Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays In Retirement Economics, Gunnar Poppe Yanez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1

The discrepancy between the high demand for annuities predicted by economic theory and the empirical low holdings of these assets, known as the annuity puzzle, is still not completely understood in economic studies of retirement finance. This paper assesses the effect of individuals' mortality risk learning process on annuitization. I isolate this effect by building a life-cycle model in which individuals have imperfect information of their true survival probability distribution, and therefore have to update their beliefs about it in a Bayesian manner. Using data on subjective mortality by the Health and …

Essays In Financial Economics And Applied Macroeconomics, Marius Mihai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that cover topics in finance and macroeconomics.

Chapter 1 - Do Credit Booms Predict U.S. Recessions?

This paper investigates the role of bank credit in predicting U.S. recessions since the 1960s in the context of a bivariate probit model. A set of results emerge. First, credit booms are shown to have strong positive effects in predicting declines in the business cycle at horizons ranging from six to nine months. Second, by isolating the effect of credit booms, I identify their contributions to recession probabilities which range between three and four percentage points at a …

Work–Family Conflict In Low-Income Households, Maritza G. Hiciano Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States is the only country not offering paid parental leave. Paid leave is left at the discretion of employers and only a few states offer Paid Family Leave benefits. The FMLA was established to protect workers from losing their jobs in case they needed to care for an elderly person or for their children. However, since value is not placed in family structures there has not been much development in that area. The FMLA fails to account for the grand majority of people in the U.S., especially those of lower socioeconomic status. Moreover, the vast inequalities that exists …

Learning To Fail? Student Experiences In Remedial Mathematics In Community Colleges, Margaret P. Fay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Referral to remedial coursework in mathematics is a significant barrier to degree attainment for community college students, which in turn has serious consequences for their employment and earning prospects. Students are placed into remediation when they are deemed unprepared to engage in college-level coursework, most often based on a score on a placement test. Nationally, 59% of community college students are placed into remedial math courses. Of these, only 49% complete remediation and gain access to college-level coursework. Because a college-level math course is often a degree requirement, many students who fail to complete remedial math courses are forced to …

Holding Both: Witness Aid Workers' Experiences Supporting Intimate Partner Violence Survivors In District Attorney Offices, Ovita Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social workers and advocates practice in district attorney (DA) offices as witness or victim aid workers providing intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors counseling, advocacy, resources and information as they enter the criminal legal system (CLS). Their experiences, in particular how stress and vicarious trauma (VT) manifested for them in this unique setting within the criminal legal system, had not yet been examined. This phenomenological study sought to better understand (1) how social workers and advocates in a prosecutor’s office experience practice with intimate partner violence survivors, (2) their experiences of stress, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and supports, and (3) …

Psychoanalytic Determinates Of The Love/Work Balance In A Cohort Of African-American Men, Joseph Ellison Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With the data derived from the life-narratives of a cohort of six African-American men, this study is an attempt to discern the effect that racial discrimination may have had on the love/work balance that developed as each participant progressed through his life-arc. The varying degrees of love/work imbalance, in the lives of the participants, are examined using a psychoanalytic framework. Through the use of this framework, each participant’s work environment becomes derivative of the aggressive aspects of the id and the family, friends and community environment (love) becomes derivative of the narcissistic aspects of the id. Although the participants, to …

Bones, Burials, And The Riddle Of Truth: Reconstructing The Past Through What Has Been Left Behind, Jelena M. Begonja

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mortuary archaeology is known to be the study of human remains and burials. The primary focus of this work has been to study all of the elements associated in burials to learn more about the burial practices and rituals in a group’s culture, however, there is much more potential in studying burial sites than just learning about a group’s burial rituals and practices. This thesis will demonstrate that it is indeed possible to make different inferences about the rest of people’s daily lives, and the truth, based from materials found in studying burials alone. For some groups without much existing …

The Stories We Tell For The Narrative We Need, Ayana Bartholomew

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The collection of oral histories presented in this project explores the variety of ways that multiply marginalized people interpret their existence within larger systemic structures of oppression. Through of lens of intersectionality, resistance, and queerness, I argue that only through personal interpretation, how one chooses to explain themselves, can we genuinely understanding the experiences of the multiply marginalized. While traditional frameworks like anti-racism and feminism help us to understand single-identity politics, they fall short in capturing the totality of an individual who exists on multiple margins. With the help of the storytellers for this project, four self-identified queer youth of …

