Economics Commons^™

Do Homebuyers Care About Good Grades? Evaluating The Effect Of Nyc School Accountability Program On Housing Values, John I. Campagna

Theses and Dissertations

This paper looks at the effect of the New York City school accountability grades on the residential property market. Grades by themselves are found to have some effect on residential property market, but the inclusion of test scores along with grades diminishes the strength of their effect.

Af Corporate Exposure Assessment Strategy: Underlying Cost Behaviors And Visibility, Bradley M. Duncan

Theses and Dissertations

The research conducted in this thesis is an initial attempt to identify the costs associated with occupational exposure assessments within the Air Force. Using cost estimation methodologies, a cost model was created to predict the total costs of occupational hazard assessments focused on air sampling. Data was gathered from bioenvironmental engineering databases and subject matter experts for analysis. The data required extensive curation before running a mixed step-wise regression. The major cost drivers for occupational exposure assessments were identified as the sample time and pre-calibration time for conducting an air sample. The average predicted cost was $183.47 with 80% of …

An Analysis Of Stability Properties In Operating And Support Costs, Scott C. Hewitson

Theses and Dissertations

Accurately predicting Operating and Support (O&S) costs is vital in the current climate of budgetary constraints. However, there is an overall lack of research in the realm of O&S which hinders cost estimator’s abilities to provide accurate sustainment estimates. This research determines when Air Force Aircraft O&S costs stabilize and to what degree. Stability is examined in three areas: total O&S costs, the six O&S cost element structures, and aircraft type. Stability results vary by category but generally is found to occur 80% of the time at approximately five years from Initial Operating Capability (IOC). The second portion of this …

Predicting Agency Contributions For The Federal Employment Retirement System (Fers) Fund, Raymond L. Mims Ii

Theses and Dissertations

The Federal Employment Retirement System is a pension fund for federal employees and is managed by the United States Office of Personnel and Management (OPM). Each year OPM publishes an annual Civil Service Retirement and Disabilities Fund (CSRDF) report that provides information on the health of the fund. The report contains historical cash flows from income provided by contributions to the fund from employees, agencies, and the U.S. Treasury. Additionally, the report shows actuarial valuations of the total liabilities owed to all current employees and annuitants. The actuaries at OPM use their estimates to provide projections needed to maintain the …

Air Force Officer Attrition: An Ecconometric Analysis, Jacob T. Elliot

Theses and Dissertations

Many organizations are concerned, and struggle, with personnel management. Training personnel is expensive, so there is a high emphasis on understanding why and anticipating when individuals leave an organization. The military is no exception. Moreover, the military is strictly hierarchical and must grow all its leaders, making retention all the more vital. Intuition holds that there is a relationship between the economic environment and personnel attrition rates in the military (e.g. when the economy is bad, attrition is low). This study investigates that relationship in a more formal manner. Specifically, this study conducts an econometric analysis of U.S. Air Force …

Phase Gate Implementation Of Project Definition Rating Index (Pdri 9f Af Milcon Project Development: A Comprehensive Analysis, Jared R. Breuker

Theses and Dissertations

The $1.3B Air Force Military Construction (MILCON) program has shown a trend of 6% cost growth and 12% schedule growth in the construction phases of its projects. Air Force leadership has attributed this to a shortfall in the standardized processes for requirements definition and scope development. The Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI) has been in use on Air Force MILCON projects for almost a decade, but the development and approval process for these projects does not lend itself to direct PDRI implementation. 96 PDRI MILCON projects executed from 2009 to 2016 were analyzed for trends in project development implementation strategies …

Air Force Installation Contracting Agency Strategic Sourcing And Category Management Through Expenditure Profiling, James T. Okamoto

