Economics Commons^™

The Effect Of Public Policy On Health Service Providers, Marier Allison

Economics - Dissertations

Chapter 1

Low-income, publicly insured admissions historically cost more to treat than the average patient. To ensure that hospitals are reimbursed an adequate amount for care of indigent populations, Medicare reimburses hospitals an additional percentage amount according to federally set financial schedule. The reimbursement cutoff is discrete: at fifteen percent of a disproportionate patient percentage, a hospital is reimbursed an extra 2.5 percent of the standard prospective payment rate. I extend a simple model of hospital quality as a function of insurance reimbursement increases to determine that under certain circumstances there exists a positive relationship between quality and reimbursement. I …

Financial Intermediation, Growth, And Microfinance In Turkey: A Quantitative Study, Selina Howe Carter

Economics - Theses

This paper uses pooled data from Turkey's largest microfinance organization to test if loans increase borrower income in the sample. Using savings deposits as a proxy for borrower income, the results show a statistically significant, positive correlation between loans and savings behavior, ceteris paribus. This suggests that microfinance is an effective tool for poverty reduction in Turkey. Since there is no prior quantitative study on microfinance in the country, this study is of interest to Turkish policymakers.

This paper first outlines existing literature on financial intermediation and growth. It then describes the development of Turkey's banking industry and its nascent …

Essays On Health And Medical Care, Yin-Fang Yen

Economics - Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays that explain health outcomes and medical care in the United States. Health care has been a major concern of economists and policy makers. Policy intervention is one of the key factors that affect health outcomes, especially among low-income families. Welfare programs such as Medicaid and cash assistance are conventionally implemented to assist low-income families. The effectiveness of these efforts to improve health outcomes and medical utilization among low-income families is not entirely clear. As to the supply side of health care, the results of previous studies on how hospitals provide the services are mixed. …

The Potential Of Youth Savings Accounts In Three East African Countries: Kenya, Tanzania, And Uganda, Njeri Kagotho, Proscovia Nabunya, Fred Ssewamala, Vilma Ilic

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper explores the potential of expanding a youth-focused asset-based intervention program for poor communities heavily affected by HIV and AIDS-currently underway in one East African country, Uganda-into similar communities in the other two East African countries: Kenya and Tanzania. This concept paper is informed by prior work on youth-focused asset-based programs first proposed in the United States of America and now successfully implemented in Uganda (Ssewamala, 2008; Ssewamala, Alicea, Bannon, & Ismayilova, 2008; Ssewamala & Ismayilova, 2008, 2009) and grounded in an asset-based development theoretical framework, which denotes an integrated approach to human, social, and economic capital development (Sherraden, …

Kentucky Forestry Economic Impact Report 2012-2013, Jeff Stringer, Billy Thomas, Bobby Ammerman, Alison Davis

Kentucky Forestry Economic Impact Reports

Kentucky plays a pivotal role in providing forest products to the U.S. and the forestry sector is a major economic force in the Commonwealth providing over 51,000 jobs and $9.9 billion to Kentucky’s economy in 2012. This economic input was generated from 708 facilities located in 109 of Kentucky’s 120 counties including a wide range of industries from logging and sawmills to cabinet manufacturers and paper and producers. In 2012 Kentucky was one of the largest producers of hardwood timber with over 590 million board feet of sawlogs and over 900,000 tons of pulpwood harvested from private family-owned forests. This …

Taxing The Opposition: Cactus League Attendance And The Efficiency Of The 'Cubs Tax', Michael C. Davis, Craig Palsson, Joseph Price

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

In 2010, a plan to finance a new spring training stadium for the Cubs through a ticket surcharge on all games in the Cactus League was proposed. We find that the Cubs increase attendance when they are the away team by about 37%. Thus, the surcharge would be economically justified as long as the price elasticity of tickets is less than 0.32, which many prior studies find to be the case. This tax provides one of the few examples in which the cost of a subsidized stadium would be born primarily by the group that benefits the most from the …

Fdi And Absorptive Capacity In Emerging Economies, Nagwa Hosny Khordagui, Gehan Saleh

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Inward FDI is believed to promote economic growth and transfer technology across countries. This led many economies to promote policies that encourage and support inward FDI. Researchers have been undertaking empirical research to determine whether inward FDI does in fact have the proclaimed effect on the economy. The findings from the studies on the spillover effects of FDI are mixed. More recent studies explain that it is not a matter of whether FDI influences the host country’s economy; but rather of whether the necessary factors for the existence of spillover effects are present. This raises the issue of what is …

