Economics Commons^™

Department Of Economics Publication List 2015, Penny Stover

Economics Pamphlet Series (1985-2016)

This compilation lists works authored by Department of Economics faculty members and other staff working on projects through the Department of Economics. Publications resulting from their research and academic activities are indexed by author at the end of this pamphlet for easy access by the public. The articles were published between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2015, except for those works printed in italics which have been accepted for publication but not actually printed as of December 31, 2015.

Does Context Information Affect Perceptions Of The Intrinsic Value Of Visual Art?, Kelsey Ferguson

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This study is an application of cultural economic value theory within the context of visual art. Current literature supports an incompatibility between objective, empirical economic research and the subjectivity of artistic expression. While variables affecting the intrinsic value of art are difficult to identify and measure, this study quantified the effect of context information on university students’ perceptions of visual art. For this study, 118 randomly assigned University of Arkansas students viewed four identical works of art and answered identical questions designed to measure perceptions of intrinsic value. Despite a hypothesis that context would positively affect participants’ reports, when significant …

The Pragmatics Of Economics Experts’ Engagement With Non-Specialists, Brendan O'Rourke, Jens Maesse

Other

A Call for Papers for Panel on Economics and Language Use: The pragmatics of economics experts’ engagement with non-specialists, 15th International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA2017) to be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 16-21 July 2017.

Barriers To Prevention In Dengue Fever In Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Swat District, Abdul Zahir, Assad Ullah, Mussawar Shah, Arsalan Mussawar

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

The main aim of this study was to find out the barriers in dengue prevention in the Swat District of Khyber Pkhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. A sample size of 354 respondents were proportionally allocated to each Mahallah or street (Tahir Abad, Angaro Dheri, Usman Abad and Banr) and then randomly selected. The association of the independent variable (barriers to prevention) and dependent variables (practices for control) were tested by using a Chi Square test. The perception about barriers in dengue prevention shows that a highly significant association was found between practices for control and access to medical facilities (p=0.034), government agencies …

Exploring The Budget Deficit-Economic Growth Nexus: New Evidence From Ghana, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Emmanuel Orkoh, Augustine Mensah Owusu

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

In this paper, we combine Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach with trend analysis to assess the relationship between Ghana’s budget deficit and economic growth from 2000 to 2015 using quarterly data. The trend analysis reveals that since 2000, years of high budget deficit were usually followed by years of low economic growth and vice versa. This phenomenon was pronounced in 2009, when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate fell from 7.3 percent in 2008 to 4 percent in 2009, following an increase in the budget deficit from 8 percent in 2007 to 11.5 percent in 2008. The same phenomenon …

An Assessment Of Federal Outlay On Pivotal Growth Induced Sectors In Nigeria, Samson Adeniyi Aladejare, Eche Emmanuel, Charles Edobor Umonda

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

This study analyses government capital and recurrent spending outlays on sectors (education, health, defense agriculture and transport and communication) believed to be critical to the growth of the economy, for the period 1980 to 2014. The Error Correction Method was adopted to analyze the short-run impact of each spending division on the prosperity of the economy. The disaggregation into capital and recurrent expenditure was done to gauge the impact each has economic growth. Empirical findings of the study reveal that though capital outlays on the sectors concerned have been more significant than recurrent spending towards achieving the goal of economic …

Motivations For Luxury Consumption: Insights From Tunisia’S Emerging Market, Pranjal Gupta,, Mouna Zaghdoudi

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

Luxury consumption and the desire for luxury are well-accepted phenomena. Myriad studies have documented the pervasiveness of the luxury market in the West and the high growth and strong potential of Asian luxury markets. It is also evident that as resources have grown in a region, luxury consumption and the desire for luxury products have followed. Nevertheless, the need for more far-reaching studies that explore emerging markets are important to understand the differences in how luxury may penetrate these markets, given variations in resources and culture. This paper investigates a number of factors that may contribute to the emergence of …

Challenges Of Respecting Riparian Rights Around Hydroelectric Dams In Cameroon Since 1949, Séverin Nwaha

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

The impact of electric energy on socio-economic development has attracted the attention of all categories of people in society. This is because of the role power plays in the economic and industrial sectors of any country. Public authorities seem to be more concerned with protecting capitalist interests at the detriment of the riparian population. Despite regulations and legal provisions, authorities are still not able to implement a rigorous policy in this sector in Cameroon due to administrative bottle necks, among other factors. Furthermore, the existence of multiple regulatory and management bodies creates confusion. Legislation related to this issue is usually …

Mobile Facial Recognition System For Patient Identification In Medical Emergencies For Developing Economies, Kingsley C. Nwosu

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

Medical emergencies are part of the common daily lives of people in developing and under-developed economies. Frequently, some of these medical emergencies end up tragically for many people in these countries due to many reasons, among which is the delivery of medical treatment when the patient is uncommunicative or unresponsive. The ability of the attending medical personnel to access a patient’s medical history is critical for the quality of the treatment rendered. Unfortunately, today many lives are lost in low income economies during medical emergencies due to lack or inaccessibility of a patient’s medical information. One of the major contributing …

