Economics Commons^™

Policy Snapshot : Health Insurance Trends Among Child Care Educators, Sara Amadon

Straus Institute for Thriving Children & Families

This brief compares the health insurance status of child care educators in 2019 and 2024—spanning the COVID-19 pandemic and preceding 2026H.R.1’s implementation—to highlight shifting coverage patterns and state-level solutions to safeguard this essential workforce.

Zero-Sum Thinking, Meritocratic Beliefs, And Preferences For Basic Income And Universal Healthcare, David Chavanne

Economics Faculty Publications

This study uses survey responses to explore how support for basic income and universal healthcare is linked to zero-sum thinking and meritocratic beliefs. Consistent with earlier work, I find that zero-sum thinking and weaker meritocratic beliefs both lead to greater levels of support for basic income and universal healthcare. Using a path analysis, zero-sum thinking is also found to strengthen support for basic income and universal healthcare along two separate channels -- one via zero-sum thinking’s direct effect on policy support and a second via an indirect effect, whereby zero-sum thinking is attached to weaker beliefs in meritocracy, which in …

Essays On Nursing Home Closures And Disparities In Post-Acute And Long-Term Care, Hyeonwoo Do

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation examines the consequences of nursing home closures for access to care, local economic conditions, and resident health in the United States. As the long-term care system shifts toward home- and community-based services and the nursing home sector contracts, facility closures have become an increasingly important policy concern. Although closures may reflect necessary market restructuring in some settings, they may also reduce access, weaken local economies, and place pressure on surviving facilities. Across three essays, this dissertation shows that the consequences of nursing home contraction are uneven and depend on racial and ethnic composition, rurality, local market concentration, and …

Three Essays In Cpi Bias And Health Economics, Auderta Amoako-Nuamah

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first essay estimates bias in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for elderly individuals in the United States using Engel curve methodology and household-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1999–2023). The analysis focuses on how well the CPI reflects changes in the cost of living for older Americans, with particular attention to differences by gender and marital status. Results show that from 1999–2011, the CPI overstated the increase in the cost of living for both elderly and non-elderly households. In contrast, from 1999–2023, the CPI understated cost increases, with the bias generally larger for non-elderly households. Within …

Three Essays In Health Economics, Caroline Andressa Welter

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Health outcomes and access to care are shaped by the interaction between public institutions, administrative rules, and responses to health risk. This dissertation investigates how barriers to access, changes in perceived risk, and policy design influence participation in public programs, preventive health behavior, and  treatment continuation. Across three essays in health economics, I examine how individuals respond to disruptions in service delivery, epidemic exposure, and administrative burden, with a focus on vulnerable populations that depend on public systems of care.
The first essay analyzes the impact of Social Security Administration field office closures on participation in federal disability programs during …

Three Essays On Urban Transportation, Daniel Amorim Souza Centuriao

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Urban environments are shaped by dynamic interactions between infrastructure development, policy interventions, and episodic demand shocks, all of which can generate unintended externalities in the form of motor vehicle collisions, injuries, and fatalities. This dissertation investigates the determinants of traffic safety in dense urban settings, with a particular focus on how different sources of urban activity affect collision risk and severity. Using New York City as a case study and leveraging high-resolution spatial and temporal data, I examine three distinct but interconnected mechanisms: construction activity, traffic safety policies, and large-scale events.

The first chapter analyzes the impact of urban development, …

Dynamic Effects Of Economic Shocks Under Uncertainty, Seojin Jung

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation studies the dynamic effects of economic shocks under uncertainty across three self-contained essays.

The first essay introduces a two-stage model averaging estimator for impulse response functions that flexibly combines local projection (LP) and vector autoregression (VAR) methods, as well as different statistical paradigms (Bayesian or frequentist). In the first stage, we compute weights within the LP and VAR groups. A second-stage weight then integrates the two groups by accounting for their structural differences and incorporating their respective strengths. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate a typical bias-variance trade-off: LP-based estimators tend to exhibit lower bias, whereas VAR-based estimators display lower …

Human Rights Education For Children And Youth On Human Rights And Digital Technologies, Diane A. Desierto, Faisal Yamil Meneses, Notre Dame Global Human Rights Clinic

Journal Articles

AI Generated Summary

This document outlines the importance of human rights education for children and youth, particularly in relation to digital technologies, emphasizing the need for comprehensive, inclusive, and accessible educational frameworks.

Entropic Foundation Of Finance And Physics: Securities Price Dynamics And Quantum Theory, Mohammad Abedi

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In many scientific and financial contexts, we must reason and make predictions under conditions of incomplete information. This dissertation develops Entropic Dynamics (ED) as a unified framework for deriving dynamical laws directly from principles of inference. Within this approach, probability distributions represent states of knowledge, and their evolution is determined through entropy maximization subject to relevant constraints. This leads to a novel concept of entropic time and a formulation of dynamics as an inferential process. In this talk, I will present how ED provides a common foundation across multiple domains. In physics, quantum dynamics for particles and scalar fields in …

Essays On Indian Inflation Targeting, Dipankar Biswas

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation explores the efficacy and impact of inflation targeting as the monetary policy framework with a specific focus on India after its formal adoption of the inflation-targeting framework in 2016.

