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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Role Of Carbon Credits On Farmers’ Adoption Of Climate-Smart Practices In South Dakota, Stephen Cheye Jan 2023

The Role Of Carbon Credits On Farmers’ Adoption Of Climate-Smart Practices In South Dakota, Stephen Cheye

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Net-zero pledges and carbon credit systems have gained momentum due to the growing urgency to address climate change and limit global warming to below 2°C above preindustrial levels. Agricultural carbon credits can be a potentially win-win mechanism by providing extra income for farmers while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of understanding about farmers’ willingness to accept carbon credit incentives and adopt climate-smart practices that sequester carbon. To address this, we analyzed 309 responses from a South Dakota producer survey conducted in 2021. We estimated probit and interval regression models to ascertain the level of …


Simulating The Impact Of Emissions Control On Economic Productivity Using Particle Systems And Puff Dispersion Model, Najam Khan Jan 2023

Simulating The Impact Of Emissions Control On Economic Productivity Using Particle Systems And Puff Dispersion Model, Najam Khan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A simulation platform is developed for quantifying the change in productivity of an economy under passive and active emission control mechanisms. The program uses object-oriented programming to code a collection of objects resembling typical stakeholders in an economy. These objects include firms, markets, transportation hubs, and boids which are distributed over a 2D surface. Firms are connected using a modified Prim’s Minimum spanning tree algorithm, followed by implementation of an all-pair shortest path Floyd Warshall algorithm for navigation purposes. Firms use a non-linear production function for transformation of land, labor, and capital inputs to finished product. A GA-Vehicle Routing Problem …


Firm-Level Political Risk And Corporate R&D Investment, Emmanuel Boah Jan 2023

Firm-Level Political Risk And Corporate R&D Investment, Emmanuel Boah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I examine how firms make R&D investment decisions during periods of political uncertainty. To minimize stickiness and overly generalized assumptions, I employ quarterly data. I find that firms invest more in R&D when facing high levels of political risk. The results suggest that this positive relationship between political risk and R&D investment is more pronounced for competitive and politically sensitive firms. Additionally, the positive association is evident among firms with higher growth opportunities and more liquid assets. The results are robust to the test for correlation, addressing endogeneity, and alternative proxies adopted for the variables of interest. Overall, the findings …


Would Ai Stocks Estimate Be As Surprised To Usda Stocks Reports As Private Market Analysts?, Asif Mahmud Chowdhury Jan 2023

Would Ai Stocks Estimate Be As Surprised To Usda Stocks Reports As Private Market Analysts?, Asif Mahmud Chowdhury

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The USDA survey-based Quarterly Agriculture Stocks (QAS) reports are the primary source of information regarding the relative supply of U.S. corn, soybeans, and wheat for the last fifty years. Research has examined USDA stock reports and their relevancy to the market (e.g., Isengildina-Massa et al., 2021). In addition, private industry analysts estimate expected quarterly grain stock reports before USDA releases them. Market information firms such as Bloomberg and Reuters publish a subset of these estimates a few days before the USDA reports. Previous research has found that when industry analysts have significant differences in stock expectations compared to what the …


The Impact Of Cluster Strength On Wages: An Empirical Analysis, Devan Schaefer Jan 2023

The Impact Of Cluster Strength On Wages: An Empirical Analysis, Devan Schaefer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the relationship between clusters (i.e., the grouping of competitive, interconnected industries within a geographical area) and wages, building upon the work of Marshall (1890) and Porter (2003) on the importance of clusters for regional economic development. I seek to answer two research questions. First, after accounting for robustness tests, do clusters continue to affect wages positively? Second, is labor force productivity the only channel through which this relationship occurs? In my analysis, I employ ordinary least squares, two-stage least squares, and fixed effects regression analyses using panel data from 2009 to 2014 for every U.S. …


Impact Of Covid-19 Relief Packages On U.S. Household Food Security And Food Expenditure, Bridget Yeboah Bafowaa Jan 2023

Impact Of Covid-19 Relief Packages On U.S. Household Food Security And Food Expenditure, Bridget Yeboah Bafowaa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in consumer shopping habits, including food expenditures. The pandemic induced changes in food expenditure patterns, food accessibility, and declining household income contributed to increased food insecurity during the pandemic. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of COVID-19- related relief packages on food security and food expenditures. The effect of Economic Impact Payments, P-EBT, SNAP, and free food will be considered. Using data from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS), a total sample of 1,899,929 households were analyzed in this study. The HPS is a nationally representative survey structured to produce data …


