Econometrics Commons^™

The Bandwagon Model, Dean A. Williams

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Professional sports teams are in the entertainment market where owners of teams invest in players with the hopes of converting their talents into wins, and in turn, added revenues for their team. To gain an understanding of the incentives that shape these team talent investment decisions, prior economists have created theoretical models of professional sports leagues that give predictions regarding the cost to acquire talent, and the winning percentage of teams from different market sizes. These models are then used to show how team talent investment decisions change once professional sports leagues implement policies such as first-year player drafts, salary …

Estimating Price Responsiveness For Service Of A Luxury Transportation Company: A Zero Inflated Poisson Approach, Sydney Butenhoff

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Estimating price sensitivity is crucial for premium service providers who face inconsistent client engagement. In this study, I investigate both observed ride demand and periods of client inactivity among ABC Transfer’s customers, meaning individuals who may not book rides in a given period but are not necessarily disengaged. ABC Transfer is a luxury ground transportation firm headquartered in upstate South Carolina. Using an unbalanced panel dataset spanning 2012 to 2024, I estimate a Zero-Inflated Poisson (ZIP) model to distinguish between individuals who might still be clients from those who are not likely to be clients any longer. The model accounts …

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

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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

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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 …

Essays On Healthcare Regulation And Industrial Regulation, Vitor C. Melo

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The first chapter explores differences in incentives and consequent behavior between for-profit and not-for-profit firms. I investigate a terrible choice nursing homes faced during the pandemic: isolating residents prevents deaths from COVID-19, but increases non-COVID deaths by aggravating mental illnesses such as dementia. I explore how ownership structure led to differences in isolation measures taken and in resultant health outcomes. I model decisions regarding isolation measures as a trade-off between profits and satisfying staff's demands, with not-for-profit managers more constrained in how they consume profits. The model predicts that not-for-profit facilities will have more restrictive isolation measures and, consequently, lower …

Essays On The Impact Of Childbirth On Parenthood And Childcare, Titir Dey

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This dissertation studies the impact of childbirth and parenthood on the labor market outcomes and decisions of parents. Of the three chapters, the first two talk about how childbirth affects the labor supply decisions of the parents and the subsequent impact on earnings. The third chapter talks about the effect of disruption in the childcare arrangements on the employment outcomes of parents during the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

The first chapter measures the short- and long-run declines (penalties) in annual earnings associated with the first childbirth for parents in the United States by exploiting the heterogeneity in their gender, educational attainment …

The Impact Of Green Credit Ratio On Return On Assets, Liao Wang

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How does the green credit ratio affect a bank return on assets? This study uses panel data from 2012 to 2019, covering 18 large banks in China, including 6 state-owned banks and major 12 important joint-stock and city commercial banks. I use regression models to measure the effect of the green credit ratio (GCR) on return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), and we focus on how bank ownership and fixed effects matters.

The results show that the effect of green credit ratio (GCR) on ROA depends on the model design. When bank fixed effects are included, green …

Borders And Burdens: Three Essays On Inter-Jurisdictional Tax Policy In America, Benjamin Jaros

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Individuals, firms, and governments make decisions about the tradeoffs of different tax policies at jurisdictional borders, such as those between states, nations, or local governments; those choices shape the burden of taxation. This dissertation examines the effects of three distinct changes in tax policy: for state corporate income tax apportionment, colonial tobacco tariffs, and tax abatements for data centers. Chapter 1 examines how changes to the corporate income tax base formula affect state tax revenues. Chapter 2 analyzes how colonial era export and import tariffs on tobacco impacted trade volumes, raised revenue, and the distribution of the tax burden between …

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

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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 …

Estimating The Effect Of Residential Sales Prices On Building Permits, Emilio Becerra

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This paper addresses home sales prices’ impact on residential building permit authorization in South Carolina’s Greenville and Richland counties amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The estimation uses a comprehensive data set of the housing markets in both counties for 2016 to 2022, incorporating 88,098 home sales. The analysis exploits the variation in sales prices of homes to analyze the sensitivity in the supply of permits to builders through an instrumental variables approach. Using two instruments, violent crimes and household income, the effect of sales prices on the supply of building permits is positive and statistically significant. Included in the first-stage regression …

When Hedge Funds Move In: Socioeconomic Consequences Of Single-Family Rentals, Hannah Misurati

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In this thesis I explore the effect of increased investment in the single-family rental sector on inequality and housing affordability. I measure the effect of the single family rental (SFR) share on Gini indices and median rental prices across the largest U.S. cities. I construct three non lagged and three lagged models for each of the two dependent variables. In my analysis of the relationship between SFR shares and inequality, I do not find a significant relationship after accounting for potential reverse causality. However, the relationship between SFR shares and rent prices is shown to be negative and significant once …

