Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Toward An Effective Approach For On‑Farm Experimentation: Lessons Learned From A Case Study Of Fertilizer Application Optimization In Japan, Takashi S.T. Tanaka, Taro Mieno, Ryoya Tanabe, Tsutomu Matsui, David S. Bullock

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

On-farm experimentation (OFE) is increasing worldwide. Appropriate OFE procedures may differ depending on the characteristics and circumstances surrounding farms, such as climate, field conditions, farm size, degree of agricultural digitalization, and a farmer’s socioeconomic background. This study aims to guide the future development of OFE in Japanese grain farming by examining the experimental setup, data analysis, and farmers’ activities within their socioeconomic and institutional communication and learning networks. The results of this typical OFE case study, which estimates a field’s economicallyoptimal fertilizer variable-rate application map for winter wheat production, are reported. The outcomes of the case study, which are intended …

Essays In Entrepreneurship, Mostafa Salari

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation concentrates on the determinants of entrepreneurship and consists of two essays. The first essay develops a dynamic model of occupational choices to capture how big-five personality traits influence entrepreneurial decisions and returns. More importantly, I divide entrepreneurs into incorporated and unincorporated to differentiate between high-growth and lifestyle entrepreneurs. I use the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) data set for this study. My model captures the role of personality traits, cognitive ability, human capital, information accumulation, and non-pecuniary benefits in entrepreneurial dynamics. The estimated model demonstrates that personality traits affect pecuniary and non-pecuniary from incorporated and …

Manage Your Money Wisely: How Consumers And Marketers Can Effectively Communicate Money Issues, Alexander Park

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Consumers and marketers find it challenging to communicate money matters. For example, consumers experience discomfort and uneasiness when discussing financial issues with their social relationships. Firms often receive backlash when sharing their good financial deeds (e.g., charitable efforts) with consumers. Because financial matters can be a sensitive topic, in my research, I explore the difficulties consumers and marketers experience when communicating money issues and how they can better navigate these problems.In Chapter One, I investigate a particularly uneasy interaction that consumers often face with their friends and acquaintances: the need to ask for money back. Seven fully preregistered studies (N …

Essays On Health Care Payment Incentives, David Adam Schwartzman

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies how payment incentives in health care change clinician and patient behavior and how different “value-based” payment models may impact outcomes. In Chapter 1, I explore optimal design of healthcare payment models in the presence of market frictions to targeting benefits. I leverage a natural experiment where an employer introduces Direct Primary Care, a form of care delivery where clinicians are paid a capitated monthly fee for high-touch access to a bundle of primary care services. This model modifies moral and behavioral hazard incentives for both patients and clinicians while changing the trade-off between preventive investments and downstream …

Essays In Sovereign Default And Central Banking, Andrea Paloschi

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The recent phenomenon of debt redemption is posing new challenges in emerging economies, whichare typically characterized by high levels of sovereign default risk. How do sovereign default risk and sovereign debt affect central bank independence? And how does this affect reserve accumulation in these countries? In the first chapter of this dissertation I study how business cycle fluctuations affect sovereign debt and sovereign default risk and how the de facto central bank independence is endogenously determines in emerging economies. I build a sovereign default model in which, period-by- period, the fiscal authority determines the degree of independence of the monetary …

Essays On Firms, Debt Contracts And Equity Market, Rusi Yan

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Debt Contracts, Outside Equity and Financial Development: How important are different financial contracts for economic development? Using cross-country firm-level data, I document the extensive usage of alternative debt contracts and ownership structure patterns for public firms. At the aggregate level, development in each segment of the financial system is significantly linked to GDP per capita and wealth inequality. To quantify the aggregate consequences, I develop a heterogeneous agent model of entrepreneurs who face asset-based or cash flow-based debt and outside equity frictions. The model is calibrated to a large set of countries in vastly different stages of financial development. Quantitatively, …

How Activated Self-Concepts Influence Selection And Processing Of Body-Positive Narratives, Melissa J. Robinson, Megan A. Vendemia

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Guided by the self- and affect–management (SESAM) model, the current study employed a selective exposure quasi-experimental design in which women (N = 381; M_age = 31.50, SD = 4.89) chose a narrative genre (romance or career) they would like to read, featuring a thin or large character with low or high body esteem, to examine individual differences that influence story selections and subsequent impacts on their self-concepts. Results indicated participants’ salient self-concepts pertaining to romance and career predicted story genre selection. Participants with higher BMI were more inclined to read narratives featuring a large character. Those who read …

Using Video Storytelling To Transform The Consumer Narrative Of Fashion Into One Of Caretaking: A First Step Towards A Sustainable Fashion Industry, Piumi De Alwis

Masters Theses

This study speaks about today’s apparel industry run by the consumption based “consumer narrative” and will introduce a sustainable alternative of “caretaker narrative,” a consumer oriented way of being to combat toxic practices in the apparel industry. Meanwhile on the other hand in today’s day and age video storytelling is getting extremely popular in the media we daily consume. This study examines how to effectively use video storytelling to popularize the sustainable practice of the “caretaker narrative” in society.

