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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Econometrics
Colonial Legacies And Institutional Legitimacy: Explaining Variation In State-Level Informal Economy Size, Makayla Barker
Colonial Legacies And Institutional Legitimacy: Explaining Variation In State-Level Informal Economy Size, Makayla Barker
Political Science Honors Projects
Abstract: Why are some states’ economies more formal than others? This question has critical significance for policy-makers who endeavor to tap into the reservoir of tax revenue and entrepreneurship that informal economies contain. More importantly, large informal economies inhibit public good provision and perpetuate the impoverishment, marginaliza- tion, and political instability of select communities. Despite major variation in the size of informal economies across states, most scholarship on the informal economy concentrates only on the causes and consequences of the phenomenon, while neglecting to address its variation. This thesis builds on a canon of scholarship surrounding colonial legacies, new- institutional …
Box Office Showdown: How Does Movie Market Saturation Affect First Weekend Box Office Revenues?, Matthew Steele
Box Office Showdown: How Does Movie Market Saturation Affect First Weekend Box Office Revenues?, Matthew Steele
Economics Honors Projects
The scheduling of release dates for feature films is among the most important decisions that movie studios make in the life cycle of a movie. While the economic literature on the movie industry has largely focused on modeling the box office success of a movie based on its own characteristics—star power, critical reception, and trailer data—there is a dearth of literature concerning the way that competition from within the industry affects box office revenues. This article primarily uses a propensity score matching model to fill a gap in the literature, establishing causal relationships between different forms of competition and first …
Do Weapons Make Warfare? An Instrumental Variables Approach Towards Investigating The Relationship Between Small Arms Abundance, Civil Conflict Onset, And Civil Conflict Intensity, Gabriel S. Barrett
Do Weapons Make Warfare? An Instrumental Variables Approach Towards Investigating The Relationship Between Small Arms Abundance, Civil Conflict Onset, And Civil Conflict Intensity, Gabriel S. Barrett
Political Science Honors Projects
Scholars, journalists, and policymakers frequently attribute the intensity and onset of civil conflict to the abundance of small arms. However, the direction of causality has been difficult to assess due to a lack of data on the illicit small arms market and the plausibly endogenous relationship between the abundance of weapons and civil conflict. Using a new dataset of estimated small arms prices, I determine that a decrease in the price of small arms is significantly and negatively correlated with an increase in the intensity of conflict in the following year. I also determine that small arms prices increase in …
Building Research Skills In The Macalester Economics Major, J. Peter Ferderer, Gary Krueger
Building Research Skills In The Macalester Economics Major, J. Peter Ferderer, Gary Krueger
Faculty Publications
Economics majors at Macalester College have won numerous awards for their research papers, and this success has helped them land jobs in finance, consulting, and the nonprofit sector, as well as gain admission to top graduate programs. This article describes how the Economics Department at Macalester promotes economic research among its students.
