Economics Commons^™

From Prison To Home, Rebecca Snyder, Randal Day

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Despite the recent slowing of population rates within the United States prison system, the prison population is at a record high. The vast majority of these 1.4 million incarcerated individuals will be released back into the community, and a significant number of these ex-inmates will relapse back into a habit of crime, eventually be reconvicted, and ultimately re-sentenced. The prospect of thousands of ex-prisoners returning to their homes and communities, and their probable recidivism, is a concern to many. But other than atheoretical studies on recidivism itself, prisoner re-entry as a whole has been neglected by the research community. The …

India And The Agreement On Textiles And Clothing, Aaron Rogers, Dr. Bradford

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Up to the end of the Uruguay Round, textile and clothing quotas were negotiated bilaterally and governed by the rules of the Multifiber Arrangement (MFA). As GATT transmogrified into the WTO, a long-awaited uniform approach was arranged. On January 1, 1995, the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) replaced the MFA. This multilateral approach was originally planned to elapse from 1995 to 2004. It entails a process of progressively enlarging the existing quotas until their removal. The liberalization is increased over time. The agreement targets all products which were previously subject to MFA-type quotas: tops and yarns, fabrics, made-up …

Poverty Alleviation Programs In Mexico, Fernanda Sayavedra, Dr. Bret Mackay

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Poverty alleviation is one of the greatest policy challenges for Mexico. In the aftermath of the Mexican crisis of 1994/95, real per capita GDP fell sharply; employment in the formal sector declined as well as real wages. This led to a drastic increase in poverty at a national level, reversing most achievements of poverty alleviation policies of the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, since 1996 there has been a notable turnaround, and the share of the population in poverty has declined. According to the World Bank, the share of Mexico’s population living in extreme poverty1 declined from 16.2 per …

The Effect Of Economic Freedom On Environmental Quality And Economic Growth, Ty Turley, Dr. B. Delworth Gardner

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Among economists, there is an ongoing debate as to what factors cause economic growth in developing nations, and what the relative strengths of these factors are. Sachs and Warner published an influential paper in 1995 reporting on a study that found “developing countries with open economies grew by 4.5% a year in the 1970s and 1980s, but those with closed economies grew by only 0.7% a year” (The never-ending question). Adkins et al. find in their research that “increases in economic freedom are associated with improved economic performance in that increases in economic freedom move countries closer to the production …

Stability With Growth, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

The stabilisation vs growth debate has been sparked by concerns that Pakistan is entering its sixth year of stagnating incomes and can no longer afford to tread the same path.

Further doses of macroeconomic stabilisation as reflected in the current arrangement with the IMF, will make ordinary lives more difficult. Proponents of stabilisation argue that fiscal prudence and monetary tightening will reduce imbalances in fiscal and current accounts, paving the way for the resurgence of economic growth.

Both arguments are partially true but there are ways in which macroeconomic stability goals with the resumption of growth can be managed.

Antitrust Enforcement In The Obama Adminstration's First Term: A Regulatory Approach, William F. Shughart Ii, Diana W. Thomas

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

During his presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama criticized sharply the lax antitrust law enforcement record of the George W. Bush administration. Subsequently, his first assistant attorney general for antitrust even went so far as to suggest that the Great Recession was, at least in part, caused by federal antitrust policy failures during the previous eight years. This paper sets out to investigate how and in what ways antitrust enforcement has changed since President Obama took office in 2009. We review four recent antitrust cases and the behavioral remedies that were imposed on the defendants in those matters in detail. We …

Of Hawks And Doves: Monetary Policy By Heterogeneous Committees, Gregor Schubert

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper develops an institutional explanation based on strategic, heterogeneous committee members for the phenomenon of inertia in monetary policy rates, by exploring variations of a game-theoretic two-period, two-player bargaining model with an endogenous status quo. The results show that inertial policy-making can arise from heterogeneity in preferences and that gridlock and policy inefficiency can become more likely due to variability in agenda-setting power, or decreases in uncertainty over the future. These conclusions are shown to accord with the empirical evidence on monetary policy setting by committees at major central banks over the last decade.

