Economic Theory Commons^™

Mountain Monitor - 3rd Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

As a group, the 10 major metro areas of the Mountain West outperformed the national economy during the third quarter of 2014 on all four indicators of economic vitality measured by the Mountain Monitor: employment growth, output growth, unemployment, and house prices. In the three months ending in September, the country’s large metropolitan areas were anticipating the rapid uptick in national economic growth that took hold at the end of 2014. Mountain region metro areas led the way.

All but two major metro areas in the region added jobs, and six did so at a faster rate than the …

Mountain Monitor - 2nd Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic growth returned to the 10 major metro areas of the Mountain West in the second quarter of 2014 after slippage in the first quarter of the year. The resumption of vitality progressed unevenly, however. Denver and Salt Lake City pulled ahead as the fastest-growing metro areas in the region. Ogden and Provo’s days of above-average growth appeared to be fading. Las Vegas’ economic recovery advanced strongly, but Sun Belt peers Phoenix and Tucson had more difficulty moving beyond the first quarter’s slowdown. Albuquerque, for its part, welcomed a return to employment and output growth.

Across the region’s 10 major …

Expanding Human Capabilities Through The Adoption And Utilization Of Free, Libre, And Open Source Software, James D. Simpson

Theses & Dissertations

Free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) is software that is collaboratively developed. FLOSS provides end-users with the source code and the freedom to adapt or modify a piece of software to fit their needs (Deek & McHugh, 2008; Stallman, 2010). FLOSS has a 30 year history that dates to the open hacker community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where information and knowledge was freely shared among a community of programmers and end-users (Lessig, 2006; Stallman, 2010; Sullivan, 2011). The advent of a proprietary or closed software development model in the late 1970s and early 1980s prompted FLOSS …

Unilateral Emissions Mitigation, Spillovers, And Global Learning, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal, Sean Walsh, John Whalley

Research Collection School Of Economics

What's the role of unilateral measures in global climate change mitigation in a post-Durban, post 2012 global policy regime? We argue that under conditions of preference heterogeneity, unilateral emissions mitigation at a subnational level may exist even when a nation is unwilling to commit to emission cuts. We establish that under certain assumptions, in a global strongly connected network of countries, learning the costs of switching to a low emissions activity can result in a universal adoption of such activities. We analyze the features of a policy proposal that could accelerate convergence to a low carbon world in the presence …

The Fair And Laissez-Faire Markets: From A Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Baseline To A Fair Market, Eric L. Dixon

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The essay begins with a brief overview of the role of the neoliberal conception of the laissez-faire market in modern political economy. The essay then goes on to defend three claims: 1) the laissez-faire version of a market should not be considered the economic ideal or baseline version of a market because often the fundamental conditions required to reach a genuine equilibrium are unfulfilled under a laissez-faire environment, 2) a distribution resultant from a laissez-faire market should not be considered the ultima facie just distributive baseline because an unregulated market may allocate commodities according to morally arbitrary factors and requires …

Mountain Monitor - 1st Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor finds that the rate of economic recovery in the major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West is no longer impervious to national trends.

The previous edition of the Mountain Monitor observed that the regional rate of recovery seemed to be converging toward that of the nation. This edition of the Mountain Monitor suggests that the trend has progressed further.

The rate of economic recovery broadly slowed across the region from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2014, just as it did nationally. The national headlines in the first three months of the …

Mountain Monitor - 4th Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor finds that the pace of economic recovery in the Mountain West region’s major metropolitan areas converged toward that of the rest of the nation in the last quarter of 2013.

While quarterly performance on the Monitor’s four indicators of economic recovery—employment, output, the unemployment rate, and house prices—varied considerably across the 10 major metro areas of the region, their combined performance broadly slowed to track with the rate of national economic recovery. The quarter’s average job growth remained unchanged in the region at 0.4 percent as the national economy caught up. The gap between the national …

Speculative Tech: The Bitcoin Legal Quagmire & The Need For Legal Innovation, Paul H. Farmer Jr.

