Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 37

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Economic Freedom And Fiscal Performance: A Regression Analysis Of Indices Of Economic Freedom On Per Capita Gdp, Jason Ockey Dec 2011

Economic Freedom And Fiscal Performance: A Regression Analysis Of Indices Of Economic Freedom On Per Capita Gdp, Jason Ockey

Jason R Ockey

This paper explores whether different forms of economic freedom drive fiscal performance. We also seek to determine which specific measurements of economic freedom have the most statistically significant impacts. Though the results of our analysis show that economic freedom does impact levels of per capita GDP, the interpretation of these results is more complicated. Because some indices of economic freedom have negative effects on per capita GDP or are statistically insignificant, it is important to note that simply generally increasing a country’s overall level of economic freedom will not necessarily spur economic growth or increase fiscal performance. This paper does …


The Historical Background Of The Communist Manifesto, George R. Boyer Dec 2011

The Historical Background Of The Communist Manifesto, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published 150 years ago in London in February 1848, is one of the most influential and widely-read documents of the past two centuries. The historian A. J. P. Taylor (1967, p. 7) has called it a "holy book," and contends that because of it, "everyone thinks differently about politics and society." And yet, despite its enormous influence in the 20th century, the Manifesto is very much a period piece, a document of what was called the "hungry" 1840s. It is hard to imagine it being written in any other decade of the 19th …


The Poor Law, Migration, And Economic Growth, George R. Boyer Dec 2011

The Poor Law, Migration, And Economic Growth, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

The loss to the English economy caused by decreased migration resulting from relief payments to agricultural laborers is estimated. I conclude that, at worst, the Poor Law had a small negative impact on national product. If poor relief and wages were substitutes, the Poor Law may have had a positive impact on capital formation and economic growth.


New Estimates Of British Unemployment, 1870-1913, George R. Boyer, Timothy J. Hatton Dec 2011

New Estimates Of British Unemployment, 1870-1913, George R. Boyer, Timothy J. Hatton

George R. Boyer

We present new estimates of the British industrial unemployment rate for 1870- 1913, which improve on the Board of Trade's prior estimates. We use similar sources, but our series includes additional industrial sectors, allows for short-time working, and aggregates the various sectors using appropriate labor-force weights from the census. The resulting index suggests a rate of industrial unemployment that was generally higher, but less volatile, than the board's index. We then adjust our series to an economywide basis, and construct a consistent time series of overall unemployment for 1870-1999.


Local Rules And A Global Economy: An Economic Policy Perspective, Dan Danielsen Dec 2011

Local Rules And A Global Economy: An Economic Policy Perspective, Dan Danielsen

Dan Danielsen

This article explores the growing significance and theoretical implications of ‘local rules’—such as Chinese labour standards, US financial regulation and Swiss bank secrecy rules—in the global economy. In particular, the argument developed is that Ronald Coase’s framework for analysing the effects of legal rules on economic welfare can help to reveal important weaknesses in current international legal approaches to analysing the transnational impact of local rules as well as contribute to a ‘global economic policy perspective’ better attuned to problems of power in the global regulatory order. Such a perspective will help us to see the effects of power differences …


The Massachusetts Environmental Industry: Facing The Challenges Of Maturity, Betty J. Diener, David Terkla, Erick Cooke Dec 2011

The Massachusetts Environmental Industry: Facing The Challenges Of Maturity, Betty J. Diener, David Terkla, Erick Cooke

David G. Terkla

For most of the past 20 years, the environmental industry has been a very significant one, both in Massachusetts and across the country. Some have placed it alongside the electronics, computer hardware, software, biotechnology, fiber optics, and composite materials industries as part of the high-technology sector that has diversified and strengthened the state’s economy. Nationally, environmental industry employment exceeded that of several major manufacturing industries, including chemicals, paper, and aerospace. In the late 1990s, however, the momentum of the environmental movement began to wane. A decline in both employment and sales suggests that many of the most pressing environmental concerns …


The Role Of Science In The Uruguay Round And Nafta Trade Disciplines, David A. Wirth Nov 2011

The Role Of Science In The Uruguay Round And Nafta Trade Disciplines, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

