Economics Commons^™

The Economic Impact Of Grand Forks Airbase On North Dakota Using Input – Output Analysis & Va Mortgage Loan Evaluation, Jack S. Weikum

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

In this paper, I examine the economic contributions of the Grand Forks Air Force Base to our community. This paper and research seek to find out what the total economic impact of the base truly is compared to its public reports. The base’s own impact statements do not consider the indirect effects associated with its operations. To fully examine its true economic impact, we must consider two important aspects that affect the local economy and other industry sectors. Specifically, I will first examine the economic impact that base operations directly have on expenditures, employment, and labor income. This information will …

From The Ground To The Stars: How Research And Development In Aerospace Plays A Massive Role, Bryan Sohan

Honors College Theses

Aerospace technology is a long-standing field of innovation, yet it has experienced renewed momentum in recent years due to increased public and private investment. This study analyzes how changes in budget allocations to aerospace-related firms and government organizations influence the pace and scope of technological development within the aerospace sector. By examining historical trends in aerospace innovation alongside recent funding initiatives and policy decisions, this research evaluates the relationship between financial investment and technological advancement. This analysis focuses on Hypothesis 1 (H1): that higher aerospace R&D expenditure is positively correlated with innovation output. Using a two-period state-level panel (FY2021 and …

Credential Shortages In Higher Education Programs In Mountain West Metro Areas, 2024, Isabelle G. Graham, Kristian Thymianos, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet reports data on workforce demand for middle-skills jobs across five high-paying occupational categories: healthcare, management, blue-collar, protective services, and STEM. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce report, “Missed Opportunities: Credential Shortages in Programs Aligned with High-Paying Middle-Skills Jobs in 55 US Metro Areas,” includes metro-level data on 55 metro areas in the United States in 2024.2 This fact sheet focuses on data for five Mountain West metro areas, including Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO; Las-Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV; Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Salt Lake City, UT; and Tucson, AZ.

China-Canada Resource Diplomacy: New Era Of Land Grabbing, Valdrin Dragusha

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

This paper examines the evolving economic relationship between China and Canada, particularly in the context of China's transition from a strictly social economy to an authoritarian socialist market economy. It highlights the implications of China's Going Out Policy initiated in 2000, aimed at securing vital natural resources amidst growing domestic demands driven by rapid economic expansion. The paper analyzes China's significant demand for resources, its sustainable development policies, and the changing dynamics of land acquisitions, particularly in relation to Canada, which is perceived as a strategic investment destination due to its abundant natural resources and technological advancements in clean energy. …

Treaty Database Project, Elisabeth Smith

Honors Capstones

International environmental governance is shaped by a complex network of treaties addressing issues such as water, agriculture, air and atmosphere, energy, wild species and ecosystems, mineral resources, and waste and hazardous substances, among many others.. However, information about these agreements is often fragmented across multiple sources, making it difficult for researchers, policymakers, and the public to understand how different treaties relate to one another. This project develops a structured database of environmental treaties that captures key attributes such as thematic focus, geographic scope, participating countries, and implementation mechanisms.

Building on this database, the project also provides an intuitive front-end interface …

Money And State Politics: State Legislature Partisan Dynamics And Ideology Outcomes Following Citizens United V. Fec, Jillian E. Pastore

Bates College Journal of Political Studies

What effect has Citizens United v. FEC had on state-level partisanship and the policy outcomes that follow from it? Scholarship on the influence of corporate and union spending in political campaigns has largely centered on federal elections. In this paper, I extend the analysis to the state level, leveraging the fact that Citizens United created a natural experiment across the states. Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, roughly half of the states prohibited corporate and union independent expenditures in state elections (including for governor, state senate, state house, and state supreme court races). The Citizens United decision effectively nullified these …

Luja Volume 6: Issue 1 (Full Volume)

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Supporting Those Who Serve: The Impact Of Peer Support On Law Enforcement Suicide, Emily N. Warren

Honors College Theses

Individuals working in law enforcement face daily stressors that far exceed those experienced by the general population. This elevated exposure to stress has been associated with increased rates of mental health disorders and suicide among law enforcement officers. In response, peer support programs have gained recent attention, with new state and federal legislation promoting peer support as a strategy to address the mental health crisis within law enforcement. This paper examines the impact of statewide peer support programs on law enforcement suicide rates through statistical analysis. A difference-in-differences analysis is used to compare state-level law enforcement suicide rates before and …

Expectations And Realities In Primary Care Appointment Access In The United States: A National Study, Brigham Walker, Ethan Tsai, Alexandra Shimanovsky, Edel Doherty, Sarah E. Tinkler, Rajiv Sharma

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective: While patients expect timely appointments, little is known about how accurately patient expectations reflect the realities of access to a primary care physician.

