Economics Commons^™

Two Essays In The Indiana Family Cap Provision, Aimee Williams

Honors Theses

The first federal welfare program in the United States was established under the 1935 Social Security Act. The child welfare component of this bill was entitled Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). While only children were eligible to receive benefits, this program was partially intended to keep women out of the labor force during the depression so they would not take jobs that would otherwise go to men. In the 1950's and 1960's. this program was expanded to allow states to claim federal reimbursement for aid to unemployed parents and the spouse of an unemployed or incapacitated parent, becoming Aid to …

An Ascending Auction For Interdependent Values: Uniqueness And Robustness To Strategic Uncertainty, Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider an single object auction environment with interdependent valuations and a generalized Vickrey–Clark–Groves allocation mechanism that allocates the object almost efficiently in a strict ex post equilibrium. If there is a significant amount of interdependence, there are multiple rationalizable outcomes of this direct mechanism and any other mechanism that allocates the object almost efficiently. This is true whether the agents know about each others’ payoff types or not. We consider an ascending price dynamic version of the generalized VCG mechanism. When there is complete information among the agents of their payoff types, we show that the almost efficient allocation …

September 11th, 2001: Immediate And Short Run Effects On U. S. Commodity Markets, Financial Statistics, And Macroeconomic Variables, Katie E. Lotz

Masters Theses

In an attempt to identify and quantify the economic impacts of 9/11 on U.S. markets, this study individually examines a wide range of U.S. economic variables. Macroeconomic indicators, commodity prices, and financial statistics are the three main focuses of the project. Econometric analysis-ranging from simple ordinary least squares regression to more advanced techniques such as autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models-is used to identify the various impacts. The analysis finds that September 11th did have a wide array of impacts on the U.S. economy. Some variables appear to have been affected both immediately and in the short run, while others seem to …

Savings Rate Of Classical Accum, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Savings rate & classical accumulation [Folder cover]. (2007, January).

• Shaikh, A. (2007, March 2). Harrod’s cyclical adjustment [Handwritten notes]. Unpublished manuscript.

• Shaikh, A. (2007, February 7). Classical accumulation with government [Handwritten notes]. Unpublished manuscript.

• Shaikh, A. (2007, January 12). Stability conditions of the post-Keynesian accumulation function [Handwritten notes]. Unpublished manuscript.

• Tullock, G. (n.d.). Government spending. In D. R. Henderson (Ed.), The concise encyclopedia of economics (Econlib edition). Liberty Fund, Inc. (Printed February 11, 2007).

• Fig06.jpg [Printed graph from JPEG image]. (2007, February 11).

• Government final consumption expenditure as a percentage …

Transition Modeling And Econometric Convergence Tests, Peter C.B. Phillips, Donggyu Sul

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A new panel data model is proposed to represent the behavior of economies in transition allowing for a wide range of possible time paths and individual heterogeneity. The model has both common and individual specific components and is formulated as a nonlinear time varying factor model. When applied to a micro panel, the decomposition provides flexibility in idiosyncratic behavior over time and across section, while retaining some commonality across the panel by means of an unknown common growth component. This commonality means that when the heterogeneous time varying idiosyncratic components converge over time to a constant, a form of panel …

Maximum Likelihood And Gaussian Estimation Of Continuous Time Models In Finance, Peter C.B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper overviews maximum likelihood and Gaussian methods of estimating continuous time models used in finance. Since the exact likelihood can be constructed only in special cases, much attention has been devoted to the development of methods designed to approximate the likelihood. These approaches range from crude Euler-type approximations and higher order stochastic Taylor series expansions to more complex polynomial-based expansions and infill approximations to the likelihood based on a continuous time data record. The methods are discussed, their properties are outlined and their relative finite sample performance compared in a simulation experiment with the nonlinear CIR diffusion model, which …

Information Loss In Volatility Measurement With Flat Price Trading, Peter C.B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A model of price determination is proposed that incorporates flat trading features into an efficient price process. The model involves the superposition of a Brownian semimartingale process for the efficient price and a Bernoulli process that determines the extent of flat price trading. A limit theory for the conventional realized volatility (RV) measure of integrated volatility is developed. The results show that RV is still consistent but has an inflated asymptotic variance that depends on the probability of flat trading. Estimated quarticity is similarly affected, so that both the feasible central limit theorem and the inferential framework suggested in Barndorff-Nielson …

