Economics Commons^™

Schumpeter's Creative Destruction: A Review Of The Evidence, Arthur M. Diamond Jr.

Economics Faculty Publications

Thoughtful scholars from Adam Smith to Jared Diamond, have asked the same life-and-death question: why do some societies succeed, and others fail, in producing the goods that make life long, healthy and prosperous? Smith's answer was basically that when societies adopt the rules of market capitalism, their economies grow,:and when they do not adopt the rules of market capitalism, their economies do not. Since Smith, other economists have developed more formal models of economic growth. The classic "Solow growth model" emphasized the investment of capital. Romer's "New Growth Theory," includes knowledge as a variable. What is mainly missing from both …

Latino Political Participation In Nebraska: The Challenge Of Enhancing Voter Mobilization And Representation - Ollas Report No. 3, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado

Latino/Latin American Studies Reports

This OLLAS policy brief seeks to enhance basic information regarding the role Latinos will play in shaping the future of politics in Nebraska in the short and medium term. Because issues such as immigration policy, fair housing, labor practices, and public education have risen to the top of the political agenda nationally and statewide, and because these issues most directly impact the lives of Nebraska’s growing Latino constituencies legitimately, we must consider to what extent Latino stakeholders can shape the debate and articulate acceptable policy responses to these matters.

How effectively these issues are dealt with will have major implications …

Log Periodogram Regression: The Nonstationary Case, Chang Sik Kim, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Estimation of the memory parameter ( d ) is considered for models of nonstationary fractionally integrated time series with d > (1/2). It is shown that the log periodogram regression estimator of d is inconsistent when 1 < d < 2 and is consistent when (1/2) < d = 1. For d > 1, the estimator is shown to converge in probability to unity.

Adaptive Estimation Of Autoregressive Models With Time-Varying Variances, Ke-Li Xu, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Stable autoregressive models of known finite order are considered with martingale differences errors scaled by an unknown nonparametric time-varying function generating heterogeneity. An important special case involves structural change in the error variance, but in most practical cases the pattern of variance change over time is unknown and may involve shifts at unknown discrete points in time, continuous evolution or combinations of the two. This paper develops kernel-based estimators of the residual variances and associated adaptive least squares (ALS) estimators of the autoregressive coefficients. These are shown to be asymptotically efficient, having the same limit distribution as the infeasible generalized …

Money Matters In Education, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Borderplex Economic Outlook: 2006-2008, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Montana Nonresident Traveler Expenditure Trends: 1995-2005, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report shows the nonresident traveler expenditure trends for visitors of Montana from 1995-2005. It also displays the total actual expenditures and the total inflation-adjusted expenditures.

Montana Nonresident Traveler Expenditures And Economic Contribution: 2005, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report shows the economic contributions, expenditures, and average daily spending of nonresident visitors to Montana during 2005.

Montana Nonresident Traveler Expenditure Profiles: 2005, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report examines spending profiles of nonresident travelers to Montana. It displays the average daily expenditures by purpose of trip for different spending categories during 2005.

Examining The Justification For Residential Recycling, Thomas C. Kinnaman

Faculty Journal Articles

Municipalities in the United States have for the past two decades initiated two policies to reduce residential solid waste generation by increasing recycling. The first policy, implemented in over 4,000 municipalities in the United States, requires households to pay a fee for each unit of garbage presented at the curb for collection. The second policy, initiated in 8,875 municipalities, subsidizes household recycling efforts by providing free curbside collection of certain recyclable materials. Both initiatives serve as examples of incentive-based environmental policies favored by many economists. But before economists can celebrate this wide-spread adoption of incentive-based environmental policies, further examination reveals …

Webfestschrift For Wealth Bondage [External Link], (Blog) The Happy Tutor

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Software And Internet Industry Workers: Implications For The Future Of Work In Massachusetts, Sarah Kuhn, Paula Raymann

New England Journal of Public Policy

Those at the leading edge of the new economy — workers in software and Internet workplaces — can tell us something about the future of work in our new world. The authors have conducted a National Science Foundation-funded study of women and men working in IT. They find that while pay and the opportunity to do interesting work are major attractions, challenges facing this workforce include stress, difficulties balancing work and family, and concerns about employment security. While women and men reported similar attitudes and experiences in many areas, in others there were still significant differences.

