Economics Commons^™

Big Data In Economics, Matthew Harding, Jonathan Hersh

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Big Data refers to data sets of much larger size, higher frequency, and often more personalized information. Examples include data collected by smart sensors in homes or aggregation of tweets on Twitter. In small data sets, traditional econometric methods tend to outperform more complex techniques. In large data sets, however, machine learning methods shine. New analytic approaches are needed to make the most of Big Data in economics. Researchers and policymakers should thus pay close attention to recent developments in machine learning techniques if they want to fully take advantage of these new sources of Big Data.

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- September 2018, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Preferences, Ability, And Intrinsic Motivation, Matthew P. Taylor

University Grant Program Reports

I use an experiment to test whether economics experiments that have explored the relationship between cognitive ability and several important economic behaviors have biased estimates because they fail to account for the impact of differences in intrinsic motivation. I find that monetary incentives do not significantly improve subject performance on the types of questions that are commonly used to measure cognitive ability. I also find that estimates of the relationships between cognitive ability and strategic reasoning, trust, and risk aversion are not significantly different whether cognitive ability is measured with or without monetary incentives. Consistent with the existing literature, subjects …

Time-Series And Cross-Section Variation Of Bond Risk Premia, Niloofar Sahebalzamany

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A long-term bond that is sold before its maturity has an uncertain excess return over the certain return from a shorter-term risk-free bond maturing at the time of sale. There is strong evidence that this excess return is predictable and that the predicted excess return, or risk premium, is time varying. Cochrane and Piazzesi (2005) use five forward rates to predict excess returns on one to five-year maturity bonds. I extend and improve their approach in multiple aspects. Firstly, the data set for the US market is expanded in two dimensions: cross-section and time series. In the cross-section dimension, one- …

Mayflower: Ode To New Beginnings — A New Column For New Times With A Positive Mission, Antje Mays

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Numerous studies and articles downplay the value of libraries, citing instances of library defunding, layoffs, and outright closures, along with studies on the waning usefulness of libraries based on flawed quantifiables. Such pronouncements spread fear of obsolescence and irrelevance, contributing to dissatisfaction in the library profession. Yet polls in the United States and Great Britain reveal the library profession's enduring value among the most trusted professions.

To kick off the column "Mayflower: Ode to New Beginnings", this article frames library pressures in a context of broader trends affecting economic and educational conditions, examines professional stewardship and the library profession’s enduring …

The Evolution Of The International Corporate Tax Regime, 1920-2008, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Racial Differences In The Effect Of Marriageable Males On Female Family Headship, Terry Ann Craigie, Samuel L. Myers, William A. Darity

Economics: Faculty Publications

Female family headship has strong implications for endemic poverty in the United States. Consequently, it is imperative to explore the chief factors that contribute to this problem. Departing from prior literature that places significant weight on welfare-incentive effects, our study highlights the role of male marriageability in explaining the prevalence of never-married female family headship for blacks and whites. Specifically, we examine racial differences in the effect of male marriageability on never-married female headship from 1980 to 2010. By exploiting data from IPUMS-USA (N = 4,958,722) and exogenous variation from state-level sentencing reforms, the study finds that the decline in …

A Study On The Impact Of Monetary Policies On Nigerian Property Market, Abiodun Jogunola, Chibuike R. Emele, Austin C. Otegbulu

Bullion

The authority responsible for formulating monetary policies in Nigeria has focused more on the oil and gas sector while other sectors such as the property sector have not been given their deserved attention with regards to monetary policy formulation. Hence, this study examined the impact of monetary policy rate on the Nigerian property market. It was revealed that the key economic indicators that are relevant to the real estate sector includes interest rate, (monetary policy instrument), GDP, exchange rate , inflation rate as well as international oil price. The findings showed that in the long term monetary policy rate has …

Addressing Infrastructure Gap Via Public-Private Partnership In Nigeria, Chiedu Ndubisi

Bullion

This paper is arranged in nine Sections. It commenced by examining the issue of the nature of infrastructure and the implication for financing. It also looked at the catalytic role of infrastructure on economic growth and development, including the debilitating implication of its negligence by policy makers. next, the paper attempted at establishing the nexus between infrastructure and economic growth and development.

Does Changes In Monetary Policy Rate In Nigeria Have Effect On The Interest Rates? Recent Evidence, Saidu D. Ahmed, Aliyu B. Saidu, Umar A. Zubair

Bullion

The objective of this study is to find out whether changes in Monetary Policy Rate have any impact on interest rates in Nigeria. The study adopted Multiple Linear Regression Analysis to examine the effectiveness of changes in Monetary Policy Rate on movement in short term and long term rates in Nigeria. The study concludes that the MPR influences the 91-Day Treasury Bills rate to the greatest extent followed by the Inter-Bank Call rate. The results obtained from this study can be used to gauge the effectiveness of MPR in an economy like Nigeria where financial infrastructure is not fully developed.

