Econometrics Commons^™

Multidimensional Arbitration, Cary Deck, Paul Pecorino, Brian R. Powers

ESI Working Papers

Most analyses of arbitration consider disputes over a single dimensional issue; however, in many situations more than one issue can be in dispute. In a labor context, the parties may disagree on the hourly wage, number of paid holidays, and fringe benefits as well as other conditions of employment. In addition to conventional arbitration (CA), two variants of multidimensional final-offer arbitration (FOA) are employed in practice. Under one version of FOA, the arbitrator must pick the entire package submitted by one of the disputants. Under the other version of FOA, the arbitrator can select elements from each disputant’s final offer …

Analisis Dampak Kebijakan Insentif Fiskal Terhadap Tingkat Komponen Dalam Negeri (Tkdn) Industri Manufaktur Di Indonesia, Muhammad Muhammad, Riyanto Riyanto

Jurnal Kebijakan Ekonomi

Over the last decade, the manufacturing sector's contribution to Indonesia's economy has declined. In 2010, it was 29.10% of GDP, but by 2022, it had dropped to 19.14%. Employment in the sector also fell, from 14.91% of the workforce in 2010 to 13.80% in 2022. To reverse this trend, the government introduced a policy to boost the Domestic Component Level (DCL) in manufacturing. By offering fiscal incentives to industries meeting certain DCL targets, the government aims to drive economic growth and job creation. A study using BPS data from 2008-2019 shows that this policy raised DCL by 23.5%.

Criminal Behavior Responses To Changing Penalties: Estimating The Impact Of Felony Theft Threshold Changes, Ezra R. Simmons

All Theses

This study estimates how criminal behavior changes in response to shifts in felony theft thresholds, contributing to broader evidence on the deterrent effects of criminal penalties. Using detailed incident-level crime reports, this study applies econometric techniques to evaluate how offenders responded to reduced penalties. Analyzed within is California’s Proposition 47, which raised the felony threshold for theft-related offenses from $450 to $950. The results show a significant increase in low-level shoplifting (approximately 21%) and more substantial rises (approximately 24% to 30%) in crimes within the threshold overlap ($450 to $950). Additionally, the value stolen in crimes below the $450 threshold …

Three Essays In The Economics Of Disagreements: Incentives, Measurement And Persistence, Mustafa W. Alam

All Dissertations

This dissertation presents three chapters that contribute to the study of economic forces shaping disagreements in society.

In Chapter 1, I demonstrate that political polarization can intensify due to innovations in the information market even if a population's ideological distribution is fixed. Viewership-maximizing news firms cater to a diverse audience who assess source accuracy using noisy private signals that vary in precision and ideological bias. If better-informed consumers disproportionately migrate to newer platforms for news (e.g., the Internet), traditional media firms increase news slant to appeal more to less-informed partisans on both sides of the ideological spectrum. This leads to …

My Performance Over Yours: Earned Entitlement, Performance, Luck, And Deservingness In Giving, Andrej Angelovski, Praveen Kujal, Jose M. Ortiz

ESI Working Papers

We study how three widely discussed cues—source of income (merit vs luck), own performance, and information about others’ work status and performance—shape redistribution. Prior to the dictator game, all 306 dictators and most of the 306 recipients complete the same real-effort matrix task in an online experiment that would yield either $4 or $1 for the dictators. In the Performance treatment the dictator’s payoff is based on their performance; in Luck, it is assigned by a 50-50 draw. We find that: (i) Earned entitlement is prevalent for high-performing dictators: they keep more for themselves; (ii) Earned entitlement is conditional …

Triple Shock On External Sustainability In Indonesia, Aloysius Deno Hervino, Insukindro Insukindro, Sekar Utami Setiastuti, Amirullah Setya Hardi

