Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Poverty, Opportunity, And Well-Being In The United States, Nate D. Peach, Emily J. Mavrakis

Faculty Publications - College of Business

Economic opportunity varies dramatically across the United States. In this study the Opportunity to Flourish Index (OFI) is created to determine the level of opportunity United States cities afford those at the bottom of the income distribution. Indicators within the index measure disposable income, access to financial services, diet, educational attainment, unemployment, physical well-being, and family structure. The OFI’s relationship with standard measures of economic growth and economic mobility is also evaluated. The OFI is not correlated with measures of income and population growth, suggesting, that in the short-run growth and opportunity are not necessarily complementary. The OFI is strongly …

Consumer Resilience And Consumer Attitude Towards Traumatic Events, Dongjun Rew, Michael Minor

Faculty Publications - College of Business

The purpose of this study is to explore consumer resilience’s role and effect on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and consumer attitude. There is little research on consumer resilience in the marketing disciplines even though the relevance of the construct has increased in other fields of study. To explore the role and effect of resilience, this study developed hypothetical conditions, in which this study assumes that each respondent is exposed to news of a traumatic incident or an experience, such as a terrorist attack or gun violence. Confirmatory factor analysis is conducted to verify each construct’s validity, and …

Burghardt And Sinns' "Global Perspectives On The Reformation: Interactions Between Theology, Politics And Economics" (Book Review), Craig Rosenbeck

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Quakers, Politics, And Economics (Volume 5 Of Quakers And The Disciplines), Thomas F. Head

Faculty Publications - College of Business

No abstract provided.

Development And Quality Of Life In Cities, Nate Peach, Luke Petach

Faculty Publications - College of Business

Articulating the goals of economic development and defining quality of life has drawn the attention of influential thinkers from Socrates to Sen. Attempts to quantify and compare economies as they pertain to these concepts have largely focused on the macroeconomy. In this study, the Metropolitan Development Index is created to measure development and quality of life in large, urban areas in the United States. The researchers then test the sensitivity of city rankings to the data used in constructing the index. These tests indicate that the index is a substantive conception of development and quality of life. Additionally, the index …

Measuring Millennials: Teenage Idleness In The Digital Age, Victoria Freitag, Emma Newman

Student Scholarship - College of Business

This research aims to model the relationship between factors contributing to situational privilege and teenage idleness. We will study the impact of race, income, household type, unemployment, and education on teenage idleness across 348 Metropolitan Statistical Areas within the United States. It is important to identify influential factors on teen idleness in order for government and community leaders to implement successful policies to get teenagers off the streets and into the workforce. Factors that were found to have a significant impact on teen idleness included the MSAs makeup of household types, race, median income, unemployment, and attainment of a bachelor’s …

Mortality And Conflict In The Developing World, Stephen Partin

Student Scholarship - College of Business

To varying extents, the world one is born into does not provide equal opportunities. This study measures the extent to which survivability across the developing world is affected by factors outside of the health and lifestyle choices one can make: industry, foreign markets, conflict, and the demographics around them. These variables are tested for a balanced panel of 102 countries over 7 years, allowing country-specific factors to be controlled.

Impact Of Human Rights Abuses On Economic Outlook, Benjamin Antony, Tyler Bowman

Student Scholarship - College of Business

This paper is concerned with measuring, quantifying, and modeling the extent to which governmental human rights abuses influence the Gross Domestic Product per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity of a nation. The intent of this study is to help develop a statistical framework for human rights under which better and more informed governmental policy decisions can be made. The results of this study suggest strong positive relationships between governmental regulatory quality, mean years of education, and government respect for physical integrity rights and higher GDP per capita (PPP). There is also no statistical relationship between a nation's perceived rule …

Mcmeasuring Diplomacy: Modeling Determinants Of International Public Opinion Toward The United States, Luke A. Petach

Student Scholarship - College of Business

This paper is concerned with modeling the extent to which external factors affect political attitudes toward the United States. The data is concerned with how economic, governance, and cultural factors impact attitudes regarding the favorability of the United States in the eyes of the world, and testing the empirical implications of Thomas Friedman’s Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.

The results suggest a strong negative relationship between a country being a Muslim majority country and the favorability of the United States in that country, a positive relationship between the perceived “Voice and Accountability” of a country and the favorability of …

Growth, Development, And The Natural Resource Curse: Understanding The Asymmetric Gains Of Trade, Low Iishan

Student Scholarship - College of Business

Trade is an essential component of a country’s economy. The flow of goods and services across national boundaries has become emblematic of the modern global economy. Yet, the effects of trade are not constant across countries. Instead, gains from trade have been observed to be asymmetric across the diverse landscape of political economies. Sharma and Morrissey (2005) for example, suggest that while trade liberalization is generally desirable, it does not guarantee growth. Instead, any impact of trade on an economy is conditional upon the initial economic structure and prevailing policy. This makes sense since countries often differ in terms of …

Don’T Judge The S&P 500 By Its Cover: When Expectations Meet Regression, Daniel Freitag

Student Scholarship - College of Business

This study aims to answer whether the health of the United States equities market is a representation of the well-being of the macro-economy. There are two primary goals in this study. The first is to model the determinants of fluctuating stock prices in the short-run. For this reason, data is collected in monthly units intended to represent short-term fluctuations in the S&P price over time. The second is to model the expected impact of recessionary pressures on the performance of equities.

