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Economics

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Clemson University

2008

Articles 1 - 18 of 18

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Benchmarking Regional Competitiveness: The Role Of A Region's Economic Legacy In Determining Competitiveness, Rebekka Dudensing Dec 2008

Benchmarking Regional Competitiveness: The Role Of A Region's Economic Legacy In Determining Competitiveness, Rebekka Dudensing

All Dissertations

Studies benchmarking or indexing regional competitiveness are increasingly common in the popular and professional press. Indices are popular because they condense a large amount of data into a single number or grade that facilitates the easy comparison of regional economies. However, researchers question both the benchmarking methodology and the appropriateness of applying one region's successful economic development practices to a dissimilar region. The goal of this study is to improve the benchmarking methodology by identifying possible variable weights for three competitiveness outcomes (growth in population, employment, and per capita income) and exploring whether policy inputs (innovation inputs, knowledge workers, labor …

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Theoretical And Practical Implications Of A Hedonic Pricing Model: Empirical Observations From Wholesale Automobile Auctions, Jeffrey Roach Dec 2008

Theoretical And Practical Implications Of A Hedonic Pricing Model: Empirical Observations From Wholesale Automobile Auctions, Jeffrey Roach

All Dissertations

Wholesale auto auctions are convenient structures for economists as they attempt to observe the marginal effects of quality changes on the market-clearing price. However, what may be categorized as a quality change might rather be a market signal of an environment with adverse selection. This dissertation analyzes the effects of seller type and tests their sensitivity to econometric model specification.
General hedonic attributes and their various applications are reviewed. This dissertation explores the basic auto auction environment and dispels inaccurate notions about the auction structure. Following Bartik's (1987) analysis, multi-market data are used to produce hedonic estimates for seller, mileage …

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Population Growth And Planned Birth Policy, Yigang Zhang Dec 2008

Population Growth And Planned Birth Policy, Yigang Zhang

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China's planned birth policy is based on 'population pessimism', which states population growth affects the income level negatively, though the role of population growth in cross-country growth regressions is ambiguous. There are 'population pessimism', 'population optimism', and 'population neutralism'. Also, a new concept 'demographic dividend' was raised in recent years, which states a rise in the rate of economic growth can be induced because of a rising share of working age people in a population while still holding 'population neutralism'. The planned birth policy results in a decreasing fertility rate, which slows down the population growth and changes the age …

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Estimation Of Emergency Room Visits: Implications For Uninsured In South Carolina, Anusha Pokuri Dec 2008

Estimation Of Emergency Room Visits: Implications For Uninsured In South Carolina, Anusha Pokuri

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This study assesses the relationships between the percentage of emergency room visits, the percentage of uninsured population, and socio-demographic characteristics. This is accomplished by developing linear models of the relationships among these variables for the 46 counties of South Carolina for the year 2000. The results showed that the percentage of non-White population and percentage of business establishments that employ fewer than 50 workers had significant positive influence on the percentage of uninsured population. The median household income and high percentage of population with educational attainment beyond high school had a significant negative influence on the percentage of uninsured population. …

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Economic Analysis Of Adoption Of Water-Saving Land Improvements In Northern China, Xuanwen Wang Dec 2008

Economic Analysis Of Adoption Of Water-Saving Land Improvements In Northern China, Xuanwen Wang

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Determinants for farmers' choice of water-saving land improvements in Northern China are analyzed with a sample survey of 401 villages. The analysis focuses on two aspects of adoption, whether or not to adopt and if a technology is adopted, how much land to which to apply the technology. In the first stage, 'whether to adopt', multinomial logit models are applied to analyze the discrete choice of alternative land improvement strategies. In the second stage of adoption, 'how much to adopt', both sample selection models and OLS models are utilized to measure the adoption extent of field leveling, use of borders, …

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Building A Knowledge Economy Index For Southern Metropolitan Areas, Kristine Koutout Dec 2008

