Economics Commons^™

Natural Disasters In Latin America: The Role Of Disaster Type And Productive Sector On The Urban-Rural Income Gap And Rural To Urban Migration, Madeline Alice Messick

Dissertations

This research provides insight into the impact of natural disasters as drivers of rural to urban migration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Disasters of varying types are predicted to have differing impacts on the productive sectors of agriculture, industry, and services; which due to the concentration of the various productive sectors in either urban or rural areas, subsequently changes the urban-rural wage differential. Changes to the wage differential (as measured by the urban-rural income gap) are predicted to lead to movement between urban and rural areas until a new equilibrium wage is reached.

This dissertation first identifies a …

So Many Hospitals, So Little Information: How Hospital Value Based Purchasing Is A Game Of Chance, Andrew I. Friedson, William C. Horrace, Allison F. Marier

Center for Policy Research

As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, participating Medicare hospitals have part of their Medicare reimbursements withheld and then redistributed based on quality performance. The Hospital Value Based Purchasing reimbursement plan relies partly on ordinal rankings of hospitals to determine how money is distributed. We analyze the quality metric distributions used for payment and show that there is not enough information to reliably differentiate hospitals from one another near the payment cutoffs; and conclude that a large part of the payment formula is driven by sampling variability rather than true quality information. Alternative reimbursement plans are developed.

Essays On Monetary Policy Rules And Inflation Dynamics, Saad Ahmad

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been a growing trend to utilize nonlinear models to analyze key issues in monetary policy and international macroeconomics. Using traditional linear models to understand nonlinear relationships can often lead to inaccurate inference and erroneous policy recommendations. The three essays in this dissertation explore nonlinearity in the Federal Reserve’s policy response as well as between a country’s inflation dynamics and integration in the global economy. My aim in accounting for potential nonlinearity is to get a better understanding of the policy makers’ opportunistic approach to monetary policy and evaluate the inflation globalization hypothesis, which basically predicts that global factors …

Modeling Economic Impacts Of The Inland Waterway Transportation System, Furkan Oztanriseven

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The inland waterway transportation system of the United States (U.S.) handles 11.7 billion tons of freight annually and connects the heartland of the U.S. with the rest of the world by providing a fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transportation. This dissertation aims to create decision support tools for maritime stakeholders to measure the economic impacts of the inland waterway transportation systems under real world scenarios including disruptions, demand changes, port expansion decisions, and channel deepening investments. Monte Carlo simulation, system dynamics, discrete-event simulation, agent-based modeling, and multiregional input-output modeling techniques are utilized to analyze the complex relationships between inland …

Indebtedness And Subjective Financial Wellbeing Of Households In Indonesia, Dwini Handayani

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

Indebtedness is an element to foresee household financial wellbeing. This vulnerability could be determined objectively and subjectively. Objective financial vulnerability is the objective ability to make ends meet that is analyzed using household income and characteristics. Measurement in subjective welbeing is determined by household perceptions in their ability to make ends meet. Household behavior with different perceptions will behave differently. Indebtedness is analyzed using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) 5 with the Ordinary Least Square method. The inferential shows that both objective and subjective financial wellbeing influence household indebtedness. Kedalaman hutang merupakan elemen untuk mengetahui kesejahteraan finansial rumah tangga. …

The Influence Of Projection Bias On Outcomes Of Healthcare Financial Incentive Programs, Jordyn M. Bader

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis contributes to the behavioral health literature and literature regarding healthcare financial incentive programs by discussing the influences of the behavioral economic concept of projection bias on programs designed to recruit healthcare providers to rural or under served areas. First, I propose an adaptation to the model of projection bias by introducing a term that captures variability in individuals’ propensity to exhibit projection bias based on the amount of effort expended in predicting future preferences. Next, I conduct a probit model regression to observe what incentive program design features and participant characteristics are likely to influence the probability of …

Anchoring In Financial Decision-Making: Evidence From The Field, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes 12,596 wagering decisions of 6,064 contestants in the US game show Jeopardy!, focusing on the anchoring phenomenon in financial decision-making. We find that contestants anchor heavily on the initial dollar value of a clue in their wagering decision, even though there exists no rational reason to do so. More than half of all wagers occur within $500 of the initial dollar value, although the maximum possible wagering value averages $5,914. This anchoring phenomenon remains statistically significant on the one percent level, even after controlling for scores, clue category, time trends, and player-fixed effects.When exploiting within-player variation …

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee

Dissertations

This study measures the impact that electrical outages have on manufacturing production in 135 less developed countries using stochastic frontier analysis and data from World Bank’s Investment Climate surveys. Outages of electricity, for firms with and without backup power sources, are the most frequently cited constraint on manufacturing growth in these surveys.