The central theme of this article is the necessity for deference to decision-making processes of national regulatory authorities in the application of these new trade disciplines and the need for trade-based reviews of national regulatory measures to operate within clearly defined limits. Accordingly, this article first examines and summarizes the relevant texts, including the original 1947 GATT, the Uruguay Round, and the NAFTA texts on standards. Next, the article considers the role of science in the standard-setting process with reference to the copious literature on this topic. Finally, the article takes up the difficult question of the application of the …


At War With The Environment, David A. Wirth Nov 2011

At War With The Environment, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

In this Article, Professor Wirth reviews the book National Defense and the Environment by Stephen Dycus, a recognized expert in both environmental and national security law. The emphasis of the book is on containing and remediating the environmental excesses of the American defense-industrial complex, with a domestic policy focus. While Professor Wirth considers Dycus’ work an intellectually rewarding and refreshing new entry into the ongoing environment-as-security colloquy, he does not consider the book to be accessible to a general audience given the book’s fundamentally legalistic nature.


Resolving Large, Complex Financial Firms, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Mark Greenlee, James Thomson Oct 2011

Resolving Large, Complex Financial Firms, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Mark Greenlee, James Thomson

James B Thomson

How to best manage the failure of systemically important fi nancial fi rms was the theme of a recent conference at which the latest research on the issue was presented. Here we summarize that research, the discussions that it sparked, and the areas where considerable work remains.


How Well Does Bankruptcy Work When Large Financial Firms Fail? Some Lessons From Lehman Brothers, Thomas Fitzpatrick, James Thomson Oct 2011

How Well Does Bankruptcy Work When Large Financial Firms Fail? Some Lessons From Lehman Brothers, Thomas Fitzpatrick, James Thomson

James B Thomson

There is disagreement about whether large and complex financial institutions should be allowed to use U.S. bankruptcy law to reorganize when they get into financial difficulty. We look at the Lehman example for lessons about whether bankruptcy law might be a better alternative to bailouts or to resolution under the Dodd-Frank Act’s orderly liquidation authority. We find that there is no clear evidence that bankruptcy law is insufficient to handle the resolution of large complex financial firms.


Hot Potato: Who Will End Up Paying For Open Access? [Slides], Sue Ann Gardner Oct 2011

Hot Potato: Who Will End Up Paying For Open Access? [Slides], Sue Ann Gardner

Sue E. Gardner

PowerPoint slides of a talk given at the 35th IAMSLIC Annual Conference & 13th Biennial EURASLIC Conference, September 27-October 1, 2009, Provinciaal Hof, Brugge, Belgium. Abstract of accompanying paper: Open access to scholarly content is increasing, and will continue to do so. This phenomenon is driving the economics of publishing to change dramatically. The question is: what will the economics of open access look like when this correction settles into a sustainable model? I will cover some of the ideas that have recently been articulated by economists, information professionals and others regarding retooling the evolving publishing business model, and will …


Restoring The Natural Law: Copyright As Labor And Possession, Alfred C. Yen Oct 2011

Restoring The Natural Law: Copyright As Labor And Possession, Alfred C. Yen

Alfred C. Yen

In this Article, Professor Yen explores the problems associated with viewing copyright solely as a tool for achieving economic efficiency and advocates for the restoration of natural law to copyright jurisprudence. The Article demonstrates that economics has not been solely responsible for copyright’s development and basic structure, but has rather developed along lines suggested by neutral law, despite modern copyright jurisprudence. The Article considers the consequences of extinguishing copyright’s natural law facets in favor of the blind pursuit of efficiency and concludes by exploring the implications of restoring natural law thinking to copyright jurisprudence.


Justice, The Bretton Woods Institutions And The Problem Of Inequality, Frank J. Garcia Oct 2011

Justice, The Bretton Woods Institutions And The Problem Of Inequality, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

The Bretton Woods Institutions are, together with the WTO, the preeminent international institutions devoted to managing international economic relations. This mandate puts them squarely in the center of the debate concerning development, inequality and global justice. While the normative analysis of the WTO is gaining momentum, the systematic normative evaluation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is comparatively less developed. This essay aims to contribute to that nascent inquiry. How might global justice criteria apply to the ideology and operations of the Bank and Fund? Political theory offers an abundance of perspectives from which to conduct such …


Is Free Trade "Free?" Is It Even "Trade?" Oppression And Consent In Hemispheric Trade Agreements, Frank J. Garcia Oct 2011

