Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Small And As Productive : Female Headed Households And The Inverse Relationship Between Land Size And Output In Kenya, Mwangi Wa Githinji, Charalampos Konstantinidis, Andrew Barenberg

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Access to land and particularly its distribution has reemerged as an important part of both academic and policy discussions in the last decade, leading to the resuscitation of the debate on the relationship between size of holdings and output per land unit. Across the world, studies have suggested the existence of a decreasing relationship between land size and output per unit of land. The most-widely accepted explanation for this relationship is that households with smaller holdings tend to be labor rich relative to land, and therefore can achieve higher output through the increased application of labor. Despite the rich literature …

Technology, Distribution And The Rate Of Profit In The Us Economy: Understanding The Current Crisis, Deepankar Basu, Ramaa Vasudevan

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper offers a synoptic account of the state of the debate within Marxist scholars regarding the current structural crisis of capitalism, identifies two broad streams within the literature dealing, in turn, with aggregate demand and profitability problems, and proceeds to concentrate on an analysis of issues surrounding the profitability problem in two steps. First, evidence on profitability trends for the Nonfarm Nonfinancial Corporate Business, the Nonfinancial Corporate Business and the Corporate Business sectors in post-War U.S. are summarized. A broad range of profit rate measures are covered and data from both the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (NIPA and …

Land, Poverty And Human Development In Kenya, Mwangi Wa Githinji

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The question of poverty has become central to the work of development economists in the last decade and a half. The 2000 World Development Report was entitled Attacking Poverty and the UN held a series of World Conferences in the 1990s, all of which addressed in some form or fashion the problem of poverty. Despite this and because of limited data there has been relatively little empirical work at the household level on determinants of poverty in Africa generally and Kenya specifically. In the few econometric studies that have been done for Kenya land has not been a significant determinant …

Transparency Without Accountability, Mwangi Wa Githinji, Frank Holmquist

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Kenya has been going through a period of political reform from 1991 when section 2A of the constitution that had made Kenya a de jure one party state was repealed. The reform followed a prolonged struggle by citizens both within and without the country. Their call for democracy was one that, post the fall of the Berlin wall, was embraced by western countries. Via diplomatic pressure and conditionality on aid, western donors played an important role in the repeal of section 2a, the return of multi-party elections and in the creation and reform of a number of political institutions and …

Business Cycles, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This note outlines and discusses some of the strands in the post-Keynesian literature on business cycles. Most post-Keynesians have focused on endogenously generated cycles, but the mechanism varies: some focus on the goods market, others on financial markets, the labor market, or political intervention. The merits of formal modeling of the cycles have also come in for debate.

Distributional Biases In The Analysis Of Climate Change, Peter Skott, Leila Davis

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The economic analysis of global warming is dominated by models based on optimal growth theory. These representative-agent models have an intrinsic distributional bias in favor of the rich. The bias is compounded by the se of revenue-neutrality in the allocation of emission permits. The result is mitigation recommendations that are biased downwards.

Public Debt And Full Employment In A Stock-Flow Consistent Model Of A Corporate Economy, Soon Ryoo, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper examines the fiscal requirements for continuous full employment. We find that (i) changes in the financial behavior of households and firms require adjustments in tax rates and public debt, (ii) the stability of the steady-state solution for public debt depends on the .fiscal instrument and the household consumption function, (iii) in stable cases, a fall in government consumption (or a decline in another component of autonomous demand) requires an increase in the steady-state ratio of public debt to capital, and (iv) the steady-state tax rate may be positively or negatively related to the level of debt.

Imposing A Balance Of Payment Constraint On The Kaldorian Model Of Cumulative Causation, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We combine two strands of Post Keynesian growth theory by imposing a balance of payments constraint on a Kaldorian cumulative causation model. The effects of external and internal shocks, and the degree to which cumulative causation comes into play depends on the exchange rate and capital account regimes. Exports act as the only exogenous drivers of growth only under a regime of fixed exchange rates and in the absence of relative price effects. Under flexible exchange rates, by contrast, it is internal demand that serves as the only exogenous driver of of growth. Moreover, regardless of the type of shock, …