Methods: We deployed a national survey (N = 6119, conducted in 2021) to measure patient expectations and a separate national field experiment (N = 11,016, conducted between 2013 and 2016) where trained research assistants called physician offices seeking an appointment to measure physician availability.

Results: Using multivariate regression analyses, we find that patients expected to call 1.9 physicians to secure an appointment, consistent with an appointment offer rate of 49%. However, expectations of 5.4 days wait …

Quantifying Overconsumption In The United States: A Multiple Linear Regression Analysis, Morgan Davis

Honors Projects

This study examines overconsumption in the United States by analyzing how socioeconomic factors influence household spending relative to income. Overconsumption is defined as elevated discretionary spending relative to income, with a focus on categories such as apparel, entertainment, and food away from home. Using 2024 Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) data, three multiple linear regression models were created to evaluate predictors of overall consumption, discretionary consumption, and apparel spending as proportions of income.

Results show that income is the most significant predictor across all models, with higher-income households consistently spending a smaller share of their income. Age and household size also …

Caregiving For Older Adults: How The Child And Dependent Care Credit Could Help, Gabrielle Pepin, Yulya Truskinovsky

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Performance-Based Budgeting Implementation Strategies For Improving Financial Performance, Waleed Ibrahim Alsyaegh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The lack of effective strategies for allocating organizational financial resources can lead to adverse business outcomes. Business managers are concerned about the ineffective allocation of financial resources, as it can impede financial performance and sustainability.Grounded in stakeholder theory, the purpose of this qualitative single-case study was to explore the performance-based budgeting strategies that business managers use to sustain financial profitability. The participants were 10 business managers who oversee subsidiaries that successfully implemented performance-based budgeting.Data were collected through semistructured interviews and the review of organization documents. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: (a) traditional versus contemporary budgeting; (b) importance of …

People Who Moved In The Mountain West, 2024, Anthony Arroyo, Sydney Mitchell, Maisoon Faris, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet presents 2024 data on state and city-level mobility rates across the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Point2Homes’ “Mobility Rates Reach Record Low: In 2024, Americans Moved Less Than Ever” report provides data on mobility rates within states, as well as the rate of new residents moving into states and cities across the U.S. This fact sheet highlights mobility rates within Mountain West states, the rate of new residents moving into Mountain West states, and the rate of new residents moving into 63 Mountain West cities. This fact sheet also includes national …

Scientific Research In Cuba: A General Analysis With A Special Focus On Energy, Agriculture And Technology, Henri Dou, Pierre Fournie

International Journal of Islands Research

An analysis of science in Cuba is carried out using data from the OpenAlex database. Examples are developed: agriculture, rice, technology in relation to the current situation: national food supply, energy and medicine. The predominance of research in biology and medicine and the low commitment in the fields of agriculture, energy, medicinal plants and technology are highlighted. Various development schemes are proposed. The conclusion is that research must be directed towards strategic areas: food and energy, must be less dispersed and that technology must be better taken into account. Three proposals are made: the development of a chemical analysis platform …

Essays In The Political Economy Of Non-Democracies, Mate Malashkhia

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Over half of the world’s population lives under non-democratic rule, where citizen preferences are often ignored and institutions such as independent courts are generally absent (Gehlbach et al., 2016). In these regimes, elections do not serve as a viable mechanism for regime change: incumbents can, in principle, always rely on electoral fraud and declare victory. In addition, although opposition parties often exist, they face severe constraints in reaching the public due to state repression, slanted media environments, and limited access to resources and funding. While recent scholarship has increasingly focused on authoritarian politics, much of this work centers on incumbents’ …

Out-Of-Pocket Costs And Antihypertensive Medication Use Among Veterans: A Natural Experiment, Alexander R. Zheutlin, Alexander Chaitoff, Daniel Addo, Joshua A. Jacobs, Catherine G. Derington, Eric L. Stulberg, Peter A. Glynn, Bernardo Modenesi, Jordana B. Cohen, Adam P. Bress

Department of Neurology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Blood pressure (BP) control remains suboptimal in the United States despite available low-cost antihypertensive medications. Even small out-of-pocket medication costs may contribute to adherence. We determined whether $0 versus >$0 out-of-pocket costs for antihypertensive medications is associated with differences in adherence, discontinuation, BP control, and cardiovascular outcomes.

