Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Three Essays On Understanding Social And Economic Responses To Crisis And Disaster Events, Shahnawaz Mohammad Rafi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation comprises three chapters that analyze the social and economic responses to crises and disasters. In the first chapter, I have investigated whether media affects the US official foreign aid channel or crisis related aid. I have examined natural disaster citations in four mainstream US newspapers to analyze whether they influence the Official Development Assistance (ODA) or the short-term crisis related aid need of a recipient following a natural disaster. I created three new media variables to measure the strength of media effect on US ODA, humanitarian aid, and food aid. The empirical analyses indicate that media citation only …

Three Essays On Trade Policy In A Multi-Country World, Enrique Valdes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation involves analyzing welfare in developing countries due to a variety of trade policies. Because all three chapters focus on developing countries and their interactions with more developed countries, we need a model that accounts for differences in income between countries, easily extending to more than two countries. For our analysis, we draw on the Ricardian model developed by Matsuyama (2000).

The first chapter investigates the effects tariff wars have on developing countries. We study the effect of a tariff war between two richer countries on a non-participant low-income developing country. Surprisingly, we find that the low-income country can …

Essays On Monetary Policy And International Macroeconomics, Elisa Vilorio Medina

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An understanding how external shocks affect macroeconomic variables is important

for policy implications and sound recommendations. My dissertation analyzes the

impact of exogenous shocks on inflation, exchange rate, and monetary policy in

advanced economies and emerging market economies.

The second chapter explores the extent to which the exogenous shock of the

shale oil revolution explains the missing-puzzle inflation—sluggish price inflation

in the U.S and below the Federal Reserve’s two percent inflation target following

the expansion after the Great Recession. Using a novel identification framework,

I disentangle the shocks by imposing a combination of dynamic sign restrictions,

block exogeneity, and short-run …

Three Essays On Healthcare Economics, Esteban Chinchilla

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation follows a three-essay format. The first chapter examines the impact of a home visiting program on medical expenses and healthcare services utilization implemented by a healthcare maintenance organization. The evaluation uses administrative claims data to estimate the six-month average expenditures following program enrollment. The estimation is carried out by applying a difference-in-differences method to compare spend for patients enrolled in the program to a control group. Estimation using matching methods to address any potential confounding bias is also applied to support estimates and confirms findings. The estimation finds that the program increases average medical expenditures by as much …

Essays On The Economic Effects Of Income Inequality, Adir Dos Santos Mancebo Junior

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Income inequality has been rising throughout the world. In the United States, for example, the income share of the population at the top 10% of the income distribution rose 34% from 1980 to 2019 according to data from the World Inequality Database. This dissertation studies how increasing levels of income inequality might affect the economy.

In the first chapter, I show that changes in the level of income inequality may affect consumption volatility through changes in household aggregate marginal propensity to consume (MPC). I propose a simple theoretical framework to explain this dynamic and evaluate it empirically, combining data from …

International Financial Institutions And Caribbean Development: A Comparison Of Haiti & Jamaica, Alexander Bruno

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The global financial system is based on, and influenced by specific institutions which are controlled by countries in the Global North. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) are two of the institutions whose policies help to shape state behaviors, and reinforce the Global North’s dominance. Thus, the main hypothesis of this study is that institutional policies and programs of the IMF and WB aid and abet the continued underdevelopment of Caribbean island-states. This study examines the impact of IMF and WB policies on the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) measurements in Haiti and Jamaica, and how they …

Essays On Migration, Entrepreneurship, And Risk Hedging, Yiming Liu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Expectations of higher income and better living conditions are the major causes behind migration. Whether migration is temporary or permanent is a consequence of both these expectations as well as the policies and the economic development of the host area. Migration comes with risks and migrants are more willing to take risks than nonmigrants. Entrepreneurship, like migration, also requires risk-taking for potentially high returns. The theme that connects the three chapters in the dissertation is the risks people take as they decide to migrate, to start new businesses, and the hedging strategies they adopt to mitigate these risks. This paper …

Three Essays On Development Economics, Ehsan Asghari-Ghara

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three essays on development economics, addressing the socio-economic effects of natural shocks and interventions in these countries. In the first essay, I analyze how the Indian government's response to cyclone Fani affected the parliamentary election in 2019. It develops a theoretical model about how voters' type (being myopic or not) and the probability of a natural disaster affect politicians' response. Unlike other studies related to myopic theory, we use sentiment analysis rather than public spending to calculate voters' attitudes towards the government's response. The result shows that (1) the probability of winning the election increases for the …

