Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Normalizing Abnormality: An Exploration Of Social Forces Driving Gendered Disparity In Rates Of Anxiety Disorder Diagnoses, Sara Tebeau

Senior Independent Study Theses

According to recent statistics provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (2013), American women are twice as likely as men to face diagnosis with an anxiety disorder. While there are existing bodies of sociological and feminist work theorizing both the social construction of mental illness categories and the historical pathologization of women, there is no contemporary dialogue centered on gendered disparity in anxiety diagnosis rates. In this paper, I contribute to ongoing discussion of neoliberal influence on the gendering of mental illness through an exploration of the forces contributing to disparity in rates of diagnosis with anxiety disorders. In …

Beautiful Disease: The Story Of Angelina Jolie’S Mastectomy In The American Media, Angie Michel

Maria Dittman Library Research Competition: Student Award Winners

In 2013 Angelina Jolie revealed in a New York Times editorial that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy earlier that year. This qualitative study examines the social meaning of that Times piece. Using fantasy theme analysis, I unearth the story the American media told about Jolie, her surgery and her editorial. I find that newspapers and magazines dramatized Jolie’s gender traits and portrayed her as an ultra-feminine hero protected from the physical and social threats of breast cancer.

Interest Groups, Think Tanks, And Health Care Policy (1960s-Present), Susan Giaimo

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Obesogenic Environmental Influences On Young Adults: Evidence From Randomized Dormitory Assignment, Kandice A. Kapinos, Olga Yakusheva, Daniel Eisenberg

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This study utilizes a natural experiment—conditionally random dormitory assignments of first-year US college students—to investigate the influence of obesogenic environmental factors in explaining changes in weight and exercise behavior during the 2009–2010 academic year. The design addresses potential selection biases resulting from the likelihood that individuals sort into built environments that match their preferences for exercise and healthy eating. We find some evidence that the food environment, specifically access to campus dining, significantly affected the weight of female students in our study. Females assigned to dormitories where the nearest campus dining hall was closed on the weekends gained about 1 …

Leisure And Happiness: Evidence From International Survey Data, Miao Wang, M. C. Sunny Wong

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

We study the statistical link between leisure and happiness. Using survey data from 33 countries in 2007, we find that (1) certain leisure activities, leisure’s role in self-fulfillment and social interaction, and leisure’s relation to work and other spheres of life are significantly linked to individual happiness; (2) the effect of leisure quantity is not as important as other aspects of leisure; and (3) some leisure activities can be negatively associated with happiness. Consistent with findings in previous studies, family income and individual demographic variables such as age and health condition are significantly associated with happiness. National unemployment and political …

Mark Blaug On The Historiography Of Economics, John B. Davis

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Inflation And Inflation-Uncertainty In India: The Policy Implications Of The Relationship, Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose – Inflation and its related uncertainty can impose costs on real economic output in any economy. This paper aims to analyze the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty in India.

Design/methodology/approach – The methodology uses a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model and Granger Causality test.

Findings – Initial estimates show the inflation rate to be a stationary process. The maximum likelihood estimates from the GARCH model reveal strong support for the presence of a positive relationship between the level of inflation and its uncertainty. The Granger causality results indicate a feedback between inflation and uncertainty.

Research limitations/implications – …

Limiting The Mortgage Interest Deduction By Size Of Home: Effects On The User Cost And Price Of Housing Across Metropolitan Areas, Andrew R. Hanson

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

In this paper, I examine the user cost and home price implications of limiting the federal mortgage interest deduction (MID) based on the square footage of a home. I extend the standard user cost model to include a square footage-based cap on the tax-favored status of mortgage interest. I compare two policy alternatives: one that limits the marginal deduction based on home size, and another that removes the deduction on the home based on home size. There is substantial variation across metropolitan areas in both the number of homes exposed to each type of cap, the user cost increase, and …

Are Houses Too Big Or In The Wrong Place? Tax Benefits To Housing And Inefficiencies In Location And Consumption, David Albouy, Andrew R. Hanson

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Tax benefits to owner-occupied housing provide incentives to consume housing, offsetting weaker disincentives of the property tax. These benefits also help counter the penalty federal taxes impose on households who work in productive high-wage areas, but reinforce incentives to consume local amenities. We simulate the effects of these benefits in a parameterized model, and determine the consequences of various tax reforms. Reductions in housing tax benefits generally increase efficiency in consumption, but reduce efficiency in location decisions, unless they are accompanied by tax rate reductions. The most efficient policy would eliminate most tax benefits to housing and index taxes to …

(Wp 2014-01) Is Bitcoin The 'Paris Hilton' Of The Currency World? Or Are The Early Investors Onto Something That Will Make Them Rich? [Updated Version], Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Working Papers

The bitcoin phenomenon, and the technological innovation that made it possible, is interesting - but for investors large and small, the more pertinent question is whether they should buy the digital currency or avoid it. We analyze a bitcoin investment from the standpoint of an investor with a diversified portfolio using both in-sample and out-of-sample settings. Within the in-sample setting, bitcoin does not yield added value to investors with utility function consistent with the mean-variance setting. On the other hand, they do offer diversification benefits to investors with negative exponential and power utility functions. However, these benefits are not preserved …

The Interaction Between Fdi And Infrastructure Capital In The Development Process, Farrokh Nourzad, David N. Greenwold, Rui Yang

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This paper focuses on the possible interaction between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the host country’s infrastructure base. Its central hypothesis is that the effect of FDI on per capita real income depends, at least in part, on the size of the recipient country’s infrastructure. This hypothesis is tested in a panel of 46 countries and 5-year averages over the 1980–2000 period using the size of three types of infrastructure capital: telecommunication, power generation, and network of roads or highways. The results indicate that the size of the host country’s infrastructure base helps to improve the marginal effect of FDI …

Where Does Racial Discrimination Occur? An Experimental Analysis Across Neighborhood And Housing Unit Characteristics, Andrew R. Hanson, Zackary Hawley

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This paper examines racial discrimination across several neighborhood and housing unit characteristics including racial composition, rent, and distance from the urban core. We find that African Americans face higher rates of discrimination than whites in a wide range of racially mixed neighborhoods, in higher rent areas, closer to central cities, and in low vacancy areas. These results are robust to various parameterizations of the local smoothing empirical specification and within a multivariate nonlinear parametric estimation technique. The location of discrimination supports the current/future customer prejudice and perceived preference hypotheses as a cause of discrimination in housing markets but not the …