Economics Commons^™

Effects Of Instructional Expenditures On Educational Outcomes In Mississippi Public Schools, Richard Grimes

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between school funding and student success in public schools in Mississippi. Data for 200 public high schools were obtained upon request from the Mississippi Department of Education, including information about school budgets, average composite ACT scores, graduation rates, and other factors. Regression analysis was conducted with the data to determine which factors might influence the success of students, with an initial emphasis on school funding. The findings indicate that allocation of school funding may have a relationship with student success as measured by ACT scores and graduation rates, but that the relationship becomes more difficult …

Heterogeneous Decision-Making And Market Power: An Application To Eurozone Banks, Levent Kutlu, Robin C. Sickles, Mike G. Tsionas, Emmanuel Mamatzakis

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We provide a structural model wherein the decision-makers are payoff maximizers in a general game theoretic setting in which heterogeneity is formally factored into the decisions of the players. The decision-makers are allowed to have different groups; and parameters are the same within each group but they differ across group. Using insights from our treatment of heterogeneous and strategic decision-making, we estimate the conducts (market powers) of Eurozone banks for years 2002–2015. We find that Eurozone banks are fairly competitive. However, banks in peripheral countries have more market power compared to the core of Eurozone.

Property, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter discusses the nature and value of property rights. It will explain (1) what property rights are, (2) the relationship between private property and economic development, and (3) some objections to structuring societies around such rights. This discussion throughout focuses on the decentralizing nature of private property rights, asking what implications it has from a philosophical, but also social and political, point of view."

Game Theory, John Thrasher Iv

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

The formal study of strategic interaction known as game theory is one of the most important elements in the PPE toolbox. It is no exaggeration to say that game theory is the fundamental logic at the heart of the social and behavioral sciences, and it is crucial for understanding social and political life. Game theory is the core of modern economic theory, formal models in political science, and the most sophisticated and rigorous approaches to moral and political philosophy. Game theory is also important in many of the natural sciences, especially in theoretical biology. As Herbert Gintis (2009, xiii) puts …

Growing A Mapletree, Hiew Yoon Khong

Perspectives@SMU

By focusing on recycling capital and re-seeding its portfolio, Singapore’s Mapletree Investments have moved beyond the island and into the global market

College Street Journal (May 2022), College Of The Holy Cross

College Street Journal

College Street Journal serves as a student platform for business-related news, opportunities and resources at Holy Cross. Readers will discover a broad range of important topics from relevant news and economic issues, career development opportunities and advice, as well as Ciocca center and campus-wide opportunities to grow outside of the classroom.

Highlights of this edition include an interview with Prof. David Chu, Dining Dollars, academic inflation,an alumni interview with Matt Blake, and a faculty editorial.

Tariff Barriers And The Protection Of Intellectual Property In The Global Economy, Difei Geng, Kamal Saggi

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper develops a simple two-country model of quality-improving innovation to study the role tariff barriers play in shaping the welfare impact of global patent protection. We show that international patent policy coordination via national treatment is desirable only if tariff barriers between countries are sufficiently low. Furthermore, if countries are free to impose their optimal tariffs on one another, requiring national treatment in patent protection unambiguously lowers world welfare. Hence, constraining tariffs helps pave the way for international coordination over patent protection. This insight provides a potential rationale for the historical sequencing of policy reforms observed in the global …

Strengthening The Southern Nevada Workforce Pipeline, Katie M. Gilbertson

Student Research

Workforce development has been a keystone in the discussion of economic diversification of Las Vegas for decades. The leisure and hospitality industry is the lifeline for the Southern Nevada economy due to the reliance on tourism as the city’s main economic driver. The leisure and hospitality industry requires physical labor and more face-to-face customer interaction than other employment sectors. Thus, these jobs often do not require high educational attainment, but rather sharp soft skills like effective listening, nonverbal communication, and negotiation strategies. While these are valuable traits, the lack of educational attainment within the leisure and hospitality workforce suppresses employees’ …

A Pandemic Of Greed And A Disease Of Poverty In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque Of The Red Death", Benjamin Herrick

