Economics Commons^™

Essays On The Economic Analysis Of Transportation Systems, Hyoungsuk Shim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of four essays on the economic analysis of transportation systems. In the first chapter, the conventional disaggregate travel demand model, a probability model for the modeling of multiple modes, generally called random utility maximization (RUM), is expanded to a model of count of mode choice. The extended travel demand model is derived from general economic theory -- maximizing instantaneous utility on the time horizon, subject to a budget constraint -- and can capture the dynamic behavior of countable travel demand. Because the model is for countable dependent variables, it has a more realistic set of assumptions to …

Essays In Health Economics Of Cigarette Consumption, Yan Song

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1, the primary focus of this essay is to use a long time series of state cross sections for the 1955-2009 time period in the United States in order to predict cigarette consumption. This essay updates estimates of the rational addiction model of cigarette consumption obtained by Gary Becker, Michael Grossman, and Kevin Murphy in their seminal 1994 American Economic Review paper. By using two types of prices, the cigarette price and the cigarette tax, and employing a cigarette demand function, I verify that smoking is a rationally addictive form of behavior. This is based on the theory that …

Essays In The Economics Of Education And Health, Jesse Margolis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this work, I study several aspects of the economics of education and health. The first chapter focuses on education, analyzing the New York City Teacher Bonus Program. Recent reviews of the program have found lower student test scores at schools randomly chosen to receive performance pay than at control schools not eligible for bonuses. Several studies have suggested lower intrinsic motivation among teachers at treatment schools as a possible mechanism driving these surprising results. The program was abruptly ended after three years, allowing me to use post-trial data to study the program's persistent effect on intrinsic motivation absent any …

Optimal Targeting Regimes And Instrument Rules In The Basic New Keynesian Model, Luc Marest

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first chapter, the objective is to measure the value of commitment in executing monetary policies in the context of the New Keynesian model and with value that is represented by the standard quadratic welfare function containing weighted output gap and inflation variances. It is found that there is a substantial potential for improvement of welfare under commitment, but this depends on some key parameters in the model. The range of parameter calibrations most often found in the literature, however, suggests the improvements will be large. We then consider specific monetary policies akin to Taylor rules. From the optimality …

Education And Marriage Decisions Of Japanese Women And The Role Of The Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Linda N. Edwards, Takuya Hasebe, Tadashi Sakai

Economics Working Papers

Prompted by concordant upward trends in both the university advancement rate and the unmarried rate for Japanese women, this paper investigates whether the Equal Employment Opportunity Act (EEOA), which was passed in 1985, affected women's marriage decisions either directly or via their decisions to pursue university education. To this end, we estimate a model that treats education and marriage decisions as jointly determined using longitudinal data for Japanese women. We find little evidence that the passage of EEOA increased the proportion of women who advance to university, but strong support for the proposition that it increased the deterrent effect of …

Políticas De Precios Y Comercialización Agrícola Durante La Transición: Experiencias Y Lecciones Para Cuba, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo

Publications and Research

Las políticas de precios y comercialización de productos agrícolas desempeñaron un importante papel durante las transiciones en los antiguos países socialistas. Estas transiciones agrícolas primordialmente se caracterizaron por el desmantelamiento, en algunos casos como China y Vietnam de forma gradual y calibrada y en otros de forma acelerada como en algunos países de Europa del Este y la Unión Soviética, del colectivismo, los subsidios estatales y los controles de precios y por mayores grados de participación de actores no-estatales en la comercialización de productos agrícolas. A pesar de notables diferencias estructurales y coyunturales, las experiencias de los antiguos países socialistas …

The Innovation Makerspace: Geographies Of Digital Fabrication Innovation In Greater New York City, Kathryn Dickerson

Theses and Dissertations

Desktop digital fabrication technology has the potential to powerfully alter the economics, geography, and sociology of production. The desktop technology cannot reach its potential for widespread impact until it improves in quality and decreases in price. Makerspaces have emerged in the United States in the last eight years as informal social organizations where innovation in this technology may be occurring. This study examines whether innovation in digital fabrication technology has occurred, or has the potential to occur, at makerspaces in the New York City area.

