Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays In Development Macroeconomics, Miguel Orozco Vazquez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that cover topics on development macroeconomics.

Chapter 1 - Misallocation of Resources and Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Mexico. This paper aims to measure the gross output loss due to misallocation of resources in the manufacturing and service sectors in Mexico during 2008-2018 and identify the inputs of production related to it. To do so, I use Mexican Economic Censuses and an extension of Hsieh and Klenow (2009). I also include resource misallocation computations using data processed with a Bayesian model for editing and imputing data to correct for measurement error (MEC data), which …

“The Real Cost Of Mining: How Digging For Rare Earth Metals Could Pose A Greater Cost Than Evs Can Save”, Brahim Khalil Yatim

Honors Theses and Capstones

The Paris Climate Agreement proposes to have 20% of all road transport vehicles be electric by the year 2030. Implementation of this policy is critical to help obtain a 2 degrees Celsius reduction in the increase of global temperatures by 2030. This paper dives into the true costs of taking on a project that large scale. This study finds that though the benefits of this project would result in a 351,785,600 tons of GHG saved by the electric conversion there are significant environmental and human costs associated with the mining necessary to complete the agreement's goal. With current technologies and …

Agents At Work: Modeling How Space Can Influence People In The Workplace, Jovan Poposki

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

People interact with space in ways that are important to consider when designing an office. Not considering this relationship has led to the dissatisfaction of employees post-occupancy. In this thesis, I present an agent-based model that incorporates several characteristics of agents, such as work ethic and sociability, and explores their behaviours and social interactions in the workplace. The model is first tested on a commercial workspace, varying agent parameters to see how they change the behaviour of the model. I find that agents with extreme personalities are happiest, and show a bimodality in the distribution of time spent in various …

Is Offense Worth More Than Defense In The National Basketball Association?, Justin Ehrlich, Joel Potter

Sport Management - All Scholarship

Motivated by the popular sports saying, “Offense sells tickets, defense wins championships,” we use Forbes revenue data to quantify whether offense really does sell more ‘tickets’ than defense in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Employing team offensive and defensive win shares as measures of offensive and defensive proficiency, we find offensively oriented teams generate the same amount of revenue as do defensively oriented teams, other things equal. Our results suggest that both profit-maximizing and win-maximizing teams should value offensively and defensively players equivalently (per unit). Thus, in an efficient free agent market, we would expect equilibrium player salaries for offensive …

“For The People: A Collaborative Space Assessment”: A Joyful Interpretation Of Room Design, Anne Holland

Honors Projects

To create a space that matters one must focus on the needs of the people who will use it. It is easy to create a beautiful space, however if that space does not function for those it was built for it has no point. Currently in the basement of Founders Residence Hall on the Bowling Green State University campus there is an old unused cafeteria space. This space has not only the potential but the ability to become something new, something of use. It is an area that could not only be renovated and redone by the Honors College but …

Law Library Blog (November 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Oflaw

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Input Trade And Service Industry Productivity Growth, Mike Hsu

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In this paper, I address two questions: (1) Does reducing tariffs for manufacturing inputs affect productivity in service industries? (2) Does the effect of input trade liberalization differ for importers in service and manufacturing industries? To answer these questions, I used an establishment-level survey of Uruguayan service industries from 1998 to 2005, a period in which the country reduced its tariffs on manufactured products. I found that service establishments that import inputs from abroad experience a larger increase in productivity relative to non-importers when input tariffs are reduced. Furthermore, the effects of trade liberalization are as significant in the service …

Three Keys Of Development: Knowledge, Efficiency And Innovative Entrepreneurship, Irfan Kalayci, Ali Soylu, Baris Aytekin

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

The change in the structure and composition of production factors have always been occurred in the world production history. The competition between sectors and also within each sub-sector that comprise them continues. In this sense, competition has always fed change, transformation and progress. The process phenomenon is the change and transformation movements that occur in the production processes that economies focus on. In this respect, the classification steps emphasize this development. In this study, we discuss economic groups (resource-oriented, productivity-oriented, and innovation-oriented) in terms of drivers of economic development (knowledge, efficiency, innovative entrepreneurship, and productivity). The 3rd Industrial Revolution starting …

The Response Of Onion Plants Allium Cepa L. To Foliar Spray With Different Concentrations Of Seaweed Extract (Algaren), Rawaa Babilie, Ossamh Al-Abdallah, Bassima Kassawat

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

The experiment was carried out in the General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research in the nursery of Al-Adaway in 2014 and 2015 seasons to study the effect of foliar spraying with seaweed extract (Algaren, Seaweeds and Seaweed Products) on local red onion growth and the yield of dry bulbs and produce of seeds. Spray treatments: (control/distilled water, 5, 10, and 15 ml/l Algaren) were applied four times during the season. The complete randomized block design was used with four replicates per treatment.