The Effects Of Crytocurrencies On The Banking Industry And Monetary Policy, Gannon Leblanc

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Nashbots: How Political Scientists Have Underestimated Human Rationality, And How To Fix It, Daniel Enemark, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner

Faculty Scholarship

Political scientists use experiments to test the predictions of game-theoretic models. In a typical experiment, each subject makes choices that determine her own earnings and the earnings of other subjects, with payments corresponding to the utility payoffs of a theoretical game. But social preferences distort the correspondence between a subject’s cash earnings and her subjective utility, and since social preferences vary, anonymously matched subjects cannot know their opponents’ preferences between outcomes, turning many laboratory tasks into games of incomplete information. We reduce the distortion of social preferences by pitting subjects against algorithmic agents (“Nashbots”). Across 11 experimental tasks, subjects facing …

Procrastination In The Workplace: Evidence From The U.S. Patent Office, Michael D. Frakes, Melissa F. Wasserman

Faculty Scholarship

Despite much theoretical attention to the concept of procrastination and much exploration of this phenomenon in laboratory settings, there remain few empirical investigations into the practice of procrastination in real world contexts, especially in the workplace. In this paper, we attempt to fill these gaps by exploring procrastination among U.S. patent examiners. We find that nearly half of examiners’ first substantive reports are completed immediately prior to the operable deadlines. Moreover, we find a range of additional empirical markers to support that this “end-loading” of reviews results from a model of procrastination rather than various alternative time-consistent models of behavior. …

Innovation Heuristics: Experiments On Sequential Creativity In Intellectual Property, Stefan Bechtold, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Jon Sprigman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Macroprudential Regulation Of Mortgage Lending, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Much regulatory effort has been devoted to improving mortgage lending, the principal source of housing finance. To date, that effort has primarily been microprudential—intended to correct market failures in order to increase economic efficiency. In contrast, and while there is some overlap, this article focuses on a more “macroprudential” regulation of mortgage lending—intended to reduce systemic risk. Although largely underdeveloped in the literature, the macroprudential regulation of mortgage lending would have two goals: an ex ante goal of preventing systemic shocks in housing finance and the housing sector, and an ex post goal of ensuring that housing finance, the housing …

Talking One's Way Out Of A Debt Crisis, Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The policy of Euro-area officialdom in the period 2010-2011 was to avoid, at all costs, a default and restructuring of the sovereign debt of a member of the monetary union. This policy was motivated principally, but not exclusively, by a fear that the international capital markets, if forcibly reminded of the precarious position of overindebted, growth-challenged members of a monetary union, might recoil generally from lending to European sovereigns. In short, they feared contagion.

The only alternative to permitting a debt restructuring, of course, was an official sector bailout. The afflicted countries -- Greece (until 2012), Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus …

The Pricing Of Non-Price Terms In Sovereign Bonds: The Case Of The Greek Guarantees, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

In March 2012, Greece conducted one of the biggest and most brutal sovereign debt restructurings ever, asking holders of Greek government bonds to take net present value haircuts of near 80 percent. Greece forced acquiescence to its terms from a large number of its bonds by using a variety of legal strong-arm tactics. With the vast majority of Greek bonds, the tactics worked. There were, however, thirty-six bonds guaranteed by the Greek state, which, because of the weakness of the underlying companies, were effectively obligations of the Greek state. Yet, on these thirty six bonds, even though Greece desperately needed …

Silence Is Golden: Railroad Noise Pollution And Property Values, Jay K. Walker

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper uses a unique dataset containing property values and manually collected noise measurements in Memphis, Tennessee to estimate the impact of train noise pollution on commercial and residential property values. Results show that a residential property exposed to 65 decibels or greater of railroad noise results in a 14 to 18 percent decrease in property value. Once a 65 decibel measure is included, there is no additional impact on price of distance to the closest railroad crossing. For commercial property, neither crossing proximity nor noise level significantly affect property value. The results provide evidence of a negative externality that …

Trashé Designs: A Social Enterprise, Cara Walden

MA IDS Thesis Projects

During my years in graduate school, my understanding of economic inequality has further expanded. While my experience in the Peace Corps and Nepal allowed me to see it in real life, my time in school has allowed me to ground these experiences in academic literature. By means of an action research project, my goal is to create economic opportunity for the HIV/AIDS community in Chiang Mai, Thailand, through the creation of the social enterprise Trashé Designs. A social enterprise is a way to address a social challenge with a market-based solution. My social enterprise, Trashé Designs, uses recycled materials to …

Illiquid Capital: Are Conservation Easement Payments Reinvested In Farms?, Joshua M. Duke, Brian J. Schilling, Kevin P. Sullivan, J. Dixon Esseks, Paul D. Gottlieb, Lori Lynch