Relative Mortality Improvements As A Marker Of Socio-Economic Inequality Across The Developing World, 1990-2009, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Using cross country regressions, this paper constructs a novel distance-to-frontier metric for tracking broad socio-onomic inequality (including access of the poor to health infrastructure) over time for individual countries. Given the unavailability of reliable and consistent direct measures of inequality for most poor countries, especially related to non-income aspects of living standards, the metric developed in this paper can be used as an alternative indirect measure that is intuitive and easy to compute. To highlight its potential use, the metric is used to rank countries in terms of improvements in socio-economic inequality for the period since 1990. Notable examples of …

Can Asia Sustain An Export-Led Growth Strategy In The Aftermath Of The Global Crisis? An Empirical Exploration, Gonzalo Hernandez, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Many developing countries have attempted to pursue the East Asian growth model in recent decades. This model is widely perceived to have been based on export-led growth. Given that developed countries are likely to grow at a slower rate and be less willing to run trade deficits in the post financial crisis world, can this growth model be sustained? Using panel data for Asian countries, this paper contributes to addressing this question by distinguishing between different kinds of export- and tradable-led growth in order to more precisely identify the nature of growth in the pre-crisis decades. We find in particular …

Heterodox Macro After The Crisis, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Macroeconomics is in crisis and this creates openings for alternative perspectives. The dominant heterodox traditions, however, have shortcomings that need to be addressed, both to improve our understanding of the real world and to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the irrelevance of most mainstream macro. This paper discusses three examples of areas that need attention: (i) investment functions (where popular specifications lack behavioral and empirical support), (ii) income distribution (where key developments have received little attention) and(iii) the relation between income inequality and financial markets (where extensions of existing models may help explain financial instability)

Public Debt In An Olg Model With Imperfect Competition, Peter Skott, Soon Ryoo

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Fiscal policy is needed to avoid dynamic inefficiency and maintain full employment in a modified Diamond OLG model with imperfect competition. A distributionally neutral tax scheme can maintain full employment in the face of variations in .household confidence.. No variations in taxes will be needed if households correctly anticipate future taxes: the tax policy functions as an insurance scheme.

Positional Goods, Climate Change And The Social Returns To Investment, Leila Davis, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The economic analysis of global warming is dominated by models based on optimal growth theory. This approach can generate biases in the presence of positional goods and status effects. We show that by ignoring these direct consumption externalities, integrated assessment models overestimate the social return to conventional investment and underestimate the optimal amount of investment in mitigation. Empirical evidence on the influence of relative consumption on utility suggests that the bias could be quantitatively significant. Our results from a simple survey support this conclusion.

Increasing Inequality And Financial Instability, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Rising inequality affects the composition of asset demands as well as aggregate demand. The poor have few financial assets and their portfolio is skewed towards fixed-income assets. The rich, by contrast, hold a large proportion of their wealth in stocks. Thus, an increase in inequality tends to raise the demand for stocks. This generates capital gains, and these gains can fuel a bubble, as desired portfolios shift further towards stocks.

Industrialization, Exports And The Developmental State In Africa: The Case For Transformation, Mwangi Wa Githinji, Olugbenga Adesida

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This essay explores the role of the state in promoting exports and industrialization in the quest for transformation of African economies. It does this by exploring the role of trade in African economies followed by a brief look at the East Asian Developmental state. This is followed by an examination of why many African states have failed at being drivers of transformation. It concludes by examining the potential role of African states in a project of transformation as well as the available avenues and resources for transformation.

What Types Of Diversity Benefit Workers? Empirical Evidence On The Effects Of Co-Worker Dissimilarity On The Performance Of Employees, Fidan Ana Kurtulus

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper explores the consequences of grouping workers into diverse divisions on the performance of employees using a dataset containing the detailed personnel records of a large U.S. firm from 1989-1994. In particular, I examine the effects of demographic dissimilarity among co-workers, namely differences in age, gender and race among employees who work together within divisions, and non-demographic dissimilarity, namely differences in education, work function, firm tenure, division tenure, performance and wages among employees within divisions. I find evidence that age dissimilarity, dissimilarity in firm tenure, and performance dissimilarity are associated with lower worker performance, while wage differences are associated …

