Economics Commons^™

Optimal Regulatory Response To Food Fraud, Syed Imran Ali Meerza, Konstantinos Giannakas

Cornhusker Economics

Food fraud refers to the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food for economic gains. In this context, food fraud can be divided into two broad categories: food adulteration and mislabeling. While food adulteration can be defined as the intentional substitution or addition of substances in a food product to reduce its costs of production, mislabeling refers to acts of misrepresentation of the type or quality of food products. Food fraud is motivated by economic gains and is enabled by the fact that information about the nature of credence goods is typically asymmetric – while product suppliers know the …

Who To Choose? Rating Broker Best Practices In The Medicare Advantage Industry, Darwin R. Hale

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to help navigate the U.S. Healthcare system in a way that maximizes value and minimizes risk to Medicare Beneficiaries. We do this through the creation of a tool that will aid in the selection of an independent health broker. Brokers are the trusted resource who have the responsibility and expertise to optimize client value through needs analysis, education, and expectations setting. Beneficiaries need help with life impacting health and wellness decisions and ongoing support across the continuum of care. The qualitative research included interviews of industry experts with combined Medicare experience of more than …

The U.S. Child Care Subsidy Program Is Underused But Well-Positioned To Promote Racial Equity, Taryn Morrissey, Colleen Heflin, William Fannin

Population Health Research Brief Series

Child care is expensive and difficult to find, especially for infants and toddlers. Compared to their higher-income peers, children from lower-income families are less likely to attend out-of-home early childhood care – which tend to be more expensive but provides more stability and is higher quality than home-based care. This contributes to disparities in school readiness and later life outcomes. This brief summarizes findings from a recently published paper examining administrative data from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Findings suggest that children are least likely to receive subsides when they are infants and toddlers despite early childhood care being the most …

When Labor Enforcement And Immigration Enforcement Collide: Deterring Worker Complaints Worsens Workplace Safety, Amanda M. Grittner, Matthew S. Johnson

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Regulatory agencies overseeing the labor market often rely on worker complaints to direct their enforcement. However, if workers face differential barriers to complain, this system could result in ineffective targeting and create disparities in working conditions. To investigate these implications, we examine how the onset of Secure Communities—a localized immigration enforcement program—affected occupational safety and health. Counties’ participation in Secure Communities substantially reduced complaints to government safety regulators, but increased injuries, at workplaces with Hispanic workers. We show that these effects are most consistent with employers reducing safety inputs in response to workers’ decreased willingness to complain.

Input Trade And Service Industry Productivity Growth, Mike Hsu

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In this paper, I address two questions: (1) Does reducing tariffs for manufacturing inputs affect productivity in service industries? (2) Does the effect of input trade liberalization differ for importers in service and manufacturing industries? To answer these questions, I used an establishment-level survey of Uruguayan service industries from 1998 to 2005, a period in which the country reduced its tariffs on manufactured products. I found that service establishments that import inputs from abroad experience a larger increase in productivity relative to non-importers when input tariffs are reduced. Furthermore, the effects of trade liberalization are as significant in the service …

A Reassessment Of The Potential For Loss-Framed Incentive Contracts To Increase Productivity: A Meta-Analysis And A Real-Effort Experiment, Paul J. Ferraro, J. Dustin Tracy

ESI Working Papers

Substantial productivity increases have been reported when incentives are framed as losses rather than gains. Loss-framed contracts have also been reported to be preferred by workers. The results from our meta-analysis and real-effort experiment challenge these claims. The meta-analysis' summary effect size of loss framing is a 0.16 SD increase in productivity. Whereas the summary effect size in laboratory experiments is a 0.33 SD, the summary effect size from field experiments is 0.02 SD. We detect evidence of publication biases among laboratory experiments. In a new laboratory experiment that addresses prior design weaknesses, we estimate an effect size of 0.12 …

The Impact Of The Pandemic On U.S. Labor Markets: Past, Present And Future Concerns, Michael Horrigan

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Proceedings - Climate Change: Threats, Risks And Vulnerabilities, Centre For Business And Economic Research (Cber), Hanns Seidel Foundation, Pakistan

Conference Proceedings

Pakistan is one of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries ranking fifth in the list. It has experienced various disasters in recent decades, including floods, droughts and intense heat waves causing thousands of fatalities. Moreover, due to the deterioration of the Indus Delta approximately 1.2 million people dispersed and shifted to urban hubs like Karachi. Researchers have projected an increase in frequency and severity of these catastrophic environmental events, causing food and water scarcity, health and socio-economic issues in coming decades.

