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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Impact Of Retirement On Subjective Well-Being, Emily Rider Jun 2014

The Impact Of Retirement On Subjective Well-Being, Emily Rider

Honors Theses

Using cross-sectional data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the American Time Use Survey Well-Being Module, this paper looks at how retirement affects one’s subjective well-being. The retirement-consumption puzzle indicates that at retirement individuals discover they have fewer economic resources than they had anticipated prior to retirement. As a consequence they reduce consumption, which contradicts the prediction of consumption smoothing based on the life-cycle model of consumption. But at the same time people have more time for leisure and home production after retirement. How does this tradeoff between consumption and leisure after retirement affect an individual’s subjective well-being, …


Can Policy Spur Technological Growth?, William Sargent Jun 2014

Can Policy Spur Technological Growth?, William Sargent

Honors Theses

The long-term slowdown in productivity growth for OECD countries, despite increased resources allocated to R&D, has once again raised the issue of limits of technological change. I explore the relationship between labor productivity growth and R&D intensity, using macro-level panel data from OECD countries. My empirical analysis essentially tests the semi-endogenous growth theory against the fully-endogenous Schumpeterian growth theory. The semi-endogenous framework assumes diminishing returns to R&D and requires positive population growth to generate long-run growth. The fully-endogenous framework assumes growing product variety and requires a constant share of R&D inputs in overall inputs in order to generate positive long-run …


Breaking The Back: The Continuous Battle Over The Bank Of England 1694-1715, Brendan Callanan Jun 2014

Breaking The Back: The Continuous Battle Over The Bank Of England 1694-1715, Brendan Callanan

Honors Theses

England during the seventeenth century experienced unprecedented political and economic transformation. The rise and fall of the British monarchy, the subsequent political ascendance of Parliament and centralization of the state, sustained economic and commercial growth, and incessant wars abroad during the latter years of the century, contributed to a volatile political climate during the final years of the 1600s that contrasted greatly with the landscape earlier in the century. Specifically, said developments especially affected England’s landed aristocracy. Their cherished ideology of order suffered significant setbacks as both the expanded reach of the state and the new economic ideology that stressed …


Cost Benefit Analysis Of The Keystone Xl Pipeline, Daniel Carr Jun 2014

Cost Benefit Analysis Of The Keystone Xl Pipeline, Daniel Carr

Honors Theses

The Keystone XL pipeline is one of the most controversial topics in North America over the last five years. The debate is based on the trade‐off between Canadian oil sands as a usable energy resource and the environmental effects associated with the extraction and refining of the oil. The green house gasses emitted from the extraction and refining of oil sands produces several environmental concerns that make the proposed pipeline controversial. On the other hand, Canadian oil companies see a significant benefit from the ability of Canadian oil reaching international markets. TransCanada, a 79.99 percent owner of the pipeline, conducted …


Effects Of The World Trade Center Attacks And Hurricane Sandy: Manhattan Commercial Real Estate Market, Michael Miceli Jun 2014

Effects Of The World Trade Center Attacks And Hurricane Sandy: Manhattan Commercial Real Estate Market, Michael Miceli

Honors Theses

Two rare and uncontrollable events that recently took place in Manhattan were the attacks on the World Trade Center and Hurricane Sandy. Both of these catastrophic events affected the commercial real estate market in Manhattan in several ways. Using quarterly time-series data between 1996 and 2013 collected from Brookfield Office Properties, this paper utilizes regression analysis to investigate the effects of these events on vacancy rate, absorption rate and rent in Manhattan. The regression analyses control for location and building type such as Midtown, Downtown and Classes A,B,C, as well as economic factors such as unemployment rate and the S&P …


The Effect Of Gross Profitability On Share Price Appreciation, Philip Barr Jun 2014

The Effect Of Gross Profitability On Share Price Appreciation, Philip Barr

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between gross profitability and share price appreciation. Dimensional Fund Advisors, an investment firm managing $338 billion, builds portfolios based on a number of different metrics and added gross profitability as a factor in early 2013. Profitable firms may be systematically undervalued and, therefore, gross profitability should predict future share price appreciation. Gross profitability is a firm’s gross profit multiplied by its asset turnover. A high gross profitability may signal a firm’s pricing power or quality in comparison with other businesses. Investors may neglect profitable firms and overpay for “lottery stocks” …


