Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Class Size On Teacher Retention, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

A Monte Carlo Study Of Efficiency Estimates From Frontier Models, William C. Horrace, Seth Richards

Economics - All Scholarship

Parametric stochastic frontier models yield firm-level conditional distributions of inefficiency that are truncated normal. Given these distributions, how should one assess and rank firm-level efficiency? This study compares the techniques of estimating a) the conditional mean of inefficiency and b) probabilities that firms are most or least efficient. Monte Carlo experiments suggest that the efficiency probabilities are more reliable in terms of mean absolute percent error when inefficiency has large variation across firms. Along the way we tackle some interesting problems associated with simulating and assessing estimator performance in the stochastic frontier environment.

Member Profiles: Karen Hanmer And Peter Verheyen, Peter D. Verheyen, Karen H. Hanmer

Librarian Publications

This is the second in a continuing series of interviews of Guild members. Current and former Exhibitions Chairs Karen Hanmer and Peter Verheyen met at Standards in Chicago in 1999. She never dreamed his subliminal messages would entice her from making “freaky-foldies” to become a binder. He never suspected she would attempt to seduce him to the other side with odd examples of vaguely book-like ephemera. They share an appreciation of fine craft, spare design, and excessively robust (read Teutonic) endsheets.

The Impact Of School-District Consolidation On Property Values, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Informality And Productivity In The Labor Market: Peru 1986 - 2001, Alberto Chong, Jose Galdo, Jaime Saavedra-Chanduvi

Economics - All Scholarship

Peru has one of the highest informality rates in Latin America, with almost 60 percent of the urban labor force working at the margins of labor market legislation or in microenterprises that lack basic labor market standards (Marcouiller, Ruiz de Castilla, and Woodruff, 1997). This paper identifies two factors that can explain the variation in informality rates in the 1990s. First, Peru experienced a steady increase in employment allocation in traditionally “informal” sectors—in particular, retail trade and transport. Second, there was a sharp increase in nonwage labor costs, despite a reduction in the average productivity of the economy. In addition, …

Teacher Attrition In Upstate New York, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Understanding Declining Mobility And Interhousehold Transfers Among East African Pasoralists, Marieke Huysentruyt, Christopher B. Barrett, John G. Mcpeak

Economics - All Scholarship

We model interhousehold transfers between nomadic livestock herders as the state-dependent consequence of individuals' strategic interdependence resulting from the existence of multiple, opposing externalities. A public good security externality among individuals sharing a social (e.g., ethnic) identity in a potentially hostile environment creates incentives to band together. Self-interested interhousehold wealth transfers from wealthier herders to poorer ones may emerge endogenously within a limited wealth space as a means to motivate accompanying migration by the recipient. The distributional reach and size of the transfer are limited, however, by a resource appropriation externality related to the use of common property grazing lands. …

Middle Class Star, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Offshoring And Unemployment, Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan

Economics - All Scholarship

In this paper, in order to study the impact of offshoring on sectoral and economywide rates of unemployment, we construct a two sector general equilibrium model in which labor is mobile across the two sectors, and unemployment is caused by search frictions. We find that, contrary to general perception, wage increases and sectoral unemployment decreases due to offshoring. This result can be understood to arise from the productivity enhancing (cost reducing) effect of offshoring. If the search cost is identical in the two sectors, or even if the search cost is higher in the sector which experiences offshoring, the economywide …

Indian Manufacturing: A Slow Sector In A Rapidly Growing Economy, Devashish Mitra, Beyza P. Ural

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper investigates the determinants of productivity in Indian manufacturing industries during the period 1988-2000. Using two-digit industry level data for the Indian states, we find evidence of imperfect interindustry and interstate labor mobility as well as misallocation of resources across industries and states. Trade liberalization increases productivity in all industries across all states, and productivity is higher in the less protected industries. These effects of protection and trade liberalization are more pronounced in states that have relatively more flexible labor markets. Similar effects are also found in the case of employment, capital stock and investment. Furthermore, labor market flexibility, …

Effects Of Age On Contextually Mediated Associations In Paired Associate Learning, Jennifer Patricia Provyn

Psychology - Theses

Older adults demonstrate an associative memory deficit that has been attributed to difficulty binding item information to contextual information (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000). Accounts of temporally-defined episodic associations that depend upon contextual retrieval (TCM Howard & Kahana, 2002) predict that a deficit in item-to-context binding will result in fewer backward (b-a) and transitive (a-c) associations. To measure group differences in backward and transitive associations, younger and older participants learned single function lists of paired associates with no contextual overlap (e.g., j-k, l-m) and double-function lists of paired associates consisting of chains of pairs (e.g., a-b, b-c). Although younger adults out-performed older adults …