Human Diversity In Molecular Sexual Dimorphism And Gender Disparities In Health, Adam Z. Reynolds

Anthropology ETDs

Although males and females exhibit an extraordinary range of diversity in sexual dimorphism across populations, prior work on the evolution of sexual dimorphism in human physiology and health has focused on ostensibly universal differences that owe to sex chromosomes and steroid hormones. This dissertation argues that sexual dimorphism in humans is not adequately captured by species-wide sex differences in mean trait values, but instead varies greatly as a result of: (i) our ability to adapt physiologically to a broad range of social and physical environments, and (ii) molecular diversity acquired by different populations over the course of their unique evolutionary …

Occupation-Based Social Skills Training Program With Animal-Assisted Therapy For Individuals With Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (I/Dd), Jason Sebastian, Karen Park

Spring 2023 Virtual OTD Capstone Symposium

This presentation describes the development and implementation of an occupation-based social skills training program with Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) for Individuals with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (I/DD) and the implications for occupational therapy after program implementation.

The Juris Master: A Proposal For Reducing Excessive Public Defender Caseloads, Blake Comeaux

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The US public defense system is underfunded, understaffed, and underdelivering on the Constitutional promises of the 6^th Amendment, the right to a fair and speedy trial. This state of our public defense system results in monstrous impacts for indigent defendants nationwide. Through indefinite delays in litigation, being abandoned in jail while sitting on waiting lists for public defenders, and being outright denied representation, indigent defendants are deprived of their rights. Beyond just defendant neglect, our current system puts immense strain on public defenders, prosecutors, and state budgets. In an attempt to combat this current state of affairs, this paper …

"I'M Fat As Fuck:" Fat Black Women's Self-Perception And Modes Of Resistance, Savannah Henderson

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

While many past scholars have positioned Black women as not having significant body image anxieties, Black women’s experiences with racism, sexism, and fatphobia is deeply rooted in historical narratives of the “acceptable body.” As a result, body image anxieties are prominent among Black women of size. My project investigates the historical and contemporary positioning of self-defined fat Black women and thoroughly interrogates the assumption that they do not have significant body image anxieties. Through the employment of 14 interviews, my project explores how fat Black women perceive their bodies and navigate the world. Additionally, using Lizzo’s media presence as a …

Birthing Reimagined: Perceptions Of Safety And Autonomy In Birth Experiences Among Postpartum Individuals During Covid-19, Beldina Orinda

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Background: Safety during childbirth is a priority for care providers, but patients' perceptions of safety may differ from those of providers, especially in biomedical settings.1–4 This can influence health outcomes and satisfaction with the birth experience.5–7 We hypothesize that autonomy, defined as the ability to make decisions about care during childbirth, may enhance feelings of safety and positive mental health outcomes.9,15

Methods: Surveys via REDCap v11.1.29 captured the experiences and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) scores of pregnant and postpartum women. Participants (n=49) included 15 pregnant and 34 postpartum individuals, aged 18 and older, who had given …

Essays On Inheritances And Entrepreneurship, Martina Ivanova

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation lays out new evidence on the relationship between inheritances and entrepreneurship and the dynamics of business formation. While the existing literature is split on whether liquidity constraints pose a real threat to the formation of new businesses, this study contributes to the debate by addressing the endogeneity problem between inherited wealth and entrepreneurship. The main results lend support to the liquidity constraint theory, indicating that receiving an inheritance boosts the likelihood of owning a business by about 3% for the average individual, which translates to a 21% increase in the probability of entrepreneurship over the baseline. Chapter 1 …

Essays In International Reserves And Sovereign Risk, Rocio E. Suarez

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1990s, international reserves accumulation has particularly surged in emerging economies. What are the rationals behind this rise and the implications of international reserves accumulation for emerging economies? Chapter 1 of the dissertation, titled The Effects of Reserves Accumulation on Sovereign Default Under Terms of Trade Shocks, studies what is the value of holding international reserves in emerging economies when they experience fluctuations in their terms of trade and the sovereign debt is denominated in foreign currency. Firstly, I document stylized facts regarding a sample of emerging economies over the period 1997-2019 and find that there is a negative …