An Empirical Analysis Of Risk Preferences, Compensation Risk, And Employee Outcomes, Fidan Ana Kurtulus, Douglas Kruse, Joseph Blasi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We use the NBER Shared Capitalism Database comprised of more than 40,000 employee surveys from 14 firms to explore whether a close match between workers’ risk preferences and the riskiness of their compensation packages relates to improved employee outcomes including lower absenteeism, lower shirking, lower probability of voluntary turnover, greater worker motivation, and higher levels of job satisfaction and loyalty. To do this, we use survey questions reflecting workers’ risk aversion parameters, coupled with a series of measures of the riskiness of workers’ compensation packages including the proportion of pay comprised of various forms of shared capitalism such as profit …

Do Women Top Managers Help Women Advance? A Panel Study Using Eeo-1 Records, Fidan Ana Kurtulus, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The goal of this study is to examine whether women in the highest levels of management ranks of firms help reduce barriers to advancement in the workplace faced by women. Using a panel of over 20,000 private-sector firms across all industries and states during 1990-2003 from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, we explore the influence of women in top management on subsequent female representation in lower-level managerial positions in U.S. firms. Our key findings show that an increase in the share of female top managers is associated with subsequent increases in the share of women in mid-level management positions …

Worker Attitudes Towards Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing And Variable Pay, Fidan Ana Kurtulus, Douglas Kruse, Joseph Blasi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Using the NBER Shared Capitalism Database comprised of over 40,000 employee surveys from 14 firms, we investigate worker attitudes towards employee ownership, profit sharing, and variable pay. Specifically, our study uses detailed survey questions on preferences over profit sharing, forms of employee ownership like company stock and stock option ownership, as well as preferences over variable pay in general, to explore how preferences for these different types of output-contingent pay vary with worker risk aversion, residual control, and views of co-workers and management. Our key results show that, on average, workers want at least a part of their compensation to …

What Types Of Organizations Benefit From Teams, And How Do They Benefit?, Jed Devaro, Fidan Ana Kurtulus

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Using data from a large cross-section of British establishments, we ask how different firm characteristics are associated with the predicted benefits to organizational performance from using team production. To compute the predicted benefits from using team production, we estimate structural models for financial performance, labor productivity, and product quality, treating the firm’s choices of whether or not to use teams and whether or not to grant teams autonomy as endogenous. One of the main results is that many firm characteristics are associated with larger predicted benefits from teams to labor productivity and product quality but smaller predicted benefits to financial …

An Empirical Analysis Of Risk, Incentives And The Delegation Of Worker Authority, Jed Devaro, Fidan Ana Kurtulus

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The authors empirically test Prendergast’s (2002) theory that incorporates the delegation of worker authority into the principal-agent model to explain the lack of consistent empirical support for a tradeoff between risk and incentives. Using data from the 1998 British WERS, the authors investigate whether there is: 1) evidence of a risk-incentives tradeoff as predicted by the principal-agent model; 2) evidence of a positive relationship between incentive pay and the delegation of worker authority; 3) evidence of a positive relationship between risk and authority; 4) support for the main testable implication of Prendergast’s model, namely that the evidence favoring a risk-incentives …

Macroeconomic Policy Coordination In A Competitive Real Exchange Rate Strategy For Development, Martin Rapetti

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Recent research has documented a positive relationship between real exchange rate (RER) levels and economic growth. The literature has interpreted this correlation as causality running from RER levels to growth rates; i.e., higher, undervalued, more competitive RERs tend to favor growth. Little effort has been made, however, on the analysis of the policy instruments required to implement a successful competitive RER strategy. An exchange rate policy targeting a permanent change in the RER may run into difficulties: it is well documented that nominal and real exchange rate movements are correlated almost one for one in the short run but such …

Comparative Growth Dynamics In A Discrete-Time Marxian Circuit Of Capital Model, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper develops a discrete-time formalization of the circuit of capital model presented by Marx in Volume II of Capital Marx (1993) as a tool for aggregate economic analysis of capitalist economies. The discrete-time formalization closely follows and extends the continuous-time formalization in Foley (1982, 1986a). The discrete-time model is used to address two important issues of interest to the heterodox economic tradition: profit-led versus wage-led growth, and the growth-reducing impact of non- production credit. First, it is demonstrated that both profit-led and wage-led growth regimes can be accommodated within the Marxian circuit of capital model. Second, it is demonstrated …