The Doha Round And Globalization: A Failure Of World Economic Development?, William E. Keating

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the WTO’s Doha Round and its numerous developmental objectives, assess the major issues that led to its stagnation, as well as examine the economic prospects for developing nations and the potential future of international trade and development.

Transportation And Sanitation Drivers Of Land Use/Land Cover Change: Loss Of The Jamaica Bay Wetlands, Margaret Joy Cytryn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an analysis (1830-2014) of the historical events of land use/land cover change in the Jamaica Bay estuary, identification of the agents of change, and a perspective on the potential drivers of transportation and sanitation in land use/land cover change.

Effects Of Divorce Risk On Women's Labor Supply And Human Capital Investment, Kristin Mammen

Publications and Research

This paper examines the effects of the divorce law liberalization of the early 1970s on the increase in divorce rates during the same time period. A review of the evidence suggests that the law changes were not a major driver of the divorce rates; but the policy changes appear to have affected behavior even for those who did not divorce. The results here suggest that as they saw the laws changing, young women in the divorce reform states redirected some of their investments from marriage to their own human capital. The perceived increase in the probability of divorce motivated women …

Political Inclusion And Educational Investment, Stephen D. O'Connell

Economics Working Papers

Using exogenous geographic variation in exposure to 1993 reforms that introduced seat quotas for women in local government in India, I find a sizable increase in the enrollment rate of male and female school-age children resulting from additional exposure to women leaders. Effects are particularly concentrated among poorer households and those with less- educated proximate role models, and were commensurate with reductions in idle time and household-enterprise employment. There is no evidence for the effects being facilitated by changes in school infrastructure, the labor market, or among broader social factors related to intrahousehold bargaining. Using textual data from the news …

Son Preference, Fertility Decline And Non-Missing Girls Of Turkey, Onur Altindag

Economics Working Papers

Couples in Turkey exhibit son preference through son-biased differential stopping behavior that does not cause a sex ratio imbalance in the population. Demand for sons leads to lower (higher) ratios of boys to girls in large (small) families. Girls are born earlier than their male siblings. Son-biased fertility behavior is persistent in response to decline in fertility over time and across households with parents from different backgrounds. Parents use contraceptive methods to halt fertility following a male birth. The sibling sex composition is associated with gender disparities in health. Among children who were born in the third parity or later, …

White Paper On Research Opportunities And Cuny Library Faculty: The Need For Annual Leave Parity, Psc Cuny Library Faculty Committee (2014-­2015), Jay H. Bernstein, Jill Cirasella, John A. Drobnicki, Francine Egger-Sider, Lisa Ellis, Robert Farrell, William Gargan, Bonnie Nelson, Mariana Regalado, Sharon Swacker, Tess Tobin

Publications and Research

This White Paper provides an exposition and analysis of how annual leave disparity has arisen for Library Faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY) as compared to other CUNY faculty, its effects on librarians, and what a positive solution to the problem would look like.

Essays On The Economics And Methodology Of Social Mobility, Benjamin Zweig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays which aim to extend the methodology and analysis of the study of social mobility. In the first essay, differences in intergenerational mobility across race and across the parent's earnings distribution are explored through a nonparametric framework. Components of mobility are differentiated and analyzed separately in order to get a comprehensive account of heterogeneities in mobility. Several important differences are found including higher expected mobility for white households, higher idiosyncratic mobility for black households, larger disparities in expected mobility at the high end of the earnings distribution, and much higher rates of overall intergenerational persistence …

Three Essays On Income And Wealth Inequality, Damir Cosic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays on income and wealth inequality. The essays examine various aspects of this complex feature of the economic system.

The first essay shows that the distribution of firm sizes in an economy is an important determinant of wage distribution. I use data from the U.S. Current Population Survey and the ExecuComp between 1992 and 2012 to construct a new dataset and estimate wage distribution and various measures of wage inequality. I decompose differences in wage inequality across firm sizes and over time by using semi-parametric methods. In 1992, wages were distributed more unequally in small …

The Impact Of Technology On Consumerism, David Naranjo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

E-commerce is shifting the way people purchase their goods and services and affecting the relationship between technology and society. Consequently, traditional retailers, aware of the inevitable change, have developed strategies to keep up with the continuously evolving marketplace. These strategies vary from creating virtual stores (i.e., websites) and developing digital social networks to data mining and spamming.

