Economics Commons^™

Invited Introduction To Jerec, Matthew Kotchen

Journal of Environmental and Resource Economics at Colby

No abstract provided.

Welcome By The Editor, Nathan W. Chan

Journal of Environmental and Resource Economics at Colby

No abstract provided.

Governance Reforms In Government, Public Sector, And Regulatory Bodies, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

Let me begin by setting the context in which the discussion of this topic should be focused. Eighty percent of national economic output is generated by the private sector. Government however plays a critical role in the generation of this output through its overwhelming role in the polity, economy and international relations. So a prior question that needs to be addressed before delving in the topic: What should be the appropriate relationship between government and private business in Pakistan? In my view, the government has at least five functions to perform – an Enabler and Regulator, Protector of Life and …

Heterogeneity In The Preferences And Pro-Environmental Behavior Of College Students: The Effects Of Years On Campus, Demographics, And External Factors, Andrew G. Meyer

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Models from several social science fields have identified factors that lead to pro-environmental behavior. This research builds on those models by analyzing a survey completed by over 500 undergraduates at a US liberal arts university to examine the characteristics of students that are associated with more environmentally friendly behavior and quantify the desirability of different environmental initiatives. There is evidence that the probability of pro-environmental behavior substantially increases with each additional year that a student spends on campus. The magnitude of the effect is between 4 and 10 percentage points per year, depending on the specific behavior and empirical model. …

Cigarette Taxes And Illicit Trade In Europe, James E. Prieger, Jonathan D. Kulick

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Cigarettes are highly taxed in Europe to discourage tobacco use and to fund public-health measures to mitigate the harms from tobacco consumption. At higher prices (more precisely, at higher differentials between licit and black-market prices) consumers substitute more toward illicit cigarettes. Illicit retail trade in cigarettes (IRTC) includes counterfeiting and smuggling—either of legally purchased products, from lower-tax to higher-tax jurisdictions, or of entirely non-tax-paid cigarettes. The existing literature includes claims that taxes are not an important factor determining the scale of IRTC. We investigate these claims with data from 1999–2013 in the European Union. We find that while the simple …

Wage Insurance As A Policy Option In The United States, Stephen A. Wandner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Wage insurance is a program that attempts to help permanently displaced workers transition to employment rapidly, effectively, and equitably. Because displaced workers have been found to suffer substantial earnings losses when they become reemployed, a wage insurance program provides a temporary wage supplement that partially reduces the wage loss experienced by targeted, newly reemployed workers. While participating workers receive a “wage supplement,” the program is called “wage insurance” because of its design as a social insurance program rather than an income transfer program. This paper provides a discussion of the development of wage insurance as a policy option in the …

Pakistan’S Daunting Deficits, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Problems in the short term that affect day-to-day life are quite naturally given centre stage by both policymakers and the government’s critics. How much fiscal deficit is real, how much contrived? What has gone into computing the rate of inflation? What is the composition of foreign exchange reserves in terms of borrowed money and own money? These are pertinent questions that need to be raised. The government of the day has to answer these questions and satisfy its critics. But this excessive preoccupation with short-term issues leads to the neglect of long-term issues that responsible governments must address. It is …

Economic Clusters Research An Annotated Bibliography, Jing Chen, Randall Jackson

Regional Research Institute Resource Documents

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Nurse Turnover On Quality Of Care And Mortality In Nursing Homes: Evidence From The Great Recession, Yaa Akosa Antwi, John R. Bowblis

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the causal effect of nurse turnover on mortality and the quality of nursing home care with a fixed effect instrumental variable estimation that uses the unemployment rate as an instrument for nursing turnover. We find that ignoring endogeneity leads to a systematic underestimation of the effect of nursing turnover on mortality and quality of care in a sample of California nursing homes. Specifically, 10 percentage point increase in nurse turnover results in a facility receiving 2.2 additional deficiencies per annual regulatory survey, reflecting a 19.3 percent increase. Not accounting for endogeneity of turnover leads to results that suggest …

Impact Of Exchange Rate Regimes On Economic Growth, Brigitta Jakob

Undergraduate Economic Review

It has been a challenge to identify a direct correlation between exchange rate regimes and economic growth. One of the most important issues left unanswered in international finance is the debates over which type of exchange rate can best stimulate economic growth.

