Economics Commons^™

Developing International Self-Reliance In Undergraduate Students Through Study Trips, Elizabeth Yobaccio, Ramesh Mohan, Jack Trifts

Finance Department Faculty Journal Articles

This paper reports on the development of a large scale international study trip program developed by an AACSB accredited institution to enhance the global perspective of its students. Developed collaboratively between the College of Business, the College of Arts and Sciences and the university's Student Affairs division, the program has resulted in more than 750 students participating in international experiences in one of 18 trips throughout the world. This paper documents the development of this program and provides important insights for anyone planning to offer a similar experience to their students.

How One Trade Could Change The World: High Frequency Trading And The Flash Crash Of 2010, Sarah Perlman

Honors Projects in Finance

Financial markets are controlled directly by a small population of people, but have direct effects on almost every aspect of the global community. Financial markets are now flooded with computerized algorithms that have drastically changed the face of trading. As with any advances in technology, there are always unforeseen events that create new challenges, and adjustments that need to be made. In our increasingly global and technological world, one wrong click of the mouse in New York could affect the stock markets in London, Tokyo, and Brazil. On May 6th, 2010, such a situation occurred and caused the Dow Jones …

An Analysis On The Factors Affecting Fertility Rates Across The U.S., Britany St. Sauveur

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper analyzes the fertility rate or the number of live births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years old. The research is based off of census data from the Statistical Abstract of the United States from 1990 to 2009. The purpose of researching fertility and birth rates is to explain the slight fluctuations during this time frame. This study looks into the factors as to why this change has occurred, such as race, education, marital status, economic impact, age, and region. The results from over the past 20 years have proven that these demographic and geographic factors have both affected …

Pigs Debt Crisis: Macroeconomic Factors, David Fiorino

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

Italy’s public debt has seen large increases over the past few years, and as a result they were bailed out by other European Union members. Either their large trade deficits, inability to stimulate growth, or lack of tax revenues are all reason why Italy has fallen to such crisis. Other countries in the EU such as Portugal, Spain, and Greece have had similar debt problems and received a bailout as well. This paper will attempt to explain the relationship between the public debt to GDP ratio and some macroeconomic conditions using panel data from 1990 to 2010 for the countries …

How Consumer Sentiment Affects Personal Consumption, Gregory Hughes

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the relationship between consumer confidence and major economic indicators as it relates to the United States after the financial crisis of 2008. This study reveals the effect consumer sentiment has on economic forecasting as it relates to personal consumption. Macro level data used to indicate future economic performance is lacking without the inclusion of consumer confidence levels.

The Effect Of Homeownership On Household Savings In The United States, Jacquelyn Ammirato

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the effect of changes in house prices on the saving patterns of households in the United States of America. The paper uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Three empirical models are run, one for 2009, one for 2005 and one for 1999 data, to account for differences in household income, age of the head of household, employment status, and mortgage information. The results indicate that whether the home is owned or rented has a significant impact on household savings in each year.

Correlation Between Economic Factors And High-Technology Export In Asia-Pacific Nations, Jiyan Hu

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the correlation between high-tech exports in Asian-Pacific nations and the economic effects in term of economic growth. Some economic factors will be highlighted in this paper, such as foreign direct investment inflow, R&D expenditure, country openness as well as gross saving. The model will explain some economic factors are the key to determinant the volume of the high-tech export in Asian-Pacific nations. In order to understand the model and interpretation of each factor, high-tech export per worker will be targeted as a dependent variable. This paper will include data from 1997 to 2007 and it will be …

Does Money Matter? An Empirical Analysis On The Effects Of Campaign Financing In Recent Senatorial Elections, Joseph Cunningham

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This empirical analysis quantifies political science variables and tests to see if the sources of campaign finance money matters and ultimately determines the most important factors affecting a candidate’s chances of becoming elected. Using data from the 2004 and 2010 Senate elections, this paper tests the importance of a number of political science variables including party affiliation, sources of campaign financing, and incumbency, among others. The effects of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and its democratic implications are also analyzed to see if money in politics weakens America’s democratic process. There are few studies in the field that are …

Gender Discrimination: What Factors Influence The Level Of Gender Discrimination Facing U.S. Workers?, Joshua Ballance

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper uses previous research conducted by the author which analyzes gender discrimination at the state level. Using state level discrimination coefficients, this paper looks to analyze why discrimination varies significantly across the United States. The empirical model is constructed using a panel data set over the past twenty years to develop a model that explains why variations in the level of gender discrimination faced by U.S. workers has persisted despite the fact that the level of gender discrimination has decreased over this period.