How Do Changes In Gasoline Prices Affect Bus Ridership In The Twin Cities?, Kim Eng Ky
How Do Changes In Gasoline Prices Affect Bus Ridership In The Twin Cities?, Kim Eng Ky
Economics Honors Projects
What determines the likelihood a resident will take public transit? To understand the relative effects of various determinants of ridership, this study focuses on the effects of gasoline prices, controlling for other determinants such as number of workdays in a given month, traffic, unemployment rate, and service quality. As gasoline prices increase, it becomes more expensive to drive a car. Thus, customers would likely shy away from driving and substitute towards the alternatives; one of which is public transportation. This study aims to find the relationship between gasoline prices and bus ridership at a disaggregated level (route type level) in …
How Do Incremental Wage Increases Affect Low-Wage Workers’ Health Levels?, Cory Stern
How Do Incremental Wage Increases Affect Low-Wage Workers’ Health Levels?, Cory Stern
Award Winning Economics Papers
This paper estimates the demand for health among low-wage American workers. I incorporate theoretical assumptions and empirical findings from the fields of food and health economics to derive a utility-maximization framework, which posits health is a normal good. Using data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics, I then regress an ordered probit random effects model to isolate the effect of income fluctuations on health over time. These results are statistically significant and robust to numerous specification checks, suggesting low-wage workers experience improved health levels as their wages increase. These findings deserve further inquiry to better-inform the current public debate …
Terror Attacks And Bond Yields In The European Union: An Autogressive Transfer Function Approach, Benjamin Goldman
Terror Attacks And Bond Yields In The European Union: An Autogressive Transfer Function Approach, Benjamin Goldman
Award Winning Economics Papers
This article seeks a connection between the rate at which governments can borrow money and terrorist activity within their country. Government borrowing habits can play a large role in economic growth, and understanding the determinants of the rate at which money can be borrowed is valuable. The traditional bond yield study includes various macroeconomic indicators and estimates the role that they play in the borrow- ing rate. A straightforward theory to connect utility theory of consumer choice to risk preferences and the decision to invest in a bond is derived. Using data from the Inter- national Monetary Fund and University …
Do Expected Marginal Revenue Products For National Hockey League Players Equal Their Price In Daily Fantasy Games?, Benjamin Goldman
Do Expected Marginal Revenue Products For National Hockey League Players Equal Their Price In Daily Fantasy Games?, Benjamin Goldman
Award Winning Economics Papers
The equality between wages and marginal revenue products is a backbone of competitive labor markets. This study will seek to test the congruity between the two in the market for players in daily fantasy hockey games. Any observed and statistically significant incongruity would lead to the conclusion that an individual can earn long run profit playing daily fantasy games. Both fixed effects and pooled regressions are employed to isolate inequalities between prices and expected marginal revenue products for players in daily fantasy hockey games. Any deviation of such could potentially be explained by utility maximizing gamblers or incomplete information. Robust …
Does School Quality Affect Real Estate Prices? The Effect Of Top-Tier Elementary Schools On Property Prices In Shanghai, Wanyi Li
Economics Honors Projects
This study adapted the hedonic pricing model and inspected how varying elementary school quality affects property prices in Shanghai. Because the variation of school quality appeared before the capitalization of the housing market, the obtained results suggest a causal relationship. The data set comprises top-tier elementary school information from eWOM, the yearly school attendance zones published by the government, and the Shanghai Existing Property Index, which has a sample of similarly structured apartments. Main results show that prices on average increase 41.9% more in the top-tier school districts under the standardized housing system, and range from 15.5% to 69.7% among …
The Country-Specific Nature Of Apparel Elasticities And Impacts Of The Multi-Fibre Arrangement, Lauren A. Martinez
The Country-Specific Nature Of Apparel Elasticities And Impacts Of The Multi-Fibre Arrangement, Lauren A. Martinez
Economics Honors Projects
Beginning with Krugman and Helpman’s theory of demand for differentiated products, this paper estimates 104 direct price elasticities of demand for apparel in the United States. While the literature has established that apparel elasticities vary by category and across countries, I examine how price elasticities of demand for apparel vary by country, regions, product characteristics, and after the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement. Results suggest that the country has the greatest single explanatory power in predicting price elasticities, and additionally, the “race to the bottom” hypothesis in the apparel industry is supported through increasing elasticity of 3.4% from the mean …
Does Information Lead To Household Electricity Conservation?, Devon M. Kristiansen
Does Information Lead To Household Electricity Conservation?, Devon M. Kristiansen
Economics Honors Projects
This paper estimates the effect of information on residential electricity consumption. Household reading expenditure, education level of the household head, and state “green” electricity pricing program participation rate represent the probability that a household has encountered information relating the carbon emission externalities of energy consumption and human-driven climate change. Reading expenditure has a significant negative effect on household electricity consumption. Initial increases in educational attainment increase electricity consumption, but education beyond high school reduces it. The predicted social norm effect of green pricing participation is insignificant.
