Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of Macroeconomic And Policy Uncertainty In Density Forecast Dispersion, You Li, Anthony S. Tay

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore empirically the role of macroeconomic and policy uncertainty in explaining dispersion in professional forecasters’ density forecasts, and in explaining individual forecaster uncertainty (defined as the uncertainty expressed by individual forecasters in their density forecasts). We focus on US real output growth and inflation, using data from the Philadelphia Fed’s quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), 1992-2016. We find that dispersion in individual density forecasts is related to macroeconomic uncertainty, especially in longer horizon forecasts, but not policy or forecaster uncertainty. There is also little evidence that forecaster uncertainty reflects macroeconomic or policy uncertainty.

Regional Economic Impacts Of China's High-Speed Rail Development And Its Institutional Challenges, Hankun Zhao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This article studies the impact of connecting to high-speed rail (HSR) network on regional development and the replication and sustainability of China’s GIUR system, aiming to summarize the experience of China’s HSR, which can provide several policy references for developing countries. This article conducts two research: (1) explore the impact of connecting to HSR network on the urban industrial structure, urban creativity and urban-rural income gap of cities in different regions and cities with heterogeneous locations along the HSR lines in the long and short term; (2) explore the advantages and disadvantages of the Government-Industry-University-Research (GIUR) system in the process …

A Critical Look At The Failure Of Mainstream Economics, Joseph M. Dipoli

Journal of Global Business Insights

Book Review

Foundations of real-world economics: What every economics student needs to know (2nd ed.), by John Komlos, New York, Routledge, 2019, 306 pp., $42.95 (Paperback), ISBN 9781138296541.

Many people in the United States of America are dissatisfied with the outcomes of the economy and some are suggesting measures that seem socialistic. The time has come to recognize that mainstream economics as taught in our schools is not serving students at all. The research sharing platform of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) states that John Komlos’s textbook Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to …

Retrospective Voting Versus Risk-Aversion Voting, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

According to retrospective voting a bad economy hurts the incumbent party and vice versa. According to risk-aversion voting a bad economy favors the Democrats over the Republicans and vice versa. This paper provides a test of both theories and rejects risk-aversion voting.

Retrospective Voting Versus Risk-Aversion Voting: A Comment On Pástor And Veronesi (2020), Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

According to retrospective voting, a bad economy hurts the incumbent party and vice versa. According to risk-aversion voting as discussed in Pástor and Veronesi (2020), high risk aversion favors the Democrats over the Republicans and vice versa. If high risk aversion is associated with a bad economy, then risk-aversion voting implies that a bad economy favors the Democrats and vice versa. The two theories thus have different implications for the Democrats. This paper tests both theories under the assumption that high risk aversion is associated with a bad economy. The results provide no support for risk-aversion voting under this assumption.

Architecture, Social Norms, And Their Economic Consequences In Japan, Koichi Kume

Japanese Society and Culture

Law and market mechanisms presuppose that people are rational. With the diversification of lifestyles and values, however, there is a limit to appealing only to economic rationality to implement social policies. In this study we focus on architecture as a policy instrument that does not presuppose people’s rationality and empirically analyze the effect on economic consequences in Japan. Specifically, we examine the relationship between bank transfers and poverty reduction, and that between statues (Sontoku Ninomiya, Jizo) and labor norms. The results suggest that the use of architecture in policy can improve policy effectiveness regardless of people’s irrationality and heterogeneous preferences.

Paso Del Norte Economic Indicator Review, March, Hunt Institute For Global Competitiveness

Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Econometric Analysis Of Japan’S Roadside Stations Provided With The New Type Grants, Ryusaku Matsuo, Mitoshi Yamaguchi

Japanese Society and Culture

The number of Roadside Stations in Japan is increasing rapidly; it increased from 103 in 1993 to 1173 in 2020. From 2007, two new subsidies were given to select Roadside Stations. In this paper, we discuss the endogenous development and the role of the Roadside Stations therein. We also consider the various models we constructed to estimate how subsidies contributed to the business of the Roadside Stations. We estimate the interrelationship between sales and the factors that influence sales amount using a simultaneous equation model. An econometric analysis shows that parking space and sales share a loop (mutual and reciprocal) …