The Great Austerity War: What Caused The Deficit Crisis And Who Should Pay To Fix It?, James Crotty

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Rapidly rising deficits at both the federal and state and local government levels, along with long-term financing problems in the Social Security and Medicare programs, have triggered a one-sided austerity focused class war in the US. Similar class conflicts have broken out around the globe. A coalition of the richest and most economically powerful segments of society and conservative politicians who represent their interests has demanded that deficits be eliminated by public-sector austerity - severe cuts at all levels of government in spending that either supports the poor and the middle class or funds crucial public investment. These demands constitute …

Reclamation - An Eco-Industrial Park In Greenfield, Massachusetts, Sage W. Sluter

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Honors Projects

Sustainable Industrial Design
Reclaiming a Brownfield in Greenfield, Massachusetts
Abstract:
For the senior capstone project at the University of Massachusetts, this student completed a conceptual site design project for the City of Greenfield. The City of Greenfield wishes to redevelop the Brownfield site, currently known as the Bendix Property, into an eco- industrial park. Working closely with the City’s officials, the student created a realistic vision for the site. After twenty years of soil and groundwater treatment, the site is ready to come back to life. The student investigated what an eco -industrial park is, and how the businesses cooperate …

The Returns To Skill And Racial Difference In Parenting: Evidence From The Civil Rights Movement, Owen Thompson

Economics Department Working Paper Series

On average, the parental practices adopted by African American parents of young children are much less cognitively stimulating than those of their white counterparts. This paper argues that these differences stem from the low rates of return to human capital historically experienced by African Americans. To study the relationship between the race-specific returns to skill and parenting, I use intergenerational data containing direct measures of parental behaviors, and examine the child rearing practices of mothers who came of age in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, during a period of rapidly increasing returns to skill for African Americans in …

The Real Exchange Rate And Economic Growth: Are Developing Countries Different?, Martin Rapetti, Peter Skott, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Recent research has found a positive relationship between real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation and economic growth. Different rationales for this association have been offered, but they all imply that the mechanisms involved should be stronger in developing countries. Rodrik (2008) explicitly analyzed and found evidence that the RER-growth relationship is more prevalent in developing countries. We show that his finding is very sensitive to the criterion used to divide the sample between developed and developing countries. We then use alternative classification criteria and empirical strategies to evaluate the existence of asymmetries between groups of countries and find that the effect …

The Real Exchange Rate And Economic Development, Arslan Razmi, Martin Rapetti, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Recent empirical studies have found a robust correlation between competitive exchange rates and economic growth in developing economies. This paper presents (i) a formal model to help explain these findings and (ii) econometric evidence on the relation between investment and the real exchange rate. The model emphasizes the existence of (hidden) unemployment as a source of endogenous growth, even under constant returns to scale. Growth promoting policies, however, affect the external balance, and two instruments are needed in order to achieve targets for both the growth rate and the trade balance. The real exchange rate can serve as one of …

Proposed Greenway Of Hatfield, Massachusetts - La497c - Senior Studio, Michael A. Brescia, Rachel L. Grigorian, Zachary M. Kingston, Carl M. Mccrae, James A. Rebello

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

This is one of five reports submitted for the LA497C Spring 2011 Senior Studio project.

The purpose of this report is to show the results of a partnership between the Town of Hatfield Massachusetts, and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts.

The Town of Hatfield initially approached the University for assistance in understanding the options available for Greenway development in Hatfield, while maintaining the charm and character the town is proud of.

In his ground-breaking book, Greenways for America, Author Charles Little (1990) provides a simple definition of a Greenway:

“A …

The Realism Of Assumptions Does Matter: Why Keynes-Minsky Theory Must Replace Efficient Market Theory As The Guide To Financial Regulation Policy, James Crotty

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The radical deregulation of financial markets after the 1970s was a precondition for the explosion in size, complexity, volatility and degree of global integration of financial markets in the past three decades. It therefore contributed to the severity and breadth of the recent global financial crisis. It is not likely that deregulation would have been so extreme and the crisis so threatening had most financial economists adopted Keynes-Minsky financial market theory, which concludes that unregulated financial markets are inherently unstable and dangerous. Instead, they argued that neoclassical efficient financial market theories demonstrate that lightly regulated generate optimal security prices and …