Economics Commons^™

Foreign Private Investment And Economic Growth In Nigeria: A Cointegrated Var And Granger Causality Analysis, F. Z. Abdullahi, S. Ladan, Haruna R. Bakari

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This research uses a cointegration VAR model to study the contemporaneous long-run dynamics of the impact of Foreign Private Investment (FPI), Interest Rate (INR) and Inflation rate (IFR) on Growth Domestic Products (GDP) in Nigeria for the period January 1970 to December 2009. The Unit Root Test suggests that all the variables are integrated of order 1. The VAR model was appropriately identified using AIC information criteria and the VECM model has exactly one cointegration relation. The study further investigates the causal relationship using the Granger causality analysis of VECM which indicates a uni-directional causality relationship between GDP and FDI …

Banking Sector Credit And Economic Growth In Nigeria: An Empirical Investigation, Aniekan O. Akpansung, Sikiru J. Babalola

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

The paper examines the relationship between banking sector credit and economic growth in Nigeria over the period 1970-2008. The causal links between the pairs of variables of interest were established using Granger causality test while a Two-Stage Least Squares (TSLS) estimation technique was used for the regression models. The results of Granger causality test show evidence of unidirectional causal relationship from GDP to private sector credit (PSC) and from industrial production index (IND) to GDP. Estimated regression models indicate that private sector credit impacts positively on economic growth over the period of coverage in this study. However, lending (interest) rate …

Neither The Washington Nor Beijing Consensus: Developmental Models To Fit African Realities And Cultures, Sanusi L. Sanusi

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

No abstract provided.

Banking Reform And Its Impact On The Nigerian Economy, Sanusi L. Sanusi

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

No abstract provided.

Globalization And Commitment In Corporate Social Responsibility: Cross-National Analyses Of Institutional And Political-Economy Effect, Alwyn Lim, Kiyoteru Tsutsui

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines why global corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks havegained popularity in the past decade, despite their uncertain costs and benefits, and how theyaffect adherents’ behavior. We focus on the two largest global frameworks—the United NationsGlobal Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative—to examine patterns of CSR adoption bygovernments and corporations. Drawing on institutional and political-economy theories, wedevelop a new analytic framework that focuses on four key environmental factors—globalinstitutional pressure, local receptivity, foreign economic penetration, and national economicsystem. We propose two arguments about the relationship between stated commitment andsubsequent action: decoupling due to lack of capacity and organized hypocrisy due …

Introduction: The History Of Economics As A History Of Practice, Harro Maas, Tiago Mata, John B. Davis

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Subtle Discrimination In The Rental Housing Market: Evidence From E-Mail Correspondence Of Landlords, Andrew R. Hanson, Zackary Hawley, Aryn Taylor

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

We find that landlords practice subtle discrimination in the rental housing market through the use of language associated with describing and viewing a unit, inviting further correspondence, making a formal greeting, and using polite language when replying to e-mail inquiries from a white name more often than to an African American name, they also send longer e-mails and respond quicker to white names.

An Examination Of Treatment Effects With A Focus On Postsecondary State Merit Aid Programs, Sherry Jensen

All Dissertations

With a focus on the impact of postsecondary merit aid programs, this body of research uses a variety of econometric methods to evaluate treatment effects. Since the introduction of Georgia's HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) scholarship in 1993, a large number of U.S. states have introduced merit-based financial aid programs. As a growing emphasis is placed on higher education and an increased level of scrutiny is directed toward postsecondary charges, it is important to formally investigate the impact of such programs on the behavior of higher education institutions and students.

Using multiple state merit aid programs introduced over the period …

The Urban Fabric Of The Great Plains, Andrew Becker

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

To most Americans the Great Plains region of North America is mysterious place. There are disagreements when defining its limits, and some people just refer to it as the Midwest. The Great Plains has been a place under an ocean, a place under glaciers, and a place on fire. It was once dubbed “the Great American Desert,” but is now known for its agricultural viability. The Great Plains sparks imagination because it is so massive and was one of the final frontiers for Euro-American settlement. The Great Plains is seen as a rural place but the majority of the region’s …