Population Trends In The Area Where Nuclear Power Plants Are Located Before And After The Fukushima Accident And Their Impact On The Estimated Population, Takeshi Inoue

Japanese Society and Culture

Comparing the population trends in the areas where nuclear power plants are located with those in the neighborhood reveals it is declining and more so in the former than in the neighborhood. The cause is thought to be that the nuclear power plant was shut down for a long time after the earthquake and the Fukushima accident. However, such a decline is not necessarily due to the decrease in employment opportunities of the electric industry itself, but from electric-related industries. Regarding the estimated future population, the percentage of nuclear-located areas with the possibility of disappearing as defined by the Regional …

Isolating The Effect Of Injunctive Norms On Conservation Behavior: New Evidence From A Field Experiment In California, Syon Bhanot

Economics Faculty Works

Social norms messaging campaigns are increasingly used to influence human behavior, with social science research generally finding that they have modest but meaningful effects. One aspect of these campaigns in practice has been the inclusion of injunctive norms messaging, designed to convey a social judgment about one’s behavior (often in the form of encouraging or discouraging language, or a visual smiley or frowny face). While some prominent research has provided support for the use of such messaging as a tool for positive behavior change, causal evidence on the effect of injunctive norms messaging as a motivator (as opposed to just …

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

Occupancy, Oil Prices, And Stock Returns: Evidence From The U.S. Airline Industry, Andre V. Mollick, Md Ruhul Amin

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This paper examines whether occupancy of seats affects stock returns of airline companies and how this relationship is affected by WTI oil prices. Our approach combines revenues (occupancy) and costs (oil prices) for 33 U.S. airline companies from 1990 to 2019. Using travel capacity utilization data from U.S. carriers at monthly frequency and exploiting fixed-effects regression models, we document a positive relation between occupancy and stock returns, which is attenuated by oil prices. The role of oil becomes larger with asymmetries: the effects of oil prices are higher when moving up than down. Airline stocks always respond by more than …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 5, Number 3, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton, Ana Gutierrez Zubiate, Ignacio Santana

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Change In Outbreak Epicentre And Its Impact On The Importation Risks Of Covid-19 Progression: A Modelling Study, Oyelola A. Adegboye, Adeshina I. Adekunle, Anton Pak, Ezra Gayawan, Denis H. Y. Leung, Diana P. Rojas, Emma S. Mcbryde, Damon P. Eisen

Research Collection School Of Economics

Background: The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) that was first detected in the city of Wuhan, China has now spread to every inhabitable continent, but now the attention has shifted from China to other epicentres. This study explored early assessment of the influence of spatial proximities and travel patterns from Italy on the further spread of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. Methods: Using data on the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and air travel data between countries, we applied a stochastic meta-population model to estimate the global spread of COVID-19. Pearson's correlation, semi-variogram, and Moran's Index were used to …

The Influence Of Food Recommendations: Evidence From A Randomized Field Experiment, Kamal Bookwala, Caleb Gallemore, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres

ESI Working Papers

We report results from a randomized field experiment conducted at two food festivals. Our primary aim is to assess the impact of two types of recommendations commonly observed in food settings: most popular and chef’s choice. Subjects select a cupcake from a binary menu. The two options, offered by the same bakery, are the best seller in the bakery and the baker’s recommended cupcake. Our treatments manipulate whether the recommendation is disclosed in tandem with the cupcakes in the menu. We find that the most popular is the only recommendation that statistically significantly increased consumers’ demand relative to …

The Effects Of Income On Health: Evidence From Lottery Wins In Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We estimate the causal effects of household income on self-reported health status by exploiting random variations in the amount of lottery prizes won. We find that a S$10,000 (US$7,245) increase in income via lottery wins improves individuals’ health by a standard deviation of 0.18. As possible mechanisms, we find that lottery wins increase household consumption spending and improve overall life satisfaction, but do not change healthcare spending, labor supply, and risky health behavior. Previous studies, which focused on the health effects of lottery prizes in Western European countries with strong social safety nets, do not find positive effects other than …

