Economics Commons^™

Saving Local Communities Using Scrip Money To Fight The Great Depression In North Central Iowa, Bryan Carl Bjorklund

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression, the Mason City Chamber of Commerce authorized the issuance of 10,000 yellow certificates with a face value of $1.00. This local effort to fight the economic disaster was represented in the unique certificates known as stamp scrip money. The overall goals of the program was to offer the unemployed work relief, build a road to further connect the city, experiment in the road building process using concrete macadam, and to stimulate local business all through the issuance of the 10,000 certificates. The idea of the project was introduced in early 1933, …

Essay On Incentives, Economic Conditions, And Human Capital Formation, Masayuki Onda

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer three independent studies. The first examines the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on entrepreneurial activities over the period 1996-2008. We find that FDI has no discernible effect on entrepreneurial activity in probusiness states identified by the existence of Right-to-Work (RTW) states. In non-RTW states, however, we find that an increase in FDI decreases the average monthly rate of business creation and destruction. The second study assesses the impact of breastfeeding on early childhood outcomes. Using Birth Cohort of Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS-b) data and employing a recently developed econometric technique, I estimate the …

Local Liability In International Economic Law, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Inequality Rediscovered, Jedediah Purdy, David Singh Grewal

Faculty Scholarship

Widespread recognition that economic inequality has been growing for forty years in most of the developed world, and in fact has tended to grow across most of the history of modern economies, shows that the period 1945-1973, when inequality of wealth and income shrank, was a marked anomaly in historical experience. At the time, however, the anomalous period of equality seemed to vindicate a long history of optimism about economic life: that growth would overcome meaningful scarcity and usher in an egalitarian and humanistic period that could almost qualify as post-economic. This has not been the experience of the last …

Essays In Health And Public Economics, Sara Oloomi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present three distinct essays in health and public economics. In chapter 2, using Vital Statistics data from National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and a Difference in Difference methodology, I investigate the impact of the Paid Family Leave (PFL) of California on birth delay, infant health, and labor market outcomes of mothers after first childbirth. I find that PFL of California reduces birth delay by encouraging women to have their first child earlier. Results are more pronounced for older women who are over the age of 35. This policy also improves infant health by reducing incidence …

Inside The Black Box: Political Economy Of The Trans-Pacific Partnership's Encryption Clause, Han-Wei Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Among other provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, a new clause on encryption technology (‘Encryption Clause’) is particularly noteworthy. By tracing the history of decades-long encryption control, this article underscores how this clause implicates international order. Modern encryption technology was conceived and developed during World Wars. Painted by such a war-time legacy, encryption has been treated as a ‘dual-use’ technology and has been subject to export control since the end of World War II via the Coordinating Committee for the Control of Multinational Trade (COCOM) and, later, the Wassenaar Arrangement. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Western …

Efficient Augmented Inverse Probability Weighted Estimation In Missing Data Problems, Jing Qin, Biao Zhang, Denis H. Y. Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

When analyzing data with missing data, a commonly used method is the inverse probability weighting (IPW) method, which reweights estimating equations with propensity scores. The popularity of the IPW method is due to its simplicity. However, it is often being criticized for being inefficient because most of the information from the incomplete observations is not used. Alternatively, the regression method is known to be efficient but is nonrobust to the misspecification of the regression function. In this article, we propose a novel way of optimally combining the propensity score function and the regression model. The resulting estimating equation enjoys the …

When Price Precision Pays In Negotiations, Michael Schaerer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

When negotiating, is an offer of 99.95 euros better than 100 euros? Our recent study shows that there is no universally true answer to the question of price precision and that the right strategy depends on with whom you are negotiating.

Restructuring Sovereign Debt After Nml V. Argentina, Lee C. Buchheit, G. Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The decade and a half of litigation that followed Argentina’s sovereign bond default in 2001 ended with a great disturbance in the Force. A new creditor weapon had been uncloaked: The prospect of a court injunction requiring the sovereign borrower to pay those creditors that decline to participate in a debt restructuring ratably with any payments made to those creditors that do provide the country with debt relief.

For the first time holdouts succeeded in fashioning a weapon that could be used to injure their erstwhile fellow bondholders, not just the sovereign issuer. Is the availability of this new weapon …

The Financial Crisis And Credit Unavailability: Cause Or Effect?, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Although the relationship between credit availability and financial decline leading to the global financial crisis was somewhat interactive, a loss of credit availability appears to have caused the financial crisis more than the reverse. The potential for credit unavailability to cause a financial crisis suggests at least three lessons: (i) because credit availability is dependent on financial markets as well as banks, regulation should protect the viability of both credit sources; (ii) diversifying sources of credit might increase financial stability if each credit source is robust and does not create a liquidity glut or inappropriately weaken central bank control; and …

The Nature Of Sequential Innovation, Christopher Buccafusco, Stefan Bechtold, Christopher Jon Sprigman

