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2016

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Full-Text Articles in Economics

Let’S Put Demography Back Into Economics: Population Pyramids In Excel, Humberto Barreto May 2016

Let’S Put Demography Back Into Economics: Population Pyramids In Excel, Humberto Barreto

School of Business and Leadership Working Papers

In 1960, George Stigler wrote that, “In 1830, no general work in economics would omit a discussion of population, and in 1930, hardly any general work said anything about population.” Today, the economics curriculum remains largely devoid of demography and this needs to change immediately. After witnessing a population explosion in the last half of the 20th century, fertility rates are crashing throughout the world. We are in the midst of another demographic sea change, slamming on the brakes right after accelerating faster than ever before. This has important consequences for economies everywhere. Instead of glibly tossing a dependency ratio …

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Are State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Sufficient For The Next Recession?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline May 2016

Are State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Sufficient For The Next Recession?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Regular state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are paid from state reserves held in unemployment trust fund accounts at the U.S. Treasury. Employers covered by the federal-state UI system make contributions to reserve accounts based on taxable wages. The federal government provides incentives for forward funding of benefits to support UI as an automatic macroeconomic stabilizer in the economy. However, the Great Recession exhausted UI reserves for the majority of states, and not all of them have yet replenished those reserves. Based on patterns observed over the past 40 years, in this paper we simulate the effects on state and systemwide …

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Are There Returns To Experience At Low-Skill Jobs? Evidence From Single Mothers In The United States Over The 1990s, Adam Looney, Dayanand S. Manoli May 2016

Are There Returns To Experience At Low-Skill Jobs? Evidence From Single Mothers In The United States Over The 1990s, Adam Looney, Dayanand S. Manoli

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Policy changes in the United States in the 1990s resulted in sizable increases in employment rates of single mothers. We show that this increase led to a large and abrupt increase in work experience for single mothers with young children. We then examine the economic return to this increase in experience for affected single mothers. Despite the increases in experience, single mothers’ real wages and employment have remained relatively unchanged. The empirical analysis suggests that an additional year of experience increases single mothers’ wage rates by less than 2 percent, a percentage lower than previous estimates in the literature.

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Economic Impact Of North Central Michigan College, George Erickcek, Brian Pittelko May 2016

Economic Impact Of North Central Michigan College, George Erickcek, Brian Pittelko

Reports

No abstract provided.

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How Microfinance Can Close Asymmetrical Information On Peer-To-Peer Platforms, Justin Jones May 2016

How Microfinance Can Close Asymmetrical Information On Peer-To-Peer Platforms, Justin Jones

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Peer-to-peer lending has sprung up in recent years, defined by its flexibility to meet the needs of loan applicants from a range of financial backgrounds. Institutional investors’ reluctance to fund small business owners has facilitated the widespread acceptance of peer-to-peer lending, which represents a convenient investment medium for prospective borrowers, individual investors, and P2P companies. Though, the inclusive model inherent in P2P lending breeds practical concerns for investors who expect to maximize returns while minimizing default risks. This paper proceeds to explore the value of information, the importance of information in principle-agent relationships, and how information must be leveraged further …

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Mean-Dispersion Preferences With A Specific Dispersion Function, Mark Schneider, Manuel Nunez May 2016

Mean-Dispersion Preferences With A Specific Dispersion Function, Mark Schneider, Manuel Nunez

ESI Working Papers

A popular approach to modeling ambiguity aversion is to decompose preferences into the subjective expected utility of an act and an ambiguity index, or an adjustment factor, or a dispersion function. However, in these approaches the dispersion function (or ambiguity index, or adjustment factor) has very little structure imposed on it, leaving the selection of a specific dispersion function in applications to be rather arbitrary. In this note, working in the Anscombe- Aumann (1963) framework, we provide a simpler axiomatic characterization of mean-dispersion preferences which uniquely identifies the dispersion function from the infinite class of possible alternatives. Given the representation, …

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Growth And Variability Of School District Income Tax Revenues: Is Tax Base Diversification A Good Idea For School Financing?, Joshua C. Hall, Antonis M. Koumpias May 2016

