Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Statistical Modelling, Optimal Strategies And Decisions In Two-Period Economies, Jiang Wu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Motivated by some real problems, our thesis puts forward two general two-period pricing models and explore optimal buying and selling strategies in two states of the two-period decision, when buyer/seller's decisions in the two periods are uncertain: commodity valuations may or may not be independent, may or may not follow the same distribution, be heavily or just lightly influenced by exogenous economic conditions, and so on. For both the example of buying laptops and the example of selling houses, the connections between each example and the two-envelope paradox encourage us to explore optimal strategies based on the works of McDonnell …

Financial Costs Incurred By Living Kidney Donors: Findings From A Canadian Multi-Centre Prospective Cohort Study, Sebastian Przech

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This prospective cohort study across 12 Canadian transplant centres evaluated the costs incurred by 912 living kidney donors. Expenses and resources were captured to 3-months post-donation, and micro-costing was used to appraise the costs incurred by donors. Living kidney donors incurred average total costs of $4790, and direct and indirect costs of $2110 and $2679, respectively. 13.3% of donors incurred total costs exceeding $10,000, and 8.6% of donors incurred costs >25% of their annual household income. Costs incurred by spousal donors were not significantly different from either unrelated or closely related donors. Similarly, costs incurred by kidney paired donors were …

Essays In International Economics: Decomposing Episodes Of Large Growth In International Trade, Brandon K. Malloy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis consists of three chapters relating to topics in International Economics. In the first essay, I use bilateral trade data from Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the U.S. and the U.K. to decompose the patterns of trade growth across various goods classifications during episodes of rapid growth in bilateral trade. I find that bilateral trade growth during these episodes is granular- less than 5\% of goods classifications account for over 65\% of overall bilateral trade growth. I quantitatively assess whether ``Melitz-style" trade models, with heterogeneous productivity firms, CES demand and fixed and variable costs of exporting, can match the observed …

Essays On Growth And Input Misallocation In China, Wenya Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis consists of three chapters that contribute to the study of input misallocation and TFP growth in China.

In Chapter 2, I compare the misallocation of intermediate goods to those of capital and labor, which have been extensively studied in the literature. To measure misallocation, I compute the dispersion of marginal products of intermediate goods across firms, and the potential output gains by eliminating this dispersion in China Industrial Enterprise Survey (CIES) data. Although the within-industry dispersion of marginal products of intermediates is smaller than that of capital and labor, gross output and value added gains from reallocating intermediate …

Essays On Debt In Macroeconomics, James G. Partridge

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation consists of three chapters, where the common theme among them is debt and saving. My work contributes to our understanding of how debt markets function for entrepreneurs, large corporations and households.

The first chapter studies how entrepreneurs used personal borrowing to fund their businesses during the Great Recession. One of the defining characteristics of this period was a “credit crunch” during which the supply of credit dropped for all borrowers. I show that changes in the finances of entrepreneurs between 2007 and 2009 are consistent with entrepreneurs using personal assets to secure lending for their businesses and overcome …

Essays On Policies Related To Immigration, School Choice, And Crime, Georgy Orlov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three policy-motivated chapters in the area of applied microeconomics. In chapter 1, I estimate the impact of English-language courses on the wages of new immigrants. I develop a model of immigrants' investment in language skills which may affect wages directly, as well as change the proportion of pre-immigration skills transferred into the host-country economy. Using unique panel data, LSIC, I find that attending language courses for six months leads to a 0.3 standard deviations gain in language skills, corresponding to an average wage increase of 11.7 percent. The increase in the total return to language skill …

Informal Hiring Patterns With Endogenous Job Contacts, Deanna Walker

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I model informal hiring in a constant returns to scale, single-firm industry. Applications are accepted when the relative gain from high quality exceeds the low-quality odds. Informal applications provide two sources of information: noisy signalling through the endogenous arrival probability of applications, and an exogenous report conveyed directly by the application. I find the informal channel may be used in equilibrium to signal quality, improve connection between potential workers and the firm, or may not be used at all due to insufficient benefit, social norms, or incompatible incentives. I find complementarity between the report screening power and the quality composition …

Data-Driven Public Diplomacy: A Critical And Reflexive Assessment, Hamilton Bean, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

This essay presents a critical and reflexive assessment of contemporary efforts

to innovate the measurement and evaluation of public diplomacy. Analyzing a

recent and pivotal report called “Data-Driven Public Diplomacy,” it explains

how the institutional and ideological residue of the Cold War underwrites

these initiatives in the context of American activities in its contemporary “War

on Terror.” Inspired by Marx’s concept of the fetish—n under-represented

conceptual approach to public diplomacy research—he authors critique

the thinking of public diplomacy scholars and officials, arguing that both an

omnipresent past and a powerful form of technological fetishism are discernible

in the “Data-Driven Public …

P14. Estimating The Effects Of File-Sharing On Movie Box-Office, Zhuang Liu

Western Research Forum

Background:

File-sharing and on-line piracy have caught great public attention. There is a public debate on whether or not we should close torrenting sites like Piratedbay.com. Copyright holders argue yes and claim substantial loss due to filesharing while Pirates claim that file-sharing is welfare-improving and the effects on sale are negligible. Right now no consensus has been reached on how file-sharing affects industry revenue in economics literature.