Estimating The Effect Of Nuclear Energy On A Country's Electricity Generation Mix: Fukushima As A Case Study, Sarah Elizabeth Zarrilli

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In this paper, I attempt to estimate the true effects of removing nuclear energy on a country’s energy portfolio, particularly how the country substitutes to other fuel sources for electricity generation and how it impacts the country’s marginal electricity prices. In 2011, anti-nuclear sentiment that arose in Japan following the meltdown of the Fukushima prefecture’s nuclear power plant resulted in the country decreasing its nuclear electricity generation from over 30% of its total supply to 0% in under two years. I use the dramatic variation across Japan’s electricity supply regions over the denuclearization period to attempt to estimate the true …

Exploring The Motivations And Determinants Of Farmer’S Market Consumers And Organic Specialty Crop Producers, Jane Arnold

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This two-chapter thesis evaluates the motivations and determinants of the central figures in farmers’ markets and organic markets. The first chapter explores the rise of farmers’ markets popularity through an in-person survey that was designed and distributed to 274 farmers' market consumers. Logit and ordered logit regressions were used to identify the motivations and characteristics that affect the likelihood of being a frequent farmers’ market customer (visiting 5 times or more per season) and spending over $50. The second chapter investigates the organic markets for cucumber and kale, which are dominant specialty crops on today’s grocery shelves. To identify the …

Economic Impact Assessment Of Nature-Based Coastal Resilience Solutions In Charleston. Estimating Local Economic Effects With Algorithm-Based Supporting Tool., Oksana Veselkova

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Coastal cities are at the forefront of the risks induced by climate change. Local communities are adversely affected, but the essential cultural assets and economies are also at risk of damage or destruction. In the efforts to limit hazard risk exposure, local governments are increasingly planning for long-term flood protection. One prospective flood risk mitigation measure is living shorelines or nature-based adaptation. The coastal ecosystems, such as beaches, wetlands, barrier islands, oyster reefs, and salt marshes, deliver multiple benefits to communities, including recreation, natural resources, freshwater, and carbon sequestration. Moreover, when combined with structural solutions, they can effectively reduce water …

Essays On The Economics Of Sports Wagering Markets, Jacob Lamb

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Economists have long been enamored with using wagering markets and sports data to answer various economic questions. Wagering market data are readily available to answer any number of questions relating to sports and economics. However, most studies surrounding wagering markets have focused on searching for inefficiencies and, consequently, profitable betting strategies against the house. This dissertation takes a different approach, focusing on the information that can be extracted from efficient wagering markets and using that information to answer economic questions. Rather than hunting for inefficiencies, this dissertation confirms the efficiency of wagering markets and uses wagering markets to answer questions …

Can The Olympics Spur Local Socioeconomic Development? Evidence From Brazil, Alex Matandos

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Countries pledge ever increasing budgets and commitments to host the Olympics. The region whose bid emerges victorious puts in motion the reallocation of inputs, labor, and capital to build all the promised infrastructure to run the event, while the remaining areas in country remain largely unaffected by the intervention. This quasi-experiment scenario is proper for the usage of the Synthetic Control Method but few papers have exploited it. This paper fills the gap by being the first to offer an analysis at local level for a developing economy on the impact of the Olympics. Using Rio de Janeiro's winning bid …

Crime Reduction And Reformation In South Carolina: An Analysis Of Sb 1154, Matthew Torres

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This thesis evaluates the policy response to the criminal justice crisis of South Carolina, Senate Bill (SB) 1154, dubbed the Omnibus Crime Reduction and Sentencing Reform Act of 2010. SB 1154 adopted a series of “common sense” reforms, including new charges constituting as violent crimes, redefined sentences in the form of reduced penalties and harsher penalties for nonviolent and violent crimes respectively, mandated supervision of individuals on probation or parole, and credit programs for early release of inmates among other provisions intended to reduce inmate population, recidivism and violent crime rates.

I examine three key factors: inmate, imprisonment and violent …

The Economic Returns To Bilingualism In The U.S Labor Market, Mara Macdonald

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This paper uses pooled cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey to analyze the economic returns of bilingualism to adults in the U.S labor market. Bilingualism in the US is defined as English proficient individuals who also report speaking a foreign language “very well” or “well”. Using OLS Least Squares regression estimation where the dependent variable is the logarithm of earnings, I modify the Mincer earnings function to include foreign language skill variables and controls for observed demographic characteristics. Holding all levels of human capital constant, bilinguals earn 7.7% less than English monolinguals in the U.S labor market; however, this …

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

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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 …