Economics Commons^™

What Is The Effect Of Social Capital On Community Resiliency Against Social Decay?, James Dail

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis builds off of the work of Robert Putnam and Charles Murray by using a fixed effects regression model and a first difference regression model to see if there is a relationship between the number of community institutions within a county and that county’s resiliency against social decay. Historically, it has been difficult to determine if there is a causal relationship in either direction between these variables because they are endogenous. That is, the underlying factors that determine whether a county will have low levels of social capital also determine whether the same county will have high levels of …

Air Pollution’S Effect On The Labor Force At The State Level, Benjamin Culberson

CMC Senior Theses

The health effects of air pollution are well established, ranging from increased rates of cancer to cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, a growing body of literature shows that air pollution has a tangible, negative impact on the labor force. However, in their efforts to avoid the endogeneity of air pollution and labor production, the current literature focuses on specific industries at a local level. The objective of this thesis is to expand this research to a state level by using naturally occurring weather events called air stagnations as a proxy for air pollution. These air stagnations correlate with increased levels of air …

The Streaming Wars: The Future Of Entertainment, Alexander D. Kenworthy

CMC Senior Theses

The Streaming Wars are the competition between Over-The-Top online streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max. This paper seeks to analyze the market through a literature review of factors which will influence in the market as well as an empirical analysis on the relationship between Netflix and the cable industry over time and how that relationship has changed. I find that Netflix’s revenue growth has had a negative impact on the cable industry’s revenue growth, but that relationship has diminished over time. I interpret this as a new market emerging for streaming services where multihoming will play …

Observing The Effects Of Antimalarial Drug Availability On Women’S Work Absenteeism, Rei Imada

CMC Senior Theses

This study aims to provide insight on how availability of antimalarial drugs can help alleviate the economic burden of malaria. Much of the existing literature that looks into the effects of antimalarial drug availability focuses on the associated health benefits, but fails to draw a link to the economic benefits that may also be incurred. Using data from the 2015-2016 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey and Malaria Indicator Survey, this study performs a series of multiple regressions to observe how increased availability of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), a front-line antimalarial drug in most African countries, affects likelihood of work absenteeism …

Formal Savings Uptake As A Catalyst For Remittances In Sub-Saharan Africa, Jordan Kouassi

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores the effects of savings account ownership on remittances and payment services in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of a field experiment executed in Central Malawi. Remittances are a major form of financial support for SSA and Sub-Saharan Africans. Through the use of a cross section analysis I find a positive significant relationship between account ownership and the likelihood to send and receive a remittance. Specifically, I find account ownership can increase the likelihood of sending a remittance by 8.75 times and increase the likelihood of receiving a remittance by 10.18 times.

Escaping The Snowstorm: Legal Rights And Economics In The Developing World, Zane Tolchinsky

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I seek to provide a framework for developing nations making policy-decisions about legal rights, as in the realm of Rawlsian ideal theory, prescriptions for governments not living in conditions of moderate scarcity is lacking. I first springboard off Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunstein’s conclusion that “all legal rights are positive,” from their book, The Cost of Rights, to argue for the value of considering the economic implications of rights protections. I then propose that Holmes and Sunstein’s conclusion means that we can think of legal rights as goods to be purchased by governments. Next, I …

Optimal Execution In Cryptocurrency Markets, Ethan Kurz

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of this paper is to study the Almgren and Chriss model on the optimal execution of large block orders both on the NYSE and in cryptocurrency exchanges. Their model minimizes execution costs, which include linear temporary and permanent price impacts. We focus on how the stock market microstructure differs from a cryptocurrency exchange microstructure and what that means for how the model functions. Once the model and microstructures are explained, we examine how the Almgren-Chriss model functions with stocks from the NYSE, looking at specifically selling a large number of shares. We then investigate how a large "wholesale" …

The Impact Of Production Budgets On Theatrical Vs. Non-Theatrical Revenues In The Movie Industry, Naveen Shastri

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis discusses the impact of movie production budgets on various revenue ratios. An OLS regression equation was created that compares the production budget of a movie to one of three movie revenue ratios. These ratios can be attributed to the relative elasticities of each revenue metric (domestic DVD sales, domestic box office revenues, and foreign box office revenues). Among other results, it seems that the elasticity for domestic DVD sales was relatively greater than the one representing domestic box office revenues. Also, foreign box office elasticities were relatively larger than either domestic revenue variable. These results imply different trends …

