Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report Vol. 19, No. 4, King Banaian, Richard A. Macdonald

St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report

St. Cloud-area businesses continue to experience steady growth, and the local six-month-ahead economic outlook remains strong. Payroll data indicates overall St. Cloud metropolitan area employment grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate over the year ending October 2017. The construction sector once again led local job growth, followed by strong gains in wholesale trade and the educational and health sector employment. The financial activities, information, government, transportation/warehousing/utilities and re­tail trade sectors all experienced year-over-year job losses. The leading economic indicator series declined slightly over the last quarter. Surveyed firms indicate strong busi­ness activity in the current quarter with higher capital …

Congressional Hearings: Immigration Frames In Expert Testimonies, Joshua Woods, C. Damien Arthur Phd

C. Damien Arthur

This book offers a broad interdisciplinary approach to the changes in the U.S. immigration debate before and after 9/11. A nation’s reaction to foreigners has as much to do with sociology as it does with political science, economics and psychology. Without drawing on this knowledge, our understanding of the immigration debate remains mundane, partial, and imperfect. Therefore, our story accounts for multiple factors, including culture and politics, power, organizations, social psychological processes, and political change. Examining this relationship in the contemporary context requires a lengthy voyage across academic disciplines, a synthesis of seemingly contradictory assumptions, and a grasp of research …

The Impact Of Culture On Hispanic Entrepreneurs As Mediated By Motivation, Challenge, And Success, Valerie V. Ballesteros

Theses & Dissertations

In the modern economic environment, demographic shifts in U.S. population resulting from changing immigration, changing economic policies and environments, and growing socioeconomic disparity, scholarly research examining the business behavior of specific groups and the impact of behavior on the broader marketplace is valuable and necessary. Hispanic entrepreneurs, when compared to both minority and non-minority business-owners, started and flourished in successful business ownership at a greater growth rate than any other group (Davila, Mora, & Zeitlin, 2014). Since the beginning of the 21st century, Hispanic entrepreneurs have become a measurable economic force. The cultural experience of the Hispanic entrepreneur is important …

The Perceived Return On College Investment In Relation To Economic Expectations Of Students At The University Of Maryland, Joshua S. Roston

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper presents the results of a survey conducted in the spring semester of 2017 of University of Maryland students. The results illustrate how University of Maryland students weigh the decision to attend college in terms of their perceived current economic situation and future expectations as well as predicted return on investment. A body of economic literature on the perception of return on investment from attending college exists already and this study hopes to add to the discussion as its results are unexpected. The results imply that the current generation of college students feels uncertain over the worthwhileness of higher …

J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis. Harpercollins, 2016., Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

The growing gap in the traditional trajectory from poverty to middle class may have less to do with color than with culture. We can see during this present election process the anger and distress of poor white men, flocking to the rallies of candidate Donald Trump. These men, who were once doing well during the post-WWII era, when our country was a manufacturing giant, are now victims of a changing economy.

The Impact Of Separating Fed From Nonfed Beef In An Econometric Simulation , Dyaa Kamal Adbou Ahmed Kamal-Abdou

Ahmed Kamal

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Tipping Rates: New Findings And Extensions, Christopher Carl Olson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a movement underway to eliminate the practice of tipping restaurant servers that is gaining momentum (Goldberger, 2015). In lieu of gratuities, restaurants are simply raising menu prices or assessing a service charge and paying servers a fixed hourly wage (Kummer, 2016). Before restaurateurs can adopt such a strategy, they need to thoroughly understand the factors that affect tipping behavior in order to develop meaningful fixed wage rates that do not diminish service levels or employee morale. The first step in this process is a better understanding of the determinants of tipping rates.

The existing research has identified many …

Take Me Out To The Ball Game? The Effect Of Crime On Major League Baseball Game Attendance, Allison Jakubek

Undergraduate Economic Review

Major League Baseball attendance has been examined since the league’s establishment in 1869. Winning percentage, opponent quality, and stadium quality have all been deemed significant determinants of increasing attendance, but deterring factors have yet to be closely examined. Since a majority of professional sports stadiums are constructed in economically poor, crime ridden areas, it seems natural to assume that crime could have an impact on people’s desire to attend Major League Baseball games. Panel data collected on twenty-eight teams over the course of ten years was used to determine whether or not crime rates have a significant effect on attendance.

Japan Chair Platform: Japan's Other Spending Problem, Gene Park

Gene Park

Since the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, a combination of declining revenue growth, fiscal stimulus, and growing budget commitments have made Japan the most indebted country of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Attention to Japan’s growing public debt problem increased in the wake of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis, and the issue of how to go about fixing Japan’s finances shot to the forefront during July’s Upper House election as competing political parties put forth ideas from trimming wasteful spending to increasing taxes to reducing budget deficits and debt. But until just a short …

School Resources And Student Outcomes: Evidence From The State Of Illinois, Alyssa Cooper

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

Literature on the subject of school resources and student outcomes tends to find that there is a positive relationship between both variables. Most literature uses per-pupil spending (PPS) or teacher salaries as a measure of school resources. While I have modeled both in my paper, my focus in this paper is on per-pupil spending. Using data from the Illinois State Board of Education from 2006-2016 and measuring student outcomes through average ACT scores, operational PPS is found to be insignificant, whereas instructional PPS is found to be positive and significant at the 5% level. Estimates suggest that a 1 standard …

Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia: Knowledge-Informed Policy Responses, Colin C. Williams, Peter Rodgers, Ruslan Stefanov

Colin C Williams

KEY POINTS

Assessing Market Integration Among Aquaculture Products And Production Efficiency In New England's Oyster Aquaculture Industry, Ben Scuderi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network (SEANET) at the University of Maine is taking an interdisciplinary approach to examine many aspects of marine aquaculture. My role on this team has been to focus on economic concerns related to aquaculture production. The main topics addressed here include price interactions between foreign and domestically produced aquaculture products, as well as production efficiency in New England’s oyster aquaculture industry.

We chose to use catfish as a model species in order to assess the role that the price of foreign aquaculture products have on similar domestic products. There are a several reasons for this choice, …

Preventative Policy Measures To Tackle Undeclared Work In Croatia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

The Evolution Of An Enduring Expertise: Understanding Irish Economists In Irish Public Discourse In The Great Recession, Joe Fitzgerald, Brendan O'Rourke

Other

This work focuses on the institutional and social contexts of Irish economists’ prominence in public discourse in Ireland during the Great Recession. While examining performative aspects of experts’ legitimacy is important, understanding the wider societal context of how particular professional expertise is recognised is also vital (Collins & Evans 2007). The economics profession generally is characterised by strong hierarchy and dense integration (Fourcade, 2009; Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009; Pautz, 2014), we explore such phenomena in the Irish context. The Irish context is of interest more generally as a prominent PIIGS country in the Eurozone crisis, as a small peripheral state …

Economic Determinant Analysis Of Student Academic Performance In Mississippi Public Schools, Debra Monroe-Lax, Jae-Young Ko

Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between economic determinants and student academic performance indicators of public school students in the State of Mississippi. It was hypothesized that public school districts with higher economic security leads to higher academic achievement. Data for the study were obtained through the Mississippi Department of Education Children’s First Annual Report for school year 2012 -2013, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Datacenter for 2013. Using bivariate analyses and multiple regression models, the results revealed that students’ academic performance indicators were statistically significantly with weak to moderate effects for each …

Arctic Economics Workshop, Dr. Judith T. Kildow, Michael Goldstein

Working Papers

About this Report

This report serves as the official Summary final report to participants and the public, from the Arctic Economics Workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation grant issued July 2017. It is a summary of participant remarks, ideas, and suggestions from the workshop. It will also be included as an addendum to our official reports to the National Science Foundation to be issued Spring, 2018. After the initial section on background and introduction, the remaining report highlights the three keynote presentations and the introductory presentation by the hosts who presented the research undertaken for the Workshop. The discussions …

The Price Revolution In The Ottoman Context: Economic Upheaval In The Sixteenth Century, Dylan Lawrence Russell

Middle Eastern Communities and Migrations Student Research Paper Series

The inflationary pressures of the Price Revolution had an impact on Ottoman agricultural organization, state finances, industry, and the growth of corruption. This analysis will examine the causes, effects, and scope of inflation in the sixteenth century. Inflation alone did not cause these drastic changes, as other very significant developments also contributed to the turbulent economic environment. However inflation did, in fact, influence many basic transformations, including shifts in wealth, power, and the enrichment of specific social classes at the expense of others.

Social Health Insurance And Maternal And Child Health Outcomes In Developing Countries: The Case Of Ghana, Ama Agyeiwaa Abrokwah

Dissertations

About 25% of all maternal deaths occur during pregnancy; 99% of these maternal deaths occur in developing countries and half of these occur in Sub-Saharan Africa (WHO 2015). Two of the eight Millennium Development Goals are to reduce infant mortality and improve maternal and child health outcomes. To improve health outcomes and reduce the financial burden on households, a number of developing countries, including Ghana, Botswana, and Croatia, have introduced social health insurance programs which are heavily subsidized. This dissertation is a collection of three essays evaluating how maternal and child health care-seeking behavior, utilization and outcomes changed as a …

Individual And Household-Level Effects Of Energy Poverty On Human Development, Brandon Bridge

Economics ETDs

This study investigates some of the predictors of energy poverty, the interrelationships between different expressions of energy poverty, and the human development impacts of energy poverty on primarily rural individuals and households in an underdeveloped country. It uses data from four rounds of Nicaragua's Living Standards Measurement Survey, and examines the effects of energy poverty on income, education, and health.