Niche Firms, Mass Markets, And Income Across Countries: Accounting For The Impact Of Entry Costs, Pedro Bento

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

I develop a model of monopolistic competition in which I distinguish between niche markets and mass markets, in the spirit of Holmes and Stevens (2013). Firms choose between entering a small niche market with high markups or a large mass market with low markups. Entry costs have a much greater impact on output in the niche market as the gains to specialization are high, relative to the mass market where varieties are highly substitutable. Calibrated to match data from U.S. manufacturing, the model generates an elasticity of total factor productivity with respect to entry costs more than twice that in …

Bullish On College, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

Latest Nobel Prize Reflects How Economics Works — And What Economists Don’T Know, Louis D. Johnston

Economics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Increasing Cost Of Health Care, Aaron Howard, Dr. Bret Mackay

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Health Care costs have increased substantially over the past several years. Unfortunately, the cause of the increase is not well understood. The purpose of my research was to study and model the increasing premium trends of HMOs in an attempt to identify factors that contribute to the increasing costs of medical care.

Attesting To Unique Attractions: The Significance Of The President's Commission On Organized Crime (1984-1986) Gambling Hearings, David G. Schwartz

Library Faculty Research

The federal government has had a curious relationship with gambling. For much of its history, the national public policy towards gambling was simple: prohibition, despite the audacity of a few laggard states in experimenting with legalization schemes. Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, the national policy shifted, at first to tolerance of legal gambling to endorsement of it. The five primary federal studies of gambling conducted in the twentieth century—the Kefauver Committee (1950–2), the President’s Crime Commission (1967), the Commission to Review the National Policy on Gambling (1974–6), the President’s Commission on Organized Crime (1984–6), and the National …

Patent Protection As A Tax On Competition And Innovation, Pedro Bento

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

I introduce patents into a general equilibrium model of innovation, where innovators choose between creating a new product market and competing in an existing market. Patent holders demand royalties from sequential innovators, but are constrained by the ability of innovators to work around patents. I show patent protection acts as a net tax on sequential innovators, reducing both competition and productivity growth. Calibrated to match moments from U.S. data, the model predicts that eliminating patent protection in the U.S. would generate a 23% increase in steady-state productivity growth as well as an increase in welfare equivalent to that from a …

Do Foreign Direct Investment And Foreign Aid Promote Good Governance In Africa?, Adugna Lemi, Blen Solomon, Sisay Asefa

International Journal of African Development

The literature on the roles that governance/political and economic stability play to attract capital flows into African economies has been burgeoning. Good governance, liberalization, infrastructure, incentive packages have been regarded as cures to break the deadlock to reverse the economic plight, to attract inflow of capital and, in some cases, to reverse outflows of African economies. The flow of capital, however, has undesirable side effects on host economies’ working conditions, environmental standard, inequality, and culture, among others. These economic and social external or negative spillover effects are due to the phenomenon of “race-to-the-bottom” where companies invest in economies with lax …

The Political Economy Of Poverty Reduction, Abu Girma Moges

International Journal of African Development

Poverty reduction strategies and policies have gained considerable popularity in recent policy discourse and international economic relations. These policies and strategies are framed in the context of the Millennium Development Goals that set specific quantitative targets to be achieved within a specified time framework. The goals specify the targets and require countries to design national poverty reduction strategies and achieve them with a generous financial assistance from the international community. However, the domestic political economic forces remain to shape the extent and effectiveness of such strategies in addressing and reducing the extent and depth of poverty in the reforming countries. …

International Journal Of African Development, Vol. 1, Issue 1

International Journal of African Development

Complete issue of International Journal of African Development, Volume 1, Issue 1.

Looking Beyond Yellen: How To Build A Strong Bench At The Fed, Louis D. Johnston

Economics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Testing The Fisher Effect Under Fractional Integration, Mark J. Jensen, Scott G. Murdock

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Abstract. In this paper we model inflation and the nominal interest rate as a fractionally integrated, autoregressive, moving average (ARFIMA) process in order to test the theoretical proposition that nominal interest rates move one for one with inflation, thus, leaving the real interest rates unchanged; i.e. the Fisher effect. Using the necessary integration conditions first derived by Fisher and Seater (1993) and extended to fractional orders by Jensen et al. (forthcoming), we test the Fisher effect hypothesis in eleven developed countries; Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US.

