Economics Commons^™

Silver Lining: Economic Woes Can Inspire Positive Life Changes, Alexis Grant

Colby Magazine

For some alumni, having careers disrupted by the economic recession proves to be a good thing.

Real Money, Real Lessons: In A Course Called Learning By Giving, Students Pursue And Allot Funding For Area Nonprofits, Laura Meader

Colby Magazine

Students learn nonprofit ropes by seeking funding for area organizations.

Overfishing: Economic Policies In Finite Resource Biological Pools, Abdullah Nasser

Undergraduate Economic Review

Common-property fishing is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Driven by competition, rational fishermen are forced to overfish to maintain marketplace viability. This shortsighted strategy will lead to the depletion of the common resource pool, and ultimately the destruction of the local fishing industry. In this paper, we present a dynamic differential system of a finite-resource fishing pool to model choices faced by average fishermen. We show that the situation mirrors a Prisonor’s Dilemma on the short- and long-terms, where overfishing is always the dominant Nash equilibrium strategy. Additionally, we use the model to analyze a multitude …

Civic Engagement In Low Income And Minority Neighborhoods, And The Role Of Public Investment, Saheli Nath

Undergraduate Economic Review

This study uses principal component analysis to measure civic engagement in the low-income and minority neighborhood of Fair Park in South Dallas, and seeks to identify the implications of the influx of public investment in the Fair Park neighborhood on civic engagement.

Teacher As 'Learner': A Case Study Of Teaching International Economics And Finance, Margaret Giles

eCULTURE

How lucky are we to be teaching economics at this time? Discussions enrich our honours and postgraduate teaching programmes which have always been delivered beyond the textbook. But what about our undergraduate programmes in economics? Can we break away from the prescribed text and engage more fully with contemporary debate? Can our undergraduates also be encouraged to think like economists? In 2009 we have an ideal opportunity to eschew the standard textbook based approach to undergraduate economics teaching. This paper highlights a case study in which a third year unit in international economics and finance fed into School, Faculty and …

Link Levy To Services- Not Urban Middle Class Assets, Tom Dunne

Articles

Paying any tax is an unwelcome burden, but in Ireland many have a particular aversion to taxes on their homes. We are not alone in this. Elsewhere, taxes on homes are also unpopular; witness the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation which forced the California state government to cut property taxes. Nevertheless, residential property taxes remain an almost universal feature of developed countries because of compelling economic arguments for them. Also, local property taxes are regarded as the best means of funding local government.

Rarely, it seems to me, is there such a distance between what the public wants and …

Tightening Our Belts In The New Healthcare Economy, Laura Pizzi Pharmd,Mph

Population Health Matters (Formerly Health Policy Newsletter)

No abstract provided.

Raising Minimum Wage Seems Best Anti-Poverty Option, Given Political Realities, Louis D. Johnston

Economics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Applying Well-Being Metrics To Public Policy: Lessons From Experiments Around The World, Carol Graham

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

The ongoing research activity of economists who study what constitutes happiness and make recommendations to governments about how best to increase it continues to receive global attention. The recent publication of the first World Happiness Report, commissioned for the United Nations General Assembly, argues that happiness can be measured objectively; that it differs systematically across societies and over time; that happiness has predictable causes and is correlated to specific things (such as wealth, income distribution, health, and political institutions); and government has the ability to create the right conditions for happiness to flourish. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, …

Household Task Delegation Among High-Fertility Forager-Horticulturalists Of Lowland Bolivia, Jonathan Stieglitz, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Paul L. Hooper

ESI Publications

Human kin cooperation is universal, leading researchers to label humans as “cooperative breeders.” Despite widespread interest in human cooperation, there has been no systematic study of how household economic decision making occurs. We document age and sex profiles of task delegation by parents to children ages 4–18 among Bolivian forager-horticulturalists. We test for sex differences in the probability of delegation and examine whether tasks are more likely delegated as household labor demand increases. We also test whether food acquisition tasks are more likely delegated to higher producers.We find mixed support for the prediction that girls are more likely delegated domestic …

It's All About The Power, James Castagnera

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

No abstract provided.

Make Or Buy?: The Software Developer Shortage That Isn’T, Chris Blanchard

University Author Recognition Bibliography: 2013

No abstract provided.