Faculty Scholarship

When creators and innovators take up a new task, they face a world of existing creative works, inventions, and ideas, some of which are governed by intellectual property (IP) rights. This presents a choice: Should the creator pay to license those rights? Or, alternatively, should the creator undertake to innovate around them? Our Article formulates this “build on/build around decision” as the fundamental feature of sequential creativity, and it maps a number of factors—some legal, some contextual—that affect how creators are likely to decide between building on existing IP or building around it. Importantly, creators are influenced by more than …

Changes In Depressive Symptoms Among Older Adults With Multiple Chronic Conditions: Role Of Positive And Negative Social Supports, Sangnam Ahn, Seonghoon Kim, Hongmei Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Depression severely affects older adults in the United States. As part of the social environment, significant social support was suggested to ameliorate depression among older adults. We investigate how varying forms of social support moderate depressive symptomatology among older adults with multiple chronic conditions (MCC). Data were analyzed using a sample of 11,400 adults, aged 65 years or older, from the 2006–2012 Health and Retirement Study. The current study investigated the moderating effects of positive or negative social support from spouse, children, other family, and friends on the association between MCC and depression. A linear mixed model with repeated measures …

Determining Individual Or Time Effects In Panel Data Models, Xun Lu, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we propose a jackknife method to determine individual and time e⁄ects in linear panel data models. We rst show that when both the serial and cross-sectional correlation among the idiosyncratic error terms are weak, our jackknife method can pick up the correct model with probability approaching one (w.p.a.1). In the presence of moderate or strong degree of serial correlation, we modify our jackknife criterion function and show that the modied jackknife method can also select the correct model w.p.a.1. We conduct Monte Carlo simulations to show that our new methods perform remarkably well in nite samples. We …

Comments On “Rich Debt, Poor Debt: Assessing Household Indebtedness And Debt Repayment Capacity”, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper assesses the system-wide impacts of Malaysia’s rising household debt.Malaysia’s household debt-to-GDP ratio (HDGR) increased from 76% in 2009 to 89%in 2016. This increase has raised concerns regarding the implications for householdfinancial resilience and banking system stability. The paper uses a micro-level datasetthat integrates income and debt to calculate financial margin (FM) and the probabilityof default (PD) for individuals at the baseline, and when subject to various shocks.This allows the estimation of loss to lenders in the event of default, and from there,the banking system’s debt-at-risk. The findings show that default is more likely forhouseholds with a debt service …

Comments On “Rich Debt, Poor Debt: Assessing Household Indebtedness And Debt Repayment Capacity”, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper assesses the system-wide impacts of Malaysia’s rising household debt.Malaysia’s household debt-to-GDP ratio (HDGR) increased from 76% in 2009 to 89%in 2016. This increase has raised concerns regarding the implications for householdfinancial resilience and banking system stability. The paper uses a micro-level datasetthat integrates income and debt to calculate financial margin (FM) and the probabilityof default (PD) for individuals at the baseline, and when subject to various shocks.This allows the estimation of loss to lenders in the event of default, and from there,the banking system’s debt-at-risk. The findings show that default is more likely forhouseholds with a debt service …

Mixed-Scale Jump Regressions With Bootstrap Inference, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop an efficient mixed-scale estimator for jump regressions using high-frequency asset returns. A fine time scale is used to accurately identify the locations of large rare jumps in the explanatory variables such as the price of the market portfolio. A coarse scale is then used in the estimation in order to attenuate the effect of trading frictions in the dependent variable such as the prices of potentially less liquid assets. The proposed estimator has a non-standard asymptotic distribution that cannot be made asymptotically pivotal via studentization. We propose a novel bootstrap procedure for feasible inference and justify its asymptotic …

Strategy-Proofness Of The Probabilistic Serial Rule On Sequentially Dichotomous Domains, Peng Liu

Research Collection School Of Economics

A class of preference domains is proposed: sequentially dichotomous domains. On any sequentially dichotomous domain, the probabilistic serial rule (Bogomolnaia and Moulin (2001)) is sd-strategy-proof. In addition, any sequentially dichotomous domain is maximal for the probabilistic serial rule to be sd-strategy-proof.

On Estimating Market Microstructure Noise Variance, Yingjie Dong, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the market microstructure noise-variance estimation of high-frequency stock prices. Based on the Hansen and Lunde (2006) approach, we propose estimates using subsampling method at different time scales. We conduct a Monte Carlo study to compare our method against others in the literature. Our results show that our proposed estimates have lower (absolute) mean error and root mean-squared error, and their performance is quite stable at different time scales.

A Multivariate Stochastic Unit Root Model With An Application To Derivative Pricing, Offer Lieberman, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper extends recent findings of Lieberman and Phillips (2014) on stochastic unit root (STUR) models to a multivariate case including asymptotic theory for estimation of the model's parameters. The extensions are useful for applications of STUR modeling and because they lead to a generalization of the Black-Scholes formula for derivative pricing. In place of the standard assumption that the price process follows a geometric Brownian motion, we derive a new form of the Black-Scholes equation that allows for a multivariate time varying coefficient element in the price equation. The corresponding formula for the value of a European-type call option …

Estimating Smooth Structural Change In Cointegration Models, Peter C. B. Phillips, Degui Li, Jiti Gao