Can Productivity Increases In The Distribution Sector Help Explain Tendency Of The Turkish Lira To Appreciate?, Fikret Dülger, Kenan Lopcu, Almıla Burgaç

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

The Balassa-Samuelson (B-S) hypothesis relies on the productivity differentials between tradable and non-tradable sectors to explain deviations in purchasing power parity. Within this framework, the relative productivity differences in tradable vis-à-vis non-tradable sectors between two countries will determine the long-run changes in the real exchange rate. However, Lopcu, Burgaç and Dülger, (2012) found that the relationship between the real effective exchange rate and productivity is not supported for the post 2001 era in Turkey. By testing the cointegration relationship between the real effective exchange rate, relative productivity differentials, real interest rate differentials and net foreign assets, using recently developed techniques …

The Limits Of Price Discrimination, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We analyze the welfare consequences of a monopolist having additional information about consumers’ tastes, beyond the prior distribution; the additional information can be used to charge different prices to different segments of the market, i.e., carry out “third degree price discrimination.” We show that the segmentation and pricing induced by the additional information can achieve every combination of consumer and producer surplus such that: (i) consumer surplus is non-negative, (ii) producer surplus is at least as high as profits under the uniform monopoly price, and (iii) total surplus does not exceed the surplus generated by efficient trade.

Sieve Wald And Qlr Inferences On Semi/Nonparametric Conditional Moment Models, Xiaohong Chen, Demian Pouzo

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper considers inference on functionals of semi/nonparametric conditional moment restrictions with possibly nonsmooth generalized residuals, which include all of the (nonlinear) nonparametric instrumental variables (IV) as special cases. For these models it is often difficult to verify whether a functional is regular (i.e., root-n estimable) or irregular (i.e., slower than root-n estimable). We provide computationally simple, unified inference procedures that are asymptotically valid regardless of whether a functional is regular or not. We establish the following new useful results: (1) the asymptotic normality of a plug-in penalized sieve minimum distance (PSMD) estimator of a (possibly irregular) functional; (2) the …

Sieve Wald And Qlr Inferences On Semi/Nonparametric Conditional Moment Models, Xiaohong Chen, Demian Pouzo

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper considers inference on functionals of semi/nonparametric conditional moment restrictions with possibly nonsmooth generalized residuals, which include all of the (nonlinear) nonparametric instrumental variables (IV) as special cases. These models are often ill-posed and hence it is difficult to verify whether a (possibly nonlinear) functional is root- n estimable or not. We provide computationally simple, unified inference procedures that are asymptotically valid regardless of whether a functional is root- n estimable or not. We establish the following new useful results: (1) the asymptotic normality of a plug-in penalized sieve minimum distance (PSMD) estimator of a (possibly nonlinear) functional; (2) …

Sieve Quasi Likelihood Ratio Inference On Semi/Nonparametric Conditional Moment Models, Xiaohong Chen, Demian Pouzo

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper considers inference on functionals of semi/nonparametric conditional moment restrictions with possibly nonsmooth generalized residuals. These models belong to the difficult (nonlinear) ill-posed inverse problems with unknown operators, and include all of the (nonlinear) nonparametric instrumental variables (IV) as special cases. For these models it is generally difficult to verify whether a functional is regular (i.e., root-n estimable) or irregular (i.e., slower than root-n estimable). In this paper we provide computationally simple, unified inference procedures that are asymptotically valid regardless of whether a functional is regular or irregular. We establish the following new results: (1) the asymptotic normality of …

The Limits Of Price Discrimination, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We analyze the welfare consequences of a monopolist having additional information about consumers’ tastes, beyond the prior distribution; the additional information can be used to charge different prices to different segments of the market, i.e., carry out “third degree price discrimination.” We show that the segmentation and pricing induced by the additional information can achieve every combination of consumer and producer surplus such that: (i) consumer surplus is non-negative, (ii) producer surplus is at least as high as profits under the uniform monopoly price, and (iii) total surplus does not exceed the surplus generated by efficient trade.