Growth And Variability Of School District Income Tax Revenues: Is Tax Base Diversification A Good Idea For School Financing?, Joshua C. Hall, Antonis M. Koumpias

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

School districts in Ohio have the option of diversifying their revenue base by adopting income taxes. Using a panel of Ohio school districts that adopted a local income tax from 1990 to 2008, we find that revenues are pro-cyclical and fluctuate only mildly. For every dollar increase in average school district income, tax revenues increased by 21 and 3 cents in the long- and short-run. We also find that the school district tax base fully adjusts to its long-run equilibrium within three years. Our results highlight a revenue-stabilizing role of income tax bases on total school district tax revenues.

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Designing Contests Between Heterogeneous Contestants: An Experimental Study Of Tie-Breaks And Bid-Caps In All-Pay Auctions, Aniol Llorente-Saguer, Roman M. Sheremeta, Nora Szech May 2016

Designing Contests Between Heterogeneous Contestants: An Experimental Study Of Tie-Breaks And Bid-Caps In All-Pay Auctions, Aniol Llorente-Saguer, Roman M. Sheremeta, Nora Szech

ESI Working Papers

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases performance of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Leveling the playing field by favoring weaker contestants through bid-caps and favorable tie-breaking rules can reduce the discouragement effect and increase the designer’s revenue. We test these predictions in an experiment. Our data show that indeed, strengthening weaker contestants through tie-breaks and bid-caps significantly diminishes the discouragement effect. Bid-caps can also improve revenue. Most deviations from Nash equilibrium can be explained by the level-k model of reasoning.

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The Impact Of Market Perception On Sovereign Default Risk In The European Union, Keith Pendergrast May 2016

The Impact Of Market Perception On Sovereign Default Risk In The European Union, Keith Pendergrast

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The recent debt crisis in the European Union has resulted in the differential treatment of Greece’s debt due in large part to market perception. This is evident in the large differences in credit default swap spreads between Greece and other periphery countries in Europe. The goal of this thesis is to explore the differential treatment, and determine the magnitude of this difference. In order to do this, a fixed effect regression is implemented to first determine that a difference exists. Then, a perception index is created in order to determine the magnitude of the market perception. Using these methods we …

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The Shochu Conundrum: Economics And Gatt Article Iii, Alex Davis May 2016

The Shochu Conundrum: Economics And Gatt Article Iii, Alex Davis

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper will discuss the National Treatment (NT) obligation contained in Article III of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 as applied in precedential tax discrimination cases. Case law has not taken a firm stance on the economic versus legal interpretation of the likeness/directly competitive or substitutable (DCS) criterion or the principle of “so as to afford protection” (SATAP) captured in Article III.2. After examining the case law on discriminatory taxation, I conclude that the NT obligation in trade agreements is imperfect. Nonetheless, NT is a critical component of these agreements, and the international trade order would …

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Lep Language Disability, Immigration Reform, And English-Language Acquisition, Alberto Dávila, Marie T. Mora May 2016

Lep Language Disability, Immigration Reform, And English-Language Acquisition, Alberto Dávila, Marie T. Mora

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Policy might partly shape the English-language acquisition of Hispanics migrating to the U.S. mainland, particularly policies related to limited-English-language disability benefits and immigration reform. Using data from the American Community Survey, we find that island-born Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland, as U.S. citizens, may have lower incentives to learn English than Hispanic immigrants because of their higher participation in LEP disability programs. However, among Mexican immigrants, recent immigration reform aimed at interior enforcement might have increased incentives for Mexican immigrants to learn English to reduce their probability of detection, if speaking English proxies for undocumented status.

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Labor Market Returns To The Ged Using Regression Discontinuity Analysis, Christopher Jepsen, Peter Mueser, Kenneth R. Troske May 2016

Labor Market Returns To The Ged Using Regression Discontinuity Analysis, Christopher Jepsen, Peter Mueser, Kenneth R. Troske

Economics Faculty Publications

We evaluate returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification for high school dropouts using state administrative data. We apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity method to account for test takers retaking the test. For women we find that GED certification has no statistically significant effect on either employment or earnings. For men we find a significant increase in earnings in the second year after taking the test but no impact in subsequent years. GED certification increases postsecondary school enrollment by 4–8 percentage points. Our results differ from regression discontinuity approaches that fail to account for test retaking.