Essays On Macroeconomics, Zheliang Zhu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation has three chapters. The first chapter examines the information transmissionfrom the central bank to the private sector regarding the public signal interest rate. The second chapter presents a proposed belief-driven Taylor rule and analyzes the rule’s impact on private expectation anchoring and social welfare loss. The third chapter studies the relationship between corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and their associated financing costs. Omitted proofs in each chapter are presented in the last section of each chapter.In the first chapter, we study the information transmission from the central bank to theprivate sector regarding the public signal interest …

Re-Membering The Living Earth: A Year In Rural Sri Lanka, Samuel C. King

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The following thesis tells the story of my year in rural Sri Lanka. After college, I traveled from suburban New York to the highlands of the island country with the hopes of writing an ethnography on agrarian Buddhism. I soon realized, however, that I was not just embarking on an academic project, but an inner journey to explore ways of being that had been lost in the modern culture I had known. My narrative recounts how immersion in a rice cultivating village deepened my sense for what it means to live in reciprocity with the more-than-human world—a world of plants, …

Sharing My Story Through Public Speaking: Young People And Mental Health, Alexandra Isabella Bush

Honors Theses

Recent years have shown a worsening mental health crisis in America. Between the high prevalence of mental illness, lack of treatment, high rates of suicide and overdoses, and increasing rates of substance use, the United States has an abundance of problems, all of which relate to mental health. One contributing factor is the insufficient education about mental health topics, also known as mental health literacy. Therefore, American citizens lack necessary knowledge, such as the signs and risk factors of mental illness, treatment options, and ways to improve mental health, to name a few. One impact of low mental health literacy …

Essays In Transportation Economics And Regional Science, Minsung Park

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three chapters that attempt to examine the effects of new infrastructure of transportation systems.This first chapter "The Impact of High Speed Rail on Traffic Congestion" examines the impact of high-speed rail systems on highway congestion, using the case of South Korea. I use different strategies to address the endogeneity problem of evaluating the impact of transport infrastructure on traffic congestion. The results indicate that building high-speed rail lowers demand for intercity driving by 7.5\% to 30.9\%. However, the detailed data suggests that the reduction in congestion comes primarily from night time, during which high-speed trains do not …

Essays On Market Reallocation And Economic Growth, Lei Ye

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the causal factors that contribute to the reallocation of economic activity in the product, financial and labor market, and to analyze the implications of these phenomena on the aggregate economic performance.The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter, "Bank Concentration, Product Market Competition and Firm Dynamics", investigates the concentration trend in the U.S. banking industry since the implementation of the Riegle-Neal Act in 1994 and its impact on product market competition, firm dynamics and aggregate economic performance. Empirically, I document that bank concentration is associated with less competition in product markets. …

Health Disparities: Ranking Horry County's Most Disadvantaged Communities, Stephen Borders, Jacob Bradley, Mackenzie Cannon, William Hall

Public Health

Horry County is a rapidly growing region in South Carolina, with a diverse population of over 300,000 residents. Despite this growth, the county faces significant health challenges, including high rates of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, and a shortage of healthcare providers in certain areas. These challenges are exacerbated by the county's socio-economic disparities, with many low-income residents lacking access to basic health services. Our approach is to address these challenges by identifying the areas within the county with the greatest unmet needs, also known as disadvantaged communities. By identifying the needs of Horry County’s most disadvantaged communities, …

Agricultural Shocks On Household Stability: A Case Study Of Tanzania Maize Farmers, Zimmi Ndlovu

Master's Theses

As the global populations grow, the need for stronger agricultural resilience in areas with high food insecurity like Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is a must. Crop failure due to climate related events has increased substantially over the past decade, raising the risks to vulnerable groups like subsistence farmers. Understanding the effects of climate variability on farmers and their crops is a pivotal step towards increasing resilience and productivity. In this paper I approach this question using a Linear Probability Fixed-effects Model on Tanzanian Panel Survey data with monthly temperature and precipitation for years 2008 to 2013. Results suggest a negative relationship …

The Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences And Risky Health Behaviors: Avenues For Prevention In New Mexico, Arianna Trott

Individual, Family, and Community Education ETDs

This study was designed to assess if adverse childhood experiences (ACES) predict risky health behaviors in New Mexico. The purpose was to determine if any factors support improved outcomes for people who have experienced ACES in New Mexico. Lastly, the study aimed to identify if urban-rural status impacted outcomes of risky health behaviors related to ACES. This study used data from the 2019 New Mexico Community Survey across twelve counties (N = 853). Multiple logistic regression and hierarchical linear modeling were used to analyze the data. The findings concluded ACES could predict risky health behaviors. Overall, there was a gradated …

