Economics Commons^™

Nebraska Farm Real Estate Values Improve Despite Uncertainty In 2020, Jim Jansen, Jeffrey Stokes

Cornhusker Economics

The market value of agricultural land in Nebraska increased by three percent over the prior year to an average of $2,730 per acre according to the 2020 Nebraska Farm Real Estate Market Survey (Figure 1 and Table 1). This improvement provides the first increase in the market value of agricultural land in Nebraska since peaking in 2014 at $3,315 per acre followed by a 20 per- cent decline extending to 2019.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Department of Agricultural Economics annually surveys land industry professionals across Nebraska including appraisers, farm and ranch managers, and agricultural bankers. Results from the survey are …

How Startups Help Cities Measure Their Economic Development Frontier, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet provides data on the ability of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the Mountain West to foster innovative and technology-driven industries, utilizing information presented by the Brookings Institution report, “How startups help cities measure their economic development frontier."

Essays On The Disposition Effect, Matthew Henriksson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains two essays that shed new light on the disposition effect – that is, the tendency for investors to be especially eager to realize gains over losses. The first essay combines county-level natural disaster data with individual investor transactions to document an increased disposition effect for investors impacted by a natural disaster. This effect is increasing in disaster severity and decreasing in the length of time following the event, suggesting that extreme natural disasters can significantly influence investor behavior, especially in the short term. These findings are not explained by liquidity needs, tax incentives, or informed trading. The …

Creating A New Legal Form: The Gmbh, Timothy W. Guinnane

Discussion Papers

The most common business enterprise for in Germany today is the Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftun (GmbH). The GmbH offers entrepreneurs the partnership’s flexibility combined with limited liability, capital lock-in, and other traits associated with corporations. Earlier enterprise forms such as the partnership and corporation were codified versions of longstanding practice; the GmbH, on the other hand, was the lawgiver’s creation. Authorized in 1892, the GmbH appeared during a period of ferment in German enterprise law and was an early example of the “Private Limited-Liability Company” (PLLC) prevalent in many economies today. This paper traces the debates and legislative process that …

Essays On Mortgage Portfolio Diversification, Timothy Patrick Dombrowski

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Portfolios of mortgage loans played an important role in the Great Recession and continue to compose a material part of bank assets. The distribution of mortgage portfolio returns, and consequently, the risk of these portfolios, is quite distinct even from other fixed income asset classes. This dissertation contains three essays, each aiming to analyze a specific component of risk in mortgage portfolios and role of geographical diversification in reducing this risk.

The first essay investigates how cross-sectional dependence in the underlying properties flows through to the loan returns, and thus, the risk of the portfolio. In addition to demonstrating this …

Variability In U.S. Labor Markets: A Presentation To The Workers’ Compensation Research Institute, Michael Horrigan

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Safety First Risk Preferences And Post-Harvest Grain Marketing A Context-Rich Lab Experiment, Stamatina Stamatina, Simanti Banerjee, Cory Walters

Cornhusker Economics

Improving our understanding of the influence of risk- preferences on decision making represents an important objective for understanding behavior, designing policy and decision making theory. A natural place this problem persists is in the marketing of grain (Kastens and Dhuyvetter, 1999). Grain marketing research has primarily focused on the use of different marketing techniques that result in lower price risk and, therefore, lower-income risk (Musser, Patrick, Eckman, 1996). However, the extent to which the theoretical findings from these studies are relevant to real-world applications is not clear (Brorsen and Irwin, 1996; Garcia and Leuthold, 2004). While reducing income risk is …

Investing In Community: A Playbook For Connecting Economic And Skills Development, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams, Lee Adams, Amy Meyers, Bridget Timmeney

Reports

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intelligence & Personal Finance: Legal And Ethical Implications, Aaron Klein

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

As part of the Brookings Scholar Lecture Series, Brookings Mountain West presents a lecture titled "Artificial Intelligence and Personal Finance: Legal and Ethical Implications" by Brookings fellow in economic studies, Aaron Klein. The rise of big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence herald great promise in making our financial system safer, fairer, and more inclusive. However, the legacy of the use of credit as a tool to enforce and promote discrimination means these same tools can recreate and reinforce biases in ways that challenge basic ethics and the law. This lecture explores how data is used to make financial decisions, …

