Economics Commons^™

Guaranteed Income And Financial Treatment Trial (Gift Trial Or Giftt): A 12-Month, Randomized Controlled Trial To Compare The Effectiveness Of Monthly Unconditional Cash Transfers To Treatment As Usual In Reducing Financial Toxicity In People With Cancer Who Have Low Incomes, Meredith Doherty, Jonathan Heintz, Amy Leader, David Wittenburg, Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Jessica Jacoby, Amy Castro, Stacia West

Department of Medical Oncology Faculty Papers

Cancer-related financial hardship (i.e., financial toxicity) has been associated with anxiety and depression, greater pain and symptom burden, treatment nonadherence, and mortality. Out-of-pocket healthcare costs and lost income are primary drivers of financial toxicity, however, income loss is a pronounced risk factor for cancer patients with low incomes. There has been little progress in developing an income intervention to alleviate financial toxicity cancer patients with low incomes. Unconditional cash transfers (UCT), or guaranteed income, have produced positive health effects in experiments with general low-income populations, but have not yet been evaluated in people with cancer. The Guaranteed Income and Financial …

Development And Economic Complexity Of Mexican Municipalities: Based On Their Energy Access And Gross Production., Angelica Gloria Velasco

Master's Theses

In 2015, Mexico ranked 22nd in the international list of ECI; Out of 136 countries, Mexico had a higher index than Netherlands and Denmark. How is this possible for a developing economy that in 2014 reached its highest inequality index at 50.3%? This research is focused on the behavior of the Economic Complexity Index when it interacts with income inequality (Gini Coefficient), the gross production and human development (which in this case is focused on access to basic services: education and electricity). In the first and second sections, this paper highlights the importance of the analysis at a municipality level …

Intricacies Of Agency: Rational Choice, Behavioral Economics, And Our Normative Commitments, Max Hendrix

Fenwick Scholar Program

This project undertakes a philosophical analysis of the intricacies of agency found in rational choice theory - the mainstream economic theory that agents are fundamentally rational and utilize their rationality to identify and pursue their self-interest. Recent experimental evidence within and outside of economics has cast doubt on the psychological accuracy and predictive prowess of the theory, laying the foundation to discuss the strengths and limitations of the theory as well as the impacts that this paradigm of agency has on our society today. I argue that rational choice theory struggles as a holistic conception of agency both from an …

An Introduction To The Bartik Benefit-Cost Model Of Business Incentives, Timothy J. Bartik

Reports

This short report provides an introduction to a new model of the benefits and costs of business incentives to promote state economic development. This model provides potential users—anyone interested in evaluating an incentive project or incentive program in their state—with a model that can be used for practical evaluation purposes, such as deciding whether or not a project should be undertaken, whether or not to expand or terminate a current incentive program, or how an incentive program could be improved by reforms to have higher net benefits. What is most distinctive about the model is that it focuses on how …

Benefits And Costs Of An Incentive Project Or Program For State Residents: A Model For Flexible Use In Any State, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Bartik Benefit-Cost Model Of Business Incentives: A User’S Guide, Timothy J. Bartik

Reports

This “user’s guide” explains a model for evaluating state or local business incentives. These incentives include tax breaks provided by state and local governments to business, to encourage local job growth. The model is intended to be used by state legislative audit bureaus, state and local economic development agencies, university centers for business research, economic development consulting firms, or any group that wants to evaluate an overall economic development program, or individual economic development projects. Users provide information on the incentives provided, and the incented jobs, and the model then produces estimates of the effects of the program on jobs, …

Using Video Storytelling To Transform The Consumer Narrative Of Fashion Into One Of Caretaking: A First Step Towards A Sustainable Fashion Industry, Piumi De Alwis

Masters Theses

This study speaks about today’s apparel industry run by the consumption based “consumer narrative” and will introduce a sustainable alternative of “caretaker narrative,” a consumer oriented way of being to combat toxic practices in the apparel industry. Meanwhile on the other hand in today’s day and age video storytelling is getting extremely popular in the media we daily consume. This study examines how to effectively use video storytelling to popularize the sustainable practice of the “caretaker narrative” in society.