A Comprehensive Analysis Of The Impact Of Health Journalism Through Women's Magazines, Abigail Cuffey

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The first women’s magazines date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Throughout the years, they continue to advise, entertain, and give a voice to women. This paper examines one particular area: health journalism, an area that offers the potential for a substantial impact on readers’ health and lifestyle. This thesis explores the potential impact through interviewing the health editors and writers, as well as the readers themselves. The thesis also profiles a pioneer health writer, Barbara Seaman, whose decades of health writing for women’s magazines served as a catalyst for change on several critical women’s issues. Seaman’s work …

Interference Of L1 English In L2 French Lexical Processing, Sarah Kuhn

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This study examines the interference, if any, caused by a first language (specifically English) in the processing of lexical items in a second language (French). Participants performed a computer-based translation recognition task where they were asked whether a pair of words, one French and the other English, represented an acceptable translation. Six different types of critical pairs were randomly alternated with actual translation pairs and unrelated distractor pairs. Each of the different categories of critical pairs had a different relationship with the L1 word, the L2 word, or both. Participants’ scores on this task were then analyzed to determine the …

Psychological Predictors Of Success In Bariatric Surgery Patients: A Meta-Analytic Review, Elizabeth C. Thompson

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Background: Bariatric weight loss surgeries are an increasingly popular last resort option for obese individuals attempting to lose weight. Though these surgeries often produce substantial weight loss outcomes, especially in a short-term follow-up period, many individuals that undergo these procedures are unable to achieve long-term weight loss success. Within the bariatric surgery literature several psychological variables have been implicated in this long-term failure to maintain weight loss. Purpose: This study was designed to assess the effects of psychological variables on weight loss success after surgery through a meta-analytic review. Methods: The effect sizes from 10 studies were calculated and combined …

The U.S./Canada Safe Third Country Agreement: A Geographical Evaluation, Sarah Anne Ryman

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The U.S./Canadian border is in the process of being renegotiated as a result of larger processes of redefining and reimagining sovereign territories inNorth America. New understandings ofU.S.and Canadian state sovereignty are creating a conflated “other” of cross-border flows: an illegitimate migrant figure who is securitized, criminalized and disembodied. The contemporary “othering” of the migrant has serious human rights implications such as the restriction of access to refugee protection. U.S.and Canadian states share an agenda of migration control executed through the manipulation of geography and the figure of the migrant.

On paper, the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) aims to enhance …

Earnings Effects Of Sexual Orientation Revisited: Evidence From The Cps, Clay Rehrig

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Objective. To measure the wage premium or penalty associated with sexual orientation of partnered lesbians and gays and to compare these estimates with those produced using smaller sample sizes and alternative definitions of homosexuality.

Data Source and Sampling Methods. Data are drawn from the Current Population Survey, produced by the U.S. Census Bureau. Extracting household information from the out-going March rotation provides a sample of 37,000 households interviewed in the years 1995 and 2000. Only workers living with a partner are included in the analysis.

Study Design. Following the methodology used by Black et al. (2003), this study uses a …

Moral Emotion Regulation: The Case Of Abortion Attitudes, Steven Nydick

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

With regard to moral judgments. Lawrence Kohlberg claimed that reason and logic lead to answers about right and wrong. By contrast, Jonathan Haidt proposed an “emotivist” theory of morality in which feelings take center stage. I tested Haidt’s theory of moral judgment by showing 59 college undergraduate participants an abortion video while instructing them to increase, decrease, or make no attempt to change their level of emotion during the video. I found that the video succeeded at both increasing negative emotions (particularly disgust) and changing abortion attitudes to a more pro-life stance. Furthermore, the moral views of participants asked to …

The Influence Of Hunger On Attitudes: Does It Go Beyond Foods?, Euiyoung Kate Min

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of hunger on attitudes (self-reports and corresponding reaction times) toward foods and non-foods (people). Participants rated their attitudes toward pictures of foods and pictures of people (older and younger males and females) along several evaluative scales (global attitudes and attitudinal bases) while reaction times were recorded. This was done twice (once when hungry, once not), in sessions separated by one week. Consistent with previous research, hunger differentially impacted ratings of the information underlying attitudes. For example, for foods, ratings of negative affect information changed more as a function of hunger …

