Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Health And Healthcare In Nepal: An Analysis Of The Private And Public Sector, Sujita Pandey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through private and public efforts, there has been considerable improvement in the health and healthcare sector in Nepal. However, the healthcare system in Nepal faces challenges such as limited access and lack of quality healthcare. Although there have been recent efforts to introduce universal healthcare coverage, there is limited evidence on existing systems to properly formulate a policy. To provide a wholistic review of the Nepali health system, we assess both public and private sectors. In 2005, Nepal introduced a financial incentive, called the Safe Delivery Incentive Program, to increase the use of maternity care with the goal of reducing …

Off-Farm Labor Supply And Health Impact Of Pesticide Use: An Economic Analysis, Nguyen Vuong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By employing data from Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys (VHLSS) and weather data from different sources, this thesis aims to fill the gaps in the literature on off-farm labor supply, health effect of pesticide use and the economic returns to communist party membership in Vietnam.

This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter provides a brief introduction. The second chapter considers the effect of weather on the risk perception of farmers in Vietnam by examining labor allocation decision and its effect on household income. I started by building a theoretical framework with the assumption that off-farm wage per hour …

Past, Present And Future Of Maine's Pulp And Paper Industry, Ariel Listo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The pulp and paper industry has historically been of paramount importance for the state of Maine, both from cultural and economic perspectives. The industry has been a vital part of the forest products economy and a large contributor to employment and state gross domestic product (GDP). However, the number of pulp and paper mills in Maine has declined sharply in the last few decades, deeply harming employment levels, local economies and the forest products sector of the most heavily forested state in the nation. This phenomenon has sparked efforts to understand the factors behind the downfall of Maine's pulp and …

Exploring The Economic Resilience In The United States Through State Gdp Output, Mariya Pominova

Honors College

Economic resilience is a rising topic in the field of economics. Although there is no standard definition, most literature suggests that the concept of regional economic resilience converged to encapsulate a region’s ability to resist, recover from, and restructure itself after an economic or environmental shock. There are a multitude of methods in the literature used to measure economic resilience. All of these methods utilize either GDP, employment, or a combination of both. While both GDP and employment cycles are powerful tools for measuring the impact of a recession on an economy, they measure vastly different things and neither fully …

Behaviors And Perceptions Of Environmental Decision Making: The Role Of Information Dissemination Through Public Disclosures And Labels, Jordan R. Anthony

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmental decision making may be influenced by information and how this information has been disseminated. By recognizing that information needs to be salient to the individual (Cash et al., 2003, 2006), tailored and framed to the individual (Pelletier & Sharp, 2008), and recognizing that the information must be presented in a way that the individual is ready and able to accept the information (Teisl, Rubin, & Noblet, 2008) all serve as a means to improve the effect information has on environmental decision making. Through this work, two studies of contextual examples of how information dissemination affects environmental decision making are …

The Impact Of Active And Passive Ownership On Total Shareholder Return And Environmental, Social, And Governance Performance Of Companies, Abigail J. Bennett

Honors College

The purpose of this study was to test the impact of passive and active ownership on total shareholder return (TSR) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) score of firms. The motivation behind the study is the rise in passive investing over the last few decades and the concern that passive owners are not able to engage sufficiently with management of the companies they are invested in.

This study hypothesized that firms that are actively controlled have high TSR and higher ESG scores than firms that are passively controlled. The hypothesis was supported by the reasoning that passive owners lack the …

Timber Harvest And Recreation In Maine's North Woods: Attitudes, Impacts, And Strategies For Coexistence, Chelsea Liddell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I explore recreator characteristics associated with attitudes toward logging evidence in recreational settings, potential effects of logging on North Maine Woods visitor spending, and the effects of an educational intervention on attitudes.

