Economics Commons^™

The Dodd-Frank Act And Its Impact On Community Bank Mortgage Lending, Margaret Schorgl

Honors Theses

I investigate the impacts of additional regulatory burdens on community bank mortgage lending due to the Dodd-Frank Act. The Dodd-Frank Act, which was signed into federal law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010, was intended to protect consumers, promote financial stability, and reduce the risk associated with larger banks being too-big-to-fail. However, one criticism of the Act is that the increased regulations and compliance costs under the Act have made it increasingly difficult for smaller banks to survive. As a result, an unintended consequence of the Dodd-Frank Act is that smaller banks may issue fewer loans than they …

The County-Level Impact Of Telemedicine: A Difference-In-Differences Analysis Of The University Of Mississippi Medical Center's Telemedicine Initiatives, Megan Elise Mcleod

Honors Theses

Mississippi has the fewest active physicians per capita of any state, consistently struggles with high rates of acute and chronic illness, and over half of its residents live in rural areas lacking specialty medical care. In an effort to bridge the state's geographical gap in access to healthcare, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) has introduced telemedicine. This study conducts an analysis of some of the societal benefits of UMMC's telemedicine initiatives using a difference-in-differences identification strategy. This model attempts to obtain the county-level causal effects of implementing telemedicine by evaluating the resulting changes in length of life, quality …

Delta Hands For Hope: A Force For Reconciliation And Sustainable Development In The Delta?, Mary D. Travis

Honors Theses

This case study focuses on the question of whether Delta Hands for Hope, a distinctive, possibly unique faith-based organization, is able to facilitate racial reconciliation and sustainable community development in the Delta community of Shaw. If so, is it a potential model for sustainable development for other communities of the Delta and beyond? This thesis builds on existing literature about sustainable development and development in the Mississippi Delta. The original, empirical research is based on Grounded Theory methodology, a participant/observer perspective, and data gathered through in-depth, open-ended interviews. This research work suggests that racial division is pervasive in every area …

Trends In U.S. Tea Imports: 1991-2015, Evan Kennedy

Honors Theses

Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, and over the past two decades it has experienced a newfound popularity in the United States. Over this time period, ready-to-drink and loose-leaf tea has increased in popularity, whereas tea bags and instant tea declined in popularity. Since the United States produces almost no tea itself, an increase in consumption requires increased imports. Therefore, this paper examines U.S. import trends as a means to begin an examination of consumption. Ten countries (Argentina, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam) provide approximately 80% of the …

Student Loans And Their Effect On Parental Views Of Education Financing, Jose Angel Nunez

Honors Theses

Using the 2012 wave National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, this study examines the effect that parents' student debt have on their decision to use tax advantage education vehicles to save for their children's college. We also examine parental decisions on obtaining student loans on behalf of their children. The results show that parents who report having student loans are 61% less likely than those that report no student loan debt to use tax-advantaged education saving vehicles. However, we find no difference in the effect of having student loans on the decision to obtain debt to fund their children's college …

Mothers As Career Leaders: Do Maternity Leave Laws Make A Difference?, Briar Rose Smith

Honors Theses

On a national level, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 is the only law that provides certain qualifying individuals with 12 weeks of unpaid, job protected maternity leave, although some states and private firms have implemented forms of paid maternity leave. Previous research indicates that female employees, regardless of their parental status, receive fewer promotions due to information asymmetry after the FMLA (Thomas 2015). In addition, some research finds that particular industries are more family friendly due to access to flexible work schedules for mothers (Goldin 2014). This thesis expands on both findings using data from the …

The College Admissions Problem: Effects Of Income And Ability Of Postsecondary Education Outcomes, Martha Whamond

Honors Theses

This paper examines the effects of students’ pre-college income on student outcomes and college admissions decisions. Under the assumption that colleges maximize utility by maximizing student outcomes, a two-stage regression model for student outcomes is building using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the 1997 National Youth Longitudinal Survey (NLSY97). The first stage estimates a model for college quality using the IPEDS dataset. The college quality estimates are then used as independent variables in the second stage. The second stage estimates student outcomes as a function of pre- college income, ability, college quality, and demographic characteristics …