The Future Of Learning, Robert B. Reich

New England Journal of Public Policy

As part of UMass Boston’s recent celebration to mark the inauguration of Chancellor Michael F. Collins, M.D., the Division of Corporate, Continuing and Distance Education (CCDE) hosted a “virtual symposium” featuring Robert B. Reich. Between April 24 and May 8, CCDE posted a streaming video and a downloadable audio file of a presentation that Professor Reich had delivered on April 11, 2006 at the national conference of the University Continuing Education Association. This talk was supplemented, on May 3, by a live teleconferencing Q&A session with Professor Reich and about fifty UMass Boston graduate students.

An Experimental Examination Of Competitor-Based Price Matching Guarantees, Jennifer G. Pate, Shakun Datta

Economics Faculty Works

We use experimental methods to demonstrate the anti-competitive potential of price matching guarantees in both symmetric and asymmetric cost duopolies. Our findings establish that when costs are symmetric, price-matching guarantees significantly increase market prices. In markets with cost asymmetries, guaranteed prices remain high relative to prices without the use of guarantees, but the overall ability of price guarantees to act as a collusion facilitating device becomes contingent on the relative cost difference. Lesser use of guarantees, combined with lower average prices and slower convergence to the collusive level, suggest that the mere presence of cost asymmetries may curtail collusive behavior.

“Sweeping The Heavens For A Comet”: Women, The Language Of Political Economy, And Higher Education In The United States, Ann Mari May

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

The importance of increased levels of education in improving the status of women throughout the world is well established. Higher levels of education are associated with lower birth rates, higher incomes, and greater autonomy for women. Yet, women’s struggle to have a voice in higher education has been fraught with difficulties in the US and worldwide, particularly in overcoming widely held perceptions that limit their entrance into certain academic fields, tenured positions, and elite universities. This essay examines the role political economy has played in providing narratives that rationalize women’s limited participation in higher education. By examining the representation of …

One Year After Katrina: Tragedy Of The Crescent City, Christopher Stream, R. Paul Battaglio

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

One year after Katrina, New Orleans and the surrounding area are slowly showing signs of growth and a return to normalcy. Two recent studies provide excellent overviews of the economic impacts the hurricane had on the area as well as the efforts New Orleans has made to recover from the storm’s devastation. The first study which was published in August of 2006 was done by the Brookings Institution. A “Special Edition of the Katrina Index: A One-Year Review of Key Indicators of Recovery in Post-Storm New Orleans” by Amy Liu, Matt Fellowes and Mia Mabanta, provides an overview of key …

Manufacturing Brief: Trends In Manufacturing Industries In Northeast Ohio, Ziona Austrian

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Northeast Ohio Manufacturing Brief, Ziona Austrian

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Entrepreneurship And “Conscientious Capitalism”? Economic Solidarity Within The Banco Palmas Network, Caroline Whistler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Capitalism is often thought of as a struggle between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Although the very nature of the economic system is to reward innovative ideas that can survive competition and the ‘free market’, many ‘have-nots’ do not have the same opportunities to succeed as those born with economic resources. The gap between those with capital and those without has gradually widened into a gaping hole that few can cross. While there are certainly enough resources in Brazil to keep all citizens above the poverty line, the reality is that economic survival has been replaced by one of the most …

La Política Comercial De La República Oriental De Uruguay: La Integración En El Mercosur Y Las Negociaciones De Libre Comercio Con Los Estados Unidos, Patrick Hudson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study analyzes the foreign economic policy of Uruguay, concentrating specifically on the current administration’s proposed policy changes as reflected in recent free-trade negotiations with the United States. The paper begins with an historical evaluation of Uruguay’s current strategy of international insertion via the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), a fifteen year-old economic bloc also including Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. The first section then concludes with a brief examination of Uruguayan-American bilateral trade negotiations leading up to the 2006 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) talks. The second part of the study identifies three possible future scenarios of Uruguayan foreign economic …

De Movimiento Político A Cooperativa Una Investigación De La Evolución Del Mtd-La Matanza, Will Greene

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper is an investigation of how one group of unemployed workers in Argentina, the MTD-La Matanza, responded to the economic and social deterioration wrought by the market liberalization of the Nineties. This investigation examines the emergence of the MTD-La Matanza as part of the larger political movement of “piqueteros” in the mid-Nineties, the division and neutralization of this movement by the Government’s “Planes Trabajar,” and the resulting transformation of the MTD-La Matanza to a self-managed cooperative. Through this examination, I highlight the way in which the cooperative crystallizes as an alternative response to the changes of the nineties, particularly …

Montana Nonresident Traveler Quarterly Travel Comparison: 2005, Melissa Dubois, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report shows the 2005 quarterly visitation and length of stay data for nonresident travelers to Montana. It also displays average daily spending for various expenditure categories, as well as total expenditures for those categories.

