Economics Commons^™

The Perceived Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence, Ross Murray

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used by millions of consumers in their daily lives. Although this technology is providing convenience, information, and instant gratification the underlying moral framework that AI uses remains largely unknown to the consumers of the technology. Two of the mostly widely used moral approaches (deontology and teleology), and their implications for AI, are discussed. The context of chatbots that use AI is examined, specifically exploring Amazon’s Alexa. The context illustrates the issue of the latent moral frameworks that AI technologies use when interacting with consumers or the environment. Although AI holds the promise of many potential …

The Complex Challenges Of Protecting Consumers, Deniz Atik, Nikhilesh Dholakia

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Slippery Fish: Enforcing Regulation When Agents Learn And Adapt, Andres Gonzalez Lira, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Discussion Papers

Attempts to curb undesired behavior through regulation gets complicated when agents can adapt to circumvent enforcement. We test a model of enforcement with learning and adaptation, by auditing vendors selling illegal fish in Chile in a randomized controlled trial, and tracking them daily using mystery shoppers. Conducting audits on a predictable schedule and (counter-intuitively) at high frequency is less effective, as agents learn to take advantage of loopholes. A consumer information campaign proves to be almost as cost-effective and curbing illegal sales, and obviates the need for complex monitoring and policing. The Chilean government subsequently chooses to scale up this …

Gas Stations And The Wealth Divide: Analyzing Spatial Correlations Between Wealth And Fuel Branding, Jean-Carl Ende

Dissertations and Theses

The gasoline refining and sales industry has many peculiarities. One such oddity is a difference in sales, distribution and pricing between branded and unbranded gasolines. Although fuels leave the refinery a uniform commodity, branding determines entirely different marketing and pricing schemes, with entirely different volatility and risk premiums. In order to determine if this volatility is felt evenly across all wealth demographics, this study uses t-tests and CART models to analyze income, home value and other wealth-based indicators in the areas surrounding gas stations, to determine if there is a correlation between branding and wealth. The results show the wealth …

Scientific And Methodogical Aspects Of The Formation Of An Innovative Set Of Services, Dilnoza Davron Kizi Djurayeva

Scientific reports of Bukhara State University

Introduction. This article considers the methodological aspects of innovative development and research of the service sector at the current stage of economic development, scientifically based proposals and recommendations for the balanced development and diversification of service enterprises, improving the efficiency of the service sector of the economy. Methodological issues of improving the practical mechanisms of application of innovative technologies and tools in the field have been studied. Research methods. Ensuring the rapid growth of the service sector in the country, further support of entrepreneurship and the creation of new jobs for the population, as well as the balanced development and …

Human Capital And Black-White Earnings Gaps, 1996–2017, Owen Thompson

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper estimates the contribution of human capital to the Black-white earnings gap in three separate samples of men spanning from 1966 through 2017, using both educational attainment and performance on standardized tests to measure human capital. There are three main findings. First, the magnitude of reductions in the Black-white earnings gap that occur after controlling for human capital has become much larger over time, suggesting a growing contribution of human capital to Black-white earnings disparities. Second, these increases are almost entirely due to growth in the returns to human capital, which magnify the impact of any racial differences in …

Demand Forecasting For Lucky Cement, Muhammad Arsalan Rashid

CBER Conference

As we know that demand is the Quantities of a good or service that people are ready to buy at various prices within some given time, other factors besides price held constant I tried to forecast the sales for next years. I removed seasonality factors and applied other determinants to predict the demand. By using values of independent variables in my Regression, the Annual Sales of Lucky Cement for period 2020-2021 is found to be around 7.9 Million Tons.

