Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An End To End V.M.T Framework With Controlled V.M.T Tax Rate Using Optimal Feedback Control Technique, Pratik Verma

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Vehicle Mile Travel (VMT) is a study related to available alternatives for the road

revenue collection system. As per the demand, the existing Gas/Fuel tax based revenue

collection system is not found an appropriate option in the longer run. Due

to existing system constraints like: no eective tax process for vehicles based on alternative

fuel (e.g. electric vehicles), no eective changes in tax due to economical

ination, and more highway expenditure than generated revenue, an alternative revenue

collection mechanism is required. Hence, the objective is to study an alternative

option in detail, which can address the gaps between required revenue …

The Influence Of Person Familiarity On Children's Social Information Processing, Andrew J. Cummings

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined the influence person familiarity has on children's social information processing (SIP) choices and emotion recognition. Children in grades 2nd through 5th watch a videotaped expression of a familiar or unfamiliar individual while listening to a hypothetical social interaction. Following the video clip, children responded to open-ended questions and prompted questions designed to assess their strategies and goals in the social interaction. Children also selected from two choices (either `on purpose' or `by accident') for their attribution of the individual's intent. Last, children identified the emotion that they believed the individual in the video was experiencing the most. …

Identity Status: The Impact On Academic Performance, Milan Jelenic

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to understand how environmental factors contributed to identity achievement with potentially positive effects on academic performance for fifth grade students. Early adolescents have not been studied partly because of the predominant acceptance of Erikson's (1968) theory of identity development. Four questions guiding the study were (a) whether adolescents acquired an Achieved identity status earlier than previous research has suggested, (b) if environmental issues such as familial obligations expedited identity achievement, (c) if identity status impacted academic performance, and (d) what was the impact of an Achieved identity on academic performance. Participants were …

Short-Time Compensation As A Tool To Mitigate Job Loss? Evidence On The U.S. Experience During The Recent Recession, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

During the recent recession only 17 states offered short-time compensation (STC)—pro-rated unemployment benefits for workers whose hours are reduced for economic reasons. New federal legislation will encourage the expansion of STC. Exploiting cross-state variation in STC, we present new evidence indicating that jobs saved during the recession as a consequence of STC could have been significant in manufacturing, but that the overall scale of the STC program was generally too small to have substantially mitigated aggregate job losses in the 17 states. Expansion of the program is necessary for STC to be an effective counter-cyclical tool in the future.

Private Debt Syndicates: Governance, Networks, And Syndicate Structure, William R. Mccumber

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examine the primary market for syndicated private credit agreements to U.S. firms within the context of contract theory with information asymmetries between contracting parties in a repeated game. Specific governance mechanisms determine a firm's cost of borrowing in syndicated credit agreements. Firms with governance mitigating agency risk between stakeholders, i.e. independent boards, strong shareholder monitoring, and greater CEO pay-performance sensitivity, enjoy lower borrowing costs. The interests of creditors and shareholders diverge with regard to external governance. Lenders charge higher spreads to firms at greater risk of acquisition and reward stronger firms with price concessions when they possess staunch anti-takeover …

The Development And Use Of A Color Discrimination T-Maze Learning Task In The Zebrafish (Danio Rerio), Elizabeth Ann Lamb

Master's Theses

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are becoming increasingly utilized in behavioral studies as a model of human learning and memory. The results of a previous study by Colwill, Raymond, Ferreira, and Escudero (2005) indicated that this species is capable of discriminating between colors and learning to respond to an assigned hue at either arm of a T-maze, indicating a learned association between the neutral stimulus and reward. While this original study showed that this task was appropriate for use in this species, we proposed that it had the potential to provide more data on specifics of the learning process with amended methods. …

Academic Paper Supports Housing Curbs For Prs, Foreigners, Mindy Tan, David Kuo Chuen Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Contract Enforcement: A Political Economy Model Of Legal Development, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In an effort to understand why the relative usage of relational and legal contracts differs across societies, this article builds a political economy model of legal development where legal quality of contract enforcement is a costly public good. It finds that legal investment tends to be too small under elite rule but too large under majority rule in comparison with the socially optimal level. Furthermore, elite rule, low legal quality, and high-income inequality may form a self-perpetuating circle that hinders economic development. In contrast to the conventional view, this article suggests that the often-observed association between heavy reliance on relational …