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Plastic Pollution And The Global Throwaway Culture: Environmental Injustices Of Single-Use Plastic, Kristin L. Mcdermott May 2016

Plastic Pollution And The Global Throwaway Culture: Environmental Injustices Of Single-Use Plastic, Kristin L. Mcdermott

ENV 434 Environmental Justice

The global throwaway culture has created a cross-ecosystem plastic pollution injustice. The first to suffer this injustice will be the most vulnerable. Our oceans have become our dumpsters. The throwaway culture has created a disrespect of material goods that has turned the earth’s resources into rubbish after a single use. Eighty percent of the yearly 8 million tons of plastic that enter the ocean is single use plastic, such as plastic bottles, plastic shopping bags, or cigarette lighters.[1] Plastic has destroyed ecosystems, robbing impoverished communities of natural resources and of a healthy and safe living environment. First to suffer …

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Information Effects In Uniform Price Multi-Unit Dutch Auctions, Joy A. Buchanan, Steven Gjerstad, David Porter May 2016

Information Effects In Uniform Price Multi-Unit Dutch Auctions, Joy A. Buchanan, Steven Gjerstad, David Porter

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We design a multi-unit descending-price (Dutch) auction mechanism that has applications for resource allocation and pricing problems. We address specific auction design choices by theoretically and experimentally determining optimal information disclosure along two dimensions. Bidders are either informed of the number of bidders in the auction, or know that it is one of two possible sizes; they also either know the number of units remaining for sale or are unaware of how many units have been taken by other bidders. We find that revealing group size decreases bids, and therefore revenue, if units remaining are not shown. When group size …

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Hospital-Skilled Nursing Facility Referral Linkage Reduces Readmission Rates Among Medicare Patients Receiving Major Surgery, Andrew J. Schoenfeld, Xuan Zhang, David C. Grabowski, Vincent Mor, Joel S. Weissman, Momotazur Rahman May 2016

Hospital-Skilled Nursing Facility Referral Linkage Reduces Readmission Rates Among Medicare Patients Receiving Major Surgery, Andrew J. Schoenfeld, Xuan Zhang, David C. Grabowski, Vincent Mor, Joel S. Weissman, Momotazur Rahman

Research Collection School Of Economics

BACKGROUND:In the health reform era, rehospitalization after discharge may result in financial penalties to hospitals. The effect of increased hospital-skilled nursing facility (SNF) linkage on readmission reduction after surgery has not been explored.METHODS:To determine whether enhanced hospital-SNF linkage, as measured by the proportion of surgical patients referred from a hospital to a particular SNF, would result in reduced 30-day readmission rates for surgical patients, we used national Medicare data (2011-2012) and evaluated patients who underwent 1 of 5 operative procedures (coronary artery bypass grafting [CABG], hip fracture repair, total hip arthroplasty, colectomy, or lumbar spine surgery). Initial evaluation was performed …

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China: Growth Slowing But In Good Shape, Singapore Management University May 2016

China: Growth Slowing But In Good Shape, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

It is still a developing economy with room to grow out of trouble

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The Fair And Impartial Spectator, Vernon L. Smith May 2016

The Fair And Impartial Spectator, Vernon L. Smith

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Adam Smith’s metaphor of the impartial spectator is an essential element in understanding his model of the maturation process whereby people learn to follow general rules that honor the human sentiments of gratitude and resentment in others. Through the impartial spectator human action, subject to error, is governed by self-command. Smith’s model is presented in the form of a series of propositions.

