Economics Commons^™

Part 3: Splish - Splash - Cash: Swimming In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads is known for its relationship with water. For some, it is too much water in the wrong place at the wrong time. For others, it is how water can transform lives. Hampton Roads is home to several premier swimming organizations, and Hampton is opening a state-of-the-art aquatics facility. We explore how swimming is intertwined with the history of the region and the economic impact of the sport on the economy and lives of the region’s resident

Part 2: The Rent Is Too Damn High: Housing In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Is Hampton Roads an affordable place to live? At first glance, median rents and housing values are below those of the closest major metropolitan areas. Comparing housing costs to household income yields a different conclusion: more than 1 in 3 households in Hampton Roads paid more than 30% of their income for housing and 1 in 7 households paid more than 50% of their income for housing. In this chapter, we explore housing affordability in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and the United States and ask what the region can do to make housing more affordable.

Part 5: Strangers In A Strange Land: Finding Refuge In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

In 2021, a record breaking 90 million people were forcibly displaced, fleeing war, violence, human rights violations, and persecution. In early 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added to this toll, pushing the estimated number of refugees past the 100- million- person mark This chapter explores how all of these developments are affecting Hampton Roads, which has received more than 300 Afghans and other political refugees over the past eighteen months.

Part 6: Perhaps I Won't Go To Law School After All: Lawyers In Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

While movies and television shows portray lawyers as members of high society, with expensive cars and tastes, the reality in Hampton Roads is grittier. Between 2005 and 2021, lawyers’ real income in the region declined by more than 25%. In this chapter, we explore the supply of lawyers in Hampton Roads and whether we are producing too many lawyers for economic conditions in the region. We ask what the future may hold for the legal profession in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and the nation.

Part 4: Does Hampton Roads Have Enough Nurses?, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

In 2021, nurses ranked again as the most trusted profession in the United States. Yet, even though many Americans view nurses favorably, nurses have been the target of conspiracy theories, verbal abuse, and yes, physical violence. As more nurses report symptoms of burnout and some are quitting the profession entirely, we explore the coming shortage of nurses in Hampton Roads, Virginia and the United States and ask what factors limit the supply of nurses in the region.

Miss Lebanon: The Digital Age’S Way Of Maintaining The Gender Gap, Ali Badereddine

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Descriptive Model Of Economic Development, Thomas O. Armstrong

Pennsylvania Economic Review

A descriptive model of economic development is a long-run framework for enhancing production factors through a supportable economic development infrastructure contributing and exploiting physical and human technological innovations. When supportable, the developmental impact results in a per capita increase with demand for goods and services changes as income increases. The structure of the labor shifts to a greater skilled and technological demanded workforce therefore contributing greater innovation in a reinforced economic development model. Costs and regulations, quality of life, innovation or competitiveness, and constitutional/institutional framework underlie an economic development infrastructure focusing upon Pennsylvania for any gaps to supportability.

Income Inequality In Pennsylvania, 1988-2018: Estimates From Taxable Income Bracket Data, David A. Latzko

Pennsylvania Economic Review

Income inequality among Pennsylvania taxpayers has worsened over the past 30 years. Estimates of the Gini coefficient for total income made from tax bracket data compiled by the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue indicate that measured inequality increased by 7.5 percent between 1988 and 2018. While wages account for the large majority of income inequality in Pennsylvania, the major drivers of the documented increased inequality in taxpayer income since 1988 have been rising inequality in income from dividends including mutual fund distributions and net business profits.

Courting American Capital: Public Relations And The Business Of Selling Ivorian Capitalism In The U.S., 1960-1980, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

This chapter is an invitation to reimagine the roles assigned to players in the history of capitalism on the global stage. It challenges aspects of the historiography of capitalism in the twentieth century, which tend to center on historical actors and institutions of the Global North. Even when actors in the Global South are discussed, it is usually to portray them as passive victims of an intractable system. By focusing on the Ivory Coast and its economic diplomacy toward the United States, I seek to destabilize this general picture.

