Economics Commons^™

Drivers Of Economic Growth In Developing Countries, Minh Dao

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

This paper examines the impact of the drivers of economic growth in developing countries. We modify the conventional neoclassical growth model to account for the impact of the increase in the number of people working relative to the total population and that of the increase in the value added per worker over time. Based on data from the World Bank for the 1995-2010 period and a sample of thirty-eight developing economies we find that the growth rate of per capita GDP is linearly dependent on technological progress, gross capital formation, the initial level of output per capita, and labour productivity …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2014, Christopher R. Bollinger, William H. Hoyt, David Blackwell, Michael T. Childress

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

No abstract provided.

Exports, Imports, Government Consumption And Economic Growth In Upper-Middle Income Countries, Minh Dao

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Esfahani (1991) shows that the statistically significant correlation between export promotion and economic growth in semi-industrialized countries (SICs) has been mainly attributable to the role of exports in reducing import ‘shortages’, which have impeded output growth in these countries. As a result, export-promotion policies as a superior development strategy in SICs play an important role in those that cannot secure sufficient foreign aid or investment. Esfahani (1991) also develops a simultaneous equations model to address the simultaneity bias between GDP and export growth rates. In this article we extend the model developed by Esfahani (1991) by incorporating the contribution of …

Creating Knowledge, Volume 7, 2014

Creating Knowledge

Dear Students, Faculty Colleagues and Friends, It is my great pleasure to introduce the seventh volume of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ Creating Knowledge—our undergraduate student scholarship and research journal. First published in 2008, the journal is the outcome of an initiative to enhance and enrich the academic quality of the student experience within the college. Through this publication, the college seeks to encourage students to become actively engaged in creating scholarship and research and gives them a venue for the publication of their essays.

Beginning with the sixth volume of the journal, we instituted a major …

Measuring Microfinance: Analyzing The Conflict Between Practitioners And Researchers With Evidence From Nepal, Ram D. Rajbanshi, Meng Huang, Bruce Wydick

Economics Faculty Publications

What accounts for the discrepancy between the microfinance impact claims of development practitioners and the far smaller impacts found in experimental studies? We demonstrate in a simple theoretical framework why "before-and-after" observations of practitioners overstate microfinance impacts and why estimations in some recent randomized trials understate the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). Our empirical study uses a unique data set from eastern Nepal to study the impact of microfinance in villages where microfinance did not previously exist. We find that approximately three-fourths of the apparent impact of microfinance observed by practitioners is an illusion driven by correlated unobservable …

Does New Information Technology Lower Media Quality? The Paradox Of Commercial Public Goods, Man-Lui Lau, Bruce Wydick

Economics Faculty Publications

We define commercial public goods as goods that are broadcast via television, radio, newsprint, or websites for which consumption is non-rival and non-exclusive, and revenue is generated mainly through advertising alongside a product in a two-sided market. With new information technology the fixed cost of entry in these markets has substantially declined. We demonstrate that as fixed costs of entry decline in a competitive media market, lower industry concentration results in lower resources to each firm for the production of commercial public goods. The counterintuitive result of new information technology is that it may result in lower quality news reporting …

Bankruptcy: The Divergent Cases Of The City And The County Of San Bernardino, Richard Callahan, Mark Pisano

Public and Nonprofit Administration

The cases are the two separate jurisdictions of the City of San Bernardino and the County of San Bernardino, California, U.S.A. The matched pair offers a unique opportunity for a research design that compares a bankrupt city government with a jurisdiction sharing the essential demographic, economic, and geographical features, though as a county a different level of government. The two cases offer insights into bankruptcy as not simply a function of economic forces or recent poor policy choices but as a result of a pattern of decision-making, a structure of government, and the constraints placed on leadership by structure and …

Something Old, Something New: Mba Program Evaluation Using Shift-Share Analysis And Google Trends, Sarah M. Davis, A. E. Rodriguez

Economics & Business Analytics Faculty Publications

Shift-share analysis is a decomposition technique that is commonly used to measure attributes of regional change. In this method, regional change is decomposed into its relevant functional and competitive parts. This paper introduces traditional shift-share method and its extensions with examples of its applicability and usefulness for program evaluation and development, strategic planning, enrollment management and other traditional functions of higher education administration. To illustrate we provide an appraisal of the impact of demographic and employment changes resulting from the great recession on the MBA program of a regional private university in the state of Connecticut. We establish the validity …

Biotechnology: Can The Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership Reconcile Eu And Us Differences On Gmos?, Claude Chereau

