Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Culture And Prosperity: The Truth About Markets—Why Some Nations Are Rich But Most Remain Poor (Book Review), Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

John Kay’s latest book offers an absorbing romp through the history of economic thought in the 20th century. Kay attempts to explain the complex reality of a modern market system rather than resorting to simplistic theorizing about it. Gone are perfectly rational traders, perfectly competitive markets, incentive compatibilities, low transaction costs, informational symmetries, and no externalities. Kay highlights problems and problem solving as the ubiquitous and historical strata through which markets in the West evolved.

Management Practices In A Profitable South Dakota Beef Cow-Calf Operation: A Case Study, Carol J. Cumber, Jill Pravatiner

Economics Commentator

No abstract provided.

Boeing-Airbus Subsidy Dispute: A Sequel, Robert J. Carbaugh, John Olienyk

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

After intensifying in the 1980s and 1990s, the longstanding dispute between Europe and the United States over government subsidies for the commercial jetliner industry again heated up in 2004. This time, however, the stakes were higher because both nations sued each other at the World Trade Organization over government subsidies paid to their respective commercial jetliner companies. The dispute over subsidies has heightened trade tensions between the United States and Europe, as both companies spar for dominance in the highly competitive industry of commercial aircraft.

This paper provides a sequel to "Boeing-Airbus Subsidy Dispute: An Economic and Trade Perspective," a …

Local And Regional Policy Implications Of Agriculture's "Multifunctionality", Thomas L. Dobbs

Economics Commentator

No abstract provided.

India: Urban Property Taxes In Selected States, Dana Weist, Roy W. Bahl, Somik Lall

ECON Publications

Property taxation has a long been a vexing issue in India, and continue to be. India faces a major structural problem with its property tax systems, resulting from the failure to resolve conflicts between assessing the true market value of property with rent control ordinances, and other limitations such as the FSI. Moreover, government officials have generally been unwilling to issue new valuation rolls, in some cases for many years. Much of the recent property tax reform in India has entailed stop-gap measures to overcome these problems, rather than engaging in comprehensive reform. Meanwhile, the growth of property tax revenues …

India: Urban Finance And Governance Review Volume Ii: Case Study Annexes, Dana Weist, Roy W. Bahl, Somik Lall, Lars Sondergaard, K. Mukundan, Ajit Karnik, Abhay Pethe, Christine Wong, Kirida Bhaopichitr

ECON Publications

The report makes an in depth analysis of what to expect of future urban population growth in cities across India. Cities play a critical role in India's development. While its one billion-plus population is predominantly rural, over 300 million people live in urban areas. One-third of this population lives in 35 urban agglomerations or cities exceeding one million. Cities' governments are responsible for delivering various public services, yet severe infrastructures shortages in water supply and sanitation, roads, transportation, housing and waste management, and inefficient management have resulted in poor quality services. These inadequate services and worsening environmental conditions affect the …

Poverty Rates Of Refugees And Immigrants, Christopher R. Bollinger, Paul Hagstrom

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

No abstract.

The Economic Impact Of Methamphetamine Use In Benton County, Arkansas, Jeffery T. Collins

Publications and Presentations

Methamphetamine use among the employed population is on the rise as general methamphetamine use increases. Many employers are unaware of the extent of the methamphetamine crisis and the harmful effects that employee methamphetamine use has on the firm. While methamphetamine use is associated with tremendous expenses for society in the form of direct health care, law enforcement, and environmental costs, this study focuses exclusively on the increased costs that firms bear as a result of the methamphetamine use of their employees. The Benton County Methamphetamine Task Force commissioned this project from the Center for Business and Economic Research in the …

Private Savings In Transition Economies: Are There Terms Of Trade Shocks?, Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Economic agents in the transition economies are subject to tight credit constraints, which are more pronounced during bad state of nature. Thus, adverse shocks to commodity prices in the world market can force them to reduce savings by a larger amount than they would otherwise have. Empirical analysis using a dynamic panel model and data from 21 transition economies confirm that most of the determinants of savings identified in the literature also apply to the transition economies. The transitory component in the terms of trade have a larger positive impact than the permanent component. This reflects the lack of access …

Consequences Of Announcements To Voluntarily Adopt The Fair Value Method Of Accounting For Stock-Based Compensation, Shilpa Manaktala, John D. Phillips, Karen Teitel

Economics Department Working Papers

We identify 133 firms that between July and December 2002, announced plans to voluntarily adopt the fair value method of accounting for stock-based compensation. We investigate whether such announcements increased the quality of these firms’ earnings as perceived by market participants. Answering this research question not only provides evidence relevant to the debate surrounding the expensing of employee stock options, but doing so provides evidence that conservative accounting choices in general lead to higher perceived earnings quality. Using two measures of earnings quality, the price-earnings relation and the earnings response coefficient, we find evidence consistent with an increase in perceived …

Applying Intermediate Microeconomics To Terrorism, Charles Anderton, John Carter

Economics Department Working Papers

The authors show how microeconomic concepts and principles are applicable to the study of terrorism. The utility maximization model provides insights into both terrorist resource allocation choices and government counterterrorism efforts, while basic game theory helps characterize the strategic interdependencies among terrorists and governments.