Climate change is no longer a threat but has become an existential crisis. There is a need for immediate …

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Capacity In Mountain West Metros, Olivia K. Cheche, Ally M. Beckwith, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet highlights data on artificial intelligence (AI) growth in Mountain West metropolitan areas over the last several decades, as originally reported by Mark Muro and Sifan Liu from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. The Brookings report examines how various metros across the United States contribute towards AI technology creation and business activity.

Evolving Protein Demand And Income Elasticity, Timothy Meyer

Cornhusker Economics

Teaching large classes in the Ag Econ department has some unique benefits. One of them is that I have a pulse on the attitudes of a large cross-section of producers. One concern that has been gradually gaining momentum is the threat that plant protein poses against traditional animal protein, namely beef.

Trends in protein demand do not support this specific fear. In general, consumers’ appetite for animal protein continues to grow. This article explains the concept of income elasticity, along with the changing income elasticities of specific meats.

The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Entitlements, Ateeb Akhter Shah Syed, Kaneez Fatima, Riffat Naseer

The Hilltop Review

The worries expressed by Alan Greenspan that the long run economic growth of the United States will fade away due to increasing burden of entitlements motivated us to empirically investigate the impact of entitlements of key macroeconomic variables. To examine this contemporary issue, we estimate a vector error-correction model to analyze the impact of entitlements on the price level, real output, and the long-term interest rate. The results show that a shock to entitlements leads to decrease in output and lends support to the assertion made by Alan Greenspan. Several robustness checks verify that the results remain unchanged qualitatively.

The Dynamics Of Referral Hiring And Racial Inequality: Evidence From Brazil, Conrad Miller, Ian Schmutte

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We study how referral hiring contributes to racial inequality in firm-level labor demand over the firm’s life cycle using data from Brazil. We consider a search model where referral networks are segregated, firms are more informed about the match quality of referred candidates, and some referrals are made by nonreferred employees. Consistent with the model, we find that firms are more likely to hire candidates and less likely to dismiss employees of the same race as the founder, but these differences diminish as firms’ cumulative hires increase. Referral hiring helps to explain racial differences in dismissals, seniority, and employer size.

Efek Aglomerasi Di Indonesia : Komparasi Jawa Dan Luar Jawa, Eggie Dwi Ananda Chaniago, Muhammad Hanri

Jurnal Kebijakan Ekonomi

Population density and average city’s wages in Java are higher than outside Java. The literature shows that population density can increase the productivity of firms and workers, thereby increasing the level of wages in cities. In urban economics, agglomeration economies are defined as the benefits that come when firms and people locate near one another together in cities and industrial clusters. This study estimates the agglomeration effect in Java and outside Java cities by analyzing the relationship between population density and urban characteristics with wage levels. Previous studies have shown that population density is positively correlated to wage levels at …

Apakah Belanja Pendidikan Dan Kualitas Guru Dapat Meningkatkan Kualitas Pendidikan?, Narulita Ratih Wulansari, Khoirunurrofik Khoirunurrofik

Jurnal Kebijakan Ekonomi

This study aims to analyze the relationship between education expenditure and teacher quality on education quality at the senior secondary level in Indonesia. Based on data analysis across provinces using the Fixed Effect Method, an inverted U-shaped relationship was identified between education expenditure and education quality. This study also shows that teacher quality has a significant effect in improving education quality. The interregional analysis shows that education expenditure has an inverted U-shaped relationship and teacher quality has a positive relationship with education quality at the outside Java-Bali region. However, education expenditure and teacher quality do not show a significant result …

Mixed-Signal Stock Splits, Ahmed M. Elnahas, Pankaj K. Jain, Thomas H. Mcinish

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We investigate CEOs who combine insider selling with stock splits, which is suspicious, because dumping stocks is inconsistent with the positive stock-split signal. Our empirical results indicate that, compared with other splits, these mixed-signal splits perform poorly and are followed by much lower buy-and-hold abnormal returns and much higher likelihoods of announcing an earnings restatement and CEO turnover in the post-split period. Our results are robust to entropy balancing and controlling for CEO characteristics, incentives, and corporate governance and highlight previously ignored agency issues around stock splits. Attention to insider trades is essential to properly interpret a stock-split signal.