The results showed that spraying the onion plants emerged from bulblets (Resulting from seed cultivation( with Algaren extract …

Judicious Vulnerability: How Humility, Teachability, And Awareness Impact Teams In Organizational Settings, Mac Strachan

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

In some professions, such as medicine, law enforcement, athletics, and education, maintaining high performance standards while being emotionally stoic often leads to work fatigue and burnout. This state of being can be detrimental to the health of both the professionals and the organization that employs them, bringing into question the necessity of a culture driven by competition and ego. As such, this paper explores the concept of vulnerability as a means to explain cognitive and emotional processes that positively affect relational behavior and organizational culture. Judicious vulnerability sits at the intersection of humility, teachability, and awareness and has the capacity …

Evaluating The Research Funding Opportunities For Library & Information Science Professionals: An Evaluative Study, Parvin S L Kureshi Miss, Navin Upadhyay Dr, Kanu Chakraborty Mr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research paper highlights the top twenty research funding agencies of the world in the discipline of Information Science and Library Information Science. The citation analysis method has been adopted for the present study and used the database Web of Science and InCites. The aim of this research paper is to make aware research scholars, faculty members, LIS professional and Practitioners, and policymakers about the various National and International top-level funding agencies available to fund their research proposals. The research and academic fraternity and particularly the library professionals who always face problems to get funds to work on any project …

Is United States’ Economic Power In Decline? Can China Replace The U.S. As The World’S Next Economic Superpower?, Islam Bakirci

Dissertations

The decline of American economic power has been passionately debated for decades. Starting from the Kennedy administration, there were many cases that declinist scholars interpreted as the beginning of American economic power decline. The financial crisis of 2007-09 is the latest case of the same debate. However, unlike the previous cases, declinist scholars who support the idea of U.S. economic power is in decline after the financial crisis, strongly believe that this time the decline is different. This time the decline is real. In addition, the same scholars also argue that China, as an economic challenger which is different from …

Ranking And Research Trend : A Comparative Study Of Research Output Of Top Ten Nirf Ranked Engineering Institutions Of India Based On Scientometric Indicators, Pooja P. Dadhe. Assistant Librarian, Manju N. Dubey. Librarian

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The first decade of 21^st century has witnessed an unprecedented increase of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in India. In the first decade itself 19493 new colleges and 257 universities were established, bringing the total number of colleges and universities to 31,324 and 493 respectively by the end of 2009-2010 (UGC, 2010) as against 11831 colleges and 236 universities till the year 1999-2000 (UGC, 2000). This sudden surge in the number of institutions attracted many debate on the quality of higher education in the country. Apart from the mandatory accreditation of courses/institutions by government established bodies, in 2015 government of …

Exploring Tech Tools And Productivity Apps, Lauren Puzier

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Technology is continuously changing, and there are always new tools and mobile apps to test out. There are tools for everything from productivity, audio, communication, content creation and design, coding, automation, VR, video, etc. As many libraries have shifted to remote operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, daily workflows have changed. The NMRT Online Discussion Committee asked members what tools they have found useful in their work at the library or home over the past year. Members shared tools they were interested in trying and which apps help their daily workflow.

Take A Break!...Or More., Maria Saez Marti

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

I investigate the optimal timing and length of breaks in a model with fatigue. A break’s length determines the worker’s productivity once work is resumed. I show that all breaks should be identical, equally spaced and long enough to fully recover productivity. When taking breaks is costless, the higher the number of breaks the better. Otherwise, the optimal number is finite and those workers whose productivity falls more at the beginning of the day should take more breaks. Workaholics take their breaks too early and make them too short, from the employers’ viewpoint. The opposite is true for leisure-oriented workers.

