Econometrics Commons^™

Guns And Fatal Police Shootings: Accuracy Of Firearm Prevalence Proxies In A Panel Data Analysis, Corin Elmore

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores the relationship between gun prevalence and fatal police shootings in the United States. Specifically, the study assesses the validity of using FSS (Firearm Suicides Per Total Suicides) as a proxy for gun prevalence. It examines whether FBI background check data can be a more reliable alternative. Through a panel data analysis, the study provides moderate evidence that FBI background check data performs better than FSS as a proxy for gun prevalence and that the relationship between firearm prevalence and fatal police shootings is positive. Additionally, the study finds that instrumenting FSS with background check data to account …

Metrics At 8,000 Meters: Determinants Of Summit Success In The Himalayas, Alyssa Gallagher

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the determinants of success for individuals summiting 8,000-meter Himalayan peaks from 1995 to 2019. Using binary logistic regressions, this paper presents evidence that a climber’s citizenship is a highly significant determinant of success. Chinese citizens are clear outliers with 192% more odds of success than an American. The success rates related to season, gender, and year all conform with existing research, justifying the robustness of the citizenship trends. Despite controlling for per capita income, the results assert that wealth may not be an important determinant of success and provokes interesting questions as to what factors may influence …

Impact Of Recessions And The Business Cycle On Altruism, Nicolas De Mello

CMC Senior Theses

I examine how recessions and the business cycle impact the time individuals allocate to altruism, using American Time Use Survey data from 2002-2019. The aim of the paper was to create a measure of altruism to explore changes in attitudes towards charity and altruism instead of the financial ability to do so. Additionally, I want to understand how economic shocks, such as recessions, impact behaviors and habits across the US population. Using ordinary least squares and the Tobit model, I created two models to capture both changes during and after recessionary periods. The first model is a regression of individuals’ …

Renewable Portfolio Standards: Effectiveness And Carbon Implications, Alexander S. Albrecht

CMC Senior Theses

A renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policy is a popular regulatory tool implemented within the U.S. and abroad to limit energy sector emissions and incentivize renewable energy. Assessing their effectiveness and efficiency is a key component of achieving further reductions. We assess an energy market under an RPS using fixed-effects panel and 2SLS regression models to lend empirical credence to common theory-based concerns about RPS policy, namely (1) that they leave emissions unregulated once the RPS requirement is met and (2) that they do not incentivize full use of renewable energy resources. Our results show these to be valid concerns that …

The Paycheck Protection Program's Effect On Real Estate Prices, Someswar Amujala

CMC Senior Theses

This paper investigates the relationship between the Paycheck Protec- tion Program (PPP) and real estate price increases. The Paycheck Protection Program was established by the Small Business Association in 2020 to pro- vide forgivable loans to businesses to aid with potential losses from COVID- 19 impacts. I leverage zip code level data across the United States and a fixed effects panel data model to quantitatively measure the PPP’s influence on housing and rental prices. I find a positive and significant relationship between the number of PPP loans disbursed and housing and rental rates. Specifically, a 1% change in the number …

Impact Of Demand For H1b Visas In The Us On The Performance Of Listed Indian Firms, Jayaditya Shekhar Maliye

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between Indian firm performance and the demand for H1B visas in the US. To test this relationship, a fixed effects model has been used on a panel dataset of 104 Indian firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) over the period 2009 to 2021. The results show that an increase in H1B visa demand is negatively and significantly associated with Indian firm performance. These findings suggest that the US’s demand for high skilled labor overseas has consequences for firms in the home country.

Application Of Sentiment Analysis And Machine Learning Techniques To Predict Daily Cryptocurrency Price Returns, Edward Wu

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the effects of social media sentiment relating to Bitcoin on the daily price returns of Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies by utilizing sentiment analysis and machine learning techniques to predict daily price returns. Many investors think that social media sentiment affects cryptocurrency prices. However, the results of this paper find that social media sentiment relating to Bitcoin does not add significant predictive value to forecasting daily price returns for each of the six cryptocurrencies used for analysis and that machine learning models that do not assume linearity between the current day price return and previous daily price …

Finding Answers In Gaps: The Relationship Between Drugs And Mexico's Economy, Mariela Centeno

