Economics Commons^™

What Citizens Want To Know About Their Government’S Finances: Closing The Information Gap, Meagan Jordan, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Martin Mayer, Kaitrin Mahar

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

There is an information gap between citizens and their governments when it comes to government finances. The inherent complexity of fiscal policy makes it exceedingly difficult for effective public participation. Effective public participation in fiscal decision making must address informing or educating the citizenry with accurate and meaningful government financial data. Better understanding citizen wants and perceptions is critical to closing the information gap between users and providers of financial information. This study uses information gathered from focus groups with residents of Norfolk, Virginia that asks what government financial information they want and how to make that information useful. Results …

The Effect Of Medicaid Expansion On Emergency Department Utilization In Kentucky., Anmol Kanotra

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This paper analyzes the impact of a major healthcare reform in Kentucky on outpatient emergency department (ED) visits. I exploit the variation in treatment intensity across counties to determine the effect of expanded Medicaid coverage on Medicaid ED usage rate. I find that there was an insignificant 1 percent increase in ED usage following expansion when utilizing fixed effects. Counties with a high percentage of females experience significantly higher ED rates. Additionally, counties with a lower percentage of children under 21 have higher ED rates.

High School Music Program Participation And Subsequent Strength Of The Local Music Economy., Andrew Segal

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

The Microfinance Industry In Bolivia, Jorge J. Eguino

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the international context, and particularly in Bolivia, microfinance and microcredit have been the subject of innumerable analyses. The arguments rely on the attributions of these two ways of intervention in financial services, as well as their impact with respect to poverty, their input, and their incidence on economic growth. Bolivia has contributed to the debate in these fields due to its experience with the microfinance system and its relevance to the country’s economy.

The purpose of this project is to describe the process of development and consolidation of the microfinance system in Bolivia. From a description to an analysis …

Effectiveness Of Beer Keg Registration Law On Decreasing Underage Binge Drinking, Zana Beck

Economics

Since the prohibition act of 1919, alcohol has always had high economic costs and benefits. While it increases revenues for the Federal Government through taxation and company profits, there are, unfortunately, several costs that impact society. These costs, also known as negative externalities, include a variety of actions like alcohol related traffic accidents, increased crime, and excessive binge drinking. A negative externality is described as “a cost that is suffered by a third party as a result of an economic transaction,” in which the third party is indirectly affected (MaClean, 2013). In the case of alcohol, society is the third …

Tax Increment Financing: A Tool For Growth In Grapevine, Texas, Nathaniel C. Chadwick

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) has become an increasingly popular tool for economic development used by state and local governments. The legislation enabling TIF and its consequences vary greatly between states, causing some controversy. Through a case study based in the City of Grapevine, Texas, this research analyzes factors influencing TIF districts and their effectiveness in achieving their respective goals.

Education And Leadership: Indispensable For Nigeria's Economic Development, Olusegun Obasanjo, Philip Charles Zerrillo

Asian Management Insights

The former President of Nigeria (1999 to 2007), Olusegun Obasanjo, talks about the nation’s evolving transformation in this interview with Philip Zerrillo.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership And Vietnam, Duong Nhu Hung, Tran Quang Dang

Asian Management Insights

Opening up a bold new world for Vietnam’s trade and industry may not be so easy.

The Economic Impact Of The 2015 Conference Usa Baseball Tournament In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Kyle A. Stoner

Honors Theses

This study aims to measure the economic impact of the 2015 Conference USA Baseball Tournament hosted by The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Attendees of the event were selected at random to participate in an intercept survey to gauge financial data spent within the Forrest and Lamar County, Mississippi area. An Economic Modeling Systems International Input-Output analysis was used to process the data. This processed data was analyzed and results were determined based on the estimated multiplier and tax effect at the local and state level. These multiplier figures yielded a change in earnings in the local area …

The Efficacy Of Congestion Pricing, Zachary J. Ridder

Honors Theses

The practice of congestion pricing, also called road pricing, is by no means a new innovation. It has roots as far back as the American Revolution, but in the modern world filled with hundreds of millions of cars it is a possible answer to gridlock, a potential source of revenue, and an environmentally conscious policy. The question remains though, is congestion pricing effective and, assuming that it is, is it a benefit to a community or a tax upon the poorer members of society? It has been implemented across the world in many forms and with varying degrees of success, …

An Ethics Of Economic Sanctions, Macallee N. Goldman

Honors Theses

This paper provides an ethical analysis of smart sanctions under the combined framework of the categorical imperative and utilitarianism. Developing an ethical model that also encompasses sanction effectiveness as a means of evaluation, this paper argues that smart sanctions should not be used by countries and legislative bodies as tools of expression or of achieving goals without efficiency considerations grounded in this ethical framework. Only when they clearly meet the criteria of utilitarianism and the categorical imperative should smart sanctions be used. By doing so sanction effectiveness is argued to be maximized, in both ethical and empirical context.