Adaptive Learning Gain In Asset Pricing, Sedealy Juste Lokossou Jan 2023

Adaptive Learning Gain In Asset Pricing, Sedealy Juste Lokossou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper delves into the complexities of asset pricing, emphasizing the need to go beyond prevailing paradigms and constant learning gain assumptions. We examine the influence of personal experiences, adaptive learning processes, and subjective return expectations on asset pricing. By incorporating the concept of time-varying learning gain, we provide a more realistic portrayal of asset pricing. Empirical analysis reveals a consistent negative correlation between experienced real payout growth and subsequent returns, indicating counter-cyclical behavior. Our findings also support the mean-reversion hypothesis in stock returns, although caution is needed due to some scenarios lacking statistical significance. Theoretical exploration uncovers that higher …


Effects Of Conservation Management Practices On Soil Health And Crop Yields In Eastern South Dakota, Alex Mclain Jan 2022

Effects Of Conservation Management Practices On Soil Health And Crop Yields In Eastern South Dakota, Alex Mclain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conservation management practice adoption on agricultural land has increased in recent years due to increasing public and private investment. The anticipated impact of increasing conservation management practice adoption are reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved soil, water, and air quality. Understanding how these conservation management practices affect agricultural producers economically is vital to properly incentivize these practices. The existing literature on how conservation management practices affect soil health and crop yields is mixed and generally has been conducted on experimental research stations. These studies may not fully account for the on-farm effects of conservation management practices. The objectives of this …


Ceo Types And Firm Efficiency, Lok Chi Lam Jan 2022

Ceo Types And Firm Efficiency, Lok Chi Lam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates the connection between CEO types and firm efficiency. I utilize the general ability index (GAI) as a proxy to examine and separate CEO types: generalist CEOs and specialist CEOs. Initially, I applied the pooled ordinary least square (OLS) and fixed effect regression on 26,830 firm-year observations to explore the GAI effect on firm efficiency. The finding shows that GAI has a negative impact on firm efficiency. It indicates that CEOs with lower GAI are better at improving firm efficiency; for instance, specialist CEOs are preferable to generalist CEOs. Further analysis of CEO types using the quadrant method …


Technology-Intensive Exports, R&D, Human Capital, And Economic Growth In The Twenty-First Century, Pierce Plucker Jan 2022

Technology-Intensive Exports, R&D, Human Capital, And Economic Growth In The Twenty-First Century, Pierce Plucker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates twenty-first century economic growth through a distanceto- frontier (technology-gap) lens where growth in a country’s knowledge stock is determined by knowledge creation and knowledge imitation. The creation term is assumed to be a function of research and development, technology-intensive export performance, and human capital, while the imitation term is a function of the technology gap, technology-intensive export performance, and human capital. Over the period 1997-2018, two samples of countries are analyzed in a panel setting, and two growth models are estimated in total—one for each sample. While research and development has been extensively analyzed in the economic …


U.S. Consumers' Acceptance And Willingness To Pay For Genetically Modified And Genome-Edited Foods, Bindu Paudel Jan 2021

U.S. Consumers' Acceptance And Willingness To Pay For Genetically Modified And Genome-Edited Foods, Bindu Paudel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Even though genetically modified (GM) crops have a lot of economic potential for producers and consumers, they have not been widely accepted due to increasing concerns related to food safety, human, animal, and environmental health. Unlike GM technology, genome-editing technology does not involve the transfer of genetic materials. It is simpler, cheaper, more precise, and faster relative to GM technology and has immense potential for incorporating producer and consumer traits. Genome-editing technology, as a novel process, not has been explored much from the consumer’s side. This study uses a nationally representative survey of 1,573 U.S. consumers to examine their acceptance …


Genetically Modified Corn Diffusion And Biofuel Usage: Impacts On Corn Belt Cropping Systems Changes, Kenneth Annan Jan 2021

Genetically Modified Corn Diffusion And Biofuel Usage: Impacts On Corn Belt Cropping Systems Changes, Kenneth Annan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops, the rise of ethanol production that produced an additional derived demand for corn, and the increasingly prominent position of corn and soybeans in crop rotations embody major changes in U.S. agriculture during the past decades. This study investigates the linkages among these developments in two ways. First, we look at how biotechnology and biofuels have influenced cropping system changes in the Corn Belt region of the United States, using state-level data from 2000 to 2019. Second, we investigate the determinants of corn acreage intensification levels and heterogeneity at the state level using data …