CMC Senior Theses

This paper sets out to understand the economic conditions that paved the way for the evolution and resilience of a powerful and resilient drug economy in Mexico. To do this, I examine the relationship between a proxy for drug movement from Mexico and large economic variables in the country. I use a dataset that incorporates the drug seizures from 1997 to 2022 to understand whether privatization and the resulting rising economic inequalities in Mexico paved the way for a growing drug economy. This paper builds on current literature regarding drug market estimates and drug economy interactions. Using an OLS regression …

Time Allocation Pattern For Household And Expenditure Saving Market Activities By Using Economic Value Of Time: A Gender-Based Analysis In Pakistan, Hamna Nasir, Ambreen Fatima, Gulrukh Zahid

Business Review

The objective of this study is to estimate the opportunity cost of time spent on household work and expenditure saving market work performed by individuals by taking into account their personal and socio-demographic characteristics. Data is gathered from Labour Force Survey of Pakistan for different years. Pseudo panel technique is used by making cohorts of household and expenditure saving market activities, region and province. Increase in the opportunity cost of time increases female household work hours and expenditure saving market hours by 6.2 and 7.001 hours/week respectively, whereas increase in the opportunity cost of time increases male household hours and …

Essays On The Economics Of Law And Crime, Zachary J. Porreca

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first chapter examines the connection between gentrification and urban violence. I demonstrate a positive and plausibly causal relationship between urban redevelopment and gun violence in Philadelphia. As the underlying mechanism, I focus on gentrification's displacement effect on local drug markets. Treating the city as a spatial network of city blocks and using two-way fixed effects differences-in-differences estimators, I show the gentrification of one block increases violence across the surrounding neighborhood. I find that some 2,400 (8%) of Philadelphia's shootings between the years 2011 and 2020 can be attributed to spillover effects from the gentrification of drug blocks. This effect …

Three Essays In Applied Microeconomics: Philly Style, Alexander Christian Marsella

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

My dissertation analyzes several contemporary policy-based and institutional occurrences in an urban setting to help guide further advancements in reducing violence, drug overdose deaths, and other unhealthy behaviors that city governments look to curb. Several recent developments in Philadelphia offer a promising setting for studying policies that have broad implications.

Chapter 1 examines the effect of the West Philadelphia Promise Zone initiative on violent crime rates in a high-crime area of West Philadelphia, where a series of educational, public-safety, and quality-of-life improvement grants were disbursed from 2014 onward. My difference-in-differences analysis with two-way fixed effects and cluster bootstrapped standard errors …

School Attendance Information Or Conditional Cash Transfer? Evidence From A Randomized Field Experiment In Rural Bangladesh, Tomoki Fujii, Christine Ho, Rohan Ray, Abu S. Shonchoy

Research Collection School Of Economics

Low school attendance remains an important challenge in resource-poor settings with cash and information constraints. We compare conditional cash transfer (CCT) treatments with framing variations (gain and loss) against attendance information treatment as interventions to address these constraints in a unified framework. Our randomized evaluation shows CCT treatments increase attendance by 11 percentage points, about half of which is attributable to attendance information. These treatments improve girls’ academic aspirations and reduce early marriage. Daily CCT set at a quarter of local child wage maximizes attendance impact. We highlight the importance of low-cost information technology to boost attendance sustainably and cost-effectively.

Volatility Puzzle: Long Memory Or Antipersistency, Shuping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The log realized volatility (RV) is often modeled as an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average model ARFIMA(1, d, 0). Two conflicting empirical results have been found in the literature. One stream shows that log RV has a long memory (i.e., the fractional parameter d > 0). The other stream suggests that the autoregressive coefficient α is near unity with antipersistent errors (i.e., d

Intergenerational Transmission Of Occupation In The United States, Swapnil Landge

Publications and Research

This paper explores the persistence of inequality via intergenerational transmission of occupations using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data from 1968 to 2001 of 56,952 unique parent-child pairs. I find that having a father who is in the top and bottom strata† of the socioeconomic professional category has a positive and significant effect on the probability that a son will follow the same professional category as the father, which supports my main hypothesis of persistence of income inequality concerning the transmission of the occupations. The main concern that has been addressed in this paper is that the intangible …