Social Memory And Evidence From The Past, Luca Anderlini, Dino Gerardi, Roger Lagunoff

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Examples of repeated destructive behavior abound throughout the history of human societies. This paper examines the role of social memory — a society’s vicarious beliefs about the past — in creating and perpetuating destructive conflicts. We examine whether such behavior is consistent with the theory of rational strategic behavior. We analyze an infinite-horizon model in which two countries face off each period in an extended Prisoner’s Dilemma game in which an additional possibility of mutually destructive “all out war” yields catastrophic consequence for both sides. Each country is inhabited by a dynastic sequence of individuals who care about future individuals …

Are You Sure You're Saving Enough For Retirement?, Jonathan Skinner

Dartmouth Scholarship

Many view the soon-to-retire Baby Boomers as woefully unprepared for their golden years, while other economists have taken a more sanguine view of American levels of saving. And if Americans are failures at saving enough for retirement, why are some retirees so happy? The seemingly simple question of "Am I saving enough for retirement?" is apparently not so simple at all. Instead, it touches on a variety of deeper issues in economics, psychology, and health policy. I use the program ESPlanner to present life-cycle retirement wealth targets for a range of incomes and situations typical of American Economic Association members. …

Farmland Preservation Programs In West Virginia: A Preliminary Inquiry Into The Merits Of Purchase Development Rights, Odd Stalebrink, Samuel E. Wilkinson

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

To prevent the loss of farmland in West Virginia, the Voluntary Farmland Protection Act (VFPA) was passed in 2000. This act gives counties and the State authority to develop and fund local farmland protection programs, which typically involve a voluntary sale by a landowner of the right to develop the farmland. Following the purchase, the purchaser (often a government or a land trust) would retire the property. Since the inception of the VFPA, 5,000 acres of farmland have been retired in West Virginia. The objective of the paper is to assess the merit of this legislation in terms of its …

Clash Of The Titans: Collisions Of Economic Regulations And The Need To Harmonize Prescriptive Jurisdiction Rules, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Part I of this article describes regulatory clashes involving different states' public laws, and then focuses on certain areas of law, including antitrust, securities, and Internet commerce and publishing, where such clashes are most likely to take place. Part II focuses on the different solutions to this regulatory puzzle invoked by scholars, advocating either territorial-based or substance-based approaches. Part III then critiques the two approaches, while emphasizing the need to address the issue from a global perspective, that is, by seeking to harmonize jurisdiction-allocating rules on an international level.

Far From The Commonwealth: A Report On Low-Income Asian Americans In Massachusetts, Michael Liu, Thao Tran, Paul Watanabe

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

Asian Americans are as diverse in history, language, class, ethnic origin, and demographics as any group in the United States. This complexity is reflected in their economic status. Much attention has focused on the significant economic attainments of many Asian Americans. The fact, however, that a large number of Asian Americans also live in poverty or have low incomes has received much less notice from researchers, foundations, government agencies, and others.

The principal purpose of this report is to bring attention to and shed more light on a significant sector of Asian Americans in Massachusetts, those with low incomes. We …

Periodically Collapsing Bubbles In The Asian Emerging Stock Markets, Ako Doffou

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper investigates empirically the existence of periodically collapsing bubbles in the Asian emerging stock markets using the Enders-Siklos (2001) momentum threshold autoregressive model. As explained in Bohl (2003), this non-linear time series technique can be used to analyze bubble driven run-ups in stock prices followed by a crash in a non- cointegration framework with asymmetric adjustment. This technique offers a more potent insight in the stock prices behavior than can possibly be obtained using conventional non-cointegration tests. The empirical findings for ten Asian emerging stock markets from 1993 to 2005 refute the bubble hypothesis.

Exploring The Effects Of Age At Arrival And Region Of Origin On The Earnings Of Immigrant Physicians In The U.S., Matthew Goergen '07

Honors Projects

Current projections, as indicated by the 2000 Census, suggest that racial and ethnic minorities will outnumber non-Hispanic whites in America by the year 2050. Clearly, immigrants are vital components of the U.S. labor force and crucial in helping drive the domestic economy. Foreign-born workers occupy all niches of the labor market, from low-skilled workers to physicians, yet there still exists a disparity in wages between immigrant and native workers.