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Identifying The Factors That Influence Changes In Aggregate Sentiment Among The Masses: An Analysis Of The Measure Of Consumer Sentiment Through A Conflict Analysis And Resolution Lens, Michael Carl Letamendi

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The University of Michigan's Survey Research Center developed a tool to quantify how people feel towards the state of the economy. Dr. George Katona, a psychologist and professor at the University of Michigan developed the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) in the 1940s. As decades of data were collected on aggregate consumer sentiment through the 50s and 60s, a discovery was made. The ICS seemed to indirectly predict the direction of the economy by accurately anticipating aggregate purchasing versus saving decisions. The index is even used today by the U.S. Government to measure consumer confidence and has been noted to …

Agricultural Patenting: A Case Study Of Monsanto, Shannon Moran

Pepperdine Policy Review

In 2012, genetically-modified crops reached 170 million hectares around the globe. The ability to patent basic forms of life such as plant properties and the legal history of those intellectual property rights gives biotechnological companies such as Monsanto immense power in the vital agricultural sector. This article outlines the concerns over genetically-modified products and the implications for follow-on advancements within biotechnology by using Monsanto as a case study. The article finds that patent policies similar to those within the United States severely restrict competition and stifle innovation in not only the agricultural sector but also within research and humanitarian projects. …

Mountain Monitor - 3rd Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor marks the four-year anniversary of Brookings Mountain West's quarterly tracking of the uneven pace of recovery across the major metro areas of the Intermountain West and it finds that, although the region continues to outperform the national economy the rate of recovery slowed moderately in the region’s metro areas.

As a group, Mountain region metro areas advanced on all four indicators of economic recovery tracked by the Monitor—employment, output, unemployment, and house prices—but their progress was more restrained in the third quarter of 2013 than it was in the second.

Beneath the regional headline of moderating …

Mountain Monitor - 2nd Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic recovery progressed steadily across the metropolitan Mountain West in the second quarter of 2013. Many of the region’s major metro areas counted among the strongest economic performers nationally, but output growth slowed over the quarter and the region‘s unemployment recovery looked to be stagnating. Moderate job growth and a fast and accelerating housing recovery buoyed the Mountain West economy in the second quarter.

Mountain Monitor-1st Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic recovery gained strength across the major metro areas of the Mountain West in the first quarter of 2013. Multiple metro areas achieved long-awaited full employment recoveries in the first quarter and regional production surpassed pre-recession levels of output for the first time. The region’s strong housing rebound continued to be a boon. Additionally, a special supplement to the Monitor shows that the healthcare sector has been an outsized contributor to recovery throughout the region. Despite progress on multiple fronts, though, many Mountain metro areas remain scarred with high unemployment rates, severely depressed house prices, and daunting jobs deficits.

Agency Decision-Making For Climate Change: Cost-Benefit Analysis, The Precautionary Principle, And The Bounds Of Rationality, Laura Carr

Pomona Senior Theses

Climate change tests the limits of human understanding of complexity and uncertainty. It challenges assumptions about our presumed power of control over this planet. This paper examines the theory of how governmental executive branch agencies make regulation decisions about climate change using the decision-making methodologies of cost-benefit analysis and the precautionary principle, and as influenced by perceptions of the bounds of human rationality and ability to deal with risk and uncertainty.

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2012, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Indicators of economic recovery depicted continued progress in the major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West in the fourth quarter of 2012. The region’s employment recovery gained momentum, and solid home-price increases in the region contributed to the nation‘s broader housing recovery. Such inroads bode well for further advances in 2013. At the same time, the region’s output recovery slowed and unemployment refused to budge.