Outages are shown to reduce output below the production frontier by almost five percent in Africa and by a lower percentage in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Production response to outages is quadratic in form. Outages also increase labor cost, reduce exports …

(Wp 2016-06) The Effectiveness Of Central Bank Forward Guidance Under Inflation And Price-Level Targeting, Stephen J. Cole

Economics Working Papers

This paper examines the effectiveness of central bank forward guidance under inflation and price-level targeting monetary policies. The results show that the attenuation of the effects of forward guidance can be solved if a central bank switches from inflation targeting to price-level targeting. Output and inflation respond more favorably to forward guidance with price-level targeting than inflation targeting. A monetary policy rule that aggressively reacts to inflation and includes interest rate inertia narrows the performance gap between the two policy regimes. However, forward guidance with price-level targeting is still preferred to forward guidance with inflation targeting after performing multiple robustness …

Local Investment And The Relationship Between Prices And Earnings, Michael Hyman

Dissertations - ALL

This paper examines how local stock ownership influences the relationship between stock prices and future earnings. Prior finance literature has found that local investment leads to superior returns and has suggested that these returns are a result of an informational edge for those who invest locally. However, the literature has yet to examine which types of information local investors have access to and how that impacts the informativeness of stock prices. This paper shows that local investors have access to earnings-relevant information which results in stock prices which better lead future earnings for companies with larger local ownership bases. This …

Friedrich List And The Imperial Origins Of The National Economy, Onur Ulas Ince

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay offers a critical reexamination of the works of Friedrich List by placing them in the context of nineteenth-century imperial economies. I argue that List's theory of the national economy is characterised by a major ambivalence, as it incorporates both imperial and anti-imperial elements. On the one hand, List pitted his national principle against the British imperialism of free trade and the relations of dependency it heralded for late developers like Germany. On the other hand, his economic nationalism aimed less at dismantling imperial core-periphery relations as a whole than at reproducing these relations domestically and expanding them globally. …

Is Unemployment Good For The Environment?, Andrew G. Meyer

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Environmental quality is a public good, potentially impacted by everybody. Individual level pro-environmental behavior affects environmental quality in the aggregate. Therefore, it is important to understand what causes individual’s pro-environmental behaviors to change. We quantify the causal effect of one determinant, unemployment, using an EU-27 population representative Eurobarometer survey. Drawing on results from the theory of the private provision of public goods, and recognizing that unemployment decreases income and the opportunity cost of time, we formulate testable predictions that unemployment will decrease the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that require monetary contributions and increase the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that mainly …

Moving From Tension To Symbiosis In A Distinctive City, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan noted that meticulous urban planning has enabled Singapore to attain a high quality of living, delicately balancing the inherent tension between the economy and the environment. He shared his views on relevant issues such as the conflicting interests between Singapore’s immigration policy and its national identity, as well as the inherent tension between the economy and the environment. Associate Prof Tan pointed out that the quest to balance economic growth with environment concerns and social character is not a mere luxury but a growing imperative. He added that as Singapore …

Free Entry And Social Inefficiency In Vertical Relationships: The Case Of The Japanese Mri Industry, Ken Onishi, Naoki Wakamori, Chiyo Hashimoto, Shun-Ichiro Bessho

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper quantifies the welfare consequences of the medical arms race in the context of MRI adoption. We build and estimate a model of the vertical structure of the industry where MRI manufacturers sell high- and low-quality MRIs in the upstream market, whereas medical institutions provide medical services to patients in the downstream market. Simulation results suggest that the current free-entry policy in Japan leads to excess MRI adoption. Furthermore, regulating medical institutions’ MRI adoption, taxing MRI purchases, or softening competition among MRI manufacturers would increase social welfare substantially by mitigating the business-stealing effect in the downstream market.

