Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mitigating Sex Trafficking: Preventative Methods For Reducing Sexual Exploitation, Autumn Rain Monroe

University Honors Theses

In recent years, sex trafficking has become more well-known in the public sphere, generating activism and legislation in an effort to combat this human rights issue. With this increased awareness comes challenges in appropriately understanding sex trafficking. The general public and even lawmakers often do not understand the complete dynamic or complexities of sex trafficking. Definitional inconsistencies make it difficult to provide a universal definition of sex trafficking, contributing to misconceptions involving the methods of entry and the barriers to exiting. Ultimately, this prevents proper identification of victims, hinders the protection of victims, and the implementation of survivor-oriented legislation, meaning …

It May Work In Practice, But Does It Work In Theory? Explaining The Trend Towards “Do-It-Yourself” Economics, Paul R. Koch

Scholar Week 2016 - present

In 1986, the late David Henderson, the former chief economist at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), published a book entitled Innocence and Design: The Influence of Economic Ideas on Policy, which were based on his Reith Lectures from the previous year. In this book, he outlined the elements of a concept which he defined as “do-it-yourself economics,” which emphasized a case-by-case approach to economic policy, as opposed to one that was associated with a comprehensive vision or theory. Some of the following statements constitute examples of “DIY economics” at work:

• Industries or activities can be classified as …

Recessionary Woes: Examining Economic Policies And Their Impact On Student Loan Debt And Housing Stability In The United States, Connor Recck

Senior Theses and Projects

Recessionary periods can seldom be avoided, but our modern public infrastructure has designed mechanisms to respond to these downturns. Economic policy has rapidly changed over the last 50 years, and the types of tools policymakers use have evolved with it. When looking at the Great Recession (2007-2009) and the COVID-19 recession (2020), a federal response structure was vital for the health of the macroeconomy. These recessionary periods serve as case studies for a review of economic policymaking activity in the United States since 2000. To examine the efficacy of the federal government’s fiscal and monetary infrastructure, policies focused on supporting …

The Residential Location Choices Of Chabad Households: An Analysis Of Decision Making With Non-Price Constraints, Chasity A. Mcfadden

Honors Theses

Where an individual chooses to live informs many of their economic decisions and may be the single largest economic decision one makes in their lives. Through understanding the way that people choose their residential locations, we are able to better understand the opportunities available to them. Within the Chabad community, there is a large focus on emissary work, which calls Chabad Jews to move outside of large Jewish communities in order to help secular Jews become more religious. There are also certain religious amenities that are necessary to live a Chabad life, such as a local synagogue. So the question …

Game Theory In Cricket, Shabab Ahmed

Honors Theses

The paper uses the natural setting of cricket to test theoretical predictions in game theory. In this setting, the agents play a one-shot-two-person constant sum game. The paper assesses whether trained professionals in cricket follow the `mix' of strategies predicted by Nash equilibria. The test uses a unique dataset derived from commentary data comprising of bowler and batsman strategies and outcomes. The paper creates a model for bowler-bastman interactions in cricket and uses this in conjunction with the data to generate predicted Nash equilibrium frequencies. These predicted frequencies are then compared with the actual frequencies from the data. My study …

Econometrics In The Courtroom, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Daniel L. Rubinfeld

No abstract provided.

Let Me, Or Let George? Motives Of Competing Altruists, Ted Bergstrom, Rodney Garratt, Greg Leo

Ted C Bergstrom

Sometimes a costly action taken by a single individual is sufficient to benefit an entire group. This should imply technical economies of scale to groups of larger size. But in a group of selfishly motivated agents, a countervailing force, the free-rider problem, may actually reduce the likelihood of provision as group size increases. Yet there are con- spicuous real-world cases where, in seeming defiance of the free-rider problem, a small minority provides a public good that benefits a large population. Examples include unpaid contributions to Wikipedia, Linux, and the bone-marrow registry. We suggest that these successful outcomes occur because a …

The Determinants Of Immigration-Policy Preferences In Advanced Economies: A Cross-Country Study, Joseph Daniels, Marc Von Der Ruhr

Joseph P Daniels

This paper employs survey data to examine the determinants of immigration-policy preferences among ten advanced economies. Ordered probit specifications suggest that skill level is a robust determinant of immigration-policy preferences and that less-skilled workers are more likely to express a preference for policies that restrict immigration. The results also suggest that older individuals, members of trade unions, and those who classify their political ideology as conservative are more likely to favor limiting immigration while non-citizens are less likely to favor such policies. Individual country-level regression results vary, in particular with regard to the influence of trade union member- ship, which …

On The Evolution Of Hoarding, Risk-Taking, And Wealth Distribution In Nonhuman And Human Populations, Ted C. Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper applies the theory of the evolution of risk-taking in the presence of idiosyncratic and environmental risks to the example of food hoarding by animals and explores implications of the resulting theory for human attitudes toward risk.