Chapter 1 provides background information on energy poverty in general, as well as the specific situation that has developed in Nicaragua. It also provides a modeling framework, both conceptual and mathematical, for the ways in which energy poverty impacts human …

The Effect Of Integration: A Study On The Impact Of Diversity On Economic Indicators, Luke H. Schleier

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines the effect of diversity, measured by the dissimilarity index, on the economic strength of an area. Economic strength is measured using five economic indicators: median home value, median income, median gross rent, percentage of people with health insurance, and firms per capita. The work aims to show that there is a positive economic impact due to integrating and creating communities that are more diverse. Previous work shows there is a positive impact of diversity on economic indicators such as wages, rents, and production but previous studies do not look at the effect on these economic indicators. This …

Inentives And Education: Experimental Evidence From Medellin, Colombia, Theodore D. Wisinski, Alessandra Cassar

Master's Theses

This research uses an experimental design to investigate how incentive structure influences goal achievement among disadvantaged high school students in Medellin, Colombia. Of particular interest is how treatment effects influence school performance as well as how this may vary with differing key characteristics of the participants. Medellin, Colombia, like much of South America suffers from high levels of inequality in the city proper. Improving educational outcomes in impoverished neighborhoods is essential for the growth of these neighborhoods and the greater community in which they are located. The model used in this experiment is inspired by the Family Independence Initiative (FII). …

How We Think About Economics, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Publications

"From my casual observation, many economists were surprised at the content of Vernon's Nobel lecture on ecological and constructivist rationality in economics. Having been awarded the prize 'for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms,' I think many expected him to catalogue the major findings of experimental economics in his prize lecture. David Porter has described Vernon as a live, interactive version of the Journal of Economic Literature. But Vernon Smith is no cataloguer. He is a synthesizer, and he synthesizes acutely aware that scientific inquiry is …

Australian Government Information Resources, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides an overview of Australian Government information resources. Features content from Australian Government agency websites such as the Department of Environment and Energy, Department of Defence, Australian National Maritime Museum, ANZAC Memorial in Sydney, Department of Immigration & Border Protection, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Dept. of Agriculture and Water Resources, Australian Parliament, Australian Treasury, Australian Transport Safety Board, and Australian Parliamentary Library. Content includes a video excerpt from Australian parliamentary debate.

Essays On The Economics Of Energy And Transportation, Ryan N. Barnes

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is responsible for planning, operating, and maintaining a highway network consisting of over 18,500 lane-miles of highway. In recent years the growing uncertainty about oil prices and availability has made long-range transportation planning even more challenging. Rather than relying on trend extrapolation, this study uses market mechanisms to shed light on key long-range transportation planning assumptions. In particular, this study was conducted to help WSDOT assess the likelihood that natural gas will substitute for petroleum fuels and estimate the impacts that changes in fuel prices will have on natural gas vehicle demand, fuel …

Does A Better Running Back Mean More Rushing? Game Theory And The Nfl, Eric Lofquist

Honors Scholar Theses

In this paper I attempt to answer the question of whether or not teams in the National Football League (NFL) rush less with a better running back. This seems counterintuitive, but game theory supposes that this is true. Defenses facing a better running back will generally expect the offense to rush more and therefore defend the run more often. The offense, foreseeing the defense’s actions, will choose to pass more to counteract the run defense. This is the basis of the difference between the strategic effect and the direct effect in mixed strategies. The direct effect is when a player …

Does Globalization Improve Quality Of Life?, Laura E. Hirt

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Gender Wage Gap In The Film Industry: A Review Of Literature, Christine Pires

Senior Theses

The gender wage gap is defined as the difference between the amounts of money paid to women and men, often for doing the same work (Cambridge, 2017). The gender wage gap is a reoccurring financial issue in all aspects of the business world. Most all career paths have had a wage gap between men and women. Having equal pay for equal work should be a thing of the past. However, women today are still fighting to close the wage gap and work equally in all fields. The film industry is one of the largest entertainment industries in America and still, …

The Retirement Strategy Of Supreme Court Justices: An Economic Approach, Kayla M. Joyce

Honors Scholar Theses

Previous research has identified strategic behavior in the nomination, confirmation, and retirement processes of the Supreme Court, each independently. This paper analyzes the interaction between the justices, the president, and the Senate in these processes. I constructed a game theoretic model to consider the nomination and approval process of Supreme Court justices and the change in dynamics that might result from an impending election. I hypothesize that sitting justices take into account the party affiliations of the president and the Senate when they are deciding whether it is the optimal time to retire to achieve their own strategic objectives. The …

The Payoff Of A Healthy Lifestyle While In College, Richard D. Angeletti Iii

Undergraduate Economic Review

This study analyzes the effect that an individual’s body mass index (BMI) has on their hourly compensation in their next job directly following attainment of their bachelor degree. This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth that started in 1997. This study aligned all the survey participants’ timeline of life events to be coordinated in such a way that bachelor degree attainment, regardless of year, is the common reference point. Sufficient observation of bachelor degree receipts was found in the year 2001 through 2007 resulting in a pooled data set across seven years. This study hypothesizes that individuals with …

Does Where You Grow Up Affect Your Chances Of Being Drafted Into The Nfl?, Walker Head

Georgia College Student Research Events

The minimum rookie salary in the National Football League (NFL) is $450,000. First round picks often sign multi-year contracts worth more than $10 million. Players from some states are much more likely to receive college scholarships and eventually be drafted into the NFL, but it is not clear if this is a causal relationship. Utilizing data from Rivals and the NFL, I attempt to determine if where a player grew up has an impact on his chances of being drafted to play professional football. I focus on the top eight states, as it relates to percentage of recruits and my …