Failure Or Adjustment?: An Analysis Of The Slowing Growth Of The Chinese Economy, Kay G. Degraw

Honors Theses

With GDP growth for the 2016 fiscal year reported at 6.7%, it appears that the Chinese economy has departed from the three-decade period in which GDP growth averaged plus-10%. While both academic journals and media outlets have accredited this slowdown to a variety of factors, existing research has failed to conflate the economic and political factors into a comprehensive explanation. Consequently, this thesis examines the causative factors behind the slowing of the Chinese economy though the analysis of three contesting plausibility probes centered on the impact of corruption, statism, and structural economic change. The results of the plausibility probes indicates …

Are Chinese Firms Attracted To Political Risk? Locational Determinants Of Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment, Grant Depoyster

Honors Theses

This study evaluates the foreign direct investment (FDI) location choices made by Chinese firms from 1996 to 2015 and investigates the extent to which Chinese firms are attracted to investing in countries with high levels of political risk. Using new Chinese data, the study categorizes Chinese firms into Central State-Owned Enterprises and Other Chinese Firms to see the relationship between investment location and political risk for firms with varying levels of Chinese government control. Additionally, the data is divided between investments made from 1996 to 2003 and investments made from 1996 to 2015 to measure the effect that important changes …

An Economic Analysis Of The Deepwater Horizon Economic Settlement, Cantrell Gideon Norman

Honors Theses

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 significantly impacted the Gulf Coast economy. The aim of this paper is to determine the adequacy of Deepwater Horizon Economic Settlement payments in achieving full recovery and restoration of the Gulf Coast economy. This paper contextualizes the event, analyzes other disaster techniques, and discusses the impact of the oil spill on dominant coastal industries. The results are constructed through linear regression models on employment figures for the coastal counties of all five Gulf states. An argument for each state is formed based upon the regression results, supplemented with outside sources and additional data …

An Experiment On Pareto-Efficiency And Communication In The Gale-Shapley School Choice Mechanism, Amy Hall

Honors Theses

The past few decades have seen an increase in the debate and discussion of school choice, and recent literature has focused on mechanism design approaches to satisfy that choice. The literature includes experimental studies of these mechanisms. I conduct an experiment that examines the Gale-Shapley mechanism. This mechanism considers the rankings by parents and students of their preferred schools as well as the schools' priorities for students (based primarily on district or walk-zones) and uses a unique algorithm to produce student-school matchings. My experimental design is based primarily on that of Chinese College Admissions and School Choice Reforms: An Experimental …

What Did You Expect? How Expectations And The Structure Of Student Loans Affect The Incentives To Pursue An Undergraduate Education, Timothy Parker

Honors Theses

Student loan debt and the cost of a college degree are on the rise each year, even as the value of a college degree appears to be stagnant. Yet, little research is available on how the characteristics of student loans create the incentives that have caused this effect. In this paper, I create a two-period, inter-temporal model for examining two related questions. First, what effect do interest rates and the structure of student loans have on individuals' incentives to attend college? Second, how do expectations of graduating high school students about future earnings impact their decision to attend or not …

Women Empowerment Externalities Of The 2004 Moroccan Moudawana Reform: Intrafamily Bargaining And Educational Attainment, Jane Alexandra Martin

Honors Theses

In order to evaluate the potential human capital externalities of women empowerment and more equitable Moudawana (personal status law) policies in the North Africa region, I use 2 countries as case studies, each with different Moudawana regimes. I compare Morocco, which had a significant Moudawana reform in 2004, to Egypt, whose Moudawana is far more inequitable. Using difference-in-difference analysis on survey data, I compare educational attainment in Morocco and Egypt. I support this with descriptive statistics about women empowerment in Morocco. The results suggest that the Moudawana reform may increase women empowerment and lead to increased educational attainment.