METHODS: We included veterans with newly diagnosed hypertension who initiated antihypertensive medication in the Veterans Health Administration from 2004 to 2022. A fuzzy regression discontinuity design with 2-stage residual inclusion leveraged differences in medication copay policy at a 50% service-connected disability threshold (≥50% service-connected disability: $0 out-of-pocket cost versus < 50%: $8 monthly cost). Outcomes included 1-year medication nonadherence (proportion of days covered < 80%), 1-year medication discontinuation (no medication in the final 90 days of the study year), 1-year BP control (systolic BP/diastolic BP < 140/90 mm Hg and < 130/80 mm Hg) and cardiovascular disease events (myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization, peripheral artery disease, or stroke).

RESULTS: Among 417 …

A Machine Learning Approach To Stochastic Frontier Modeling, Levent Kutlu, Xi Mao, Xuelei Sherry Ni

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We propose a deep neural network based stochastic frontier model that can handle complex non-linear patterns both in the frontier and in the distribution of inefficiency term. To illustrate our methodology, we employ quarterly data to estimate the technical efficiencies of large US banks from the first quarter of 1984 to the second quarter of 2010. The mean efficiency of US banks during this time period is 89.43%. Between 2004 and 2008, the mean efficiencies of these banks are significantly lower than the overall average, with an average of 81.30%. This is in line with the financial conditions experienced during …

Supersuit Up Or Get Left Behind: Why A Personal Agentic Os Is Required For Commercial Viability In The New Economy, Gary Sheng, Ron Roberts

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

In my first article, The Writing on the Wall, we laid out the case: self-improving AI has arrived, the economy is splitting, and every organization faces an existential choice. This paper answers the question we heard most after that piece: “Okay, I believe you. What do I do on Monday morning?” The answer is your Personal Agentic OS. It is the minimum viable infrastructure that turns you from a passive consumer of AI into a sovereign operator of it. And in April 2026, three events converged to make this the most urgent professional skill in the world: Andrej Karpathy’s LLM …

Monopsony In Academia And The Gender Pay Gap: Evidence From California, Zhanhan Yu, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We investigate monopsony power in a highly skilled labor market made up of tenure-ranked faculty in the University of California system, and analyze differential monopsony power exposure by gender. We infer the campus-level labor supply elasticity by estimating the elasticity of separations utilizing individual-level faculty data and two instruments based on campus revenues and salary scales. We find that the “exploitation rate,” a common measure of monopsony power, is about 7% for tenure-ranked faculty. There is a statistically significant difference in the monopsony power experienced by male and female faculty that appears to account for a relatively small percentage of …

Benchmarking Digitalized Innovation In Business Strategy Across Msmes, Shyam Sundar. S, Uma Raman. M, Shanmuga Priya. G, C. M. Sudha Arogya Mary

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The contemporary globally interconnected economy is fundamentally changing international trade and opening up new prospects for businesses, particularly Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs). The basic concept of global business is changing in the modern world due to the digital environment. To preserve their competitive advantage both domestically and internationally, businesses must look for new opportunities. Since the usage of digital technology is causing entrepreneurial processes to become more fluid and irregular over time and space, our research chose a conceptual approach to examine how the digitalization of MSMEs would benefit decision-makers in global organizations. Using a conceptual approach, as …

Accounting For Non-Monetary Exchange: A Systematic Review Of Barter Literature From Colonial Ledgers To Digital Economies, Christian Timotius Peilouw, Unti Ludigdo, Imam Subekti, Yeney Widya Prihatiningtias

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Non-monetary exchange systems persist throughout human history, challenging assumptions about monetary dominance and revealing fundamental limitations in conventional accounting frameworks. This systematic literature review examines how accounting practices adapt to and shape non-monetary exchange across diverse historical and contemporary contexts, investigating patterns in accounting practices, challenges to conventional theory, and implications for economic resilience. Following PRISMA guidelines, the review analyzed 28 peer-reviewed articles from 1979 to 2025 identified through Scopus database searches combining barter-related and accounting terms. The analysis reveals four major themes: historical foundations showing sophisticated proto-banking systems in colonial America that operated without currency; crisis-driven alternatives demonstrating how …

Engaging Young People In Sustainable Finance: Opening Up Opportunities For Transformation, Allison Guerette

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The field of sustainable finance could benefit from more meaningful engagement with young people, who offer a unique perspective and have a vested interest in addressing climate change and other global issues that will shape their future. In this post-qualitative study, three young people document what they see, hear, and experience as they attend a symposium for experts on sustainable finance and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. These raw tellings are used in the cocreation of a youth sustainable finance assemblage and analysis tool, which the young people then apply to the Return on Sustainable Investment (ROSI™) methodology. Relationality, …