A Unified Characterization Of The Randomized Strategy-Proof Rules, Souvik Roy, Soumyarup Sadhukhan

ISI Best Publications

We show that a large class of restricted domains such as single-peaked, single-crossing, single-dipped, tree-single-peaked with top-set along a path, Euclidean, multi-peaked, intermediate (Grandmont (1978)), etc., can be characterized by using betweenness property, and we present a unified characterization of unanimous and strategy-proof random rules on these domains. As corollaries of our result, we show that all the domains we consider in this paper satisfy tops-onlyness and deterministic extreme point property. Finally, we consider weak preferences and provide a class of unanimous and strategy-proof random rules on those domains.

Increasing Consumer Opportunities For Self-Employment In Vocational Rehabilitation, University Of Montana Rural Institute

Employment

Self-employment is an important option for people with disabilities, especially for those living in rural communities where economic choice and opportunity may be more limited. Although people with disabilities are self-employed at higher rates than people without disabilities, few vocational rehabilitation (VR) consumers become self-employed partly due to lack of knowledge and barriers within VR systems. This research report explains some reasons for low rates of self-employment within the VR system, and presents the Vocational Rehabilitation Self-Employment Guide-an online resource providing guidance and tools to assist people with disabilities and VR counselors with the self-employment process. This guide was …

College Street Journal (October 2021), 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 topics including 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.

This edition includes student and professor articles on macroeconomic topics, market-moving issues, inflation, semiconductor shortage, ESG investing and government regulation as they relate to the environment and crypto, and research surrounding capital flows, U.S. foreign debt, and pension reforms around the globe.

Skill Downgrading Among Refugees And Economic Immigrants In Germany: Evidence From The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Plamen Nikolov, Leila Salarpour, David Titus

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Upon arrival to a new country, many immigrants face job downgrading, a phenomenon describing workers being in jobs below the ones they have based on the skills they possess. Moreover, in the presence of downgrading immigrants receiving lower wage returns to the same skills compared to natives. The level of downgrading could depend on the immigrant type and numerous other factors. This study examines the determinants of skill downgrading among two types of immigrants – refugees and economic immigrants – in the German labor markets between 1984 and 2018. We find that refugees downgrade more than economic immigrants, and this …

Income And Happiness: A Philippine Context, Rosalina Palanca-Tan

Economics Department Faculty Publications

This paper adds to the relatively scant developing country perspective in the economic literature on happiness by investigating the relationship between income and happiness in the context of Koronadal, a low-income city in Mindanao, Philippines. Subjective happiness and potential contributory factors to happiness (demographic, economic, and social capital variables) are elicited through a survey and analyzed using descriptive and regression analyses. The study provides empirical evidence for the “happy poor” image of the Filipinos, with its survey data revealing that despite high poverty incidence and generally low-income levels, people in Koronadal are pretty happy with a mean self-reported happiness score …

Ucimco Endowment Semi-Annual Presentation, Fall 2021, Kareem Elghawy, Kyle Blaze, Jeremy Calabro, Ryan Carkhuff, Jacob Connelly, Christopher Craven, Zachary Crebbin, Olivia Defusco, Colin Holtzman, Brooke Hurley, Matthew Mcmahon, Jared Minnichbach, Zoey Nikolaou, Jared O'Connell, Erik Ojert, Thomas Pancheri, Christopher Porzelt, Tyler Sargent, Scott Sloan, Storm Snape, Matthew Snyder, Matthew Tuley

Business and Economics Presentations

The Ursinus College Investment Management Company (UCIMCO) consists of groups of student analysts who manage endowment-style and stock selection funds on behalf of the college endowment. This presentation, by the endowment team, examines performance and investment philosophy while discussing selections in the portfolio including: developed and emerging market equities, U.S. equities, corporate bonds, U.S. treasuries and U.S. real estate.

Ucimco Stock Selection Semi-Annual Presentation, Fall 2021, Michael Buck, Stevie Benson, Walker Hamilton, Mason Jolivette, Harrison Lorenc, Devin Molina, Stephen Schoenborn, Jack Shimer, Mohammad Sufyan, John Wagner, Riley Yee

Business and Economics Presentations

The Ursinus College Investment Management Company (UCIMCO) consists of groups of student analysts who manage endowment-style and stock selection funds on behalf of the college endowment. This presentation, by the stock selection team, examines quarterly performance and strategy while discussing the most recent selections in the portfolio: Agios Pharmaceuticals, CubeSmart, Splunk and Nexstar Media Group.