The Economic Impact Of The 2015 Conference Usa Baseball Tournament In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Kyle A. Stoner

Honors Theses

This study aims to measure the economic impact of the 2015 Conference USA Baseball Tournament hosted by The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Attendees of the event were selected at random to participate in an intercept survey to gauge financial data spent within the Forrest and Lamar County, Mississippi area. An Economic Modeling Systems International Input-Output analysis was used to process the data. This processed data was analyzed and results were determined based on the estimated multiplier and tax effect at the local and state level. These multiplier figures yielded a change in earnings in the local area …

The Efficacy Of Congestion Pricing, Zachary J. Ridder

Honors Theses

The practice of congestion pricing, also called road pricing, is by no means a new innovation. It has roots as far back as the American Revolution, but in the modern world filled with hundreds of millions of cars it is a possible answer to gridlock, a potential source of revenue, and an environmentally conscious policy. The question remains though, is congestion pricing effective and, assuming that it is, is it a benefit to a community or a tax upon the poorer members of society? It has been implemented across the world in many forms and with varying degrees of success, …

An Ethics Of Economic Sanctions, Macallee N. Goldman

Honors Theses

This paper provides an ethical analysis of smart sanctions under the combined framework of the categorical imperative and utilitarianism. Developing an ethical model that also encompasses sanction effectiveness as a means of evaluation, this paper argues that smart sanctions should not be used by countries and legislative bodies as tools of expression or of achieving goals without efficiency considerations grounded in this ethical framework. Only when they clearly meet the criteria of utilitarianism and the categorical imperative should smart sanctions be used. By doing so sanction effectiveness is argued to be maximized, in both ethical and empirical context.

Making Mississippi Cool: Craft Beer And The Creative Economy, Katherine E. Hogan

Honors Theses

The goal of this research is to define and explore two main constructs within Mississippi: craft beer as a phenomenon and the creative economy. As the two play a large role in many aspects of Mississippi’s culture and economy, characteristics of the two have the capability of interconnecting and building off the other. In this study, both craft beer and the creative economy in Mississippi will examined. The findings of this study will answer the question: is there a relationship between the the craft beer phenomenon and the creative economy?

Ez Timeout: The Business Plan, Simbarashe Chirara

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Fluctuations In Oil Prices And Its Effects On The Usd-Mxn Exchange Rate, Alejandro Velasco

Honors Theses

Do oil prices affect exchange rates? There is a strong correlation between the changes in oil prices and the fluctuations of the exchange rates. What is the effect of the oil prices on US Dollar- Mexican Peso exchange rate? The US Dollar depreciates whenever the oil prices rise, meaning that the oil prices have an impact on exchange rates (Amano, 1998). Financial analysts and oil industry expertise have seen how prices started to decrease in 2014, and this caused uncertainty affecting other markets and consequently exchange rates. The intention of this research is to demonstrate the correlation that exists between …

The Effects Of The One-Child Policy On Household Financial Decisions, Sylvia M. Xu

Honors Theses

The Chinese One-Child Policy, enacted in 1979, was an attempt to decrease the population growth rate following a period of massive social and political confusion and uncertainty. While the policy was beneficial to curbing the population growth in China, it also introduced unintentional consequences, including sex imbalance, and other demographic differences. The goal of this paper is to examine the economic behavior and financial decisions of son-families and daughter-families across different provinces and regions of China, which have varying levels of sex imbalance, as a result of a cultural preference for sons. These financial decisions include the household saving rate, …

Detecting Stock Market Bubbles: A Price-To-Earnings Approach, Austin F. Murphy

Honors Theses

To this day, economists argue about the existence of stock market bubbles. The literature review for this paper observes the analysis of four reputable bubble tests in an attempt to provide ample qualitative proof for the existence of bubbles. The first obstacle for creating an effective bubble detection test is the difficulty of estimating true fundamental values for equities. Without adequate estimations for the fundamental values of equities, the deviation between actual price and fundamental price is impossible to observe or estimate. Additionally, these tests are reliant on strong underlying assumptions, which tend to cloud results.