Cracks In The Bathroom Stall: A Discourse Analysis On Transgender Bathroom Usage At Garden Spot High School, Kirsten D. Corneilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, high schools across the country have seen the concern around transgender students using gendered facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, come to the forefront. Often, dissenters raise worries of privacy and of “catering to a minority,” no matter what decision is reached. At Garden Spot High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the site of this research, one such concern has led to a district-wide decision to eliminate gendered facilities and move to single-use facilities, in the name of preserving student privacy. Through the examination of historical precedent and discourse analysis, this paper examines how transgender surveillance …

Repairing The U.S.–South Korea Alliance: Thaad As An Appeasement Measure, Jane Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On July 8, 2016, the South Korean government announced its decision to deploy the first stages of the U.S.-operated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) technology in South Korea. Both countries stated that the reason for deployment was to enhance the security of South Korea, the U.S. and their allies in the Asia Pacific region against North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations. However, a closer look at the timing and events surrounding the deployment poses significant questions over the South Korean government’s decision to deploy a highly controversial and expensive U.S.-operated military technology that had little military and strategic benefit …

Development Of An Aba Tool Kit For Audiologists To Increase Hearing Aid Wear Time In Individuals With Autism, Lindsay Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When working with individuals with the dual-diagnosis of hearing loss and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), audiologists are often faced with unique challenges and must adapt their approach in order to more effectively address the needs of these individuals. Currently, there is only a small body of research focused on the special considerations required for appropriately fitting and utilizing amplification for children with the dual-diagnosis of hearing loss and ASD. Subsequently, recommendations and strategies for clinicians to implement when faced with these common challenges, specifically of hearing aid compliance and appropriate hearing aid wear time, are lacking. It is important to …

Can A Growth Mindset Intervention Increase Individuals’ Intentions To Engage In Intergroup Dialogue?, Noelle A. Malvar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dialogue initiatives between different status groups foster meaningful conversations about inequality. Low and high status groups, however, frequently avoid discussions on difficult topics and do not participate in these initiatives. To address this, the current research tested an intervention model that aims to increase dialogue intentions using the growth mindset framework. The model proposes that inducing a malleable mindset toward one’s dialogue skills would boost group members’ intentions to engage with the outgroup. The intervention was hypothesized to be especially effective for high status groups, who have higher anxiety relative to lower status groups when anticipating intergroup dialogue. The intervention …

Building For Culture: How Municipal Ownership Of Cultural Facilities Influences Annual Arts Funding In American Cities, Adam M. Sachs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how local government support for arts and culture varies across 24 American cities. It has proven to be challenging for researchers to accurately measure municipal arts support. Research on cultural policy has also often focused on the federal level, despite total city expenditures far exceeding national or state government support. This thesis attempts to take an accurate pulse of city expenditures in 2017 and correlates those spending levels to the variation in city ownership of arts facilities. Rooted in the historical perspectives of the ‘new institutionalism’ and path-dependency, this paper argues that past decisions about taking ownership …

Inferring Research Fields In Administrative Records Using Text Data, Ekaterina Levitskaya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The UMETRICS database (Universities: Measuring the Effects of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science) contains rich information on grants from sponsored federal and non-federal research for 32 universities over a 15-year period. It is hosted at IRIS (Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, University of Michigan) and serves as a rich source of university administrative data; however, it does not contain information on research fields. Categorizing grants data by research field can help to measure results of investment in research and science and provide evidence for the data-driven policy-making; yet administrative data often lacks this type of categorization. In …

Internet Voting And The Equity Of Participatory Budgeting Outcomes: A Study Of New York City’S Participatory Budgeting Initiative, Rodrigo Saad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, political science scholarship—once dominated by elitist conceptions of democracy—has increasingly focused on participatory models which emphasize the normative and instrumental value of enhanced political participation. The emergence of these theories in the latter half of 20th century coincided with the development of innovative institutions of democratic practice. Among these democratic innovations, participatory budgeting is the most widespread mechanism used in contemporary politics. Launched in 2011, participatory budgeting in New York City (PBNYC) seeks to expand civic engagement and make public spending more equitable. As scholars point out, these objectives are not always synergetic, particularly in the presence …

Climbing Performance And Ecology In Humans, Chimpanzees, And Gorillas, Elaine E. Kozma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to establish the effects of limb proportions and body size on the climbing performance of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas by assessing three aspects of climbing performance: 1) energetic cost, 2) fatigue, and 3) canopy access. Whether hominins were arboreal, and to what extent, is a matter of hot debate. Specifically, the relative prominence of vertical climbing in the locomotor repertoires of various hominin taxa remains a contested issue. Over the course of human evolution, both the body size and relative hindlimb length of hominins has increased. These traits are often linked to bipedality. Long forelimbs, in contrast, …