The Limits Of Price Discrimination, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We analyze the welfare consequences of a monopolist having additional information about consumers’ tastes, beyond the prior distribution; the additional information can be used to charge different prices to different segments of the market, i.e., carry out “third degree price discrimination.” We show that the segmentation and pricing induced by the additional information can achieve every combination of consumer and producer surplus such that: (i) consumer surplus is non-negative, (ii) producer surplus is at least as high as profits under the uniform monopoly price, and (iii) total surplus does not exceed the efficient gains from trade. As well as characterizing …

The Limits Of Price Discrimination, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We analyze the welfare consequences of a monopolist having additional information about consumers’ tastes, beyond the prior distribution; the additional information can be used to charge different prices to different segments of the market, i.e., carry out “third degree price discrimination.” We show that the segmentation and pricing induced by the additional information can achieve every combination of consumer and producer surplus such that: (i) consumer surplus is non-negative, (ii) producer surplus is at least as high as profits under the uniform monopoly price, and (iii) total surplus does not exceed the efficient gains from trade. As well as characterizing …

Likelihood Inference In Some Finite Mixture Models, Xiaohong Chen, Maria Ponomareva, Elie Tamer

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Parametric mixture models are commonly used in applied work, especially empirical economics, where these models are often employed to learn for example about the proportions of various types in a given population. This paper examines the inference question on the proportions (mixing probability) in a simple mixture model in the presence of nuisance parameters when sample size is large. It is well known that likelihood inference in mixture models is complicated due to 1) lack of point identification, and 2) parameters (for example, mixing probabilities) whose true value may lie on the boundary of the parameter space. These issues cause …

Reflections On Finance And The Good Society, Robert J. Shiller

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

After the financial crisis that began in 2007 many have expressed renewed doubts about the basic goodness of the financial sectors, doubts related to deeply-held moral principles and traditions of larger society. We need to reconcile these doubts with financial practice. We must acknowledge the important principle of reciprocity. We must understand that there are natural human tendencies towards aggression and hoarding, which no financial institutions and codes of ethics can completely eliminate. We must appreciate the important role of professional organizations in moderating these tendencies. When these principles are made part of financial education we can expect better public …

A Tribute To William D. Duncombe, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Does The Early Bird Really Catch The Worm?: An Economic Analysis Of Application Factors For Honors Students At The University Of Connecticut, Mallika M. Winsor

Honors Scholar Theses

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether application date affects the probability that an entering UConn honors freshman will graduate with Honors.

Design/methodology/approach – Utilizing 1998-2007 Honors and Office of Institutional Research data, the effect of application date is examined using an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model in Microsoft Excel.

Findings – Results from and OLS model controlling for measures of academic ability and ambition suggest that applying between October and January increases an incoming honors freshman’s honors graduation probability by approximately 30 percentage points each. Application date is significant for Nurses, Engineers who took the …

Dodd-Frank And The Future Of Banking, Gregory Burns

All Theses

The financial crisis of 2008-2009 set the globally economy into a free-fall, requiring massive government intervention in order to prevent the entire system from crashing down. The Dodd-Frank Act, the largest financial reform since the Great Depression, attempts to move the financial system towards a more stable foundation. Part 1 discusses the causes of the financial crisis and an overview of the Dodd-Frank Act. In part 2 explores the reform in the over-the-counter derivatives market with a focus on the impact to market participants, the impact on the systemic risk of the financial system, as well as the overall U.S. …

Effects Of Unemployment Insurance Extensions On Job Search Outcomes, Ailin He

All Theses

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how unemployment insurance (UI) extensions affect job finding probabilities and the length of unemployment spells in the most recent decade. Exploiting the panel structure of the Current Population Survey (CPS), I constructed a 16-month panel with the CPS basic monthly data from 2002 to 2012 and modeled the reemployment (unemployment-to-employment and not-in-labor-force-to-employment) hazard. Since unemployment policies in the US are subjected to change by the condition of the macro economy, this paper adopted different approaches to distinguish UI impacts on exit probability from other macro factors. Our results suggest that UI extensions …

Does A Banking Crisis Reduce Foreign Direct Investment?, Eunjeong Kim

All Theses

With as much importance as Foreign Direct Investment, an enormous amount of study on the factors which might hamper Foreign Direct Investment has been done with a lot of research. Also, the impact of a crisis on FDI has been especially appealing due to the recent economic depression. However, the literature about the linkage between one of the crises, a banking crisis and FDI is sparse even though a banking crisis is highly correlated with the overall economy's damage. With data collected for 60 countries for the years 1990-2010, this paper examines the relationship between Foreign Direct Investment and a …

Empirical Study On Stock's Capital Returns Distribution And Future Performance, Han Liu