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines an approach to characterizing various expenditure profiles for the Air Force Installation Contracting Agency’s Operations and Maintenance Appropriated Funds. Using naive, seasonal naive, trailing moving average, exponential smoothing, linear regression, and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) forecasting methods, the paper evaluates multiple error measures over one fiscal year to find the most precise model for each level of analysis. Levels of analysis included the Air Force enterprise and level 1 category levels, as well as an illustrative approach to Information and Technology spend at the level 2 subcategory, major command, and base levels. Optimal model characteristics were …

An Analysis Of Aircraft Operating And Support Cost Element Structures, Garrett B. O'Hanlon

Theses and Dissertations

As the cost of DoD Weapon Systems continue to increase, the ability to more accurately predict the Operating and Support (O&S) costs for the various weapon systems has become more vital for long run affordability. The investigation into the O&S arena has been overshadowed by the research and development (R&D) and acquisition fields. This research focuses on the O&S portion of the total life cycle costs, specifically the OSD-CAPE Cost Element Structure (CES) elements and sub-elements. The research investigates seven categories of 52 aircrafts and their cost expenditures within the CES from the years 1996-2016. The first portion of the …

The Effect Of Expansions In Medicaid Eligibility On Hospital Financial Performance: Evidence From Medicare Cost Reports, Kevin Wu

Theses and Dissertations

Expansions in Medicaid eligibility and effects on profitability for different hospitals are examined using data from Medicare Cost Reports and difference-in-differences analysis. Critical access and disproportionate share hospitals are associated with the largest profitability gains from these expansions. Results imply that vulnerable hospitals are affected most by changes to Medicaid.

For Better, For Worse: The Effect Of Maternity Leave Policy On Divorce Rates, Toni S. Forde

Theses and Dissertations

Prior to 1993, maternity leave legislation in the United States varied from state to state. The implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) thus created a “natural experiment” via which we can study the effect of the law on divorce across states.

The Role Of Family And Gender In The Transfer Of And Returns To Human Capital, Liwen Chen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the role of family and gender in understanding the disparities in human capital accumulation and corresponding disparities in labor market outcomes. The first chapter explores the relationship between workers’ wages and the gender of their supervisor, conditioning on the occupational gender composition. It develops a theoretical model suggesting that supervisors’ task assignment accuracy is affected disparately in occupations of different gender types, leading to varying degrees of skill mismatch among workers. This leads to average wage differences between workers with female supervisors and those with male supervisors in occupations of different gender types. Consistent with the theoretical …

State Specific Poverty Thresholds Adjusted For Cost Of Living Differences, Melissa Gentry

Theses and Dissertations

While poverty is undoubtedly one of the most widely used domestic indicators of social wellbeing, its measurement has a critical shortcoming. Using national poverty thresholds ignores the potential differences in the cost of living across states. States use the national poverty threshold when conducting poverty research and assessing community demographics. Theoretically price level differences between states could mean that, if poverty thresholds were adjusted for cost-of-living by state, the adjusted poverty rate could be different than the official poverty rate Using data specific to individual states that can be found in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, geographically specific thresholds …

Three Essays On The Effects Of Policies On Price Differentials, Eun Son Lim

Theses and Dissertations

Free Trade Agreements and Purchasing Power Parity: Evidence from South Korea

We explore whether a decline in tariffs after the passage of South Korea’s free trade agreements yields evidence more favorable to purchasing power parity between South Korea and its free trade partners. Our data include two aggregated measures of prices – the CPI and the PPI – as well as disaggregated CPI data for six selected, highly tradable items: food, alcoholic beverages, non-alcoholic beverages, clothing, footwear and tobacco products. We study nine free trade partners using data for the sample period January 1998-November 2017. Utilizing a battery of conventional …

Three Essays On Maternal And Child Health, Mandar V. Bodas

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of three separate essays on the health of women and children. In the first essay, I along with my co-authors, analyzed the impact of two large, national-level health policies (the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) and the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)) on maternal health outcomes (proportion of institutional deliveries) in India. We used data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) and found that the JSY and the NRHM had a greater impact on institutional deliveries in high-focus states. We also found that the conditions of the public health facilities, did not change after the …

