Economics Commons^™

Anatomy Of A Financial Center's Global Competitiveness In The Context Of Michael Porter's Model Of National Competitive Advantage A Theoretical Analysis, Josef Joachim L. Magpantay

HIM 1990-2015

Throughout history, a number of financial centers have risen and fallen. While the significance of some centers have deteriorated, a small number of centers have emerged as today's leading financial centers by meeting a specific set of necessary conditions needed to successfully address the growing financial needs of the regions they are located. Furthermore, an even smaller number of financial centers have been able to sustain and expand their initial dominance in the financial industry by continuously satisfying a more focused set of conditions and factors. This thesis focuses on adapting Michael Porter's Diamond Model in determining, clustering, and expanding …

The Application Of Personality Assessment To Suggest Appropriate Employment In Various Fields Within Economic Development, Brittani Elizabeth Plaisance

Master's Theses

Personality assessment has been established through previous literature as a viable tool in organizational contexts in different job fields (Hough & Dilchert, 2010; Rothstein & Goffin, 2006). The field of economic development has seen little application of personality assessment to aspiring professionals within the discipline. This research hoped to establish distinct personality typologies within economic development by bifurcating the field into two sectors of (a) business recruitment, retention, and expansion and (b) entrepreneurship developers and community developers. Participants were asked to complete the Personal Preferences Self-Description Questionnaire (Thompson, 1996) after distinguishing within which of the two realms they were employed. …

Social Interactions In The Labor Market, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner, John A. Bishop

Center for Policy Research

We examine theoretically and empirically social interactions in labor markets and how policy prescriptions can change dramatically when there are social interactions present.

Spillover effects increase labor supply and conformity effects make labor supply perfectly inelastic at a reference group average. The demand for a good may also be influenced by either a spillover effect or a conformity effect. Positive spillover increases the demand for the good with interactions, and a conformity effect makes the demand curve pivot to become less price sensitive. Similar social interactions effects appear in the associated derived demands for labor.

Individual and community factors may …

Designing A Raw Water Fee Scheme For Groundwater Extraction In Cagayan De Oro, Philippines, Rosalina Palanca-Tan

Economics Department Faculty Publications

Our earlier study (Palanca-Tan and Bautista 2003) looked into groundwater depletion in Cagayan de Oro City (CDO) and the viability of collecting a raw groundwater fee to control the excessive abstraction of groundwater and to generate revenues to finance watershed preservation activities. This current study is an action research project that endeavored to push the CDO government to legislate and implement a raw groundwater pricing scheme as a resource management tool. The project included a hydrological study that was done to estimate the safe yield of the CDO aquifer. The hydrological study also aimed to equip our research team with …

Why The Master? Human Capital Development For Practicing U.S. Cycling Coaches, Daniel Larson, Joel Maxcy

Faculty Articles

The economic structure of the industry of cycling coaches has yet to be the subject of any apparent published inquiry. This study describes the basic characteristics of practicing cycling coaches and presents economic models of the determinants of commercial success for individual coaches. Data were collected through an independent survey of current and former U.S.A. Cycling (USAC) coaches in 2010 (N = 386). Results of ordinary least squares and negative-binomial regression models suggest that coaching and competitive experience are associated with larger clienteles, but formal human capital investments do not generally add to a coach's ability to garner more clients. …

The Man With A Vision, Ishrat Husain Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Dr Ishrat Husain is the Dean and Director of IBA (Institute of Business Administration), Karachi, the oldest graduate business school of Asia. He was also the 13th Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan from 1999-2005. He joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1964 and served in the field of Finance, Planning and Development before moving to Washington in 1979 to join the World Bank as an Economist.

Metropolitan Report - August 2011, Division Of Business And Economic Research, College Of Business Administration, University Of New Orleans

UNO Metropolitan Report (1986-2017)

No abstract provided.

A Proposal To Make Grain Storage Financially Feasible, David L. Garrett

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The United States has a National Oil Reserve but not a food reserve. Just as the oil reserve is designed to buffer unforeseen disruptions in the critical supply, the nation should also have a food reserve for the same purpose.