Increasing Profitability Of Small Scale Cocoa Farmers Through Optimizing Replacement Rate, Mahrizal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study is to empirically estimate the optimum annual replacement rate and age of replacement of cocoa trees in order to maximize the net present value of four production practices over time. The study examines the costs and returns of four common cocoa production systems in Ghana associated with changes in cocoa prices, fertilizer prices, inflation rates, and labor prices. While this study focuses on cocoa, the method is applicable to any tree crop industry. This study uses empirical yield curves and cost of production data from Ghana to determine when and what percentage of a cocoa …

The Potential For Growth In Foreign Direct Investment In The Horticultural Sector Of Armenia, Mikayel Khachatryan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study examines why foreign investors choose to invest in companies in Armenia and is specifically attempting to understand how to attract more investment into the fruit and vegetable companies of Armenia. Investment by foreigners in domestic companies is referred to as foreign direct investment of FDI. The research was completed by gathering information from foreign firms that are already investing in companies in Armenia. This was done by conducting a face-to-face questionnaire with business managers of these companies in Yerevan, Armenia during August and December of 2010. The information gathered from these interviews was used in a statistical analysis …

Examining Revenue Management Practices In Las Vegas Casino Resorts, Arun Tanpanuwat

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The overall goal of this study was to examine Revenue Management (RM) practices in Las Vegas casino resorts. A great deal of research has been done on RM in the hospitality industry. The academic research has examined RM in hospitality in general, but not specifically in casino resorts, which gain their revenue from both rooms and resort amenities. Moreover, the academic literature often show high-level mathematic-based solutions or statistical applications, but not necessarily pragmatic techniques for practitioners. This qualitative study investigates the extent to which the essential fundamentals of any RM system are implemented successfully by casino RM professionals and …

The Long-Term Impact Of A Loyalty Program: An Evaluation From A Las Vegas Casino Hotel, Myongjee Yoo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Loyalty programs are popular marketing strategies intended to attract, maintain, and enhance customer relationships. Despite the widespread usage of loyalty programs across various businesses, its effectiveness has not been well validated. Few empirical studies attempted to evaluate the value of loyalty programs but the findings have been conflicting with each other. Given the competitive climate of such a highly saturated competitive market of the hospitality industry, it is meaningful for hospitality marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of loyalty programs to increase customer retention and profitability. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a hospitality …

International Capital Flows With Limited Commitment And Incomplete Markets, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Recent literature has proposed two alternative types of financial frictions, i.e., limited commitment and incomplete markets, to explain the patterns of international capital flows between developed and developing countries observed in the past two decades. This paper integrates both types of frictions into a two-country overlapping-generations framework to facilitate a direct comparison of their effects. In our model, limited commitment distorts the investment made by agents with different productivity, which creates a wedge between the interest rates on equity capital vs. credit capital; while incomplete markets distort the investment among projects with different riskiness, which creates a wedge between the …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: The Value Of Political Connections In Social Networks, Quoc-Anh Do, Bang Dang Nguyen, Yen Teik Lee, Kieu-Trang Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the impact of social-network connections to politicians on firm value. We focus on the networks of university classmates and alumni among directors of U.S. public firms and congressmen. Using the Regression Discontinuity Design based on close elections from 2000 to 2008, we identify that a director’s connection to an elected congressman causes a Weighted Average Treatment Effect on Cumulative Abnormal Returns of -2.65% surrounding the election date. The effect is robust and consistent through various specifications, parametric and nonparametric, with different outcome measures and social network definitions, and across many subsamples. We find evidence to support the …

Power Maximization And Size Control Of Heteroscedasticity And Autocorrelation Robust Tests With Exponentiated Kernels, Yixiao Sun, Peter C. B. Phillips, Sainan Jin

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using the power kernels of Phillips, Sun, and Jin (2006, 2007), we examine the large sample asymptotic properties of the t-test for different choices of power parameter (ρ). We show that the nonstandard fixed-ρ limit distributions of the t-statistic provide more accurate approximations to the finite sample distributions than the conventional large-ρ limit distribution. We prove that the second-order corrected critical value based on an asymptotic expansion of the nonstandard limit distribution is also second-order correct under the large-ρ asymptotics. As a further contribution, we propose a new practical procedure for selecting the test-optimal power parameter that addresses the central …

