Economics Commons^™

Technology, Unilateral Commitments And Cumulative Emissions Reduction, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this article, we argue that weak property rights over transnational pollution and the limited threat of retaliatory punishments blunts the effectiveness of a broad-based multilateral agreement to deliver the emission reductions required to mitigate climate change. Instead, we propose a policy framework that builds on unilateral commitments, endogenous innovation and technology transfer that could lead to cumulative emissions reduction by altering the participation constraints of nations over time.

Counting Working-Age People With Disabilities: What Current Data Tell Us And Options For Improvement, Andrew J. Houtenville Editor, David C. Stapleton Editor, Robert R. Weathers Editor, Richard V. Burkhauser Editor

Upjohn Press

This book offers a systematic review of what current statistics and data on working-age people with disabilities can and cannot tell us, and how the quality of the data can be improved to better inform policymakers, advocates, analysts, service providers, administrators, and others interested in this at-risk population.

From Sugar To Blackberries: Restructuring Agro-Export Production In Michoacán, Mexico, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

In recent years, economic crisis in the sugar industry and the closure of an important sugar mill in Michoacán, Mexico, have fostered the entry of transnational agribusinesses that contract with local growers for blackberry production. Land concentration is under way as wealthy growers rent ejido (agrarian-reform) land to grow berries and small-scale growers shift to less capitalized berry production or migrate out of the region. An analysis of the impact of this transition, part of the globalization of the agro-food system, on campesinos, workers, and their communities reveals that a general improvement in the economy has been accompanied by increased …

A Solution To Proebsting's Paradox, Or "How To Skim A Bettor If You Must", Eduardo Zambrano

Economics

Proebsting's Paradox is an argument that appears to show that the betting rule known as the Kelly criterion can lead a bettor to risk an arbitrarily high proportion of his wealth on the outcome of a single event. In this paper I show that a large class of betting criteria, including fractional Kelly, also suffer from the same shortcoming and use standard tools from microeconomic theory to explain why this is so. I also derive a new criterion, dubbed the doubly conservative criterion, that is immune to the problem identified above. Immunity stems from the bettor's attitudes towards capital preservation …

Making Partnerships Count: A Case Study: The Role Of Social Capital In The 2009 Homeless Count In Suburban Cook County, Jessica Aleksy

Master's Theses - Economics

As research intern for the Alliance to End Homelessness in Suburban Cook County from 2008 to 2009, I served a primary role as the 2009 Homeless Count Coordinator. I approached this challenge with a background in politics and applied community development from Illinois State University’s Politics & Government Department and the Stevenson Center for Community & Economic Development. With such a strong foundation in related academic fields, I focused much of my time on utilizing Social Capital Theory to plan the 2009 Homeless Count in suburban Cook County. This paper will present the 2009 Homeless Count in suburban Cook County …

Does Unemployment Decrease Cancer Mortality?, Benjamin Torres Galick

Economics Honors Projects

Recent research indicates that healthier lifestyles during recessions decrease the most common U.S. mortalities, but not cancer. However, they combine specific cancer mortalities with different progressions into one, possibly obscuring cancer’s link to unemployment. This paper estimates a fixed-effects regression model on unemployment and the nine most prevalent cancers between 1988 and 2002 using state-level panel data. Five cancers and total cancer are procyclical, and suggest that unemployment affects both incidence and gestation for some cancers. Consistent with the medical literature, this paper contradicts previous economic research and suggests that behavioral factors significantly impact cancer mortality.