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Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- May 2016, Leonard Lardaro May 2016

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- May 2016, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

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Estimating Potential Visitorship And Expenditures From The Proposed Whitewater Park Near Siloam Springs, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj May 2016

Estimating Potential Visitorship And Expenditures From The Proposed Whitewater Park Near Siloam Springs, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

The proposed whitewater and mountain biking park at the old Lake Frances dam site will prove to be an important recreational amenity for the City of Siloam Springs and the Northwest Arkansas region. While it is not possible to effectively calculate the true value of the park as a regional amenity, this study provides estimates of the potential numbers of visitors to the park and their associated spending in Siloam Springs. These numbers will allow leaders at the City of Siloam Springs and the Walton Family Foundation to make informed decisions about the operations of such a park.

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Economic Consequences Of Conflict, Displacement And Humanitarian Aid: Implications For Syria, Molly S. Burns May 2016

Economic Consequences Of Conflict, Displacement And Humanitarian Aid: Implications For Syria, Molly S. Burns

Sustainability and Social Justice

This report analyzes the complex relationships between conflict, displacement, aid, and economics. Providing a brief overview of the context of civil war in Syria and an analysis of development literature on micro- and macroeconomic consequences of conflict and displacement, it critically analyzes the role of emergency humanitarian aid in contribution to the persisting conflict in Syria. It then discusses relationships of humanitarian aid and conflict through past cases of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Rwanda. These two case studies have been chosen in order to demonstrate how aid can inadvertently become contributive to funding war economies, and also how the …

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Inequality And Financialization, Oscar C. Soons May 2016

Inequality And Financialization, Oscar C. Soons

Senior Honors Projects

This paper analyzes economic inequality in the United States and makes a connection between rising inequality and “Financialization” since the 1970’s. I provide an overview of how and why income and wealth inequality have changed over time. The increase in inequality since the 1970’s is correlated with an increase in Financialization, measured by a Financialization index that I created. Financialization, defined as the increasing size, power and influence of the financial sector in the economy and politics, has changed the economic and political landscape in the United States in a way that increases economic inequality.

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A Complement, Not A Competitor: How Public Markets Can Support Business Districts In Worcester, Ron M. Barron May 2016

A Complement, Not A Competitor: How Public Markets Can Support Business Districts In Worcester, Ron M. Barron

Sustainability and Social Justice

The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible economic and community development impacts of entry-level public markets (e.g. fixed location markets, farmers markets, etc.) on the communities in which they operate. While there is extensive literature around their benefits to vendors, community health and public space, there is comparative little on the interplay between these markets and more traditional brick and mortar businesses. The background and definition of these markets, the basic common characteristics that define them, and some of the benefits they can offer for economic and community development are each explored. It then examines two different …

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Corporate Responsibility In Peace Building, Conflict Prevention And Development: The Role Of The Mining Sector In Ghana, Abdul Karim Issifu May 2016

Corporate Responsibility In Peace Building, Conflict Prevention And Development: The Role Of The Mining Sector In Ghana, Abdul Karim Issifu

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

This article seeks to explore the role of the mining sector in peace building, conflict prevention and community development in Ghana. After thoroughly reviewing secondary data, including articles, books, journals, newspapers, etc., via critical document review and qualitative research approaches the research found that, there is no legal document on CSR in Ghana, yet mining companies in a free will, have executed CSR programs laying down for peace, security and development in the country. More so, this article provides a theoretical support for the Integrative theory of CSR on the basis that, the socio-economic, political, cultural and environmental needs of …

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Student-Crafted Experiments “From The Ground Up”, Stacie A. Bosley May 2016

Student-Crafted Experiments “From The Ground Up”, Stacie A. Bosley

School of Business All Faculty Scholarship

If experiential learning activities support engagement and deeper student learning, student-owned experiments constructed “from the ground up” might have benefits that exceed pre-designed classroom experiences. This paper provides a framework for embedding a custom experiment project within an existing course. Students manage every aspect of the process, from experimental design to analysis. Two example implementations are described. Undergraduate behavioral economics students created original experiments, exploring anchoring and adjustment in the context of pyramid scheme pitches (in spring 2013) and reciprocity in attraction (in fall 2014). Perceived benefits and potential pitfalls are explored. While this paper does not represent a controlled …

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Preferential Trade Agreements And Quality Of Government In Sub-Saharan Africa, Sharon Camara May 2016