Tommi's Place: An Adaptation And Commentary On Uncle Tom's Cabin, Vanessa L. Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Harriet Beecher Stowe penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin which was published in 1852. This book exposed and condemned the atrocities of slavery. Her book became a bestseller and is said to be one of the primary reasons why slavery was eventually abolished. Though slavery has been dismantled the system of oppression which allowed the marginalization of others to thrive has never been eliminated. This system established a dominant culture; one which oppresses those of African descent and has endured for centuries. Tommi’s Place retells Uncle Tom’s Cabin in contemporary corporate America. Tommi’s Place reflects that this system of oppression is still …

The Effect Of Changes In Racial Composition On Housing Prices: A Study Of The Most Diverse Place In The World, Youseph Anwar

Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to illustrate that increases in minority residents may lead to decreases in housing prices. I observe the effects of changes in racial composition on housing prices in Queens, NY from 2011-2015. The following econometric tools are implemented: a fixed effects model, quantile, hedonic, and OLS regressions.

Cooperation And Reciprocity In Anonymous Interactions: Other-Regarding Preferences And Quasi-Magical Thinking, Gregory Klevans

Theses and Dissertations

In economic experiments, players often demonstrate concerns for the relative payoffs between themselves and other subjects, in addition to their own payoffs. In addition, they appear to do their parts to achieve efficient outcomes, particularly when they are ignorant of the opponent's decision. I present a parsimonious model of other-regarding preferences and quasi-magical thinking that explains such behavior, and I apply it to four games: the prisoner's dilemma, the traveler's dilemma, the ultimatum game, and the trust game.

Could Reducing Compulsory Years Of Schooling In A Developing Country Be Beneficial?, Dina Al Ajmi

Theses and Dissertations

Towards the end of the 1980s Egypt introduced an educational policy aimed at reducing the years of compulsory primary schooling from six years to five years. This reduced the overall compulsory years of schooling from nine years to eight years. This paper will examine the educational and labor outcomes of this policy change differentiated by urban and rural areas using the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) 2006 and 2012 rounds. Regressions estimated in this paper differentiated between the urban and rural populations. The results suggested that the effect on the rural community was much larger than the effect on …

Credit Risk And Corporate Governance, Olivier Mugisho Mudekereza

Theses and Dissertations

Is the executive’s compensation structure influenced by the credit rating assigned to his company? I analyze a panel of U.S. public firms using the random-effects and fixed-effects estimations. Compared to firms with lower credit risk, I find that firms facing higher probability of default provide more incentives for their CEOs.

Direct Effects Of Bundled Payments For Care Improvement Initiative: A County-Level Approach, Konstantinos Panitsas Mr

Theses and Dissertations

Implementing a nonlinear, Difference-in-Differences estimation method, I quantify the positive impact bundled payment reforms have on vulnerable population groups living in U.S. counties where this cost reducing initiative was implemented. I find statistically significant effects of this health-care initiative on the elderly and the economically disadvantaged individuals.

The Effect Of Paid Sick Leave On Physician Office-Based Visits, Korvin Vicente

Theses and Dissertations

This paper uses a balanced sample of workers from cross-sections of the National Health Interview Survey to estimate the causal effects of paid sick leave on the medical care seeking behavior of individuals, as measured by physician office-based visits.

The Impact Of Exchange Rate Changes On Sectoral Activity: The Case Of Egypt, Nada Shokry

Theses and Dissertations

NOTE: A revised and corrected version, the version of record, is available online at: https://erf.org.eg/app/uploads/2018/11/1252.pdf

This paper investigates the effect of changes in exchange rate on sectoral production in Egypt. For this purpose, the study, first, uses a MIDAS regression to compare between the sign and magnitude of the effect of two exchange rate measures on 22 subsectors and 4 aggregate sectors' production in the period between 1982 till 2014. One measure is the monthly deflated official bilateral exchange rate of EGP against the US dollar and the other is the annual real effective exchange rate of the EGP. The …

How Does Child Participation In Early Head Start Programs Affect Their Mother’S Employment And Educational Attainment?, Pamela Barcelona

Theses and Dissertations

Early Head Start (EHS) was established in 1994 to provide assistance to families in need. Mothers receiving services are more likely to attend high school and job training than mothers who don't receive them. Mothers in EHS are also more likely to have part-time employment than mothers who are not.