Is Fish Brain Food Or Brain Poison? Sea Surface Temperature, Methyl-Mercury And Child Cognitive Development, Mark R. Rosenzweig, Rafael J. Santos

Discussion Papers

We exploit variation in the composition of local fish catches around the time of birth using largescale administrative and census data on adult cognitive test scores, schooling attainment, and occupation among coastal populations in Colombia to estimate the distinct causal effects of methylmercury (MeHg) and DHA, elements contained in fish, on cognitive development. Using an IV strategy based on an equilibrium model of fish supply that exploits time-series variation in oceanic SST anomalies on both coasts of Colombia from 1950 to 2014 as instruments, we find that net of cohort and municipality fixed effects increases in high-MeHg fish catches around …

Labor Market Dynamics And Development, Kevin Donovan, Will Jianyu Lu, Todd Schoellman

Discussion Papers

We build a dataset of harmonized rotating panel labor force surveys covering 42 countries across a wide range of development and document three new empirical findings on labor market dynamics. First, labor market flows (job-finding rates, employment-exit rates, and job-to-job transition rates) are two to three times higher in the poorest as compared with the richest countries. Second, employment hazards in poorer countries decline more sharply with tenure; much of their high turnover can be attributed to high separation rates among workers with low tenure. Third, wage-tenure profiles are much steeper in poorer countries, despite the fact that wage-experience profiles …

Solar Bait: How States Attract Solar Investments From Large Corporations, Jed J. Cohen, Levan Elbakidze, Randall Jackson

The Nature Conservancy

Past literature in solar adoption has focused primarily on households without significant attention to the potential of commercial properties as sites for solar generation. Herein we examine firms’ decisions to install solar panels on their properties using state-level data. We are interested in the effects of state-level characteristics, including policies and regulations, on firm decisions regarding solar investments. We find that state characteristics that influence the return-on-investment from solar installations, most notably solar intensity, are important for commercial adoption decisions. Further results suggest that certain state-level policies, in particular solar carve-outs in renewable portfolio standards, financing programs and tax breaks, …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- March 2020, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

The (Unfilled) Fintech Potential, Aluma Zernik

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

Part I explores the idea that technology has the utopian potential to significantly improve the way individuals make financial decisions. Part II discusses some existing market failures, while presenting the potential of technological innovation in resolving such failures. Part III presents the realized potential of such innovative products, analyzing the design of credit card comparison websites, financial management tools, and mobile wallets. I will demonstrate the significant benefits of such products, and yet the limited realization of the potential advantages of such services. Part IV presents several explanations for why such potential is not being fully realized. These explanations may …

The Importance Of Cognitive Domains And The Returns To Schooling In South Africa: Evidence From Two Labor Surveys, Plamen Nikolov, Nusrat Jimi

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Numerous studies have considered the important role of cognition in estimating the returns to schooling. How cognitive abilities affect schooling may have important policy implications, especially in developing countries during periods of increasing educational attainment. Using two longitudinal labor surveys that collect direct proxy measures of cognitive skills, we study the importance of specific cognitive domains for the returns to schooling in two samples. We instrument for schooling levels and we find that each additional year of schooling leads to an increase in earnings by approximately 18-20 percent. The estimated effect sizes—based on the two-stage least squares estimates—are above the …

Quantum (And More General) Models Of Research Collaboration, Oscar Galindo, Miroslav Svitek, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the last decades, several papers have shown that quantum techniques can be successful in describing not only events in the micro-scale physical world -- for which they were originally invented -- but also in describing social phenomena, e.g., different economic processes. In our previous paper, we provide an explanation for this somewhat surprising successes. In this paper, we extend this explanation and show that quantum (and more general) techniques can also be used to model research collaboration.

