Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Teaching Economics Interactively: A Cannibal's Dinner Party, Ted Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

This paper describes techniques that I use to teach economics principles "interactively". These techniques include classroom experiments and classroom clickers. The paper describes an experiment on market entry and gives examples of applications of classroom clickers. Clicker applications include the collection data about student preferences that can be used to construct demand curves and supply curves. Check on students' knowledge of central concepts. Play interactive games that illustrate economic concepts.

Corruption, Extortion, Reputation, And Asymmetric Information, Neil Campbell

Neil Campbell

This paper develops a simple reputational model that examines the situation of where a corrupt official attempts to extort a bribe from a firm. The game, between these two players, is repeated, giving us a two-period story. In, what I describe as the ‘pretending-to-be-heroic scenario’, the firm (a ‘soft’ firm) does not pay the bribe in the first period (as well as, not paying the bribe in the second period). If it was a one period-model this firm would pay the bribe, and, if the bribe was not paid, the official would carry out her threat. However, in the two-period …

Ideology, Inequality And Inequitable Trade Policies, Daron Djerdjian

Daron Djerdjian

Does more wealth inequality lead to more inequitable trade policies? To answer this question, this study develops a political economy model of international trade theory and predicts that in a pro-worker regime, an increase in wealth inequality leads to more equitable trade policies. In a pro-capitalist regime, an increase in wealth inequality leads to more inequitable trade policies. Using cross-country data on political ideology, wealth inequality and different measures of trade policies, this paper finds empirical support for these predictions.

Public–Private Partnerships In A Texas Municipality:The Case Of The City Of Houston Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones, Andrew Ewoh

Andrew I.E. Ewoh

This article examines the public–private partnerships' (PPPs') processes, governance structures, financing, and promotion strategies through tax increment reinvestment zones' (TIRZs') provision in various projects and their impacts in the City of Houston, Texas. In conclusion, the analysis delineates the policy implication of using PPPs or TIRZs as a government reinvention tool in public service delivery in the 21st century and recommends how to implement successful partnerships.

Peace And Economic Interdependence In The Middle East, Kirsten Wandschneider, Jeffrey Cason, Amichai Kilchevsky

Kirsten Wandschneider

Can economic interdependence pacify the Middle East? While Middle Eastern countries have, for the most part, avoided the global trend of regionalism, this study provides empirical evidence that Middle Eastern countries with significant trade ties to other countries in the region do cooperate more and fight less. In addition to confirming the liberal notion of peace through trade, this study shows that several conditions outlined by the selectorate theory of political survival must be fulfilled if economic interdependence in the Middle East is to be achieved. A case study outlining Israeli and Turkish economic cooperation is used to show the …

How Often Do Economists Self-Archive?, Ted Bergstrom, Rosemarie Lavaty

Ted C Bergstrom

To answer the question of the paper's title, we looked at the tables of contents from two recent issues of 33 economics journals and attempted to find a freely available online version of each article. We found that about 90 percent of articles in the most-cited economics journals and about 50 percent of articles in less-cited journals are available. We conduct a similar exercise for political science and find that only about 30 percent of the articles are freely available. The paper reports a regression analysis of the effects of author and article characteristics on likelihood of posing and it …

Estimated Age Effects In Athletic Events And Chess, Ray Fair

Ray C Fair

Rates of decline are estimated using record bests by age for chess and for various track and field, road running, and swimming events. Using a fairly flexible functional form, the estimates show linear percent decline between age 35 and about age 70 and then quadratic decline after that. Chess shows much less decline than the physical activities. Rates of decline are generally larger for the longer distances, and for swimming they are larger for women than for men. An advantage of using best-performance records to estimate rates of decline is that the records are generally based on very large samples. …

First In The Class? Age And The Education Production Function, Diane Schanzenbach, Elizabeth Cascio

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

Older children outperform younger children in a school-entry cohort well into their school careers. The existing literature has provided little insight into the causes of this phenomenon, leaving open the possibility that school-entry age is zero-sum game, where relatively young students lose what relatively old students gain. In this paper, we estimate the effects of relative age using data from an experiment where children of the same biological age were randomly assigned to different classrooms at the start of school. We find no evidence that relative age impacts achievement in the population at large. However, disadvantaged children assigned to a …