Finances, Depressive Symptoms, Destructive Conflict, And Coparenting Among Lower-Income, Unmarried Couples: A Two-Wave, Cross-Lagged Analysis, Melissa A. Curran, Xiaomin Li, Melissa Barnett, Olena Kopstynska, Alexa B. Chandler, Ashley B. Lebaron

Faculty Publications

Following from an adapted family stress model (FSM), we used two-wave, secondary data from the Building Strong Families project, focusing on 4,424 primarily lower-income, unmarried couples expecting their first child together. We used cross-lagged analyses to test the directionality of the associations among financial difficulties, depressive symptoms, destructive interparental conflict, and coparenting alliance for both fathers and mothers when children were 15 and 36 months old. Two of the three hypotheses provided support for the FSM. First, destructive conflict predicted coparenting alliance (but not the reverse). Specifically, higher destructive conflict at 15 months for both fathers and mothers predicted lower …

Community Supported Enterprises – Preparing For The Future, Charlotte Narjes

Cornhusker Economics

The Bayard Grocery store made headline news in Nebraska the end of January with the announcement of its upcoming closure. Unfortunately, a grocery store closing is not uncommon in Nebraska or across the United States. A North Dakota study from the state’s association of rural electric cooperatives in 2017 found that in communities with 2,100 people or fewer, there are 98 full-service grocery stores, down from 137 in 2014. In addition, A PEW Trusts article in October 2019, further addresses the nationwide challenge of rural grocery store closures. Challenges include decreased population, competition from superstores (i.e., Walmart), and rural food …

Cbe Waves Newsletter: March 2021, Various

Newsletters

• BROAD CITIZEN LOBBY to PROMOTE OCEAN CLIMATE ACTION;
• WRITING WORKSHOP for OCEAN AND CLIMATE ADVOCACY;
• OCEANS IN NATIONAL INCOME ACCOUNTS 5th. Intl. Symposium Wednesday-Thursday, March 24-25, 2021;
• HOW THE BLUE ECONOMY can HELP SOLVE the CLIMATE CRISIS;
• OPTIONS for SEA LEVEL RISE ADAPTATION on WEST CLIFF DRIVE;
• ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABILITY SPRING LECTURES & FILM EVENT,

Regional Economic Impacts Of China's High-Speed Rail Development And Its Institutional Challenges, Hankun Zhao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This article studies the impact of connecting to high-speed rail (HSR) network on regional development and the replication and sustainability of China’s GIUR system, aiming to summarize the experience of China’s HSR, which can provide several policy references for developing countries. This article conducts two research: (1) explore the impact of connecting to HSR network on the urban industrial structure, urban creativity and urban-rural income gap of cities in different regions and cities with heterogeneous locations along the HSR lines in the long and short term; (2) explore the advantages and disadvantages of the Government-Industry-University-Research (GIUR) system in the process …

Retrospective Voting Versus Risk-Aversion Voting, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

According to retrospective voting a bad economy hurts the incumbent party and vice versa. According to risk-aversion voting a bad economy favors the Democrats over the Republicans and vice versa. This paper provides a test of both theories and rejects risk-aversion voting.

Retrospective Voting Versus Risk-Aversion Voting: A Comment On Pástor And Veronesi (2020), Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

According to retrospective voting, a bad economy hurts the incumbent party and vice versa. According to risk-aversion voting as discussed in Pástor and Veronesi (2020), high risk aversion favors the Democrats over the Republicans and vice versa. If high risk aversion is associated with a bad economy, then risk-aversion voting implies that a bad economy favors the Democrats and vice versa. The two theories thus have different implications for the Democrats. This paper tests both theories under the assumption that high risk aversion is associated with a bad economy. The results provide no support for risk-aversion voting under this assumption.

Architecture, Social Norms, And Their Economic Consequences In Japan, Koichi Kume

Japanese Society and Culture

Law and market mechanisms presuppose that people are rational. With the diversification of lifestyles and values, however, there is a limit to appealing only to economic rationality to implement social policies. In this study we focus on architecture as a policy instrument that does not presuppose people’s rationality and empirically analyze the effect on economic consequences in Japan. Specifically, we examine the relationship between bank transfers and poverty reduction, and that between statues (Sontoku Ninomiya, Jizo) and labor norms. The results suggest that the use of architecture in policy can improve policy effectiveness regardless of people’s irrationality and heterogeneous preferences.