The Evolution Of Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Health Outcomes, Megan T. Hoang

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Health disparities between different racial/ethnic groups in the United States are substantial. When reviewed across an extensive body of literature, these disparities have been demonstrated to persist even when socioeconomic status, geographic region, health conditions, treatment methods, and patient access-related variables are controlled. This ultimately leads to higher mortality rates among minority patients, making disparities in health a highly prevalent issue. However, the literature suggests that while racial and ethnic disparities in health have been widely examined, research documenting the evolution of these changes over time is lacking. This motivates the research questions: (1) How has the impact of racial …

An Analysis Of The 2014 Medicaid Expansion On New York And California's Maternal Mortality Rate, Reshanna Jagroo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis seeks to investigate the 2014 Medicaid expansion’s effect on maternal mortality rates for New York and California. The CDC reported in 2019 that maternal mortality rates have been increasing. These findings are concerning for mothers and are a problem for developed nations like the United States with improved healthcare. Furthermore, women of color are disproportionately affected relative to white women. Previous research has indicated that healthcare expansions positively affect decreasing death rates among pregnant women.

In this study, I investigate how increased access to healthcare through the 2014 Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act affects maternal mortality …

Worker Cooperatives And Globalization: A Case Study Of Fagor Electrodométicos Utilizing Game Theory, Bradley C. Williams

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The internationally recognized and flagship worker cooperative Fagor Electrodomésticos was founded in 1956 and was heralded as a success story before declaring bankruptcy in 2013. In this thesis, I examine the existing literature regarding worker cooperatives and provide historical background on Fagor Electrodomésticos. I then focus on one of the factors credited by the literature as contributing to its failure and other worker cooperatives broadly, the internal decision-making process. To analyze the role of the internal decision-making process I develop a game-theoretic model that sheds light on the dynamics of this process. This model contains three actors each of whom …

Effects Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Gambling Behavior And Revenues: A Multi-State Analysis, Xiaoling W. Sundberg

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individual gambling behavior by testing whether ticket sales and revenues in the multi-state parimutuel PowerBall and MegaMillions lotteries decreased or increased between the pre-COVID and COVID periods in Florida, Texas, and Colorado. Two competing hypotheses are investigated. First, gambling activity may have decreased during COVID either due to increased risk-aversion induced by the pandemic, negative changes in household income from the loss of employment, or a combination of the two. Second, gambling activity may have increased during COVID either due to increased willingness to take risks, substitution of income previously …

Choice Of Accounting Major Amongst Minority Students As A Function Of Socioeconomic Status, Sara Mohammed

Honors Undergraduate Theses

I tested the relationship between self-efficacy and socioeconomic status and how the combination can affect major choices in African American students. I used the social cognitive career theory and process mediation models to analyze the results of different variables. At the University of Central Florida, the participants were 1200 students in the introduction to financial accounting course. They completed a survey that measured various social barriers, social supports, and self-efficacy. Implications of future research in the context of accounting fields are discussed.

Determinants Of Bond Market Development In Emerging And Developing Economies, Mohanad Alsadoun

CGU Theses & Dissertations

A study of local currency bond market development determinants in Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) is considered important when most EMEs and developing countries are shifting from issuing long-term debt securities in foreign currency denominations to their respective local currencies. This dissertation discusses key factors that influence the development of the local currency bond market (LCBM) in emerging developing economies. This study uses three different models to examine the importance of various factors. A total of 26 countries have been examined, and their data revealed several interesting results. The results show that larger economic size, larger banking systems, greater trade openness, …

Physiological Synchrony Predicts Cooperative Behavior With High Stakes, Lena Arai

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Can subconscious bodily responses explain our natural tendency to be trusting and trustworthy towards a stranger? I address this question by conducting, to my knowledge, the first study of physiological synchrony (PS) between pairs of partners playing the trust game face-to-face. Participants were given the choice to send $0, $40, $80, or $120 to their partner; these choices were categorized as showing no, low, medium, and high trust, respectively. Participants were endowed with a more considerable sum of money ($120) than many other trust games (Johnson & Mislin, 2011) to encourage participants to perceive their decisions to have significant consequences, …