The Problem With Eating Money: Remittances And Development Within Senegal's Muridiyya, Rebecca F. Sheff

Political Science Honors Projects

Contemporary development theory is poorly equipped to understand remittance-based development occurring in transnational spaces that partially escape the control of the state. An extended case study of the Muridiyya, a Sufi brotherhood in Senegal, reveals how collective remittances from Mouride transmigrants become tools for community-level development when channeled through transnational religious associations. I argue that remittance-based development projects transform the political, economic, and social contexts in which they are embedded, including the relationship between the Muridiyya and the state. Development theory must be reconceptualized to account for how remittance-based development defies conventional understandings of the scales of economic and social …

Why Do Macroeconomic Forecasters Forecast Inaccurately?, Jayant Gokhale

Economics Honors Projects

In this paper, I examine why forecasters inaccurately predict the annual growth rate of real GDP in late 1990s (the dot com boom) and early 21st century. I argue that forecasters herd around the lagged consensus (the mean forecast) which, when uninformative, leads them to converge to the wrong prediction. Using data from the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter and the Real Time Research Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia for the 1994-2002 period, I econometrically test for the presence of herding and its impact on accuracy. The results suggest that (1) forecasters do herd to “the wisdom …

Immigration, Trade And Home Country Development: State-Level Variation In The Us Immigrant-Export Link, Roger White, Bedassa Tadesse

Economics

This article examines the pro-trade influence of immigrants using data on state-level exports from the 48 contiguous USA to 28 countries during the year 1993. Immigrants from lesser developed countries are found to exert stronger proportional effects on state-level exports relative to the immigrants from more developed countries. Calculation of absolute immigrant effects at state, regional and national levels also reveal influences of immigrants from developing countries are of greater magnitude; however, results depend on the metric employed to categorize countries as developing or developed. The findings emphasize the importance of immigrants’ connections to business and social networks and allow …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index — May 2009, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Does Violent Crime Cause Individuals To Join Gangs?, Colin Hottman

Economics Honors Projects

This paper examines the hypothesis that violent crime causes gang membership. I construct a theoretical model of the individual’s decision to join a gang based on the protection that gang membership provides from violent crime. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort and a probit specification, I test three different measures of the threat of violent crime: a dummy variable for experiencing gun violence, a dummy variable for being the victim of repeated bullying, and a dummy variable for being the victim of a violent crime. In my regressions, I find support for the hypothesis that …

Down From The Mountain: Skill Upgrading And Wages In Appalachia, Christopher Bollinger, James P. Ziliak, Kenneth R. Troske

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Despite evidence that skilled labor is increasingly concentrated in cities, whether regional wage inequality is predominantly due to differences in skill levels or returns is unknown. We compare Appalachia, with its wide mix of urban and rural areas, to other parts of the U.S., and find that gaps in both skill levels and returns account for the lack of high wage male workers. For women, skill shortages are important across the distribution. Because rural wage gaps are insignificant, our results suggest that widening wage inequality between Appalachia and the rest of the U.S. owes to a shortage of skilled cities.

Working Well With A Disability, Catherine Ipsen, University Of Montana Rural Institute

Employment

Secondary conditions are health problems that exacerbate or intensify limitation caused by a primary impairment. They affect an individual’s physical, medical, emotional, and psychological well-being. Untreated secondary conditions may cause acute medical episodes or severe health conditions that limit normal activities of daily living (DeVivo, 1998; Ipsen, 2006). Several research studies report that the probability of employment is lower for people who experience secondary conditions such as depression, pain, anxiety, sleep problems, fatigue, and feelings of isolation (Crisp, 2005; Ipsen & Seekins, 2008). Fortunately, many secondary conditions are manageable through health promotion behavioral interventions that improve healthy lifestyle behaviors. Although …

Globalization And The Wage-Working Conditions Relationship: A Case Study Of Cambodian Garment Factories, Cael Warren

Economics Honors Projects

The wage premiums for firm-level foreign exposure (exporting and foreign ownership) have been well documented in the literature, and their potential sources have been studied in depth. Compensating differentials and efficiency wages are two distinct explanations (with radically different implications for worker welfare) for wage gaps that persist between firms despite controls for firm and worker characteristics. We use a comprehensive dataset of working conditions and wage compliance in Cambodia’s exporting garment factories to explore (1) the impact of foreign ownership on wages and working conditions, (2) whether the relationship between wages and working conditions within these exporting factories more …