This thesis applies a …

The Effect Of Temperature On The Supply And Demand For The American Lobster (Homarus Americanus) In The State Of Maine, Gaby E. Carpenter

Honors Theses

The Gulf of Maine (GOM) American lobster (Homarus americanus) stock accounts for 90% of the U.S. American lobster landings. This makes it an extremely valuable and important fishery on a national scale, but also to the state of Maine. In the past decade, the fishery has experienced rapid fluctuation in landings and price due to anthropogenic influences of the water temperature in the GOM. Given the economic importance of the fishery, it is important to understand the future impacts of climate change on the availability of lobster and economic consequences of these shifts. A bio-economic model is used in the …

Impact Of Asean : China Free Trade Area On Trade Flows, Son Tung Nguyen

Honors Theses

This paper estimates the impact of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement on the trade flows between China and the ASEAN countries. A gravity model with FTA specification is used to estimate the treatment effect of ACFTA. Since there are other unobserved variables that correlate with both the trade flows between China–ASEAN and the decision to form ACFTA, a cross-sectional OLS regression runs the risk of having endogeneity bias due to omitted variables. Therefore, this paper applies a panel regression approach with time and country fixed effects as the main method of estimation. The hypothesis is that ACFTA will increase trade …

The Effects Of Financial Leverage On The Output Decision Of An Exploration And Production Company, Michael Levine

Honors Theses

I examine companies focused on the exploration, production and exploitation of oil and gas assets to test whether there is a significant relationship between a firm’s debt burden and its production decision. I am most interested in debt’s effect on a firm’s price elasticity of supply as this would allow me to conclude how a highly levered firm would react to changes in price relative to other firms. I use data from 81 publicly traded exploration and production companies with varying degrees of leverage over the last ten years. This time frame captures two price cycles for the oil and …

The Marquee Effect : A Study Of The Effect Of Designated Players On Revenue And Performance In Major League Soccer, Hannah Holub

Honors Theses

Since its formation in 1994 Major League Soccer (MLS) has slowly been gaining the momentum to reach a level of recognition similar to that of the top four sports leagues in the United States – the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball. Major League Soccer (MLS) is the top tier professional soccer league in the United States, one of only two leagues to reach that status and the only soccer league to sustain long term success.1 Made up of nineteen teams across the United States and Canada, the MLS is structured …

How Does One Child Policy Influence Chinese Household Saving Behavior, Yueyang Cao

Honors Theses

This paper investigates the influence the decline in the family size on household size through a Chinese family planning policy, the One-Child Policy (OCP). I find the evidence of the negative effect at the micro level using Chinese household survey data. I also study the aggregated effect using Chinese provincial level data. With the concern of endogeneity, I use a two-stage least square regression with financial punishments for having more than one child and share of population that were exempted from the restriction as instruments for the fertility variable. This regression shows a positive impact of the implementation of the …

Food Insecurity In Nepal : A Cross-Sectional Analysis From 75 Districts, Aarti Reddy

Honors Theses

There are a number of studies regarding food insecurity, but not many that investigate the simultaneous relationships between food insecurity and the measures of well-being (health, education and gender equality). This paper conducts a district-level cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between food insecurity and the measures of well-being in Nepal using an ordered probit model. Instrument variables are used in a two-stage analysis to address the problem of endogeneity. The study finds that health deprivation levels significantly affect levels of food insecurity in a district but education and gender literacy disparity are less significant. Addressing issues of endogeneity and multicolinearity …

Localized Economic Impact Of Sports Stadium Construction, Scott Sommers

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Nondepository Credit Intermediation And Its Effects On The Financial Well-Being Of Consumers, Nathan Simpson

Honors Theses

This paper investigates whether the availability of consumer loans has a positive or negative effect on the indicators of financial well being for consumers in the same area. By observing the number of consumer lending establishments and regressing those numbers on financial indicators, such as percent in poverty and median household income, this paper observes any statistically significant correlations that arise out of the presence of these establishments as well as the sign (positive or negative) of the correlation. The data period is 2007 to 2013. This process is used for nationwide numbers as well as six selected Southern states. …

An Examination Of The College Major Decisions Of Students At The University Of Mississippi, Jonathan P. Evans

Honors Theses

Factors such as socio-economic status affect students' level of educational aspiration. Furthermore, major (and thus career choice) may be influenced by race or gender. This study demonstrates the effects of academic aptitude, race, gender, first generation status, and importance of expected future earnings on undergraduate students' college major decision. More specifically, this study examines if these factors lead to an increase or decrease in the probability of students choosing a major in a specific field. The likelihood of choosing a major in a specific field is relative a baseline category, which can be changed.