The main hypothesis of this research is that fixed exchange rate regime will have positive correlation with GDP growth due to the stability factor it has to offer. Control variables used in this study include inflation rate, gross capital formation (%GDP), index of government spending, and index of human capital per person. After observing the data from 74 …

The Adoption Of Solar Cells In The Us: A Cross-Section Analysis, Iwnetim I. Abate

Undergraduate Economic Review

The amount of solar energy that falls on the earth’s surface in one minute equals the total annual energy consumption of the entire world’s population. The question is how to harvest the energy efficiently. Photovoltaic or solar cell is one of the few means of to harvest this energy. The main objective of this paper is to identify factors that determine the number of photovoltaic panel installation per a million people in the US and build a regression model to quantify their effect. Ten independent variables were studied and their effect was quantified. In addition, different statistical hypothesis tests were …

Exploring Economic And Social Factors That Increase Economic And Well-Being Measurements Of Developing And Developed Countries, Kofi D. Boadu

Undergraduate Economic Review

The historical growth paths of developed and developing countries reveal the challenges that developing countries face in traveling the road from poverty to prosperity. Based on economic development literature, economic theory, and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression method, this research considers whether or not, and to what extent globalization characteristics, foreign direct investment levels (FDI), secondary school enrollment rates, information communication technology (ICT) as a percentage of trade imports, and happiness levels of 103 developing and developed countries, impact their GDP per capita levels. This paper will also take a look at alternative ways of viewing and measuring economic success.

Pace Thomas Wolfe, Americans Can And Do Go Home Again: Implications For Admissions, Michael Hemesath

Administration Publications

No abstract provided.

Covered Interest Parity Empirical Analysis Of Non-Traditional Monetary Policy's Effects On Exchange Rates, Tyler Salminen

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This research sought to find an economically justifiable relationship between non-traditional monetary policies of the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve and the dollar/yen exchange rate. This research utilized the covered interest parity condition in conjunction with a partial least squares structured equation analysis in order to discern any possible relationships between these two phenomenon. A solid relationship between the non-traditional monetary policies of these central banks and dollar/yen exchange rate was found. In order to analyze significance, direction, and nature of this relationship this research followed up the partial least squares analysis with bootstrap structural equation modeling. Because …

Wheels Of Fortune: The Economic Impacts Of Wheelchair Provision In Ethiopia, Justin L. Grider, Bruce Wydick

Economics Faculty Publications

Although approximately 1 billion people in the world live with physical disabilities, there is a lack of rigorous research on the economic impacts of providing assistive devices for persons with disabilities. This study involves 261 people with disabilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where 121 had received wheelchair donations through nonprofit organisations. Using covariate matching (CVM), seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) and a series of robustness checks for endogeneity, it is found that those given access to a wheelchair devoted 1.75 more hours per day to work, 1.40 fewer hours per day to street begging and realised a 77.5 per cent increase …

Development And Quality Of Life In Cities, Nate Peach, Luke Petach

Faculty Publications - College of Business

Articulating the goals of economic development and defining quality of life has drawn the attention of influential thinkers from Socrates to Sen. Attempts to quantify and compare economies as they pertain to these concepts have largely focused on the macroeconomy. In this study, the Metropolitan Development Index is created to measure development and quality of life in large, urban areas in the United States. The researchers then test the sensitivity of city rankings to the data used in constructing the index. These tests indicate that the index is a substantive conception of development and quality of life. Additionally, the index …

Measuring Millennials: Teenage Idleness In The Digital Age, Victoria Freitag, Emma Newman