Imperative Of Fiscal Discipline In Sustaining Economic Growth, Uche Uwaleke

Bullion

The Nigerian economy technically exited a recession since the second half of 2017 but the growth in GDP has remained weak and fragile. The concept of fiscal discipline can be viewed from three perspectives. The first is by public finance theorist, Richard Musgrave, Another view by John Mikesell (cited in Musgrave and Musgrave, 1989), The third usage by Axelrod extends the coverage of fiscal discipline to legislators. This paper examines why fiscal discipline is essential for Nigeria, experiences of peer countries and imperatives of fiscal discipline for sustaining economic growth

Review Of Reading The Market: Genres Of Financial Capitalism In Gilded Age America, Lynne P. Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Peter Knight's Reading the Market: Genres of Financial Capitalism in Gilded Age America.

Essays On The Market Structure Of The U.S. Health Care System, Ayse S. Diebel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the welfare implications of vertical restraints in the U.S. health care market. I focus on two phenomena that influence vertical relationships between hospitals and insurers: vertical integration and vertical bundling. Both of these practices have potential efficiency-inducing and anti-competitive effects from a theoretical standpoint, making welfare implications ambiguous. I analyze their impact on welfare in an empirical setting. This task requires structurally modeling the market by using data on hospitals, insurers, and consumers, and simulating counterfactual worlds free of vertical restraints.

I construct my dataset by combining data from multiple sources. Hospital characteristics come from the American …

From Prison To Homeless Shelter: Camp Laguardia And The Political Economy Of An Urban Infrastructure, Christian D. Siener

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At this time of increasing housing insecurity, recent reforms in homeless shelter policy have attracted the attention of scholars and activists. This research sheds light on these changes by placing them in historical and political-geographic perspective, focusing on the role of homeless shelters in stabilizing social displacement by destabilizing solidarity. It demonstrates historical continuity between prisons and homeless shelters in New York City through a case study of conditions surrounding the transition of Camp LaGuardia, a prison that slowly transformed into the city’s largest, and longest lasting, homeless shelter. The case study is an empirical demonstration of some of the …

Debt Market Illiquidity And Correlated Default Risk, Siamak Javadi, Mohsen Mollagholamali

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We empirically test the theoretical prediction of the impact of debt market liquidity on correlated default risk. Confirming the theory, our results indicate that the lower debt market liquidity, leads to an economically significant increase in the correlated default risk. Also consistent with theory, we show that this effect is more pronounced for short-term debt.

A Non-Parametric Approach To Testing The Axioms Of The Shapley Value With Limited Data, Victor H. Aguiar, Roland Pongou, Jean-Baptiste Tondji

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

The unique properties of the Shapley value–efficiency, equal treatment of identical input factors, and marginality–have made it an appealing solution concept in various classes of problems. It is however recognized that the pay schemes utilized in many real-life situations generally depart from this value. We propose a non-parametric approach to testing the empirical content of this concept with limited datasets. We introduce the Shapley distance, which, for a fixed monotone transferable-utility game, measures the distance of an arbitrary pay profile to the Shapley pay profile, and show that it is additively decomposable into the violations of the classical …

Intergenerational Mobility And The Political Economy Of Immigration, Henning Bohn, Armando R. Lopez-Velasco

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Flows of US immigrants are concentrated at the extremes of the skill distribution. We develop a dynamic political economy model consistent with this observation. Individuals care about wages and the welfare of their children. Skill types are complementary in production. Voter support for immigration requires that the children of median-voter natives and of immigrants have sufficiently dissimilar skills. We estimate intergenerational transition matrices for skills, as measured by education, and find support for immigration at high and low skills, but not in the middle. In a version with guest worker programs, voters prefer high-skilled immigrants but low-skilled guest workers.

Labor Law And Innovation Revisited, Bill B. Francis, Incheol Kim, Bin Wang, Zhengyi Zhang

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This paper examines the impact of changes in job security on corporate innovation in 20 non-U.S. OECD countries. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we provide firm-level evidence that the enhancement of labor protection has a negative impact on innovation. We then discuss possible channels and find that employee-friendly labor reforms induce inventor shirking and a distortion in labor flow. Further investigation reveals that the negative relation is more pronounced in 1) firms that heavily rely on external financing, 2) firms that have high R&D intensity, 3) manufacturing industries, and 4) civil-law countries. Our micro-level evidence indicates that enhanced employment protection impedes …

Essays In New Keynesian Monetary Policy, Tzu-Hao Huang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation consists of three Chapters. I consider New Keynesian models which involve tradeoffs between output gap and inflation variances. Such policy strategy is often referred to as flexible inflation targeting rules (e.g., Lars Svensson 2011, pp.1238-95). Taylor rules, in general, have the symbolic expression ��_t=��_x��_t+��_����_t+��_g��_t, where ��_t is the nominal interest rate at period t, ��_t is the target variable output gap at period t, ��_t is the target variable inflation rate at period t, ��_t is realized shock …

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard …

Synthetic Control And Dynamic Panel Estimation: A Case Study Of Iran, Orkideh Gharehgozli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

International sanctions imposed on Iran, targeting primarily Iran’s key energy sector and its ability to access the international financial system, have harmed Iran’s economic growth, specifically from 2011 to 2014. This thesis uses this case to study and compare the applicability of two different popular approaches used in comparative case studies exploring the effect of a policy intervention.