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This study evaluates Indonesia’s external sustainability by analyzing exports, imports, and net unilateral transfer payments. The study utilizes Indonesia’s data from the third quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2019, applying both a long-run dynamic model and a short-run forward-looking model incorporating triple shocks. This research excludes the period from 2020 onwards due to the economic upheaval in Indonesia resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak. This study concludes that Indonesia’s current account is unsustainable, as neither export nor import variables exhibit a long-term link, hence failing to meet intertemporal budget constraints. Furthermore, imports substantially influence long-term exports, which increase …

Money And Social Exclusion In Networks, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Edoardo Gallo

ESI Working Papers

Globalization offers unparalleled opportunities to expand welfare through cooperation across large networks of unrelated individuals. Social exclusion – permanent or temporary – and monetary exchange are institutions that in theory can incentivize cooperation. In an experiment, we evaluate their relative performance and interaction in anonymous networks of different sizes. Permanent social exclusion (ostracism) reduces long-run economic potential by leading to sparse networks. Monetary exchange and temporary social exclusion perform similarly well in small networks. In large networks, however, monetary exchange is the only institution that promotes full cooperation by crowding out ostracism and keeping the network complete. An insight is …

General Equilibrium Markets As Distributed Computational Systems, Steven Gjerstad

ESI Working Papers

One principal capability of markets is the coordination of information distributed among market participants who typically have competing incentives. Despite distributed information and conflicting incentives, competition among market participants often leads to socially desirable resource allocation. In this sense a market is a distributed multi-agent mechanism that, in effect, finds an optimal solution to a computational problem that is not known to any individual market participant. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that capacity of markets by defining automated agents that interact with one another in a distributed system that implements a socially desirable resource allocation. In this …

Price Coordination Under List Pricing And Discounting: Experimental Evidence, Roberto Hernán González, Praveen Kujal, Miguel Angel Ropero-García, Román Fossati

ESI Working Papers

List-pricing and discounting is common in both retail and wholesale markets. Its interpretation amongst competition authorities varies from being procompetitive to collusion facilitating. We experimentally test how list pricing and discounting impact prices in a capacity constrained Bertrand-Edgeworth duopoly with symmetric and asymmetric firms facing constant marginal costs. We find that, relative to the symmetric baseline experiments, list pricing and discounting generate higher equilibrium prices for (symmetric) firms. Prices in the asymmetric-list price duopoly are also higher, however, the effect is much smaller than under symmetry. The introduction of asymmetry results in higher prices. The smaller firms gain more from …

Preferences Or Confounders? Persistent Gender Gap In Competition Across Four Continents, Natalia I. Valdez-Gonzalez, Adriana Gaviria, Antonio M. Espin

ESI Working Papers

The gender gap in willingness to compete is thought to underlie enduring inequalities in education, career choice, and labor market outcomes. Yet it remains unclear whether the gap reflects true preference differences or results from confounding factors such as task stereotypes, overconfidence, or risk aversion. We test gender differences in competition entry across eight pre-registered studies in seven countries spanning four continents (Dominican Republic, Ivory Coast, El Salvador, Madagascar, Spain, The Philippines, and Uruguay; total n = 1,833), using an experimental design that systematically minimizes these confounds: (i) based on a non-male-stereotyped task (the Reading the Mind in the Eyes …

Welfare Implication Of Alternative Tax Rates Adjustment Policy In Nigeria: A Dsge Analysis, Umar B. Ibrahim, Isah F. Abubakar

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study sets out to determine the desirable policy adjustment in the tax rate for Nigeria that ensures the least welfare cost. A calibrated small open-economy New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (NKDSGE) model of the Nigerian economy is applied to achieve this objective. Within this framework, we examined the impact of an increase in value-added tax (VAT) rate from 7.5 to 15 percent on key macroeconomic variables relative to the impact of an increase in company income tax (CIT) rate from 30 to 35 percent on macroeconomic variables. Furthermore, we examined the welfare costs of the increases in the …