Is Free Trade "Free?" Is It Even "Trade?" Oppression And Consent In Hemispheric Trade Agreements, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

In order for free trade as a policy to deliver fully on its social promise, it must be both “free” and “trade.” In fact, it must be free, in the sense of voluntary, to be trade at all. In other words, for normative and practical reasons, free trade requires that global economic relations be structured through agreements which reflect the consent of those subject to them. The neoliberal trading system today only imperfectly lives up to this obligation. In this essay, I will examine the role of consent in trade agreements, drawing on examples from CAFTA as representative of important …


The Moral Hazard Problem In Global Economic Regulation, Frank J. Garcia Oct 2011

The Moral Hazard Problem In Global Economic Regulation, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

Global regulation of international business transactions presents a particular form of the moral hazard problem. Global firms use economic and political power to manipulate state and state-controlled multilateral regulation to preserve their opportunity to externalize the social costs of global economic activity with impunity. Unless other actors can effectively counter this at the national and global regulatory levels, globalization re-creates the conditions for under-regulated or “robber baron” capitalism at the global level. This model of economic activity has been rejected at the national level by the same modern democratic capitalist states which currently dominate globalization, creating a crisis of legitimacy …


Optimal Sequential Search And Optimal Consumption-Leisure Choice, Sergey Malakhov Sep 2011

Optimal Sequential Search And Optimal Consumption-Leisure Choice, Sergey Malakhov

Sergey Malakhov

This paper describes the static model of consumption-leisure choice in which both the maximization of utility and the maximization of precautionary savings for sequential purchases are constrained by the equality of the marginal costs of search to their marginal benefits. The marginal rate of substitution of leisure for consumption appears in the specific form, which updates the Cobb-Douglas utility function and provides search behavior with the optimal stopping rule. This rule bridges the gap between the neoclassical explanation of search behavior and the search-satisficing concept. The original arrangements of polar models of behavior, the overconsumption effect, the Veblen effect, and …


Income Mobility, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

Income Mobility, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Income mobility means different things to different people. This article explains the six different mobility concepts used in the literature, reviews the various indices used in the mobility literature to measure these concepts, summarizes the difference the use of different mobility concepts and measures makes in practice, presents the axiomatic approach to income mobility, and discusses a number of other issues that arise in the mobility literature.


The Balanced Scorecard: An Intentional Academic Fraud?, David Randall Jenkins Jul 2011

The Balanced Scorecard: An Intentional Academic Fraud?, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

The Kaplan and Norton 1992 Balanced Scorecard was intentionally structured to aid an Informal Capital Market Cartel in search of the next John Maynard Keynes.


Workers’ Remittances And Real Exchange Rate In Bangladesh: A Cointegration Analysis, Mamta B. Chowdhury, Fazle Rabbi Jul 2011

Workers’ Remittances And Real Exchange Rate In Bangladesh: A Cointegration Analysis, Mamta B. Chowdhury, Fazle Rabbi

Fazle Rabbi

Workers’ remittances have an ever important role as one of the major sources of foreign exchange earnings for the Bangladesh economy. It accounts for over 12 per cent of GDP in 2010 and having colossal socio economic implications for the country. Using Cointegation an Error Correction model, this paper attempts to contribute to the literature by investigating the effects of increasing flow of remittances on the real exchange rate of the country. Our results suggest that the influx of workers’ remittances significantly appreciating the real exchange rate by lowering the relative prices tradables to nontradables of the country compared to …


Un Premio En Honor De Manuel (Muso) Ayau, Martin E. Krause Dr. Jan 2011

Un Premio En Honor De Manuel (Muso) Ayau, Martin E. Krause Dr.