Review Of John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

A review of John Tomasi's Free Market Fairness, published by Princeton University Press.

Public Health Delivery Systems And Population Health: What We Know And Need To Learn, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Despite high overall health expenditures, the U.S. continues to fall behind other high-income countries on many measures of population health. While health care delivery systems are now studied intensively for solutions to U.S. cost and quality problems, the nation's delivery systems for public health programs and policies are only now becoming the subject of rigorous empirical study. This presentation examines recent studies of public health delivery systems and important directions for future inquiry.

Studies Of Economic Development, Paul Kim

Economics Papers and Presentations

This paper explains the major source of economic growth that is found in an increase in labor productivity through building human capital or simply called – investing in education, capital formation and advancement of technology as well as the mobilization unemployed (or disguised) workers from rural areas into the industrial sector, and the increase in labor inputs or hours (as well as an increase in the number of resources) or simply called a variable, and removing of waste or simply called.

Walker Vs. Dayton Smackdown: Which Governor Has The Better Economy?, Louis D. Johnston

Economics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Estimating The Health And Economic Effects Of Public Health Spending, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Preventable health conditions account for more than 75% of the $2.7 trillion spent annually on health care in the U.S., yet less than 5% of these expenditures are devoted to public health programs and services that are designed to prevent and control disease and injury rather than to treat the downstream consequences of these conditions. Such limited expenditures in public health may contribute to the higher rates of preventable morbidity, mortality and excess medical costs experienced in the U.S. compared to other high-income countries. In this presentation, I update previous estimates of the health effects and medical cost offsets associated …

Normalizing India- Pakistan Trade Relations!, Ishrat Husain

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

India and Pakistan, the two largest economies in South Asia, have enjoyed very little trading relations for past four decades. The intransigency between these two countries has had deleterious effect on intra-regional trade flows within the South Asia region. Consequently, the region remains the least integrated region of the world. The foregone benefits to the people inhabiting these countries of South Asia are substantial. The correlation between trade, economic. growth and poverty reduction has become quite evident in the last few decades. Unlike export pessimism literature, the ascendancy of China, a developing country, that despite having a large internal market …

Family Income, Student Achievement, And Educational Costs, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Inward Fdi In The United States And Its Policy Context, Lucyna G. Kornecki Ph.D.

Accounting, Economics, Finance, and Information Sciences - Daytona Beach

Inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) represents an integral part of the United States (U.S.)economy, with its stock growing from US$ 83 billion in 1980 to US$ 3.5 trillion in 2011. The United States, which had earlier been primarily a home for multinational enterprises (MNEs) rather than a host for affiliates of foreign MNEs, has become a preferred host country for FDI since the 1980s. Foreign MNEs have contributed robust flows of FDI into diverse industries of the U.S. economy, and total FDI inflows reached US$ 227 billion in 2011, equivalent to 15% of global inflows, the single largest share of …

Economic Impact Of Visitor Segments In Osceola County 2012, Robertico R. Croes, Manuel A. Rivera

Dick Pope Sr. Institute Publications

The main purpose of this report is to document the economic effects of tourism in Osceola County. Few industries have as much impact on the economy of Osceola County. In 2012, a total of 5.9 million tourists visited the area, spending on average $5.8 million per day, resulting in $2.1 billion in direct spending effect. The total economic contribution of tourism to the county is $3.1 billion, resulting in an estimated multiplier of 1.48. The total economic contribution of tourism accounts for about 28% of the gross economic product of the county. In total, the tourism industry supported one in …

‘Educating Indonesia’ And The Minister Who’S Making It Happen, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Energy and optimism were highlights of the recent speech given by Indonesia’s Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan during the SMU Presidential Distinguished Lecturer Series. While the optimism may be rooted deeply in the potential of Indonesia’s current demographic — more than 30 percent of its population is aged between 19 and 24, and more than 50 percent is under 29, making it one of the youngest productive populations in the world — its economic success story is fact, reflected in its G-20 membership, where it is the second fastest growing economy.Yet much remains to be done to unleash the full potential …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- February 2013, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of State Lotteries And Casinos On State, Kent Grote, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

