Econometrics Commons^™

Air Pollution, Temperature And Cognitive Performance In The Short Run: Evidence From Women’S Ability To Recall Dates, Ke Yang

Master's Theses

Abstract: Cognitive performance is important to productivity across many fields and potentially correlated to air pollution and extreme temperatures. We study the effects of daily ambient air pollution and monthly temperature on women’s ability of recalling dates across 42 developing countries from 1997 to 2009. We use an estimated natural air pollution data, and calculate the AQI to get an aggregate effect of air pollution. We find that one standard deviation increase in the AQI leads to a statistical decrease in women’s probability to recall dates such as birthdays, marriage date or children’s birthdays by 0.44 percentage point. Furthermore, there …

Does Infant Formula Availability Reduce Breastfeeding?, Ingvild Madsen Lampe

Master's Theses

Abstract: Several key studies highlight the importance of breastfeeding and there is a broad consensus that it plays a crucial role for a child's health and cognitive development. This is especially true for the poor in developing countries, where vulnerable infants' access to proper nutrition is vital. We investigate the effect of introducing infant formula into a market on changes in breastfeeding patterns. Using the Demographic Health Surveys and annual reports from the baby food industry between 1981 and 2002 in 11 tropical countries, we find evidence that import of infant formula significantly reduces breastfeeding duration. The effects are stronger …

Gender Bias In Microlending: Do Opposites Attract?, Kanyinsola Adepoju

Master's Theses

This study exploits a quasi-random assignment of clients to loan officers using a unique database and survey from a large microfinance bank in Nigeria to show that opposite-sex preferences affect credit demand and supply. We find that clients matched to loan officers of the opposite gender are more likely to receive credit and are more likely to return for an additional loan with the credit lender.

The Impact Of Foreign Direct Investment On Labor Market Measures: Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa, David A. Mayom

Master's Theses

There is scant literature examining the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and labor market measures in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. This paper explores the effect of FDI on the labor market measures using panel data of 48 Sub-Saharan African Countries from 1991 to 2009. The result indicates that FDI has a positive and significant effect on employment implying that an increase in the inflow of FDI is associated with higher employment. Thus, Sub-Saharan African governments should strongly consider poverty alleviation and employment policies that encourage and direct FDI to the industries where it can significantly reduce unemployment.

The Impact Of Offcial Development Assistance On Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence From Vietnam, Hang Pham

Master's Theses

The relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Official Development Assistance (ODA) has not been fully established, nor has its directionality, as evidenced the disagreement among economists. Using existing literature as starting point, I extend its base by examining key causal variables for ODA and FDI within 64 Vietnamese provinces, covering the span from 1998 to 2012. With the most extensive and newest dataset available, I find that ODA attracts more FDI inflows in intermediate term (5year average) and long term (all year average), but not in the short-term. An important policy implication of these results for developing countries, and …

Consumption Smoothing And Labor Supply Allocation Decisions: Evidence From Tanzania, Dustin Davis

Master's Theses

This paper tests the hypothesis that agricultural households engage in intermittent wage labor as a way to smooth consumption in the face of idiosyncratic shocks to agricultural income. Using data on agricultural households from the Tanzanian LSMS-ISA National Panel Survey and global commodity price data as a source of plausibly exogenous variation, the sensitivity of wage labor to farm income shocks is estimated. The idiosyncratic shock to post-harvest income is estimated by incorporating pre-harvest information, including local farm-gate prices as instrumented by global commodity prices. The results show that households are more likely to select into wage labor and work …

The Curious Case Of Greece: The Impact Of Fiscal Policy Shocks On Key Macroeconomic Variables. A Var Based Approach., Manny Kaliontzakis

Master's Theses

For years, the Vector Autoregressive approach has been the main tool for monetary economics and macroeconomic researchers around the world. Leading central banking figures, academics, and modern economic think tanks have used the approach to determine the effects of interest rate shocks on basic macroeconomic variables such as GDP, industrial production and unemployment rate. Shocking policy variables, such as interest rates or long term bond rates have given economists the ability to run reliable forecasts. The last 20 years have seen a turn in the use of the VAR approach on fiscal policy as well. Even though, in general, previous …

The Impact Of Migration And Remittances On Children's Education In El Salvador, Philip H. Jakob

Master's Theses

The effect that migrant remittances have on school enrollment is a challenging relationship to empirically define, requiring both an analysis of the circumstances that lead a household member to emigrate from their home and equally, but not always independently, how the family makes investment decisions in the education of one or more of their children. This study presents a new strategy to determine the nature of this relationship for households in El Salvador, using a 2SLS estimation with a wealth-stratified panel constructed from household survey data over a nine-year period. Employing this methodology to estimate the combined effects of both …

Privatization & Fdi: Examining Growth In Vietnam's Provinces, William T. Clark

Master's Theses

Over the past three decades many developing countries have looked toward privatizing investment markets and relying more on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to supply needed capital investment for their emerging private sectors. In their pursuit of foreign capital, developing countries have enacted several changes in economic policy and regulation in hopes of transforming formerly rural and undeveloped countries into highly urbanized centers of global production. This is particularly true for a transitioning economy such as Vietnam, which has seen increasing privatization of industry and investment since the reforms of 1986 known as “Doi Moi.” In this study I …

A Test Of The Household Separation Hypothesis In Rwanda, James E. Anderson

Master's Theses

How does a farm household in rural Africa react when the government decides crop selection? In developing countries, agricultural households strive to optimize a risk mitigating utility function rather than a traditional agricultural production function. These households are termed “non-separated” as their farming efforts are directed towards family food security rather than maximizing agricultural profits. The lack of integration with labor and commodity markets makes these non-separated households difficult to influence with policy initiatives. Various tests for household separation have been developed.

