Economics Commons^™

Husbands’ Job Loss And Wives’ Labor Force Participation During Economic Downturns: Are All Recessions The Same?, Kristin Smith, Marybeth J. Mattingly

Sociology

Earlier research showed an added-worker effect for wives when their husbands stopped working during the Great Recession (December 2007–June 2009) but not when husbands stopped working in recent years of prosperity (2004–2005). By including one recession per decade for the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, this article builds upon that research by using Current Population Survey data to compare wives’ labor force responses to their husbands stopping work across three recessions to determine whether wives’ employment responses during the Great Recession differed from those during earlier recessions. Additionally, we hypothesize motivations for wives entering the labor force and consider the occupations …

Perceptions Of Crime And Safety In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: 2014 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bradley Lubben

Nebraska Rural Poll

Most rural Nebraskans are not worried or not very worried about either crime in their community or about personally being a victim of crime. However, persons living in or near larger communities are more likely than persons living in or near smaller communities to be worried or very worried about crime. Furthermore, most persons living in or near communities with populations less than 10,000 are not worried or not very worried about crime in their community.

Trust also remains high in the rural areas. Most rural Nebraskans say they count on their neighbors to watch their property while they are …

A Demographic Portrait Of The Mexican-Origin Population In Nebraska, Lissette Aliaga-Linares

Latino/Latin American Studies Reports

A study released from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Office of Latino and Latin American Studies (OLLAS) chronicles the current state of Mexican-origin residents of Nebraska, finding that while the numbers of immigrants moving into Nebraska has slowed in recent years, the population continues to grow and become more a part of the state’s demographic makeup.

The study, which was also funded in part by the Sherwood Foundation, examined more than a century of census data from the United States, finding that the more than 140,000 Mexican-origin residents in Nebraska as of 2012 has rapidly increased since …

Does Retirement Make You Happy? A Simultaneous Equations Approach, Raquel Fonseca, Arie Kapteyn, Jinkook Lee, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Continued improvements in life expectancy and fiscal insolvency of public pensions have led to an increase in pension entitlement ages in several countries, but its consequences for subjective well-being are largely unknown. Financial consequences of retirement complicate the estimation of effects of retirement on subjective well-being as financial circumstances may influence subjective well-being, and therefore, the effects of retirement are likely to be confounded by the change in income. At the same time, unobservable determinants of income are probably related with unobservable determinants of subjective wellbeing, making income possibly endogenous if used as control in subjective wellbeing regressions. To address …

Mountain Monitor - 2nd Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic growth returned to the 10 major metro areas of the Mountain West in the second quarter of 2014 after slippage in the first quarter of the year. The resumption of vitality progressed unevenly, however. Denver and Salt Lake City pulled ahead as the fastest-growing metro areas in the region. Ogden and Provo’s days of above-average growth appeared to be fading. Las Vegas’ economic recovery advanced strongly, but Sun Belt peers Phoenix and Tucson had more difficulty moving beyond the first quarter’s slowdown. Albuquerque, for its part, welcomed a return to employment and output growth.

Across the region’s 10 major …

Childhood Stress: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Intergenerational Circumstances Of Child Hunger, Mariana Chilton, Molly Knowles

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), including abuse, neglect, and household instability, affect lifelong health and economic potential. While relationships between household food insecurity and caregiver’s childhood exposure to abuse and neglect are underexplored, preliminary evidence indicates that caregivers reporting very low food security report traumatic events in their childhoods that lead to poor physical and mental health. Building on this evidence, this study investigates how adverse childhood experiences are associated with the intergenerational transmission of household food insecurity.

Distributional Effects Of Welfare Reform Experiments: A Panel Quantile Regression Examination, Carlos Lamarche, Robert Paul Hartley

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

In an influential article, Bitler, Gelbach and Hoynes (American Economic Re- view, 2006; 96, 988-1012) illustrate the importance of estimating heterogeneous impacts of welfare reform experiments. They find that the mean treatment effect offers an uninfor- mative summary of opposing effects, while the treatment effects are significantly different across quantiles. We replicate their results and evaluate the robustness of their findings to accounting for individual-specific heterogeneity possibly associated with welfare program participation. We find results that are in general similar to Bitler’s et al. findings, although the interpretation of labor supply effects in the upper tail is revised. We find …

Analysis And Evaluation On Cost And Benefit Of Vts, Weiwei Xie

Maritime Safety & Environment Management Dissertations (Dalian)

No abstract provided.