Three Essays In Applied Economics, Mohammad Javad Mehregan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Governments worldwide support their national economies to obtain growth, adequate employment, and price durability. Regulation is a unique approach through which governments control the economy. Governments attempt to maintain and regulate the economy in various ways to guarantee that business fosters the common good. The range of government regulations is enormous and touches all areas of the economy and all features of daily life. Understanding the effect of regulations on the economy is essential since its outcomes can improve government interventions’ efficiency. Applied economics can help measure the effectiveness of government intervention on economic outcomes.

This dissertation includes three essays …

Three Essays On Disaster Risk, Housing Market And Public Health, Mehrnoosh Asadi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on topics related to environmental and health economics. In the first essay, we look into risk mitigation measures related to public health. More specifically, the focus is on the societal impacts of Superfund Sites and their inundation during extreme weather events. With that objective in mind, we investigate the effect of hurricane-induced discharges from Superfund Sites in terms of residents’ risk perception and its consequence on housing values in the real estate market using the property sales data. The findings suggest that home prices in the vicinity of Superfund Sites experience depreciation. Following …

Me, Myself And My Future-Self: How Self-Motives Impact Personal Financial Decision Making, Patricia Torres

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The role of self-motives on consumer behavior has been a subject of interest for researchers in the fields of marketing and psychology. With regard to consumer well-being, most of studies have focused on health-related issues (diet, physical activity, tobacco use, substance abuse). However, there is a specific area that is of significant interest in the American context: financial decision making, specifically, personal savings and debt (mis) management. Both the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic exposed Americans’ lack of savings and its devastating consequences. A record-high consumer debt (Federal Reserve, 2018) combined with a lack of savings (Northwestern …

Rethinking The Functions Of Regional Economic Communities: Why African Small States Join And Remain In Sub-Regional Entities, Cliff Kodero

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances new arguments about regional integration in Africa. It sheds light on the roles of regional economic communities (RECs) for small-economy states in Africa by examining the benefits and drawbacks of participating in such regional groups for both the small states themselves and their ruling regimes. The study suggests that RECs, rather than being agents of economic development, facilitate regime-boosting agendas of neopatrimonial regimes, promote a sense of (false) sovereignty, and entrench the political elite’s capture of the states.

The significance is threefold. First, it suggests that RECs provide an extension of neopatrimonial networks, which expand state-capture by …

Canadian Banks And Imperialism In The English-Speaking Caribbean, Tamanisha J. John

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Canadian banks have been important components of an imperialist system since at least the 19^th century. However, their long and rich history of operating as purely exploitative entities in the English-speaking Caribbean region is often overlooked— leading to many incomplete and conflicting narratives about Canada’s role within the global system. I argue that Canada is an imperial actor that exerts agency in supporting a Canadian banking oligopoly both within Canada and in the English-speaking Caribbean. Insufficient attention is given to these Canadian banks, especially considering the power they have wielded in the Caribbean over the centuries. By analyzing the …

Three Essays On Labor And Demographic Economics, Andra Hiriscau

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation follows a three-essay format. The first chapter examines the mechanism behind birth order effects. The second and third chapters analyze the impact of paid maternity leave on fertility rate, women's labor force participation, and family living arrangements.

The literature primarily suggests that, in developed countries, first-born children have better educational outcomes than their siblings; meanwhile, in developing countries, first-born children perform worse than their siblings. In the first chapter, co-authored with Mihaela I. Pintea, Ph.D., we use parental income during childhood and family fixed effects estimation to test if financial resources contribute to birth order effects on educational …

Essays On Macroeconomics And Financial Economics, Maryam Aljahani

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises of three Essays. The first essay classifies households as savers and borrowers based on their wealth during the credit cycle. It examines the wealth effects of the saving and housing decisions of heterogeneous households over a credit cycle. To do so, we employ the Difference-in-Difference estimator and find evidence of a significant difference between the wealth effect for savers and borrowers. In the second essay, we examine the extent to which credit-constrained households are able to accumulate wealth when the macro environment is characterized by the presence of a liquidity trap and borrowing constraints. Our evidence highlights …