Paso Del Norte Economic Indicator Review, March, Hunt Institute For Global Competitiveness

Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Econometric Analysis Of Japan’S Roadside Stations Provided With The New Type Grants, Ryusaku Matsuo, Mitoshi Yamaguchi

Japanese Society and Culture

The number of Roadside Stations in Japan is increasing rapidly; it increased from 103 in 1993 to 1173 in 2020. From 2007, two new subsidies were given to select Roadside Stations. In this paper, we discuss the endogenous development and the role of the Roadside Stations therein. We also consider the various models we constructed to estimate how subsidies contributed to the business of the Roadside Stations. We estimate the interrelationship between sales and the factors that influence sales amount using a simultaneous equation model. An econometric analysis shows that parking space and sales share a loop (mutual and reciprocal) …

Population Trends In The Area Where Nuclear Power Plants Are Located Before And After The Fukushima Accident And Their Impact On The Estimated Population, Takeshi Inoue

Japanese Society and Culture

Comparing the population trends in the areas where nuclear power plants are located with those in the neighborhood reveals it is declining and more so in the former than in the neighborhood. The cause is thought to be that the nuclear power plant was shut down for a long time after the earthquake and the Fukushima accident. However, such a decline is not necessarily due to the decrease in employment opportunities of the electric industry itself, but from electric-related industries. Regarding the estimated future population, the percentage of nuclear-located areas with the possibility of disappearing as defined by the Regional …

Isolating The Effect Of Injunctive Norms On Conservation Behavior: New Evidence From A Field Experiment In California, Syon Bhanot

Economics Faculty Works

Social norms messaging campaigns are increasingly used to influence human behavior, with social science research generally finding that they have modest but meaningful effects. One aspect of these campaigns in practice has been the inclusion of injunctive norms messaging, designed to convey a social judgment about one’s behavior (often in the form of encouraging or discouraging language, or a visual smiley or frowny face). While some prominent research has provided support for the use of such messaging as a tool for positive behavior change, causal evidence on the effect of injunctive norms messaging as a motivator (as opposed to just …

Occupancy, Oil Prices, And Stock Returns: Evidence From The U.S. Airline Industry, Andre V. Mollick, Md Ruhul Amin

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This paper examines whether occupancy of seats affects stock returns of airline companies and how this relationship is affected by WTI oil prices. Our approach combines revenues (occupancy) and costs (oil prices) for 33 U.S. airline companies from 1990 to 2019. Using travel capacity utilization data from U.S. carriers at monthly frequency and exploiting fixed-effects regression models, we document a positive relation between occupancy and stock returns, which is attenuated by oil prices. The role of oil becomes larger with asymmetries: the effects of oil prices are higher when moving up than down. Airline stocks always respond by more than …

Indispensable Homes In Third World Countries: Constructing A Home In Tijuana, Mexico, Myles Hubers

Construction Management

This project was created to explore a way in which poverty around the world could ultimately be reduced. The way in which this project intends to demonstrate a method used to reduce poverty is by building a home for a specific family in Tijuana, Mexico. In doing so, this home will act as a model home for a manual, comprised of steps that should be taken to construct similar homes throughout any third world country. The goal of this project is to highlight the importance of poverty in the world while also creating a buildable solution in order to reduce …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 5, Number 3, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton, Ana Gutierrez Zubiate, Ignacio Santana

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Change In Outbreak Epicentre And Its Impact On The Importation Risks Of Covid-19 Progression: A Modelling Study, Oyelola A. Adegboye, Adeshina I. Adekunle, Anton Pak, Ezra Gayawan, Denis H. Y. Leung, Diana P. Rojas, Emma S. Mcbryde, Damon P. Eisen

Research Collection School Of Economics

Background: The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) that was first detected in the city of Wuhan, China has now spread to every inhabitable continent, but now the attention has shifted from China to other epicentres. This study explored early assessment of the influence of spatial proximities and travel patterns from Italy on the further spread of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. Methods: Using data on the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and air travel data between countries, we applied a stochastic meta-population model to estimate the global spread of COVID-19. Pearson's correlation, semi-variogram, and Moran's Index were used to …

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

A Critical Look At The Failure Of Mainstream Economics, Joseph M. Dipoli

Journal of Global Business Insights

Book Review

Foundations of real-world economics: What every economics student needs to know (2nd ed.), by John Komlos, New York, Routledge, 2019, 306 pp., $42.95 (Paperback), ISBN 9781138296541.