Forced Migration Populations And Terrorism, Liam Egan

Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes the relationship between refugee populations per capita and terrorism incidents per capita in a host country. Using data from UNHCR and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), I conduct cross-national time series poisson and OLS analyses for 164 countries during the years 1992-2013 to explain their relationship.

Unemployment, Does It Really Hurt?, Claudia Vargas

Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes the consequences of changes in the unemployment rate in Colombia on the level of education attained for adolescents. Increases in the unemployment rate are associated with an increase in the average number of years of education. No significant effect was found for men of the same age.

A Case Study Of The Impact Of The -Ny-Suny 2020 Challenge Grant Program Act On Public College Enrollment, Mekaj T. Daniel Ms.

Theses and Dissertations

In 2011, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York signed into law NY Senate Bill S5855 establishing the NY-SUNY 2020 Challenge Grant Program Act. This legislation limited year-over-year resident undergraduate tuition increases in the City University of New York (CUNY) and State University of New York (SUNY) systems to a maximum of three hundred dollars ($300) per year from the 2011/2012 school year to 2015/2016. It also mandated that increases in nonresident undergraduate tuition not exceed 10 percent over the previous year. In addition to the tuition cap, a tuition credit is provided to students whose annual resident undergraduate rate of …

The Effect Of Risk And Time Preferences On Agricultural Decisions Among Farmers In Malawi, Sheena Som

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the relationships between risk and time preferences and agricultural decisions among poor farmers in Malawi. Utilizing a 2006 baseline survey from the MTARI experiment, this paper uses a Tobit regression to find how risk aversion and time discount factors influence poor farmers' agricultural choices.

Tertiary Degrees And The Market: Cross-Country Statistical Evidence, Boontharika Meesuwan

Theses and Dissertations

Substantial differences in stock market behavior exists across the world. Many determinants have been explored and empirically studied, yet the exact reasons for these differences remain unclear. The purpose of this paper is to contribute some insight into the question of why market behavior differs across countries and between social groups despite continuing globalization within financial markets. I hypothesize that there is a direct relationship between personality and trading behavior that directly affects market liquidity.

Racial And Ethnic Differences In Receipt Of Immediate Breast Reconstruction Surgery: Do Hospital Characteristics Matter?, Jaya Shankar Khushalani

Theses and Dissertations

Immediate Breast Reconstruction Surgery (IBRS) is associated with better quality of life among women who undergo a mastectomy. Despite insurance coverage for IBRS, utilization of IBRS remains low. Data from publicly available sources for 2010-2012 are used to examine the association between hospital characteristics receipt of IBRS by patients. Minority-serving status, low bed size, for-profit ownership, non-teaching status, high competition, low density of plastic surgeons in the market and non-metropolitan location are associated with lower likelihood of receipt of IBRS.

Racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive IBRS. A mixed effects logistic regression model with interactions between Black/Hispanic …

Health Aid In Africa: Placement, Service Utilization, And Benefit, Carrie Dolan

Theses and Dissertations

While the health sector has attracted significant foreign aid, evidence on the effectiveness of this support is mixed. This dissertation examines the allocation of health aid within the context of placement, service utilization, and benefit. The first paper examined the sub-national allocation of Chinese development aid projects across Africa. I determined how political preferencing of Chinese aid specifically, allocating aid to the birth region of the current political leader differs across sectors such as health, education, and transportation. I find some evidence that aid, more broadly defined, is subject to political preferencing in recipient countries, which could potentially limit its …