Economics Commons^™

Incentives, Evidence, And Reminders For Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers To Policy Scale Up, Patrick Agte, Daniel R. Morales, Christopher Neilson, Sebastian Otero, Guatam Rao

Discussion Papers

Scaling up effective policies often requires the attention of frontline bureaucrats with many competing responsibilities. Even when policymakers adopt effective programs, implementation may not follow. In a nationwide experiment in the Dominican Republic, we test interventions to increase school principals' implementation of an educational program proven effective in a previous RCT. Only 37% of control schools verifiably implemented the intervention when ordered to by the Ministry of Education, compared with 83% in the original trial. Implementation was no higher among schools that previously implemented the program in the RCT, suggesting that fixed costs of adoption do not explain non-adoption. We …

From Trade War To Green Transition: Optimal Electric Vehicle Tariffs With Revenue-Funded Subsidies, Panle Jia Barwick, Jack Collison, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Shanjun Li, Yucheng Wang

Discussion Papers

We study the optimal design of trade and industrial policy when governments pursue environmental objectives alongside traditional national welfare. Motivated by the global transition to electric vehicles (EVs) and growing concerns about competitiveness, resilience, and the environment, we develop a framework in which policymakers choose tariffs and domestic production subsidies to maximize national welfare, defined as the sum of consumer surplus, domestic profits, environmental benefits, and tariff revenue net of subsidies. We combine a theoretical model of differentiated-product oligopoly with a structural demand model estimated using vehicle-level data from 13 countries during 2004-2023 that together account for the vast majority …

The Impact Of Corruption On Private Investment In The Mena Region: An Empirical Study On The Period Of 1996-2023, Mohamed A. El Regdawy

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to examine and understand empirically the impact of corruption on private investment in the MENA region during the period of 1996-2023, as private investment is a key enabler for sustainable economic growth. To better understand such a relationship, a Pooled Mean Group estimator was implemented to figure out this relationship in both the short run and long run. The findings confirm that in the long run, within the context of MENA, corruption was used as a tool to overcome the lack of quality in the regulations that were supposed to enable the role of the private sector. …

Fiscal And Monetary Policies For Inclusive Growth In Developing And Emerging Markets, Collins Anosike

Journal of Global Awareness

The study examined the effects of monetary and fiscal policies in attaining inclusive growth for some developing countries and emerging markets. The study selected 20 countries and grouped them into group one and group two. The study is unique because it captures a broader range of countries compared to previous studies and shows their effect on economic growth. We use panel data and employ OLS regression and Johansen cointegration. We examine how each variable, general government expenditure, gross national expenditure, total revenue, official exchange rate, broad money, and deposit interest rate, affects the dependent variable (real GDP) from 1980 to …

Spatial Analysis Of Maize Yields And Household Dietary Diversity In Sub-Saharan Africa: Causal Evidence From A Machine Learning Instrument, Addi Joof

Master's Theses

MAIZE YIELDS AND HOUSEHOLD DIETARY DIVERSITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: EVIDENCE ON THE CAUSAL EFFECT FROM A MACHINE LEARNING INSTRUMENT

Addi Joof, University of San Francisco, May 2026

This paper provides estimates of the effect of maize yield on household dietary diversity across seven Sub-Saharan African countries, using data from 36,474 maize-growing households in the Living Standards Measurement Study Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) panels for the period 2008--2021. OLS estimates which include district and country-by-wave fixed effects yield a positive and significant coefficient of 0.070 (SE = 0.006, p < 0.001), implying that a 10 percent increase in maize yield raises the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) by approximately 0.007 food groups. Because self-reported yields are subject to classical measurement error and unobserved household characteristics confound the OLS estimate, we construct an instrumental variable using a Random Forest model trained on satellite-derived agro-environmental features including the Enhanced Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Growing Degree Days, precipitation, and soil moisture obtained from Google Earth Engine at the GPS-coordinate-by-year level. Our preferred 2SLS specification, which adds region fixed effects to absorb persistent sub-national geographic variation, returns a positive point estimate of 0.217 (SE = 0.206; 95% CI: -0.19 to +0.63, p = 0.294) larger than OLS and consistent with downward attenuation bias, but imprecisely estimated and statistically indistinguishable from zero at conventional levels. We interpret the OLS estimate of 0.070 as a credible lower bound on the true effect, with the IV evidence pointing to a moderately larger but uncertain magnitude. Heterogeneity analysis reveals a declining gradient across consumption quintiles the effect is strongest among the poorest households (Q1: 0.055, p < 0.01) and diminishes with wealth (Q5: 0.015, not significant) while showing no gradient across market-integration levels. These patterns are consistent with own-consumption, rather than market income from surplus sales, as the primary pathway from yield to dietary diversity. OLS estimates are positive and significant in five of six estimable countries. The findings suggest that maize yield improvements can serve as a nutrition co-investment, particularly for subsistence-oriented smallholders, though the available data do not permit a sharp causal quantification of the effect size.