Mechanism Design With Partially Verifiable Information, Roland Strausz

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

In mechanism design with (partially) verifiable information, the revelation principle obtains in full generality if allocations are modelled as the product set of outcomes and verifiable information. Incentive constraints fully characterize the implementable set of these product-allocations. The revelation principle does not generally hold when an allocation is modelled as only an outcome. However, any outcome of an implementable product-allocation is also implementable under this restricted modelling, provided that the mechanism designer can expand communication by adding unverifiable messages and restrict communication by limiting the use of messages. A canonical representation of such mechanisms is presented, implying that an inalienable …

Monhegan: A Prescription For Resilience, Kenneth Paul Kiel Gross

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

Monhegan, like many island communities, is threatened by the loss of population as its young adults migrate to the mainland. The purpose of this study is to develop a resilient population on Monhegan Island.

Knowing the problem is easy, as is asking the obvious question, “How do we get people to move to this area?” This is a problem that confronts not only Monhegan, but also other Maine islands and even Maine itself.

Several factors make Monhegan’s future uncertain. The first is the gradual shift from commercial fishing, the mainstay of its economy, as it becomes more reliant on tourism …

Making Mississippi Cool: Craft Beer And The Creative Economy, Katherine E. Hogan

Honors Theses

The goal of this research is to define and explore two main constructs within Mississippi: craft beer as a phenomenon and the creative economy. As the two play a large role in many aspects of Mississippi’s culture and economy, characteristics of the two have the capability of interconnecting and building off the other. In this study, both craft beer and the creative economy in Mississippi will examined. The findings of this study will answer the question: is there a relationship between the the craft beer phenomenon and the creative economy?

Are Music Streaming Services Healthy For The Recorded Music Industry?, Elizabeth W. Pittman

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

To listen to music just a few hundred years ago would require hundreds of miles of travel, tons of wood and metal and ivory and copper strings, construction of a stage and audience platforms, human capital to perform the music of course, and lots of money. All of these variables would combine to produce an auditory experience of approximately 45 minutes total. Today, a single musician can produce the sound of dozens with just a laptop, and it can be consumed relatively cheaply with the click of a button. Digital services such as iTunes or Spotify give listeners access to …

"How The Unemployment Rate In Spain Affects University Enrollment", Morgan A. Clarke

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis studies the subsequent labor market outcomes of college graduates during an economic recession in Spain over the years 2000-2012. I use data on undergraduate enrollment, unemployment, national income, and educational spend from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics, the CIA World Fact Book, Spain’s Ministry of Education, and World Bank to run regression analyses and the Granger Causality Test. I find that university enrollment and unemployment rate are positively correlated. Regression results show that for every one percent increase in unemployment, enrollment increases by approximately 7,429 students.

Income Inequality In American Professional Sports Leagues, Joshua S. Thurman

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sports leagues provide an interesting window to view issues that larger economies face that are much harder to measure due to their complexity. These leagues have many policy tools similar to those used in major world economies such as minimum wage, price ceilings, labor unions, and revenue sharing, although the impact of these policies are much easier to measure in the closed economy model of a sports league because the income and output of every player in a given year is known. In this paper, I measure the level and trend of income inequality in the NBA, NFL, and MLB, …

Date Stamping Bubbles In Real Estate Investment Trusts, Diego Escobari, Mohammad Jafarinejad

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We test for the existence of single and multiple bubble periods in four Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) indices using the Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (SADF) and the Generalized SADF. These methods allow us to estimate the beginning and the end of bubble periods. Our results provide statistically significant evidence of speculative bubbles in the REIT index and its three components: Equity, Mortgage and Hybrid REITs. These results may be valuable for real estate financial managers and for investors in REITs.

Us Airport Ownership, Efficiency, And Heterogeneity, Levent Kutlu, Patrick Mccarthy

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

All US commercial airports are in the public sector yet not all have the same ownership type. For medium and large hub US airports we use stochastic frontier analysis to analyze the efficiency differences for alternative airport ownership types. We find that while form of ownership may matter for cost efficiency, in general its effect is relatively small. Yet type of public sector ownership does have cost efficiency implications in certain environments. Further, when heterogeneity is not controlled, the results change substantially so that type of ownership matters much more which demonstrates the importance of controlling for cross section heterogeneity.

Remittances As Contributor To Risk Management And Poverty Reduction In Grenada, Dianne Jntl Rosemary Forte

Dissertations

A Small Island Development States (SIDS) viewpoint is underrepresented in the existing migration literature. That perspective is necessary because SIDS geography creates a unique set of social and economic circumstances that predisposes small states to high vulnerability to external shocks from environmental events and influences emigration decision making. Like other SIDS, Grenada is characterized by small land mass, small population, limited opportunities for productive labor, and limited resources to efficiently support all the requirements of modern institutions. This has resulted in high levels of emigration and a pattern of circularity as Grenadian households make rational decisions to manage risk and …

Reformer-In-Chief, Fahad Ali

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

When IBA was set up in 1955, it was the first business school outside North America. Why the heck is it still so unknown outside Pakistan? To me, the challenge was that this institution should be one of the top institutions like the Indian Institutes of Management, which are household names abroad. Why isn't IBA in the same league?