Integration Of And Deliveries Among The World Zionist Organization, Israel, And Diaspora Countries: System Articulation With The Social Fabric Matrix, F. Gregory Hayden

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

The religious economics (not economics of religion) concern here is the relationship between the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and Israel, which is known as a geopolitical power in its region and which is also known as an economic success story. Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Polanyi explained how the political economy of medieval Europe was influenced and guided by Christian morality. This paper extends the analysis of religious economics by using the social fabric matrix of original institutional economics to define and structure the integration of the WZO, Israel, and the Diaspora countries. This allows us to observe how to conduct …

The Coal Industry And Funding Support For Elementary And Secondary Education In Appalachia: A Descriptive Analysis, Jilleah G. Welch, Matthew N. Murray

Coal Industry Effects on Education

This is the first of two reports exploring the relationship between coal activity and funding for elementary and secondary education in the Appalachian Region. In this first report, patterns in funding for elementary and secondary education are explored using annual data from 1995 to 2016. Counties that had some level of coal employment over this time period (coal counties) are compared to counties that had no coal employment over the same time (non-coal counties). Through a descriptive analysis, we find that educational attainment rates in the Appalachian Region lag behind national rates, often by a significant margin. There is considerable …

Chain Restaurant Calorie Posting Laws, Obesity, And Consumer Welfare, Charles J. Courtemanche, David Frisvold, David Jimenez-Gomez, Mariétou H. Ouayogodé, Michael Price

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced a mandate requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts on menus and menu boards. This paper investigates whether and why calorie posting laws work. To do so, we develop a model of calories consumed that highlights two potential channels through which mandates influence choice and outlines an empirical strategy to disentangle these alternatives. We test the predictions of our model using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to compare changes in body mass index (BMI), obesity, and consumer well-being in locations that implemented calorie-posting laws between 2008 and …

Search, Information, And Prices, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Consider a market with many identical firms offering a homogeneous good. A consumer obtains price quotes from a subset of firms and buys from the firm offering the lowest price. The “price count” is the number of firms from which the consumer obtains a quote. For any given ex ante distribution of the price count, we obtain a tight upper bound (under first-order stochastic dominance) on the equilibrium distribution of sale prices. The bound holds across all models of firms’ common-prior higher-order beliefs about the price count, including the extreme cases of complete information ( firms know the price count …

Changes In Assortative Matching: Theory And Evidence For The Us, Pierre-André Chiappori, Monica Costa-Dias, Costas Meghir

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The extent to which like-with like marry is particularly important for inequality as well as for the outcomes of children that result from the union. In this paper we discuss approaches to the measurement of changes in assortative mating. We derive two key conditions that a well-defined measure should satisfy. We argue that changes in assortativeness should be interpreted through a structural model of the marriage market; in particular, a crucial issue is how they relate to variations in the economic surplus generated by marriage. We propose a very general criterion of increase in assortativeness, and show that almost all …

Search, Information, And Prices, Dirk Bergemann, Benjamin Brooks, Stephen Morris

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Consider a market with identical firms offering a homogeneous good. A consumer obtains price quotes from a subset of firms and buys from the firm offering the lowest price. The “price count” is the number of firms from which the consumer obtains a quote. For any given ex ante distribution of the price count, we obtain a tight upper bound (under first-order stochastic dominance) on the equilibrium distribution of sale prices. The bound holds across all models of firms’ common-prior higher-order beliefs about the price count, including the extreme cases of full information ( firms know the price count) and …

Popular Economic Narratives Advancing The Longest U.S. Economic Expansion 2009-2019, Robert J. Shiller

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The U.S. economic expansion since 2009 is the longest on record since 1854, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee. This paper seeks to understand this phenomenon better by looking at the time paths of popular narratives over this interval, of stories that people have been telling that offer clues into their economic behavior. Six constellations of narratives are studied, identified by keywords “Great Depression,” “secular stagnation,” “sustainability,” “housing bubble,” “strong economy,” and “save more.”