Over the past half century, there has been an increasing prevalence of legalized gambling in the US. At the same time there is a general recognition, empirically supported in the economics literature, that spending on lottery and gaming products tends to be regressive in nature. In addition, gambling addiction is a widely acknowledged social problem. This raises the question of whether the increased presence of casinos and state lotteries results in relatively more bankruptcy filings in the states that offer them. This paper adds to the existing literature by comparing the relative impact of the presence of lotteries to that …

Student Uncertainty And Major Choice, Joshua Congdon-Hohman, Anil Nathan, Justin Svec

Economics Department Working Papers

This paper examines how model uncertainty affects students' choice of major. To account for this uncertainty, the students apply a max-min operator to their optimization problem. We show analytically that greater uncertainty in a particular major causes the student to be less likely to choose that major and that greater uncertainty across all majors causes fewer students to major in science, technology, engineering, and math. To test the model's assumptions and predictions, we have conducted a novel survey of college freshmen. The results from this survey are consistent with assumptions and implications of the theoretical model.

Mission Accomplished: A Reply To Reuveny And Keshk, Cullen F. Goenner

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

Reuveny and Keshk (“Reconsidering trade and conflict simultaneity: The risk of emphasizing technique over substance,” this issue, 2013) argue that the econometric techniques used by Goenner (Conflict Management and Peace Science 28(5): 459–477, 2011) to test and control for endogeneity when estimating the relationship between trade and conflict lack substance. Both sets of authors propose the use of instrumental variable methods, which are known by econometricians to be the natural remedy for estimation with potentially endogenous regressors. Where Goenner (2011) and Reuveny and Keshk (2013) agree is that theory should guide variable selection and the model’s specification. Yet they …

The Economic Impact Of Fort Bliss And William Beaumont Army Medical Center In El Paso County, Texas: 2013, David A. Schauer, Roberto Tinajero, David Ramirez, Dennis L. Soden

IPED Technical Reports

The Institute for Policy and Economic Development (IPED) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has undertaken an economic impact study on behalf of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce. The purpose of this study is to quantify the economic impacts of Fort Bliss and the William Beaumont Army Medical Center (WBAMC) in the County of El Paso, Texas. Specifically, this report estimates the effects that Fort Bliss and WBAMC operations have on output, employment, and labor income within the county as of 2013. In addition, the economic impact of construction activities over the 2011-2013 period is …

Pay And Relative Income Within Couples, Kevin F. Hallock

Economics Faculty Publications

In "U.S. Labor Market Challenges Over the Longer Term," labor economist David Autor shows that the fraction of young adults who are currently married plummeted, dropping by 30% to 70% depending on gender, education and race/ethnicity (paper prepared for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 2010). At the same time, women's labor earnings have steadily increased. An interesting and provocative new working paper, "Gender Identity and Relative Income Within Households", by Marianne Bertrand, Emir Kamenica and Jessica Pan (working paper, November 2012), tries to determine how these two trends are related. One of the things Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan focus …

Education Policy And Intergenerational Transfers In Equilibrium, Brant Abbott, Giovanni Gallipoli, Costas Meghir, Giovanni L. Violante

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper examines the equilibrium effects of alternative financial aid policies intended to promote college participation. We build an overlapping generations life cycle model with education, labor supply, and consumption/saving decisions. Cognitive and non-cognitive skills of children depend on the cognitive skills and education of parents, and affect education choice and labor market outcomes. Driven by both altruism and paternalism, parents make transfers to their children which can be used to fund education, supplementing grants, loans and the labor supply of the children themselves during college. The crowding out of parental transfers by government programs is sizable and thus cannot …

Career Progression, Economic Downturns, And Skills, Jerome Adda, Christian Dustmann, Costas Meghir, Jean-Marc Robin

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper analyzes the career progression of skilled and unskilled workers, with a focus on how careers are affected by economic downturns and whether formal skills, acquired early on, can shield workers from the effect of recessions. Using detailed administrative data for Germany for numerous birth cohorts across different regions, we follow workers from labor market entry onwards and estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of vocational training choice, labor supply, and wage progression. Most particularly, our model allows for labor market frictions that vary by skill group and over the business cycle. We find that sources of wage growth differ: …