Master's Theses

The breakers tripped. Again. The breakers, a mandatory halt to trading on the floor of the stock exchange in response to the S&P falling more than 7% from the previous close. This was instituted after the Crash of 1987 to calm the markets before trading is allowed to resume. They are supposed to mitigate a drastic crash. They have only ever triggered once before, in 1997. Not for the tech bubble. Not even in the crash of 2008. All trading stops for fifteen minutes when the Level One breaker trips. If it drops further in the same day, the Level …

Factors Affecting Graduation With Honors: A Case Study In Business, William Litzinger

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many first-year college students elect to enroll in their university’s honors program. These programs offer students many educational benefits not provided to non-honors students, such as smaller class sizes, priority registration, and added faculty interaction. However, of the students that enter the university as an honors student, many fail to complete their honors program. Researchers have documented completion rates as low as 18.45% (Campbell and Fuqua, 2008). So why are honors graduation rates so low? In this study, variables were examined that the literature suggests affects honors graduation rates (High School GPA, ACT/SAT scores, AP credits, GPA 1^st term …

Historical Underpinnings And Consequent Effects Of Labor Exploitation Of Mexican And Central Americans In The United States, Andrew Elkins

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Undergraduate Honors Theses

The experience immigrants have today working and living in the southern United States is defined by systems that have developed out of lingering racist attitudes and reactions toward these individuals. The flow of people across the U.S.-Mexico border has a long history, and it is characterized by patterns that have continued from early guest worker programs to the present-day flow of migrants, both legal and undocumented. Also continually present is the racialization of these migrants, which has often forced them to work and live as marginalized members of American society. This project will explore the establishment of Mexican American citizen …

America At A Glance: Occupational Injuries Among Rural Workers, Andrew Myers, Arin Leopold, Catherine Ipsen, Bryce Ward, University Of Montana Rural Institute

Employment

RTC:Rural researchers led by Andrew Myers review data from the 2019 American Community Survey to explore differences in occupations and workplace injuries across rural and urban areas.

Panel Data Analysis Of Import Tariff Policy On Economic Growth And Industrial Output In Developing Economies, Connor A. Palazzo

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper is focused on interpreting the effects of import tariff policy on domestic economic growth in the small market economies of developing nations. There have been several previous studies that have investigated the effect of tariff policy on domestic consumers and producers of already established economies. In addition, there have also been many studies assessing the effects tariffs from developed countries have on developing countries. However, few reports have been done on how tariffs impact the domestic producers of a developing nation. It is widely accepted that open and free trade is the best method for facilitating growth and …

Perspectives On The Environment: What Do Likert Values Tell Us For Meea?, Mine Cinar, Alain Safa, Denis Allemand

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

This proceeding is a short version of our study on different perceptions and approaches for mitigation to environmental problems between social and natural scientists. We discuss our survey findings of perception differences between respondents from the MENA region relative to those in the US in terms of their awareness of environmental issues. The survey used Likert values to measure attitudes, values, knowledge, intent, business ethics and corporate social responsibility with respect to climate change.

Manufacturing As The Engine Of Growth: Evidence From The Mena Region, Fatma Taşdemir

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

This study investigates the relationship between manufacturing share in GDP (MVA) and growth for a balanced panel of 13 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) economies over the 1996-2019 period. We examine whether the impact of MVA on growth may change depending on the structural domestic conditions (SDC) including human capital, governance and financial development. Our panel fixed effects threshold estimation results suggest that SDC provides an endogenously estimated threshold for the sensitivity of growth to MVA. Accordingly, manufacturing is the engine of growth for the episodes of SDC exceeding the data-driven estimated threshold levels. We find that SDC, themselves, …

Reluctance To Report Criminal Incidents: Limited Access To Justice, Social Exclusion, And Gender, Ayça Akarçay, Sezgin Polat

