Economics Commons^™

Massive Kinked Bonuses, Kevin F. Hallock

Economics Faculty Publications

While most people are paid by the hour or with a yearly salary, some are also paid bonuses. And, some are paid very large, all-or-nothing bonuses. The author's favorite recent example is from last summer when golfer Darren Clarke earned a $3-million bonus from his sponsor. But it was how the payout was structured more than the amount that so intrigued him -- his sponsor's payout was all or nothing. How people are paid is fascinating. It is particularly interesting in this case of very, very large bonuses. The sports odds that Darren Clarke would win the tournament going into …

National Geographic Crown Of The Continent Geotourism Mapguide Usage Assessment, Christine Oschell, Norma P. Nickerson

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report examined the uses of the Crown of the Continent MapGuide (both the printed and website versions) and how this tool has influenced those who use it. The Crown of the Continent MapGuide appears to be a tool that is influencing many visitors to the area. The findings of this study suggest that the Geotourism concept, as portrayed by the MapGuide, is a successful tool in visitor management.

Impact Of The Global Crisis On Overseas Workers And The Families-Left-Behind: A Snapshot Of The Philippine Case, Alvin P. Ang, Alfie Maria R. Custodio

Economics Department Faculty Publications

The Global Economic Crisis (GEC) of 2008-2009 was seen as negatively affecting the Philippines in a different way. Most countries affected by the GEC suffered export declines and domestic economic slowdown leading to the collapse of certain sectors in the economy. Though the Philippines was affected this way in some aspects, it is more the unique nature of its economy having around 10% of its population abroad working or permanently settled but continuing to send a significant amount of remittances. It was the concern of the Philippines that the crisis affecting many of the destination countries of its migrant workers …

Spe Members' Views On Sustainability: A Survey, Bonnie Bachman, Shristy Bashyal, Margaret Baumann

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The results of the research conducted to understand sustainability in the plastics industry, initiated with the membership of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). are presented. The implications of sustainability to the plastics industry are discussed. An online survey was created with a set of 27 questions including demographics. The survey was distributed to the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) membership via an emails. When asked about the organization-wide definition of sustainability, 45% of the senior managers believed sustainability refers to addressing issues from a long term perspective. When asked who is responsible for addressing sustainability issues, most of the …

Do Voters Demand Responsive Governments? Evidence From Indian Disaster Relief, Shawn Cole, Andrew Healy, Eric Werker

Economics Faculty Works

Using rainfall, public relief, and election data from India, we examine how governments respond to adverse shocks and how voters react to these responses. The data show that voters punish the incumbent party for weather events beyond its control. However, fewer voters punish the ruling party when its government responds vigorously to the crisis, indicating that voters reward the government for responding to disasters. We also find evidence suggesting that voters only respond to rainfall and government relief efforts during the year immediately preceding the election. In accordance with these electoral incentives, governments appear to be more generous with disaster …

The Adversity/Hysteresis Effect: Depression Era Productivity Growth In The U.S. Railroad Sector, Alexander J. Field

Economics

Throughout its history the United States has endured cycles of fi nancial boom and bust. Boom periods have been marked by weakened or absent regulation of the fi nancial sector and a growing willingness on the part of households, nonfi nancial businesses, and fi nancial businesses to hold riskier assets and to fi nance these positions with higher leverage (higher debt to equity ratios). These twin engines fuel fi nancial sector profi ts and remuneration so long as asset prices continue to appreciate, but they (especially the trend toward higher leverage) render the system vulnerable when asset bubbles burst. In …

West Of Eden: Resource Wars And Nature-Cultures In The American West, Scout Calvert

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

The richness and variety of the western landscape is what is at stake in hot political contests for the resources of the West: much of this public land is available to economic activity, including for mining, grazing, logging, and recreation. These uses threaten to outpace the land’s ability to renew these resources along with others, like air and water. Now in the first decade of the millennium with a new environmental awareness emerging partly from media coverage of global warming and peak oil, The American West at Risk offers a wide-ranging look at the degradation of the environment in the …

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2011, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Recovery was firmly underway in the Intermountain West by the fourth quarter of 2011 but its pace varied considerably across the region’s 10 major metropolitan areas. Six of the 10 metros saw job growth in the fourth quarter but only four saw it accelerate over the previous one. Output grew everywhere but only in half of the region’s metros did the pace of growth quicken. The unemployment rate was down across the board from one year earlier. House prices in most markets stabilized. Yet signs of a robust, sustained, and self-fueling recovery remained elusive.

