Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Monitoring The Philippine Economy State Of The Economy Report, Mitzie Irene P. Conchada, Lawrence B. Dacuycuy, Jesus Felipe, Desher Edgar Empeño, Brendan Emmanuel A. Miranda

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

The Philippine economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic during 2022. It posted a very high annual growth rate, 7.6%, although this must be understood in the context of a low base. AKI’s State of the Economy Report focuses on three issues in the context of the new Administration’s 8-Point Socioeconomic Agenda and the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028: growth, inflation, and the fiscal deficit and national debt. Overall, we have a positive view of the economy over the medium and long-term. However, we argue that:

-The focus of economic policy has to shift decisively toward changing the structure of the economy …

Covid-19 Lockdowns And Air Quality In The United States, Ashlyn B. Cenicola

Economics Masters Project Research Papers

Using a difference-in-differences approach, I test whether the U.S. COVID-19 lockdowns influenced air pollution levels. I hypothesize that the halt in human mobility stemming from lockdowns caused transportation sector activity to decrease, leading to a reduction in related pollutants such as PM2.5, PM10, and NO2. I investigate whether counties with strict lockdown policies experienced greater improvements in air pollution relative to before the lockdowns than counties with lenient lockdown policies. I use lockdown stringency data from the University of Oxford to identify strict versus lenient counties, and data from the Environmental Protection Agency to capture air pollution outcomes. The main …

Writing Tips For Economics Research Papers, Plamen Nikolov

Economics Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Incentivized Learning And Libraries: A Comparative Study Of Summer Reading Programs In Connecticut, Andrew Morrison

Honors Scholar Theses

With digital forms of entertainment and media more inescapable than ever, it has become increasingly difficult to encourage children and teens to read. Simultaneously, despite an overwhelming amount of literature demonstrating the educational benefits of reading, especially as a necessity in the summer between academic years, library budgets are shrinking as federal funding nears its end. How do libraries promote summer reading amidst declining interest and decreased funding? Using data from public libraries across Connecticut, this paper investigates how libraries are adapting their children's summer reading programs to a changing landscape, how programs are designed to incentivize reading without eliminating …

Technology In Major League Baseball: 2017 Houston Astros, Prisoner’S Dilemma, And Behavioral Solutions, Spencer Kinyon

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper compares and contrasts the economic model for baseball in the 20th century without technology and the economic model for baseball in the 21st century with technology. Major League Baseball (MLB) teams have evolved to use technology to improve the performance of players on the field. This paper explores the economics of penalties in MLB and how teams are penalized for their use of illegal technology. In the 2017 season, the Houston Astros used illegal technology that led the team to win the World Series. This paper provides a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether or not a team should …

Everybody Wants To Belong: Comparing The Relative Impact Of Social Capital On Happiness At An International Level, Elana Lambert

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Subjective well-being has become increasingly more important as a guide for policy and welfare. This paper uses data from the World Bank Indicators and the World Values Survey to look at the intricate relationship between subjective well-being data, social capital, and the relative nature of human happiness. Subjective well-being data has recently become widely accepted in economics research and analyzed using econometric methods. In this study, I look at specific aspects of social capital across countries to easily compare individuals within countries with a standardized scale. I look at economic determinants and social capital determinants and their impact on happiness. …

Development Of Utility Theory And Utility Paradoxes, Timothy E. Dahlstrom

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Since the pioneering work of von Neumann and Morgenstern in 1944 there have been many developments in Expected Utility theory. In order to explain decision making behavior economists have created increasingly broad and complex models of utility theory. This paper seeks to describe various utility models, how they model choices among ambiguous and lottery type situations, and how they respond to the Ellsberg and Allais paradoxes. This paper also attempts to communicate the historical development of utility models and provide a fresh perspective on the development of utility models.

El Recuperador Urbano Reconstruido: Una Perspectiva Crítica Sobre La Gestión De Residuos Urbanos En Buenos Aires Y La Nuevas Políticas Públicas De "Ciudad Verde" / The Urban Recycler, Reconstructed: A Critical Perspective On The Waste Managementprocesses Of Buenos Aires, And The New Public Policies Known As “Green City”, Mira Korber

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Historically, a survival method for the most impoverished populations of developing countries has been the collection, accumulation, and sale of recycled materials accessible in the urban waste generated by large metropolitan areas. After Argentina’s economic crisis of 2001, the number of people who participate in this informal sector of work in Greater Buenos Aires boomed due to the financial recession that devastated the country. In the last fourteen years, the population of urban recyclers, colloquially called cartoneros or cirujas, has not diminished. Various advances have been made towards the legitimation of their work as environmental protection and recycling through their …

F. A. Hayek’S Sympathetic Agents, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In what follows, we show first that, for Hayek, behavior within the small group – the “small band or troop,” or “micro-cosmos” – is correlated, resulting from agents who are sympathetic one with another. We shall argue that sympathy in this context for Hayek entails the projection of one’s preferences onto the preferences of others. With such correlated agency as the default in small-group situations, Hayek attempts to explain the transition from small groups to a larger civilization. We consider the role of projection in Hayek’s system at length, because projection from the local group characterized by a well-defined preference …

Illusions Of Market Paradise: State, Business, And Economic Reform In Post-Socialist Russia And Post-1980s Crisis Argentina, Jeffrey K. Hass, Gastón J. Beltrán

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by sweeping, radical neoliberal, monetarist-inspired economic reforms designed to correct financial or structural crises. Latin American countries initiated the wave, followed by Eastern Europe and the former USSR, although the timing, scope, and policies varied. Often one reads accounts of friends and foes of reform lined up to do battle in domestic and international alliances. However, reform processes and outcomes do not always follow the formula of reformers versus conservatives; there is more to the balance of power than these all-too-common accounts would suggest. Industrial managers in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia …

Searching For A New Brand: Reimagining A More Diverse Orlando, Kevin Archer, Kris Bezdecny

All Faculty Scholarship for the School of Graduate Studies and Research

No abstract provided.

Denying Human Homogeneity: Eugenics & Making Of Post-Classical Economics, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The question we propose to address is how did economics move from the classical period characterized by the hardest possible doctrine of initial human homogeneity—all the observed differences among people arise from incentives, luck, and history¹—to become comfortable with accounts of human behavior which alleged foundational differences among and within races of people? (Darity 1995) In this paper, we shall argue that early British eugenics thinkers racialized economics in the post-classical period.²

Sun Spots And Expectations: W. S. Jevons And The Theory Of Economic Fluctuations, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

W. Stanley Jevon’s statistical study of periodicity has received much scrutiny (Aldrich1987), but less attention has been given to his theoretical position on economic fluctuations, a circumstance which T.W. Hutchison justly finds surprising considering that “Jevons maintained that aggregate instability, and the distress it caused, presented profoundly serious problems, and devoted some of his most strenuous economic research to their explanation” (Hutchison 1988, p. 6). This paper takes up the challenge to examine the development of Jevon’s though on economic fluctuations from the early 1860s until his death in 1882.

I shall distinguish in what follows between Jevon’s “theory of …