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Measures of access to justice mainly use indicators from judicial statistics or legislation whereas subjective perceptions or attitudes are often measured by survey questions related to judicial services. Using Turkey’s Life Satisfaction Survey, we consider reluctance to report an experienced criminal incident, which is a factual statement, as an objective indicator affecting demand for and access to justice. We identify correlates of reluctance to report and find that socio-economic status has a negative impact on the probability of reporting a criminal incident, and that the impact is greater for women. Perceived social pressures related to gender and level of income …

Convergence In Co2 Emissions, Pınar Deniz

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

The Paris Agreement (2016) brings hundreds of countries together under an international intention to limit global warming. Currently (December 2021), 193 parties submitted their first long-term trajectories to take action against climate change known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). The agreement does not put forward a direct action plan but rather leave it to the parties. The agreement is successful in achieving the ultimate aim of creating awareness and setting global and local barriers against emissions. The domestic policies to comply with this supranational agreement to mitigate emissions create new economic challenges hence, NDCs, i.e., emission reduction aims, and the …

Political, Racial, And Household Income Barriers For Access To Healthcare In Illinois Counties, Kennedy Bray '23

Student Publications & Research

Access to health care impacts many people throughout the United States, as it restricts their ability to solve their health concerns. People who have the highest risk of a lack of access include people who are uninsured, people a part of a specific social class, or people belonging to a specific political party. In a particular geographical region, these factors could lead to groups of people suffering because of circumstances that they cannot control in their region. In my project, I determine how better access to healthcare and the percentage of people insured are affected by a measurement of the …

The Relationship Between Migrants, Education, And Income In The Eu, Wendi Jiang

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The European nations are currently facing one of the biggest challenges to their society since the end of World War II: Aging. While the rest of the world will also be facing this issue, it is the European societies that are the first to face this challenge and must find a sustainable solution fast. Among the choices of solutions are immigration, Universal Basic Income (UBI), and raising the retirement age. This paper aims to explore immigration as a solution to solve the problems that an aging society faces by looking into the earning power of migrants through their
education and …

Care, Job Guarantee, And Revisiting “Socialization Of Investment”: Insights From Institutional Economics, Zdravka Todorova

Economics Faculty Publications

The paper discusses commitment to full employment in light of institutional theory and offers a renewed examination of Keynes’s "socialization of investment" concept. The discussion builds on Veblen's theory of human development, predation, and capitalism. It highlights contemporary institutional inquiry in a discussion of ongoing issues of care and social disparities. Based on this, the article formulates problems for a broader inquiry about socialization of investment. The article provides insights about Job Guarantee based on original institutional economics concepts.

A Full Universal Basic Income For The United States, Kevin Rogers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to estimate whether a "full" Universal Basic Income (FUBI), within or without a single-payer Universal Health Care (UHC) system, would be both sufficient to eliminate income poverty and affordable without increasing federal borrowing or decreasing federal discretionary spending in the United States.

In Chapter 1, I elaborate on the components and benefits of a FUBI. In Chapters 2 and 3, I present the results from a static, behavioral, partial-equilibrium, micro-simulation model that analyzes household responses to changes in mandatory spending, sources of tax revenues, and tax expenditures. These changes include introducing a FUBI in …

Essays On International Trade, Shenxi Song

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Reciprocity is a key principle governing the negotiations under the GATT/WTO agreement, which calls for a balance of concessions among the WTO members. In recent years, however, various politicians across the world have voiced concerns about their country's excessive obligations under the WTO and a lack of reciprocation by their trading partners. The objective in the first chapter is to evaluate the degree to which the pattern of applied tariffs across WTO members deviates from a balanced-concession condition. To this end, we employ a quantitative trade model and use alternative definitions of reciprocity (based on market access or welfare) to …

Policy Complementarities Between And Within Jurisdictions: The Case Of Alcohol Consumption And Driving, Tabitha Knott

All Dissertations

Federalism allows multiple levels of government, such as counties, states, and nations, to control the same territory. The result is often differentiated policies across smaller jurisdictions, which inevitably create spillovers when goods can be purchased in one locality and not in another. The first chapter discusses how each of the subsequent chapters are related using this context.