Keywords: dietary diversity, maize yields, instrumental variables, Sub-Saharan Africa, LSMS-ISA, satellite …

What Complexity Costs: Growth, Productive Capability, And The Vulnerability Of Interconnectedness, Pete Mcniff

Master's Theses

Growth depends on the sophistication of what an economy can produce, but economies that have specialized more deeply depend on the market access that sustains it. I test whether this dependence makes complex economies more vulnerable when access is disrupted, computing the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) from firm-level records in the U.S. Census of Manufactures (1850--1880) and using the Panic of 1873 as a natural experiment to measure county-level market access shocks from railroad bond defaults following Dutta (2024) and Donaldson and Hornbeck (2016). ECI predicts production and employment growth across all three decade windows, with the association strengthening as …

Essays On Development Economics, Environmental Economics, And Political Economy, Weihong Li

Economics Theses and Dissertations

Chapter 1 explores the strategic behavior of provincial leaders in China in response to visits by central government leaders. I find that such behavior is correlated with provincial leaders’ personal characteristics and their connections with the visitors. Meanwhile, acting strategically during these visits has a positive and significant effect on overall promotions, but a positive and insignificant effect on promotions to the most important positions in the Politburo.

Chapter 2 examines the impact of the Confucian norms on the spatial heterogeneity of fertility rates and sex-selective abortions in contemporary China. To overcome the challenge of quantifying cultural norms, I construct …

Beyond Brain Drain: H-1b Visas, Innovation, And Human Flourishing, Joel Wong

Honors Projects

High-skilled migration has become one of the defining features of the modern global economy, especially in technology, engineering, and research-intensive industries. While public debate surrounding the H-1B visa program often centers on its effects within the United States, less attention has been given to how these migration flows affect the countries from which workers originate. This question is important because many sending countries invest heavily in the education and development of highly skilled workers while also seeking long-term economic growth and innovation. This study examines whether increases in H-1B visa migration are associated with changes in innovation outcomes in major …

Hammurabi’S Laws: Ancient Traditions Of Violence, Aaron Secrist

The Confluence

The tradition of enforcing private property through violence is truly ancient, and goes back thousands of years to the first civilizations. There exists a prevailing attitude that contemporary culture is more “civilized” than the first organized societies – and while it’s true in some ways, our laws are still remarkably similar to those practiced in antiquity. In the following essay, I analyze the Law Code of Hammurabi and examine its parallels to the way laws function today. First, I will provide context for the technological advances that made the first city-states possible, then give a cultural and economic overview of …

Solid Waste Management In Greater Khartoum City, Sudan, Roba Mahmoud

Student Theses 2015-Present

This study investigates the rising solid waste management (SWM) dilemma in Greater Khartoum City (GKC), a critical environmental and public health issue caused by fast urbanization and inadequate infrastructure, with historical linkages to Sudan's colonial and postcolonial growth. Chapter 1 describes the current problem using quantitative and qualitative data, demonstrating that GKC produces approximately 3,340 tons of waste each day, with 56% organic matter, 8% plastics, and 16% paper. Collection efficiency remains severely poor, at 31.5%. Informal recyclers known as Nakasha or Barkata collect approximately 7% of total waste, supporting roughly 3,900 people, whereas filthy open dumps and unsorted medical …