How Does Income Inequality Affect The Growth Of U.S. Counties?, Jeremy Roth
How Does Income Inequality Affect The Growth Of U.S. Counties?, Jeremy Roth
Economics Honors Projects
This paper aims to conduct a precise test of the political economy hypothesis linking income inequality and economic growth. By choosing covariates from a detailed county-level dataset and assuming that U.S. counties experience perfect capital mobility, I shut off the four possible channels linking inequality and growth other than political economy. This is a first in an empirical literature that has reported conflicting findings with observations of states and countries. I also present thematic maps to illustrate the cross-county variation in key growth determinants that is masked by state-level studies. My econometric tests find a negative association between the initial …
Are Major League Baseball Starting Pitchers Compensated For Stadium Risk?, Joseph Glatman Zaretsky
Are Major League Baseball Starting Pitchers Compensated For Stadium Risk?, Joseph Glatman Zaretsky
Economics Honors Projects
This paper examines the significance of stadium effects on the determination of starting pitcher salaries. It models stadium effect first under the assumption of perfect certainty, and then includes risk through uncertainty. Using starting pitchers’ statistics between 1990 and 2008, this paper determines that the stadium effect is not significant in the model with perfect certainty, but becomes significant when uncertainty (risk) is introduced. An unexpected result of the test shows, however, that there is a fundamental difference between the American League, where the stadium effect is significant, and the National League, where it is insignificant in both models.
Do Bank Mergers Create Shareholder Value? An Event Study Analysis, Varini Sharma
Do Bank Mergers Create Shareholder Value? An Event Study Analysis, Varini Sharma
Award Winning Economics Papers
This paper investigates the economic role of bank mergers in creating shareholder value based on the idea that shareholder wealth will increase if the consolidation leads to the aforementioned gains. This paper is divided into seven sections. The second section of my paper provides an academic review of the literature, focusing on econometric theory that tests the gains in shareholder value and corporate synergies after a merger. The third section introduces a conceptual model I have designed using econometric tools to test how bank mergers create shareholder value. The fourth section embarks on a discussion about my ideal data followed …
Are Credit Unions In Ecuador Achieving Economies Of Scale?, Nick A. Marchio
Are Credit Unions In Ecuador Achieving Economies Of Scale?, Nick A. Marchio
Economics Honors Projects
This study tests the assertion that membership growth in credit unions is constrained by their unique structural features, such as their non-profit mission and member-based ownership. Although these features enhance inclusiveness, existing theory suggest that they work against efficiency when membership grows too diffuse. To address this issue, this study uses a model that takes into account existing theory on constrained-optimization in credit unions and theory on the adverse effects of diffuse ownership. Using data on 36 public credit unions in Ecuador, the empirical analysis finds evidence that credit unions can achieve economies of scale despite their problematic structural features. …
Does Sorting Make A Difference In The Sat’S Prediction Of Course Grades And Cumulative Gpa At Macalester College?, Yuen Ting Liu
Does Sorting Make A Difference In The Sat’S Prediction Of Course Grades And Cumulative Gpa At Macalester College?, Yuen Ting Liu
Economics Honors Projects
This paper estimates the predictive power of the SAT for college success. Most studies use GPA as a proxy for college success, but GPA is subject to differing grading standards across instructors and departments. Using individual course grades of Macalester College students from 1996 to 2005, this paper uses fixed effects to control for students sorting themselves into particular departments and courses. After controlling for sorting by major, a general trend emerges: the Math SAT is more predictive for science and math-related social science majors while the Verbal SAT is more predictive for language majors. After controlling for sorting by …
Does Unemployment Decrease Cancer Mortality?, Benjamin Torres Galick
Does Unemployment Decrease Cancer Mortality?, Benjamin Torres Galick
Economics Honors Projects
Recent research indicates that healthier lifestyles during recessions decrease the most common U.S. mortalities, but not cancer. However, they combine specific cancer mortalities with different progressions into one, possibly obscuring cancer’s link to unemployment. This paper estimates a fixed-effects regression model on unemployment and the nine most prevalent cancers between 1988 and 2002 using state-level panel data. Five cancers and total cancer are procyclical, and suggest that unemployment affects both incidence and gestation for some cancers. Consistent with the medical literature, this paper contradicts previous economic research and suggests that behavioral factors significantly impact cancer mortality.