Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Analytics In The Atp, Christopher Pillitere

All Theses

This paper applies data analysis used in the major team sports to the Association of Tennis Professional (ATP). A linear regression model is used to determine the aspects of the professional tennis most relevant to player success. Special focus is given to the effect of a player’s overreliance on his serving performance. The available data (1991-2014) is divided into two periods in an effort to observe any differences between the era dominated by Pete Sampras and the era dominated by Roger Federer. The results from the former period indicate the same effect on player success of first and second serving …

An Analysis Of Major League Soccer: Competitive Balance And Wage Dispersion, William Hobbs Iii

All Theses

Major League Soccer is in a transitional state which may see it projected into the realm of international relevancy, competing with European soccer. This transition is fueled by contracting renowned superstars from Europe via the designated player (DP) rule. This study examines implications of the DP rule on competitive balance (CB) of the league and wage dispersion among teams. The effect of the rule on CB is inconclusive in the model constructed, but propositions of a more appropriate CB measure are presented for future research. The DP rule has caused higher levels of salary dispersion within the league and this …

The Job Of Human Capital: What Occupational Data Reveal About Skill Sets, Economic Growth And Regional Competitiveness, Lillian Frances Stewart

ETD Archive

A region's workforce has been described as its greatest asset. Guided by human capital theory and new growth theory, regions have pursued economic development policies to increase the number of college-educated workers and expand the pool of STEM -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- talent. Academic literature and policy interventions have focused on a region's human capital in terms of educational attainment instead of a more fine-grained definition of human capital based on skills and competencies. This dissertation integrates economic and business theory and combines three federal databases to explore regional human capital assets. Findings suggest that policymakers may …

A Theoretical And Methodological Framework To Analyze Long Distance Pleasure Travel, Vijayaraghavan Sivaraman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States (US) witnessed remarkable growth in annual long distance travel over the past few decades. Over half of the long distance travel in the US is made for pleasure, including visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and leisure activities. This trend could continue with increased use of information and communication technologies for socialization, and enhanced mobility being achieved using fuel-efficient (electric/hybrid) and technology enhanced vehicles. Despite these developments, and recent interest to implement alternate mass transit options to serve this market, not much exists on the measurement, analysis and modeling of long distance pleasure travel in the U.S.

Statewide …

Economics Of Fixed-Dose Combination Drugs Approved In The United States, Jing Hao

Doctoral Dissertations

Patent is the most important form of intellectual property protection for new drugs. Patent extension and market exclusivity currently serve as major regulatory incentives to promote new drugs. Combination drug, or fixed-dose combination (FDC) are formulations that contain two or more active ingredients in a single pill. FDCs, especially combinations of singe drugs that are already in the market, are common strategy for brand-name drug companies to extent the patent and exclusivity life. The substitution of single drug products that soon have generic alternatives with newer, brand-name combinations lead to potential increases in pharmaceutical expenditures and raises concerns on economic …

Essays On Inequality, Credit Constraints, And Growth In Contemporary Mexico, Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents four essays on inequality, credit constraints, and economic growth in the Mexican economy in its recent history, or “contemporary Mexico”. In the first essay, it is argued that the possibility that wealth/income inequality could affect economic growth has been neglected in the contemporary Mexican economy literature. Also, preliminary thoughts on the channels through which inequality could have been affecting growth are offered. In the second essay, a time series, macroeconometric analysis on the possible relationship between inequality and aggregate production (GDP) in Mexico is presented. The analysis suggests that an increase in inequality boosts the economy, but …

Three Essays On Macroeconomic Implications Of Contemporary Financial Intermediation, Hyun Woong Park

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on macroeconomic models with a financial intermediary sector. The first two chapters use the circuit of capital modeling methodology to study the relation between growth and profitability in capitalist economy where credit is essential, and the third uses a more standard macrodynamic model to investigate how securitized banking, which relies on short-term collateralized borrowing, as opposed to traditional commercial banking, generates procyclical bank leverage, which in turn leads to supply-led fluctuation in credits and ultimately to a boom-bust cycle of asset prices. In chapter 1, I extend the baseline model of circuit of …