Empirical Results From The Eliminations Of Municipal Minimum Parking Requirements, David A. Griffith

Honors Theses

Minimum Parking Requirements (MPR) are municipal zoning ordinances mandating a set number of off-street parking spaces for new developments. Since the 1950s, MPR has been the near-universal way American municipalities supply parking, though growing criticisms since the late 1990s have targeted the policy for distorting development patterns, imposing high costs, and subsidizing personal vehicle use. Beginning in the early 2010s and increasingly in the early 2020s, cities and counties across the United States have moved to reform or eliminate MPR. This paper is the first empirical study of the economic effects of these removals. Using a two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences OLS …

Ai Is Taking Over!: A New Generation Of Unemployment Fears, Amaya V. Hepburn

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The growing panic surrounding AI taking over the workforce is strong in a distinct group of demographics, in contrast to the fear of computers taking over the workforce that was seen in previous generations. This suggests that AI developments have sparked a wave of fear that is unlike the fear of tech developments in the past. I have discovered that this fear is prevalent across several demographics: age, employment, and income. By cross-analyzing through the 2017 and 2025 fear surveys, I discovered that fear of AI is more prevalent in younger generations and is more threatening to students entering the …

The Impatience Of Winning: An Analysis Of Time Discounting, Predictive Modeling, And The Nba Draft, Alec R. Plante

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This paper examines whether NBA draft decisions can be better explained by incorporating non-geometric time discounting into a model of general manager decision making. Using a dataset of 285 NBA draft prospects over a 12-year period, the impact of college statistics on Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) is determined, and these impact values are then used to create a “predicted” VORP for the first 4 seasons of each player’s career: a projection of what a general manager might think of a prospect’s future value given their college statistics. Following this, geometric and hyperbolic time discounting models are applied to estimate …

Two Essays In Development: Convergence And Technological Adoption, Jacob Campbell

All Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of two essays in development economics, both related to conver gence either in outcomes (Chapter 1) or ultimate causes (Chapter 2).

Chapter 1:

This paper investigates the dynamics of productivity convergence across the United States from 1800 to 2020. Exploiting a novel historical dataset from Tamura et al. (2025), I examine β- and σ-convergence at both aggregate and sectoral levels for the entire history of the United States. I f ind a long-run trend toward convergence consistent with the conditions of an integrated national market with free mobility of labor and capital. However, the pace of …

Gme As A Healthcare And Economic Driver In Southern Nevada, Tripp Umbach

Policy Briefs and Reports

In early 2025, the Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation (NHBC) commissioned Tripp Umbach to conduct a comprehensive study examining the current state and future expansion of physician training and retention in Southern Nevada. The approach recommended in this report is rooted in strategic partnerships among medical institutions, proven funding approaches, and needed policy changes. Tripp Umbach, a nationally renowned private consultancy specializing in medical education expansion strategies, reviewed data, conducted interviews, and developed recommendations to expand GME, highlighting its profound economic impact in Southern Nevada.

Credential Shortages In Higher Education Programs In Mountain West Metro Areas, 2024, Isabelle G. Graham, Kristian Thymianos, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet reports data on workforce demand for middle-skills jobs across five high-paying occupational categories: healthcare, management, blue-collar, protective services, and STEM. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce report, “Missed Opportunities: Credential Shortages in Programs Aligned with High-Paying Middle-Skills Jobs in 55 US Metro Areas,” includes metro-level data on 55 metro areas in the United States in 2024.2 This fact sheet focuses on data for five Mountain West metro areas, including Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO; Las-Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV; Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Salt Lake City, UT; and Tucson, AZ.