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies nonlinear cointegration models in which the structural coefficients may evolve smoothly over time, and considers time-varying coefficient functions estimated by nonparametric kernel methods. It is shown that the usual asymptotic methods of kernel estimation completely break down in this setting when the functional coefficients are multivariate. The reason for this breakdown is a kernel induced degeneracy in the weighted signal matrix associated with the nonstationary regressors, a new phenomenon in the kernel regression literature. Some new techniques are developed to address the degeneracy and resolve the asymptotics, using a path-dependent local coordinate transformation to reorient coordinates and …

Variation In Boilerplate: Rational Design Or Random Mutation?, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Standard contract doctrine presumes that sophisticated parties choose their terminology carefully because they want courts or counterparts to understand what they intended. The implication of this “Rational Design” model of rational behavior is that courts should pay careful attention to the precise phrasing of contracts. Using a study of the sovereign bond market, we examine the Rational Design model as applied to standard-form contracting. In NML v. Argentina, federal courts in New York attached importance to the precise phrasing of the boilerplate contracts at issue. The industry promptly condemned the decision for a supposedly erroneous interpretation of a variant of …

How To Restructure Venezuelan Debt (¿Cómo Restructurar La Deuda Venezolana?), Mitu Gulati, Lee C. Buchheit

Faculty Scholarship

English Abstract: There is a growing consensus that Venezuela will not be able to persist for much longer with its policy of full external debt service. The social costs are just too great. This implies a debt restructuring of some kind. Venezuela, principally through its state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (“PDVSA”), has extensive commercial contacts with the United States. Not since Mexico in the 1980s has an emerging market country with this level of commercial contacts attempted to restructure its New York law-governed sovereign debt. Holdout creditors in a restructuring of Venezuelan sovereign debt will therefore present a …

Deterring Holdout Creditors In A Restructuring Of Pdvsa Bonds And Promissory Notes (¿Cómo Disuadir A Acreedores 'Holdout' En Una Restructuración De Bonos Y Pagarés De Pdvsa?), Lee C. Buchheit, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The prospect of the potential mischief that may be caused by holdout creditors in a Venezuelan sovereign debt restructuring is probably the main reason why the Maduro administration has not attempted such an exercise. The next administration in Venezuela — whenever and however it may arrive — will not want for suggestions about how to minimize or neutralize this holdout creditor threat. This short article is another contribution to that growing literature. Were the Republic of Venezuela to acknowledge that there really is only one public sector credit risk in the country, and that the distinction between Republic bonds and …

Feminism And Economic Inequality, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor, 1st Quarter, 2017, Armstrong State University Center For Regional Analysis

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor

The Coastal Empire Economic Indicators are designed to provide continuously updating quarterly snapshots of the Savannah Metropolitan Statistical Area economy. The coincident index measures the current economic heartbeat of the region. The leading index provides a short term forecast of the region’s economic activity in six to nine months.

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor, 2nd Quarter, 2017, Armstrong State University Center For Regional Analysis

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor

The Coastal Empire Economic Indicators are designed to provide continuously updating quarterly snapshots of the Savannah Metropolitan Statistical Area economy. The coincident index measures the current economic heartbeat of the region. The leading index provides a short term forecast of the region’s economic activity in six to nine months.

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor, 3rd Quarter, 2017, Armstrong State University Center For Regional Analysis

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor

The Economic Monitor provides a continuously updating quarterly snapshot of the Savannah Metropolitan Statistical Area economy, including Bryan, Chatham and Effingham counties in Georgia. The coincident index measures the current economic heartbeat of the region. The leading index is designed to provide a short-term forecast of the region’s economic activity in the upcoming six to nine months.

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor, 4th Quarter, 2017, Armstrong State University Center For Regional Analysis

Coastal Empire Economic Monitor

The Economic Monitor provides a continuously updating quarterly snapshot of the Savannah Metropolitan Statistical Area economy, including Bryan, Chatham and Effingham counties in Georgia. The coincident index measures the current economic heartbeat of the region. The leading index is designed to provide a short-term forecast of the region’s economic activity in the upcoming six to nine months.

Reducing Extreme Poverty Through Skill Training For Industry Job Placement, Abu S. Shonchoy, Selim Raihan, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Vocational training programs aimed at rapidly growing sectors have the potential to reduce skills gaps, improve income and employment potentials. Such programs often been unsuccessful, because they are not driven by industry-demand and market-linkages, and they are not well targeted. Our rigorous RCT-based impact study shows that a targeted training-program offered to poor rural households in northwest Bangladesh has significant effects on employment in garment factories. Data from a follow-up — six and twelve months’ after the intervention — shows a statistically significant and large employment effect of the training program when it is combined with the stipend or internship.This …

Jump Regressions, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop econometric tools for studying jump dependence of two processes from high-frequency observations on a fixed time interval. In this context, only segments of data around a few outlying observations are informative for the inference. We derive an asymptotically valid test for stability of a linear jump relation over regions of the jump size domain. The test has power against general forms of nonlinearity in the jump dependence as well as temporal instabilities. We further propose an efficient estimator for the linear jump regression model that is formed by optimally weighting the detected jumps with weights based on the …