Exploring The Causality Between The Pollution Haven Hypothesis And The Environmental Kuznets Curve, Brian W. Jbara '07

Honors Projects

In recent years, increased economic development, globalization, and liberalization of international trade have been linked by economists and environmental scholars as possible causes for specific trends in pollution. One of the most studied and controversial hypotheses is the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis (EKC), which states that a country's pollution concentrations rise with development and industrialization up to a certain point, after which they fall again as the country uses its increased affluence to reduce pollution concentrations again. If true, plotting pollution concentrations against income per capita will yield an inverted V-the EKC. Another controversy is the manner in which the …

An International Comparison Of The Incomes Of The Vast Majority, Anwar Shaikh Phd, Amr Ragab Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes.

• Shaikh, A., PhD, & Ragab, A. (2007). An international comparison of the incomes of the vast majority [Working paper]. The New School, New York.

Endogenous Savings Propensity, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Pugno, M. (1998). Harrod's economic dynamics as a persistent and regime-changing adjustment process. In G. Rampa, L. Stella, & A. P. Thirlwall (Eds.), Economic dynamics, trade and growth: Essays on Harrodian themes (pp. 152–178). Macmillan Press.
• Shaikh, A. (2007). Debutsar macro themes (Unpublished manuscript note) (p. 2).
• Robinson, J. (1965). A reconsideration of the theory of value. In J. Robinson, Collected economic papers (Vol. 3, pp. 173–181). Basil Blackwell.
• Shaikh, A. (n.d.). Endogenous variable saving propensity (Unpublished manuscript notes) (p. 1).

W. Arthur Lewis In Retrospect, Charles M. Becker, Terry Ann Craigie

Economics: Faculty Publications

This paper reviews several themes from the writings of W. Arthur Lewis, both the first black Nobel Laureate in Economics and the first from a developing country, and examines them from the perspective of two to five decades of hindsight. The paper emphasizes three main interrelated aspects; economic growth, economic dualism, and "the evolution of the economic order"-the forces that drive the prices of goods and relative incomes across countries. Lewis's messages still resonate today, as he foresaw the rise of industrial exports from developing countries-and also that it would not end the large gaps among nations' standards of living. …

Estimating Guard Labor, Arjun Jayadev

Economics Faculty Publication Series

As a background paper to Jayadev and Bowles (2006), this paper provides details on our measure of guard labor as we measure these in labor units. Data from the United States indicate a significant increase in its extent in the U.S. over the period 1890 to the present. Cross-national comparisons show a significant statistical association between income inequality and the fraction of the labor force that is constituted by guard labor, as well as with measures of political legitimacy (inversely) and political conflict.

The Meaning Of Poverty: Questions Of Distribution And Power, Arthur Macewan

Economics Faculty Publication Series

Focusing on the low-income parts of the world and reviewing the different ways we can define poverty, I first argue that what people generally mean by poverty – or, more broadly, by economic well-being – cannot be adequately captured by a single, absolute measure such as income level or a more complex aggregate such as the Human Development Index. Not only do these measures fail to account for the complexity of human material needs, but they also fail to recognize the importance of distributional issues. The failure to incorporate a consideration of distribution in defining poverty (or, more generally, economic …

2007'S Housing Market: Not Yet Recovering From Recent Ills, Alan Clayton-Matthews

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

The Massachusetts economy is currently on a trajectory that is similar to that of the national economy, at least as measured in the aggregate. During the second quarter of the calendar year, the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.4 percent. During the same period, the Massachusetts economy grew at 3.6 percent annual rate of growth, down from a strong 4.1 percent rate in the first quarter. The state’s economy is being pulled in two directions. On the upside, strong demand for the state’s technology, science, knowledge, and health-based goods and services is creating good job and income …

The Class Content Of Preferences Towards Anti-Inflation And Anti Unemployment Policies, Arjun Jayadev

Economics Faculty Publication Series

This paper assesses class based preferences towards anti-inflationary and anti-unemployment policy. Using a consistent cross-country social survey, I find that the working class broadly defined, and those with lower occupational skill and status are more likely to prioritize combating unemployment rather than inflation. The result is robust to the inclusion of several plausible controls. The idea that the working class is less ‘relatively inflation averse’ is consistent with earlier predictions coming from large body of political economy research in the 1970s. The finding that inflation and unemployment aversion have a distinct class character has implications for current debates on the …

Clean Energy In Massachusetts: Already Strong, This Emerging Sector Is Poised For Greater Growth, David Levy, David Terkla

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This article reviews Massachusetts’ clean energy sector in the context of the industry nationally and worldwide. We also suggest policy options to enhance the sector’s potential for the Massachusetts economy.