China-Canada Resource Diplomacy: New Era Of Land Grabbing, Valdrin Dragusha

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

This paper examines the evolving economic relationship between China and Canada, particularly in the context of China's transition from a strictly social economy to an authoritarian socialist market economy. It highlights the implications of China's Going Out Policy initiated in 2000, aimed at securing vital natural resources amidst growing domestic demands driven by rapid economic expansion. The paper analyzes China's significant demand for resources, its sustainable development policies, and the changing dynamics of land acquisitions, particularly in relation to Canada, which is perceived as a strategic investment destination due to its abundant natural resources and technological advancements in clean energy. …

People Who Moved In The Mountain West, 2024, Anthony Arroyo, Sydney Mitchell, Maisoon Faris, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet presents 2024 data on state and city-level mobility rates across the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Point2Homes’ “Mobility Rates Reach Record Low: In 2024, Americans Moved Less Than Ever” report provides data on mobility rates within states, as well as the rate of new residents moving into states and cities across the U.S. This fact sheet highlights mobility rates within Mountain West states, the rate of new residents moving into Mountain West states, and the rate of new residents moving into 63 Mountain West cities. This fact sheet also includes national …

Supersuit Up Or Get Left Behind: Why A Personal Agentic Os Is Required For Commercial Viability In The New Economy, Gary Sheng, Ron Roberts

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

In my first article, The Writing on the Wall, we laid out the case: self-improving AI has arrived, the economy is splitting, and every organization faces an existential choice. This paper answers the question we heard most after that piece: “Okay, I believe you. What do I do on Monday morning?” The answer is your Personal Agentic OS. It is the minimum viable infrastructure that turns you from a passive consumer of AI into a sovereign operator of it. And in April 2026, three events converged to make this the most urgent professional skill in the world: Andrej Karpathy’s LLM …

Inequality And Well-Being, Sarah E. Boslaugh

Theses

Human well-being has been a topic of interest to philosophers at least since the time of Aristotle, and well-being has also been a core concern of social scientists since the birth of the discipline in the late 18^th century. Some theories of well-being include economic inequality as a factor, and multiple ways to measure this factor have been developed; as with well-being, there is no single best measure of economic inequality and the choice of which measure to use may be based on both theoretical and practical reasons. I argue that income inequality should always be included as a …

A Counterfactual Analysis Of The Impact Of Stock Market Absence On Economic Growth In Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries, Etsub Tekola Jemberu, Adriana Knápková, Bruce Dehning

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

Despite the global expansion of financial markets as a strategy for financial reform over the past century, around one-sixth of the world’s countries lack a formal stock market. This paper provides novel evidence from nine sub-Saharan African countries on how the absence of stock markets impacts economic growth. Using the synthetic control method (SCM), we estimate the counterfactual GDP per capita these countries would have experienced had they established a stock market during 1993–1995. The findings reveal that the absence of a stock market resulted in substantial losses for most countries, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Comoros, Guinea, …

Rising Numbers, Rising Risks: Population, Growth, And Natural Disasters, Sophia Becker-Toro, Yu Ouyang

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

How does population size and growth affect the risk of natural disasters? On October 7, 2024, before Hurricane Milton makes landfall in the Tampa Bay area, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issues a dire warning to affected citizens: “I can say without any dramatization whatsoever. If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die.” While there is an extensive literature which focuses on the impact of climate change and/or natural disasters, there is a dearth of works on how population affects the risks of natural disasters. As both the frequency and severity of storms and …

Search Costs, Intermediation, And Trade: Experimental Evidence From Ugandan Agricultural Markets, Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Craig Mcintosh, Meredith Startz

Discussion Papers

We study the large-scale experimental rollout of a platform that reduced search and matching frictions in Ugandan agricultural markets by connecting buyers and sellers. Market integration improved substantially: trade increased and price gaps fell. Interpreting the experiment through a trade model, we estimate treatment effects accounting for equilibrium changes that impact control markets. The intervention reduced fixed trade costs by 20% and increased trade flows between treated markets by 7% and across all markets by 1%. Scale economies shaped engagement:few farmers used the platform, but equilibrium price convergence from improved arbitrage by larger traders passed through to farm revenue.

Essays On Family Economics, Culture, Inequality, And Growth, Rouzhi Liang

Economics Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of essays on how family resource allocation and cultural values shape innovation, inequality, and long-run economic development. Across the chapters, I combine quantitative modeling and empirical analysis to understand the determinants of inequality and long-run growth.