Life In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska: Perceptions Of Well-Being, 2014 Nebraska Rural Poll Results, Rebecca J. Vogt, Cheryl A. Burkhart-Kriesel, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bradley Lubben

Nebraska Rural Poll

By many different measures, rural Nebraskans are positive about their community. Many rural Nebraskans rate their community as friendly, trusting and supportive. Most rural Nebraskans also say it would be difficult to leave their community. In addition, most rural Nebraskans disagree that their community is powerless to control its future.

Differences of opinion exist by the size of their community. Residents of smaller communities are more likely than residents of larger communities to rate their community favorably on its social dimensions. However, residents of larger communities are more likely than residents of smaller communities to say their community has changed …

No. 29: Zimbabwe’S Return Migrants – Before & After Challenges, David Mandiyanike

Southern African Migration Programme

Various countries in the developing world have implemented policies and incentives to encourage the participation of their respective diasporas in development. The ‘best case’ countries include the Philippines, India, Mexico, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Morocco, Kenya and Ghana, and there seems to be a positive correlation between reforms meant to facilitate diaspora participation and the level of actual participation. The reforms and policies not only contribute to the diaspora maintaining social and psychological links with their home countries but also serve as vehicles for promoting remittances and investments. However, diaspora participation in the (re)development of the country of origin can never be …

Conference Presentation: The Power Of Words In Tension: Enterprise/Strategy As A Dilemma In Neoliberalism’S Persistence., Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

We address how enterprise is related to, another important discourse, strategy. From a discourse analysis of the talk of small firm owner-managers, emerges a view of strategy and enterprise as a single, integrated entity, bound together by some commonalities but more importantly by paired opposites reminiscent of ideological dilemmas (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton & Radley, 1988). This dilemmatic nature of enterprise/strategy discourse adds to explanations for the persistence of the neoliberal form of enterprise, with the entrepreneur as the heroic saviour of all, based on the entrepreneur as an empty signifier (Jones & Spicer, 2009; Kenny & …

Ageism, Honesty, And Trust, Eric Schniter, Timothy W. Shields

ESI Publications

Age-based discrimination is considered undesirable, yet we know little about age stereotypes and their effects on honesty and trust. To investigate this aspect of ageism, we presented older adults (over age 50) and younger adults (under age 25) with incentivized belief elicitation tasks about anticipated interaction behaviors and then a series of same, different, and unknown-aged group interactions in a strategic-communication game. All adults shared consensual stereotypes about uncooperative younger adults and cooperative older adults that demonstrated “wisdom of crowds”. While the out-group was consistently stereotyped as relatively different and more dishonest and suspicious than observed to be, the in-group …

Conditional Cash Transfers, Community, And Empowerment Of Women In Colombia, Harlan Downs-Tepper

21st Century Social Justice

In 2001, the Colombian government initiated an experiment in poverty alleviation called Familias en Acción. This conditional cash transfer (CCT) program takes a novel approach to poverty reduction by addressing short- and long-term factors contributing to poverty. Though Colombia’s CCT program is just one of a wave of similar initiatives, its unique context and unexpected social effects, beyond the primary intentions of program designers, differentiate it from other such programs. Drawing on 200 interviews and focus group discussions which he conducted with academic experts, program beneficiaries and program administrators in three Colombian cities, the author finds that an unexpected …

Creative Economies: Using Arts To Revitalize Post-Industrial Cities And Towns In Massachusetts, Anna Price

Honors College Theses

During my senior year in the Honors College at UMass Boston, I became involved in the yearlong Creative and Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship program. During this program, I interned alongside other UMass Boston students at a local creative non-profit organization, providing the staff with assistance as they worked towards achieving their goals. This internship was funded by the Creative Economy Fund (CE Fund) from the University of Massachusetts President’s Office. My involvement in this program sparked an interest in pursuing an Honors thesis investigating the CE Fund and how the awarded projects are benefitted by that fund.

After looking through all …

Statement Of Concern, Heartland Workers Union, Office Of Latino/Latin American Studies (Ollas)

Latino/Latin American Studies Other Publications

The Heartland Workers Center (HWC) and the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies (OLLAS) have issued a statement of concern about the humanitarian crisis confronting refugee children from Central America. We support our local partner organizations in their work to address this crisis. Please feel free to distribute widely.