Ursinus College Women's Investment Management Company, Fall 2021, Maddy Sorokanych, Taylor Beaumont, Shelby Boyle, Laura Bradley, Olivia Defusco, Rachel Grossbauer, Jess Gutekunst, Rebecca Lewis, Alice Nathanson, Madelyn Nau, Ketlee Staz, Marcella Thanh-Guyet, Theodora Zeibekis

Business and Economics Presentations

The Ursinus College Investment Management Company (UCIMCO) consists of groups of student analysts who manage endowment-style and stock selection funds on behalf of the college endowment. In 2020, a group of women students began to manage their own fund. This presentation reviews activities of the Fall 2021 semester and analyzes the stock performance of various companies including: Anthem, Inc., American Well Corporation, Netflix, Travel and Leisure Company, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Oshkosh and the Hershey Company.

Reassessing The Case For Development Charges In Canadian Municipalities, Andrew Sancton

Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance – Publications

“Growth should pay for growth.” This slogan—the common justification for development charges—is rarely challenged in municipal circles. The principle that those who cause new urban growth should pay for the infrastructure associated with it has generally been taken for granted, at least for the last few decades. Development charges evolved from post-1945 subdivision agreements and were initially accepted by most developers as a mechanism for enhancing the likelihood that current residents in a municipality would agree to new development. They now add as much as $90,000 to the cost of a new house in some parts of the Greater Toronto …

Why Is Chester, Pennsylvania, So Poor?, John P. Caskey

Economics Faculty Works

Chester is one of the poorest cities in Pennsylvania. Chester’s poverty is often blamed on a lack of local job opportunities. But a far more important factor is the concentration of the region’s low-cost rental housing in the City. Much of this housing consists of project-based government-subsidized apartments that are restricted to low-income households. In addition, Chester has an abundant supply of antiquated private housing with low rental rates. Low-cost housing is relatively scarce in the county surrounding Chester. Poor households move to Chester, or remain in Chester, because that is where they can afford to live.

China’S Geopolinomic Goals In Argentina, Chile, And Ecuador: How Chinese Resource Extraction Is Reinvigorating The Debate On Dependency, Eric Stephen Cruz

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to identify signs of economic dependency China creates in South America. The study builds on dependency theory by challenging China's self-categorization as a periphery nation. Using the mixed-methods case study approach, this study explores the effects of China's going out policy in South America. Specifically, the focus in the study is on asymmetric trade, increased debt, and economic dependency in the context of Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador. One of the study's significant findings is that dependency begins with access. China is efficient at securing access to natural resources through its trade arrangements, which seem …

Nevada Campaign Financing: U.S. House Of Representatives, 2020, Kristian Thymianos, Olivia K. Cheche, William E. Brown Jr.

Elections & Governance

In the 2020 election cycle, Nevada’s U.S. House of Representatives delegation fundraised a combined total of $9,994,636. This fact sheet summarizes the campaign donations and expenditures of these representatives. The data are collected from the Open Secrets website.

Analysis Of Factors Influencing The Bailout Of Distressed Enterprises By Local Asset Management Companies, Houwen Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years, the number of distressed enterprises in China has gradually increased due to radical enterprise strategies, excessive expansion, poor management, and a trend of accelerating growth. Unable to adapt to fierce market competition, a large number of “zombie enterprises” disrupt the market order, reduce the use efficiency of social resources, and aggravate market risks. However, some enterprises are
temporarily caught in financial distress due to a deterioration of their financial situation caused by factors such as debt structure or capital liquidity. If such enterprises can be bailed out in time, they can escape their distress, which not only …

Business Models For Post-Crisis Information Ecosystems, Antje Mays

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Since early 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted activity across business, education, research, and communities. Public health safety precautions have forced drastic reductions in economic and educational activity, resulting in widespread economic uncertainty and sizeable budget cuts. With library budgets already declining since the 2001-2002 recession following the dotcom crash and more steeply since the 2007-2009 Great Recession spawned by the financial crash, the pandemic has accelerated trends that were already underway. Libraries’ reduced purchasing power places the information ecosystem at risk of contraction in the race to contain costs. While economic contexts and publishing forms have changed considerably. …

Central Bank Of Nigeria And The Developmental Function: Some Thoughts On Policy Measurement Perceptions, Xavier-Itam Antigha Okon, Igonibo D. Abili

Bullion

The developmental function is one prominent contribution of the Central Bank of Nigeria to the Nigerian economy. Routine reporting of this function focuses on volume of projects funded, disbursements, and repayments. Exploring the possibility of expanding the reporting scope, this paper conceptualized and illustrated handy measures of policy anchored on macroeconomic aggregates, to track this function relative to other macroeconomic policy ends. Descriptive and inferential analyses suggested that the financial, economic and market intensity measures were quite responsive to developments in the economy and could be useful tools for policy reporting purposes. The pricing intensity indicator suggested distortions in the …