The Road To Human Emancipation - The Moral And Political Foundations Of Markets, William Shi

CMC Senior Theses

The thesis aims to provide both a real public ideology and the legal and socioeconomic structures to realize Karl Marx’s ideal of human emancipation. Marx argues that in capitalist society, the legal and political superstructure forces the ruling class to represent its interest as the public interest, which legitimizes the massive inequality in resources and social power. To demonstrate how to realize the substantive public interest, the two parts of the thesis have two goals. The first part aims to formulate a rightful candidate to the public ideology of human emancipation, which represents the substantive public interest rather than the …

Healthy And Unhealthy Responses To American Democratic Institutional Failure, Thomas D'Anieri

CMC Senior Theses

I have set out on the hunch that politics in America “feels different,” that we are frustrated both with our institutions as well as with one another. First, I will seek to empirically verify this claim beyond mere “feelings.” If it can be shown that these kinds of discontent genuinely exist to the extent that I believe they do, I will then explain why people feel this way and why things are different this time from the economic, political, and social points of view. Next, I will examine two potential responses, what I will call the populist and the institutional …

K-Means Stock Clustering Analysis Based On Historical Price Movements And Financial Ratios, Shu Bin

CMC Senior Theses

The 2015 article Creating Diversified Portfolios Using Cluster Analysis proposes an algorithm that uses the Sharpe ratio and results from K-means clustering conducted on companies' historical financial ratios to generate stock market portfolios. This project seeks to evaluate the performance of the portfolio-building algorithm during the beginning period of the COVID-19 recession. S&P 500 companies' historical stock price movement and their historical return on assets and asset turnover ratios are used as dissimilarity metrics for K-means clustering. After clustering, stock with the highest Sharpe ratio from each cluster is picked to become a part of the portfolio. The economic and …

Policies And Politics Of Reform : The Governmentality Of Structural Adjustment In Urban And Rural Egypt, Gabriel Gluskin-Braun

CMC Senior Theses

This analysis explores the unique and tumultuous approach to reform in Egypt and addresses

the effects of the implementation of neoliberal policy tools. These tools included privatization, price

liberalization, deregulation, and land reform in both urban and rural areas. Based on these effects, this

analysis will argue that the benefits accrued by the political-economic elite created opportunities for

new patronage networks that upheld elite economic privilege through the process of liberalization

while a wide swath of Egyptians suffered the loss of limited privileges and protections from the state

established by Nasr and upheld by his successors. Consequently, the socialist-statist ‘social …

Moral Hazards And Negative Externalities Of Lifesaving Programs: How Naloxone Access Laws And Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Affect Hiv Transmission, Jeremy Horn

CMC Senior Theses

This paper looks at naloxone access laws and prescription drug monitering programs and see how these programs affect HIV transmission and drug overdose deaths. Using an OLS regression I find that NAL reduces HIV and increases overdose deaths. I also find reducing the number of drug prescriptions increase HIV and overdose deaths because users switch to intravenous methods.

The Political Economy Of State Minimum Wage Laws And Legislator Voting Behavior, Sophia Helland

CMC Senior Theses

The Median Voter Theorem is a key concept in political economy, one that has been tested numerous times in the literature. However, it remains unclear the extent to which legislators respond to the needs of their district on a bill-by-bill basis. This paper seeks to understand the role of ideology and of local economic pressures that a state legislator faces when deciding how to vote on minimum wage legislation. Although some papers have examined legislator voting behavior on specific issues, this paper uses state legislatures and minimum wage bills to innovate on this existing literature in two key ways. First, …

The Noxious Market Of Division 1 College Football, Bryan Carlen

CMC Senior Theses

This paper is made up of four sections. The first will explain Satz’ framework for identifying and treating noxious markets, as well as how it was developed, and the second will make the case for viewing D1 football as a labor market. The second section will lay out who’s involved, what their incentives are, and what they must do to earn these incentives. The third section will then apply Satz’ framework to the market at hand, as well as address a gap in her theory regarding her concept of weak agency. The paper will then conclude with policy guidelines that, …

Buying Influence? An Analysis Of The Political And Economic Impacts Of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment In The European Union, Ethan Kable

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the economic and political impacts of the recent influx of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into the European Union (EU). I consider the ways in which EU perceptions of Chinese OFDI have evolved over the course of the past decade as well as what attempts the EU has made at an institutional level to address challenges posed by Chinese investment. I contend that despite institutional efforts to respond to these perceived challenges – namely losing a technological edge, security concerns, and unreciprocated market access – Chinese OFDI in the EU has had a divisive effect. Not …