The Institutional Entrepreneur As Modern Prince: The Strategic Face Of Power In Contested Fields, David Levy, Maureen A. Scully

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This paper develops a theoretical framework that situates institutional entrepreneurship by drawing from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to understand the contingent stabilization of organizational fields, and by employing his discussion of the Modern Prince as the collective agent who organizes and strategizes counter-hegemonic challenges. Our framework makes three contributions. First, we characterize the interlaced material, discursive, and organizational dimensions of field structure. Second, we argue that strategy must be examined more rigorously as the mode of action by which institutional entrepreneurs engage with field structures. Third, we argue that institutional entrepreneurship, in challenging the position of incumbent actors and stable …

Washington Dollars And The Puerto Rican Economy: Amounts, Impacts, Alternatives, Arthur Macewan, Angel Ruiz

Economics Faculty Publication Series

By examining the Washington to Puerto Rico flow of funds in some detail and comparing it with the flow of federal funds to the states, this paper demonstrates that the island’s receipt of funds is not uniquely large and cannot be viewed as representing the “largess” of U.S. taxpayers. The funds coming from Washington to Puerto Rico cannot bear the weight of responsibility for the island’s economic problems that various sources have placed upon them. Puerto Rico’s economic ills have to be explained by a larger set of factors. Nonetheless, some of the Washington to Puerto Rico transfer programs may …

Health Care And The Looming Fiscal Crisis In The United States, Michael J. Wasylenko

Economics - All Scholarship

The United States spends a sixth of its GDP on health care. The costs of Medicare and Medicaid have grown along with the cost of health care in general in the United States. The paper addresses the large budget gap that will emerge in Medicare and Medicaid in the decades to come. It describes program financing and some of their main features and explains the projections of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office as well as those of the U.S. appointed Board of Trustees of Social Security, Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds. Finally, the article discusses …

Growth And Convergence: A Profile Of Distribution Dynamics And Mobility, Esfandiar Maasoumi, Jeff Racine, Thanasis Stengos

Economics - All Scholarship

In this paper we focus primarily on the dynamic evolution of the world distribution of growth rates in per capita GDP. We propose new concepts and measures of “convergence,” or “divergence ” that are based on entropy distances and dominance relations between groups of countries over time. We update the sample period to include the most recent decade of data available, and we offer traditional parametric and new nonparametric estimates of the most widely used growth regressions for two important subgroups of countries, OECD and non-OECD. Traditional parametric models are rejected by the data, however, using robust nonparametric methods we …

Survive Then Thrive: Talent, Research Motivation, And Completing The Economics Ph.D., Wayne A. Grove, Donald H. Dutkowsky, Andrew Grodner

Economics - All Scholarship

This study investigates the completion of the Ph.D. in Economics. We use ex ante information, based solely upon reviewing a set of individual applications from former doctoral students. Estimation for determining success is done by logit, multinomial logit, and generalized ordered logit. We find that students need different skills and attributes to succeed at each distinct and sequential stage of the doctoral program. Significant determinants for passing the comprehensive exams include high GRE verbal and quantitative scores, a Masters degree, and a prior focus on economics. Research motivation and math preparation play significant roles in completing the dissertation, but having …

A Monte Carlo Study For Pure And Pretest Estimators Of A Panel Data Model With Spatially Auto Correlated Disturbances, Badi H. Baltagi, Peter Egger, Michael Pfaffermayr

Center for Policy Research

This paper examines the consequences of model misspecification using a panel data model with spatially auto correlated disturbances. The performance of several maximum likelihood estimators assuming different specifications for this model are compared using Monte Carlo experiments. These include (i) MLE of a random effects model that ignore the spatial correlation; (ii) MLE described in Anselin (1988) which assumes that the individual effects are not spatially auto correlated; (iii) MLE described in Kapoor et al. (2006) which assumes that both the individual effects and the remainder error are governed by the same spatial autocorrelation; (iv) MLE described in Baltagi et …

Economic Growth And The Interests Of Future (And Past And Present) Generations: A Comment On Tyler Cowen, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.