Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Economics

Colby College

2006

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Religion And Subjective Well-Being Among China’S Elderly Population, Philip H. Brown, Brian Tierney Dec 2006

Religion And Subjective Well-Being Among China’S Elderly Population, Philip H. Brown, Brian Tierney

Working Papers in Economics

Evidence from developed and developing countries alike demonstrates a strongly positive relationship between religiosity and happiness, particularly for women and particularly among the elderly. Using survey data from the oldest old in China, we find a strong negative relationship between religious participation and subjective well-being in a rich multivariate logistic framework that controls for demographics, health and disabilities, living arrangements and marital status, wealth and income, lifestyle and social networks, and location. In contrast to other studies, we also find that religion has a larger effect on subjective well-being on men than women.

Go to article

Media Coverage And Charitable Giving After The 2004 Tsunami, Philip H. Brown, Jessica H. Minty Jun 2006

Media Coverage And Charitable Giving After The 2004 Tsunami, Philip H. Brown, Jessica H. Minty

Working Papers in Economics

Media coverage of humanitarian crises is widely believed to influence charitable giving, yet this assertion has received little empirical scrutiny. Using Internet donations after the 2004 tsunami as a case study in a tobit framework, we show that media coverage of disasters increases charitable donations, with an additional minute of nightly news coverage increasing donations by 0.036 standard deviations from the mean. We repeat the analysis using instrumental variables in a tobit model to account for endogeneity, and the estimates are unchanged. We also show that the magnitude and sign of media impact vary by news source and relief agency.

Go to article

Be The Change You Wish To See: National Attiudes And Climate Change Policy, Emilia Tjernstrom May 2006

Be The Change You Wish To See: National Attiudes And Climate Change Policy, Emilia Tjernstrom

Senior Scholar Papers

A multitude of views characterize what should or should not be done about climate change, and in the past decades, nations have acted very differently in the face of climate change. This study explores factors that affect individuals' attitudes and concerns towards the environment and how those attitudes ultimately affect climate change policy. One model investigates the link between individual attitudes and countries' actions on climate change, and the results show that attitudes indeed matter in the implementation of policy. Different measures of democracy such as freedom of the press also prove to be important as channels for these attitudes. …

Go to article

Globalization, Agency, And Institutional Innovation: The Rise Of Public-Private Partnerships In Global Governance, Liliana B. Andonova Mar 2006

Globalization, Agency, And Institutional Innovation: The Rise Of Public-Private Partnerships In Global Governance, Liliana B. Andonova

Working Papers in Economics

Public and private actors increasingly cooperate in global governance, a realm previously reserved for states and intergovernmental organizations (IOs). This trend raises fascinating theoretical questions. What explains the rise in public-private institutions and their role in international politics? Who leads such institutional innovation and why? To address the questions, this paper develops a theory of the political demand and supply of public-private institutions and specifies the conditions under which IOs and non-state actors would cooperate, and states would support this public-private cooperation. The observable implications of the theoretical argument are evaluated against the broad trends in public-private cooperation and in …

Go to article

Meeting The Standards: An Analysis Of Eight Grade Educational Assesment Test Scores In Maine, Michael Donihue, Joseph Mattos, Caroline Theoharides, Charlotte Tiffany Jan 2006

Meeting The Standards: An Analysis Of Eight Grade Educational Assesment Test Scores In Maine, Michael Donihue, Joseph Mattos, Caroline Theoharides, Charlotte Tiffany

Working Papers in Economics

This paper examines the impact of socioeconomic factors on eighth grade achievement test scores in the face of federal and state initiatives for educational reform in Maine. We use student-level data over a five year period to provide a framework for understanding the policy implications of these initiatives. We model performance on standardized tests using a seemingly unrelated regressions approach and then determine the likelihood of meeting the standards defined by the adequate yearly progress requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act and Maine Learning Results initiatives. Our results indicate that the key factors influencing a student’s test scores …

Go to article

Assisted Living: The Politics Of Medicaid And Medicare, Sarah Lim Jan 2006

Assisted Living: The Politics Of Medicaid And Medicare, Sarah Lim

Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS)

In this paper I examine the structure of the current assisted living industry in order to explain how and why it is appealing and effective, as well as look at its limitations. I discuss the politics of Medicaid and Medicare, and how through these programs the federal and state governments are failing to provide adequate care for the nation’s senior population. Like the rest of our health care system, these two public health insurance systems are fragmented, and consequently, financing long-term care is complicated and insufficient. Ultimately, this paper will function as a policy report and I will propose: standardized …

Go to article

Marketing Social Change: A Comparative Historical And Methodological Analysis Of Anti-Smoking Endeavors, Jessica Stathis Jan 2006

Marketing Social Change: A Comparative Historical And Methodological Analysis Of Anti-Smoking Endeavors, Jessica Stathis

Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS)

Even though assessing social marketing endeavors proves to be challenging, evaluators can learn from previous campaigns and identify which facets of social marketing events, programs and campaigns need to be improved. Additionally, by analyzing social movements and evaluating how they connect to social marketing, we can gain a clearer view on ways to ameliorate the field of social marketing. As social marketing becomes increasingly sophisticated and similar to commercial marketing, there is hope that social marketing can yield higher rates of success in the future. Friend and Levy (2002) claimed that it was nearly impossible to compare social marketing endeavors …

Go to article

Role Of Home Equity In Retirement Saving: Building Your Nest (Egg), Caroline Theoharides Jan 2006

Role Of Home Equity In Retirement Saving: Building Your Nest (Egg), Caroline Theoharides

Honors Theses

This study examines the role of home equity in retirement saving. Using data from the 2001 and 2003 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study first updates the existing literature by regressing active saving on real housing capital gains using median regression techniques. Consistent with the literature, an increase in housing capital gains results in a decrease in active saving. While the active saving literature provides an initial analytical framework regarding saving behavior and home equity, the demographic shift in the U.S. due to the imminent retirement of the baby boomers indicates that the impact of changes in home equity …

Go to article

Media Coverage And Disaster Relief: Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Words?, Jessica H. Minty Jan 2006

Media Coverage And Disaster Relief: Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Words?, Jessica H. Minty

Honors Theses

This paper analyzes the effect of media coverage on donations made to relief agencies. Specifically, this empirical analysis examines the effect of the daily volume of domestic newspaper and television coverage devoted to the December 26, 2004 tsunami on daily web donations to U.S. relief agencies. Media coverage, as measured by daily newspaper word and picture counts and by daily total television minutes positively affects the amount of donations relief agencies receive. In addition, media coverage is found to have a greater effect on donations for some agencies than for others.

Go to article