The Hidden Logic Behind Migration And Success, Elsa Russom

Master's Projects and Capstones

This research paper explores the hidden drivers of financial success among Eritrean migrants navigating uncertainty, displacement, and limited institutional access. Drawing on original survey data collected from diaspora communities across East African host countries, I apply a mixed-methods framework combining ordinal and binary logistic regression, random forest classification, bootstrapping, and Bayesian causal mediation; to identify the structural and cultural variables most predictive of financial stability. The findings reveal that participation in Ekub, a traditional rotating savings association, and engagement in communal support systems are the strongest predictors of financial success, outperforming conventional factors such as age, education, or employment status. …

Microfinance In Latin America: Sustainability, Growth, And Efficiency, Katelyn M. Hoidal

Global Tides

The subsequent research addresses the question: Within populous Latin American countries (Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Chile, and Peru), are microfinance institutions associated with differences in GDP and household consumption equally between 2010 and 2018? Which do they have a stronger correlation with? The essence of this question seeks to answer whether the correlation between MFIs and wealth indicators carries over to a national level or merely persists at an individual level. This research has been informed and influenced by literature and studies conducted across South Asia, Africa, and Latin America focusing on the research of Abdelkader, Naveeda, Annim, Campbell, Armendáriz, …

What About The Buyers? Deriving Factors Of Demand In The U.S. Black Market, Eric S. Schneider

Undergraduate Theses

The vast majority of econometric research regarding black markets focuses on the supply. Relatively little information is definitively shown in academic literature regarding the drivers of demand for black markets. This project seeks to identify factors of demand for black market goods and services. First, this paper gives a brief definition of the broad definition of black markets, before specifically defining the scope of individual markets which will be included in this project. Next, there is a brief review of recent literature on the U.S. black market in order to determine prime candidates for factors of demand. Then, a robust …

Religion And Economic Development: Past, Present, And Future, Sascha O. Becker, Amma Panin, Steven J. Pfaff, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

This chapter examines the role of religion in economic development, both historically and today. Religion's influence varies globally, with high religiosity in countries like Pakistan and low rates in China. Despite declines in some Western countries, religion remains influential worldwide, with projected growth in Muslim populations due to higher fertility rates. Religion continues to shape societal norms and institutions, such as education and politics, even after its direct influence fades. The chapter explores how religious institutions and norms have impacted economic outcomes, focusing on both persistence and decline. It also examines cultural transmission, institutional entrenchment, networks, and religious competition as …

Religion, Culture, And Politics, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

This chapter presents a conceptual framework for understanding the interaction of religion, ideology, and politics. The framework’s key insights are: i) culture and ideology provide a shared mental framework for interpreting the world; ii) ideology is malleable, and it can be used to justify a wide set of empirical realities in a manner that is consistent with the prevailing mental framework; iii) religion is particularly adept at shaping this mental framework because it attempts to explain the unknown; iv) because co-religionists share a mental framework that depends on a (religious) interpretation of events, religions are particularly likely to be co-opted …

From Home To Abroad: The Intergenerational Impact Of Household Member Migration On Women’S Economic & Social Empowerment In Egypt, Menna Elgohary

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates to what extent the migration of a household member to an Arab country leads to increased social and economic empowerment among Egyptian women of two age categories (15-35 and +35) over two waves. Determined through Principle Component Analysis (PCA) of panel data from Egypt Labor Market Panel Surveys in 2018 and 2023, composite indices of social and economic empowerment serve as dependent variables in an IV 2SLS regression model. The model assesses whether household member migration, proxied by migration prevalence on the district (qism) level as an IV, causes a significant increase in social and economic empowerment …

Essays In Industrial Organization, Nilesh Kumar Jain

Doctoral Theses

This thesis contains three chapters on industrial organization, covering two distinct topics. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the impact of firm owner's corruption on the organization, while Chapter 3 analyzes the market dynamics of a two-sided newspaper market.\medskip The first chapter investigates the agency conflict that arises when the principal (the owner) of a firm is involved in corruption. A corruptible principal has an incentive to conceal his or her illegal activities, while the agent (CEO or manager), due to their information advantage, is in a position to monitor this corruption, thus creating an agency conflict. We show that such …