The Labor Share Question In China, Hao Qi

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study I explore why China’s labor share measured by the conventional approach experienced a major decline over the period from the mid-1990s to the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis in 2008. I adopt a Marxian approach to address this question. Following the Marxian approach, I focus on how the power relation in the sphere of production affects labor’s share. I argue that major changes in the power relation that took place during the transition of China’s economic system have played a crucial role in the changes of distribution. To this end, I build homogenous series …

Essays On Information, Income, And The Sharing Economy, Anders F. Fremstad

Doctoral Dissertations

Many privately-owned items are somewhat non-rival in consumption, so there are often benefits to borrowing and lending underutilized goods and exchanging used goods. Although sharing is ubiquitous, it is understudied in economics. This dissertation seeks to help develop an economics of sharing. Chapter 1 presents a simple mathematical model of the “gains from sharing”, which connects the literatures on club goods, household economies, collective action, community governance, and decentralized cooperation. I argue that the level of sharing in society depends not just on technology but also on the norms that govern how people cooperate, on people’s preferences around privacy and …

Structural Transformation, Culture, And Women’S Labor Force Participation In Turkey, Yasemin Dildar

Doctoral Dissertations

Turkey has experienced important structural and social changes that would be expected to facilitate women’s participation in market work. Social attitudes toward working women have changed in recent years; women are becoming more educated; they are getting married at a later age; and fertility rates are declining. Despite these factors, women’s labor force participation rates are very low in comparison to the countries at a similar development stage. This dissertation analyzes the underlying causes of low female labor force participation in Turkey. In addition to a background chapter (Chapter 2) analyzing structural transformation and employment generation patterns, the dissertation has …

Essays On Growth Complementarity Between Agriculture And Industry In Developing Countries, Joao Paulo De Souza

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines three aspects of the macroeconomic role of agriculture in the industrialization of developing countries. In the first essay, I utilize instrumental variable techniques to empirically identify the effect of growth in agriculture on growth in manufacturing. Using data for 62 countries and instrumental variable techniques, I find that higher land yields in agriculture raise growth in manufacturing in the short to medium run. Along with extensions of the basic empirical model, this finding suggests that land-saving technical change can stimulate demand for industrial goods, raise fiscal revenues, and provide foreign exchange earnings to finance capital accumulation. In …

He_Rtland: The Violence Of Neoliberalism, Hector Sotomayor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Perhaps, under the consciousness of today, “neoliberalism” has defined our world during the previous and current centuries more than any other socioeconomic system. But the evolution of this ideology, which initially aimed to enhance, or rather, reinvent capitalism and individual freedom, has, in essence, induced an unrecognized problem. I argue that neoliberalism is the catalyst for much of the hostility in this globalized society where tensions and poverty are casualties of individual and corporate prosperity. Because of this revelation, I argue that neoliberalism inadvertently instills violence that is both unseen and gendered. In order to formulate my argument, I introduce …

Behavioral Finance: Its History And Its Future, Robert Christopher Hammond

Selected Honors Theses

The field of behavioral finance has attempted to explain a litany of biases, heuristics, and

inefficiencies present in financial markets since its creation in the 1980’s. This paper is structured as a comprehensive literature review of behavioral finance, and includes both the seminal works as well as more recent papers. The various subtopics of behavioral finance will also be analyzed, which include loss aversion, corporate finance, and momentum/contrarian investing. Finally, this paper will draw unique conclusions across behavioral finance and hypothesize about what topics within behavioral finance are likely to yield the most interesting research in the near future.

Gubernatorial Party Affiliation And Crime, Chase Lindsey

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Understanding India’S Green Revolution: A Case Study For Contemporary Agrarian Reform, Nick Tucker

Economics Theses

Faced with large-scale food insecurity in the mid-twentieth century, India adopted innovative agricultural technologies as part of the Green Revolution. While these technologies expanded agricultural productivity, this paper argues that the program was a disruptive force to Indian social, economic, and political systems, specifically in the rural setting. An analysis of outcomes of the Green Revolution reveals that inadequate attention was given to India’s unique colonial history as well as to the regional differences, both ecological and socioeconomic, found within the country. Advocating for a holistic approach to global development, this paper offers a framework of policy recommendations aimed at …

Policy Options For Recruiting And Retaining Rural Primary Care Physicians In Maine, Casey Lancaster