Many people in the United States of America are dissatisfied with the outcomes of the economy and some are suggesting measures that seem socialistic. The time has come to recognize that mainstream economics as taught in our schools is not serving students at all. The research sharing platform of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) states that John Komlos’s textbook Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to …

Japanese Monetary Policy And Its Impact On Stock Market Implied Volatility During Pleasant And Unpleasant Weather, Marinela Adriana Finta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the effect of Japan’s Monetary Policy Meeting releases on the intraday dynamics of the Nikkei Stock Average Volatility Index and its futures during pleasant and unpleasant weather. We show that at the time of a monetary policy release when the temperature is pleasant, there is a significant decline in Japanese equities’ implied volatility and futures, which lasts for about 10 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively. This decline is longer and exhibits a greater variation when releases occur during cold days. Finally, we emphasize the achievable economic profits and losses, given the reaction of Nikkei VI futures to the …

The Influence Of Food Recommendations: Evidence From A Randomized Field Experiment, Kamal Bookwala, Caleb Gallemore, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres

ESI Working Papers

We report results from a randomized field experiment conducted at two food festivals. Our primary aim is to assess the impact of two types of recommendations commonly observed in food settings: most popular and chef’s choice. Subjects select a cupcake from a binary menu. The two options, offered by the same bakery, are the best seller in the bakery and the baker’s recommended cupcake. Our treatments manipulate whether the recommendation is disclosed in tandem with the cupcakes in the menu. We find that the most popular is the only recommendation that statistically significantly increased consumers’ demand relative to …

The Effects Of Income On Health: Evidence From Lottery Wins In Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We estimate the causal effects of household income on self-reported health status by exploiting random variations in the amount of lottery prizes won. We find that a S$10,000 (US$7,245) increase in income via lottery wins improves individuals’ health by a standard deviation of 0.18. As possible mechanisms, we find that lottery wins increase household consumption spending and improve overall life satisfaction, but do not change healthcare spending, labor supply, and risky health behavior. Previous studies, which focused on the health effects of lottery prizes in Western European countries with strong social safety nets, do not find positive effects other than …

The Role Of Macroeconomic And Policy Uncertainty In Density Forecast Dispersion, You Li, Anthony S. Tay

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore empirically the role of macroeconomic and policy uncertainty in explaining dispersion in professional forecasters’ density forecasts, and in explaining individual forecaster uncertainty (defined as the uncertainty expressed by individual forecasters in their density forecasts). We focus on US real output growth and inflation, using data from the Philadelphia Fed’s quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), 1992-2016. We find that dispersion in individual density forecasts is related to macroeconomic uncertainty, especially in longer horizon forecasts, but not policy or forecaster uncertainty. There is also little evidence that forecaster uncertainty reflects macroeconomic or policy uncertainty.

On Incentive Compatible, Individually Rational Public Good Provision Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper characterizes mechanisms satisfying incentive compatibility and individual rationality in the classical public good provision problem. Many papers in the literature obtain the results in the so-called standard model of ex ante identical agents with a continuous, closed interval of types. The main contribution of this paper is the characterization of the budget-surplus maximizing mechanism satisfying incentive compatibility and individual rationality (Theorem 1 for Bayesian implementation and Theorem 3 for dominant strategy implementation) that applies to a finite discretization over the standard model. Making use of the proposed budget-surplus maximizing mechanisms, we show that some known results do not …

Essays On Random Social Choice Theory, Soumyarup Sadhukhan Dr.

Doctoral Theses

The thesis covers an extreme point characterization of strategy-proof and unanimous probabilistic rules over binary restricted domains. It shows that every strategy-proof and unanimous probabilistic rule on a binary restricted domain has binary support, and is a probabilistic mixture of strategy-proof and unanimous deterministic rules. Examples of binary restricted domains are single-dipped domains, which are of interest when considering the location of public bads. We also provide an extension to infinitely many alternatives. It also discusses that a random rule on a top-connected single-peaked domain is unanimous and strategy-proof if and only if it is a random min-max rule. As …