Lumpy Investment, Lumpy Inventories, Ruediger Bachmann, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

The link between the microenvironment (frictions and heterogeneity) and the macroeconomic dynamics of general equilibrium macromodels is influenced by exactly how general equilibrium closes the model. We make this observation concrete using the recent literature on how nonconvex capital adjustment costs influence aggregate investment dynamics. We introduce inventories into a two-sector lumpy investment model and find that nonconvex capital adjustment costs dampen and propagate investment impulse responses, more so than without inventories. With two means of transferring consumption into the future, fixed capital and inventories, the tight link between aggregate saving and fixed capital investment is broken.

Sequential Auctions With Descending Reserve Prices, Massimiliano Landi

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

Communication Network Among Campus Sustainability Influencers, Alexandra C. Freling

Honors Thesis

Systems of all types require efficient communication between its parts and units in order to be successful and e ective. It is thus important to understand a systems units in order to better advance its operations. In this study, we look at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) as a systematic organization in regards to the universitys execution of its environmental sustainability endeavors. This approach allows for the identification of the path by which important environmental sustainability information is communicated, is learned, and is acted upon at LMU. Through various network centrality measurements, I will develop a visual representation of the communication …

A Macro Economic Approach To Gender Disparities In Hiring At The Ceo Level, Abigail R. Wood

Business and Economics Summer Fellows

More men named John run S&P 1500 companies than all women combined, causing many to wonder what factors are limiting women’s career advancement. While many studies have been written about the topic of women’s success in the business world, most focus on individual firms or positions and therefore miss macroeconomic factors such as women’s completion of master’s degree programs and labor force participation rates. This research examines the disparity of gender in CEO positions through the examination of macroeconomic data which captures women’s career trajectory and qualifications. This research specifically examines trends in women’s obtainment of master’s degrees in business …

Patrick Keiller, Robinson In Ruins (2010), Aras Özgün

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Nassimbeni And Sartor, Sourcing In India (2008), Mehmet G. Yalcin

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Virtual Goods Markets And Economy In China: A Historic Account, Mann (Michael) Zhang

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Rapidly expanding virtual goods markets and virtual economy are thriving worldwide in general, and in China in particular. This paper reviews the growth of virtual goods markets in China and builds a historical narrative of the rapidly changing (or dynamic) and persistently unchanged (or relatively static) aspects of reality in China that condition virtuality and virtual goods markets. The review and historical analysis provide a perspective of a larger place – a total reality – where the virtuality and virtual goods markets exist, along with the physical aspects, and suggest that virtual goods marketers need to pay more attention to …

Conflicting Perspectives On Speed: Dynamics And Consequences Of The Fast Fashion System, Zeynep Ozdamar-Ertekin

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The fashion industry today is trapped in a competitive cycle of shorter and faster sales and production periods, requiring continual changing of styles, frequent renewal of products, and speed of availability. This high speed of the current fashion system has both positive and negative outcomes on the environment, the workers and the society. The purpose of this study is to provide a more comprehensive and macro perspective on speed, by acknowledging the conflicting perspectives of different stakeholders, focusing mainly on institutional actors. Ethnography, with emphasis on participant observation and interviews, was used as a research method, supported by secondary data …

Electronic Waste And Sustainability: Reflections On A Rising Global Challenge, Bipul Kumar, Kalyan Bhaskar

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Globalization, technological advancements, advent of the internet, near-universal availability of mobile phones and changing consumer preferences have led to a boom in the electrical and electronics industry. Such products are now available in almost all countries of the world. The increased availability and consumption of electronic products have also led to rapid rise in the volumes of electronic waste (e-waste) globally. Markets have traditionally not paid sufficient attention to post-consumption behavior for electronic products and hence safe disposal and management of e-waste has always remained a critical issue. There are significant sustainability issues related with e-waste at local as well …

The Dynamics Of The Local And The Global: Implications For Marketing And Development, A. Fuat Fırat

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Globalization’s contemporary omnipresence has resulted in an emphasis on the conflicts between the local and the global. This emphasis has blurred our ability to have insights that may be gained by recognizing that the local and the global are interdependent and cannot exist without each other. This paper explores the initial insights from such recognition regarding local identities, cultural development, and modern marketing’s shortcomings in aiding development. Preliminary conclusions as to how a new conceptualization of marketing can be instrumental in enrichment of meaningful and substantive human lives through constructing redefinitions of development and marketing based on these insights are …