Score Tests For Inverse Gaussian Mixtures, A. F. Desmond, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The mixed inverse Gaussian given by Whitmore (Scand. J. Statist., 13, 1986, 211–220) provides a convenient way for testing the goodness-of-fit of a pure inverse Gaussian distribution. The test is a one-sided score test with the null hypothesis being the pure inverse Gaussian (i.e. the mixing parameter is zero) and the alternative a mixture. We devise a simple score test and study its finite sample properties. Monte Carlo results show that it compares favourably with the smooth test of Ducharme (Test, 10, 2001, 271-290). In practical applications, when the pure inverse Gaussian distribution is rejected, one is interested in making …

Singapore Consumer’S Inflation Expectations And Creation Of Singapore Index Of Inflation Expectations, Aurobindo Ghosh, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The aim of this report is to highlight a broad spectrum of issues that brings about the measurement of the disagreement and the uncertainity and the formation of inflation expectations among economic agents in Singapore.

Uniform Asymptotic Normality In Stationary And Unit Root Autoregression, Chirok Han, Peter C. B. Phillips, Donggyu Sul

Research Collection School Of Economics

While differencing transformations can eliminate nonstationarity, they typically reduce signal strength and correspondingly reduce rates of convergence in unit root autoregressions. The present paper shows that aggregating moment conditions that are formulated in differences provides an orderly mechanism for preserving information and signal strength in autoregressions with some very desirable properties. In first order autoregression, a partially aggregated estimator based on moment conditions in differences is shown to have a limiting normal distribution that holds uniformly in the autoregressive coefficient rho, including stationary and unit root cases. The rate of convergence is root n when vertical bar rho vertical bar < 1 and the limit distribution is the same as the Gaussian maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), but when rho = 1 the rate of convergence to the normal distribution is within a slowly varying factor of n. A fully aggregated estimator (FAE) is shown to have the same limit behavior in the stationary case and to have nonstandard limit distributions in unit root and near integrated cases, which reduce both the bias and the variance of the MLE. This result shows that it is possible to improve on the asymptotic behavior of the MLE without using an artificial shrinkage technique or otherwise accelerating convergence at unity at the cost of performance in the neighborhood of unity. Confidence intervals constructed from the FAE using local asymptotic theory around unity also lead to improvements over the MLE.

A Simple And Robust Method Of Inference For Spatial Lag Dependence, Zhenlin Yang, Yan Shen

Research Collection School Of Economics

A simple and reliable method of inference for the spatial parameter in spatial autoregressive models is introduced, based on a statistic obtained by centering and rescaling the numerator of the concentrated Gaussian score function. The resulted tests and confidence intervals are robust against the distributional misspecifications and are insensitive to the spatial layouts and the error standard deviation. In contrast, the standard methods based on Gaussian score and information matrix may lead to inconsistent inference when errors are non normal, and can be quite sensitive to the spatial layouts and the error standard deviation even when errors are normally distributed. …

One Mandarin Benefits The Whole Clan: Hometown Infrastructure And Nepotism In An Autocracy, Kieu-Trang Nguyen, Quoc-Anh Do, Anh Tran

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies nepotism by government officials in an authoritarian regime. We collect a unique dataset of political promotions of officials in Vietnam and estimate their impact on public infrastructure in their hometowns. We find strong positive effects on several outcomes, some with lags, including roads to villages, marketplaces, clean water access, preschools, irrigation, and local radio broadcasters, as well as the hometown’s propensity to benefit from the State’s “poor commune support program”. Nepotism is not limited to only top-level officials, pervasive even among those without direct authority over hometown budgets, stronger when the hometown chairperson’s and promoted official’s ages …

The Impact Of Chinese Purchases Of U.S. Government Debt On The Treasury Yield Curve, Radhames A. Lizardo, Andre V. Mollick

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Examining monthly data from May of 1985 to May of 2008, we find that increases in Chinese purchases of U.S government debt lead to decreases in Treasury yields. The effect is stronger as the maturity increases: a one percent increase in purchases of U.S. Treasuries by Chinese investors lowers the two-year (ten-year) Treasury yield by 10 to 38 basis points (39 to 55 basis points) on average, ceteris paribus . Overall, the demand-side variable capturing Chinese purchases of U.S. Treasuries improves the cointegrating properties of U.S. interest rates. In-sample and out-of-sample forecasts reinforce that the model with Chinese purchases greatly …