Offshoring And The Effects On American It Workers, Kristen Bousquet

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper will use an existing model from Amiti and Wei (2009) to illustrate the potentially positive effects that offshoring will have on the productivity of American IT workers and the IT industry. The inputs that will be used to measure productivity are labor, capital, materials, service inputs, and the offshoring of materials and services and were collected from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Based on a previous study from Amiti and Wei (2009), the results may suggest that there is a positive correlation from offshoring and productivity.

The Impact Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Plan On The Job Market, Matthew Schur

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper will investigate the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on the job market. The ARRA, also known as the Stimulus or the Recovery Act, is a stimulus package that was passed by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009 and signed into law on the 17th of February by President Barack Obama. The primary focus of this bill was to save and create jobs in response to the 2000’s recession that our economy faced. We will evaluate impact of the ARRA by using the latest census bureau data of each state and regression analysis. Our …

The Impact Of Defense Spending On Economic Growth In The United States, Nathaniel Harty

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper addresses whether or not the United States’ government’s choice to cut defense spending is going to have a negative impact on economic growth, and therefore slow down the US recovery. This paper analyzes the findings during the last 70 years regarding defense spending and its effect on economic growth, through comparing that relationship between studies under various circumstances. It then goes into detail of the most recent data from the United States to see if there is a casual relationship between defense spending and economic growth. This paper will use the Granger Causality Method to test the significance …

Crime Rate In Massachusetts Cities: Has The Negative Economy Affected This?, Karissa Guerette

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This review concentrates on the relationship between the effects the downturned economy has had on the crime rate. The paper examines specifically Massachusetts cities unemployment rate and average income, along with education level. With the financial crisis starting in 2008, this paper will take a look 2010, a couple years after the peak of the recession. The results show the increasing crime rates are positively related to the change of times with the economy leading to unemployment and lower income level.

Tax Rates On Alcohol: Does It Affect Demand For Particular States?, Matthew Schoenewolf

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

In this paper, different variables will be tested to figure out whether or not different levels of tax have a determinant on the consumption or demand for alcohol. The study will examine several variables including the sales taxes in each state, the different taxes on beer, wine and spirits, along with GDP per capita, death rates and whether or not there is an advertising ban in a particular state. The results from the research and tests performed focus on the factors that are closely correlated to the consumption of alcohol, with GDP per capita proving to be the most influential …

Social And Economic Factors Leading To Differences In Us State Unemployment, Taylor Neighbours

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper dives into the socio-economic factors that lead to differences in U.S. State unemployment rates. The study will look at and evaluate prior economic literature, including regression analysis, comparative statistics, and raw data from the BLS and Census Bureau. Further, it will take select parts from past models to create and analyze an economic regression model. The data to be found below is a cross-sectional interpretation of each of the 50 states for the years 2000 & 2010. The root causes for fluctuations in unemployment can help economists better understand how to monitor and manage unemployment levels on a …

The Environmental Kuznets: For High, Middle And Low Income Latin American Countries, Allia Afifi

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the relationship between environmental quality and economic development through the use of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. The study will examine the effect of economic development on the environmental quality for selected high, middle and low income Latin American countries. The model will look at emission levels (CO2 emissions in metric tons per capita) in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Columbia, Honduras and Nicaragua as affected by changes in Gross Domestic Product. The results show that there is an inverted U-shaped curve representing the relationship between environmental degradation (CO2 emissions per capita) and GDP per capita, supporting the EKC hypothesis.