Essays On Firms, Debt Contracts And Equity Market, Rusi Yan

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Debt Contracts, Outside Equity and Financial Development: How important are different financial contracts for economic development? Using cross-country firm-level data, I document the extensive usage of alternative debt contracts and ownership structure patterns for public firms. At the aggregate level, development in each segment of the financial system is significantly linked to GDP per capita and wealth inequality. To quantify the aggregate consequences, I develop a heterogeneous agent model of entrepreneurs who face asset-based or cash flow-based debt and outside equity frictions. The model is calibrated to a large set of countries in vastly different stages of financial development. Quantitatively, …

Essays On Inheritances And Entrepreneurship, Martina Ivanova

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation lays out new evidence on the relationship between inheritances and entrepreneurship and the dynamics of business formation. While the existing literature is split on whether liquidity constraints pose a real threat to the formation of new businesses, this study contributes to the debate by addressing the endogeneity problem between inherited wealth and entrepreneurship. The main results lend support to the liquidity constraint theory, indicating that receiving an inheritance boosts the likelihood of owning a business by about 3% for the average individual, which translates to a 21% increase in the probability of entrepreneurship over the baseline. Chapter 1 …

Essays In Finance And Macroeconomics, Yi Chun Lin

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The first and second chapters of my dissertation are about empirical asset pricing, and the third chapter is about international macroeconomics.In the first chapter, we study slope factors (estimated OLS slopes from Fama-Macbeth regressions of firm returns on lagged standardized characteristics) in relation to sorted and ranked factors. We show that slope factors provide significant value if they are pure-play, i.e., purged of the effects of a broad set of characteristics. Starting from 47 characteristics, we show, by a new risk factor discovery method, that the SDF varies by factor construction class. On a large collection of test assets, the …

Essays In Sovereign Default And Central Banking, Andrea Paloschi

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The recent phenomenon of debt redemption is posing new challenges in emerging economies, whichare typically characterized by high levels of sovereign default risk. How do sovereign default risk and sovereign debt affect central bank independence? And how does this affect reserve accumulation in these countries? In the first chapter of this dissertation I study how business cycle fluctuations affect sovereign debt and sovereign default risk and how the de facto central bank independence is endogenously determines in emerging economies. I build a sovereign default model in which, period-by- period, the fiscal authority determines the degree of independence of the monetary …

Essays In Transportation Economics And Regional Science, Minsung Park

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three chapters that attempt to examine the effects of new infrastructure of transportation systems.This first chapter "The Impact of High Speed Rail on Traffic Congestion" examines the impact of high-speed rail systems on highway congestion, using the case of South Korea. I use different strategies to address the endogeneity problem of evaluating the impact of transport infrastructure on traffic congestion. The results indicate that building high-speed rail lowers demand for intercity driving by 7.5\% to 30.9\%. However, the detailed data suggests that the reduction in congestion comes primarily from night time, during which high-speed trains do not …

Essays In International Reserves And Sovereign Risk, Rocio E. Suarez

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1990s, international reserves accumulation has particularly surged in emerging economies. What are the rationals behind this rise and the implications of international reserves accumulation for emerging economies? Chapter 1 of the dissertation, titled The Effects of Reserves Accumulation on Sovereign Default Under Terms of Trade Shocks, studies what is the value of holding international reserves in emerging economies when they experience fluctuations in their terms of trade and the sovereign debt is denominated in foreign currency. Firstly, I document stylized facts regarding a sample of emerging economies over the period 1997-2019 and find that there is a negative …

Essays On Market Reallocation And Economic Growth, Lei Ye

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the causal factors that contribute to the reallocation of economic activity in the product, financial and labor market, and to analyze the implications of these phenomena on the aggregate economic performance.The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter, "Bank Concentration, Product Market Competition and Firm Dynamics", investigates the concentration trend in the U.S. banking industry since the implementation of the Riegle-Neal Act in 1994 and its impact on product market competition, firm dynamics and aggregate economic performance. Empirically, I document that bank concentration is associated with less competition in product markets. …

Essays On Macroeconomics, Zheliang Zhu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation has three chapters. The first chapter examines the information transmissionfrom the central bank to the private sector regarding the public signal interest rate. The second chapter presents a proposed belief-driven Taylor rule and analyzes the rule’s impact on private expectation anchoring and social welfare loss. The third chapter studies the relationship between corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and their associated financing costs. Omitted proofs in each chapter are presented in the last section of each chapter.In the first chapter, we study the information transmission from the central bank to theprivate sector regarding the public signal interest …