What Moves The National Retirement Risk Index? A Look Back And An Update, Anthony Webb, Alicia Munnell, Francesca Golub-Sass

Anthony Webb

In June 2006, the Center for Retirement Research released the National Retirement Risk Index (NRRI). The results showed that even if households work to age 65 and annuitize all their financial assets, including the receipts from reverse mortgages on their homes, 43 percent will be at risk of being unable to maintain their standard of living in retirement. Households are more likely to be ‘at risk’ if they are young, have low incomes, or lack pension coverage…

Increases In Morbid Obesity In The Usa: 2000-2005., Roland Sturm

Roland Sturm

No abstract provided.

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec): Economic Cooperation Through Political Conflict, Jonathan Ping

Jonathan H. Ping

No abstract provided.

Cohort Differences In Retirement Expectations And Realizations, Nicole Maestas

Nicole Maestas

No abstract provided.

Employee Pensions: Policies, Problems And Possibilities, Terea Ghilarducci, Christian Weller

Christian Weller

No abstract provided.

Strategic Appointments, Sven Feldmann, Anthony Bertelli

Sven Feldmann

This article develops an institutional spatial theory of presidential appointments to administrative agencies that falls within the spirit of a recent line of theoretical research toward an institutional theory of the presidency. We show that when bureaucrats implement policy that results from negotiation with constituents, the ally principle—appointing political allies—holds only as a knife-edge condition. Presidents are better served by appointing administrators whose preferences partially offset the influence of organized interests. The incentives described have implications for the selection of a whole range of bureaucratic personnel at various levels, generating significant implications for the study of public management on issues …

The Asian Financial Crisis: The International Monetary Fund's Increasing Importance, Jonathan Ping

Jonathan H. Ping

No abstract provided.

Decomposing Consumer Wealth Effects: Evidence On The Role Of Real Estate Assets Following The Wealth Cycle Of 1990-2002, Michael Donihue, Andriy Avramenko

Michael R Donihue

During the period from 1990 to 2002, U.S. households experienced a dramatic wealth cycle, induced by a 369 percent appreciation in the value of real per capita liquid stock-market assets, followed by a 55 percent decline. However, despite predictions at the time by some analysts relying on life-cycle models of consumption, consumer spending in real terms continued to rise throughout this period. Using data that include the period from 1990 to 2005, traditional approaches to estimating macroeconomic wealth effects on consumption confront two puzzles: (i) econometric evidence of a stable cointegrating relationship among consumption, income, and wealth is weak at …

Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, A Haitian Anthropologist And Self-Making In Jamaica, Gina Ulysse

Gina Athena Ulysse

The Caribbean “market woman” is ingrained in the popular imagination as the archetype of black womanhood in countries throughout the region. Challenging this stereotype and other outdated images of black women, Downtown Ladies offers a more complex picture by documenting the history of independent international traders—known as informal commercial importers, or ICIs—who travel abroad to import and export a vast array of consumer goods sold in the public markets of Kingston, Jamaica. Both by-products of and participants in globalization, ICIs operate on multiple levels and, since their emergence in the 1970s, have made significant contributions to the regional, national, and …

What Have Researchers Learned From Project Star?, Diane Schanzenbach

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

No abstract provided.

Tracking Performance: When Less Is More, Kathy Paulson Gjerde, Hughes S.

Kathy A. Paulson Gjerde

Is The United States A Good Model For Reducing Social Exclusion In Europe?, John Schmitt, Ben Zipperer

Ben Zipperer

Advocates of U.S.-style labor market flexibility have long argued that Europe could generate jobs and lower unemployment if the continent's economies followed the example of the United States. More recently, proponents of the U.S. model have suggested that labor market deregulation also holds out the possibility of reducing the problem of "social exclusion" in Europe, primarily because unemployment is one of the worst forms of social exclusion and contributes to other forms of social marginalization. The authors review a broad range of social and economic indicators and conclude that the United States fares poorly compared with much of Europe on …

Greening The Business Economics Curriculum: A Paradigm For Environmental Stewardship In The 21st Century, Asayehgn Desta

Asayehgn Desta