The United States and other developed nations have little or no food reserve beyond the typical demands between growing seasons. Marvelous production achievements in agriculture beginning in the early 1960s and known as the “Green Revolution” are now leveling off. Food production, suffering from such negative side effects as reduced water tables, is being outstripped by population growth (Bourne, 2009).

Essays On Location Choice And The Demand For Housing Services, Ovidiu Lasca

All Dissertations

My dissertation addresses two important individual level decisions: the choice of location made by young college graduates and the demand for owner-occupied housing. Young college graduates are an important component of the skilled labor force and one of the population groups with the highest risk of relocation. As a result, they are often targeted by state level policies aimed at attracting or retaining them in the labor force. My research reveals an important factor that determines the location chosen by young college graduates at the beginning of their career, and therefore informs policy makers on novel ways to make a …

Crime, Punishment, And Institutions, David Wilson

All Dissertations

The effect of prison conditions and discretionary parole on inmate behavior and crime rates is examined. Evidence suggests that prison conditions and crime rates are positively related, and that a shift away from discretionary parole leads to lower crime rates, but possibly higher levels of inmate misconduct.

Essays In The Political Economy Of Higher Education Funding, Benjamin Compton

All Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the consequences of political influence on state higher education funding at the committee level. The State of South Carolina has a long history of using a formula to determine the appropriate amount of funding that is to be allocated to its colleges and universities. I use the funding level implied by the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education's formula as a counterfactual against which actual levels of appropriation are measured. The membership of key state legislative committees with alumni members is used to determine if colleges receive a greater proportion of their performance funding target than those …

Predictive Duty Cycle Adaptation For Wireless Camera Networks, Paul J. Shin, Henry Medeiros, Johnny Park, Avinash Kak

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) typically employ dynamic duty cycle schemes to efficiently handle different patterns of communication traffic in the network. However, existing duty cycling approaches are not suitable for event-driven WSN, in particular, camera-based networks designed to track humans and objects. A characteristic feature of such networks is the spatially-correlated bursty traffic that occurs in the vicinity of potentially highly mobile objects. In this paper, we propose a concept of indirect sensing in the MAC layer of a wireless camera network and an active duty cycle adaptation scheme based on Kalman filter that continuously predicts and updates the location …

Impact Of Agricultural Profitability, Productivity And Interest Rate On Farmland Value For Selected U.S. And Slovak States, Maria Majerhoferova

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines agricultural factors which may have impact on agricultural land values. Based on theory, three primary factors are considered to have an impact on land value: agricultural productivity, agricultural profitability and interest rate. The study is of two countries: the US, where data are from 16 states and Slovakia with 6 states. The ten-year period from 2000 until 2009 is used in the analysis. A capitalization model is used to estimate the relationship between agricultural productivity, profitability and interest rate and land value. Three types of agricultural land are used: cropland and its value in relationship with crops, …

Essays On The Performance Of Us Bank Holding Companies, Liliana Danila

All Dissertations

I employ nonparametric estimation techniques to explore different aspects of the performance of US bank holding companies (BHCs).
In my paper 'Market Pricing of U.S. Bank Holding Companies' Technical Efficiency,' I use quarterly data from 1986 to 2009 to examine whether changes in technical efficiencies of U.S. BHCs are reflected in their stock returns. The relationship between technical efficiency and stock returns is analyzed both in a financial and accounting framework. Efficiencies are estimated using the unconditional hyperbolic α-quantile estimator developed by Wheelock and Wilson (2008). This estimator is a local estimator and exhibits more desirable statistical properties than traditional …

(Wp 2011-06) Do Stock Market Risk Premium Respond To Consumer Confidence?, Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Working Papers

During the 2007-9 Great Recession, the risk premium associated with U.S. stocks sharply increased and has since remained significantly higher compared to its range during the last 40 years. The increase in the equity risk premium has led many analysts to believe that risk aversion among stock investors has moved to a permanently higher range in recent years. Our empirical findings show that the recent increase in the equity risk premium primarily reflects a temporary collapse in consumer confidence. As long as the consumer confidence in the sustainability of economic recovery remains low, today's elevated risk premium would persist. Once …

