determinants Of Within-Country Political Instability And Violence: A Panel Data Examination Of Central And South America, Michael Biskupic

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the potential impact of economic factors on withincountry violence and instability utilizing a panel data approach. More specifically, this paper examines the impact of within-country income inequality on a measure of political stability and a measure of within-country violence. Utilizing a Generalized Least Squares method, this paper finds that only in countries with a per-capita income less than $5000 is there a significant relationship between income inequality and violence. This paper concludes with a discussion of the results, recommendations for future research, and a section on policy recommendations based on the empirical results and potential risks not …

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