Student Scholarship - College of Business

This research aims to model the relationship between factors contributing to situational privilege and teenage idleness. We will study the impact of race, income, household type, unemployment, and education on teenage idleness across 348 Metropolitan Statistical Areas within the United States. It is important to identify influential factors on teen idleness in order for government and community leaders to implement successful policies to get teenagers off the streets and into the workforce. Factors that were found to have a significant impact on teen idleness included the MSAs makeup of household types, race, median income, unemployment, and attainment of a bachelor’s …

Mortality And Conflict In The Developing World, Stephen Partin

Student Scholarship - College of Business

To varying extents, the world one is born into does not provide equal opportunities. This study measures the extent to which survivability across the developing world is affected by factors outside of the health and lifestyle choices one can make: industry, foreign markets, conflict, and the demographics around them. These variables are tested for a balanced panel of 102 countries over 7 years, allowing country-specific factors to be controlled.

Impact Of Human Rights Abuses On Economic Outlook, Benjamin Antony, Tyler Bowman

Student Scholarship - College of Business

This paper is concerned with measuring, quantifying, and modeling the extent to which governmental human rights abuses influence the Gross Domestic Product per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity of a nation. The intent of this study is to help develop a statistical framework for human rights under which better and more informed governmental policy decisions can be made. The results of this study suggest strong positive relationships between governmental regulatory quality, mean years of education, and government respect for physical integrity rights and higher GDP per capita (PPP). There is also no statistical relationship between a nation's perceived rule …

Food Store Choice Of Poor Households: A Discrete Choice Analysis Of The National Household Food Acquisition And Purchase Survey, Sofia B. Villas-Boas, Rebecca Taylor

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Policymakers are pursing initiatives to increase food access for low-income households. However, due in part to previous data deficiencies, there is still little evidence supporting the assumption that improved food store access will alter dietary habits, especially for the poorest of U.S. households. This article uses the new National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) to estimate consumer food outlet choices as a function of outlet type and household attributes in a multinomial mixed logit. In particular, we allow for the composition of the local retail food environment to play a role in explaining household store choice decisions and …

The Effect Of Food Price On Food Insecurity And Diet Quality: Exploring Potential Moderating Roles Of Snap And Consumer Competency, Yunhee Chang, Jinhee Kim, Swarn Chatterjee

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Higher food prices may aggravate household food insecurity and hurt diet quality. Using a sample of low-income households from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS), this study examines whether local food prices affect food insecurity and nutritional quality of foods acquired, and how households use competent consumer behaviors to mitigate any adverse effects of price. Financial management practices, nutrition literacy, and conscientious food shopping practices were considered for consumer competency. Our findings indicate that low-income households in higher-cost areas, regardless of whether they participate in SNAP or not, are more likely to adopt loyalty or other store …

A New Economic Growth Theory #2: How To Overcome An Obstacle To Economic Growth, Paul Kim

Economics Papers and Presentations

In this paper the author will establish the hypothesis that the fluctuation of GDP depends on labor mobility. The author bases this on the fact that economic research pointed out that the US had the highest labor mobility among 7 advanced nations when the US achieved the highest labor productivity growth rate. A nation with lesser labor mobility had a lower GDP. The purpose of this paper is to explain how true the hypothesis is from a single nation's perspective using the US economy as a case study.