(Wp 2011-07) Factoring Emerging Markets Into The Relationship Between Global Liquidity And Commodities, Steven Landgraf, Abdur Chowdhury

Economics Working Papers

What caused the mid-2000s world commodity price “bubble” and the recent commodity price growth during the economic recovery after the 2007-2009 recession? The classical “supply and demand” interpretation offered by some observers suggests that rapid global industrial growth over the past decade – the so-called “demand channel” – is the key driver of price growth. Others have argued that recent bouts of commodity price growth were directly related to central banks, especially the U.S. Federal Reserve, injecting too much money or “liquidity” into the financial system. They assert that high commodity prices are a result of excessively loose monetary policy. …

Grey Market For Indian Ipos: Investor Sentiment And After-Market Performance, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Tiong Yang Thong, Vishwanath Ramanna

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant research on developed markets shows that investor sentiment is a prominent feature in IPO grey markets. There is sparse work in the context of emerging markets. We fill this lacuna by studying the working of the Indian IPO market. We consider this work interesting and relevant for the following reasons. First, grey market trading always involves short-selling as securities are not yet available. Since legal and institutional environment is less developed in emerging markets, the functioning of grey markets is of interest to policy makers and financial economists. Second, retail investors participate to a greater extent in IPOs of …

The Singapore Town-Hall Meeting, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Professor Eugene Tan forecasts what the Prime Minister might say in his National Day Rally speech. He predicts it will touch on the ecomomy, Presidential election and social cohesion, among other issues.

Simulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Latent Diffusion Models, Tore Selland Kleppe, Jun Yu, Hans J. Skaug

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper a method is developed and implemented to provide the simulated maximum likelihood estimation of latent diffusions based on discrete data. The method is applicable to diffusions that either have latent elements in the state vector or are only observed at discrete time with a noise. Latent diffusions are very important in practical applications in financial economics. The proposed approach synthesizes the closed form method of Ait-Sahalia (2008) and the efficient importance sampler of Richard and Zhang (2007). It does not require any infill observations to be introduced and hence is computationally tractable. The Monte Carlo study shows …

Labor Supply Responses To The 1990s Japanese Tax Reforms, Ken Yamada

Research Collection School Of Economics

The consumption-leisure choice model implies that an exogenous change in tax rates will induce a change in labor supply. This implication is expected to be important to labor supplied by secondary earners under a progressive tax system when spousal income alters effective marginal tax rates. This paper examines labor supply responses to the income tax changes associated with Japanese tax reforms during the 1990s. The results indicate that the hours-of-work elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax rate is 0.8 for married women.

Risk And The Technology Content Of Fdi: A Dynamic Model, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper incorporates risk into the FDI decisions of firms. The risk of FDI failure increases with the gap between the South's technology frontier and the technology complexity of a firm's product. This leads to a double-crossing sorting pattern of FDI firms of intermediate technology levels are more likely than others to undertake FDI. It is with the attempt to relax the upper bound of the technology content of FDI, we argue, that many FDI policies are created. The theory's predictions are consistent with the empirical pattern of FDI in China by US and Taiwanese manufacturing firms.

Testing For Multiple Bubbles, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Identifying explosive bubbles that are characterized by periodically collapsing behavior over time has been a major concern in the literature and is of great importance for practitioners. The complexity of the nonlinear structure in multiple bubble phenomena diminishes the discriminatory power of existing tests, as evidenced in early simulations conducted by Evans (1991). Multiple collapsing bubble episodes within the same sample period make bubble diagnosis particularly difficult and complicate attempts at econometric dating. The present paper systematically investigates these issues and develops new procedures for practical implementation and surveillance strategies by central banks. We show how the testing procedure and …

Bayesian Hypothesis Testing In Latent Variable Models, Yong Li, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Hypothesis testing using Bayes factors (BFs) is known not to be well defined under the improper prior. In the context of latent variable models, an additional problem with BFs is that they are difficult to compute. In this paper, a new Bayesian method, based on decision theory and the EM algorithm, is introduced to test a point hypothesis in latent variable models. The new statistic is a by-product of the Bayesian MCMC output and, hence, easy to compute. It is shown that the new statistic is easy to interpret and appropriately defined under improper priors because the method employs a …