Inheritance And Financial Health: The Correlation Between Intergenerational Wealth Transfers And Income Levels Of Personal Bankruptcies, Benjamin D. Kahn

CMC Senior Theses

This paper describes the correlations between intergenerational wealth transfers, or IWTs, and income of households in bankruptcy as existing research does not address any linkage between the two events. The effect that inheritances, trust payments, and lump sum gifts have on personal finances will impact the millions of Americans who will receive such transfers during the “Great Wealth Transfer” of the coming decades. I use bankruptcy data from the Federal Judicial Center’s Integrated Database, or IDB, and income data from the University of Michigan’s Panel Survey of Income Dynamics, or PSID, to produce a dataset that contains average IWT values …

Is There Racial Bias In Officiating Nba Games?, Kyle Gaisano

CMC Senior Theses

Racial discrimination has not only been an issue in policing and in the labor market among others, but also it is a growing and contentious concern in professional sports leagues. This paper uses data from the 2017-18 and the 2018-19 NBA seasons to find evidence of racial bias and market inefficiencies in the context of sports betting markets. We find that although the results only weakly support this, there is some evidence of racial bias in the league. This is because it was found that sports betting companies tend to price in race-related information into the betting odds.

Exchange Rate And Cost Of Credit Fluctuations In Ghana Before And After Inflation Targeting Framework, Patrick Glavee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fluctuations in exchange rate and cost of credit affect most economies in the world. The problem arises with the uncertainty it generates and the challenges it poses to the economy. The volatility of the exchange rate has been studied extensively in the extant literature, but the problem continues to persist. This paper therefore investigates whether inflation targeting framework influences the exchange rate and cost of credit in Ghana using data from February 2001 to March 2019. Using vector autoregressive model and vector error correction model, the study reveals that the exchange rate situation improves in both the short and long …

Drug Policy: The Effect Of Medical Marijuana On Opioid Consumption During The Us Opioid Epidemic, Jonathon David Knudson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The introduction and subsequent over-prescribing of extended-release opioids in the United States resulted in a large rise in both addiction and overdose. Recognition and regulation of these new drugs as addictive did little to control the supply of opioids to Americans while Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and Abuse Deterrent reformulations had limited effect to control the problem. Simultaneously, states like Michigan and Rhode Island legalized medical marijuana through voter referenda opening the door for a new approach to pain management. Recent research has found medical marijuana has proven an effective treatment for conditions such as chronic pain and PTSD and …

Inference In Threshold Models, Yoonseok Lee, Yulong Wang

Center for Policy Research

This paper develops new statistical inference methods for the parameters in threshold regression models. In particular, we develop a test for homogeneity of the threshold parameter and a test for linear restrictions on the regression coefficients. The tests are built upon a transformed partial-sum process after re-ordering the observations based on the rank of the threshold variable, which recasts the crosssectional threshold problem into the time-series structural break analogue. The asymptotic distributions of the test statistics are derived using this novel approach, and the finite sample properties are studied in Monte Carlo simulations. We apply the new tests to the …

The Determinants Of Sectoral Employment In Nepal, Thaman P. Bastola

Masters Theses

This paper uses the data from 1991 to 2019 to analyze the determinants of employment in agriculture, industrial, and service sectors of Nepal. The data are gotten from the world development indicators (WDI), human development indicators (HDI) and Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB). The results show that significant determinants of employment in Nepal areeducation, health, population growth, interest rate, inflation rate and political conflict.The education, health, population growth, and inflation are inversely related to the employment of agricultural sectors employment. Likewise, the industrial sector employment is positively affected by the health and political conflict, and negatively affected by the level of …

Financial Development In Developing Countries, Obinna Franklin Ezeibekwe

Masters Theses

What are the economic, political, institutional, socio-cultural, and geographical determinants of financial development in developing countries? This paper uses the two-way fixed effects (with clustered standard errors) and annual panel data from 1980 to 2018 for 69 developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, East and South Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to address this question. The principal component analysis is employed to construct a financial development index based on three financial development indicators. This study builds on previous studies by introducing new potential determinants of financial development, such as the perception of corruption, and by …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Investment Efficiency: Evidence From An Emerging Asian Market, Ming-Te Lee