El Centro Laboral y OLLAS han publicado un documento sobre la crisis humanitaria afectando a miles de niños centroamericanos. Adáptela para sus tareas educativas y de incidencia política y distribuyan ampliamente.

Marriage And Child Bearing, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

This chapter considers the impact of existing incentives and policies to encourage marriage and child-birth, and other direct and indirect ways to raise the total fertility rate (TFR).

The Fair And Laissez-Faire Markets: From A Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Baseline To A Fair Market, Eric L. Dixon

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The essay begins with a brief overview of the role of the neoliberal conception of the laissez-faire market in modern political economy. The essay then goes on to defend three claims: 1) the laissez-faire version of a market should not be considered the economic ideal or baseline version of a market because often the fundamental conditions required to reach a genuine equilibrium are unfulfilled under a laissez-faire environment, 2) a distribution resultant from a laissez-faire market should not be considered the ultima facie just distributive baseline because an unregulated market may allocate commodities according to morally arbitrary factors and requires …

Income, Program Participation, Poverty, And Financial Vulnerability: Research And Data Needs, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The aim of this paper is to assess the adequacy of the data infrastructure in the United States to meet future research and policy evaluation needs as it pertains to income, program participation, poverty, and financial vulnerability. I first discuss some major research themes that are likely to dominate policy and scientific discussions in the coming decade. This list includes research on the long-term consequences of income inequality and mobility, issues of transfer-program participation and intergenerational dependence, challenges with poverty measurement and poverty persistence, and material deprivation. I then summarize what information we currently collect in the U.S. that is …

Lessons From Lived Experience: From Fresh Insights To Effective Action, Lisa Deangelis, Maureen A. Scully, Andrea Wight

Emerging Leaders Program Team Projects

The 34 fellows in the 2014 Emerging Leaders Program worked with community partners to generate the theme, “Learning from Lived Experience: From fresh insights to effective action." Each year, the projects draw upon a theme or lesson from the prior year. Last year and this year, fellows saw how the lived experiences of both their stakeholders and themselves generated nuanced and appropriate approaches to problem-solving. The fellows worked with six community partners, giving their time and professional skills to understand how to frame complex social challenges, engage new partners and resources, and sharpen strategic plans. They conducted surveys, interviews, open …

Mountain Monitor - 1st Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor finds that the rate of economic recovery in the major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West is no longer impervious to national trends.

The previous edition of the Mountain Monitor observed that the regional rate of recovery seemed to be converging toward that of the nation. This edition of the Mountain Monitor suggests that the trend has progressed further.

The rate of economic recovery broadly slowed across the region from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2014, just as it did nationally. The national headlines in the first three months of the …

Patterns Of Dissaving Among U.S. Elders, Deborah Gray

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examined patterns of decumulation and the role that health events and marital disruption play in forming those patterns. Study data were drawn from six biennial waves of the HRS (1998 - 2008), and merged RAND HRS data files for the period 1998 - 2008. The a priori expectation was that there will be variation in drawdown strategies households employ.

Findings suggest that patterns of dissaving are heterogeneous. The five most prevalent patterns were discussed. Households predominantly transitioned between oversaving and overspending. Households are expected to have a goal of on target spending therefore the observed cycle's dissaving will …

Reused Refuse: Freeganism And The Shifting Hegemonies Of Consumption And Waste, Jamie Corliss

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Freeganism is a counter-culture practice, lifestyle, and philosophy that resists the waste and exploitation inherent to capitalism. By examining freegan practices and philosophies, specifically dumpster diving, this project reveals how these actions help make apparent and shift dominant ideologies about waste and consumption by re-injecting value into wasted items. The project argues that the waste that freegans live on has the semiotic power to shift dominant attitudes about waste and gives freegans the means to survive with limited participation in the economy, but this waste is a byproduct of capitalist production, not a cause of it. Freegans are conceptually paving …

Moving Motherly: Raising Children In The Low-Wage Hospitality Industry, Anna E. Hackman

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the hospitality industry, women with children are in a unique position. Government deregulation of corporate labor practices, the exit of manufacturing overseas, and the rise of the service sector economy in the United States has contributed to the development of a surplus, low-wage labor force. Tourism is one subset of this labor force that deserves further attention. Although there is substantial literature on the structure of low-wage labor in tourism economies (Herod and Aguiar, 2006), as well as the impacts on work-family balance (Liladrie, 2009), a less explored topic is the impacts hospitality labor has on mothering. The purpose …