Barriers To Health Care Access For Refugees In Cache County, Utah, Michael Timo Hoggard

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The United States has a rich history of resettling refugees. The United States resettled hundreds of thousands of refugees at the conclusion of World War II, and has resettled more than 3 million refugees since 1975 (Refugee Council USA, 2016). A refugee is a forcibly displaced person who will not or cannot return to their country of origin because of fear of physical harm or persecution (United Nations, 1951). Refugees are distinct from other forms of immigrants in many ways: refugees do not choose their country for resettlement, they receive government assistance upon arrival, their residency and work permits are …

East Asian Economies And Financial Globalization In The Post-Crisis World, Joshua Aizenman, Hiro Ito

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper assesses the East Asian Economies’ openness to cross-border capital flows and exchange rate arrangements in the past decades, with the main focus on emerging market economies. Using Mundell’s trilemma indexes, we note that the convergence of the three policy goals in East Asia toward a “middle ground” pre-dates the convergence of these indices in other regions. Another more recent development involves the high level of international reserve (IR) holdings–a feature that is known as the most distinct characteristic of Asian EMEs. Financial globalization seems to have made asset prices and interest rates in Asian EMEs more vulnerable to …

Three Essays On Random Mechanism Design, Huaxia Zeng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies a standard voting formulation with randomization. Formally, there is a finite set of voters, a finite set of alternatives and a lottery space over the alternative set. Each voter has a strict preference over alternatives. The domain of preferences contains all admissible preferences. Every voter reports a preference in the domain; a preference profile is generated; and the social lottery then is determined by a Random Social Choice Function (or RSCF). This dissertation focuses on RSCFs which provide every voter incentives to truthfully reveal her preference, and hence follows the formulation of strategyproofness in [26] which requires …

On Refined And Robust Inferences For Spatial Econometric Models, Shew Fan Liu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Asymptotically refined and heteroskedasticity robust inferences are considered for spatial linear and panel regression models, based on the quasi maximum likelihood (QML) or the adjusted concentrated quasi score (ACQS) approaches. Refined inferences are achieved through bias correcting the QML estimators, bias correcting the t-ratios for covariate effects, and improving tests for spatial effects; heteroskedasticity-robust inferences are achieved through adjusting the quasi score functions. Several popular spatial linear and panel regression models are considered including the linear regression models with either spatial error dependence (SED), or spatial lag dependence (SLD), or both SED and SLD (SARAR), the linear regression models with …

Price Volatility And Structural Breaks In U.S. Dairy Markets, Morgan James Baldwin

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper examines whether price volatility has increased for the all-milk price and milk margin over the past 25 years. It focuses on the impact of export and attempts to establish the existence of structural changes in the market. Various models are applied to analyze the stated question and results discussed. This paper finds that there was a distinct structural break in the milk price and possibly in the milk margin. Trade has limited correlation to volatility in the milk margin and milk price.

How Does Information In Fuel Economy Labels Affect Consumer Choice?, Lauren Beatty

Economics Honors Projects

This paper examines the effect of different pieces of information in fuel economy labels on consumer choice using data from a discrete choice experiment. In the experiment, participants are randomly assigned to treatment groups and asked to make choices between vehicle alternatives. Fuel economy labels vary over treatment group. Individual-specific discount rates are elicited in the survey, allowing this analysis to disentangle the effects of information and discount rate on choice. The analysis estimates each individual's willingness to pay for a one dollar reduction in present value of operating costs, then examines how information affects the willingness to pay coefficient. …

The Relationship Between Water Shortage Concern And Age In Utah, Viviane S. Baji

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

It is unclear whether current water supplies in Utah will be able to accommodate the needs of the future. Population in the state is expected to double by 2050 and climate change models predict declines in water availability in the region. Public perceptions of the adequacy of the water supply (and concerns about potential shortages) are key factors that could influence water use behaviors and support for public policy interventions. This paper explores the research question: "Are young people in Utah more concerned about water shortages than older cohorts?" It was expected that young people would be more concerned about …

The Affordable Care Act And Health Care In America, Michael Ryan

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

What you are about to read is a final project meant to incorporate ideas from my undergraduate coursework with my interests in medicine and economics. Issues in health care, especially insurance, fascinate me and I chose to use my Honors Capstone Project as an opportunity to further my understanding of issues important to me as both a future physician and businessman. The purpose of this paper is to practice critical and analytical thinking skills by exploring some of the challenging issues surrounding American health insurance and the Affordable Care Act while also gaining a deeper understanding of the nuances of …

A Look At The Controversies Of The United States Export-Import Bank, Bo A. Johnson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Ex-Im Bank is the official export credit agency of the United States. The Bank was established in 1934 to aid a depressed economy and foster global trade. Ex-Im was mandated to improve economic conditions and international trade by providing financial assistance where the private sector fell through, while not competing against private firms. The bank has four main tools to perform its responsibilities - direct loans, loan guarantees, working capital financing, and credit-export insurance.

The Ex-Im Bank has enjoyed a long history of strong bipartisan support. Opposition surfaced in the late 2000's leading to an Ex-Im temporary shutdown. The …