Sectoral Herding: Evidence From An Emerging Market, Esin Cakan, Aram Balagyozyan

Economics & Business Analytics Faculty Publications

This study examines herding behavior in all industrial sectors of the Turkish stock market. Applying the methodology of Chang et al. (2000) to the Turkish sectoral daily stock prices from 2002 to 2014, we found strong evidence of herding. This evidence did not disappear even after we controlled for market regimes and firm fundamentals. Investor herding is asymmetric in all sectors; even though herding is prevalent in both rising and falling markets, it is more pronounced in rising markets. In the financial, services, and technology sectors herding is detected only in the highly volatile markets. In contrast, in low-volatility markets …

Climate Change And Its Impact On Wheat Production In Kansas, Joshua C. Howard, Esin Cakan, Kamal Upadhyaya

Economics & Business Analytics Faculty Publications

This paper studies the effect of climate change on wheat production in Kansas using annual time series data from 1949 to 2014. For the study, an error correction model is developed in which the price of wheat, the price of oats (substitute good), average annual temperature and average annual precipitation are used as explanatory variables with total output of wheat being the dependent variable. Time series properties of the data series are diagnosed using unit root and cointegration tests. The estimated results suggest that Kansas farmers are supply responsive to both wheat as well as its substitute (oat) prices in …

The Effects Of Benefit Timing And Income Fungibility On Food Purchasing Decisions Among Snap Households, Joshua P. Berning, Gregory Colson, Jeffery H. Dorfman, Travis A. Smith, Xiaosi Yang

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest nutritional safety net in the United States. Prior research has found that participants have higher consumption shortly after receiving their benefits, followed by lower consumption towards the end of the benefit month. This “SNAP benefit cycle” has been found to have negative effects on beneficiaries. We examine two behavioral responses of SNAP participants that may work in tandem to drive much of the cycle: short-run impatience – a higher preference to consume today; and fungibility of income – the degree of substitutability between a SNAP dollar and a cash dollar. Using …

Variation In Food Prices And Snap Adequacy For Purchasing The Thrifty Food Plan, Erin Bronchetti, Garret Christensen, Benjamin Hansen

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Whether Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are adequate to provide food security for eligible households is an important and timely policy question. While the nominal value of SNAP benefits is fixed across states (except for Hawaii and Alaska), variation in food prices across geographic areas is dramatic, and the real value of SNAP benefits varies widely across the U.S. Our research provides new evidence on geographic variation in the adequacy of SNAP benefits to purchase the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP).

Using multiple methods to estimate the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) faced by households across the nation, …

Agricultural Policy Reform: An Argument For A Soil Erosion Tax, Alex M. Ingulsrud

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

The purpose of this research is to examine the history of soil erosion and US agricultural policy in order to show why a soil erosion tax would be a good policy. Part A of this essay focuses on the dust bowl as an archetype for modern agriculture and ecological limits. Historical lessons are drawn from the dust bowl that illustrate why a soil erosion tax would be more practical than past policies for agricultural policy to coerce farmers into implement soil conversation practices. Part B of this essay examines the current dilemma of soil erosion and agricultural policy, why a …

The Connection Between Education And Sustainable Economic Growth In Nigeria, Lotanna Ernest Emediegwu, Ighodaro Clement

Zambia Social Science Journal

This article considers the nexus between education and economic growth in Nigeria. Education here is seen as portraying one of the major components of human capital formation. Investment in the quantity of education, and more significantly in its quality is pivotal to achieving sustainable economic growth. Time-series data were collected from different sources for the period 1980-2015. Cointegration technique and error correction methodology were employed for the estimation of the chosen model. The empirical results reveal that educational investment impacts on economic growth in Nigeria in a direct and significant manner. Hence, amongst several recommendations, we propose that a forceful …

Causality Between Government Revenue And Expenditure: Empirical Evidence From Zambia, Mutinta Champita

Zambia Social Science Journal

We establish the causality between government revenue and government expenditure using Granger causality tests within the Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) framework. The estimated VAR model includes gross domestic product, exchange rate and Treasury Bill rates. Granger causality tests found unidirectional causality running from government expenditure to revenue. This work is founded in economic theory of public choice and the underlying causality of budget deficits. Knowledge of the revenue spending nexus will shed more light on the nature of the intertemporal relationship between government revenue and government spending and help shape the political economy of fiscal policies.

The results are augmented by …

"Extra-Activism", Dorothy Kidd

Media Studies

No abstract provided.