Will We Be Stimulated? Economists Sound Off On Obama’S Stimulus Package Reason, Nick Gillesie, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Meg Mcardle

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Drawing Conclusions From Non-Random Samples: A Comment On “Race And Art: Prices For African American Painters, Melissa Boyle, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

In a recent paper in the Journal of Black Studies, “Race and Art: Prices for African American Painters and Their Contemporaries,” economist Richard Agnello examines price differentials between paintings sold at auction from 1972 to 2004 for a set of 16 African American artists, and a group of white artists identified as similar contemporaries. In this short paper we examine Agnello’s control group of white artists and confirm that this is a non-randomly selected sample of artists that are, on average, quantifiably more famous than the black artists in Agnello’s treatment group. In light of this selection bias, we discuss …

Estimating The Macroeconomic Consequence Of 9/11, S. Brock Blomberg, Gregory Hess

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

We perform an empirical investigation to estimate the macroeconomic cost of September 11 attacks on the United States economy. We estimate the impact of the attacks to be approximately a 0.50 percentage point decrease in GDP growth or $60 billion. Our upper bound estimate of the impact of September 11 is approximately twice that or $125 billion.

Financial Crisis Containment, Anna Gelpern

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims.

First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it targets the immediate term. It involves claims of emergency, rule-breaking, time inconsistency and moral hazard. In contrast, regulation, prevention and resolution seek to establish sound incentives for the long term. Second, containment decisions deviate from non-crisis norms in predictable ways, and are consistent across diverse countries and crises. Containment invariably entails three kinds of choices: choices …

Impact Of Air Quality Regulations On Entrepreneurial Activity, Scott E. Lowe, Samia Islam

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of NAAQS non-attainment status on the entrepreneurial activity in a metropolitan statistical area (MSA). Most of the existing research on the relationship between non-attainment and the financial robustness of areas focuses on the big polluters (e.g., plastics, organic chemicals, steel smelting and refining, etc.), and examines how many of the big polluters failed or relocated, measured by the change in the number of plants/businesses when an area moved from attainment to non-attainment. Our paper will use a 306 MSA panel data set over the 1989-2003 timeframe, to address the question …

Housing Market Effects Of Inclusionary Zoning, Antonio Bento, Scott E. Lowe, Gerrit-Jan Knaap, Arnab Chakraborty

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article presents an empirical analysis of the effects of inclusionary zoning policies on housing prices and starts in California during the period from 1988 through 2005. The analysis compares cities with and without such policies and isolates the effects of inclusionary zoning programs by carefully controlling for spatial and temporal conditions, such as the neighborhood or school district within which the house is located and changing market conditions over time. The analysis found that inclusionary zoning policies had measurable effects on housing markets in jurisdictions that adopt them; specifically, the price of single-family houses increases and the size of …

The Consequences Of Kelo: A Financial Approach, Curry Hilton

All Theses

ABSTRACT
Municipal bonds corresponding to states that passed effective post-Kelo restrictions on eminent domain takings experienced an increase in yields. The high costs associated with property acquisitions in states with strong legislation deter economic development takings and contribute to the decreasing of municipal bond prices. The financial effect attributed to municipal bonds issued for the purpose of economic improvement completely exceeds the impact offered by industrial improvement and public improvement bonds. The Kelo decision itself reinforced the appropriateness of government takings for private gain. The outcome directly affected municipal bond yields, causing an increase in price because of the low …

The Value Of Reputation In Online Auctions: Evidence From Ebay, Ahmed Eddhir

All Theses

Online auctions create reputation mechanisms to give users information about the reputation of their trading partners. This information helps the buyer to make an informed decision regarding his purchase: whether or not to make a purchase from a particular seller and the price the buyer is willing to pay. eBay is a leading internet auctioneers and in May 2008, it changed its feedback system. This paper examines the new feedback system and studies the impact of seller's reputation on auction's price. The empirical results show that buyers respond to the Positive Feedback ratings of sellers. However, the impact on the …

Rationalizable Implementation, Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This note studies (full) implementation of social choice functions under complete information in (correlated) rationalizable strategies. The monotonicity condition shown by Maskin (1999) to be necessary for Nash implementation is also necessary under the more stringent solution concept. We show that it is also sufficient under a mild “no worst alternative” condition. In particular, no economic condition is required.