Chapter 1 studies how parental fertility and bequest decisions affect children’s potential to become entrepreneurs when financial barriers exist. Motivated by evidence that high-income parents tend to have fewer children and leave larger bequests and allocate more resources per child, I develop an overlapping-generations model with endogenous fertility, bequests, and occupational choice, calibrated to U.S. data. The model shows that, when …

A National Security Strategy For The Middle East, Vanessa Rice, Rudy Torres, Addy Horgan, Joy Omosa, Mark Westfall

School of Public Policy Capstones

This National Security Strategy addresses the persistent national security challenges the United States faces in the Middle East, a region vital for global energy supply, economic connectivity, and a source of anti-American extremism. Recognizing the failures of past "haphazard experimentation," the strategy proposes a thoughtful, pragmatic plan prioritizing five distinct and congruent interest areas: Maintaining Regional Access, Supporting Regional Stability, Ensuring Energy Security, Defending American Citizens and Personnel, and Preserving and Protecting Western Ideals. The strategy outlines actions such as: countering Chinese and Russian influence through intelligence sharing and defense incentives; containing Iran via a new, permanent nuclear deal and …

From Ideas To Impact: Evaluating How Financial Technology Expands Financial Inclusion Across Countries, Shravani Atakari

Posters - 2026

Financial inclusion refers to access and use of financial services (World Bank, 2022). Traditional finance excludes users due to:

• High costs • Geographic distance • Limited credit History . Fintech expands access through digital tools Purpose: Analyze how fintech improves inclusion and what drives adoption

Research Questions How does financial technology reduce barriers to financial inclusion, and what factors influence its adoption among underserved populations? Objectives Identify key barriers to financial inclusion Analyze how fintech reduces these barriers Examine adoption factors (TAM + UTAUT) Propose solutions to improve adoption

Mica Productions: The Sad Truth Behind Cosmetic Corporations' Impact On Children's Well-Being In India, Nyleen Benavides

Posters - 2026

Mica is a shiny silicate mineral found in granite, crystals, or rocks. This mineral has attracted the eyes of many cosmetic corporations. Due to high rates of unemployment and poverty in Asian countries, particularly in India’s Jharkhand region, corporations have taken over to profit the exportations of mica. India relies on illegal child labor in mica mining sites that are not only hazardous to children, but the economy and ecosystem. Previous research has shown how cosmetic corporations use mica as one of their main ingredients for shiny pigmentations within their products. However, there is limited research that has indicated the …

Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Global Inequality, Valentina Caceres

Posters - 2026

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a central tool in the global system, shaping economic growth, political power, and international influence. While AI is often celebrated for innovation and progress in different sectors like education, healthcare, security and more, its development is uneven and mostly concentrated in wealthy countries. Because AI is increasingly embedded in economic production, public administration, and social services, access to AI capabilities has become a key determinant of global competitiveness and influence. Many developing nations lack the capital, infrastructure, and technological capacity needed to compete in the global economy driven by AI. This imbalance matters because …

Can Argentina Overcome The Lithium Natural Resource Curse? A Case Study Into Argentina's Institutional Framework For Lithium Supply Chain Development And Innovation, Colby Greene

Senior Theses

Through the analysis of the natural resource curse, the development of institutional frameworks in societal contexts, the nature of natural resource-based industry value chains, and value creation through institutions and value chains, all in the context of Argentina’s lithium industry, this paper finds that Argentina has failed to implement the necessary institutions and promote proper policy to promote value addition and real economic growth through the conduit of the development of the lithium industry, yet it is not actively a victim of the natural resource curse. In the hierarchical nature of mining value chains, Argentina has permitted their vast lithium …

Protection Vs. Progression: A Macroeconomic Approach To Military Expenditure Direct Effects On Social Outcomes Using Ihdi Measures, Connor Graham

Global Tides

This study examines whether military expenditure reduces inequality-adjusted human development and how national governance quality moderates these effects. Using panel data covering 121 countries from 2010-2023, two-way fixed effects models are employed to estimate the relationship between military spending and the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). Three key findings emerge from the analysis based on the resulting data. First, a one percentage point increase in military spending reduces IHDI by 0.0012-0.0015 points. Second, the effects prove seven times larger in developed countries than in developing ones, which runs contrary to expectations and prior literature. Lastly, political stability emerged as a …