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The purpose of this paper is to test opposing views of the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and investment efficiency in a major Asian emerging stock market. The empirical results show that CSR significantly mitigates investment inefficiency among Taiwanese firms. This finding is consistent with the notion that socially responsible Taiwanese firms have fewer agency problems and lower information asymmetry, thus reducing investment inefficiency. The empirical results also show that CSR has a more pronounced effect in mitigating investment inefficiency for Taiwanese firms with more effective corporate governance. In particular, due to the mandatory preparation of CSR reporting, CSR …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Earnings Management: Evidence From Controversial And Non-Controversial Sectors In Asia, Eugene Burgos Mutuc, Jen-Sin Lee, Fu-Sheng Tsai

DLSU Business & Economics Review

In this study, we investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on earnings management through discretionary accruals and real-activities decisions, in light of the increasing attention and engagement of firms from different sectors. This study contemplates on non-financial Asian firms from controversial and non-controversial sectors with 889 and 3,017 firm-year observations from 2011 to 2017. The findings reveal that Asian firms likely use a mix of accrual-based earnings management (AEM) and real-activities earnings management (REM) as a strategy to manipulate reported earnings. In terms of sector classifications, managers from controversial sectors exhibit higher opportunistic behavior than managers from non-controversial …

The Effects Of External Stakeholder Pressure On Csr Disclosure: Evidence From Indonesia, Anisa Ramadhini Trianaputri, Desi Adhariani, Chaerul D. Djakman

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study examines the effect of external stakeholder pressure on the extent of social and environmental disclosure or corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. Several studies have examined the impact of internal stakeholder pressure (e.g., ownership or board of directors’ structure) and corporate characteristics on CSR disclosure, but there has been little attention focused on the role of external stakeholders. Therefore, this research seeks to examine the influence on the extent of CSR disclosure by four external stakeholder groups: customer, creditor, auditor, and media. A total of 327 annual reports produced by 109 manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange …

On Extreme Perception Bias, Emerico Habacon Aguilar, Klarizze Martin Puzon, Imelda Revilla Molina

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This note investigates perception bias: To what extent do individual opinions confound reality? We estimated the relative gap between self-declared estimates and real data. With a sample of respondents from Laguna, Philippines, we asked about the prevalence of diabetes and smartphone usage. We observed a trend of judgment miscalibration. Responses exhibit significant deviation from facts; for example, inaccuracies can go as high as seven times the real value. Especially for estimates on smartphone ownership, bootstrapped quantile regression models showed that perception bias is associated with age.

Japanese And Filipino College Students As Consumers: Does Country Of Origin Affect Their Purchase Intent?, Luz Suplico Jeong, Reynaldo Bautista Jr., Takanori Osaki

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The marketing literature shows that consumers evaluate and buy products based on the country of origin. The impact of the country of origin (COO) on consumers, especially college students who influence demand in global markets, is becoming increasingly important due to advances in information technology. There are studies that show that COO can directly affect purchase intent without mediator variables. However, this study shows that COO does not have a direct effect on purchase intent. COO can only affect the purchase intent of Japanese and Filipino consumers if perceived product quality is used as a mediator variable. In the case …

Gender Gap Pada Tingkat Partisipasi Kerja Di Provinsi Dki Jakarta, Azwar Anas, Maria Goreti Arie Damayanti

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This research aims to decompose the employment participation rate to explain gender gap in DKI Jakarta Province in three periods (1995, 2005, and 2015). Determinant of employment participation rate of men and women was estimated by probit regression model and marginal effect. Non-linear decomposition technique used to analyze the source of gender gap. The results show that the main cause of gender gap comes from structural factors in the labor market (discrimination). The value of the gender gap in 20 years has decreased, in 1995, 2005, and 2015 it was 40,82%; 39,17%; and 29,34% respectively. It shows that the discrimnination …

Pendanaan Dalam Pencapaian Akses Universal Air Minum Di Indonesia, Ratria Anggraini Sudarsono, Nurkholis Nurkholis

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

RPJMN 2015–2019 mandates universal access of drinking water in 2019. This study analyzes the policy using panel data regression. Random Effect Model (REM ) shows funding, per capita Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP ), and population density explain the water coverage of 23.57%, while the rest are explained by variables outside the model. Gross Regional Domestic Product (PDRB) per capita has the biggest impact on coverage, followed by Population Density. On funding, central government’s budget significantly has the highest impact, followed by local government’s budget (APBD), while others aren’t significant. Investment has positive effect, but high per capita investment may …