In the Chapter 1 we study the synthetic control method. Using this method, we estimate the effect of the intensification of sanctions on Iran’s GDP during the period 2011 to 2014. The year of 2011 was Iran’s first full year under these …

Essays On The Economics Of Unhealthy Behaviors, Raul Segura-Escano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore a variety of responses in the form of unhealthy behaviors as a consequence of different sudden events perceived by individuals. The first one is the doubtlessly pure exogenous shock caused by an unexpected terrorist attack, Boston Marathon Bombings. The second one is the turmoil caused by the Great Recession of 2008, which is the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression during the 1930’s. This dissertation consists of the following two chapters:

Chapter 1: “The Impact of Terrorism on Mental Health and Substance Use: Evidence from the Boston Marathon Bombings” On April 15, 2013, …

Corporate Urbanization: Between The Future And Survival In Lebanon, Deen S. Sharp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you look today at the skyline of downtowns throughout the Middle East and beyond, the joint-stock corporation has transformed the urban landscape. The corporation makes itself present through the proliferation of its urban mega-projects, including skyscrapers, downtown developments and gated communities; retail malls and artificial islands; airports and ports; and highways. Built into these corporate urban structures are edifices of politics, ideology and certain forms of socio-spatial and temporal organization. The corporation, however, has largely escaped critical scholarly analysis in Geography and/or Urban and Middle East Studies. In this thesis, I argue that the corporation is far more than …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 2, Number 9, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Omar Solís, Esmeralda P. Muñiz, Aaron Nazarian

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Living A Lie: Theory And Evidence On Public Preference Falsification, John Duffy, Jonathan Lafky

Department of Economics Working Paper Series

We propose a model of how public behavior changes in response to the evolution of privately held preferences. Our aim is to rationalize the tendency for individuals who hold minority viewpoints to falsely report their preferences by taking actions favored by the majority. We do this using a game involving a tension between honest expression of one’s true preferences and a desire to conform to the behavior of others. In an experimental test of our model, we find confirmatory support for the model’s main predictions, that even after a majority of the population shares what was previously an unpopular minority …

Judicial Deference And The Efficiency Of The Common Law, Mark T. Kanazawa

Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Economists and legal scholars in the law-and-economics tradition have long been occupied with the question of whether, and the extent to which, the common law is efficient. There have been two main approaches taken in the scholarly literature. One approach has been to focus on judges, who are modeled having various motivations including, but not necessarily confined to, concern for efficient allocation of resources.1 However, to the extent they are concerned with efficiency, this attitude will be reflected in their opinions.2 This argument has been subject to criticism by scholars on various grounds, including questioning the assumption that judges are …

Quantity Versus Quality: Experimenting With The Margins For Social Information, Jonathan Lafky, Alistair Wilson

Department of Economics Working Paper Series

People share their experiences of goods and services online, through reviews, ratings and endorsements on social networks, potentially generating welfare-improving information that can help subsequent consumers make better, more informed decisions. While the economics literature has focused on questions of alignment and the intensive quality of provided information, another tension is extensive: in the absence of an incentive, many might choose not to provide information at all. We study three different incentives that encourage information transmission on the extensive margin, examining the tradeoffs between quality and quantity of information. Our findings indicate substantial efficiency gains can be made relative to …

Unequal Hopes, Lives, And Lifespans In The Usa: Lessons From The New Science Of Well-Being, Carol Graham

Center for Policy Research

Given that we have had historic increases in inequality, as well as stagnant poverty levels for several decades, I will tell the story of poverty and inequality in the U.S. from the perspective of the metrics of happiness and well-being. My research—and the book that resulted—found that inequality is part of this story, but not the only part. The story was much more complicated than I anticipated. One of the most interesting parts of the story includes different levels of hope and resilience across races and places. Poverty and inequality play a big role, but there is much more to …

Comment On: Limit Of Random Measures Associated With The Increments Of A Brownian Semimartingale, Jia Li, Dacheng Xiu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We thank the Editors’ invitation for the opportunity of contributing to this special issue as a celebration of Professor Jean Jacod’s seminal work originally written in 1994 (Jacod, 1994). This paper established general limit theorems for integrated volatility functionals, and provided theoretical tools that eventually changed the landscape of theoretical research concerning high-frequency data. This impact is also largely due to Professor Jacod’s continuous contribution to a broad variety of challenging issues in the area of high-frequency financial econometrics, including volatility estimation, jumps, and microstructure noise, as well as a large body of mathematical results collected in Jacod and Shiryaev …

Does Foreign Direct Investment Lead To Industrial Agglomeration?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on industrial agglomeration. Using the differential effects of FDI deregulation in 2002 in China on different industries, we find that FDI actually affects industrial agglomeration negatively. This result is somewhat counter-intuitive, as the conventional wisdom tends to suggest that FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster for various agglomeration benefits, in particular technology spillovers. To reconcile our empirical findings and the conventional wisdom, we develop a theory of FDI and agglomeration based on two counter-veiling forces. Technology diffusion from FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster, but fiercer competition drives firms away. …