Economics Commons^™

Nonlinear Pricing With Finite Information, Dirk Bergemann, Ji Shen, Yun Xu, Edmund M. Yeh

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We analyze nonlinear pricing with finite information. A seller offers a menu to a continuum of buyers with a continuum of possible valuations. The menu is limited to offering a finite number of choices representing a finite communication capacity between buyer and seller. We identify necessary conditions that the optimal finite menu must satisfy, either for the socially efficient or for the revenue-maximizing mechanism. These conditions require that information be bundled, or “quantized” optimally. We show that the loss resulting from using the n -item menu converges to zero at a rate proportional to 1 = n 2 . We …

Why Is Pollution From U.S. Manufacturing Declining? The Roles Of Trade, Regulation, Productivity, And Preferences, Joseph S. Shapiro, Reed Walker

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Between 1990 and 2008, emissions of the most common air pollutants from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent, even as real U.S. manufacturing output grew substantially. This paper develops a quantitative model to explain how changes in trade, environmental regulation, productivity, and consumer preferences have contributed to these reductions in pollution emissions. We estimate the model’s key parameters using administrative data on plant-level production and pollution decisions. We then combine these estimates with detailed historical data to provide a model-driven decomposition of the causes of the observed pollution changes. Finally, we compare the model-driven decomposition to a statistical decomposition. The …

Why Is Pollution From U.S. Manufacturing Declining? The Roles Of Trade, Regulation, Productivity, And Preferences, Joseph S. Shapiro, Reed Walker

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Between 1990 and 2008, air pollution emissions from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent despite a substantial increase in manufacturing output. We show that these emissions reductions are primarily driven by within-product changes in emissions intensity rather than changes in output or in the composition of products produced. We then develop and estimate a quantitative model linking trade with the environment to better understand the economic forces driving these changes. Our estimates suggest that the implicit pollution tax that manufacturers face doubled between 1990 and 2008. These changes in environmental regulation, rather than changes in productivity and trade, account for …

Why Is Pollution From U.S. Manufacturing Declining? The Roles Of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, And Trade, Joseph S. Shapiro, Reed Walker

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Between 1990 and 2008, air pollution emissions from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent despite a substantial increase in manufacturing output. We show that these emissions reductions are primarily driven by within-product changes in emissions intensity rather than changes in output or in the composition of products produced. We then develop and estimate a quantitative model linking trade with the environment to better understand the economic forces driving these changes. Our estimates suggest that the implicit pollution tax that manufacturers face doubled between 1990 and 2008. These changes in environmental regulation, rather than changes in productivity and trade, account for …

Why Is Pollution From U.S. Manufacturing Declining? The Roles Of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, And Trade, Joseph S. Shapiro, Reed Walker

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Between 1990 and 2008, air pollution emissions from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent despite a substantial increase in manufacturing output. We show that these emissions reductions are primarily driven by within-product changes in emissions intensity rather than changes in output or in the composition of products produced. We then develop and estimate a quantitative model linking trade with the environment to better understand the economic forces driving these changes. Our estimates suggest that the implicit pollution tax that manufacturers face doubled between 1990 and 2008. These changes in environmental regulation, rather than changes in productivity and trade, account for …

Why Is Pollution From U.S. Manufacturing Declining? The Roles Of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, And Trade, Joseph S. Shapiro, Reed Walker

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Between 1990 and 2008, air pollution emissions from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent despite a substantial increase in manufacturing output. We show that these emissions reductions are primarily driven by within-product changes in emissions intensity rather than changes in output or in the composition of products produced. We then develop and estimate a quantitative model linking trade with the environment to better understand the economic forces driving these changes. Our estimates suggest that the implicit pollution tax that manufacturers face doubled between 1990 and 2008. These changes in environmental regulation, rather than changes in productivity and trade, account for …

Taking Down The Totem: A Post-Keynesian Behavioral Critique Of Neoclassical Economics, Gideon Olshansky