Preferential Trade Agreements And Quality Of Government In Sub-Saharan Africa, Sharon Camara

Dissertations

Objectives. Sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations have made concerted attempts at economic integration and openness with use of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) beginning in the latter half of the 1990s. These changes could result in increases in trade and growth. The World Bank’s Good Governance indicators are designed to assess the quality of institutions in a given country. The objective is to assess the impact of PTAs and Good Governance indicators on trade in SSA nations. Methods. Data on trade y was generated based on exports defined by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Direction of Trade statistics, and both OLS and …

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The Impact Of Governance On Economic Growth: The Case Of Middle Eastern And North African Countries, Noha Emara, I-Ming Chiu May 2016

The Impact Of Governance On Economic Growth: The Case Of Middle Eastern And North African Countries, Noha Emara, I-Ming Chiu

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

The main goal of this paper is to evaluate the impact of governance on economic growth using a group of 188 countries. Although our main focus is on the 21 Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, our findings can be applied to the other countries as well. We create a “composite governance index” (CGI) that summarizes the existing six governance measurements in the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), using the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) method. The first principal component derived from the WGIs explains as much as 81% of the variations in the original six WGI measurements. We then use …

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Housing Costs And Divorce Rate In The Mena Countries, Hassan Gholipour Fereidouni May 2016

Housing Costs And Divorce Rate In The Mena Countries, Hassan Gholipour Fereidouni

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between housing costs and divorce rate using data from a set of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries over the period of 1990-2014. Applying panel fixed-effects and the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) estimation methods, our results suggest that a 10% increase in the housing costs increases divorce rate about 1.5% in the sample countries. The findings also indicate that social globalization has a positive and significant relationship with divorce rate in the MENA countries.

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Determinants Of Household Education Expenditures: Do Poor Spend Less On Education?, Ayse Aylin Bayar, Bengi Yanik İlhan May 2016

Determinants Of Household Education Expenditures: Do Poor Spend Less On Education?, Ayse Aylin Bayar, Bengi Yanik İlhan

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Accumulation of human capital is proved to be crucial for economic growth and poverty alleviation. Education is counted as one of the basic services that allows individuals to gain better skills and knowledge which enhances economic growth and is also essential to combat poverty. Although investment in education is mostly financed by the government, most of the families privately contribute to their children’s education. Some of the researches argued that education expenditures depend on the income level of the households. From this point of view, private education can only be afforded by households who are at the higher income groups. …

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Productivity Change Of The Egyptian Banking Sector: A Two Stage Non-Parametric Approach, Ammar Jreisat, Hassan Hassan May 2016

Productivity Change Of The Egyptian Banking Sector: A Two Stage Non-Parametric Approach, Ammar Jreisat, Hassan Hassan

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

This study aims to evaluate of the productivity change of the Egyptian Banking sector by using a data set which cover 14 banks operating in the Egyptian market from 1997 to 2013. We use a non-parametric approach Data Envelopment Analysis based analysis to investigate the productivity change in the Egyptian banking sector. Inputoriented Malmquist indices of productivity change are estimated to measure total factor productivity (TFP) change. The TFP changes are decomposed into the product of technological change and technical efficiency change (catch-up). In the second stage, potential determinants of productivity change are studied using a regression model. We find …

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On The Behavior Of Entrepreneurial Factor Supply To The Firm, Nicos Zafiris May 2016

On The Behavior Of Entrepreneurial Factor Supply To The Firm, Nicos Zafiris

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

This paper draws on an existing, but little used, approach to the choices governing the supply of ‘entrepreneurial’, in the sense of ‘residually remunerated’, resources to an enterprise, especially post start up. It focuses in particular on the hybrid ‘own factor demand/supply curve’ to the firm of Bronfenbrenner (1960), but attempts to treat such supply in conjunction with ‘contractual’ employment of resources, thus making use of gearing and portfolio concepts. To achieve this, it is found necessary for the hybrid schedule to be reinterpreted and recast as the locus of the relevant utility maximising choices. A model is presented which …

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