Impacts Of Zero-Commission Trading On Stock Market Liquidity, Jie Hu Jan 2021

Impacts Of Zero-Commission Trading On Stock Market Liquidity, Jie Hu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the elimination of commission fees of retail brokers, zero-commission trading became the new normal after October 2019. This study employs DTAQ data to calculate ten different market liquidity measures and finds that the implementation of zero-commission trading significantly improves market liquidity. This effect is also significant after related factors including trading volume, price volatility, market performance, opening effect, and closing effect are controlled. By explicitly modeling the simultaneity nature among market liquidity measures, trading volume, and price volatility, this study finds that there is a positive relationship between spread and price volatility. The implementation of zero-commission trading decreases price …


Exploring The Determinants Of Aspects Of Rotational Grazing In The U.S. Great Plains, Iftekhar Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury Jan 2021

Exploring The Determinants Of Aspects Of Rotational Grazing In The U.S. Great Plains, Iftekhar Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pasture and rangeland make up about 45 percent of the agricultural land in the U.S. Great Plains and one of the most common form of mismanagement of this pasture is overgrazing. Which results in many detrimental effects on environment. Many practitioners endorsed Rotational grazing (RG) as an improved grazing management practice over season-long continuous grazing. The overall goal of the current study is to assess the certain aspects of using RG in the U.S. Great Plains. Using mail survey data of the of 874 beef cattle producers of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas, the study found that neighborhood practice, …


Are Us Government Foreign Aid Flows And Fdi Flows Intertemporally Related? An Investigation Of Twenty-Three Countries In Sub-Saharan Africa, Ravi Kumar Datt Panchagnula Jan 2021

Are Us Government Foreign Aid Flows And Fdi Flows Intertemporally Related? An Investigation Of Twenty-Three Countries In Sub-Saharan Africa, Ravi Kumar Datt Panchagnula

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I test my central hypothesis that United States government foreign aid flows and FDI flows from anywhere in the world to Sub-Saharan Africa are intertemporally related; thus, I test to what extent FDI flows follow—and, thus, are caused by—aid flows or to what extent aid flows follow—and, thus, are caused by—FDI flows. My panel dataset includes twenty-three Sub-Saharan countries and spans 1991 to 2018. Based on the results of pooled-OLS and panel fixed-effects regressions, and panel Granger causality tests, I show that aid and FDI are intertemporally related. Additionally, Granger-causality is bidirectional: FDI Granger-causes United States government …


Food Insecurity And Affordable Housing, Domelaar A. A. Ouattara Jan 2021

Food Insecurity And Affordable Housing, Domelaar A. A. Ouattara

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity in household with children in the US is about 13.6 percent. Food insecurity among households with children headed by a single woman is 28.7 percent and among households with incomes below 185 percent of the poverty threshold (the Federal poverty line was $25,926 for a family of four in 2019) is 27.6 percent (USDA, 2019). This research is about the effect of affordable housing on food security in the United States. The data include observations on 50 states and Washington, D.C., from 2004 to 2017 resulting in a total sample of 714 observations. The research used the 50th …


A Joint Estimation Of Pheasant Hunting Parameters, Rama Khadka Jan 2021

A Joint Estimation Of Pheasant Hunting Parameters, Rama Khadka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The decreasing pheasant population from 2008 to 2019 across South Dakota is a concern as it may lead to decreased hunting activity and consequently reduced economic activity. Past studies have shown that changes in the landscape (e.g., from changing agricultural practices) is a major factor responsible for decreasing the bird population. However, these studies lack a clear understanding of how the fluctuating crop mixes impact the pheasant population together with harvest volume. The goal of this study was to analyze the pheasant population and the quantity of harvested birds during 2008 to 2019 in South Dakota to understand how variations …


Quantifying The Benefits Of The Expanded Food And Nutrition Education Program (Efnep) Using Biomarkers For Chronic Disease Risk, Richard Acquah-Sarpong Jan 2021