Therefore, from a historical point of view, this thesis will analyze the impact of technology on commerce and how the creation of new virtual marketplaces had affected consumers' behavior. This thesis will explore the origins of e-commerce, the technologies that made possible its …

Negative Externalities, Network Effects, And Compatibility, Matthew G. Nagler

Publications and Research

Positive network effects arise where incremental product use increases the utility of users of compatible products (user-positive effects), but also in situations where product use imposes negative externalities that selectively affect the adopters of incompatible alternatives (nonuser-negative effects). This paper compares the social optimality of firms’ incentives for compatibility under these two regimes. Using a “location” model of differentiated products, I find that, under both regimes, incentives for unilateral action to increase compatibility tend to be suboptimal when firms’ networks are close in size, but they may be excessive for small firms when networks differ greatly in size. The result …

Resistance, Acquiescence Or Incorporation? An Introduction To Land Grabbing And Political Reactions ‘From Below’, Marc Edelman, Ruth Hall, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ian Scoones, Ben White, Wendy Wolford

Publications and Research

Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of ground- breaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives ‘from below’ in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats. The relevance of political reactions to land grabbing is discussed in light of theories of social movements and …

Precarity And Gentrification: A Feedback Loop, Samuel Stein

Graduate Student Publications and Research

How do rent hikes and labor precarity conspire to reinforce each other against tenants and workers? Samuel Stein explains the mechanisms that link these two trends affecting citizens and calls for a tightening of rent-control laws to stop the spiraling descent of American residents into poverty.

Estimating The Variance Of Decomposition Effects, Takuya Hasebe

Economics Working Papers

We derive the asymptotic variance of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition effects. We show that the delta method approach that builds on the assumption of fixed regressors understates true variability of the decomposition effects when regressors are stochastic. Our proposed variance estimator takes randomness of regressors into consideration. Our approach is applicable to both the linear and nonlinear decompositions, for the latter of which only a bootstrap method is an option. As our derivation follows the general framework of m-estimation, it is straightforward to extend to the cluster-robust variance estimator. We demonstrate the finite-sample performance of our variance estimator with a Monte …

Essays On The Impacts Of Quantitative Easing On Financial Markets, Joanne Guo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Due to the severity of the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve had attempted a variety of unconventional monetary policy to support the U.S. financial markets at the verge of collapse. The most well-known of the Fed's unconventional monetary policy is quantitative easing, in which it purchased a large amount of government securities from the markets in order to lower longer term interest rates and mortgage rates. The several rounds of quantitative easing had different impacts, intended as well as unintended, on U.S. financial markets and foreign markets. The purpose of this paper is to fully explore the effects, …

Does Financial Openness Affect Economic Growth In Asian Economies? A Case Study In Selected Asian Economies, 1980-2010, Hsinrong Wei

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, financial liberalization has been one of the most important strategies for Asian countries to promote growth. However, debate emerges following several financial crises on whether liberalizing financial markets and allowing for free access to international capital markets, would benefit or impede economic development. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of financial openness on selected seventeen Asian economies and answer the three questions: 1. Is there any linkage between financial openness and economic growth for these seventeen Asian countries? 2. Does any of the financial openness pose positive or negative effects? 3. If no …

Essays On Spatial Econometrics: Estimation Methods And Applications, Osman Dogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of four essays on the estimation methods and applications of spatial econometrics models. In the first essay, we consider a spatial econometric model containing spatial lags in the dependent variable and the disturbance terms with an unknown form of heteroskedasticity in the innovations. We first prove that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not taken into account in the estimation. We show that the necessary condition for consistency of the MLE depends on the specification of the spatial weight matrices. Then, we extend the robust generalized method of moment (GMM) estimation approach …