The first chapter focuses on the history of monetary policy framework in India. It discusses, in detail, the different monetary policy frameworks, namely Credit Planning, Flexible Monetary-Targeting, and Multiple-Indicator approaches, adopted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) (i.e., the monetary authority of the country), before arriving at the adoption of the inflation-targeting framework. The monetary policy transmission process in India during the different global turmoil segments of the …

Essays On Financial Econometrics And Macro-Financial Forecasting, Zhendong A. Li

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The first chapter proposes an innovative supervised learning technique for dimension reduction and forecasting financial and macroeconomic time series in the presence of weak factors that can undermine the effectiveness of traditional Principal Component Analysis (PCA). This approach employs double or multiple supervised learning procedures and is termed ``Supervised Scaled Principal Component Analysis'' (SsPCA). Initially, each predictor is scaled using its predictive slope on the target forecast variable, giving more weight to those with stronger predictive abilities and less to those with weaker ones. Subsequently, utilizing the scaled predictors, we intelligently identify the most informative subset for prediction. This involves …

Testing Mean Stability Of Heteroskedastic Time Series, Violetta Dalla, Liudas Giraitis, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Time series models are often fitted to the data without preliminary checks for stability of the mean and variance, conditions that may not hold in much economic and financial data, particularly over long periods. Ignoring such shifts may result in fitting models with spurious dynamics that lead to unsupported and controversial conclusions about time dependence, causality, and the effects of unanticipated shocks. In spite of what may seem as obvious differences between a time series of independent variates with changing variance and a stationary conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) process, such processes may be hard to distinguish in applied work using basic …

Shrinkflation And Consumer Demand, Aljoscha Janssen, Johannes Kasinger

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study investigates shrinkflation—the practice of reducing product size while maintaining or slightly changing prices—in the U.S. retail grocery market. We analyze a decade of retail scanner data to assess the prevalence and patterns of product size changes across various product categories. Our findings show that approximately 1.92% of products have been downsized. When comparing total sales, product downsizing is more than five times as prevalent as upsizing. Product downsizing typically occurs without a corresponding decrease in price and is widespread across product categories. Consequently, consumers end up paying more per unit volume. We further find that consumers are more …

Understanding Housing Market Adjustment: Evidence From Population Shocks, Regulation, And Monetary Policy, Michael Tyler Duncan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation studies how housing markets adjust to demographic shocks, local regulation, and macroeconomic policy through three related essays. Chapter 1 develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model and panel VECM evidence to study how population volatility affects housing prices, rents, and construction. It finds that population shocks generate strong price responses across housing markets and more pronounced effects in tight housing markets and declining regions. Chapter 2 examines local rental registry policies using county-level difference-in-differences analysis and finds limited aggregate effects but meaningful heterogeneity across treatment intensity and market segments. Chapter 3 revisits the macro-housing VAR literature on …

Time-Varying, Frequency-Domain, And Quantile Spillovers Across Energy And Financial Markets Under Climate Policy Uncertainty: Evidence From Tvp-Var-Sv, Bk, And Qvar Models, Md Qamruzzaman, Abdulrahman Alomair, Mohammed Alomair, Sylvia Kor

Student Publications [Scholarly]

The study explores how much area is influenced by climate policy uncertainty (CPU), which adjusts the dynamics of volatility and cross-market spillovers among European electricity, energy commodities, carbon markets, and financial assets, thereby explaining the mechanisms affected by the existing sustainability transition. Using high-frequency market data, we combine an econometric architecture linking a time-varying parameter VAR to stochastic volatility, Barunik–Krehlik frequency-domain connectedness, and quantile-VAR methods, thereby enabling the capture of horizon-specific and regime-dependent risk transmission. The discussion shows that the CPU is a structural amplifying agent of market interconnectedness, which has its most substantial impacts in long-horizon and downside regimes. …

Symmetry, Presumptions, And The Judges Design, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

An instrumental variables approach called ‘the judges design’ used frequently in social sciences relies on an assumption called ‘average monotonicity’. This assumption pertains to how different judges’ (or other classifiers’) decision making processes relate to each other. Violations of it are hard to detect, which raises the importance of it being supported by a plausible theory. Decisions of judges who solve Bayesian decision problems violate average monotonicity as long as the signals they process are symmetric and they do not possess strong presumptions. This result is extended to cases where judge presumptions are symmetrically distributed and may include strong presumptions. …

Do Variations In State Consultation Programs Affect Construction Fatality Rates?, Wayne B. Gray

Economics

Background: Along with its enforcement program, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a voluntary consultation program that responds to requests from firms to identify hazards at their workplaces. We studied the effects of this program on fatal work injuries in the construction industry. Methods: We first examined differences across states in their consultation programs using data from 2016 through 2022, during which time 47,418 consultation visits were conducted in construction. These included differences in frequency of consultation visits at construction firms, the average number of hazards identified per visit, and the scope of those visits. We then used …

Three Essays On Personnel And Labor Economics, Chengyuan Hua

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Labor market dynamics are not only relevant for worker welfare, but also matter for firm productivity. This dissertation investigates the dynamic interactions between firms and workers, with a particular focus on the determinants and effects of human resources management practices. Using professional sports labor markets as a natural laboratory, I examine three distinct but interconnected mechanisms: managers, hiring decisions, and contract setting.