Essays In Entrepreneurship, Mostafa Salari

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation concentrates on the determinants of entrepreneurship and consists of two essays. The first essay develops a dynamic model of occupational choices to capture how big-five personality traits influence entrepreneurial decisions and returns. More importantly, I divide entrepreneurs into incorporated and unincorporated to differentiate between high-growth and lifestyle entrepreneurs. I use the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) data set for this study. My model captures the role of personality traits, cognitive ability, human capital, information accumulation, and non-pecuniary benefits in entrepreneurial dynamics. The estimated model demonstrates that personality traits affect pecuniary and non-pecuniary from incorporated and …

Essays On Health Care Payment Incentives, David Adam Schwartzman

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies how payment incentives in health care change clinician and patient behavior and how different “value-based” payment models may impact outcomes. In Chapter 1, I explore optimal design of healthcare payment models in the presence of market frictions to targeting benefits. I leverage a natural experiment where an employer introduces Direct Primary Care, a form of care delivery where clinicians are paid a capitated monthly fee for high-touch access to a bundle of primary care services. This model modifies moral and behavioral hazard incentives for both patients and clinicians while changing the trade-off between preventive investments and downstream …

Affective Commitment, Mentoring, And Anticipated Turnover Among Millennials, Keiasha Hypolite

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Millennials comprise the largest group of individuals in the workforce, yet organizations struggle to keep millennials engaged in the workplace. Millennials move from job to job, with an average stay at one employer between 12 and 18 months (Hechl, 2017). Researchers have reported that millennials cause the majority of turnover in the workplace. Globally, human resources practitioners experience difficulties retaining millennials (Sahraee et al., 2021). Previous studies have researched millennials, affective commitment, mentoring, and turnover. However, no known research has used all four factors to solve a global problem. In their discussion of the highly competitive labor market, Ramírez …

Three Essays In The Economics Of Child Development And Health Inequities, Travis Whitacre

Economics Theses and Dissertations

In chapter 1, I assess the long-term education and labor market effects of missed ADHD diagnoses. Doing so is challenging for two reasons. First, a person's true ADHD status is unobserved; only their diagnosed status is known. Second, even if diagnostic errors are observed, they are likely akin to non-classical misclassification errors and therefore endogenous. To overcome these empirical challenges, I use and extend on a partial observability model with genetic data from Add Health. Through the lens of the partial observability model. I recover an estimate of true ADHD status, and the probability of underdiagnosis. Then, I estimate their …

Zoning And City Revenues: Does Euclidean Zoning Impact Cities' Tax Revenues?, Jett Robert Meek

Honors College Theses

This paper is primarily concerned with measuring the impact of zoning for single family residential on city tax revenues within the San Francisco Bay Area. Single family residential zoning acts as a form of Euclidean zoning by restricting zoned land to one type or use. In the wake of decisions of cities such as Minneapolis to end zoning for single family housing, there has been a push for more research into the possible impacts going forward. This paper takes cross-sectional data from 2020 for 101 cities within the Bay Area. To estimate the impact of zoning on city tax revenues, …

County-Level Unemployment Dynamics Following The Covid Recession: The Effects Of Ppp Loan Take Up, Preston Antes

Honors Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a nationwide shutdown, dragging the US into a recession. To combat the effects of the pandemic on the economy, Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) with the focus of preserving jobs and providing liquidity to small businesses. PPP created low-interest, forgivable business loans with forgiveness tied to a few benchmarks, providing a de facto cash transfer to small businesses. Did PPP preserve jobs? When examining Mississippi, this paper shows that counties with high cyclical unemployment participated more intensely in the program. Furthermore, the research shows that as loan totals grew within a county, local labor …

The Effect Of Bike Share Expansion On Bay Area Rapid Transit Ridership, Jacob Holifield

Honors Theses

The transportation sector causes significant negative externalities (collisions and pollution), most of which are caused by cars. As a result, policymakers often seek to reduce reliance on cars and spur demand for alternative modes of transportation. Many urban planners posit that bike sharing could serve to increase public transit ridership by allowing the bike sharing system to feed into the public transit stations, thereby solving first- and last-mile problems and reducing the time cost to access public transit. However, research into the effect of bike sharing on public transit is mixed. This thesis examines the effect of the 2017 expansion …

Our Mothers Are Dying: How Economics Affect Maternal Mortality, Kendall Wheelock

Honors Theses

One of the primary goals from the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals is to reduce maternal mortality on a global scale. It is well documented that economic success has a strong correlation with maternal mortality (Kirigia et al 2014, 1-3). There is ample research on how one’s health affects their ability to participate in society, furthermore protecting women within the sphere of medicine is a key part of advancing society. This thesis aims to give qualitative and quantitive backing to a deeper investigation of the correlation between economic success and maternal health.