Serving God Globally: Finding Your Place In International Development (Book Review), Nathanael D. Peach

Faculty Publications - College of Business

No abstract provided.

Governance & Sustainability: Does Democracy Beggar Thy Future?, Nathanael D. Peach

Faculty Publications - College of Business

Findings:

An increase in political stability:

• Higher levels of natural resource depletion
• Higher levels of adjusted net savings (ANS) i.e. contributes positively to sustainable growth

Increase in democracy:

• Lower levels of natural resource depletion
• Impact on sustainability is conditional on the economic and political context

A Cross-Country Analysis Of Unbanked Within The Oecd, Nathanael D. Peach, Andrew D. Van Der Werff, Jeanne M. Hogarth

Faculty Publications - College of Business

Financial inclusion has been extensively researched on a nation-by-nation basis. The recently released Global Findex data set from the World Bank allows for this literature to be extended because it creates universal measures of relevant data. Because data are universal, it allows multiple nations to be analyzed simultaneously. Using a set of thirty-one countries from the OECD, we find that social factors are an important part of highly banked populations. Higher levels of trust in government and formal financial institutions increase the level of financial inclusion. Increases in income inequality are predicted to decrease the banked population within a nation. …

Economics And The Bible, Roger S. Nam

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

At its essence, economics is the study of how societies make decisions on the allocation of limited resources. Whether subsistence, capitalist, socialist, or totalitarian, each society faces complex choices regarding the distribution of goods and utilities. In making such choices, economics involves the study of the various allocation processes such as production, consumption, exchange, forecasting, scarcity, and risk. But in all of these activities, economics is observable only through human behavior. Consequently, efforts to isolate economic behavior from social spheres are heuristic at best, misleading at worst. Economic decisions reflect deeper ideological values, hierarchies, and positions of power, often revealed …

Understanding Child Work And Child Labor In The 21st Century: A Focus On Malawi And Tanzania, Courage Chikomborero Mudzongo

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

Child labor is on the increase and this is exacerbating an already desperate situation in Africa. Past research has focused on which levels of determinants are most effective in influencing the decision on children’s activities. Using the Malawi Integrated Household Survey and the Tanzania National Panel Survey, this research seeks to unearth the factors that influence the number of hours that child workers and laborers work. I can conclude that the greatest degrees of change are at the individual level as child’s enrollment status is significant for child workers from Malawi and Tanzania and laborers from Tanzania. At the community …

Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just (Book Review), Nathanael D. Peach

Faculty Publications - College of Business

No abstract provided.

Efficiency Of The Welfare State: A Comparative Approach Using Data Envelopment Analysis, Jekabs Bikis

Faculty Publications - College of Business

As governments continue to evolve over the past century or so in their perceived role of providing economic security for their populations, a ubiquitous yet ill-defined concept of the welfare state is increasingly taking center stage in political and economic debates. With fiscal crises looming over the horizon in many parts of the world, the fingers of blame point with greater frequency to the welfare state as the entity which is contributing more to fiscal problems than to economic solutions. Reformation of the welfare state is rapidly becoming more likely and more urgent and this study proposes one mechanism for …

Energy And Economic Growth: A State-Level Analysis, Nathanael D. Peach

Faculty Publications - College of Business

No abstract provided.

The Poor Will Be Glad: Joining The Revolution To Lift The World Out Of Poverty (Book Review), Nathanael D. Peach

Faculty Publications - College of Business

No abstract provided.

The Business Of Our Lives, Thomas F. Head

Truth's Bright Embrace: Essays and Poems in Honor of Arthur O. Roberts

I view John Woolman's "A Plea for the Poor" through the eyes of my own experience. In particular, two aspects of my experience shape my vision: that of being an economist and that of being a Quaker. The economist in me is sensitive to statements about prices, wages, rents, production, distribution, equality, inequality, contracts, poverty and wealth. The Quaker in me responds especially to the language of the spirit. When Woolman speaks of God, the Creator, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, pure wisdom, Divine love, tender mercies, universal love, the Fountain of universal light and love, our Lord, our Saviour and …

Poland As Cross-Cultural Context: Theology And Economics In Transition From The Communist To The Post-Communist Era, Halina Grzymala-Moszczynska

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Intergovernmental Power And Dependence, Ron Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

No abstract provided.