Economics Honors Papers

This thesis critiques neoclassical economic theory. In each chapter, with the exception of the last two, I will examine a different neoclassical theory and reveal its lack of realism, and how said theory cannot apply to the real economy. With each critique, I show how neoclassical economic theories are built vindicate free market capitalism. Therefore, neoclassical theory cannot actually understand the real economy, and anticipate its movements. The lack of realism in their theories, and staunch commitment to free markets, suggests that neoclassical theories should not be at the forefront of economic policy decisions and education programs. In the last …

Lies, Probabilities, And Threats In Ultimatum Games, Mark Ferreira

Economics Honors Papers

Many papers have used the ultimatum game as a means to test bargaining behavior. A subset of experiments has examined the use of cheap talk and asymmetric in bargaining scenarios. Yet, this earlier work leaves out many of the complicated factors that occur in bargaining in the real world. No research has looked at the interaction of probabilities and threats in ultimatum games. The experiment described here makes two novel modifications to the ultimatum game: First: participant’s have the ability to send threats. Second: the game uses probabilities to determine whether or not the endowment size becomes revealed. The data …

The Quest For Work And Family Balance Using Flexible Work Arrangements, Sandra Ellen Forris

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Employees experience challenges managing home and work. The increase of women in the workforce, single-parents, childcare, elder care responsibilities, and men in nontraditional roles warrant changes in traditional working hours and flexibility in work schedules. Through the theoretical frameworks of work-family conflict, spillover, border, and boundary theories, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how flexible work arrangements (FWAs) assisted employees in meeting work and family obligations. Minimal research is available in the defense industry and the use of FWAs. A nonprobability, convenience sample was used to explore how management and nonmanagement participants from a Midwest defense …

Assa Sf, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes,

• Harvey-Barratt, T. (2015, December 17). Email to Anwar Shaikh forwarding an invitation from Economists for Peace & Security to a dinner honoring Daniel Ellsberg, including event details and registration forms [Email].

Squealer Dealers: The Market For Information In Federal Drug Trafficking Prosecutions, Andrew Nutting

Economics Faculty Research and Scholarship

Federal data on drug trafficking sentences are used to determine factors that affect market quantities of providing information against other defendants (i.e., defendant probabilities of receiving testimony-related sentence reductions) and market prices of information (i.e., the sizes of such sentence reductions). Women and better-educated defendants experience high demand (higher quantities and prices) for information. Blacks, Hispanics, and non-U.S. citizens experience low demand. Defendants expecting longer sentences have higher supply of information. Conditional on expected sentence, crack dealers, high-level dealers, and dealers with long criminal histories experience low demand, while low-level dealers experience high demand. Women of all races experience high …

Southeast Asia’S Democratic Developmental States And Economic Growth, Michael T. Rock

Economics Faculty Research and Scholarship

How has democracy impacted growth in Southeast Asia? This question can be answered by demonstrating how political elites in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand crafted quite unique democratic developmental states that enabled them to provide the public goods and public policies to maintain high growth. Because of this, growth under democracy has been as high as it was during the heyday of these polities’ developmental autocracies. Moreover, as there was no single dominant pathway to the construction of democratic development in these polities, it looks like political elites were able to take local conditions and history into account suggesting that political …

A New Approach To Climate Change: A Consideration Of Ancillary Benefits In Linking Regional Permit Trading Systems, William H. Meyer

Honors Theses and Capstones

In this paper, I investigate the economic efficiency of two major approaches to greenhouse gas reduction, and evaluate their respective benefits. First, I trace the path of action and thinking on addressing climate change from a global to a regional level. Second, I consider the major economic benefits of having a globally-integrated greenhouse gas abatement system. Third, I consider the economic benefits of regional approaches to climate change, with a focus on the ancillary benefits from greenhouse gas abatement. I conclude by reviewing the challenges to linking regional abatement systems into a cohesive network, and suggest a potential future approach …