Essays On Crime And Law, Morgan Elaine Stockham

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Civil law and public policy often are related to crime in complex and interesting ways. The following dissertation explores the intersections of divorce law and public policy with criminal outcomes. Within my first chapter, we attempt to identify the causal effect of wages on a prosecutor’s effort by studying an exogenous salary increase in New York. We measure the performance by the likelihood that a conviction is upheld when appealed. If the efficiency wage theory explains behavior, then the exogenous wage shock should entice better performance. Alternatively, if individuals who hold office are motivated primarily by an intrinsic motivations rather …

Essays In Behavioral Economics And Neuroeconomics, Rana Sulaiman Alogaily

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three unrelated chapters on Behavioral Economics and Neuroeconomics, all of which are on different topics. Chapter 1: Willingness to Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19 and Reasons for Hesitancy Among U.S Residents. Chapter 2: Testosterone Administration Induces A Red Shift in Democrats. Chapter 3: Neurophysiologic Predictors of Mood in the Elderly.

Three Essays In Law And Economics: Consequences And Formation Of Legal Rules In Other Markets, Minjae Yun

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, I study the consequences and formation of legal rules in the “non-traditional” markets to show that non-traditional markets are fundamental to a society’s functioning. The first chapter shows how legal participants strategically behave based on judicial disqualification. The second chapter examines the unintended consequence of a decarceration policy in the criminal-justice system by linking the ex-criminal re-entry issue and homelessness. Lastly, the third chapter concentrates on how the tenure of elected law enforcement agents contributes to the jail-crowding environment, leveraging term limits imposed on local county elected officials.

The first chapter examines the use and impact of …

An Exponential Formula For Random Variables Generated By Multiple Brownian Motions, Maximilian Lawrence Baroi

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The frozen operator has been used to develop Dyson-series like representations for random variables generated by classical Brownian motion, Lévy processes and fractional Brownian with Hurst index greater than 1/2.The relationship between the conditional expectation of a random variable (or fractional conditional expectation in the case of fractional Brownian motion)and that variable's Dyson-series like representation is the exponential formula. These results had not yet been extended to either fractional Brownian motion with Hurst index less than 1/2, or d-dimensional Brownian motion. The former is still out of reach, but we hope our review of stochastic integration for fractional Brownian motion …

Improving Targeting Of Farmers For Enrollment In Agri-Environmental Programs, Joshua M. Duke, Robert J. Johnston, Amy L. Shober, Zhongyuan Liu

Economics

Agricultural cost-share research and planning tend to focus on one program at a time, and hence overlook additional efficiencies that might be obtained by considering the possibility that enrollment decisions are related across different programs. Models of multiple-program participation decisions enable these relationships to be considered as part of conditional enrollment predictions, providing more complete and accurate understanding of enrollment behavior. Analysis of data from farmer surveys in Maryland and Ohio show complementary drivers across program participation. Results are consistent with economies of scale and/or scope among different agri-environmental programs. The data also show the gains in prediction accuracy when …

The Relationship Between Groom Price And Parents’ Investment In Their Daughters’ Human Capital, Mahjuja Taznin

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This paper analyzes the relationship between a daughter’s education and the price her family pays for a groom in India. I use an Indian national school-latrine-construction initiative as a policy instrument to address the problem of endogeneity between parental spending on education and groomprice. I find that a woman with an additional year of education marries a more educated groom and pays on average an extra 6 percent for her groomprice. A woman pays extra for each additional year of her groom’s education, resulting in the total effect of a woman with more education paying more groomprice. I do not …

A Profit-Based View Of Economic Granularity In The Perspective Of Market Competition, Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This paper studies Gabaix’s granular hypothesis from an analytical angle in lights of profits and market competition. By establishing the profit pictures of the initial firms of an emerging market and the incumbent firms of a maturing market, it is shown that consumers’ evolving preference help intensify market competition and encourage new firms’ entry into an established oligopoly market. With this profit-based logic, among other results established are precise conditions under which Gabaix’s granular hypothesis is either surely true or definitely not true, followed by relevant empirical confirmations. At the end, several important open questions are posed for future research.