To focus this research, the thesis focuses on …

Chinese Political Rhetoric And Ideology: Tension And Pretension, Israel Paredes

Honors Theses

This changing nature of the Chinese government’s ideology leads one to believe that its core beliefs are not dogmatic, despite the foundation for their ideology being rooted in specific societal and economic theories. Starting with Mao Zedong to modern day, the Chinese government officials will continue to support the original tenets (and, no doubt, future presidents’ additions to the tenets). However, the interpretation of their ideology over time is fluid and is used to support policies and actions during a political cycle. Chinese political leaders are unlikely to disagree with a past leaders, and will rather use their own interpretation …

When God Gives You Tomatoes, Don't Import Them From Italy: A Case Study On The Impact Of Supranational Institutional Policy On The Ghanaian Tomato Industry, Kaci Wilcox

Honors Theses

Supranational organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the European Union (EU) have impressed market liberalizing policies upon developing countries for decades in efforts to stabilize their economies and introduce them to global markets. While these programs and the resulting popular scholarly debates are typically geared toward macroeconomic indicators, the way those policies affect industries on the micro level has been somewhat overlooked, especially when considering how such policy over time could affect an individual industry. This thesis studies how supranational organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the EU contribute to the …

Pandemic, Retail Sales And Local Economies: Evidence From Northeast Oklahoma, Sanchari Ghosh, Brian Jackson, Ray Murphy

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

Early post-COVID pandemic studies focused on the macroeconomic impacts of that event on employment, income, healthcare costs, food security, etc. Yet there has been little emphasis on how changes in consumption spending patterns resulting from the pandemic affected retail sales and revenues, each of which are major contributors of growth for local economies. This study investigates these relationships by implementing retail pull and sales gap analyses to determine how non-metropolitan rural regions responded to consumption expenditures and retail sales before and after the pandemic. Using three cities of northeastern Oklahoma as a case study, retail pull factors at the city …

A Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Preserving The Great Barrier Reef, Taylor Cox

Honors Theses

This paper investigates both the economic benefits and costs of protecting Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The benefits associated with the Reef come from a 2016 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited report and quantifies direct economic contributions, nonuse values, and a social, economic, and icon value. The costs of protecting the Reef come from a collection of sources, including the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan, “The Cost and Feasibility of Marine Coastal Restoration”, and a number of annual reports from governmental and non-governmental organizations. By analyzing these documents, the net benefits were calculated. The Great Barrier Reef contributes $6.4 billion to …

21st Century Political Agronomy: Between Collapse And Apocalypse In The Capitalist World System, Harrison Raskin

Honors Scholar Theses

Examinations of the causal chain between ecological impacts and food shortages reveal significant impending global disturbances. This paper draws a causal link between ecological impacts and low food productivity which will lead to food insecurity and economic crises in the near term. Further, this paper argues that food insecurity may lead to the collapse of the capitalist world system. This threat is contrasted with “business as usual” climate models which, rather than depicting the collapse of the capitalist world system, depict its persistence throughout the collapse of the world ecology.

Bitcoin Price Dynamics: A Multiple Regression Analysis Of Market Variables, Zachary S. Biedscheid

2023 Symposium

Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency (property), has gained significant attention recently as a potential alternative to traditional financial systems. This research project aims to explore the market variables of Bitcoin by conducting a multiple regression analysis. The literature review highlights market dynamics and the impact of Bitcoin in economics and finance, specifically in banking and monetary systems. It explores Bitcoin's decentralized nature and limited supply as a more secure and stable form of money, contrasting it with the flaws and inefficiencies of centralized banking systems. The dataset provides information on the Bitcoin market from July 23, 2010, to April 16, …

America Without A Minimum Wage: Why The Federal Minimum Wage Should Be Abolished, Zachary Cary

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Minimum wage policy may be the greatest economic policy issue where the common man has a strong opinion. Nearly every person has a view of how minimum wage policy should be enacted, whether it be in raising the federal minimum wage, changing the scope of authority in the federal government, or another policy. However, in discussing any kind of policy, the key details of the policy must be discussed in the framework of both how it would be affected and how it would impact its stakeholders. In this policy analysis, the Iron Triangle of Public Policy – the key executive …