Who Governs The Sea? An Analysis Of The Regime Complex In International Shipping, Brent Landon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In many respects, international shipping represents the physical embodiment of globalization. It ties states together via the exchange of raw materials and finished goods in ways that inspire important questions about power distributions, trade, growth, global governance, jurisdiction, policy coordination, sovereignty, and regimes. Although shipping is a space that can be used to illustrate many International Relations ideas, it has been understudied in International Relations. This thesis argues that the international shipping regime complex produces suboptimal outcomes because it has inefficient and peculiar design features. Specifically, it locates the responsibility to enforce rules in states that lack the ability to …

An Analysis Of Women And Terrorism: Perpetrators, Victims, Both?, Elizabeth Lauren Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze women’s participation in terrorism under groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It will research the use of violence within terrorist organizations, perpetrated by female participants. What leads women to join groups like the Islamic State? There will be an analysis of the factors that attract women to joining terrorist organizations, in addition to the practices of recruitment that aid in their radicalization. There is a misconception that women who join the Islamic State lack education, which is seen as the sole reasoning for their radicalization or involvement. In reality, several reasons exist leading to their …

Pre-Report Review Of Body-Worn Camera Footage: An Examination Of Stakeholder Beliefs, Laypeople’S Judgments Of Officer Credibility, And The Consequences For Memory, Kristyn A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Aim: This dissertation examines people’s beliefs about police officer access to body-worn camera footage, people’s judgments of officer credibility as it relates to video footage, and the consequences that review of footage has on reporting accuracy.

Rationale: With escalating police-civilian tensions in 2014, American police departments adopted body-worn camera programs. A majority of departments have policies allowing officers unrestricted access to camera footage. Because officers fear that inconsistencies between reports and videos could result in suspicion of officer deceit, they argue that officers should have access to footage before writing their reports to ensure reports match the footage. Yet, because …

Aesthetic Redemption: Psychedelia, Film, And Walter Benjamin’S Sensory Revolution, Alexander C. Redlins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This inquiry examines the ways in which the psychedelic nature of film, as posited by Walter Benjamin, has the potential to precipitate class consciousness and lead to humanity’s emancipation from anaesthetizing capitalist forces. We first explore Benjamin’s relationship to, and understanding of, Marxist thought with a particular focus on György Lukács’ theory of reification and Marx’s fetish character of the commodity which Benjamin ultimately believes lead to an erosion of the human sensorium and the destruction of human nature. As such, we explore Benjamin’s revolutionary aesthetic theory which seeks the reversal of these erosive capitalist forces and the redemption of …

Economics Of Higher Education Productivity, Uchenna K. Oparah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How does spending affect academic outcomes in higher education institutions? Postsecondary schools incur costs to provide services to its student body. In this study, I introduce multiple outcome variables, a two-stage production function, and current-year expenditures on core services to evaluate how school spending affects academic outcomes.

The empirical analysis includes 28 group sample parameter estimates from four outcome variables, the pooled sample, and group samples for each of six sectors. The fixed effects/instrumental variable (FE-IV) instructional expenditure parameter estimates were positive for 20 of the 28 group samples. The sign and size of the estimated academic output effects varied …

Can Gentrification Improve Education For Low-Income Minority Students?, Edir Coronado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gentrification is the process of investment into disinvested neighborhoods. The development of gentrification brings a reduction in crime, new job opportunities, and better government services, but these new neighborhood amenities are not available to all residents within the gentrified location. Newark, NJ one of the poorest municipalities in the northeast has long been one of the faces for urban blight and is one of the most troubled cities in the state of New Jersey in terms of crime, poverty, and academic performance.

Out of gentrification expensive chain stores, high priced rental units, and charter schools are born. Structurally the neighborhood …

Genderlects In Social Media, Alina Korovatskaya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many studies have found significant differences in ways men and women use language; some argue that these differences occur as a result of culture differences, and others suggest that they are influenced by differences in social status and power between the genders. However, some of the major studies were concluded decades ago and do not reflect changes in gender relations in recent years. In this study, we analyze modern conversations using two social media platforms, Twitter and Reddit, to determine whether substantial differences between men and women’s use of language were preserved between the genders.

