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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Economics

Colby College

2021

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

When An Economist Is A Mentor: For Yang Fan, Colby’S Teaching Philosophy Was The Right Fit, Kardelen Koldas Dec 2021

When An Economist Is A Mentor: For Yang Fan, Colby’S Teaching Philosophy Was The Right Fit, Kardelen Koldas

Colby Magazine

They say follow your passion to wherever it takes you. Yang Fan, the new Todger Anderson Assistant Professor of Investing and Behavioral Economics, did just that. He followed his passion for teaching and changed coasts, from West to the East. Now, he’s helping his students find and pursue their passions as well.

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Ready, Willing, And Able, Gerry Boyle Dec 2021

Ready, Willing, And Able, Gerry Boyle

Colby Magazine

So what gives? How, after four years on Mayflower Hill, do these Colby alumni have an outsized impact in a fintech company that is focused on, for example, changing the way municipal bonds are traded? What makes them able to dive in and figure it out? “That’s part of the liberal arts education,” said Associate Professor of History John Turner, who taught Tagg Martin ’13, history major turned MarketAxess go-to analyst. “You’re always learning. … You are always going to be mastering something, as opposed to having mastered.”

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Social Capital Unmasced: The Role Of Social Capital In State-Level Economic Growth, Meredith H. Allen Jan 2021

Social Capital Unmasced: The Role Of Social Capital In State-Level Economic Growth, Meredith H. Allen

Honors Theses

While the examination of social capital in social science research has expanded since the 1990s, little is known about its development over time or contributions to economic growth, particularly at the community level. I create a state-level index of social capital from 2008 to 2019 to analyze its evolution across the United States since the Great Recession. After analyzing the different rates of social capital improvement across the country, I then integrate the index in the production function and a growth accounting framework alongside capital and labor. I find that social capital is not only significant as a factor of …

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Ethnicity And Education: College Attendance Patterns Among Early 20th-Century Maine's Immigrant Community, Jacob M. Nash Jan 2021

Ethnicity And Education: College Attendance Patterns Among Early 20th-Century Maine's Immigrant Community, Jacob M. Nash

Honors Theses

I examine the college attendance patterns of second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants in Maine in the early 20th century relative to other ethnic groups using individual-level Census records. I employ the Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson (ABE) algorithm to track second-generation Jewish, Italian, French Canadian, English Canadian and European immigrants from the 1910 Census to the 1940 Census. My logistic regression analysis indicates that second-generation Jewish immigrants in Maine attended college at significantly higher rates than their peers of similar background in every other ethnic group. While I cannot evaluate them, I also discuss potential explanations for the disparity in college attendance …

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The Predictive Power Of The Term Structure Under Unconventional Monetary Policies, Luying Yang Jan 2021

The Predictive Power Of The Term Structure Under Unconventional Monetary Policies, Luying Yang

Honors Theses

Previous research has confirmed a positive relationship between the slope of the yield spread and future economic growth. Since the start of the Great Recession, a number of developed economies have hit the zero lower bound and adopted unconventional monetary policies such as large-scale bond/asset purchase programs and negative interest rate policies. This paper finds that the yield spread’s predictive power generally deteriorates after the central bank adopts its first bond purchase program. However, there is no general pattern of how these unconventional monetary policies impact the yield spread’s forecasting ability across countries.

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‘The Robinhood Effect’ - Digital Technology In Global Financial Markets And Its Effects On Investor Decision Making, Ben Steib Jan 2021

‘The Robinhood Effect’ - Digital Technology In Global Financial Markets And Its Effects On Investor Decision Making, Ben Steib

Honors Theses

We are currently experiencing a revolution that is larger, arguably, than the industrial revolution, it’s the Internet, also known as the World Wide Web. The Internet has transformed how we live — how we talk, how we work, how we go about our daily business, and how we manage our finances on a global and individual level. In the late 1990s, an investor would search the World Wide Web and, within seconds, find 3,372 websites with the term "investment,” today, the same search for “investment” yields 1,860,000,000 results. Today, as proven with GameStop and other popular ‘meme stocks,’ social media, …

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Gold Mining Districts And Path Dependence, Jason T. Dunn Jan 2021

Gold Mining Districts And Path Dependence, Jason T. Dunn

Honors Theses

This paper applies quantitative spatial analysis to the long-term impact of Western gold rushes, studying the effect of 19th century US mineral districts on modern (2010) population density, as a proxy for long-term economic growth. OLS regression estimates show positive effects for areas adjacent to historic mining districts. Census tracts within 15 miles of a mineral district but not containing one are 29.8% more dense than other tracts. Additionally, capital-intensive/large-scale mining was more persistent than labor-intensive/small-scale methods, and path dependence is achieved mainly through agglomeration. This research corroborates historical arguments focusing on the development of Western infrastructure for long term …

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