Testing For Multiple Bubbles 2: Limit Theory Of Real Time Detectors, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper provides the limit theory of real time dating algorithms for bubble detection that were suggested in Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011, PWY) and Phillips, Shi and Yu (2013b, PSY). Bubbles are modeled using mildly explosive bubble episodes that are embedded within longer periods where the data evolves as a stochastic trend, thereby capturing normal market behavior as well as exuberance and collapse. Both the PWY and PSY estimates rely on recursive right tailed unit root tests (each with a di§erent recursive algorithm) that may be used in real time to locate the origination and collapse dates of bubbles. …

Testing For Multiple Bubbles 1: Historical Episodes Of Exuberance And Collapse In The S&P 500, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Recent work on econometric detection mechanisms has shown the effectiveness of recursive procedures in identifying and dating financial bubbles. These procedures are useful as warning alerts in surveillance strategies conducted by central banks and fiscal regulators with real time data. Use of these methods over long historical periods presents a more serious econometric challenge due to the complexity of the nonlinear structure and break mechanisms that are inherent in multiple bubble phenomena within the same sample period. To meet this challenge the present paper develops a new recursive flexible window method that is better suited for practical implementation with long …

Housing Policies In Singapore: Evaluation Of Recent Proposals And Recommendations For Reform, Sock Yong Phang, David Kuo Chuen Lee, Alan Cheong, Kok Fai Phoon, Karol Wee

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Singapore housing market is unusual in its high homeownership rate, the dominance of HDB housing, and the extensive intervention of the government in regulating housing supply and demand in both the HDB and private housing sectors. Recent rapid population increases in a low interest rate and high global liquidity environment has resulted in accelerated house prices increases in Singapore. Earlier this year, the government launched “Our Singapore Conversation” of which discussion on housing policies constitutes one major component. This “conversation” comes in the wake of several consecutive rounds of measures to stabilize housing prices using various instruments. This paper …

Exploring The Impact On Students Of Western Universities On Foreign Soil: A Case Study Of Qatar, Richard Bakken Phd

Dissertations

The development of branch campuses in higher education is not a new phenomenon. Over the past decades, however, branch campuses have expanded throughout the world as Western universities have begun to deliver their programs and course offerings in countries that expect the West to provide educational (and, by implication, economic) success. Middle Eastern countries in particular have rapidly expanded the number of Western-style branch campuses for native students in their countries. This qualitative research study focused on one specific Middle Eastern country, Qatar, and explored how native students respond to attending a Western university that has been transplanted from the …

Growing The Asset Management Franchise: Evidence From Hedge Fund Firms, William Fung, David Hsieh, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the growth strategies of hedge fund firms. We find that firms with successful first funds are able to launch follow-on funds that charge higher performance fees, set more onerous redemption terms, and attract greater inflows. While first funds outperform follow-on funds, the superior performance of the former attenuates following the launch of the second fund. Multiple-product firms underperform single-product firms, but harvest greater fee revenues. Consequently, the multiple-product firm has become the dominant business model in the hedge fund industry.

Pursuing The Good Life, Kevin Corcoran

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Christopher Peterson's Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology

Trial And Error In Influential Social Networks, Xiaohui Bei, Ning Chen, Liyu Dou, Xiangru Huang, Ruixin Qiang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we introduce a trial-And-error model to study information diffusion in a social network. Specifically, in every discrete period, all individuals in the network concurrently try a new technology or product with certain respective probabilities. If it turns out that an individual observes a better utility, he will then adopt the trial; otherwise, the individual continues to choose his prior selection. We first demonstrate that the trial and error behavior of individuals characterizes certain global community structures of a social network, from which we are able to detect macro-communities through the observation of microbehavior of individuals. We run …

Volatility Occupation Times, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose nonparametric estimators of the occupation measure and the occupation density of the diffusion coefficient (stochastic volatility) of a discretely observed Itô semimartingale on a fixed interval when the mesh of the observation grid shrinks to zero asymptotically. In a first step we estimate the volatility locally over blocks of shrinking length, and then in a second step we use these estimates to construct a sample analogue of the volatility occupation time and a kernel-based estimator of its density. We prove the consistency of our estimators and further derive bounds for their rates of convergence. We use these results …

Derailed: Communicating Singapore’S Mass Transit Crises [Case Study], Pang, A.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The case: In December 2011, one of Singapore’s main mass transit rail lines came to a standstill for several hours on two separate days. While occasional public transport breakdowns are unavoidable, the rail operator came under intense criticism for its poor handling of the incidents, including its failure in crisis communication. Its value: This case can be used to illustrate a number of perspectives and concepts from the literature on crisis and organisational communication. Of particular contemporary interest is what the case shows about how communication technologies, including social media, should and should not be used by organisations.