Marketing’S Lost Frontier: The Poor, Ravi Achrol, Philip Kotler

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The problems of persistent poverty have occupied the minds, money and agencies of the world for a very long time. It is the subject of a large literature in economics and sociology, and the literature has evolved through a variety of theoretical paradigms. Despite numerous initiatives the impact on alleviating poverty is marginal. Recently the poverty conundrum has attracted the attention of schools of business and global corporations. In this paper we critically review the major changes in the conventional approaches to development. Then we review three models based on the thought traditions of business schools that offer a new …

Ismd: Glimpses In The Rearview Mirror, Ruby Roy Dholakia

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This retrospective commentary looks back to the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and later decades to trace the originating ideas, intellectual influences, personalities, academic ventures and other events that spawned and shaped the International Society of Markets and Development (ISMD), the parent sponsoring organization of Markets, Globalization & Development Review (MGDR). From this rich history, this commentary hopes to inspire existing and emerging generations of authors to explore the areas of interest to ISMD and MGDR, and to contribute to this journal.

Markets, Globalization, Development: Charting The Intersections Of Three Multipolar Concepts, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Via this introductory article, the founding editors of MGDR welcome the global readership and potential base of contributors to this journal. This essay lays out the editors views of the three momentous concepts that form the title of this journal -- markets, globalization and development -- and the intersections of these. Of course, as a journal MGDR remains open to all views of these concepts, so long they are thoroughly researched and presented in a spirit of open dialogue and discussion.

Architecture As Artefact, Socialfact, And Mentalfact : On The Hypothetical Works Of Office Of Strategic Architecture (Osa) : Part 2 = 建築作為藝術、社會、精神之平台 : 策略建築局前設工作 : 第二部分, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 28th July 2016, Eka Swadiansa gave us a lecture at the Third South South Forum on Sustainability. The lecture was titled Architecture as Artifact, Socialfact and Mentalfact: on the Hypothetical Works of OSA .He divided the lecture into six parts:

1. Architecture as Artefact
2. Architecture as Socialfact
3. Architecture as Artefact VS Socialfact
4. Architecture as Mentalfact
5. Office of Strategic Architecture (OSA)
6. Tadao Ando Works: Architecture as Faith Mentalfact (Extended Discussion)

This was the afternoon session of the lecture.

Architecture As Artefact, Socialfact, And Mentalfact : On The Hypothetical Works Of Office Of Strategic Architecture (Osa) : Part 1 = 建築作為藝術、社會、精神之平台 : 策略建築局前設工作 : 第一部分, Eka Swadiansa

South South Forum 南南論壇

On 28th July 2016, Eka Swadiansa gave us a lecture at the Third South South Forum on Sustainability. The lecture was titled Architecture as Artifact, Socialfact and Mentalfact: on the Hypothetical Works of OSA .He divided the lecture into six parts:

1. Architecture as Artefact
2. Architecture as Socialfact
3. Architecture as Artefact VS Socialfact
4. Architecture as Mentalfact
5. Office of Strategic Architecture (OSA)
6. Tadao Ando Works: Architecture as Faith Mentalfact (Extended Discussion)

This was the morning session of the lecture.

Associations Between Male Testosterone And Immune Function In A Pathogenically Stressed Forager-Horticultural Population, Benjamin C. Trumble, Aaron D. Blackwell, Jonathan Stieglitz, Melissa Emery Thompson, Ivan Maldonado Suarez, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Objectives—Despite well-known fitness advantages to males who produce and maintain high endogenous testosterone levels, such phenotypes may be costly if testosterone-mediated investment in reproductive effort trade-off against investment in somatic maintenance. Previous studies of androgen-mediated trade-offs in human immune function find mixed results, in part because most studies either focus on a few indicators of immunity, are confounded by phenotypic correlation, or are observational. Here the association between male endogenous testosterone and 13 circulating cytokines are examined before and after ex vivo antigen stimulation with phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in a high pathogen population of Bolivian forager-horticulturalists.

Materials …