Are Subjects Making Financial Decisions In Lab Auctions Or Are They Just Gambling?, Cary Deck, Jungmin Lee, Javier Reyes

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Optimal bidding strategies in first-price and Dutch auctions are theoretically isomorphic but depend on bidder risk attitudes. However, laboratory experiments consistently find different behaviour between auction formats. This article explores whether the notion in psychology that financial and gambling risks are viewed differently can explain the discrepancy. Ultimately, the evidence does not support this hypothesis, but a bidder's propensity to gamble is associated with how much risk he takes in both auctions whereas his propensity to take financial risks is not. The results suggest that subjects may view themselves as gambling in laboratory auctions rather than making financial decisions.

Concept And Contract In The Future Of International Law, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

This is an article written for a symposium on Joel Trachtman’s book, The Future of International Law. I first deal with the contractarian features of Trachtman’s approach to understanding international law. Using the tools of new institutional economics and constitutional economics, Trachtman seeks to describe the features of an international legal system. This is positive political theory or at least relates substantially to the methods of positive political theory. I explore a different approach, one connecting to normative political theory. In its ambitious sense, my approach would see international law as a form of moral argument, but in its modest …

Part 1: The Virginia Economy Struggles To Cope With Economic Headwinds, Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

The Virginia economy grew 0.02 percent in real terms in 2014, will grow only about 1.33 percent in 2015, and we forecast only a 1.98 percent growth rate in 2016. The villain in this scenario is stagnant or declining federal spending, especially defense spending.

Financial Competence, Overconfidence, And Trusting Investments: Results From An Experiment, Bryan C. Mccannon, Colleen Tokar Asaad, Mark Wilson

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Financial transactions sometimes occur in an environment where third-party enforcement is lacking. Behavioral explanations typically allude to the social preferences, where an individual’s utility is directly affected by another’s outcome, as the driver of the trusting investments and reciprocal returns. We hypothesize that, in part, these decisions are determined by an individual’s financial literacy. Experimental evidence is coupled with an innovative financial literacy assessment, which measures general competence, numeracy skills, and overconfidence in one’s knowledge. Results indicate that overconfidence is a significant determinant of behavior. Specifically, overconfident individuals make larger contributions in the investment game. We also document that there …

The Birth Of The U.S. Federal Reserve, Richard A. Naclerio

History Faculty Publications

On November 16, 2014 the United States Federal Reserve celebrated the centennial of its organization. Its one hundred year legacy has left no doubt of its vast monetary control, its far-reaching geopolitical power, and its enigmatic secrecy. These defining features of the Fed remain a mirror of the men who created it. Wall Street barons and ambitious politicians vied for control over shaping the U.S. Federal Reserve to the specifications that suited the needs of both their country and themselves.

This paper covers men like Senator Nelson Aldrich, J.P. Morgan, Jacob Schiff, and Paul M. Warburg, who were the undeniable …

The Political Economy Of Good Governance, Sisay Asefa Editor, Wei-Chiao Huang Editor

Upjohn Press

The contributors to this book capture several of the key dimensions of good governance, as well as what deleterious and negative consequences may arise in its absence. They draw analysis and solutions from diverse sectors such as economics, public administration, management, and political science, in order to treat some of the most pressing societal issues of our time. They connect the importance of education, health, climate change, and poverty to address the challenges of creating a world where more countries embrace good governance policies to benefit their peoples.

Guild-Ridden Labor Markets: The Curious Case Of Occupational Licensing, Morris M. Kleiner

Upjohn Press

In his third Upjohn Press book on occupational licensing, Morris M. Kleiner examines why the institution of occupational licensing has had such a curious evolution and influence in the United States, the European Union, and China. He also discusses the many similarities it has to guilds.