Changes In Assortative Matching And Inequality In Income: Evidence For The Uk, Pierre-André Chiappori, Monica Costa-Dias, Sam Crossman, Costas Meghir

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The extent to which like-with like marry is important for inequality as well as for the outcomes of children that result from the union. In this paper we present evidence on changes in assortative mating and its implications for household inequality in the UK. Our approach contrasts with others in the literature in that it is consistent with an underlying model of the marriage market. We argue that a key advantage of this approach is that it creates a direct connection between changes in assortativeness in marriage and changes in the value of marriage for the various possible matches by …

Data From: Municipal Water Consumption And Urban Economic Growth In El Paso, Daniel J. Pastor, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Datasets

This study investigates the nexus between municipal water consumption and economic growth for El Paso, Texas. Located in the semi-arid southwestern United States, El Paso water consumption has been the subject of prior economic studies. However, the relationship between water consumption and economic growth has not been previously analyzed for El Paso or any other metropolitan economies in the region. Empirical results indicate that municipal water usage and real personal income are integrated of order one, but are not co-integrated. Given that, a vector autoregression model is estimated and a Granger causality test is performed. Estimation results show unidirectional causation …

Are The Goals Of Sustainability Interconnected? A Sociological Analysis Of The Three E’S Of Sustainable Development Using Cross-Lagged Models With Reciprocal Effects, Matthew Thomas Clement, Nathan Pino, Patrick Greiner, Julius A. Mcgee

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Conceptual discussions of sustainability emphasize the interdependent relationship between relevant social and environmental factors. Yet, traditional quantitative analyses of the topic have tended to estimate the exogenous or direct/indirect effects a predictor variable has on a particular measure of sustainability. We examine the endogenous, interdependent relationship between the three E’s of sustainability (economy, equity, and ecology), incorporating country-level data for 1990 through 2015 into cross-lagged structural equation models with reciprocal and fixed effects. Results from these longitudinal models suggest that over time, at the country level, increasing economic inequality reduces renewable energy consumption, with no evidence of reciprocal feedback. Keeping …

Estimating Residential Water Demand In A Relocation Area With Inadequate Piped Water System, Rosalina Palanca-Tan

Economics Department Faculty Publications

This paper assesses household water demand and estimates a demand equation particularly for low-income households in the Philippines. The study uses survey data on the value and volume of household water purchases from different water providers in a government resettlement area. The paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of average water price on household water consumption, as well as the effects of household income and size on household water consumption. The study finds that households buying water from jetmatic pump wells and water tankers pay more than five times that of those served by the piped water system. This …

Governance, Institutional Quality, Growth And Inequality In Africa. A Study Of Central Bank Of Nigeria, Ann Ogbo, Arachie Augustine Ebuka, Ezema Ikechukwu Humphrey

Bullion

This paper examined the role of institutional quality on economic growth and reduction of inequality in Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted and data were collected through primary and secondary sources. Population of the study was 600 businesses across Nigeria. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. Findings revealed that the bottlenecks facing businesses in accessing loans have significant effects on business creation in Nigeria. The study concluded that lack of policies and interventions are not the problems for small businesses to obtaining funds from government, but effectiveness and efficiency of these interventions and policies.

Pension Fund, Financial Development And Output Growth In Nigeria, Iwegbu Onyebuchi

Bullion

This study examines the indirect effect of pension fund on economic growth in Nigeria through the financial system. Using Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) model, the study found out that pension fund contribution is effective in stimulating growth through investment in portfolios that yield short term returns; this implies that pension fund contribution cannot on its own without a credible financial system impact on economic growth. The policy implication of this study is for Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) to invest in portfolios with short-term returns; thus, a large chunk of funds invested in federal government securities should be unbundled to other …

Portfolio Capital Inflows And Banking Crisis In Emerging Market And Developing Economies (Mdes): Bank-Level Evidence From Nigeria, Tijjani Mohammed Jume

Bullion

The objective of the paper is to assess the effects of foreign portfolio capital surge on the banking sector in Nigeria from 2005 - 2018. Using a simple trend analysing a static general equilibrium framework, the paper reveals that portfolio capital inflows, in the wake of monetary policy independence in Nigeria, led to portfolio capital surge which resulted to credit boom and speculative transactions in the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) leading to assets price bubble. When the bubble burst during the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2007, and thereafter in 2014, portfolio capital inflows reversed and banking stocks prices declined …