Religion And Gender In The Impact Of Parental Mediation On Self-Censorship And Attitudes Toward Mediation, Christopher Layton, David Hansen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This article reports the results of a three sample follow-up quantitative study involving 588 participants. Those sampled were students of three institutions of higher education, namely: Brigham Young University, Illinois State University and Texas Christian University. The three samples involved three different religious and non-religious affiliated institutions to evaluate the impact of religious affiliation on mediation strategies and self-censorship in mass media viewing choices. We used a 47-point, cross-sectional survey instrument to operationalize our hypotheses. Surveys were administered by faculty members at each of the universities and by members of our research team to each class. We discovered significant relationships …

The Advanced Practice Nurse And Patient-Centered Medical Home: Maintaining Patient Focus, Meeting The Institute For Healthcare Improvement Triple Aim Through The Electronic Health Record, Aileen Teresa Twomey

Seton Hall University DNP Final Projects

The Federal Government enacted the Heath Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) in 2009, which incentivized providers to use electronic health records (EHR) for meaningful use (MU); the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) stems from the Act. Research by the National Council on Quality Assurance (NCQA) shows that primary care practices have a positive influence on the health of patients, families and communities. These positive influences are related to their ability to deliver first-contact access, and to develop long-term therapeutic relationships that focus on the person rather than the disease, improving patient health outcomes and reducing health care …

On The Finite Sample Properties Of Pre-Test Estimators Of Spatial Models, Gianfranco Piras, Ingmar R. Prucha

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

This paper explores the properties of pre-test strategies in estimating a linear Cliff-Ord -type spatial model when the researcher is unsure about the nature of the spatial dependence. More specifically, the paper explores the finite sample properties of the pre-test estimators introduced in Florax et al. (2003), which are based on Lagrange Multiplier (LM) tests, within the context of a Monte Carlo study. The performance of those estimators is compared with that of the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator of the encompassing model. We find that, even in a very simple setting, the bias of the estimates generated by pre-testing …

A Comprehensive Analysis Of The Current And Future Talent Needs For The Talent 2025 Region, George Erickcek, Brian Pittelko, Claudette Robey, Bridget Timmeney

Reports

No abstract provided.

Development Of An Economic And Social Dashboard For Berrien County, George A. Erickcek

Reports

No abstract provided.

Diet And Health Capital: An American Case Study, Matthew J. Klein

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper begins to model diet's contribution to national stocks of Health Capital as defined in Kenneth Arrow et al.'s (2012) "Sustainability and the Measurement of Wealth" by developing a set of equations that link the diet of a nation’s average citizen to that nation’s per capita welfare over time. The model is applied to the American diet from 2005 to 2009. This research finds that even a small change in diet can have a large impact in whether or not a nation is sustainable over time.

Ce Fall 2013, Coyote Economist

Coyote Economist

Inside this Issue:

End Of The Quarter Party!......3

Econ Radicals...........................3

Change In Offerings...............4

Staying Informed...................4

Tentative Schedule...................5

Location, Location, Location: The Importance Of Proximity In Student Peer Evaluation, Roger White

Economics

The appropriateness of physical distances as a proxy for interpersonal networks is examined using data on peer evaluation scores collected from undergraduate student presentations in econometrics courses during the spring 2010 and spring 2011 semesters at Franklin & Marshall College. Employing the Tobit regression technique and decomposing the resulting coefficient estimates into marginal effects, we find that greater physical distance is negatively related to peer evaluation scores in the sense that greater distance lowers scores and reduces the likelihood that the evaluating student will assign the maximum possible score. Similarly, evaluating students assign higher scores to those student presenters they …

Do African Immigrants Enhance Their Home Nations’ Trade With Their Hosts?, Roger White, Bedassa Tadesse

Economics

Employing data on the immigrant stocks of 43 African home countries who reside in 110 host countries and on trade flows between these countries during the year 2005, we examine whether African immigrants exert positive effects on their home countries’ trade with the typical host country. Estimates from Tobit regression models indicate a one percent increase in the number of African immigrants in a given host country increases that country’s exports to and imports from the typical home country by 0.132 percent and 0.259 percent, respectively. Further evaluation of these effects from the perspective of each African home country reveals …

Mexico Consensus Economic Forecast, Volume 16, Number 4, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Adam G. Walke

Departmental Papers (E & F)

No abstract provided.

China At The Crossroads, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

When villagers in Wukan village (乌坎) in Southern China protested against illegal land grabs in September 2011, it highlighted a main source of tension in China: the displacement of rural Chinese by rapid urbanisation, sometimes done illegally. The Seige of Wukan was a case in point, where local Communist Party officials had sold communally held farmland

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

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.