Quantifying The Benefits Of The Expanded Food And Nutrition Education Program (Efnep) Using Biomarkers For Chronic Disease Risk, Richard Acquah-Sarpong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) is among the major nutrition education programs funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) with the aim of reducing food insecurity among low-income families. The program reaches about 70,000 adults and youth of low-income families in the US, District of Columbia, and six U.S. territories. Prior studies have used self-reported data, which possesses measurement errors, to estimate the benefits of the program. This can lead to underestimation or overestimation of results. To address this limitation, I use clinically measured objective biomarkers, such as body mass index (BMI), blood sugar level …


Working Capital Management And Economic Policy Uncertainty, Jacob Kplorla Tandoh Jan 2020

Working Capital Management And Economic Policy Uncertainty, Jacob Kplorla Tandoh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, Ernst and Young (2009) working capital report note that the leading 2,000 corporations in the US and Europe can extract an up to US$1 trillion if they manage their working capital efficiently. While the existing literature documents the effects of working capital management on firm performance, there is a dearth of research between economic uncertainty and working capital management. We attempt to fill this gap by examining the effect of the economic policy uncertainty on firms’ ability to manage their working capital. For this study, with over 80,000 US firm-year observation over the …


Exchange Rate And Cost Of Credit Fluctuations In Ghana Before And After Inflation Targeting Framework, Patrick Glavee Jan 2020

Exchange Rate And Cost Of Credit Fluctuations In Ghana Before And After Inflation Targeting Framework, Patrick Glavee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fluctuations in exchange rate and cost of credit affect most economies in the world. The problem arises with the uncertainty it generates and the challenges it poses to the economy. The volatility of the exchange rate has been studied extensively in the extant literature, but the problem continues to persist. This paper therefore investigates whether inflation targeting framework influences the exchange rate and cost of credit in Ghana using data from February 2001 to March 2019. Using vector autoregressive model and vector error correction model, the study reveals that the exchange rate situation improves in both the short and long …


Factors Influencing Adoption And Adoption Intensity Of Precision Agriculture Technologies In South Dakota, Md Mahi Uddin Jan 2020

Factors Influencing Adoption And Adoption Intensity Of Precision Agriculture Technologies In South Dakota, Md Mahi Uddin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Precision agriculture can play an important role in preserving the environment and improving the economic conditions of agricultural producers. This thesis analyzes the determinants of adoption and adoption intensity of precision agriculture technologies in South Dakota. This analysis uses survey data collected from 199 farms distributed over 28 different counties in South Dakota, accounting for approximately 500,000 acres of tillable agricultural land, to (1) discover the factors impacting precision technology adoption; (2) compare and contrast several characteristics among adopters and non-adopters; and (3) develop probit, count, and negative binomial models to determine the significance of explanatory variables impacting precision technology …


Socioeconomic Determinants Of Expenditures On Fortified And Unfortified Fruit Juice, Cole Sellnow Jan 2020

Socioeconomic Determinants Of Expenditures On Fortified And Unfortified Fruit Juice, Cole Sellnow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As of 2019, fruit beverages comprise an $11 billion industry in the US (Juice Production in the US 2019). There has been a recent push for fortification of fruit juices due to rising consumer health concerns such as obesity and high sugar consumption. Additionally, the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting fruit beverage consumption (Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee 2020). While there is a rich set of literature analyzing determinants of fruit beverage demand, there is a lack of research analyzing which factors drive consumer expenditures on fortified and unfortified fruit juices (Yen et al. 2004; Storey et al. 2006; …


Business Cycles And American Dreams: (Dis) Aggregate Fluctuations And Intergenerational Mobility, Kailie Drescher Jan 2020

Business Cycles And American Dreams: (Dis) Aggregate Fluctuations And Intergenerational Mobility, Kailie Drescher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I test my central hypothesis that aggregate economic fluctuations (business cycles) affect intergenerational economic mobility (American dreams). I exploit heterogeneity across U.S. state-level business cycles. I argue that these cycles impose countercyclical credit constraints on households that rely on credit to invest in the human capital of their children. Thus, credit constraints effectively limit the skills and expected earnings of children. I focus on an empirical measure of absolute mobility that Chetty et al. (2017) propose: the rate of absolute income mobility, which measures the fraction of adult children who earn more than their parents earned, conditional …


Consumer Perceptions And Demand For Locally-Grown Vegetables In South Dakota, Richard Mulder Jan 2019