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

Maine faces a challenge providing primary care services to over half of its residents, as they live in rural areas – even though Maine has enough primary care physicians practicing in the state to service the needs of the population. Maine has a primary care physician distribution problem. Androscoggin, Oxford, Sagadahoc, Somerset, Waldo, Washington, and York Counties, all fall well below the national average of primary care physicians per 100,000 residents. Maine has no true financial incentive program to help rural area’s recruit and retain primary care physicians, though Maine does have two programs that attempt to get primary care …

Dwelling In Time, Dwelling In Structures: Disintegration In World Politics, Jan Adam Nalaskowski

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims to propose a general theory of disintegration. This subject is not treated directly by some theoretical accounts and mistreated by others. European integration theories are fashioned to explain the greater integration process while game-theoretic approaches to withdrawals and secessions, even if treating disintegration directly, fail to include critically responsible factors. This dissertation offers a constructive criticism of both accounts. Since neither turning integration theories symmetrically around nor direct, game-theoretic assessment of disintegration help to provide sufficient explanation, it is suggested that the problem of symmetrical reversal and rational conduct must be revised.

Disintegration fails to follow the …

Employee Opportunism In Two Early Modern British Trading Companies, Robert Franklin Unger

History Theses & Dissertations

The English East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company were the most prominent of a score or more of seventeenth and eighteenth century joint stock European trading companies whose merchants conducted their trading activities around the globe. The extraordinary distances and length of time that separated the London directorate committees of both companies from their distant employees was perhaps their greatest managerial challenge. Neither company could directly supervise their employees at their remote trading concessions, whether it was India and the East Indies for the East India Company or sub-arctic North America for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Because of …

Social Studies Middle Childhood Education Oae Economics Workshop, Jacqueline Gilbride

Honors Projects

This project focuses on the Social Studies Middle Childhood Education OAE Economics Workshop that was carried out on November 14^th, 2015 at Bowling Green State University. The workshop was created to help Bowling Green State University pre-service teachers prepare for the Economics portion of the Middle Grades Social Studies Ohio Assessment for Educators (OAE). Throughout the workshop participants were taught lessons on microeconomics and macroeconomics. At the beginning participants were pretested and at the end participants were post tested on Middle Grades Social Studies OAE practice test questions to assess how much they learned. The project includes the …

Institutions Of Higher Education And Cultural Heritage Tourism: A Case Study Of The Crooked Road, Virginia's Heritage Music Trail, Terence Michael Gilley

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

The southwest region of Virginia has an unstable economy, which cycles through periods of growth and decline. The strategic plans for southwest Virginia propose cultural heritage tourism as a sustainable industry for economic development of this rural region. Institutions of higher education provide education and training for a qualified workforce and community service. This qualitative, single case study on The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail examines the roles of institutions of higher education with regard to cultural heritage tourism for sustainable community and economic development in rural areas. The data sources for this study are the administrators of …

Two-Year And Four-Year Tertiary Education: Measuring Human Capital Effects On Economic Growth In Developing And Developed Countries With The Uzawa-Lucas Model, Darryl M. Tyndorf

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

Tertiary education is believed to be a driver of economic development through the relationship between human capital development and economic output. Global massification efforts of tertiary education have led to increased global demand. Countries with limited tertiary education systems, like developing countries, have employed policies to increase domestic tertiary education opportunities instead of sending students abroad. Many tertiary education policies have focused on importing tertiary education from countries with established tertiary education systems. Import efforts first emphasized university models, but limited success prompted the import of more flexible short-cycle education modeled after the United States’ community college system. Limited empirical …

Essays On International Risk-Return Trade-Off Relations, Liang Meng

Finance Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays on the international risk-return trade-off relations. The first essay is titled “The Role of the US Market on International Risk-Return Trade-Off Relations” and the second essay is titled “The Role of Investor Sentiment on International Risk-Return Trade-Off Relations”.