Center for Great Plains Studies: Staff and Fellows Publications

Agricultural conservation easements have positive externalities but few studies examine the supply-side. This paper explores whether easements may also overcome a credit-market failure, as banks may not be lending based on the full developed value of land. Original survey data test our research hypotheses and show profitable owners and nonoperators to be using easement payments to extract capital from their land by using the preservation programs as a bank. The results also show that the unprofitable owners and operators are reinvesting in their agricultural enterprises. Both results are consistent with an underlying credit-market failure, and the latter suggests that easements …

The Determinants And Trends In Public-Private Wage And Fringe Benefit Differential, Sun Ki Choi

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

The decline in private sector wages in the aftermath of the Great Recession reopened a longstanding debate about whether public sector employees make more than private sector employees. However, much of this debate has only focused on the difference in wages over the past few years. This paper uses the Current Population Survey from 1995-2013 to examine how the federal-private wage differential has evolved over time. Wage regressions are estimated by year for federal and private sector workers. I then use these estimates to calculate the federal-private wage differential. This is augmented with selectivity bias corrections for each year. Probit …

Three Rationalities: An Exploration Of Three Views On Rationality In Economics, Martin Smith Sanders Iv

Honors Program Theses

This paper conducts an exploration of three rationalities within economic thought: core, bounded, and ecological. Assumptions, policies and other key underpinnings of the rationalities are discussed and compared. Concluding remarks summarize the key points of each rationality and briefly discuss avenues for future research.

Cultivating The Liberally Education Mind Through A Signature Program, Emily Chamlee-Wright, Joshua C. Hall, Laura E. Grube

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

In this paper we describe the Miller Upton Programs, launched by the Department of Economics at Beloit College in 2008. The Miller Upton Programs aim to advance student understanding of the nature and causes of wealth and well-being. After describing core elements of the program, we discuss the ways in which they leverage economic discourse as a means to advance liberal learning. We argue that programs of this kind advance liberal learning by cultivating the skills required to engage the great questions of human flourishing, by fostering the development of a students’ economic imagination, and by enhancing students’ ability to …

Regionalization And Consolidation Of Municipal Taxes And Services, Joshua Hall, Joshua Matti, Yang Zhou

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

The United States has a rich history of local government taxation and good provision. The last fifty years, however, have seen increasing calls for the regionalization of municipal taxes and services from policymakers. Arguments for greater regionalization emphasize improved efficiency, enhanced equity, mitigation of spillovers, and improved economic development. A number of localist scholars have responded to regionalists’ concerns. This review articulates regionalists’ arguments, the localists’ response, and then summarizes the relevant empirical literature to see which side’s theories hold forth in the data.

The Renewable Fuel Standard’S Effect On Corn Belt Income And Unemployment, Ryan M. Yonk, Landon Stevens, Arthur R. Wardle, Joshua C. Hall

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

No abstract provided.

Kentucky's Educational Performance & Points Of Leverage, Michael T. Childress

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

This issue brief explores the links between obstacles students face and educational outcomes.

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2016, Christopher R. Bollinger, William H. Hoyt, David Blackwell, Michael T. Childress

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

No abstract provided.

Export Barriers And Competitiveness Of Small And Medium-Sized Enterprise In Developing Countries: Case Study In Ethiopian Leather Footwear Manufacturing Firms, Gebreyohannes Gebreslassie Gebrewahid

International Conference on African Development Archives

Export is one of the most important business activities that play a significant role for economic development of nations. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the export barriers and export competitiveness of the Ethiopian Leather Footwear manufacturing firms in particular and the industry in general. Purposively, 100 respondents were selected from 15 exporting firms in the leather industry. In addition, interview was held with some top managers and owners to collect more detail information. The survey data is analyzed using factor analysis and MDS techniques. Using factor analysis, 10 conceptually linked components were empirically identified. Both factor loadings and factor …

Comparing The Economic Developments Between South Korea And China, Hye Tae Kim

A with Honors Projects

South Korea and China both have reputations for the countries’ economic development however in slightly different ways. South Korea is known for its rapid development that took place decades ago where as China is known for its massive development over the last few decades. With this paper I tried to examine the economic development statuses of both countries by using certain criteria such as GDP growth rate and attempted to analyze their similarities and differences.

Temporal And Spatial Influences On South Dakota Farm Economies Of Size, Henry Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Census of Agriculture data are evaluated to test for economies of size of South Dakota farms. Economies of size occur when per-unit costs decrease as the size of a firm increases. This research measures technical economies of size, which assume that all firms pay identical input prices and receive identical output prices. The dependent variable of the model is expenses per dollar of sales. This is a typical measure of efficiency in agricultural statistics. The data come from the four prior Census of Agriculture years, 1997, 2002, 2007, and 2012. A state-wide model and a county-wide model were developed to …

The Effect Of Nba Free Agency On Player Utility, Austin Erikson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Observably, free agents in the National Basketball Association often make misguided decisions during the free agency period. These decisions may have a direct effect on a player’s performance and salary, affecting their overall utility. Research exists confirming that moving through free agency leads to an effect on player performance, but no study has explored the effect of changing teams through free agency on a player’s salary. As a significant number of players enter this market every year, research on this area is crucially important. The null hypothesis for performance is: H0: moving to a different team through free agency leads …