Including Jobs In Benefit-Cost Analysis, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Public policies may affect employment by directly creating jobs, facilitating job creation, or augmenting labor supply. In labor markets with high unemployment, such employment changes may have significant net efficiency benefits, which should be included in benefit-cost analyses.
The research literature offers diverse recommendations on measuring employment benefits. Many of the recommendations rely on arbitrary assumptions. The resulting employment benefit estimates vary widely.
This paper reviews this literature, and offers recommendations on how to better measure employment benefits using estimable parameters. Guidance is provided on measuring policy-induced labor demand, estimating the demand shock’s impact on labor market outcomes, and translating …

State Economic Development Policies: What Works?, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Policy-Performance Gap, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

The diagnostics of Pakistan’s worsening economic conditions are quite well known. The vital signs of the health of the economy i.e. growth, inflation, employment, fiscal balance, current account balance, indebtedness, etc appear worrisome.

The persistence of an ailing economy sapping the energies of the people raises a fundamental question: are the policy prescriptions to rectify the situation themselves deficient or is the dosage administered, i.e. the phasing, sequencing, mixture and timing of the policies, inadequate, or is ‘patient management’— the implementation of these policies — poor?

A dispassionate analysis would reveal that it is a combination of all three elements …

Finding Historic Indiana Documents In An Online Environment: Civil War Era And Later 19th Century, Bert Chapman

Libraries Research Publications

This presentation provides information on digitally accessing historic Indiana State and U.S. Government documents from the latter half of the 19th century. Examples of these resources include the periodical Indiana Farmer, Indiana Civil War Governor Oliver Morton's telegraph books, the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Indiana Adjutant General Reports, and the Brevier Indiana Law Reports covering Indiana General Assembly proceedings. These collections have been digitized by various Indiana libraries including Purdue University, IUPUI, and Indiana University. Accessing these primary source materials will enable users to gain augmented understanding ot the economic, military, and political issues facing Indiana …

Happiness Around The World: The Paradox Of Happy Peasants And Miserable Millionaires, Carol Graham

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

For centuries the pursuit of happiness was the preserve of philosophers. More recently there is a burgeoning interest in the study of happiness in the social sciences. Can we really answer the question what makes people happy? Is it grounded in credible methods and data? Is there consistency in the determinants of happiness across countries and cultures? Are happiness levels innate to individuals or can policy and the environment make a difference? How is happiness affected by poverty and by progress? This presentation introduces a line of research which is both an attempt to understand the determinants of happiness and …

The Science Of Public Health Delivery: Evidence, Uncertainties & Research Needs, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Policy initiatives to reform the nation's health system increasingly recognize the need to incorporate public health and prevention strategies. The nation's delivery system for public health, however, varies widely across states and communities in its structure, authority, and capabilities. This session examines research from the growing field of public health services and systems research to identify directions for improving public health delivery.

Conflicts In The Licensing Process For Transcanada's Keystone Xl Pipeline, F. Gregory Hayden

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this report is to investigate and explain conflicts involved in the ongoing licensing process whereby TransCanada is attempting to obtain permission from the U.S. Department of State to build a pipeline (named Keystone XL) from the tar sand oil fields of Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast. The economic concepts important in guiding this investigation are: (1) rules are important, (2) moral hazard, and (3) corporate strategic misinformation.

Economists emphasize the importance of rules for structuring and determining the working of economic institutions and the social institutions that support, regulate, and enforce the economic institutions. The kind …

Unify, Regionalize, Diversify: An Economic Development Agenda For Nevada, Mark Muro

Brookings Mountain West Publications

Nevada stands at a crossroads, yet it appears ready to remap its future.

Silver Staters sense that the current economic slump has not been just a temporary reversal but a challenge to the state’s traditional growth model—one that has revealed an economy over-dependent on consumption sectors, prone to booms and busts, and too little invested in innovation and economic diversification. And yet, for all that Nevadans have been early to recognize that the current slump will beget, in some places, innovation and renewal, and in other places erosion—and so requires action.

To that end, this report draws on an intense …