Intra-Firm Trade From U.S. Multinational Enterprises To Emerging Market Economies: An Assessment Of The Impact Of The Global Recession And Intellectual Property Rights, Trang Nguyen Jun 2014

Intra-Firm Trade From U.S. Multinational Enterprises To Emerging Market Economies: An Assessment Of The Impact Of The Global Recession And Intellectual Property Rights, Trang Nguyen

Honors Theses

The level of US intra-firm imports from Emerging Markets, EM, (i.e., imports of MNEs from their foreign affiliates) has increased from 149 billion USD in 2002 to 347 billion USD in 2012. A similar magnitude is observed for US arm’s length imports (i.e., imports of MNEs from third parties in foreign countries). This thesis estimates the responsiveness of US intra-firm and arm’s length imports to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection indicators, “Doing Business” indicators, and to the Global Recession. I use two panel data sets, one covering 332 industries (3-digit NAICS) and 43 emerging countries from 2002 to 2012, the …


Who Really Benefit From The One Child Policy: An Analysis Of The Impact The One Child Policy Has On Marital Prospects Of Han Chinese And Ethnic Minorities In China, Zhu Chen Jun 2014

Who Really Benefit From The One Child Policy: An Analysis Of The Impact The One Child Policy Has On Marital Prospects Of Han Chinese And Ethnic Minorities In China, Zhu Chen

Honors Theses

Over the past 35 years, the One Child Policy (OCP) has had enormous influences on almost every aspect of Chinese society. The exacerbated unbalanced sex ratio and the unequal implementation of the OCP between Han Chinese and ethnic minorities have brought some interesting changes to China’s marriage market. This paper explores the differences between the marital prospects of Han Chinese and ethnic minorities under the influence of the OCP. Using 2007 China Household Income Project (Data) and 2010 Chinese Population Census Data, this paper finds that under the circumstances of the OCP, Han Chinese, especially Han women, enjoy more advantages …


Aggressive Monetization: Why The Pay For Currency Model Is Dominating The Ios App Store Today, Theodore Kitchen Jun 2014

Aggressive Monetization: Why The Pay For Currency Model Is Dominating The Ios App Store Today, Theodore Kitchen

Honors Theses

The Apple iOS App Store has only been around for 5 years, and yet it has completely changed the way that mobile software is distributed. In this brief period, the online marketplace has seen dramatic shifts in the most successful strategies used by iOS software developers and, more specifically, game developers to gain revenue. As of March 14th 2014 fifteen of the twenty top-grossing iOS apps feature some form of in-app currency that users may purchase with real money, eighteen are mobile video games, and all twenty of these apps are free to download. This paper explores a new business …


Innovation And Finance: A Firm Level Analysis On Emerging Markets, Emily Zangrillo Jun 2014

Innovation And Finance: A Firm Level Analysis On Emerging Markets, Emily Zangrillo

Honors Theses

Economic theory suggests that the more financially constrained a firm, the lower its ability to allocate resources for innovation. I test this theory using firm-level survey data that covers 29 Eastern European and Central Asian countries. The survey is conducted in 2002, 2005, and 2009, and covers nearly 12,000 enterprises. I construct two baseline probit models to test the impact of financial constraints on firms’ ability to innovate a new product or upgrade an existing product. Existing literature suggests that the more financially constrained a firm, the less likely they are to innovate. Previous studies have also noted the reverse …


The Effect Of Educational Debt On The Probability Of Homeownership For College Graduates: An Empirical Analysis, Cole Ikkala Jun 2014

The Effect Of Educational Debt On The Probability Of Homeownership For College Graduates: An Empirical Analysis, Cole Ikkala

Honors Theses

With the average tuition of both public and private institutions on the rise, students are graduating from college with a higher burden of debt than ever before. In turn this is adversely affecting their post-graduation decisions, specifically the purchasing of their first home. With the simultaneous increase of educational debt levels and tightening of lending constraints for mortgages, it is hypothesized that first-time homeownership is being delayed. The purpose of this study is to analyze what exactly is delaying graduates from purchasing a home, the outstanding total educational debt amount or the monthly educational debt repayment amounts. Both can hinder …