Missouri Soybean Exports And The Democratizing Market Force, David D. Hammons

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

A commonly held assumption of America’s post-Cold War place in the world is that prolonged contact with American capitalism and democracy will lead to the adoption of these systems in all nations that participate in international trade. This paper attempts to verify or disprove that assumption by examining a specific traded commodity between two specific nations, the institutions that support this trade, and the people actively participating in it. The growth of soybean exports from the state of Missouri provides this vehicle for examining the trade history between the United States of America and China, and provides evidence that disproves …

Implications For The Mainstreaming Of Fair Trade: Applying The Eras Of Fair Trade To The Product Life Cycle Theory, Kimberlee Josephson

Pennsylvania Economic Review

By drawing attention to the notion of trade-based development, Fair Trade has contributed to the awareness of how market transactions can intersect with social issues. Fair Trade serves as an innovative supply chain that engages the world’s ‘poor’ in the trading system and it can be thought of as a development project that has evolved from a social movement to a social enterprise. The commercialization of activist efforts, however, faces the same pressures as the commercialization of any product and despite Fair Trade being founded for a purpose rather than a profit, this sector is embedded within market-based systems and …

Exploring The Effect Of Three-Dimensional Television Advertising On Brand Attitudes: The Roles Of Human Factors, Involvement, Presence, And Flow, Young Bae, Michelle Gordon, Chang-Dae Ham, Jong Woo Jun

Pennsylvania Economic Review

This research explores how consumers process three-dimensional television advertising. It examines the hierarchical relationships among human factors, involvement, presence, flow, and attitudes toward the advertised brand by employing a quasi-experimental design incorporating a real three-dimensional television commercial. This study finds that human factors, i.e., physical fatigue and the inconvenience of wearing three-dimensional glasses, are negatively associated with situational involvement. Situational involvement is in turn positively related to attitudes toward the brand in the three-dimensional television advertisement. Interestingly, feelings of presence significantly mediate the relationship between involvement and attitudes toward the brand, but the flow state does not. Additionally, the physical …

Why Do Rich People Not Retire?, Xiya Li

Scripps Senior Theses

Work and leisure are central to the human condition. Scholars from many fields have tried to understand why Americans work so much. Many people believe that when they have enough money, they will retire. However, many people are not willing to retire even if they have enough money to do so. Most people who do not have enough money to retire do not even get any amount of leisure from their jobs. If the view that enough money directly leads to retirement is wrong, then it is time to reconsider using this logic to think of the possibility of retiring. …

Analyzing College On-Campus Residency Agglomeration Benefits And Their Impact On Student Outcomes, Emily Pedace

Scripps Senior Theses

Economies of agglomeration have been shown to increase productivity in part due to technological/ knowledge spillovers. I look at public colleges and universities in California and Texas to examine if students living on-campus can generate enough agglomeration to boost productivity in the students. I use a unique data set with information collected from Common Data Sets, self-reported by the schools. When using an OLS regression with the averages of these variables, higher averages of on-campus residence is correlated to higher average graduation and retention rates for Texas and California. When using a fixed effects panel regression, I find changes in …

County Walkability And Small Business Receipts, Talia Perluss

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the correlation between county walkability and small business receipts, as well as other possible demographic variables that could explain the success of small businesses, by using a fixed-effect panel regression model. Using county-level data in the years 2012 and 2017, this paper finds that there is a significant correlation between an increase in walkability and an increase in receipts. When running the fixed-effect regressions, this paper found that there is a moderately high positive correlation between walkability and per capita income, suggesting that the effects of an increase in walkability may also capture the effects of an …

The Economic And Social Decline Of Women's Colleges Across The United States, Alexandra Isabelle Rivasplata

Scripps Senior Theses

Women have been attending college at a greater rate than men for several decades. However, women’s colleges have been shutting down or transitioning to coeducation at incredibly high rates. Literature demonstrates the importance of women’s colleges due to their benefits on students’ future career success and psychological wellbeing. However, there is less research concerning the decline of women's colleges, and none regarding the economic and quantitative factors influencing their closures. Using a newly constructed, completely original data set, I perform a logistic regression and analyze variables related to the survival of women’s colleges. I find a high statistical significance of …