Electric Commuter Rail Access In Residential Communities: A Hedonic Analysis Case Study Of Nonmarket Value Creation, Catherine A. Sunding

Scripps Senior Theses

This study quantifies the price impact on houses of a new electric commuter rail line outside of Denver, Colorado. I find a negative price impact corresponding to increased accessibility and proximity of homes to the rail stations due to the negative externalities associated with the track. I also discover an even larger negative price impact of the rail stations in the years before the stations opened to the public, indicating possible endogeneity in the location of the rail line. I attempt to account for this endogeneity using instrumental variable analysis due to a limitation of house pricing data before 2016.

The International Transracial Adoption Effect: Measuring The Well-Being Of Korean Adoptees Vs. Non-Adopted Korean Americans, Grace H. Jones

Honors Theses

In this study, I examine the differences in well-being and long-term outcomes between adopted and non-adopted Korean Americans. The vast majority of adopted Korean Americans are placed with white, heterosexual couples, positioning them in a unique position in American society. While they are raised in white families and often disconnected from Korean culture, they are still perceived and treated as Asian by society. Scholars refer to this tension as the transracial adoptee paradox. This study explores how that paradox affects both economic and non-economic outcomes. The analysis finds that adopted Koreans tend to earn higher incomes than their non-adopted peers, …

Three Essays On Sustainability Economics, Hélène Flore Nguemgaing

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As global economies face increasing resource dependencies and supply chain challenges, it becomes essential to understand the vulnerabilities that threaten economic stability. This dissertation investigates three empirical issues in agribusiness and critical minerals using econometric models to estimate the following: 1) the impact of supply chain disruptions on stock market returns during COVID-19; 2) the extraction of rare earth elements from acid mine drainage treatment by investigating the impacts of ownership and legislation in West Virginia and Pennsylvania; 3) China-to�FOBb (Free-on-Board) price transmission in rare earth elements markets: a copula-based dynamic tail dependence analysis.

The first essay evaluates how events …

China’S Economic Slowdown: How Does It Affect New Zealand’S Economy?, Haven Qin

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the impact of China’s economic slowdown on New Zealand’s economy, focusing on sector-specific linkages across real estate, the stock market, exports, and import prices. As a small open economy, New Zealand’s deep integration with global markets makes it particularly vulnerable to external shocks from its largest trading partner. Employing OLS regression models and monthly economic data, this study reveals the nuanced pathways through which China’s economic conditions influence New Zealand. Key findings include the sensitivity of New Zealand’s housing market to Chinese property investments and Chinese stock market performance, the influence of Chinese financial market performance on …

Striking A Balance: Market Shock & Responses In Automotive Components Manufacturing, Emma Lane Mcgahey

All Theses

This thesis examines the effects of extreme market shocks on supply chain dynamics within the automotive industry. Through an analysis of demand data from an automotive manufacturer to its component suppliers (January 2018 to May 2024), the study investigates the relationship between market shocks and supply chain responses, providing insights into how auto components inventory management handles downstream responses to market shocks. With supporting public data—from FRED, BLS, and the U.S. Census Bureau resources—we explore two primary relationships: the impact of market shocks on the Average Standard Deviation of Demand (SDO) and the effect of demand variability on expedited pricing …

How To Discipline Financial Markets: Reputation Is Not Enough, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

ESI Working Papers

Historically, shocks originating in the financial sector often spilled over into the real sector with dramatic consequences. We study in the lab how interventions targeting disclosure and capital requirements of financial intermediaries can reduce insolvencies or prevent their negative effects from propagating to the broader economy. In our two-sector economy, consumers and producers can fund financial intermediaries, who, in turn, provide them with liquidity to settle trades. However, intermediaries may undertake risky investments and become insolvent, which depresses real economic activity. In the experiment, insolvencies were frequent. As a consequence, consumers and producers often refused to fund intermediaries, which lowered …