Methods:

Using a novel dataset of downloads from Bit-Torrent network, this paper quantifies the effects of file-sharing on movie box-office revenue. I estimate a random coefficient demand model of movies to …

P29. Basic Skills Or Major-Specific Knowledge? Sources Of Wage Penalties For Working Outside The Major Field Of Study, Yuki Onozuka

Western Research Forum

Background: This paper examines the sources of wage penalties for working outside the major field of study. Recent research shows that workers in a job unrelated to their major field of study experience significantly lower wages than those in a related job. A substantial amount of human capital may be underutilized. Identifying the sources of the wage penalty is important in terms of how to decrease the inefficient use of human capital, students' college major choice, and type of human capital accumulated in college.

Methods: I use the 1993 National Survey of College Graduates and the O*NET to divide the …

Social Relationships In Young Offenders: Relevance To Peers, Poverty, And Psychological Adjustment, Victoria Sabo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The increasing influence of peers in adolescence is related to a developing array of skills, aspirations, attitudes, and behaviours. The nature and magnitude of this influence and the potential association of certain youth with deviant peers is among the most prominent risk factors in predicting youth crime. This becomes of greater concern for economically disadvantaged youth, whose neighbourhoods harbour greater susceptibility to negative peer influence. With social affiliations at the forefront of youth development and criminality, research efforts need to further characterize the nature, constitution, and influence of peers on adolescent offending. Two hundred and eighty-one Canadian youth were sampled …

2017-2 A Non-Parametric Approach To Testing The Axioms Of The Shapely Value With Limited Data, Victor Aguiar, Roland Pongou, Jean-Baptiste Tondji

Department of Economics Research Reports

No abstract provided.

2017-1 International Risk Sharing With Endogenously Segmented Asset Markets, Simona E. Cociuba, Ananth Ramanarayanan

Department of Economics Research Reports

No abstract provided.

The Impacts Of Negative Interest Rates On The Eurozone Economy, Cynthia Wang

2017 Undergraduate Awards

This thesis evaluates the effects of a monetary policy shock in the Eurozone. The investigation stems from the recent implementation of negative interest rates in select European countries and Japan. Impulse response functions are used to compare variable responses when not influenced by negative rates versus when significantly impacted by this monetary policy. The inconclusiveness in the comparison between these two models resulted in failing to reject the hypothesis that negative interest rates have yet to be successful in the Eurozone. However, any economy is a complicated environment that cannot be modelled precisely, as numerous other factors play a role …

2017-01 Targeting The Wrong Teachers? Linking Measurement With Theory To Evaluate Teacher Incentive Schemes, Nirav Mehta

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-04 Careers And Mismatch For College Graduates: College And Non-College Jobs, Andrew Agopsowicz, Chris Robinson, Ralph Stinebrickner, Todd Stinebrickner

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-03 Early And Late Human Capital Investments, Borrowing Constraints, And The Family, Elizabeth M. Caucutt, Lance Lochner

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-07 Social Interactions, Mechanisms, And Equilibrium: Evidence From A Model Of Study Time And Academic Achievement, Tim Conley, Nirav Mehta, Ralph Stinebrickner, Todd Stinebrickner

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-12 Changing Trends In China’S Inequality: Key Issues And Main Findings, Terry Sicular, Shi Li, Ximing Yue, Hiroshi Sato

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-21 The Redistributive Role Of Government Social Security Transfers On Inequality In China, Meng Cai, Ximing Yue

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-25 Measuring Quality For Use In Incentive Schemes: The Case Of "Shrinkage" Estimators, Nirav Mehta

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-14 China's Emerging Global Middle Class, Bjorn Gustafsson, Terry Sicular, Xiuna Yang

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-11 Different Paths? Human Capital Prices, Wages And Inequality In Canada And The Us, Audra Bowlus, Chris Robinson

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-23 China's Urban Gender Wage Gap: A New Direction?, Jin Song, Terry Sicular, Bjorn Gustafsson

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-02 Modeling Enrollment In And Completion Of Vocational Education: The Role Of Cognitive And Non-Cognitive Skills By Program Type, Leslie S. Stratton, Nabanita Datta Gupta, David Reimer, Anders Holm

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-06 Job Tasks, Time Allocation, And Wages, Ralph Stinebrickner, Todd Stinebrickner, Paul Sullivan

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-05 Beauty, Job Tasks, And Wages: A New Conclusion About Employer Taste-Based Discrimination, Todd Stinebrickner, Ralph Stinebrickner, Paul Sullivan

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-08 The Potential Output Gains From Using Optimal Teacher Incentives: An Illustrative Calibration Of A Hidden Action Model, Nirav Mehta

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-17 New Patterns In China's Rural Poverty, Shi Li, Peng Zhan, Yangyang Shen

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2017-16 Public Policy And Long-Term Trends In Inequality In Rural China, 1988-2013, Hisatoshi Hoken, Hiroshi Sato

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.