Do Policy-Makers Earmark To Constrain Their Successors? The Case Of Environmental Earmarking, Neva Novarro

Economics Department Working Papers

This paper examines whether legislators earmark funds in order to constrain the spending of future legislators with different preferences. Specifically, panel data is used to estimate the probability a new environmental earmarking law is passed as a function of Democrats holding and subsequently losing majority control of the government. The results of this study do not support this hypothesis. In fact, Democrats with a large majority who subsequently lose this majority power following the next election are found to be less likely to earmark funds for the environment. One possible explanation for this finding may be that competing forces make …

The Regional Capacity And Possible Expansion Of Holloman Afb, New Mexico: 2004, David A. Schauer, Dennis L. Soden, Brent Mccune, David Coronado

IPED Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Introduction To The Legal Foundation Of Federal Land Management, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Introduction to the Legal Foundation of Federal Land Management (December 1-3)

Materials prepared for the course held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado on December 1-3, 2004

Course instructors: Charles Wilkinson; Sarah Krakoff; Kathryn Mutz; Ann Morgan; Maggie Fox

Contents:

Introduction -- Agenda -- Summaries of laws -- Case studies. Travel management; Oil and gas development; Timber/fuels reduction -- How to influence agency decision makers -- Natural resource related legal and policy resources for the non-legal professional

Introduction To The Legal Foundation Of Federal Land Management, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Introduction to the Legal Foundation of Federal Land Management (December 1-3)

1 v. (various pagings) : ill., maps ; 28 cm

Materials prepared for the course held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado on December 1-3, 2004

Course instructors: Charles Wilkinson; Sarah Krakoff; Kathryn Mutz; Ann Morgan; Maggie Fox

Contents:

Introduction -- Agenda -- Summaries of laws -- Case studies. Travel management; Oil and gas development; Timber/fuels reduction -- How to influence agency decision makers -- Natural resource related legal and policy resources for the non-legal professional

The Welfare Implications Of Increasing Disability Insurance Benefit Generosity, John Bound, Julie Berry Cullen, Austin Nichols, Lucie Schmidt

Economics: Faculty Publications

In order to evaluate whether workers are over- or under-insured through the Disability Insurance (DI) program, we develop a framework that allows us to simulate the benefits as well as the costs associated with marginal changes in payment generosity from a representative cross-sectional sample of the population. Under the assumption that individuals are reasonably risk averse, we find that the typical worker would value increased benefits somewhat above the average costs of providing them. However, whether the benefit increases tend to lower or raise utility when we average across all individuals in our sample is sensitive to assumptions that affect …

Trend And Cycle Analysis Of Unemployment Insurance And The Employment Service, Wayne Vroman, Stephen A. Woodbury

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Trend And Cycle Analysis Of Unemployment Insurance And The Employment Service, Wayne Vroman, Stephen A. Woodbury

External Papers and Reports

This report traces historical developments in two major DOL programs: State Unemployment Insurance (UI) and the federal-state Employment Service (ES). Developments in the UI program are traced from the late 1940s while ES program activities are traced from the late 1960s. For both programs, the report emphasizes long term trends as well as changes that have occurred over the course of the business cycle. The analysis uses annual data and is conducted at three levels of geographic detail: national, regional and state. A major objective of the project was to create data files useful for other researchers in studying the …

Currencies, Identities, Free Banking, And Growth In Early Twentieth Century Manchuria, Thomas Gottschang

Economics Department Working Papers

From 1906 until 1931, Manchuria – Northeast China - was a complex patchwork of Chinese, Japanese, and Russian spheres of control. Since political authority was fragmented, none of the governments was capable of establishing a central bank with a monopoly over the money supply. Multiple currencies were in use, ranging from strings – tiao- of traditional Chinese copper cash, to silver dollars (yuan) from Mexico, China, and Japan, to Russian rubles (which crashed in value after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution), and miscellaneous paper currencies of varying stability. The modern banks established under national and private auspices to serve the commercial …

Vulnerable Trade: The Dark Side Of An Edgeworth Box, Charles Anderton, John Carter

Economics Department Working Papers

We examine incentives to seize and defend goods offered for trade in an Edgeworth box economy. Appropriation possibilities generate an equilibrium of coerced redistribution and voluntary trade in a reduced box. Potential mutual gains remain untaken because the prospect of piracy creates a price wedge, wherein the effective relative price is lowered for the exporter and raised for the importer. As the vulnerability of one or both goods increases, the price wedge widens, causing trade to diminish. If vulnerability becomes sufficiently high, then trade and appropriation are driven to zero, or one or both players are rendered indifferent to trade.