Essays In Finance And Macroeconomics, Yi Chun Lin

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The first and second chapters of my dissertation are about empirical asset pricing, and the third chapter is about international macroeconomics.In the first chapter, we study slope factors (estimated OLS slopes from Fama-Macbeth regressions of firm returns on lagged standardized characteristics) in relation to sorted and ranked factors. We show that slope factors provide significant value if they are pure-play, i.e., purged of the effects of a broad set of characteristics. Starting from 47 characteristics, we show, by a new risk factor discovery method, that the SDF varies by factor construction class. On a large collection of test assets, the …

Three Essays On Public Attitudes Toward Federal Agencies, Zoe Ang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three papers on public attitudes toward US federal agencies. In the first, entitled ``Political Influences of Public Attitudes toward Federal Agencies,'' I argue that individuals rely on agency-adjacent political information to form their attitudes because bureaucratic politics are relatively low-salience and individuals hold little specific knowledge with which to evaluate agencies. Using nationally representative surveys administered from 2007 to 2018, I find that individuals rely on political information to evaluate agencies. Copartisanship with the president and one's ideology, and to a lesser extent partisanship, influence attitudes toward agencies; this effect persists over time but varies …

Putting Attentional Control On The Map: An Investigation Of Meaningful Boundaries And Context-Specific Control, Jackson Stuart Colvett

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

People can learn and adopt relaxed or focused control settings based on the likelihood of conflict at specific inducer locations, then flexibly retrieve those control settings at nearby unbiased diagnostic locations. Importantly, people can learn that multiple distinct contexts predict conflict, such as specific locations or regions of space (e.g., all locations in the upper left). In realistic visual scenes, meaningful boundaries that demarcate objects or areas of space serve as an important signal that the area inside the boundary is distinct from the area outside the boundary. Recent research (Colvett & Bugg, 2022) indicated a role for meaningful boundaries …

Comparison Of Self- And Informant-Reported Change In Memory, Attention, And Spatial Navigation In Predicting Preclinical Alzheimer Disease, Taylor Fama Levine

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Preclinical Alzheimer disease (AD) is characterized as the point at which a person is clinically normal but exhibits AD-related neuropathological change and is associated with developing AD-related dementia in the future (Jack et al., 2018). As such, there has been a focus on identifying procedures sensitive to the preclinical stage. However, the current methods used to detect biomarker abnormalities associated with preclinical AD (e.g., lumbar puncture, PET scan, and MRI) are invasive and/or expensive, which limits feasibility for widescale screening. This leaves the need to develop a non-invasive, time-efficient, and cost-effective screening measure to identify those who are at greater …

Cognitive Explanations Behind The Lack Of Public Support For Climate Action, Jordan Hale Mcallister

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Studies show that the primary barriers to climate action support are cognitive ones, and yet it is not clear how people’s climate perceptions influence their support. Key perceptions’ effects remain either disputed or unidentified in the literature, so there is no established theory explaining the drivers of climate action support. I argue that people’s climate perceptions—including of others’ climate actions, climate change impacts, and climate change severity and timing—have effects that align with conventional assumptions of rational behavior. By running survey experiments and statistical analyses on data from both the US and Europe, I show that perceptions’ effects on support …

Evolutionary History Of Populations Of Pleistocene Homo With A Focus On East Asia, Catherine Mclean

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the evolutionary history of our species is a key objective of paleoanthropology, yet the pattern of hominin evolution in East Asia remains uncertain. This research aimed to evaluate the relationships and evolutionary history of East Asian hominin paleodemes through the Pleistocene. Recent descriptions of Pleistocene East Asian hominins reveal a high degree of morphological variability, mosaics of primitive and derived traits, regionally predominant characteristics, and late surviving archaic morphologies. This study tests two hypotheses explaining the complexity of the East Asian hominin record: 1) Continuity with Hybridization, and 2) the existence of Multiple Hominin Lineages. These models were tested …

Discrimination And Health Disparities: Sense Of Purpose As A Mitigating Factor, Megan Elizabeth Wilson

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Racial health disparities exist in the United States, and exist in part due to negative effects of experiencing discrimination on health. Thus, the current work uses subjective and objective health outcomes to document the ill effects of discrimination on aspects of physical and mental health. In addition, as sense of purpose in life has been shown to have a positive impact on one’s health, the current work examines the effect of sense of purpose on the same health outcomes, and assesses the extent to which sense of purpose may help to mitigate some of the harmful effects of discrimination on …