In Chapter 1, I use data from a random sample of Maine households to examine the associations between demographic characteristics/recreational activities and attitudes towards evidence of forest management in recreational settings. I use three separate ordered logistic regressions to model the associations between respondent characteristics and three types of forest management settings: old growth forest, a managed forest with selective harvest, and seeing/hearing evidence of …

Assessing Economic Performance Of Maine's Lobster Fleet Under Changing Ecosystem Conditions In The Gulf Of Maine, Alexa Dayton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the inter-disciplinary space that lies between fisheries management and stock conservation, resource extraction and economic return at the individual producer level, balanced with societal welfare. It considers policy implications in support of changing marine ecosystems and considers the values of the Maine lobster communities, which depend on it. We conducted a comprehensive lobster industry survey to assess costs and effort expended at the producer level for a representative fishing year, and establish a series of production function performance baselines for future comparison. The demographic data, attitudes and valuations collected allow us to characterize the fishing effort and …

Assessing Economic Performance Of Maine's Lobster Fleet Under Changing Ecosystem Conditions In The Gulf Of Maine, Alexa M. Dayton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research evaluates lobster producer efficiency and considers fleet wide economics and policy implications in support of changing marine ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine. We conducted a comprehensive lobster industry survey to assess costs and effort expended at the producer level for a representative fishing year, and establish a series of production function performance baselines for future comparison. The demographic data, attitudes and valuations collected allow us to characterize the fishing effort and regional dependency on the resource. We look at the Maine Lobster limited entry licensing system, to understand how the future participation in the fishery might change, …

The Underrepresentation Of Racial And Ethnic Minorities In Legal Occupations, Maria Beaulieu

Honors College

For the purpose of this research, minorities are defined as both racial and ethnic categories that are numerically inferior than the majority racial or ethnic group. Historical social inferiority is an arguable consequence of numerical inferiority, but is not included in this research’s definition of a minority. In this research, we see how women are numerically inferior in certain legal occupations, however gender/sex is also incorporated within the broader category of racial and ethnic minorities.

Current literature utilizing census bureau data, goes into some detail about the underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority lawyers. However, this research project reaches greater …

Forecasting Labor Force Participation At The Regional Level In The United States: The Case Of Maine, Maryam Kashkooli

Honors College

This project attempts to investigate the future of labor force participation in Maine using an econometric forecasting approach. Forecasting has become an increasingly popular form of statistical analysis which uses historical distributions to help estimate future distributions of econometric models. There exists extensive literature on forecasting employment, however the literature on forecasting labor force participation is relatively small. I adapt existing econometric models and make use of time series information on sociodemographic factors such as age and net migration in order to determine how Maine’s changing demographic structure is affecting its labor force and how these effects will carry on …

Constructing Identity Through The Lens Of Fashion: An Honors Thesis, Cara P. Doiron

Honors College

Fashion is an artistic decision that every person makes every day. Even those who say they don’t care about clothing are still portraying something about themselves to the outside world with the stylistic choices they make. This creative Honors Thesis explores the impact of fashion on self-representation, accomplished through the design and construction of a capsule wardrobe line of clothing. Due to the project’s personal and introspective nature, the intended wearer is the artist, and therefore the pieces are specifically tailored to her, rather than the straight sized garments that are typically produced in the fashion industry. This line consists …

The Analysis Of Labor Market Efficiency: A Comparative Analysis Of Maine And The United States, Sarah M. Welch

Honors College

The purpose of this research is to analyze the change in the labor market efficiency from before to after the great recession and its effect on economic output following the recession. Concerns have been raised about the adjustment of the labor market compared to the recovery of other economic indicators. Influenced by the methods of Blanchard and Diamond (1989) and Dixon et al. (2014), the Beveridge curve and matching function are used to estimate and observe changing labor market dynamics through the relationship between unemployment and job vacancies.

This thesis finds that labor markets for both Maine and the United …

Peck (H. Austin) Records, 1946-1963, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Henry Austin Peck was born in 1921 in Somerville, Mass. and graduated from Tufts College in 1942. He received his master's degree and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts where he was also named to Phi Beta Kappa. Before joining the University of Maine faculty in 1948 he was an instructor in economics at Tufts and also was director of veterans' housing at that college. In 1961 he was named vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maine. In 1968 he was named president of the State University of New York at Potsdam. …

How Well Is Maine Doing? Comparing Well-Being Across Maine Counties, Angela Daley, Andrew Crawley, Muntasir Rahman, Jake Demosthenes, Erin Lyons

Maine Policy Review

Maine has experienced major challenges over the last decade including recession, stagnant recovery, and industrial and population decline. But by some measures, Maine is still seen as one of the best in the United States for well-being. In this paper, we critique the notion of what well-being is and how it is measured. Based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Better Life Initiative, we then propose and construct an index to compare well-being across Maine counties. Our work gives new insights on the types of challenges counties are facing and provides policymakers a new way of empirically understanding …