The second chapter investigates how one jurisdiction's policy may diffuse across neighboring jurisdictions to mitigate spillover effects using evidence from Texas. Texas is one of 34 states that allow local jurisdictions to determine alcohol policies and regulations via local option referenda. A force …

Essays On Delegation And Voter Preferences, Cory Simpkins

All Dissertations

Chapter 1 examines delegation and communication as strategies in coordination games with uncertainty and social preferences. I construct a model where other-regarding partners attempt to coordinate over a binary choice with privately known utilities. Players can choose to either communicate by signaling their preferences or delegate the choice entirely to their partner. I characterize equilibrium behavior under various assumptions on information transmission and coordination risk. If coordination is risky, there is a type of "first mover advantage" where the first player to communicate her own-preference guarantees her ideal outcome when communication is honest revelation. When preference signals are cheap talk, …

Essays On Nonparametric Benchmarking Of Energy Firms And Natural Gas Market Integration, Matthew Cronin

All Dissertations

My dissertation focuses on issues related to the technical efficiency of energy firms as well as the integration of U.S. natural gas markets during the era of shale gas expansion of the early 2000s. In the first chapter, I use nonparametric methods to estimate changes in efficiency and productivity of natural gas pipelines in the U.S. during the period of shale gas expansion during 2007--2018. This period, known as the Shale Revolution, saw an increase in shale gas production from less that 5 billion cubic feet per day (BCF/d) in 2007 to over 60 BCF/d in 2018. This increase in …

The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

There is a growing debate about whether upzoning is an effective policy response to housing shortages and unaffordable housing. This paper provides empirical evidence to further inform debate by examining the various impacts of recently implemented zoning reforms on housing construction in Auckland, the largest metropolitan area in New Zealand. In 2016, the city upzoned approximately three quarters of its inner suburban land to facilitate construction of more intensive housing. We use a quasi-experimental approach to analyze the short-run impacts of the reform on construction, allowing for potential shifts in construction from non-upzoned to upzoned areas (negative spillovers) that would, …

Improving Depression Screening And Follow-Up Care In Underserved Populations, Alicia D. Hankins

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing DNP Capstone Projects

Depression is a substantial source of financial, emotional, and physical burdens to patients and their families worldwide. It also disproportionately affects economically disadvantaged populations. To combat the depression crisis, The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published guidelines to boost depression screenings of all patients presenting for healthcare services. A review of literature and the completed needs assessment confirmed low rates of depression screening in the rural primary care sector. This project took place in an outpatient primary care facility in rural Arkansas, where current depression screening tools were not being used. The goal was to increase the percentage …

A Garch Approach To Modeling Chilean Long-Term Swap Yields, Tanweer Akram, Khawaja Mamun

WCBT Working Papers

This paper econometrically models the dynamics of the Chilean interbank swap yields based on macroeconomic factors. It examines whether the month-over-month change in the short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on the long-term swap yield after controlling for other factors, such as the change in inflation, change in the growth of industrial production, change in the log of the equity price index, and change in the log of the exchange rate. It applies the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) approach to model the dynamics of the long-term swap yield. The change in the short-term interest rate has an economically …

Sino-Us Trade War, Erin Torgersen

Senior Honors Projects

China and the United States are unquestionably the two wealthiest economies in the world. These two countries alone account for almost half of the world’s wealth. As these nations battle to become the world's most powerful economy, it is no surprise high tensions have developed to complicate their relationship. China’s economy has been rapidly growing, especially in the last two decades as China is making its way towards the top of the list of strongest economies through its abundance of exports and manufacturing. Alternatively, as the U.S.’s economy has slowly decreased in the last few years, the gap between the …

Biden’S Options: Policy Recommendations On The Us-China Trade War, Marley Taylor Belanger

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

As talks of unprecedented inflation and the long-term impact of the pandemic are on the rise in the United States, it is critical to understand how the foreign policy choices of the US Government ultimately impact its economy. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of the economic tensions between the US and China as a result of the ongoing US-China Trade War. To examine the viability of proposed options, a cost-benefit analysis of Biden’s policy options is implemented based on a framework of escalation, de-escalation, or modification of the current US-China economic policy initiative. The analysis of these proposals …