Biased Technical Change, Institutional Shift, And The Functional Distribution Of Income: Who Benefits From Economic Growth?, Adam Szymanski-Burgos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Starting from the mid 1970s and early 1980’s, the US and other advanced economies observed a widening divergence between the growth of average and median real hourly labor compensation and the average growth of labor productivity. This decoupling between labor compensation and productivity indicates a decline in the labor share of national income. Opposite to movements in the labor share, the share of national income remunerated as capital income has increased with the rise of capital incomes concentrated largely in corporate sector profits. Key developments since the middle of the 20th century have coincided with the onset of medium-run fluctuations …

Work Ethic And Productivity: The Mediating Role Of Leadership, Everly Tapp

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Employee work ethic and workplace productivity are vital for organizational success. Past research has shown leadership style to be influential on both, with the manager-employee relationship impacting employee’s attitude and output in the workplace. This study investigated the relationship between employee work ethic and workplace productivity, while also examining the impact of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles on agriculture equipment dealership employees. The leadership style of service managers, as measured by the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (5x-Short), was compared to the workplace productivity and work ethic scores of the service technicians they manage. Service technician workplace productivity data was …

Strategies To Monitor And Deter Cyberloafing In Small Businesses: A Case Study, Veronica Pugh Dooly

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some information technology (IT) managers working for small businesses are struggling to monitor and deter cyberloafing. Strategies are needed to help IT practitioners to discourage cyberloafing and improve productivity while maintaining employee satisfaction. Grounded in adaptive structuration theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies some small business IT managers use to monitor and deter cyberloafing. The participants were nine IT managers who successfully implemented cyberloafing monitoring and deterrence strategies in the United States. Data were collected via semistructured interviews and organization employee policy handbooks (n = 4) provided by the participants. Data were analyzed using …

Overcoming The Downsides Of Personal Internet And Cell Phone Use In The Workplace: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis, Kaustav Misra, Michael D. Stackhouse, Arundhati Bagchi Misra, Gregory Berry

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The now taken-for-granted introduction of internet usage into the workplace changed the dynamics of work, productivity, and management, and this is now further complicated by the ubiquitous availability of personal cell phones, going beyond company supplied and (partially) controlled computers with internet connections. This paper studies the connection between internet and cell phone usage by employees and firm productivity. Using primary data collected via a self-reported survey, we conduct an empirical analysis utilizing information based on firm and industry characteristics. Results indicate that the level of non-work-related internet and cell phone usage is significantly associated with firm productivity. Some of …

Nonparametric Identification And Estimation Of Stochastic Frontier Models, Jun Cai

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies nonparametric identication and estimation of stochastic frontiermodels. It is composed of three chapters. The rst chapter investigates the identication and estimation of a cross sectional stochastic frontier model with Laplacian errors and unknown variance, which is built on a nonparametric density deconvolution strategy. Chapter two studies a zero-ineciency stochastic frontier model utilizing a penalized sieve estimator, which allows flexible function forms and arbitrary distributions of ineciency. The third chapter explores identication and estimation of a nonparametric panel stochastic frontier model based on Kotlarski's Lemma and moments derived from conditional characteristic functions.

Research Productivity Of Nigerian, Pakistani And Indian Authors In The Online Journal Of Library Philosophy And Practice From 2008 To 2013: A Bibliometric Study/Analysis, Rasheed Ahmed Mr, Anwar Muhammad Mr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose

The prime purpose of this study is to find out the research productivity of three regions Nigeria, Pakistan, and India. The bibliometric quantification was used to analyze the data. The present research identifies the importance of this online journal. The study discloses frequency of publication growth, author’s collaborations, papers length, and most cited papers, most productive authors, and total references used.

Design/methodology/approach

The survey method was used to find out the full-text research articles on the online database of LPP. The Google scholar was used to retrieve the citations. All the collected data has been analyzed using MS excel …

Return To School 1 Year After Traumatic Brain Injury: A Study Using The Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems National Database, Kathryn Tarnai

Masters Theses, 2020-current

For many individuals, recovery from moderate to severe brain injuries involves returning to a level of pre-injury productivity. Specifically, previous research has focused extensively on factors predicting return to employment, where students are inconsistently categorized with those in competitive employment. Moreover, research dedicated to return to school for students in secondary and tertiary education is largely qualitative; very few studies have utilized predictive modeling on a sample composed solely of students. For this study, a model including days of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA), length of stay (LOS), rehabilitation discharge Disability Rating Scale (DRS) scores, and educational level was used to predict …

Health Is Wealth: The Correlation Of Wellness Programs & Productivity In Canada And The U.S., Madeline Wert