Martin Krause

Encontramos premios y galardones por doquier (Frey, 2006). Hay centenares de ellos cubriendo logros destacados en ciencia, humanidades, honores militares y patrióticos, arte y entretenimiento, deportes. También están presentes en las empresas (empleados del mes, gerente del año) y han sido utilizados para modelar los mercados laborales dentro de las empresas como “torneos” que proveen incentivos óptimos para lograr el máximo esfuerzo. Los más importantes premios vigentes se crearon en el Siglo XX. Antes de esto hubo gran cantidad de condecoraciones patrióticas y militares, pero durante el Siglo XX los premios se independizaron de los gobiernos (aunque con cierta grado …


One For The Road: Public Transportation, Alcohol Consumption, And Intoxicated Driving, Clement (Kirabo) Jackson, Emily G. Owens Jan 2011

One For The Road: Public Transportation, Alcohol Consumption, And Intoxicated Driving, Clement (Kirabo) Jackson, Emily G. Owens

C. Kirabo Jackson

We exploit arguably exogenous train schedule changes in Washington DC to investigate the relationship between public transportation provision, the risky decision to consume alcohol, and the criminal decision to engage in alcohol–impaired driving. Using a triple differences strategy, we provide evidence that both DUI arrests and alcohol related fatal traffic accidents fell, while alcohol related arrests increased, as a result of the expanded hours of Metro operation. However, we find that these effects may be due, in part, to individuals shifting their drinking to evenings when the Metro offered late night service from other evenings. Furthermore, we provide strong evidence …


Economic Parameters Of An Ideal Society, Subhajit Kumar Ganguly Jan 2011

Economic Parameters Of An Ideal Society, Subhajit Kumar Ganguly

Subhajit Kumar Ganguly

The issues regarding the functioning and growth of an ideal economic society is the subject of investigation here. One basic guideline for such a society is that it must have total control over its economics and that money cannot drive such a society from pillar to post. The equal right of every individual over the basic amenities to live and grow and equal right of every individual over the resources, ensuring no misuse of the society's resources may be taken care of by controlling the market through a control-parameter, decided upon by the society.


Antitrust Class Certification: Towards An Economic Framework, Bret M. Dickey, Daniel L. Rubinfeld Jan 2011

Antitrust Class Certification: Towards An Economic Framework, Bret M. Dickey, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Bret Dickey

No abstract provided.


Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz Jan 2011

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …


Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz Jan 2011

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …


A Global Currency For A Global Economy: Getting From Here To There, Warren Coats Jan 2011

A Global Currency For A Global Economy: Getting From Here To There, Warren Coats

Warren Coats

In this paper Dr. Warren Coats proposes stabilizing the value of money by linking it to an independently defined unit of account with a relatively constant real value. A common unit of account would lower the cost of trading by reducing transaction and information costs and would increase world trade and improve the efficiency of international resource allocation. The unit he suggests, a commodity basket, would not have the shortcomings that afflict the gold standard-gold's fluctuating relative value. The link between money and this unit that he suggests, fixing the value of a unit of money in terms of the …


Editorial: Contemporary Issues In Global Economy And Policy Analysis, Sushanta Mallick, Srijit Mishra Jan 2011

Editorial: Contemporary Issues In Global Economy And Policy Analysis, Sushanta Mallick, Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra

No abstract provided.


Combining Multiple Climate Policy Instruments: How Not To Do It, Jisung Park Jan 2011

Combining Multiple Climate Policy Instruments: How Not To Do It, Jisung Park

Jisung Park

Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policymakers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example by complementing cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon tax, or with a feed-in tariff. Often, the motivation for doing so is to limit undesirable fluctuations in the carbon price, either from rising too high or falling too low. This paper reviews the implications for the carbon price of combining cap-and-trade with other policy instruments. We find that price intervention may not always have the desired effect. Simply adding a carbon tax to an existing cap-and-trade system reduces the carbon …


Who's To Blame When A Business Fails? How Journalistic Death Metaphors Influence Responsibility Attributions, Ann Williams Dec 2010

Who's To Blame When A Business Fails? How Journalistic Death Metaphors Influence Responsibility Attributions, Ann Williams

Ann E Williams

This study unites a textual analysis and an experimental audience study to document the use of death metaphor in business news and to assess the impact that death metaphor has on audiences' attributions of responsibility for corporate failure. The findings show that death metaphors are frequently used in financial press coverage and that the use of death metaphor influences audience members' responsibility attributions by intensifying overall levels of blame, while simultaneously deflecting blame away from the executives responsible for managing the firm and diffusing it to other factors, including the state of the economy, the government, and individual consumers.


Using Econometrics: A Practical Guide, A. Studenmund Dec 2010

Using Econometrics: A Practical Guide, A. Studenmund

A. H. Studenmund

No abstract provided.