Rationalizable Implementation, Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris, Olivier Tercieux

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider the implementation of social choice functions under complete information in rationalizable strategies. A strict (and thus stronger) version of the monotonicity condition introduced by Maskin (1999) is necessary under the solution concept of rationalizability. Assuming the social choice function is responsive (i.e., it never selects the same outcome in two distinct states), we show that it is also sufficient under a mild “no worst alternative” condition. In particular, no economic condition is required. We also discuss how our results extend when the social choice function is not responsive.

Two Essays On Financial Econometrics, Jia Geng

All Dissertations

The first paper examines the properties of the realized volatilities of US Dollar / Canadian Dollar spot exchange rate covering a time span of about three years and then the deseasonalized volatilities are estimated and forecasted using a fractionally-integrated model. The key feature of the realized volatilities is that they are model-free and also approximately measurement-error-free. Usually a U-shaped pattern of the intraday volatilities should be observed due to opening-closure effects in the global market. I do not see a typical U-shaped pattern in the intraday volatilities for US Dollar / Canadian Dollar. The reasons are given in this paper. …

Trade Effect Of A Single Currency In East Africa, Rodgers Mukwaya

All Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a single currency policy for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda on the volume, value and direction of trade and the distribution of welfare changes between these countries. A single-commodity (maize), multi-country spatial equilibrium model was used to evaluate the possible trade and welfare effects of the proposed single currency. Simulation results show higher levels of aggregate regional production with increased production in Uganda and decreased production in Kenya and Tanzania. The results also show increased aggregate trade in the region, the value of exports from Uganda to Kenya increased by …

The Expenditure Effects Of Sunset Laws In State Governments, Jonathan Waller

All Dissertations

Abstract: Sunset laws are laws designed to limit the size of state government by providing a process whereby statutorily created programs, agencies and bureaus are reviewed cyclically and their effectiveness assessed. Possible sunset results include continuation of the status quo, a reorganization or consolidation with other state agencies or agency termination. These programs exist in 30 states and use four distinct approaches, reflecting the confusion associated with the purpose and effects of such programs. This paper utilizes state expenditure and employment data to isolate the effects of sunset laws in general and the effects of each of the four different …

Trade Liberalization And New Imported Inputs, Pinelopi Goldberg, Amit Khandelwal, Nina Pavcnik, Petia Topalova

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cap-And-Trade For Climate Change Policy: Lessons Learned From Emissions Trading In The Us And The Uk, Justine L. Kelly

Economics Honors Papers

Market-based instruments, particularly cap-and-trade programs, have been the focus of attention in environmental policy in recent years. The success of the US Acid Rain Program, dubbed the “grand policy experiment,” has inspired governments across the globe to turn to the market for the purpose of controlling pollution. This paper attempts to formulate a policy recommendation for a future domestic cap-and-trade program for climate change policy in the United States. The paper describes and evaluates the US Acid Rain Program and the UK Emissions Trading Scheme in detail in order to gain insight into two relatively successful experiences with cap-and-trade. The …

Shelter Poverty In Massachusetts, 2000-2007: An Overview, Michael E. Stone

Center for Social Policy Publications

Nearly half of all renter households in Massachusetts - 415,000 households - are "shelter poor." After paying for their housing, they do not have enough resources left to meet their non-shelter needs for food, clothing, medical care, transportation, etc., at even a minimal level of adequacy. The median income of these shelter poor renters in Massachusetts is only $14,000 a year. This is just 16 percent of the median family income for Metro Boston (AMI). Shelter poverty is a more realistic approach to assessing affordability than the conventional 30 percent of income standard because it takes into account the cost …