Lottery Rather Than Waiting-Line Auction, Winston T. H. Koh, Zhenlin Yang, Lijing Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the allocative efficiency of two non-price allocation mechanisms – the lottery (random allocation) and the waiting-line auction (queue system) – for the cases where consumers possess identical time costs (the homogeneous case), and where time costs are correlated with time valuations (the heterogeneous case). We show that the relative efficiency of the two mechanisms depends critically on a scarcity factor (measured by the ratio of the number of objects available for allocation over the number of participants) and on the shape of the distribution of valuations. We show that the lottery dominates the waiting-line auction for a …

On Joint Modelling And Testing For Local And Global Spatial Externalities, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper concerns the joint modeling, estimation and testing for local and global spatial externalities. Spatial externalities have become in recent years a standard notion of economic research activities in relation to social interactions, spatial spillovers and dependence, etc., and have received an increasing attention by econometricians and applied researchers. While conceptually the principle underlying the spatial dependence is straightforward, the precise way in which this dependence should be included in a regression model is complex. Following the taxonomy of Anselin (2003, International Regional Science Review 26, 153-166), a general model is proposed, which takes into account jointly local and …

What Matter For Child Development?, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper estimates production functions of child cognitive and social development using a panel data of nine-year old children each with over two hundred home and school inputs as well as family background variables. A tree regression method is used to conduct estimation under various speci…cations. A small subset of inputs is found consistently important in explaining variances of child development results, including the number of books a child has at various ages and how often a mother reads to child by age …ve, while the e¤ects of race and maternal employment are negligible when detailed inputs are controlled.

Profiling For Public Workforce Investment Programs In The United States, Christopher J. O'Leary, Stephen A. Wandner, Randall W. Eberts

Reports

No abstract provided.

New Mexico Labor Market Review 09-30-2006, New Mexico Department Of Labor

Historic Publications

The New Mexico Labor Market Review is a monthly publication presenting statistical data and analysis on labor market conditions throughout New Mexico. Issues examine statewide and regional trends in employment, unemployment, labor force estimates, industry activity, wages, occupational demand, and related economic conditions, often accompanied by feature articles on topics affecting the state’s economy. This issue covers August 2006.

Just Insurance Through Global Macro-Hedging: Information, Distributive Equity, Efficiency, And New Markets For Systemic-Income-Risk-Pricing And Systemic-Income-Risk-Trading In A New Economy, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article considers the prospects for exploiting (a) several deep conceptual linkages between justice and insurance, (b) the rapid development of new hedging methods and technologies, and (c) an increasingly integrated global finance economy, in a manner that can render the global economy both more just and more prosperous.

It first derives an account of economic justice from the best known theories currently in the field – an account likely to enjoy broad appeal. The article then elaborates on a number of striking parallels between what it takes for the best account of justice on the one hand, the theory …

The Geography Of American Poverty: Is There A Need For Place-Based Policies?, Mark D. Partridge, Dan S. Rickman

Upjohn Press

Partridge and Rickman explore the wide geographic disparities in poverty across the United States. Their focus on the spatial dimensions of U.S. poverty reveals distinct differences across states, metropolitan areas, and counties and leads them to consider why antipoverty policies have succeeded in some places and failed in others.

Whose Ownership? Which Society?, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The idea of an "ownership society" (OS) is not new to American politics or law. It might be called the seventeen year cicada of American domestic policy - emerging once per generation onto the national agenda, generating just a bit of buzz, then receding once again to leave a mass of empty shells and buried eggs behind. Unlike the insects, however, OS proposals seldom have sounded the same notes to everyone's ears. They have been proffered to or on behalf of differing constituencies for differing reasons, and therefore have tended to mean different things to different people. It is tempting …