Economics & Business Analytics Faculty Publications

The US and EU have announced negotiations for a free trade agreement to be completed by end of 2014. While tariff barriers between the two entities are limited, their trade is encumbered with non-tariff barriers (NTBs), one of them being their diverging approach to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the agriculture and food industries. The US operates from a science-based perspective while the EU relies on the precautionary principle. This paper reviews the developments of GMOs in both the US and EU and draws on measures outlined in international organizations and recent trade agreements to explore options for the US …

Flight To Quality For Large Financial Institutions, A. Can Inci, Hsi Li, Joseph Mccarthy

Finance Department Faculty Journal Articles

Local correlation analysis is used to investigate flight to quality among large financial institutions before, during, and after the financial crisis of 2008-2009. While standard correlation captures general overall linear association, local correlation analysis more accurately captures changes in the associations in response to changing market conditions. Using raw, market-adjusted, and industry-adjusted stock returns of individual banks, we investigate the performance of troubled banks and the change in investing behavior. Investors react to noisy information from the financial difficulties encountered by banking institutions. This reaction results in flight to quality. While the traditional Pearson correlations capture general overall linear association, …

Levers For Change -- Philanthropy In Select South East Asian Countries, Prapti Upadhyay Anand, Crystal Hayling

Lien Centre for Social Innovation: Research

Explosive economic growth in South East Asia has resulted in unparalleled wealth creation. Forbes magazine reports there are 386 billionaires in the Asia Pacific region. While the region’s emerging economies report hopeful signs of a broadening middle class, income inequality is rising faster than living standards for the majority. There is widespread agreement that the stark income disparity must be addressed or it risks threatening political and social stability. For those interested in the social economy, key questions remain unanswered: first, will philanthropic giving match the fast pace of wealth accumulation, and second, will that philanthropy be strategic and targeted …

The Globalization Of Human Rights In Post-Genocide Rwanda, Sadara Shine

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

In the past two decades, Rwanda has been through major changes, from a conflict-ridden society with deep divisions between the two main ethnic groups–Hutus and Tutsis–to a case of impressive economic growth. Despite the progress, deep divisions and human rights issues exist. To avoid the recurrence of any conflict, both state and non-state actors are playing varied roles in a post-genocide Rwanda. Based on both primary and secondary sources, this article argues that in an era of globalization and postgenocide in Rwanda, non-state actors like international non-governmental organizations have the most impact in the preservation of human rights. So, in …

Trade Eqilibrium: A Multi-Generational Economic Policy, Narendra C. Bhandari

Faculty Working Papers and Articles

No abstract provided.

Managing Budgets During Fiscal Stress: Lessons For Local Government Officials, Jeremy M. Goldberg, Max Neiman

McCarthy Center Student Scholarship

Like many local governments across the nation, cities and counties in California were impacted heavily by recent economic problems. This report examines what happened to local California government revenues during this period, which services have been adjusted, how employee benefits have been treated, and what innovations have been introduced.

The report is based on both a web-based survey of 245 California city government officials and face-to-face interviews with chief financial officers in most of the state’s major cities (Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Riverside, Pasadena and Los Angeles). The authors write, “There has always been much interest in the …

Nova Southeastern University 2014 Annual Report, Nova Southeastern University

NSU Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

The Education Lorenz Curve: Exploring Education And Social Mobility In A Lorenz Curve Framework, Nichole D. Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within any society the level of social mobility, the distribution of income, and equality of opportunity work together to determine the ease with which a child born into poverty can make it to the middle class during his or her lifetime. Education plays a large part, if not the largest part, in the analysis of these areas within a given society. Therefore, an equal distribution of education among those born into all income levels is one key ingredient to ensuring that all children who are born into poverty get the same chance of succeeding in the workforce as their more …

Horizontal Product Differentiation In Auctions And Multilateral Negotiations, Charles J. Thomas, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We experimentally compare first-price auctions and multilateral negotiations after introducing horizontal product differentiation into a standard procurement setting. Both institutions yield identical surplus for the buyer, a difference from prior findings with homogeneous products that results from differentiation's influence on sellers' pricing behaviour. The data are consistent with this finding being driven by concessions from low-cost sellers in response to differentiation reducing their likelihood of being the buyer's surplus-maximizing trading partner. Further analysis shows that introducing product differentiation increases the intensity of price competition among sellers, which contrasts with the conventional wisdom that product differentiation softens competition.