Education And Income Inequality In Latin American Countries, Courtney Weiss

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

It is a common theory that education levels and inequality are highly correlated. In layman’s terms, as access to education increases, the earning potential of the poor also increases. Therefore, the poverty gap shrinks. However, when access to education is limited, there is a greater disparity between the earning potential of the rich and that of the poor, thereby expanding the poverty gap. The following paper examines and compares the education levels and income inequality across 14 Latin American countries. These countries experience “persistent” and “pervasive” inequality impacting all aspects of life (de Ferranti et al., 2004). Inequality will be …

Investment Styles, Fees, & Returns Among Individually Managed & Team Managed Mutual Funds, Kendal Cehanowicz

Honors Projects in Finance

Identifying a successful mutual fund investment involves a crucial analysis of alternatives, all of which influence the true benefit of the investment. Major considerations must include performance, management and fees; which ultimately determine investment returns. Studies have shown that team managed mutual funds exhibit similar risk adjusted performance to individually managed mutual funds, however studies lack this comparison of performance based on fund fees and investment objective. This gap in research implies that there is an opportunity to examine how fund management, investment objective, and fund fees affect overall returns to the investor. Using the 2010 Center for Research in …

Competition For Trophies Triggers Male Generosity, Xiaofei Sophia Pan, Daniel E. Houser

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Background

Cooperation is indispensable in human societies, and much progress has been made towards understanding human pro-social decisions. Formal incentives, such as punishment, are suggested as potential effective approaches despite the fact that punishment can crowd out intrinsic motives for cooperation and detrimentally impact efficiency. At the same time, evolutionary biologists have long recognized that cooperation, especially food sharing, is typically efficiently organized in groups living on wild foods, even absent formal economic incentives. Despite its evident importance, the source of this voluntary compliance remains largely uninformed. Drawing on costly signaling theory, and in light of the widely established competitive …

Do Foreign Direct Investment And Trade Openness Accelerate Economic Growth?, Donna Chan Wah Hak

Honors Projects in Economics

This research investigates the impact of trade openness and foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth. Using a framework proposed by Barro (1991), panel data regression analysis is performed on 5-year time periods between 1985 and 2005. A sample of 89 countries is analyzed using data collected from the World Development Indicators (WDI), Penn World Table, Barro and Lee (2010), and Polity IV Project datasets. The empirical analysis shows that conditional convergence occurs among the countries in the sample and that FDI net inflows per worker slightly increases the speed of conditional convergence. This study also finds evidence that FDI …

The Effects Of Natural Disasters On Donations To Non-Profits, Megan Mckenzie

Honors Projects in Finance

This study analyzes the relationship between natural disasters and donations to non-profit organizations in disaster-affected regions. Using regression analysis, this study seeks to determine the relationship based on various factors including the number of deaths, total number of people affected, the economic damage costs, and media coverage of a given disaster. The purpose of this study is to examine whether disaster-affected regions truly receive increased donations following a natural disaster, the sources of these donations (government grants versus private donations), the question of whether donations are diverted away from other non-profits in industries not related to relief efforts, the longevity …

The Importance Of Good Governance In Achieving Economic Growth For Developing Nations: An Analysis Of Sub-Saharan Africa, Karl Turner

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper aims to expand on the idea that good governance is essential in sustaining growth in developing countries. I have chosen variables that are specific to determining the effect of good governance on sustained growth in several Sub-Saharan African nations. These variables will take into account the increased levels of corruption and manipulation that takes place in many of these regions. By analyzing different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, I will be able to account for different economic and political conditions. My results show that although these countries differ in various aspects of macroeconomic policy, stable governance has been the …

Foreign Aid And Growth In Select African Countries, Thomas Strong

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper analyzes the effects of foreign aid on economic growth in a set of African countries. This paper differs from previous literature in several ways; this paper analyzes a small sample set of aid-receiving African countries of varying distances from the equator. This paper also uses the most up-to-date data available, which will provide an insight into the 21st century conditions. Previewing the empirical results, this paper determines that aid, in the form of technical cooperation grants, has a significant, positive impact on growth.