The first chapter studies how managers matter for worker productivity by exploiting manager moves in Major League Baseball. I first show that manager effects are primarily match-specific using an AKM-type model. Then, staggered difference-in-differences results show positive effects …

Essays On Public Policy, Labor Markets, And Regional Economics, Toby Heaney

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays examining how economic and political outcomes respond to changes in public policy, information, and local economic conditions. Across the three studies, the dissertation applies empirical methods to questions in political economy, economic forecasting, and regional economics, with particular attention to how the effects of economic shocks and policy changes vary across individuals, markets, and geographic areas.

The first essay examines the role of policy salience in electoral outcomes. Building on rational-choice and median-voter models, it argues that voters may respond disproportionately to policies that impose concentrated and highly visible costs, even when those …

Childlessness And Health In Middle Age And Older Adulthood: Evidence From Singapore, Christine Ho, Dahye Kim, Rohan Ray, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Health and well-being in mature adulthood are important concerns given the prevalence of individuals aging without children. We exploit two new instruments for childlessness— infertility and the number of childless siblings—and condition our analyses on a rich set of covariates including childhood health and financial status, to investigate the causal relationship between childlessness and health in middle age and older adulthood. Using a nationwide dataset of 1,500 Singaporeans aged 50 and above, we show that OLS underestimates the negativeeffects of childlessness on health. We find that childlessness leads to higher likelihood of poorer self-reported health and mental distress. The results …

Uncovering Mild Drift In Asset Prices With Intraday High-Frequency Data, Shuping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Asset prices are commonly represented as a drift-diffusion process, wherein the drift component denotes the anticipated return of the asset within some time frame, while the diffusion component accommodates random shocks. The drift component has substantial practical significance but accurate estimation is typically challenging and has met with limited success in the existing literature except over large time spans. This paper explores a comprehensive range of drift-diffusion models that include constant, linear, trending, and bursting drift. Conditions are identified under which realized squared drift  is a reliable tool for gauging integrated squared drift when the time span Tn is large …

Assessing Ethereum’S Diversification Role With Bitcoin And Major Equity Index – A Bayesian Mixture Copula Approach, Jackie Li, Jacie Jia Liu

Research Collection School Of Economics

With the introduction of spot Ethereum ETFs, Ethereum plays an increasingly important role in the cryptocurrency market. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian modelling framework incorporating a mixture copula for co-modelling Ethereum returns with Bitcoin or FTSE 100 returns. The mixture copula is designed as a combination of the Clayton copula and its three rotations, Frank, and Gaussian copulas. It provides substantial flexibility for handling a variety of dependency structures. The Bayesian approach offers the advantage of jointly estimating both the margins and copulas and simulating future returns in a coherent procedure. Using 10 different risk or risk-return measures, …

Application Paths Of Semantic Modeling In Financial Fraud Detection And Risk Identification, Victor P. Gauthier, Daniel S. Wu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Financial fraud and risk pose significant threats to economic stability and individual well-being. Traditional detection methods often struggle to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated fraudulent schemes. Semantic modeling, which focuses on understanding the meaning and relationships within data, offers a promising avenue for enhancing fraud detection and risk identification. This review paper explores the application paths of semantic modeling in this domain. We begin with a historical overview of fraud detection techniques, highlighting the limitations of traditional approaches. Subsequently, we delve into core themes, including knowledge graph-based fraud detection and semantic rule-based inference for risk assessment. We then compare and …

Envisioning The Role Of Community-Owned Stores & Aligning Federal Food Policies: A Participatory Approach To Food Security And Food Sovereignty In Sambaa K’E, Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada), Narayan Subramoniam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northern Indigenous communities have relied on traditional food systems for meaningful, nutritious diets since time immemorial. But many Indigenous communities in remote northern regions of Canada still face disproportionately elevated levels of food insecurity due to climate change radically altering the availability for traditional foods, colonial food policies imposing Western diets, and the high costs of transporting store-bought foods. Extreme weather events such as wildfires further isolate fly-in remote communities increasing both the costs of transporting store-bought foods and the difficulties of harvesting traditional foods. There are many examples of community-based initiatives for supporting traditional and locally grown foods, however, …

Multivariate Quantile Autoregression-Mixed Data Sampling (Mvqar-Midas) Modeling Of Cost Of Living And Supply Chain Dynamics In Canada., Patrick Gbolonyo

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In recent years, the rising cost of living as a result of persistent inflationary pressures, disruptions in the global supply chains, and changes in the macroeconomic landscape has become a critical topic of discussion. To address this, we move beyond a mean-based framework and employ a quantile regression approach. This allows the persistence of each series and the transmis- sion of shocks between the Consumer Price Index (CPI) (the total CPI which is a percentage change over the past 12 months), the Interest Rate (IR)(the target for the overnight rate), the New Housing Price Index (NHPI), and high-frequency supply chain …