Turkey-Russia Relations In 2001-2020: Deepening Partnership And Heightening Competition Amid Regional Restructuring, Muhammet Koçak

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explains the evolution of Turkey-Russia relations in 2001 2020. Turkey and Russia are two of the most critical powerhouses of Central Eurasia. In the past, the Russian Empire played a significant role in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey took part in containing the USSR during the Cold War. In 2001 2020, however, Turkey and Russia invested in bilateral trade and established partnerships in the defense and energy sectors. Two countries also worked together to resolve several regional conflicts, including the Syrian Crisis. Despite this trend’s regional and global significance, the literature suffers from an inadequacy …

Three Essays Of Assessing The Risk, Adaptation And Resilience To Natural Disasters, Mohammad Asif Hasan Khan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters in environmental and natural resource economics. In the first chapter, using survey data, I investigate what factors are important in people's evacuation decisions in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. I examine if temporal spillover is present in their decision making and how significant the spillover effect is. With that objective in mind, I examine the effect of previous evacuation experience on future evacuation decision. I also analyze how network effects influence people's evacuation decisions during a natural disaster.

As the threat of climate change grows, communities around the world are facing the dangers of …

Equity Valuation - Seeking An Understanding Through Alternative Approaches, Faisal Awwal

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation involves measuring and testing the empirical performances of equity pricing models.

The first paper extends the constant discount factor model with intrinsic bubbles developed in Froot and Obstfeld (1991) to account for autocorrelation in dividend growth rates. We derive an analytical expression for both the present value stock price and an intrinsic bubble component when dividend growth rates evolve as a Gaussian AR(1) process. Hypotheses tests favor an AR(1) process for dividend growth rates and an AR(1)-based model developed here for price-dividends ratios over a benchmark case. Hypotheses tests also reject the absence of a bubble component in …

Neoliberalism And Monopoly In The Motion Picture Industry, Michael S. Wartenbe

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monopolies and industry concentration have returned in our time, as did the ramifications in the globalized political economy. One of the most impactful in our daily lives are the Mass Media Conglomerates who not only own the majority of film, television, and news we access, but increasingly control the means of accessing it, from cable to digital. While many are familiar with these corporations via their services and products, less known by the public are their political operations and close cooperation with Washington. This is due to the lack of holistic analysis of the industry and cooperation in the media …

Essays On Economic Valuation Of Water Resources, Christina Estela Brown

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increased potential of flooding caused by heavy precipitation events and sea level rise, as well as growing risk of drought that are likely changes in the frequency and spatial distribution of climatic conditions, pose particular challenges to water management in coastal areas. Extreme events are expected to increase the complexity of managing scarce water resources for competing water users. South Florida, which is characterized by a mosaic of urban settlements, agricultural areas and natural areas, is served by a highly human-engineered water management system grappling to meet multiple objectives, including urban and agricultural water supply, flood control, and environmental restoration. …

Essays On Macroeconomic Analysis Of Development, Nazmul Islam

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three essays on empirical studies of macroeconomic analysis of development. The first and second chapter focus on defining different categories of households based on the type of wealth they hold, deriving their demographic characteristics and how they react to transitory income shocks. The economics literature splits households into poor hand-to-mouth (P-HtM), wealthy hand-to-mouth (W-HtM), and not hand-to-mouth (N-HtM). This breakdown is important to accurately capture how different categories of households react to income shocks.

In Chapter 1, I argue that this classification is missing important features related to the behavior of indebted households. Thus, novel in the …

Essays In Labor Economics And International Economics, Seyed Javad Nosratabadi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three essays in labor economics and international economics. The first essay studies the relationship between the amount of a loan demanded by firms and their labor demand. Governments have developed small loan programs with a reduced interest rate to decrease unemployment in Iran. Using longitudinal, firm-level data from the years 2005 to 2010 in Iran, this study examines the effect of one Iranian province's loan program on employment based on two different methods of evaluating causal effects. The first method applies a difference-in-difference fixed effects matching estimator to estimate the employment effect of the program. The second …

Essays On International Macroeconomics And Monetary Policy, Renzo M. Alvarez Oyola

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A sound monetary policy depends on a solid understanding of how external shocks reverberate throughout the economy. This is particularly true in emerging market economies under the inflation targeting (IT) framework since these economies tend to be subject to large external shocks, and don't have a long IT track record. My dissertation studies the macroeconomic consequences of external shocks under IT in emerging market economies, and the policy response to such shocks.