Hacking The Wealth Of Nations: Managing Markets Amid Malware, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Essays On Income Inequality, Minority Health And Healthcare Spending, Rui Cheng

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This set of essays addresses issues related to income inequality, public healthcare supply and population health. Income inequality has been found to affect health in a number of studies. Using data from Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a telephone survey of adults in the United States, the first chapter of my dissertation studies the effect of state level and county level income inequality on health status and the pathway via public health spending. By using multiple imputation method applied to BRFSS income data, it derives synthetic Gini coefficient at state level and county level for each year from 2000 …

Hedge Fund Market Timing Skills, Liquidity, Flows And Performance, Xin Li

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The doctoral dissertation consists of three essays on the topics of hedge fund capital flows, liquidity and market timing skills.

Three Essays In Program Evaluation, Jungtaek Lee

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

I evaluate a wider range of public policies with program evaluation methods, difference-in-difference regression method and regression discontinuity design. The first chapter considers the causal relationship between the expansion on dependent coverage of the Affordable Care Act and risky behaviors including smoking and drinking. I also examine the effect of coverage on preventive care and health care utilization. To overcome the endogeneity problem, I exploit a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of losing health insurance. I find that young adults those who turned 26 are 8 to 10 percent more likely to lose health insurance than young …

Three Essays On Risks In The Middle-Aged And Elderly In Japan, Daisuke Moriwaki

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation consists of three essays on the risks facing the middle-aged and elderly in Japan.

Three Essays On Higher Education, Fang Song

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the first chapter, I analyze the growth patterns of postsecondary education costs in re-cent years. It shows the trends of college revenue, expenditure and other financial items using data drawn from the Delta Data Project between 1987 and 2010. Connections be-tween various categories of revenue / spending and state-level macroeconomic indicators were analyzed using GLS models. College tuition had been growing rapidly over time, whereas total revenues and expenditures did not grow so much. The differences in the responses of public sector and private sector institutions to changes in state-level factors stem from differences in their main sources of …

Three Essays On Scientists, Engineers, And Industrial R & D, Sifan Zhou

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The first chapter studies the effects of noncompetition agreements (NCA) on the mobility and compensation of doctoral degree recipients by analyzing the variation in the enforceability of these contracts across states and over time in the United States. I find that, for doctoral degree recipients who work in industry, stricter NCA enforcement decreases within-state job mobility, increases cross-state job mobility, and flattens salary growth. Freshly minted PhDs who work in states with tougher NCA enforcement earn lower starting salaries.

Fiscal Policy, Laffer Curves And Economic Growth, Si Gao

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The doctoral dissertation consists of three essays on the topics of economic growth and fiscal policy.

Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project: A Requirement For The Ms In Sustainability Degree, Latif M. Jiji, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, George A. Smith

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to describe experience gained with a required six-credit year-long course, the Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project, a key component of the Master of Science (MS) in Sustainability degree at the City College of New York. A common feature of sustainability problems is their interdisciplinary nature. Solutions to sustainability problems often require professionals with different training and backgrounds to work as a team. A sustainability curriculum should provide students with the skills needed to competently participate in an interdisciplinary team.

Design/methodology/approach – Instructors drawn from different departments and divisions of the college developed a pool of sustainability-focused …

Advancing The Understanding Of Behavior In Social-Ecological Systems: Results From Lab And Field Experiments, Marco A. Janssen, Therese Lindahl, James J. Murphy

ESI Publications

"Experiments have made important contributions to our understanding of human behavior, including behavior relevant for understanding social-ecological systems. When there is a conflict between individual and group interests in social-ecological systems, social dilemmas occur. From the many types of social-dilemma formulations that are used to study collective action, common-pool resource and public-good dilemmas are most relevant for social-ecological systems. Experimental studies of both common-pool resource and public-good dilemmas have shown that many predictions based on the conventional theory of collective action, which assumes rational, self-interested behavior, do not hold. More cooperation occurs than predicted (Ledyard 1995), “cheap talk” increases cooperation …