Building A Knowledge Economy Index For Southern Metropolitan Areas, Kristine Koutout

All Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to determine if the methodology used to build the South Carolina Research Authority Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) for states can be replicated and applied to Southern Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Data to imitate the KEI measures for workforce education and fast growth firms were available at the MSA-level; however, academic R&D was used as a proxy for industrial R&D in this index because data was not available for MSAs. An index for Southern MSAs was built based on the coefficients from the OLS results. Workforce education was the most important factor for increasing mean …

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Disability Insurance And Female Labor Supply, Rania Malik Dec 2008

Disability Insurance And Female Labor Supply, Rania Malik

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This paper studies the household characteristics where husbands receive disability income. It tries to analyze the characteristics of the married men based on age, race, education and wage. This paper also concentrates on the labor supply pattern of married women in the disabled households and tries to find whether women in these households work more in response to the disability income received by the husbands.

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Restrictions On Credit: A Public Policy Analysis Of Payday Lending, Petru Stoianovici Aug 2008

Restrictions On Credit: A Public Policy Analysis Of Payday Lending, Petru Stoianovici

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Using state level data between 1990 and 2006, I find no empirical evidence that payday lending leads to more bankruptcy filings, which casts some doubt on the debt trap argument against payday lending. I capture the intensity of the payday lending activity in a state by the number of payday lending stores.
I control for restrictions on payday lenders by including into the analysis six variables that I construct that rank legislative provisions across states and across time.

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Employment-Based Health Insurance And The Minimum Wage, Laura Bucila Aug 2008

Employment-Based Health Insurance And The Minimum Wage, Laura Bucila

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This dissertation contains a detailed picture of the employment-based health insurance coverage in the past twenty years, and it provides new estimates of the effects of increased federal and state minimum wages on the coverage of low-wage workers by this type of health insurance. I use March Current Population Surveys collected from IPUMS, for 1988 to 2005. Previous studies have found no significant evidence that increased minimum wages reduce fringe benefit receipt (Beeson Royalty 2000; Simon and Kaestner 2003). In contrast to these studies, I use a difference-in-difference approach and I define treatment groups as being individuals in the lowest …

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The Effect Of Compulsory Voting Laws On Government Spending, James Brookie Jul 2008

The Effect Of Compulsory Voting Laws On Government Spending, James Brookie

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The United States' voter turnout is often cited as being disappointingly low. Compulsory voting laws are offered as a possible solution to increase voter turnout and overall political participation. Opponents of the law complain that voters affected will be more politically liberal and in turn seek to enlarge the size and scope of the government. In order to determine whether this is true, a test was run on the effect compulsory voting laws have on the government revenue of 109 nations. The data held that no significant relationship exists between the two variables observed. This paper will discuss compulsory laws …

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The Negative Consequences Of Alcohol Consumption And The Analysis Of Variables That Can Affect Or Reduce Alcohol Consumption, Zapora Johnson Jul 2008

The Negative Consequences Of Alcohol Consumption And The Analysis Of Variables That Can Affect Or Reduce Alcohol Consumption, Zapora Johnson

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Alcoholic beverages are consumed all over the world and have been consumed for centuries. The excessive consumption of alcohol many times results in negative consequences. These consequences not only can affect the individual consuming the alcohol, but also others around them. This research looks at some of the negative medical consequences that can develop from an individual consuming alcohol excessively. The cost of an average hospital stay for an individual with liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and esophageal cancer was analyzed along with the opportunity cost for the wages that would be lost if an individual could not attend his place …

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Building A Knowledge Economy Index For The Fifty States With A Focus On South Carolina: The Clemson Knowledge Economy Index, Tate Watkins Jun 2008

Building A Knowledge Economy Index For The Fifty States With A Focus On South Carolina: The Clemson Knowledge Economy Index, Tate Watkins