Government Economists As ‘Global Economists’”, Giulio M. Gallarotti

Giulio M Gallarotti

With the advent of globalization, economists that serve the U.S. government have had to become more sensitized to the greater internationalization of the challenges facing America's leaders. As this globalized world has turned domestic issues into international issues, the analysis of U.S. government economists has had to concomitantly become more internationalized. Only through such a broad analytical perspective can government economists best understand issues and solve problems in a globalized world.

Measures Of Assortativity, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper discusses alternative measures of assortative matching and relates them to Sewall Wright's F-statistic. We also explore applications of measures of assortativity to evolutionary dynamics. We generalize Wright's statistic to allow the possibility that some types match more assortatively than others, and explore the possibility of identifying parameters of this more general model from the observed distribution of matches by the partners' types.

The Good Samaritan And Traffic On The Road To Jericho, Ted C. Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

An End To End-To-End? A Review Essay Of Barbara Van Schewick’S Internet Architecture And Innovation, Adam Candeub

Federal Communications Law Journal

Amidst much controversy, the FCC released its landmark "network neutrality" order in December 2010. This regulation prohibits Internet service providers, such as Verizon or Comcast, from discriminating in favor of traffic or content that they own or with which they are affiliated. Professor Barbara van Schewick's recently published book, Internet Architecture and Innovation, could not be timelier. Employing a variety of economic and technical arguments, van Schewick defends the type of regulation the FCC passed as necessary to preserve the Internet's potential for innovation. My central critique of Internet Architecture is its deployment of economic theories on one side of …

A Unified Approach To Comparative Statics Puzzles In Experiments, Armin Schmutzler

Armin Schmutzler

The paper shows that several game-theoretic solution concepts provide similar comparative statics predictions over a wide class of games. I start from the observation that, in many experiments, behavior is affected by parameter shifts that leave the Nash equilibrium unchanged. I explain the direction of change with a heuristic structural approach, using properties such as strategic complementarities and increasing differences. I show that the approach is consistent with general comparative statics results for (i) the Nash equilibrium of a game with perturbed payoff functions, (ii) the quantal response equilibrium, (iii) level-k reasoning. I also relate the structural approach to equilibrium …

Effects Of Globalization In Welfare, Philadelphia University

Philadelphia University, Jordan

No abstract provided.

Reconstruction Of Concept Of Paradigm In Thomas S. Kuhn, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

This article aims to discuss an evaluation of the concept of paradigm of T. Kuhn in his representative work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ERC, [Ku96] and the complementary version by W. Stegmüller, Structure and dynamics of theories EDT, [Steg83]. This refined interpretation of the concept of paradigm allows for a more complete set of central Kuhnian concept.

Antinomies Of Capitalism (Review Of Globalization Its Discontents Joseph Stiglitz, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

We present the central arguments of the critics on the limits and scope of globalization on the work

The Leviathan Of Thomas Hobbes, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

This interpretation of the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes line of work includes a project from Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt. It offers a reading from modern political theory as opposed to rational version of the book of Hobbes. The Leviathan from mythological nature preserves from the Biblical and Talmudic tradition, which opens an understanding of the modern State from the medieval stories. Hobbes is one of the first theorists that paves the way for liberalism, but disputed that his work reflects not strictly liberal thought, but the problems of political power during the Monarchies

The Effects Of Labour Market Performance On Financial System Stability, Tomasz Daras, Joanna Tyrowicz

Joanna Tyrowicz

Crisis may spread through economy via the propagating mechanisms of the labour market - households becoming delinquent due to initial unemployment shock may be unable to continue servicing obligations versus the financial system. With large volume debts - e.g. mortgages - such defaults pose a threat to financial system stability. In this paper we use the Polish household budgets survey to simulate the impact of changes in the labour market status of household members on the ability of the household to service its mortgage payments. The simulation results are subsequently aggregated to facilitate macro-level interpretation of the findings. We simulate …

Do We Really Need To Start From Scratch?, Michal Gradzewicz, Krzysztof Makarski, Joanna Tyrowicz

Joanna Tyrowicz

This paper presents views and believes of the authors on the relevance of the current economic theory for the understanding of the complex world we live in. Has the crisis indeed demonstrated that as profession we are misled by the beauty of the mathematical models and the only useful, workable solutions at hand were provided in early 1930s? The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the current state-of-the-art literature from the perspective of its usefulness in the context of economic crises. We argue that although we might be unable to answer many questions or to “predict” …

The Coasean Analysis Of Harmful Interactions: Some Conceptual Difficulties, Satish K. Jain

Satish K. Jain

This paper is concerned with two distinct issues flowing from Coase's analysis of harmful interactions and of how courts deal with them. The first issue relates to the domain of validity of the Coase Theorem. It is argued in the paper that if non-pecuniary considerations are brought into the analysis then it can no longer be claimed that the outcome will be efficient regardless of liability assignments. In other words, it is contended in the paper that the validity of the Coase Theorem is crucially dependent on neglect of non-pecuniary considerations from the analysis. From this it follows that if …

Paul A. Samuelson (1915 - 2009): Memories Of Friedrich Von Hayek (1899 - 1992) Spanish Translation: Fernando Estrada And Andrea Trujillo, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