Does Being An Only Child Affect The Attitudes Of Chinese Students?, Yuwei Wei

Senior Theses

Three decades has passed since China started implementing regulations and policies for population control. Today, the ever-famous “One-Child Policy” is starting to not only lose its popularity, but also its effectiveness in spurring economic growth. This paper will discuss the heavy social cost the last generation had to pay for the growth of economy and the slowing down of population growth, as well as the challenges in social adaptation young adults face today. As part of the literature review, this paper examines the issue of the “Upside down pyramid” and analyzes the family planning policy’s impact on China’s demography. The …

Crime In Game Theoretic Models: An Exploration Of The Rational Criminal In A Variety Of Frameworks, Benjamin A. Chalmers

Student Scholarship

There is as much contention over the cause of crime as there is about how to solve it, and the two issues are inextricable from one another. While the idea of studying such a deeply social and humanistic issue through the ‘cold lens’ of mathematics may seem unorthodox or even unproductive to the layperson, the practice has become commonplace since Gary Becker’s introduction of the ‘rational criminal’ model in his paper Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach in 1968. The rational criminal model is a method of explaining the actions of a criminal not by attributing them to an inherent …

Women’S Empowerment And Community-Driven Development: Evidence From The Solomon Islands, Erin M. Steffen

Master's Theses

The study evaluates the impact to-date of a community-driven development (CDD) program on women’s empowerment in the Solomon Islands. Originally launched in 2008, the CDD program is known as the Rural Development Program (RDP). The RDP aims to foster employment and income growth by focusing on participatory development, demand-responsive provisions of government services, and the creation of a supportive economic environment for small-scale rural development. The RDP process mandates female involvement, which manifests predominately in the selection of community infrastructure projects and by participation in a RDP subcommittee known as the Sub-Implementation Committee (SIC). Members of the SIC are in …

Effects Of Maternal Depression On Family Food Insecurity, Kelly Noonan, Hope Corman, Nancy E. Reichman

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Theory suggests that adverse life events—such as unemployment or health shocks—can result in food insecurity, which has increased substantially in the U.S. over the past decade alongside the obesity epidemic. We test this proposition by estimating the effects of a specific and salient mental health event—maternal depression during the postpartum year—on child and family food insecurity. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort, we estimate the effects of maternal depression on food insecurity using both single- and twostage models, and explore potential buffering effects of relevant public assistance programs and supports. We find that moderate to severe maternal …

Hot Crime: Economic Analysis And Insight Into The Relationship Between A City's Latitude And Its Rate Of Violence, Erin K. Piepenbrok

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Every day in America, a case of violent crime makes headlines across the television, newspapers, websites, and social media. These tragedies deeply affect those directly involved and the communities in which the crimes take place. Not only are individuals physically and mentally affected by violent crime, but communities and cities suffer an economic loss from rising violent crime rates. Reducing the current rates of violent crime (robbery, assaults, rapes, and murders) can reduce costs for cities and taxpayers, while ultimately improving the quality of life for Americans. Research into what affects violent crime rates lead to discoveries that unemployment, gun …

Centralized Institutions And Cascades, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Why do sudden and massive social, economic, and political changes occur when and where they do? Are there institutional preconditions that encourage such changes when present and discourage such changes when absent? I employ a general model which suggests that cascades which induce massive equilibrium changes are more likely to occur in regimes with centralized coercive power, defined as the ability to impose more than one type of sanction (economic, legal, political, social, or religious). Centralized authorities are better able to suppress subversive actions when external shocks are small, as citizens have little incentive to incur numerous types of sanctions. …

Exploring The Neighborhood Preferences Of A Segment Of Millennials In Omaha, Nebraska, Aaron Kloke

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

In 2010, Millennials, or those between 18 and 34, surpassed the Baby Boomers in population size. Today, Millennials, also known as Generation Y, make up over 25 percent of the United States’ population. In Omaha, they make up 26.9 percent of the population. The next largest generation in Omaha, the Baby Boomers, make for 19.2 percent of the population. Clearly, this emerging demographic has the ability to change the way we create and design our built environment if it so chooses.

To review how this generation may choose to change the way we design our future neighborhoods, national trends were …