We use a unique dataset from Rwanda to evaluate these separation tests. The data include households forced into …

Can Community Water Projects Combat Child Diarrhea? Results From The Solomon Islands, Thomas G. Sackman

Master's Theses

There is a vast amount of existing literature that has empirically scrutinized whether or not community water projects have the ability to mitigate diarrheal disease. A strong and persistent belief thinks that community water projects do have the means, however, over the decades empirical work commonly finds this to simply not be true. This study expands the research question to the Solomon Islands. The research tests the hypothesis using a differences-in-differences identification strategy by utilizing the government’s staggered timing rollout of community water subprojects with whether or not a village received a community water subproject to test for a program …

Matrilineal Asset Inheritance, Female Bargaining Power, And Household Welfare In Malawi, Nicholas T. Garcia

Master's Theses

Matrilineal inheritance practices in Malawi exogenously determine female land holdings at the time of marriage, allowing for the identification of the effect of increased female bargaining power on household consumption decisions. I use the matrilineal ethnicity of the head of household as an instrument for the share of total household land inherited by the female head or male head’s wife. I find that child’s height-for-age decreases with female assets, and evidence suggesting increased consumption from households’ own production. Since the food basket from own consumption is high in carbs but not nutritious, long-term child health suffers despite receiving more resources …

Forecasting Short-Term Stock Returns Using Irregular Pricing Behavior In The Options Market, Thomas W. Sampson

Master's Theses

This paper uses regression analysis to examine the relationship between today's implied volatility on AMD stock options with tomorrow's return on the underlying. An economic analyis of the options markets' micro-structure is discussed to establish the intuition and the basis behind the relationship. Four seperate models are developed to examine its statistical significance and the ability of options' prices to accurately forecast returns on the underlying security.

The hypothesis of the paper is that daily changes in implied volatility can be used to earn higher than expected returns on the underlying stock. I find that implied volatility can be used …

The Fii Model As An Investment In Patience: Exploring Time Preferences In Medellin, Colombia, Jennifer Graham

Master's Theses

The motivation for this research is to explore the success behind the Oakland based Family Independence Initiative (FII) as a model for poverty alleviation. During the period of June-December 2012, nearly 200 small business owners in Medellin, Colombia participated in a field experiment intended to replicate the FII model by randomizing the treatments of setting goals, receiving conditional payments, and participating in self-help groups, as well as the combinations thereof. The data shows that the subjects in the full FII treatment group achieve more goals and have significantly higher monthly sales than those subjects in any other treatment or control …

Risk, Religion, And Islamic Microfinance, Dunia Aburish

Master's Theses

This research design creates a framework in which the risk preferences and Islamic religiosity of Jordanian borrowers can be estimated. Specifically, this study highlights the different characteristics of conventional and Islamic microfinance borrowers. Although there is extensive literature on the topics of conventional microfinance and Islamic finance individually, few studies characterize borrowers who choose between these financial products. For this study, field research was conducted in conjunction with the National Microfinance Bank (NMB) and the Development and Employment Fund (DEF) in Jordan. Overall, 143 conventional and 78 Islamic borrowers were surveyed for a total sample of 221 borrowers. To estimate …

Different Uses Of Microfinance Among Conventional And Islamic Borrowers: Evidence From Jordan, Ngan Bui

Master's Theses

The paper focuses on investment decisions made by microfinance borrowers in Jordan. While there has been a lot of literature concentrating on the level of investment after credit access was made available, there has been very limited research on the impact of Islamic microfinance. The amount of literature comparing Islamic financing and its conventional counterpart is even more uncommon. This study will look at how conventional and Islamic borrowers differ in their decisions pertaining to business investments, home improvement projects and consumer durable goods. Results show that microfinance loan take-ups do lead to a higher probability of business investments. In …

Does Child Sponsorship Have A Positive Impact On The Quality Of Life And Social Behavior Of Sponsored Children? Evidence From Indonesia, Mario Carrillo

Master's Theses

Relaxing an internal constraint of an individual at early stages of life is an approach that complements traditional policy interventions aimed to alleviate poverty. The Compassion International child sponsorship program focuses their work on the emotional, social, and spiritual development of sponsored children. This study investigates the impacts of child sponsorship on the quality of life and social behavior of sponsored children using age-eligibility as an instrument for sponsorship, a time preference experiment and a trust game. The study looks specifically at self-esteem, optimism, social trust, educational outcomes, patience and reciprocity of 286 sponsored children and 234 non-sponsored children between …

Can Neoclassical Trade Theory Explain Congressional Voting?, John Dellipriscoli

Master's Theses

The neoclassical trade model has notoriously been unable to empirically predict trade flows throughout the world, however there has been a notion that the same theories and predictions could also be applied to democratic voting on free trade legislation. Using roll-call votes on three 2011 United States bilateral trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, respectively, a simple empirical model based on the neoclassical concepts, specifically the Heckscher-Ohlin and Stolper-Samuelson corollary theorems, is outlined. After an analysis using a logit estimation method, it is revealed that there is conflicting evidence whether the voting on the 2011 free trade agreements …

The Impact Of Being Born With Cleft And Cleft Reparative Surgery On Overall Health And Speech Outcomes, Khatansuudal Evsanaa

Master's Theses

Orofacial cleft is one of the most common and treatable birth defects in the world. If left untreated, orofacial cleft can impair normal speech development, growth, and could lead to a number of health consequences later in life. The main motivation of the study is to measure the impact of being born with cleft and the cleft reparative surgery on overall speech and health cleft for teenagers in India using difference-in-differences approach along with household fixed effects method. An overall health outcome was measured using height, weight, grip strength and BMI, and the speech acceptability was measured using a “Universal …