Appendix D: The Econometric Analysis Of The Benefits Of School-Based Mentoring, Amanda Bayer

Economics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Political Economy Of Polarized Pluralism, Salvatore Babones, Riccardo Pelizzo

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Sartori’s party system typology at least because, as Peter Mair recently pointed out, “there has been very little new thinking on how to classify systems since the seminal work of Sartori” (Mair, forthcoming). The first important party system taxonomy was proposed by Duverger in his Political Parties (1951). Duverger in this classic study identified three types of party systems: the one party system, the two party system and the multi-party system. By the early 1960s Sartori had become quite unhappy with this typology (Sartori, 1982). Sartori thought that both the one-party and …

The Development Of Mexican Nonproliferation Export Controls Cits Special Report, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado

Latino/Latin American Studies Reports

This report by OLLAS assistant director Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado is part of a developing research and outreach project with the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia. It involved working with Mexican government officials to design and implement national responses to international agreements and obligations to ensure command and control of critical nuclear, biological, and chemical materials in Mexico. Dr. Benjamin-Alvarado conducted a comprehensive survey, which he administered in Argentina and Cuba previously, later in 2005 to assess Mexican export controls.

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- December 2004, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

India: Urban Finance And Governance Review - Volume I Executive Summary And Main Report, Dana Weist, Roy W. Bahl, Somik Lall, Lars Sondergaard, K. Mukundan, Ajit Karnik, Abhay Pethe, Christine Wong, Kirida Bhaopichitr

ECON Publications

The report makes an in depth analysis of what to expect of future urban population growth in cities across India. Cities play a critical role in India's development. While its one billion-plus population is predominantly rural, over 300 million people live in urban areas. One-third of this population lives in 35 urban agglomerations or cities exceeding one million. Cities' governments are responsible for delivering various public services, yet severe infrastructures shortages in water supply and sanitation, roads, transportation, housing and waste management, and inefficient management have resulted in poor quality services. These inadequate services and worsening environmental conditions affect the …

Estimating The Cost Of An Adequate 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.

Analytically Calibrated Box-Cox Percentile Limits For Duration And Event-Time Models, Zhenlin Yang, Albert K.C. Tsui

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a unified approach to constructing confidence limits for a future percentile duration or event-time. The construction is based on an analytical calibration of the Box-Cox-type “plug-in” percentile limits (PL). The performance of the calibrated Box-Cox PL is investigated using Monte Carlo experiments. Comparisons are made with PLs that are specifically designed for a particular distribution such as Weibull and lognormal. Excellent performances of the calibrated Box-Cox PL are observed. Simulation based on other popular duration models such as gamma and inverse Gaussian reveal that the proposed PL is robust against distributional assumptions and that it performs much …

L S Penrose's Limit Theorem: Tests By Simulation, Pao-Li Chang, Vincent Chua, Moshe Machover

Research Collection School Of Economics

LS Penrose’s limit theorem (PLT) – which is implicit in Penrose [5, p. 72] and for which he gave no rigorous proof – says that, in simple weighted voting games, if the number of voters increases indefinitely while existing voters retain their weights and the relative quota is pegged, then – under certain conditions – the ratio between the voting powers of any two voters converges to the ratio between their weights. Lindner and Machover [3] prove some special cases of PLT; and conjecture that the theorem holds, under rather general conditions, for large classes of weighted voting games, various …

An Analytical Framework For Science Parks And Technology Districts With An Application To Singapore, Cher Chiew Francis Koh, Teow Hock Winston Koh, Feichin Ted Tschang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper analyzes the question: what does it take for science parks and technology districts to evolve and grow? We propose an analytical framework to examine the gestation, evolution and sustainability of science parks and regional phenomena at a broader scale such as technology districts. The framework comprises three aspects of a science park's development: growth mechanisms, level of technological capabilities, and integration with national or global markets. The main growth mechanisms we identify are government-led infrastructure provision, agglomeration effects and continual self-renewal through the creation of new businesses. We apply this framework to analyze Singapore's science park strategy and …

Investing In Real Estate: Mortgage Financing Practices And Optimal Holding Period, Winston T. H. Koh, Edward H. K. Ng

Research Collection School Of Economics

Real estate investments are typically characterized by high degrees of leverage and long-loan tenures. In perfect capital markets, leverage has no impact on the investment decision apart from tax considerations. However, the mortgage financing market is imperfect in many countries. In the presence of market imperfections, an optimal holding period exists for real property investments. We provide a simple rule to calculate the optimal holding period to compare the required rate of return with the leveraged rate of return on equity.