Consumer Perceptions And Demand For Locally-Grown Vegetables In South Dakota, Richard Mulder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An increasingly popular topic in the food labeling field over the last 15 years has been the increasing body of research for food that is locally produced. Consumers’ definition of, attitudes toward, and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for local food have been areas of interest for researchers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that contributes to the current body of local foods’ research for vegetables by providing information on these areas of interest for the state of South Dakota. This study acquires data through a consumer-intercept survey conducted in grocery stores throughout South Dakota with a sample …


Multi-Step Forecast Of The Implied Volatility Surface Using Deep Learning, Nikita Medvedev Jan 2019

Multi-Step Forecast Of The Implied Volatility Surface Using Deep Learning, Nikita Medvedev

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Implied volatility is an essential input to price an option. Machine learning architectures have shown strengths in learning option pricing formulas and estimating implied volatility cross-sectionally. However, implied volatility time series forecasting is typically done using the univariate time series and often for short intervals. When a univariate implied volatility series is forecasted, important implied volatility properties such as volatility skew and the term structure are lost. More importantly, short term forecasts can’t take advantage of the long term persistence in the volatility series. The thesis attempts to bridge the gap between machine learning-based implied volatility modeling and multivariate multi-step …


Political Connectedness, Firm Performance And Corporate Risk Taking: Are Emerging Markets Different?, Augustine Tarkom Jan 2019

Political Connectedness, Firm Performance And Corporate Risk Taking: Are Emerging Markets Different?, Augustine Tarkom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Existing literature exploring the effect of politically connected firms on their performance and risk-taking seems to offer decisive results for the emerging and the developed market. However, from professionals and anecdotal evidence, both markets do not exhibit similar characteristics. Considering these characteristics, instability of the government, lack thereof of adequate governance structure, I revisit the topic. This study comprises 27 advanced and 20 emerging economies for the years 1992 through 2016. I find that sound political environment drives risk-taking in advanced markets, while political connections drive corporate risk-taking in emerging markets. I also find that political institutions and political connections …


The Impact Of Location Characteristics On Population Distribution In The United States, Shuruq Alsharif Jan 2019

The Impact Of Location Characteristics On Population Distribution In The United States, Shuruq Alsharif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The United States is one of the most mobile countries in the world. This paper examined a couple of questions not previously addressed in the literature, namely the research questions of how the distributional patterns and associated factors, especially locational characteristics could be different between two types of internal migrants: native-born and foreign-born. The central hypothesis that guided the analysis was that income is often the primary push factor and key contributor to population growth in a county for both types of internal migrants, as they would be more likely to live in a county with a good economic conditions …


The Economic And Social Values Associated With Small South Dakota Lakes, Aaron Patrick Sundmark Jan 2019

The Economic And Social Values Associated With Small South Dakota Lakes, Aaron Patrick Sundmark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The valuation of small fishing lakes is a vital component in understanding the importance of fishing and of recreational resources, in general. Knowing the values associated with such lakes is essential when prioritizing management activities. The overall value of a lake as a resource for human benefit is estimated as the summation of both instrumental and non-instrumental values. Instrumental values consist of economic and utilitarian values, as well as the values that a lake provides from ecosystem services. Non-instrumental values consider what the lake is worth as a good of its own, such as aesthetic, moral, and spiritual values gained …


Does Medicaid Increase Emergency Room Use: Evidence From Oregon Health Program?, Md Fourkan Jan 2019

Does Medicaid Increase Emergency Room Use: Evidence From Oregon Health Program?, Md Fourkan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper strives to identify the relationship between Medicaid expansion and Emergency Department use. I use a Monte Carlo simulation for demonstrating the endogeneity problem and a copula model using the Oregon Health Program (OHP) data to show the previous literature has exaggerated the causal relation between Medicaid expansion and Emergency Department use. This paper can be divided into two parts. First, it tries to focus on the under-identification of multiple endogenous variables problem in typical econometrics papers, where researchers correct for a single endogenous variable but intentionally or unintentionally ignore the endogeneity of one or more other independent …


Food Assistance Programs In The Us And Their Impact On Childhood Obesity, Jannatul Kawsar Jan 2019

Food Assistance Programs In The Us And Their Impact On Childhood Obesity, Jannatul Kawsar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Numerous food assistance programs (FAP) aim to ensure food security among low income American households. However, the literature suggests that participation in food assistance programs may be associated with the US childhood obesity epidemic. The goal of this study is to analyze the association between the number of major food assistance programs children participate in and childhood obesity. The major food assistance programs considered are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and the School Breakfast Programs (SBP). This is the first study to …