National economic indicators from early 2012 …

America's Human Capital Paradox, Thomas A. Kochan

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

It is widely recognized that human capital is essential to sustaining a competitive economy at high and rising living standards. Yet acceptance of persistent high unemployment, stagnant wages, and other indicators of declining job quality suggests that policymakers and employers undervalue human capital. This paper traces the root cause of this apparent paradox to the primacy afforded shareholder value over human resource considerations in American firms and the longstanding gridlock over employment policy. I suggest that a new jobs compact will be needed to close the deficit in jobs lost in the recent recession and to achieve sustained real wage …

Retiree Health Benefits As Deferred Compensation: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, James Marton, Stephen A. Woodbury

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Are early retiree health benefits (RHBs) a form of deferred compensation that binds workers to an employer? Most employers who offer RHBs offer them only to workers who have 10 or more years of tenure with the firm and have reached age 55. Accordingly, workers in firms offering RHBs have an incentive to stay with a firm in the years before they attain eligibility for RHBs, and a greater incentive than otherwise to retire thereafter. We test for the existence of such a pattern of incentives by examining the age-specific relationship between workers’ eligibility for RHBs and retirement. The findings …

Examining Megachurch Growth: Free Riding, Fit, And Faith, Joseph P. Daniels, Marc Von Der Ruhr

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose – Megachurches are thriving in religious markets at a time when Americans are asserting their ability as consumers of religious products to engage in religious switching. The apparent success of megachurches, which often provide a low cost and low commitment path by which religious refugees may join the church, seems to challenge Iannocconne's theory that high commitment churches will thrive while low commitment churches will atrophy. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs a signaling model to illustrate the strategy and organizational forms megachurches employ to indicate a match between what the church produces …

Subsidizing Religious Participation Through Groups: A Model Of The “Megachurch” Strategy For Growth, Joseph P. Daniels, Marc Von Der Ruhr

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Either despite or because of their non-traditional approach, megachurches have grown significantly in the United States since 1980. This paper models religious participation as an imperfect public good which, absent intervention, yields suboptimal participation by members from the church’s perspective. Megachurches address this problem in part by employing secular-based group activities to subsidize religious participation that then translates into an increase in the attendees’ religious investment. This strategy not only allows megachurches to attract and retain new members when many traditional churches are losing members but also results in higher levels of an individual’s religious capital. As a result, the …

(Wp 2012-01) Samuels On Methodological Pluralism In Economics, John B. Davis

Economics Working Papers

Warren Samuels was an influential proponent of methodological pluralism in economics. This short paper discusses his understanding of methodological pluralism, and argues that it is based on three distinct components: (1) his critique of the idea that theories have epistemic foundations and his 'matrix approach to meaningfulness,' (2) his belief that the absence of meta-principles for science combined with our human psychology create an existential dilemma for theorists and policy-makers, and (3) his understanding of relativism, social constructivism, and 'limited but affirmative' defense of nihilism against the charge of skepticism. The paper closes with a brief discussion of what Samuels' …

Assessment Of The Usage Of The National Geographic Greater Yellowstone Mapguide , Christine Oschell, Norma P. Nickerson

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report examines the uses of the Greater Yellowstone MapGuide (both the printed and website versions) and how this tool has influenced those who use it. The Greater Yellowstone MapGuide appears to be a tool that is influencing visitors to the area in many ways. The MapGuide appears to influence where they stay, where they drive, and the activities in which they participate. The findings of this study suggest that the Geotourism concept, as portrayed by the MapGuide, is a successful tool in visitor management.

A Re-Examination Of Montana's Economic Impact Estimates, Norma P. Nickerson, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

Adjustments to the estimates of the economic impact of tourism in Montana are discussed in this research note.

Is Specialization Desirable In Committee Decision Making?, Ruth Ben-Yashar, Winston T. H. Koh, Shmuel Nitzan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Committee decision making is examined in this study focusing on the role assigned to the committee members. In particular, we are concerned about the comparison between committee performance under specialization and non-specialization of the decision makers. Specialization (in the context of project or public policy selection) means that the decision of each committee member is based on a narrow area, which typically results in the acquirement and use of relatively high expertise in that area. When the committee members’ expertise is already determined, specialization only means that the decision of each committee member is based solely on his/her relatively high …

A Note On Separability And Intra-Household Resource Allocation In A Collective Household Model, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a collective model of a household in which each member has a utility function satisfying the weak separability condition. We show that the separability at the individual level carries over to the household level and that the allocation of private goods in any Pareto-efficient allocation can be supported as a Pareto-efficient allocation of private sub-problem. We also provide the necessary and sufficient condition for the Pareto weight for the private sub-problem to move in the same direction as the household Pareto weight.