The Globe Spins Faster; We Keep Providing Clearer Interpretive Snapshots, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Zeynep Ozdamar Ertekin, Delphine Godefroit-Winkel

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Are The Self-Employed Really Their Own Boss?: Evidence On The Degree Of Autonomy And Control The Self-Employed Have Over Their Work, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman, Beth C. Truesdale

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Self-employment is commonly equated with being one’s own boss. This implies that, compared to employees, the self-employed have greater freedom to make their own decisions on key aspects of their job, including how they do their work and when they work. In this paper, we use information from a large, nationally representative survey, collected as part of the American Job Quality Study, to examine the degree to which workers in various self-employment arrangements do, in fact, control their own work. We find that while the self-employed are more likely than employees to have a lot of input into how and …

Essays In Macroeconomics, Sihyun Kim

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two research projects in macroeconomics. The first chapter studies a topic in fiscal policy and sovereign debt. I became interested in this topic during my third year of the Ph.D. program while working as a research assistant for Professor Manuelli. He recommended several papers on debt sustainability in the U.S. and Japan. I initially struggled to reconcile the coexistence of low default risk and persistent fiscal deficits in these countries. This led me to think that, in addition to the realized fiscal path, the fiscal capacity---such as the tax base---can also play an important role in …

Essays On Empirical Research Of Education, Criminal And Decision, Hsuan-Hua Huang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays in applied microeconomics, examining how subjective beliefs, institutional designs, and policy incentives shape critical life-cycle decisions in education and public safety. The first chapter investigates how students form beliefs about their academic ability and how the misalignment between perceived and benchmark ability shapes high-stakes educational sorting. Using longitudinal data from Taiwan, I show that these ability gaps systematically predict school and track choices. By developing a model of utility maximization under perceived ability, the results highlight that subjective beliefs, rather than objective scores alone, are central to educational outcomes and potential mismatches in school …

School System Selection Processes And Workforce Diversity In School, Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Constance A. Lindsay, Elton Mykerezi, Aaron Sojourner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

To date, there is little evidence about the extent to which teacher and principal diversity is related to the advancement of applicants to teacher and principal jobs through the hiring pipeline. We investigate this issue using novel job application and hiring data from a wide range of school districts and charter organizations. We find that non-White teacher applicants are less likely to advance through the hiring pipeline, particularly Asian applicants. We do, however, see evidence of heterogeneity with charter schools more likely to hire underrepresented minority teacher applicants. We do not find similar differences for principal hiring, but smaller samples …

Inequality And Well-Being, Sarah E. Boslaugh

Theses

Human well-being has been a topic of interest to philosophers at least since the time of Aristotle, and well-being has also been a core concern of social scientists since the birth of the discipline in the late 18^th century. Some theories of well-being include economic inequality as a factor, and multiple ways to measure this factor have been developed; as with well-being, there is no single best measure of economic inequality and the choice of which measure to use may be based on both theoretical and practical reasons. I argue that income inequality should always be included as a …

Competition As A Solution To High Prices And Low Capacity In U.S. Healthcare: A Synthetic Control Analysis Of Certificate Of Need Repeal As A Lever For Hospital Market Reform, Eve Velasquez, Wyatt Greco

School of Public Policy Capstones

The U.S. healthcare system faces dual challenges: rising hospital prices and declining capacity. Between 2000 and 2024, average hospital expenses per adjusted inpatient day increased from approximately $1,000 to over $3,000, while hospital beds per capita declined from 3.11 to 2.45. This capstone evaluates three policy alternatives to address affordability and accessibility: restrictions on most-favored nation clauses in insurance-provider contracts, elimination of federal tax exemptions on employer-sponsored health insurance, and repeal of certificate of need (CON) laws. Through a comprehensive literature review and a synthetic control analysis of Indiana's 2019 nursing home CON reinstatement, we assess the empirical effects on …

The Impact Of Trade Tariffs On U.S. Soybean Exports: A Time Series Analysis Using Sarima Modeling, Haolun Liu

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

This study shows how the 2025 trade tariffs affected U.S. soybean export volumes tariff. A Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model was used to forecast exports under a no-tariff scenario by using monthly U.S. soybean export data (January 2000 to July 2025). Then Forecasted values were compared with actual 2025 export volumes. The Result shows a large and sudden export decline in 2025 that are much greater than normal seasonal patterns, suggesting a strong tariff-related disruption to U.S. soybean trade.