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This paper seeks to express the relevance of the knowledge economy to economic growth and development and to demonstrate the construction of a knowledge economy index for the fifty states, with a focus on South Carolina. The effort involves a survey of economic literature, reports and indexes related to the knowledge economy. Once significant knowledge economy indicators are identified, regression analysis is performed to select the most promising indicators for use as variables in the index. Statistical testing is also used to determine weights for index components. The thesis project was supported by the South Carolina Research Authority, an organization …

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Essays On Wage Inequality And Economic Growth, Jin-Tae Hwang May 2008

Essays On Wage Inequality And Economic Growth, Jin-Tae Hwang

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This thesis is about the relationship between wage inequality and minimum wage, and then about parental choice and the impact of this on economic growth. First, it empirically examines the relation between wage inequality and the federal minimum wage. Then it develops a theory of how a parent of children with heterogeneous abilities makes choices on (a) investments in education for her children and (b) on the number of children she will have. Parental choices on these margins are shown to affect the rate of economic growth.
Chapter 1 briefly introduces my studies for the dissertation. In Chapter 2, I …

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Judicial Checks On Corruption, Adriana Cordis May 2008

Judicial Checks On Corruption, Adriana Cordis

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Judicial oversight is widely regarded as an important check and balance on the abuse of governmental power. The literature identifies two important components of this oversight function: judicial independence and constitutional review. However, recent work using country-level data indicates that the effectiveness of constitutional review is largely determined by the rigidity of the constitution. My dissertation builds on this work by investigating whether judicial independence and constitutional review are deterrents to a specific type of abuse of power by government officials: corruption in office. Since the appropriate way to measure corruption, which is defined as the abuse of public office …

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Three Essays On Environmental Economics And International Trade, Patrick Mclaughlin May 2008

Three Essays On Environmental Economics And International Trade, Patrick Mclaughlin

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ABSTRACT This dissertation addresses the broad topic of appropriate metrics, proxies, and estimation methods in environmental economics and international trade research, presented as three separate studies. The first, entitled, 'Something in the Water? Testing for Groundwater Quality Information in the Housing Market,' examines how informed real estate markets are with respect to groundwater quality by using a couple of different proxies for groundwater quality in a hedonic framework. This research topic has potentially suffered from imperfect proxies and incomplete information, which I test. In the second, entitled, 'Do Economic Integration Agreements Actually Work? Issues in Understanding the Causes and Consequences …

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Essays On International Trade, Volha Baranava May 2008

Essays On International Trade, Volha Baranava

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This dissertation is composed of two essays. The first uses the gravity equation and data on bilateral trade to investigate colonial patterns. The second also uses bilateral trade and the gravity model. The inquiry in the second essay concerns the causal relation between trade and government expenditures. In addition to bilateral trading pattern, data on tariffs and trade tax revenues is also examined.

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Economic Variables And Their Influence On Scientific Accplishment, Willis Boykin May 2008

Economic Variables And Their Influence On Scientific Accplishment, Willis Boykin

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ABSTRACT This research looks for an association between economic variables and scientific advancement. More specifically, the main economic variables will be average schooling in the labor force, output per worker, capital per worker and different forms of the three. Index scores will provide a quantitative measure of scientific advancement. This paper explores the relationship of these variables among individuals and societies.

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Beating A Live Horse: Effort’S Marginal Cost Revealed In A Tournament, Michael T. Maloney, Bentley Coffey Mar 2008

Beating A Live Horse: Effort’S Marginal Cost Revealed In A Tournament, Michael T. Maloney, Bentley Coffey

Michael T. Maloney

There is ample evidence that incentive pay structures such as tournaments result in increased performance, but whether this is due to selection or increased individual effort is less clear. We show that empirical specification is the key. Misspecification masks individual effort and interprets it as selection. Looking at data on horse racing, we compare a pure selection model to the Lazear-Rosen tournament model. While both models organize the data, the tournament model does a better job, and it says that nearly two-thirds of the increased performance associated with higher prizes is due to increased individual effort. This estimate is very …

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