Sin Taxes And Sindustry: Revenue, Paternalism, And Political Interest, Adam J. Hoffer, William F. Shughart Ii, Michael D. Thomas

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Revenue shortfalls associated with the Great Recession and the slow recovery that followed have placed the budgets of many U.S. state and local governments under heavy stress. In the past several years, lingering economic troubles have eroded governmental tax bases while voters have remained strongly resistant to proposals for cutting public spending or raising taxes on income, property, or other broad bases. This has left many states searching for new revenue sources. Particularly attractive targets for "revenue enhancement" are goods that policymakes deem to be "sinful" or misguided because they are bad for the user or generate negative externalities or …

An Instructive Case In Referencing, Priority Conflict And Ethics: The Role Of An Editor In A Scholarly Journal, Michael Szenberg

Lander College of Arts and Sciences Publications and Research

The author discusses the high standard of ethics that editors must adhere to. He reviews a controversy concerning citation and priority of publication that arose between the authors of two different articles on the same subject published in two different journals, and also discusses the role played by the editor of a journal.

A Simple Treatment Of The Liquidity Trap For Intermediate Macroeconomics Courses, Sebastien Buttet, Udayan Roy

Publications and Research

Several leading undergraduate intermediate macroeconomics textbooks now include a simple reduced-form New Keynesian model of short-run dynamics (alongside the IS-LM model). Unfortunately, there is no accompanying description of how the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates affects the model. In this article, the authors show how the aforementioned model can easily be modified to teach undergraduate students about the significance of the zero lower bound for economic performance and policy. This acquires additional significance because economies such as the United States and Japan have been close to the zero lower bound since 2008 and 1995, respectively. The authors show …

Education, Employment, And Coastal Carolina University: What Are Ccu Students' Plans After Graduation?, Tom Fernandez

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that while unemployment amongst young college graduates is high, joblessness decreases as students pursue post-baccalaureate degrees. With national unemployment near eight percent, it is important for college students to consider what obstacles they may face when entering the workforce. Challenges may include sociohistorical factors like parental educational attainment, socioeconomic factors, and obstacles surrounding various forms of human capital. This study predicts the decisions Coastal Carolina University (CCU) students will make post-graduation based upon four elements: parental education, academic achievement, paid work, and faculty-student interaction. I surveyed a random sample of CCU students to …

Niche Markets And Their Lessons, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

Markets are full of nooks and crannies. Out of the glare of the big economies and their public exchanges, markets specializing by financial product, activity, or industry thrive, often attracting little by way of formal regulatory oversight. But there is another kind of specialized market, one which is geographically and politically determined albeit internationally focused. Luxembourg, Ireland, Dubai, Bahrain, Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland, among others, these are some of the world’s niche markets.

It is a hard business being a niche market, operating in a competitive and often unforgiving environment, engaging in constant repositioning and facing inherent limitations on growth. Surprisingly, …

The Impact Of Fdi And Trade Openness On The Economic Growth Of The Transition Economies, Regina Castro

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines effects of FDI inflows and trade openness on economic growth of three former Soviet Union economies: Kazakhstan, Armenia and Ukraine. The study uses a regression model that incorporates data sets for the period from 1992 to 2011 obtained from the World Bank. The regression result indicates that FDI inflows are positively correlated to the economic growth of the transition economies. However, impact of FDI would vary for each specific country depending on the degree of capacity of the host country to use FDI efficiently. Trade openness has also a positive effect on the real GDP per capita …

The Predictive Power Of Commodity Futures Prices On South American Equity Markets, Aadithyan Manivannan

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the futures United States futures market the returns on the South American stock market. In particular the paper focuses on three key commodities—industrial sugar, copper, and coffee. The study looks into methods to isolate the effect of the United States commodity market from the returns of the equity exchanges in both the United States and South America. Once isolated, the relationship between the selected commodities and South American stock market returns can be estimated through quantitative analysis.

2014-5 Student Loans And Repayment: Theory, Evidence And Policy, Lance J. Lochner, Alexander Monge-Naranjo

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2014-4 Model Uncertainty And The Effect Of Shall-Issue Right-To-Carry Laws On Crime, Steven N. Durlauf, Salvador Navarro, David A. Rivers

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2014-3 Targeting The Wrong Teachers: Estimating Teacher Quality For Use In Accountability Regimes, Nirav Mehta

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2014-2 Understanding Earnings Dynamics: Identifying And Estimating The Changing Roles Of Unobserved Ability, Permanent And Transitory Shocks, Lance J. Lochner, Youngki Shin

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2014-1 Default And Repayment Among Baccalaureate Degree Earners, Lance J. Lochner, Alexander Monge-Naranjo

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2014-1 Existence Of Monotone Equilibria In First-Price Auctions With Resale, Charles Z. Zheng

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.