Business and Economics Summer Fellows

Does health impact the productivity of workers? Are there differences between the U.S. and Canada? Firms both in Canada and the U.S. deal with issues of presenteeism and absenteeism. Presenteeism is when an employee shows up to work but they are distracted by their own or a family member’s health issue. One response to reduce presenteeism and absenteeism are workplace wellness programs. Workplace wellness programs are facilitated programs by a firm to promote the health and wellbeing of their employees, which benefits the employer and the employees. There are additional incentives for U.S. employers to implement workplace wellness programs as …

Presenteeism, Megan Paul

Umbrella Summaries

What is presenteeism? Presenteeism is not simply a matter of attending, or being physically present, at work. Rather, it refers to going to work while ill and, in some cases, also includes the concept of lost productivity as a result (Johns, 2010; McGregor, Sharma, Magee, Caputi, & Iverson, 2017). Unlike absenteeism, which can be measured through personnel records, presenteeism is measured by employee self-report via surveys or interviews. For the more limited definition (going to work ill), employees are asked whether or how often in the past they showed up to work when they were sick and should have taken …

From Imitation To Innovation: Where Is All That Chinese R&D Going?, König D. König, Kjetil Storesletten, Zheng Song, Fabrizio Zilibotti

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We construct a model of rm dynamics with heterogenous productivity and distortions. The productivity distribution evolves endogenously as the result of the decisions of firms seeking to upgrade their productivity over time. Firms can adopt two strategies toward that end: imitation and innovation. The theory bears predictions about the evolution of the productivity distribution. We structurally estimate the stationary state of the dynamic model targeting moments of the empirical distribution of R&D and TFP growth in China during the period 2007-2012. The estimated model ts the Chinese data well. We compare the estimates with those obtained using data for Taiwan …

Covid-19 And Procrastination: The Struggle To Stay Motivated In A Pandemic, Singapore Management University

Social Space

COVID-19 has led to the cancellation of countless internships, travel plans, summer jobs, music concerts and festivals, graduations, conferences, you name it. Fixed deadlines have become fluid, and both short-term and long-term goals are presently at the mercy of something far beyond our control. In the face of a global pandemic, we may find ourselves wondering, “Why bother planning for anything anyway?" Yet this very mindset is the crux of the coronavirus procrastination problem, says CHARDONNAY NEEDLER.

Covid-19 And Boredom: A Photoessay, Kylie Cooper

Social Space

For the second time in my life, I was riding a train alone. I looked around to see what my fellow passengers were up to. A woman wearing a lime green beanie was leaned over, asleep with her mouth open. Nearby, a man was flipping through the pages of a newspaper, pausing every now and then to take a sip of his drink. Why were they on the southbound train on a foggy Saturday morning at 7:30 am?

Examining The Impact Of It Investment On Insurer Productivity: A Bootstrapped Malmquist Frontier Analysis Approach, Jee Yuen Yew

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper attempts to examine productivity changes of insurance companies in Singapore as represented by bootstrapped Malmquist indices, generated from a data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based frontier analysis, and attribute these changes to an increasing investment in information technology infrastructure and equipment, and increasing investment in staff enhancement. Through this analysis, the author finds that there has been a general increase in productivity and efficiency from 2011 – 2017, as seen from changes in the kernel density functions of productivity change between the two periods. The author also finds, through running a panel tobit regression model, that there is a positive …

Estimating The Benefits And Costs Of Forming Business Partnerships, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

I estimate a matching model of business‐partnership formation to quantify the relative importance of productivity gains, financing gains, and the coordination failure of effort provision (moral hazard) among partners. Productivity gains account for 61% of the gain from the observed partnerships. For partners in the first quartile of the wealth distribution, however, financing accounts for 93% of the gain. The cost of moral hazard corresponds to 42% of the entire gain from partnerships. A loan policy specifically targeting partnerships is less effective in improving welfare than a conventional loan policy that provides loans to individual entrepreneurs.

Total Factor Environmental Productivity In The Mediterranean Countries: A Malmquist–Luenberger Index Approach, Eya Jebali, Hédi Essid

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

This paper examines the environmental productivity in the Mediterranean countries over the period 2009-2014.We use the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index (MLPI) that can handle undesirable outputs within Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. We decompose the MLPI index into technical efficiency, technological change and scale efficiency change in order to determine the source of productivity changes. Empirical findings indicate that the total factor environmental productivity in the Mediterranean countries have a negative developmental trend. Furthermore, we find that technological progress is the main source of productivity growth. Finally, Mediterranean countries need a considerable effort on R&D to optimize the potential for technical …