In this report Professor Samuelson staff prepares a tour of the work and thought of highlighting the contributions of Hayek Austrian economist and showing the world within which they took power broadly two contradictory paradigms of economic thought. This testimony intellectual frontline is extraordinary, given the recent death of Professor Samuelson

Financial Theory Has A Paradigm A La Kuhn?, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

This article aims to discuss two issues relatively linked. The first is an evaluation of the concept of paradigm of T. Kuhn in his representative work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ERC, [Ku96] and the complementary version by W. Stegmüller, Structure and dynamics of theories EDT, [Steg83]. This refined interpretation of the concept of paradigm allows for a more complete set of central Kuhnian concept. The second objective is to analyze the scope of the Kuhnian concept of models to evaluate financial explanation. Is explored preliminarily proposed fractal models / multifractal (F / M) of Mandelbrot [Mand97, 82, 02, 05]. …

Monopolistic Screening Under Learning By Doing, Dennis L. Gärtner

Dennis L Gärtner

This article investigates the design of incentives in a dynamic adverse selection framework where agents’ production technologies display learning effects and agents’ learning rates are private knowledge. In a simple two-period model with full commitment available to the principal, we show that whether learning effects are over- or underexploited crucially depends on whether more efficient agents also learn faster (so costs diverge through learning effects) or whether it is the less efficient agents who learn faster (so costs converge). We further show that an overexploitation of learning effects can occur also if the full-commitment assumption is relaxed.

Stem Cell Matching For Patients Of Mixed Race, Ted C. Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

Patients with leukemia and other blood diseases stand a good chance of recovery and a return to normal life if they receive a stem cell transplant from a living donor. In the absence of a transplant, their survival prospects are grim. For a transplant to be successful, the human leukocyte antigens (HLA) of the donor and recipient must be a close genetic match. To facilitate non-sibling matches, the developed nations of the world have set up national volunteer registries. The larges such registry is the NMDP (National Marrow Donor Program). We estimate the distribution of HLA types for individuals of …

Merger Negotiations And Ex Post Regret, Dennis Gärtner, Armin Schmutzler

Dennis L Gärtner

We consider a setting in which two potential merger partners each possess private information pertaining both to the profitability of the merged entity and to stand-alone profits, and investigate the extent to which this private information makes ex-post regret an unavoidable phenomenon in merger negotiations. To this end, we consider ex-post mechanisms, which use both players’ reports to determine whether or not a merger will take place and what each player will earn in each case. When the outside option of at least one player is known, the efficient merger decision can be implemented by such a mechanism under plausible …

Merger Negotiations And Ex Post Regret, Dennis Gärtner, Armin Schmutzler

Armin Schmutzler

We consider a setting in which two potential merger partners each possess private information pertaining both to the profitability of the merged entity and to stand-alone profits, and we investigate the extent to which this private information makes ex-post regret an unavoidable phenomenon in merger negotiations. To this end, we consider ex-post mechanisms, which use both players’ reports to determine whether or not a merger will take place and what each player will earn in each case. When the outside option of at least one player is known, the efficient merger decision can be implemented by such a mechanism under …

Exogenous Coalition Formation In The E-Marketplace Based On Geographical Proximity, Tomasz Michalak, Joanna Tyrowicz, Peter Mcburney, Michael Wooldridge

Joanna Tyrowicz

This paper considers a model for exogenous coalition formation in e-marketplaces. Using its informational advantage, an e-retailer creates coalitions of customers based on geographical proximity. Most of the literature regards this process as endogenous: a coalition leader among the buyers bundles eventual purchases together in order to obtain a better bargaining position. In contrast – and in response to what is typically observed in business practice – we analyse a situation in which an existing e-retailer exogenously forms customers’ coalitions. Results of this study are highly encouraging. Namely, we demonstrate that even under highly imperfect warehouse management schemes leading to …

Simple Economies With Multiple Equilibria, Ted C. Bergstrom, Ken-Ichi Shimomura, Takehiko Yamato

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper studies a general class of pure exchange economies that have multiple equilibria, which extend an example presented by Lloyd Shapley and Martin Shubik. For such economies, we find easily verified conditions that determine whether there are multiple equilibria. We also provide simple methods for constructing economies in which arbitrary pre-specified sets of prices are equilibria. These economies have simple comparative statics, since prices at interior competitive equilibrium depend on the parameters of utility but not on the endowment quantities.

All-Pay Auctions With Negative Prize Externalities: Theory And Experimental Evidence, Armin Schmutzler, Dario Sacco

Armin Schmutzler

The paper characterizes the mixed-strategy equilibria in all-pay auctions with endogenous prizes that depend positively on own effort and negatively on the effort of competitors. Such auctions arise naturally in the context of investment games, lobbying games, and promotion tournaments. We also provide an experimental analysis of a special case which captures the strategic situation of a two-stage game with investment preceding homogenous Bertrand competition. We obtain overinvestment both relative to the mixed-strategy equilibrium and the social optimum.