The first chapter studies whether foreign exchange interventions (FXI) are effective under IT in the context of commodity prices shocks. It also explores the extent to which lack …

International Trade And Environmental Regulation, Qingru Tu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three chapters regarding international trade and environmental regulation. The first chapter focuses on the relationship between port ownership and the port R\&D investment. I investigate whether a larger degree of private involvement in the port sector makes for a higher level of welfare, as well as an improvement in port performance. I establish the stage games to analyze the reciprocal international trade. The theoretical findings indicate that the endowment of population plays an essential role in choosing the optimal port ownership. In the second chapter, I investigate the effect of port pollution regulation on port …

Three Essays On Growth, Housing Market And Inequality, Shahrzad Ghourchian

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three essays on growth, the housing market, and inequality. In the first essay, I analyze the effects of government consumption and government debt on long-run economic growth by considering the economic characteristics of the countries investigated. Linear regressions reveal that government consumption has a much bigger negative impact on long-run growth compared with the negative (and sometimes insignificant) effects of government debt. Nonlinear analyses further show that such effects are highly impacted by the economic characteristics of the countries investigated.

In the second essay, I study time-series fluctuations in the United States housing market from 2010 to …

Resource Nationalism And Energy Integration In Latin America: The Paradox Of Populism, Brian Hollingsworth

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between resource nationalism and energy integration, and uses Bolivia and Brazil as a test case. Essentially, does resource nationalism affect energy integration? The findings nest within more expansive questions on international political economy and export-driven models of development. Why do populist regimes, historically operating under an economic nationalist cum protectionist paradigm, simultaneously pursue policies of economic integration? What is the relationship between resource nationalists and open markets, especially in the hydrocarbons sector? What is the relationship between populists, who are typically resource nationalists, and their decision to choose policies of energy integration?

The most common …

Three Essays On Managing Extreme Weather Events And Climatic Shocks In Developing And Developed Countries, Md Tanvir Pavel

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Climate change and extreme weather events are affecting the environment, and people’s livelihood in both developing and developed countries. Agriculture, forestry, fishing, livestock, water resources, human health, terrestrial ecosystems, biodiversity, and coastal zones are among the major sectors impacted by these shocks. The challenge of adaptation is particularly acute in the developing countries, as poverty and resource constraints limit their capacity to act. Bangladesh fits in this category, and thus I use data from Bangladesh to analyze the adaptation process in the first and second chapter of my dissertation.

In the first chapter, I investigate whether transient shocks (flood, cyclone) …

Essays On Trade And Growth, Yulin Hou

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three essays on international trade and economic growth. The first essay investigates whether the content of what economies export matters for human capital accumulation. I construct a small open economy model and find that expansion of primary exports can harm human capital accumulation if the economy is initially allocating significant resources to primary goods production. Then I test this prediction empirically using Latin American data over the period from 1965 to 2010 and find robust evidence in support of the hypothesis that a shift towards primary exports reduces human capital accumulation.

In the second essay, …

Three Essays On International Trade And Migration, Yun Wang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation encompasses three different topics on empirical international trade and migration. The first chapter investigates the short run effects of regional trade agreements on trade costs. It is widely accepted that the reinforcement of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) aiming at trade costs reduction among trade partners requires time. This paper investigates the effects of RTAs on trade costs over time by using unique micro-price data. We confirm that having an RTA on average lowers trade costs significantly. Furthermore, data shows significant and negative effects of RTAs on trade costs over time. Specifically, besides the initial impact on trade costs, …

Three Essays In Health, Welfare, And International Economics, Amin Shoja

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Both economists and policy makers are interested in understanding the welfare effect of economic policies, especially in small open economies such as Turkey and Iran. This knowledge is crucial for priority setting in any informed policy discussion. This dissertation aims to study the impoverishing effect of high levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments in the health sector, referred to as catastrophic health expenditure (CHE), and investigates the impact of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) on both the microeconomic and macroeconomic indicators of a country. For millions of people worldwide, health payments present a huge financial risk. A high rate of OOP health …