It-Enabled Coordination In Electronic Markets: An Experimental Investigation Of The Effects Of Social Communication On Group Buyers, Alexander Pelaez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coordination, and the mechanisms by which coordination occurs, represents a significant area of study for economic research, and information technology. Technology enhances communication in both speed and quantity of information and when aligned with appropriate tasks can improve decision-making and task performance. Examining the effect of technology based coordination mechanisms on market platforms provides insight into outcomes as represented by buyer surplus and task completion as well as behaviors, such as network structure and emotional attitudes in economic experiments. Drawing on theory from economics and information systems, larger buyer groups should be able to obtain better prices and extract higher …

Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project: A Requirement For The Ms In Sustainability Degree, Latif M. Jiji, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, George A. Smith

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to describe experience gained with a required six-credit year-long course, the Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project, a key component of the Master of Science (MS) in Sustainability degree at the City College of New York. A common feature of sustainability problems is their interdisciplinary nature. Solutions to sustainability problems often require professionals with different training and backgrounds to work as a team. A sustainability curriculum should provide students with the skills needed to competently participate in an interdisciplinary team.

Design/methodology/approach – Instructors drawn from different departments and divisions of the college developed a pool of sustainability-focused …

Heteroskedasticity Of Unknown Form In Spatial Autoregressive Models With A Moving Average Disturbance Term, Osman Dogan

Publications and Research

In this study, I investigate the necessary condition for the consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of spatial models with a spatial moving average process in the disturbance term. I show that the MLE of spatial autoregressive and spatial moving average parameters is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not considered in the estimation. I also show that the MLE of parameters of exogenous variables is inconsistent and determine its asymptotic bias. I provide simulation results to evaluate the performance of the MLE. The simulation results indicate that the MLE imposes a substantial amount of bias on both autoregressive and …

"Microfinance As A Determinant Of Domestic Violence In Bangladesh: Who Is At Risk?", Alvin Christian

Dissertations and Theses

This paper examines the impact that microfinance participation has on reported domestic violence rates among women in Bangladesh. While microfinance programs are aimed at reducing poverty, they may have unintended consequence and contribute to domestic violence or Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Using nationally representative data from the Urban Health Survey (2006), I study the association between microfinance participation and domestic violence among currently married women. The outcome variable is domestic violence, which is coded as a dummy variable, where a women either has experienced domestic violence episodes or she hasn’t. Predictor variables include microfinance participation, community attitudes, liberal views, labor …

Political Choice And Economic Crisis In Brazil: A Case Of Mismanagement Of Public Money, Evellyn Brasil Monteiro

Dissertations and Theses

A few years ago, Brazil was the country where everybody would like to invest. Because it was one of the members of the BRIC, group of emergent countries with fast-growing economies including also Russia, India and China that gave the investors warranties that those investments would be successful. The current situation is very different from the one pictured not too long ago. High interest rates, high inflation, undervalued currency, and international political scandals describe the very serious economic crisis the country has been facing recently, making the economic growth forecast decrease. In 2013, the variation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) …

Do Oil Economies In Sub-Sahara Africa, Rebecca Girma

Dissertations and Theses

The African continent provides majority of the world’s raw material for technology and fine jewelry. Countries dependent on their extractive industries lag behind on developmental goals. Their GDPs are high as well as their national poverty levels. This paper explores the factors in which a nation lacks development when it is financially wealthy to do so. There are similar patterns in nations where resource curse has occurred. What is the key to sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa? Is solving corruption and migrating away from a market dependent on primary exports the answer? Can they transition from the ancient patrimonial state …

The Face Of The Market, Thomas Woodcock

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis reviews the effect on economic openness that can be established by the presence of strong Global Compact local networks. The work identifies three measures of openness and four sets of domestic conditions in which the Global Compact operates, respectively: (1) prevalence of trade, (2) measures of foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment and (3) policy indicators of openness, in respect to democracies with (a) strong local networks or (b) weak local networks, as well as autocratic regimes with (c) strong or (d) weak local networks. A comparative study follows, looking at twenty-three years of data across fifty …