All Theses

Investors subject to reference dependence and mental accounting tend to make decisions based on the unrealized losses and gains relative to a reference point, and behave consistently with the disposition effect. In this paper, I focus my study on stocks' capital returns distribution, which is a distribution of each stock that represents the relative capital gains/losses of all shareholders during a target time period. Empirical evidences show the mean value and the skewness of stock's capital returns distribution play significant roles in forecasting future performance. For stocks with a negative mean value of the distribution, the only significant parameter is …

Estimate The Effect Of Police On Crime Using Electoral Data And Updated Data, Yaqi Wang

All Theses

It is surprisingly difficult to isolate causal effects of police on crime empirically due to the simultaneous determination of crime and police presence. Instruments are used to address the simultaneity concerns in the previous crime literature. The 2SLS results provide evidence indicating that additional police reduce crime. However, we might suspect whether the same instruments can generate consistent results with previous studies by using datasets of more recent years instead of thirty years ago and considering the change of policies, crime situation, and other factors. This paper use electoral cycles as instrumental variable and updated data of the 1985-2010 period …

Cracking The Tax Codes: How State Tax Laws Influence The Number Of Manufacturing Jobs Within Their Borders, Nick Lorenson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

With the recent economic downturn, jobs have been at the forefront of people’s concerns. Policy makers in every state have promised their constituents new jobs. Of particular importance are high paying jobs. Manufacturing jobs tend to be a well-paying and highly sought after form of employment. However, in recent decades, the percentage of manufacturing jobs has been declining in the United States. Also, manufacturing facilities have shown an increased likelihood of relocating to different states. I theorize that manufacturing facilities relocating and expanding in different states is primarily due to state tax policies. This phenomenon has increased within recent years …

The Economic Theory Of Deregulation, Samuel D. Gass

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

One of the consequences of the financial crisis of 2008 was a renewed focus on the issue of deregulation. The broadly recognized connection between the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression and the systematic deregulation of our financial markets dating back over three decades reinvigorated the economic and political debate around the appropriate balance between market freedom and government regulation. This paper explores this theme historically, analyzing several economic markets that were highly regulated prior to the late 20^th century. Through this analysis it establishes a foundational framework for the study of the widespread deregulation of the late …

Incorporating Personality Trait Pyschology Into Economic Decision Making Models, Sohaib Hasan

All Theses

In this thesis, we compare the abilities of Big Five locus of personality traits, religiosity, risk aversion, contextual, and historical variables in explaining behavior in the Trust Game, the Minimum Effort Game, and a Cheap Talk Game. We find that that behavior in the games is largely explained by contextual and historical variables, with some influence from personality traits. This suggests that, while there is a role for personality traits in explaining behavior in economic settings, most variation is explained by the context of economic interactions and the results of previous interactions.

Identifying The Effect Of Unemployment On Hate Crime, Alex Curthoys

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Hate crimes are those crimes that are motivated by bias against groups different from the perpetrator. They are especially contemptible offenses in that they, like terrorism, negatively impact an entire community as well as the victim targeted. While crime has been, and will continue to be, widely studied by economists, the specific area of hate crimes is relatively understudied. To contribute to the understanding of hate crimes, this paper examines whether hate crimes are economically motivated: in particular, whether there is a relationship between the incidence of hate crimes and the unemployment. Comprehending this link can help build the knowledge …

Labor Market Assimilation: Evidence From Hurricane Katrina Evacuees, Joseph Batista Andrade Iv

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The objective of this paper is to use the mass migration toHoustonafter Hurricane Katrina as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of migration on employment (i.e., the effects of being an outsider rather than a native to a certain area). The use of this natural experiment helps control for the usual endogeneity of studying effects of immigration; it is safe to assume away the possibility that the migration was mainly because of higher wages or better employment opportunities, a possibility present in most empirical studies on the subject, which makes it hard to say how the actual migration itself …

Essays On Academic Achievement And Student Behavior In Public Schools, Wael Soheil Moussa

Economics - Dissertations

This dissertation examines the student academic achievement through various mechanisms, put in place by the public school district, classroom student behavior, and negative external shocks to the students' living environment. I examine the impacts of various treatments on student short and long run academic outcomes such as math and English test scores, grade retention, special education diagnoses, as well as high school graduation. Each essay will be presented as a chapter of the dissertation.

The first essay uses student-level administrative data from New York City Public Schools to examine the impacts of school entry age on student academic outcomes (including …