Un Trust Funds As Agent To Fulfill The Norm Adapting And Diffusing Functions, Mikiko Sawanishi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on existing large-scale general trust funds at the United Nations (UN) Secretariat, as one example of the important transformations of the UN. They were created around the 1990s amid a paradigm shift in international relations after the end of the Cold War. They function as autonomous entities to carry out specific mandates to tackle emerging global issues in responding to the requests of a limited number of UN member states that provide voluntary contributions of significant sum. The thesis explores answers to the questions of why such general trust funds were created within the UN Secretariat, and …

Evidence Based Practices At A New York City Youth Justice Services Organization, Betsy Delissa Cespedes

Student Theses

There has been a national push to establish evidence-based juvenile criminal justice policies and practices that are focused on reducing the risk of recidivism for juvenile offenses. The reason for this push is rooted in the growing recidivism rates of juvenile offenders in the United States (Weber, Umpierre, & Bikchik, 2018). More than half of all juveniles who are on probation nationwide are rearrested, indicating that each juvenile offender faces equal likelihood of reoffending or not (Weber et al., 2018). Further, approximately 66% of juvenile offenders, or nearly seven out of 10 offenders, are rearrested within two years of their …

Felony Disenfranchisement: Factors Relating To Support For Restoration, Alexis K. Karpf

Student Theses

Felony Disenfranchisement, a collateral consequence, strips justice-involved individuals of their voting rights. While this policy is enacted in 48 states and the District of Columbia, a majority of community members are unaware of its existence. The current study used three hypotheses to guide its research about how education about disenfranchisement policy impacts a community member's opinion:1) Participants exposed to information about the effects of disenfranchisement will be more supportive of enfranchisement than those in the control condition; 2) Participants who receive the vignette featuring the White justice-involved individual will indicate a higher level of support for enfranchisement compared to those …

Semi-Quantitative Detection Of Signature Peptides In Body Fluids By Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry (Lc-Ms/Ms), Tebah N. Browne

Student Theses

This study covers a modified semi-quantitative approach for liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) signature peptide detection for body fluid identification. Peptide concentrations were measured based on synthetic peptide standards. Samples were processed with varying trypsin digestion and purification protocols, including a three-hour trypsin digestion and Microcon membrane filtration. The Microcon filtration method generates polymerase chain reaction (PCR) compatible DNA and peptide fractions that can be analyzed without any further purification. Preliminary validation tests covered stains on different substrates, semen/ saliva mixtures, minimum sample volume, and repeatability. All signature peptides in the multiplex were present at different concentrations and varied amongst …

Impact Of Think/No-Think Paradigm On Memory For Inadmissible Evidence, Catherine Hackett

Student Theses

Jurors are typically not able to disregard inadmissible evidence when asked to do so by judges. Yet, there is no research using the think/no-think paradigm on juror memory, which could be beneficial for trials in which inadmissible evidence is an issue. This study uses witness photos and statements to see if the material can be intentionally remembered and intentionally forgotten through a think/no-think task in which participants are cued to think about some witness photo/statement combinations and not think about other photo/statement combinations. Participants were responsible for learning pairs of faces and statements of witnesses from an alleged stabbing. After …

Dementia And Competency In United States Courtrooms: A Case Law Review, Dana Miller

Student Theses

The number of older adults in the United States is rising, as is the incidence of dementia. Older adults are coming into contact with the criminal justice system at greater rates than previously encountered. As such, individuals with dementia are likely appearing in courts at an unprecedented rate. While many civil competencies commonly related to older adults are well researched, competency in the criminal legal system has not received the same level of recognition in this population. This is particularly concerning given the growing awareness of the relevance of dementia in some criminal competencies (e.g., Madison v. Alabama, 2019). Of …

The Criminalized Victim: Can Knowledge Of Trauma And Coercion Influence Free Will Doubt And Perception Of Culpability For Sex Trafficked Individuals?, Megan Korovich

Student Theses

Individuals who have been sex trafficked are continuously being targeted for prostitution and other related offenses instead of being recognized for their victimization. This may occur due to a fundamental lack of understanding of the sex-trafficked experience, allowing for misperceptions to form unhindered. Individuals with these misperceptions then go on to form laws and services intended to aid victims, but instead leave them vulnerable and criminalized. This study assessed whether an educational intervention on the experience of a sex-trafficked individual could influence public perceptions of free will doubt and criminal culpability. This study used a nonequivalent groups posttest-only design to …