The Relationship Between Poverty And Crime: A Cross Section Analysis, Luke Fleming

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper compares the crime rates, poverty rates, and other economic statistics to determine if there is a relationship amongst the variables. The highest crime rates per capita in the world exist in developing countries; these countries also have very high rates of poverty. Is it a coincidence, or is there actually some substance to these facts? Crime is a complicated issue, and other variables like education, healthcare, and housing have to be taken into consideration. The results indicate that there is a relationship between certain types of crime and poverty, and that income inequality is significant to all types …

Determinants Of A Country's Happiness, Timothy Caradonio

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the relationship between several macroeconomic factors and the relative happiness of a country’s citizens. Inflation, GDP growth, real interest rate, and unemployment rate were selected as independent variables. Data on the dependent variable, the degree of happiness, was not available from other studies. Therefore, life satisfaction was used as the dependent variable which was obtained from the Happy Planet Index. This study was conducted using cross sectional data and the least squared method to determine if any of the independent variables are statistically significant to the happiness of a country.

Sexual Orientation Wage Differentials, Gian Spicuzza

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

Most early works find that homosexual and bisexual men suffer from a wage disadvantage and that lesbian and bisexual women earn a substantial wage premium compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Almost all earlier works use 1980-1990 General Social Survey data and Census 1990 data. This economic analysis uses more recent 2010 GSS data and finds statistically insignificant results that that both homosexual and bisexual men and women earn a wage differential. This is most likely attributed to the new terminology included in the 2010 GSS. For the first time, the GSS records the sexual orientation of the respondent whereas past …

A Comparative Analysis Of Development: Foreign Direct Investment And Remittances In Latin America, Jeffrey Denault

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

Economic growth in developing countries has long been thought to come from a variety of different economic factors. One of the most prevalent theories has been providing a country with high levels of foreign direct investment, encouraging the country to industrialize. Whilst there are obviously many other factors either inhibiting or encouraging a developing country’s growth, foreign direct investment has long been seen as the prime inflow of capital. However, in recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the transfer of funds to developing countries from migrant workers through remittances. This study explores the aggregate impact remittances have …

Analysis Of Employer Of Last Resort In The United States: Implications Of Educational Attainments And Wage Rates, Benjamin Dionne

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the feasibility and impact of an Employer of Last Resort (ELR) program in the United States. ELR could provide the US with a new policy direction in curbing poverty and creating growth. An ELR growth program would be run by the government to employ millions of unemployed and underemployed people in skilled and unskilled positions. This study aims to show that a well developed and administered ELR program could address the important issues facing the American economy and could lead to a significant economic impact. Using an ordinary least squared model the study establishes factors affecting the …

Tax Reform In Rhode Island: Developing A High Quality Revenue Stream, Nicholas A. Denice

Honors Projects in Accounting

The present study explores the current state of taxation in Rhode Island in relation to its sales tax. An analysis of the literature will examine how the current sales tax system compares with other alternatives and if it hurts the state's economic competitiveness as shown in tax burden studies. Using Rhode Island tax data from the Annual State Audit and Consumer Expenditure Survey, this study will analyze the current sales tax system in the state and determine whether an alternative model would lead to a higher-quality revenue stream. Data from the State of Rhode Island General Audit Report and the …

Economic Conditions And Employment Prospects: Examining The Experiences Of Bryant University Graduates In The Labor Market, Jeffrey Steacie

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Many authors have researched and identified trends in employment during good and bad economic times. The recent financial meltdown warrants a reexamination of these trends to see if they coincide with previous recessions and what lessons can be learned for those graduating and attempting to find employment. This report details the varying circumstances surrounding college graduates as they seek employment during times of both economic prosperity (or booms) and less fortunate times of economic busts (recessions). This is important since these trends may identity both potential roadblocks and benefits for gainful employment and future opportunities. Graduation is also a crucial …