Temporary Shocks And Offshoring: The Role Of External Economies And Firm Heterogeneity, Devashish Mitra, Priya Ranjan

Economics - All Scholarship

We construct a model of offshoring with externalities and firm heterogeneity. Due to the presence of externalities, temporary shocks like the Y2K problem can have permanent effects, i.e., they can permanently raise the extent of offshoring in an industry. Also, the initial advantage of a country as a potential host for outsourcing activities can create a lock in effect, whereby late movers have a comparative disadvantage. Furthermore, the existence of firm heterogeneity along with externalities can help explain the dynamic process of offshoring, where the most productive firms offshore first and the others follow later. Finally, we work out some …

Production Functions And Cost Functions For Public Education, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

The Media’S Influence In Everyday Life On Women’S Perception Of Body Image, Sarah Christian

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Many women are not satisfied with their current body figures and frequently attempt to improve their figure. Body image discrepancies occur when a comparison between “actual” self to either “ought” or “ideal” selves don’t match up. If there is a difference between these two self-guides then a discrepancy exists. According to a national survey, half of women report negative evaluations of their appearance and worry about being or becoming overweight. One of the strongest socio-cultural pressures that women face with their body image is the media, such as magazines and television. Studies have shown that when exposed to thin body …

Secondary Markets, Risk, And Access To Credit Evidence From The Mortgage Market, Stuart S. Rosenthal, Stuart A. Gabriel

Economics - All Scholarship

Secondary markets for credit are widely believed to improve efficiency and increase access to credit. In part, this is because of their greater ability to manage risk. However, the degree to which secondary markets expand access to credit is virtually unknown. Using the mortgage market as an example, we begin to fill that gap. Our conceptual model suggests that secondary credit markets have potentially ambiguous effects on interest rates, but unambiguous positive effects on the number of loans issued. We focus our empirical analysis on the latter using 1992-2004 HMDA files for conventional, conforming, home purchase loans in conjunction with …

April 2007, Syracuse Department Of Economics

Economics - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Volume 19 Number 2, Newhouse Network, Spring 2007, Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School Of Public Communications

Newsletters from School of Public Communications - Newhouse Network

Deans Column -- Mirror Awards -- Dean Rubin Retirement -- Turner Diversity Fellowships -- PSA Project -- South Side Newspaper -- Newspaper Design Competition -- New Academic Programs -- First Amendment -- Student snapshots -- Schoonmaker Book -- Comstock Book -- Award winning documentary -- Alumnus Kenneth Sparks -- Alumni at Sirius Radio -- SU in LA -- Class notes -- Alumna Kelly Brown

Issue 50, Spring 2007, Society Of Bead Researchers

The Bead Forum: Newsletter of the Society of Bead Researchers

No abstract provided.

Defining Programmatic Access To Healthcare For People With Disabilities, Nancy R. Mudrick, Silvia Yee

Social Work - All Scholarship

People with disabilities face disability-related barriers that affect their receipt of health care. These often are discussed in terms of three categories: financial, structural, and programmatic barriers. Financial barriers may involve the lack of insurance, inability to pay for care, or coverage limitations for such items as durable medical equipment and medication. Structural barriers primarily arise from the architectural characteristics of health care delivery settings, such as parking location, building entrances, stairs and ramps, and bathrooms. Programmatic barriers are barriers involving the processes used to deliver health care. This category is the least understood, yet an important factor for access …

Vol. 2 No. 2, Moynihan European Research Centers, Spring 2007, Moynihan European Research Centers

Newsletters from Moynihan European Research Centers

Global Europe Students Update -- Turkey and European Identities -- Forthcoming Book announcement -- SU program on Muslim Cultures -- FLAS Fellowship details -- Current FLAS Fellows -- Upcoming Events Calendar

Hamas: From “Terrorist” Organization To Governing Party The Implications Of Hamas’S 2006 Electoral Victory, Heather Freitag

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

“Peace in the Middle East.” As a child, I had always assumed this phrase was in reference to a specific conflict or war that would soon be over; however, peace in the Middle Eastnow seems to be a process of huge proportions with no visible end. Numerous conflicts encompass the problems in the Middle East, most of which have been exacerbated by ineffectual and biased American foreign policy. Of these conflicts, one of the most long-standing and heartbreaking is between the Israelis and Palestinians. With the unequivocal support of the US, Israelhas largely been able to pursue whatever policy it …

Number 6 Spring 2007, Special Collections Research Center

Newsletters from The Special Collection Research Center - The Courant

No abstract provided.

Education Finance In California Part 3: Lessons, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.