Political Connection And Firm Value, James S. Ang, David K. Ding, Tiong Yang Thong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the effect of political connection (PC) on company value in an environment where low PC is due to better institutions and not confounded by favorable social/cultural factors. We find that in Singapore, the only country that fits this description, PC in general adds little to the value of a company. However, in industries that are subject to more stringent government regulations, PC appears to be somewhat important. Robustness checks show that alternative PC variables give rise to similar results, and the addition of control variables do not drastically change the findings. Politically connected firms have higher managerial ownership …

Improving Housing Status Quo, Sock Yong Phang, David K. C. Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

On home ownership and upgrading, PM Lee Hsien Loong has reaffirmed the Government's objective to make home ownership more affordable for all first-time buyers, especially low-income earners, through increasing the amounts of targeted housing grant subsidies. He spelt out the desired outcomes of housing affordability policy through his detailed matching of Housing Board flat type with household incomes.

2013 Applied Projects Evaluation Organizational Impact Report, Svetlana Krasynska, Jennifer A. Jones, Mary Jo Schumann

USD Evaluation of Applied Learning Model in Nonprofit Leadership and Management Master's Program

University of San Diego’s Nonprofit Leadership and Management (NLM) master’s degree program places a special focus on experiential learning, requiring students to complete multiple applied projects as part of the program’s curriculum. Applied projects give students various opportunities to work in teams to provide real-world consulting services to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. In developing this curriculum, the NLM program serves both the students who are given these real-world consulting opportunities, as well as the client organizations who benefit from the services provided by the students.

In Fall 2010, the University of San Diego’s NLM program initiated an Applied Projects Evaluation …

Inconsistent Var Regression With Common Explosive Roots, Peter C. B. Phillips, Tassos Magdalinos

Research Collection School Of Economics

Nielsen (Working paper, University of Oxford, 2009) shows that vector autoregression is inconsistent when there are common explosive roots with geometric multiplicity greater than unity. This paper discusses that result, provides a coexplosive system extension and an illustrative example that helps to explain the finding, gives a consistent instrumental variable procedure, and reports some simulations. Some exact limit distribution theory is derived and a useful new reverse martingale central limit theorem is proved.

Automation Of Common Building Energy Simulation Workflows Using Python, Clayton Miller, Christian Hersberger, Marcus Jones

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

A valuable skillset for building industry professionals is proficiency in high-level, scripting languages that can automate and perform many common repetitive or technically intensive tasks. This application-focused paper emphasizes the use of the Python programming language in various workflows common to the building performance modeling and simulation process. Python is an open, powerful, and easy-to-learn scripting language with an emphasis on programmer productivity. While the highlighted applications themselves are notably ordinary amongst building simulation practitioners, the novelty of this discussion is in the speed and usefulness of new Python libraries and data analysis techniques. Four short examples are illustrated: simulation …

The Impact Of Parent Education On Parental Feeding Practices, Larra Kolby Brawley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research looked at the potential impact that parent education may have on the feeding practices of parents of young children. Since eating behaviors are a national concern for both children and adults, it's important to examine how we can create not just healthier children but, as a result, healthier adults. This study utilized an intervention that was an adapted version of a healthy eating curriculum created by Sesame Workshop and the California WIC association with the intention of improving parental feeding practices through a behavior-based approach. Previous research with this curriculum has addressed only low-income populations, with a relatively …