In our first essay, we study the intertemporal risk-return trade-off relations based on returns from 18 international markets. Our main contribution is that we find the US market plays an important role affecting the international risk-return trade-off. We present striking new empirical evidence that the inclusion of US market variables significantly changes the estimated risk-return trade-off …

Techno-Economic Analysis Of Protein Concentrate Produced By Flash Hydrolysis Of Microalgae, Alexander Nana Yaw Asiedu

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Process simulation and techno-economic analysis of 95wt.% protein concentrate from microalgae has been performed using SuperPro Designer v. 9.0. This work, first of its kind, is focused on the economic analysis of protein concentrate that includes processes such as microalgae cultivation, harvesting, protein extraction and drying steps. A baseline capacity of 160 MT/day protein concentrate production on commercial basis has been analyzed. This throughput requires 336 MT/day dry algae (54 wt.% protein). The amount of carbon dioxide required to grow this quantum of algae is estimated to be 648 MT/day, which is produced from an in situ 21 MW power …

Revisting The Domestic Labor Debate: Toward A Critique Of Workerist Feminism, Alice Feng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The extremely high presence of housewives in Italy during the 'miracle years,' of 1950-1963, seemingly suggested that an unprecedented number of women were unemployed after their expulsion from large-scale industry. This phenomenon inspired debate among feminists on questions such as the contribution of housewives to the reproduction of labor-power, the character of reproductive labor and the relation between the participation of women in waged labor and unwaged domestic labor. In revisiting this phenomenon, this thesis argues that, contrary to the appearance of women being unemployed, a significant number of women, along with children, were irregularly engaged in undeclared forms of …

Essays On Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Michael Malenbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the degree to which the prices of imports to the United States respond to changes in bilateral exchange rates. The first chapter provides a review of the literature on exchange rate pass-through and outlines how research on the topic has changed over the past forty years. The next two chapters focus individually on specific questions that are important to the pass-through literature. These topics include the impact of imperfect competition and varying market shares on pass-through rates, as well as the decline in pass-through to import prices and the possible effects of China's increased role in trade …

Essays On The Economic Analysis Of Transportation Systems, Hyoungsuk Shim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of four essays on the economic analysis of transportation systems. In the first chapter, the conventional disaggregate travel demand model, a probability model for the modeling of multiple modes, generally called random utility maximization (RUM), is expanded to a model of count of mode choice. The extended travel demand model is derived from general economic theory -- maximizing instantaneous utility on the time horizon, subject to a budget constraint -- and can capture the dynamic behavior of countable travel demand. Because the model is for countable dependent variables, it has a more realistic set of assumptions to …

Optimal Targeting Regimes And Instrument Rules In The Basic New Keynesian Model, Luc Marest

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first chapter, the objective is to measure the value of commitment in executing monetary policies in the context of the New Keynesian model and with value that is represented by the standard quadratic welfare function containing weighted output gap and inflation variances. It is found that there is a substantial potential for improvement of welfare under commitment, but this depends on some key parameters in the model. The range of parameter calibrations most often found in the literature, however, suggests the improvements will be large. We then consider specific monetary policies akin to Taylor rules. From the optimality …

Essays In The Economics Of Education And Health, Jesse Margolis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this work, I study several aspects of the economics of education and health. The first chapter focuses on education, analyzing the New York City Teacher Bonus Program. Recent reviews of the program have found lower student test scores at schools randomly chosen to receive performance pay than at control schools not eligible for bonuses. Several studies have suggested lower intrinsic motivation among teachers at treatment schools as a possible mechanism driving these surprising results. The program was abruptly ended after three years, allowing me to use post-trial data to study the program's persistent effect on intrinsic motivation absent any …

Basic Cable: A Reluctant American Perspective On The Arab Spring Through Revolutionary Art, Philip Ayoub

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Supported by a critical component that traces back the Egyptian revolution of 2011 to its roots in the post-Nasser era when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces assumed nearly complete political and economic control over the country, this novella, based in New York City, looks at the crisis through an American lens. As the story progresses the protagonist learns that the conditions which precipitated the events in Egypt can be viewed at once as both a product of American capitalism and Egyptian complicity, as well as act as a mirror, albeit on a magnified scale, of the changing socio-economic …

Essays In Health Economics Of Cigarette Consumption, Yan Song

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1, the primary focus of this essay is to use a long time series of state cross sections for the 1955-2009 time period in the United States in order to predict cigarette consumption. This essay updates estimates of the rational addiction model of cigarette consumption obtained by Gary Becker, Michael Grossman, and Kevin Murphy in their seminal 1994 American Economic Review paper. By using two types of prices, the cigarette price and the cigarette tax, and employing a cigarette demand function, I verify that smoking is a rationally addictive form of behavior. This is based on the theory that …