Why Was The Arab World Poised For Revolution? Schooling, Economic Opportunities, And The Arab Spring, Filipe R. Campante, Davin Chor

Research Collection School Of Economics

What underlying long-term conditions set the stage for the Arab Spring? In recent decades, the Arab region has been characterized by an expansion in schooling coupled with weak labor market conditions. This pattern is especially pronounced in those countries that saw significant upheaval during the first year of the Arab Spring uprisings. We argue that the lack of adequate economic opportunities for an increasingly educated populace can help us understand episodes of regime instability such as the Arab Spring.

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 patterns of FDI in China by US and Taiwanese manufacturing firms.

A Comparison Of Cardinal Tournaments And Piece Rate Contracts With Liquidity Constrained Agents, Kosmas Marinakis, Theofanis Tsoulouhas

Research Collection School Of Economics

Acelebrated result in the theory of tournaments is that relative performance evaluation (tournaments) is a superior compensation method to absolute performance evaluation (piece rate contracts) when the agents are risk-averse, the principal is risk-neutral or less risk-averse than the agents and production is subject to common shocks that are large relative to the idiosyncratic shocks. This is because tournaments get closer to the first best by filtering common uncertainty. This paper shows that, surprisingly, tournaments are superior even when agents are liquidity constrained so that transfers to them cannot fall short of a predetermined level. The rationale is that, by …

On The Intraday Periodicity Duration Adjustment Of High-Frequency Data, Wu Zhengxiao

Research Collection School Of Economics

In the last decade, intensive studies on modeling high frequency financial data at the transaction level have been conducted. In the analysis of high-frequency duration data, it is often the first step to remove the intraday periodicity. Currently the most popular adjustment procedure is the cubic spline procedure proposed by Engle and Russell (1998). In this article, we first carry out a simulation study and show that the performance of the cubic spline procedure is not entirely satisfactory. Then we define periodicity point processes rigorously and prove a time change theorem. A new intraday periodic adjustment procedure is then proposed …

This Much I Know Is True: The Five Intangible Influences On Collective Bargaining, Nicholas Digiovanni

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Studies of collective bargaining have often centered on technique, style and the economic data that each side can use in bargaining a labor contract. Often overlooked, however, are the more subtle factors that influence the outcome of a round of bargaining. This article will reflect upon five of those intangible influences, namely, 1) the role of history; 2) the setting of expectations; 3) the nature and character of the people in the process; 4) the aspects of timing in negotiations and 5) the element of catharsis. The author has noted these five factors in his long career at the bargaining …

Estimating Medical Cost Offsets Attributable To Public Health Spending, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Uncertainty about the magnitude and timing of economic returns associated with spending on public health services has contributed to policy debates about the optimal role of the federal government in financing these services.

A Generation Of Isolation: Cuban Political Economic Policies, Elba Marcell Rivera Rodriguez

The Hilltop Review

Cuba is not only the largest island in the Greater Antilles, but also the only communist island in the Caribbean. This country has been governed by the Marxist-Leninist ideology for more than fifty years. Although the Cuban economy has not shown significant development since January 1, 1959, i.e. when the Revolutionaries came to power, it is presenting a new economic capacity-the tourism industry, which could drive the nation to a modern economic growth.

This article has been revised by the author. The revised version is available as a supplement at the link below.

Economic Shocks, Trade And International Relations, Jack Barnes Thompson

Undergraduate Economic Review

In an interdependent world, trade has unavoidable game aspects. A model with two agents is used to determine the impact of trade and a military alliance between two major world players, North America and China, and an external non-actor, South Korea. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of cooperative actions and outcomes by the two agents on a two-track policy for South Korea. We also study a variant to the game by considering a change in international relations. Welfare implications are also observed.

The Upside Of Government Default, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Big Bang Vs. Gradualism, Lauren Sims

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Strong Euro Weakening Dollar: A Potential Economic Demise, Guadalupe F. Garcia

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Understanding Immigrant Behavior In Denmark: The Immigrant Enclave And Employment Rate Paradox, Andrew Christensen

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Eu's Common Foreign Policies Towards Russia: Past, Present And Future, Yigit Canay

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.