The Effect Of Alcohol Outcome Expectancies On The Relationship Of Social Anxiety And Desirability Of Alcohol, Hilary Casner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The comorbidity of Social anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorders is well-documented in the research literature. However, conflicting findings have been noted in cross-sectional investigations of this link; some studies indicate that individuals with Social anxiety disorder are more likely to engage in problematic alcohol use, while others suggest that Social anxiety may serve as a protective factor against heavy drinking. Alcohol outcome expectancies (AOEs), the beliefs one holds about the effects of alcohol consumption, have been identified as an important variable in the consideration of the Social anxiety-alcohol use link. The current study tested the effect of an expectancy …

Your Media Speak So Loud I Can't Hear A Word You're Saying: Impact Of Media And Media Selection On Performance, Martin Hassell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the proliferation of communication media and technologies available, it is important for teams to understand the influence of these media on the performance of their communications. Additionally, it is important for researchers to understand how teams choose and use media. Literature on communication media impacts and communication performance has been somewhat fragmented, and researchers have used different theories and paradigms to study this problem. Researchers still do not have a full understanding of how media influences communication, whether teams recognize and select appropriate media for their communication needs, and what makes some communication more effective, irrespective of the communication …

Financial Declines, Financial Behaviors, And Relationship Satisfaction During The Recession, Jeffrey P. Dew, Jing Jian Xiao

Faculty Publications

Using nationally-representative data collected during the summer of 2009 (N = 575), this study examines how reports of financial declines are associated with financial behaviors and how financial behaviors are associated with relationship satisfaction among cohabiting and married participants. Findings suggested that financial declines were only negatively associated with sound financial management behavior if participants also experienced feelings of economic pressure. Sound financial management behavior was found to be positively associated with marital satisfaction. Finally, sound financial management behavior also moderated the association between financial declines, economic pressure, and relationship satisfaction.

A Brief Acceptance And Commitment Therapy Protocol For Depression In An Inpatient Setting: An Effectiveness Study, Lucas Broten

Dissertations

The present study sought to investigate the utility of a brief Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) protocol for the treatment of depression in an inpatient setting. ACT is a generally promising treatment for a variety of psychological issues. Thirty-nine participants were randomly assigned using and weighted, blocked distribution to either Treatment as Usual (TAU) or individual sessions of ACT in conjunction with treatment as usual (ACT). The study compared re-admission rates between the ACT intervention group and the TAU group at 3 and 6 months. In addition, the study examined the proposed mechanisms of change between groups and depression rates …

Teachers' Perceptions Toward Implementing English As A Foreign Language At Kindergarten: What Can We Learn From The Case Of Kuwaiti Kindergarten Teachers?, Kawthar M. Habeeb

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The teaching of English as a foreign language has a promising outlook in the nation of Kuwait. Recent policy reflects language development theories that see early childhood as an especially good period for the learning of a foreign language. Thus, English is now taught at 30 public kindergartens in Kuwait. However, the program apparently was implemented quickly, with little consideration for how teachers and other stakeholders would respond to it. This paper explores that program in the context of the perceptions and views of teachers affected by it.

A review of the existing curriculum points towards deficiencies, and investigation of …

Ecology And Structure Of Black Bear (Ursus Americanus) Populations In The Interior Highlands Of Arkansas, Thea Vandervelde Kristensen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the Interior Highlands of Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, over-harvest, extensive logging, and reductions of habitat availability by other means contributed to the decline of black bears (Ursus americanus). Bears were extirpated from the majority of the region by the 1940's Oklahoma by 1915 and from Missouri by 1931. From 1958-1968, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission undertook a reintroduction to the Ouachita and the Ozark National Forests in Arkansas. The successful growth and expansion of the released population caused these efforts to be considered one of the most successful reintroductions of carnivores. In this dissertation, I sought to examine …

An Empirical Examination Of The Associations Among Crystal Methamphetamine Use History, Posttraumatic Stress Symptom Severity, And Perceived Social Support, Courtney Elaine Dutton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social support functions as a protective factor against the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Crystal methamphetamine use, however, is associated with a decrease in Social functioning. This is noteworthy as people with PTSD endorse elevated rates of crystal methamphetamine use. The current study proposed to look at perceived Social support as it relates to crystal methamphetamine use among individuals endorsing a wide range of posttraumatic stress symptoms. Questionnaires measuring perceived Social support and posttraumatic stress symptom severity were administered to 98 traumatic event-exposed adults (M_age = 48.5, SD =7.74) recruited from the San Francisco bay area who …