Axiomatic Characterization Of Generalized Neo-Eu Preferences And The Falsifiability Of Ambiguity Theories, Manuel Nunez, Mark Schneider

ESI Working Papers

We introduce a new weakening of the independence axiom, co-extreme independence, which we show characterizes a class that encompasses popular ambiguity models including Hurwicz preferences, ϵ-contamination preferences, and NEOEU preferences. Importantly, our representation unifies these as forms of simple ambiguity models as we show that the Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension of these models is either unity or increases linearly with the number of states. In contrast, standard ambiguity models characterized in the Anscombe-Aumann framework are complex ambiguity models that have a VC dimension that is either infinite or increases exponentially in the number of states. We show that simple ambiguity preferences …

A Critical Evaluation Of Loss Aversion As The Determinate Of Effort In Compensation Framing, Timothy W. Shields, James Wilhelm

ESI Working Papers

A robust finding in managerial accounting research is that participants prefer contracts framed as bonuses to economically equivalent contracts framed as penalties. Another finding is that participants put forth more effort when facing penalty contracts than equivalent bonus contracts. Both results are commonly described as due to loss aversion, an integral portion of prospect theory. We test whether loss aversion is correlated with higher effort in an experiment with two parts. In the first part, we elicit individual participants' loss aversion using two measures. In the second part of the experiment, participants choose costly effort to increase the likelihood of …

On Explaining Why The (Human) World Is Rich, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Working Papers

The wealth of the modern world is a natural historical marvel. Explaining it has traditionally been the purview of economic historians, as exemplified by the recent book How the World Became Rich by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin. Economic historians, though, tend to only ask process-oriented “how” questions and “by what means” questions of the Great Enrichment. The eight co-authors of Explaining Technology, who are not economic historians, engage the debate asking a different question. Their goal is to explain the exponential shape of our enrichment with a model of the combinatorial evolution of technology. With an eye toward how …

Do Participation Rates Vary With Participation Payments In Laboratory Experiments?, Huizhen Zhong, Cary Deck, Daniel J. Henderson

ESI Working Papers

This paper reports a series of experiments designed to evaluate how the advertised participation payment impacts participation rates in laboratory experiments. Our initial goal was to generate variation in the participation rate as a means to control for selection bias when evaluating treatment effects in common laboratory experiments. Initially, we varied the advertised participation payment to 1734 people from $5 to $15 using standard email recruitment procedures, but found no statistical evidence this impacted the participation rate. A second study increased the advertised payment up to $100. Here, we find marginally significant statistical evidence that the advertised participation payment affects …

The Effect Of Crime On Tourism In Indonesia, Muhammad Farhan, Hera Susanti

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Tourism sector is widely known as one of economic sectors that can be the engine of economic growth in an effort to reduce poverty in a country. However, growth in the tourism sector can be influenced by safety factors. Tourists tend to avoid tourism destination areas with high crime rates in order to avoid becoming victims of crime. This study aims to analyze the effect of crime on the number of tourist arrivals in Indonesia by using four proxies of crime, which are total crime rate, property crime rate, violent crime rate, and fraud crime rate. This study utilizes a …

Coordination Within And Across Two Cultures, Gabriele Camera, James Gilmore, Marilyn Giselle Hazlett, Jason Shachat, Bochen Zhu

ESI Working Papers

We study within- and cross-culture interaction in a Stag Hunt game, using a controlled online experiment with Chinese and American participants. We find that cross-culture interactions can have a positive impact on efficiency. American participants, particularly females, more frequently selected the efficient but risky action when facing a Chinese counterpart. Chinese male participants, instead, less frequently selected the efficient but risky action when facing an American counterpart. These behavioral asymmetries do not support the notion of cultural equivalence, nor the hypothesis that multiculturalism fosters strategic uncertainty.