On Incentive Compatible, Individually Rational Public Good Provision Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper characterizes mechanisms satisfying incentive compatibility and individual rationality in the classical public good provision problem. Many papers in the literature obtain the results in the so-called standard model of ex ante identical agents with a continuous, closed interval of types. The main contribution of this paper is the characterization of the budget-surplus maximizing mechanism satisfying incentive compatibility and individual rationality (Theorem 1 for Bayesian implementation and Theorem 3 for dominant strategy implementation) that applies to a finite discretization over the standard model. Making use of the proposed budget-surplus maximizing mechanisms, we show that some known results do not …

Indispensable Homes In Third World Countries: Constructing A Home In Tijuana, Mexico, Myles Hubers

Construction Management

This project was created to explore a way in which poverty around the world could ultimately be reduced. The way in which this project intends to demonstrate a method used to reduce poverty is by building a home for a specific family in Tijuana, Mexico. In doing so, this home will act as a model home for a manual, comprised of steps that should be taken to construct similar homes throughout any third world country. The goal of this project is to highlight the importance of poverty in the world while also creating a buildable solution in order to reduce …

Japanese Monetary Policy And Its Impact On Stock Market Implied Volatility During Pleasant And Unpleasant Weather, Marinela Adriana Finta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the effect of Japan’s Monetary Policy Meeting releases on the intraday dynamics of the Nikkei Stock Average Volatility Index and its futures during pleasant and unpleasant weather. We show that at the time of a monetary policy release when the temperature is pleasant, there is a significant decline in Japanese equities’ implied volatility and futures, which lasts for about 10 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively. This decline is longer and exhibits a greater variation when releases occur during cold days. Finally, we emphasize the achievable economic profits and losses, given the reaction of Nikkei VI futures to the …

Essays On Random Social Choice Theory, Soumyarup Sadhukhan Dr.

Doctoral Theses

The thesis covers an extreme point characterization of strategy-proof and unanimous probabilistic rules over binary restricted domains. It shows that every strategy-proof and unanimous probabilistic rule on a binary restricted domain has binary support, and is a probabilistic mixture of strategy-proof and unanimous deterministic rules. Examples of binary restricted domains are single-dipped domains, which are of interest when considering the location of public bads. We also provide an extension to infinitely many alternatives. It also discusses that a random rule on a top-connected single-peaked domain is unanimous and strategy-proof if and only if it is a random min-max rule. As …

Kant And Lindahl, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Wicksell (1896) and Lindahl (1919) analyzed the public provision of public goods through parliamentary negotiation. Roemer (2010, 2019) applied Kant’s (1785) categorical imperative to the private provision of public goods by voluntary contributions. They coincide in yielding efficient outcomes. Our focal equilibrium notions are the Multiplicative Kantian Equilibrium in the Kant-Roemer modelling and the Balanced Linear Cost Share Equilibrium for the Wicksell-Lindahl approach. It turns out that both are defined by the same individual optimization problem, and that costs are distributed according to marginal valuation, what we call the Lindahl Ratio. More general versions of the Wicksell-Lindahl and Kant-Roemer models …

Short-Term Institutions, Analyst Recommendations, And Mispricing: The Role Of Higher Order Beliefs, Martijn Cremers, Ankur Pareek, Zacharias Sautner

Department of Finance Faculty Research

We document that stocks that have optimistic (pessimistic) consensus recommendations and are currently held by many short-term institutions exhibit large stock-return reversals: Their large past outperformance (underperformance) is followed by large negative (positive) future alphas. The predictable return reversals originate from overreaction to past recommendation releases and the correction of these overreactions around future releases. Results are stronger when earnings news is released and at firms with higher fundamental uncertainty. Further, firms with more short-term institutions show stronger announcement returns and price drift after recommendation changes. Our results are consistent with models of higher order beliefs where short-term institutions coordinate …

The Effects Of Renewable Portfolio Standards And The Deregulation Of Energy Markets On Electricity Prices, Amani Chaar

Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are public policies put into effect to help alleviate the harmful consequences of air pollution. Every state has a unique form of standards corresponding to their natural resources. More states have implemented the policy to increase the generation of renewable energy; however, many stand opposed to the policy in fear that it will increase electricity prices. The influence that RPS has on the price of electricity is not entirely understood. Previous literature confirms that RPS, on average, increases prices by three percent. This paper focuses on analyzing the effect of RPS on electricity rates over a …

Legal Financial Obligations & Rehabilitation: How The Ability To Pay Fines And Fees Disproportionately Affects Citizens Based On Socioeconomic Status, Bailey R. Code

University Honors Theses

In the United States, legal financial obligations (LFO's), also known as monetary sanctions or criminal justice financial obligations, refer to the fines and fees that result from an individual’s involvement in the criminal justice system. Today, these fines and fees have become the most common form of punishment used by the United States' legal system. This paper answers the following research question: How can the ability to pay legal financial obligations shape the rehabilitation of incarcerated people in the United States?

Legal Financial Obligations are harmful to those entangled within the justice system, as shown by their cyclical nature and …

What Is The Impact Of Economic Stimulus Measures On Covid-19 Mortality Rates?, Stephanie C. Santaguida

University Honors Theses

This inquiry seeks to establish the degree to which economic stimulus measures impact COVID-19 mortality rates. There appears to be an inverse correlation between domestic social spending and COVID-19 deaths. While confirmed infections are the most reliable predictor of mortality rates, trust in government is an important factor to consider when public compliance with health directives determines the degree of epidemiological risk in each country. Although most economists agree that stimulus monies directed to low-income individuals to prevent financial collapse were appropriate, there is some dissention with regard to the type and size of such cash infusions. Nonetheless, behavioral economists …

Aurora: The Pandemic Within, Nahariah Jaffar, Haslin Johari

International Journal of Management, Finance and Accounting

Aurora Layar Group (Aurora) had been experiencing losses for three consecutive years since 2017. Among factors contributing to these losses were high depreciation due to high capital expenditure and recognition of impairment losses. However, Aurora managed to reduce its losses from RM252 billion in 2017 to RM79.5 billion in 2019. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic had hammered many industries worldwide including Aurora, in the travel, leisure and hospitality sector. The implication from the restrictions on business operations due to the Covid-19 pandemic on Aurora was evidenced by its reported losses of RM371.3 billion in the first six months to June 2020 …

The Determinants Of House Prices In Malaysia, Hazmi Hamizan Bin Mohd Zaki

International Journal of Management, Finance and Accounting

This paper studied how house prices were affected by macroeconomic factors from Q1 2009 to Q4 2018. The short and long-run effects of real income, nominal interest rates, inflation rate and stock prices on house prices in Malaysia were examined with the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) of a restricted error correction model (ECM). It was discovered that the selected macroeconomic factors were cointegrated with house prices. Income, represented by real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), significantly affected house prices in the short and long-run. Inflation and interest rate, proxied by Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Overnight Policy Rate (OPR), respectively, affected …

Factors Affecting Accumulation Of Household Debts In Malaysia, Yvonne Lean-Ee Lee, Vanisa Sukhavudh Charun, Hazmi Hamizan Mohd Zaki

International Journal of Management, Finance and Accounting

Since 2000, the ratio of debt to income among Malaysian households has been showing an upward trend. This paper examines the factors affecting accumulation of household loans into two main categories, housing loans and consumption loans. The purpose of this separation is to study the impact of savings on housing loans and consumption loans individually, which has not been researched in a Malaysian context prior to this. By adopting the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), we found that cost of living, house prices and savings impacts accumulation of housing loans and consumption loans differently. There is a positive relationship between …

A Roller Coaster Ride, Hasni Binti Mohd Hanafi, Azman Bin Jantan

International Journal of Management, Finance and Accounting

Fun Extreme Park is a new theme park in town. After a few years in operation, the park is facing a crisis in declining number of visitors. Revenue is greatly affected as the biggest revenue stream comes from the sales of tickets. A few other challenges have been identified that may further contribute to the decline in the visitors’ numbers. The sales of retail products are not promising and there has been an increasing complaint from customers on the quality of food and services at their restaurants. Despite having ten rides in the park, some of the popular rides are …

Comments On Three Papers On Labor Market Effects Of Opportunity Zones, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.