Specification Sensitivities In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing, Shu-Ping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Right-tailed unit root tests have proved promising for detecting exuberance in economic and financial activities. Like left-tailed tests, the limit theory and test performance are sensitive to the null hypothesis and the model specification used in parameter estimation. This paper aims to provide some empirical guidelines for the practical implementation of right-tailed unit root tests, focusing on the sup ADF test of Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011), which implements a right-tailed ADF test repeatedly on a sequence of forward sample recursions. We analyze and compare the limit theory of the sup ADF test under different hypotheses and model specifications. The …

Occupational Licensing: Protecting The Public Interest Or Protectionism?, Morris M. Kleiner

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The issue of the government regulation of occupations involves the role of government in reconciling the special interests of the practitioners with those of society. The strictest form of occupational regulation is occupational licensing which is extensive and growing. In 2008, nearly 30 percent of the workforce was required to hold a license up from around 10 percent in 1970. There are potential job loss implications in the growth of occupational licensing for the labor market and the economy. An alternative form of regulation, the certification of occupations, which does not impose a "closed shop" on entry and mobility, may …

Maximising Benefits, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

The recent moves to devolve some of the functions and responsibilities of the federal government to the provinces through the 18th Amendment and the decision of the National Finance Commission (NFC) to allocate a larger portion of divisible tax pool to the provinces are highly commendable. These steps have the potential to overcome some of the structural difficulties and micro-economic distortions that have been keeping Pakistan as an underachiever economically and socially. In a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic society, with one of the federating units being much advanced and enjoying political dominance, de-concentration of powers and equitable sharing of resources among …

Are Big Schools Bad Schools?: Measuring The Effects Of The Number And Size Of Schools On District Costs And Student Achievement, Jamie Steiner

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

As state governments shrink their budgets, more school districts are debating consolidation. In considering school consolidation, governments must evaluate costs per pupil and student achievement. Factors associated with costs per pupil include schools per district, district enrollment, income per individual, percent of pupils eligible for free lunch, pupil-teacher ratio, and average teacher salary. Factors associated with achievement include school enrollment, percent of pupils eligible for free lunch, suspension/expulsion rates, pupil-teacher ratio, and average teacher salary. This paper presents a regression model that analyzes the effects of school enrollment and schools per district on costs per pupil and standardized test passing …

The Value Of Life: Real Risks And Safety-Related Productivity In The Himalaya, Jeremy Goucher, William C. Horrace

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper estimates the value of a statistical life from commercial Himalayan expeditions. Because deaths occur with a fair amount of regularity, fatality rates are calculated for each mountain trail and are, hence, disaggregated measures of risk. Also, since the marginal product of labor in the industry is (in part) the marginal product of safety, our revenue measures may account for unobserved safety-related productivity of guides. Guide safety is explicitly observed by market participants, and is reflected in higher wages for safer guides. Our VSL estimates are about $5 M.

Governance Initiatives, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Pakistan's problems of governance do not require as much unknown remedies as they do political will to initiate bold reforms. Unnecessary leakages, high non-development expenditure , and a low tax base have strained the government's fiscal position to the point that without immediate reforms, it will remain caught in chronic stagflation, always spending beyond its means and adding to the unbearable deficit.

While formulating the National Commission for Government Reforms, we conducted a detailed cross-section study of the governance structure and related institutions, We gathered consultants and stakeholders on a single platform to hammer out consensus in terms of trimming …

Civil Service Reform In Pakistan: Capacity, Competence, Courage, And Compassion, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

My remarks this afternoon will be divided into three parts. First, I will dwell on the question: Why reform the Civil Service? What is the rationale and justification for reform? Second, if it is necessary what should be the end-result of the reform and what needs to be done to achieve this objective. Third, what should be the phasing and sequencing of various reforms if there is an agreement on the need, the objective and the content of the reforms. The overall governance structure is important because it is through this structure that economic policies are intermediated and translated into …