Unilateral Measures And Emissions Mitigation, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal, Sean Walsh, John Whalley

Research Collection School Of Economics

We discuss global climate mitigation that builds on existing unilateral measures to cut emissions. We document and discuss the rationale for such unilateral measures argue that such measures have the potential to generate positive spillover effects both within and across countries. In a simple dynamic model of learning we show that while single countries on their own may never get to the point of switching completely to low emission activities, a learning process with positive spillovers across nations is more likely to deliver a global switch to low emissions. We discuss the key features of a new global Intellectual Property …

State Juvenile Justice Spending Decisions: The Effects Of Federal Aid, Race, Politics, And Other Socioeconomic Factors, Willie B. Coleman Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Historically, juvenile justice in the United States has been the responsibility of state governments with limited federal support. There is a notable gap in the empirical literature on factors that affect funding policies for state juvenile justice programs. In this dissertation research, I used two theoretical perspectives to examine determinants of juvenile justice spending: economic theory on intergovernmental aid and tenets of the Politics of Social Order Framework, developed by Stucky, Heimer, and Lang (2007) to investigate corrections spending. Two research questions were considered: 1) What impact does federal aid have on state spending on juvenile justice programs? and 2) …

Halos, Alibis And Community Development: A Cross National Comparison Of How Governments Spend Revenue From Gambling, Lynn Gidluck

Occasional Papers

This paper provides a cross-national comparison of how governments around the world distribute revenues from state-directed gambling and how these choices have been justified by proponents and vilified by critics. Case studies where governments have popularized gambling expansion by “earmarking” revenues for particular good causes and where the state has collaborated with the voluntary sector to deliver programs from this revenue stream are examined. Lessons learned from challenges of various approaches are considered.

The Effects Of Political Institutions On Public Budgeting, Andrew Burnos

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Economics around the globe has been a growing issue of late due to the current economic crisis. This study focuses on political institutional factors that influence spending in a particular country. The variables used in this study include Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Tax Revenue as Percent of GDP, and current account balance to name a few. This research looks at the relationship between proportional representation compared to majoritarian systems as well as presidential compared to parliamentary systems and how these relate to public budgeting. This research updates the analysis of Persson and Tabellini in their book The Economic Effects of …

Estimating The Impact Of Cell Phone Laws On Car Accident Fatalities, Odinakachi Anyanwu

Pepperdine Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Friedrich Von Hayek: The Socialist-Calculation Debate, Knowledge Arguments, And Modern Economic Development, Cara A. Elliott

Gettysburg Economic Review

At the close of the nineteenth and the commencement of the twentieth century, socialism began to gain momentum as a large-scale movement in Europe and the United States. This popularity was supported by an increased influence of the working class in society, which put pressure for representation upon European parliaments and began to secure concrete improvements in labor protection laws. Moreover, socialist proponents looked hopefully towards the living example of the Soviet Union, which began its socialist experiment in 1917 following the success of the Bolshevik Revolution. Socialism, which found its economic grounding in the legacies of such men as …

Take Me Out Of The Ball Game: The Efficacy Of Public Subsidies In The Success Of Professional Sports Stadiums, Jonah Chodosh

CMC Senior Theses

This paper weights the relative advantages of multiple factors that lead to the success of professional sports stadiums in major markets, though a discussion of the arguments for and against public subsidies towards these projects. Using a logit statistical model, the paper determines that the two factors determining the highest likelihood of venue success include multiple tenants and access to mass transit. The analysis demonstrates that public subsidies towards stadiums don’t generate sufficient economic returns, and that successful stadiums can be created without using taxpayer funds.

Three Essays On Financial Markets And Monetary Policy, Abeba Siraj Mussa

Dissertations

The global financial crisis triggered by fallout from the sub-prime mortgage market in the U.S. has led economists to focus attention on the role of monetary policy in the crisis. The question of how monetary policy affects the financial sector is the key to the current debate over the role financial stability should play in the monetary policy decisions. As a contribution to this debate, my dissertation examines the link between monetary policy and three main financial sectors - the banking sector, the stock market, and the housing market.

The first essay examines whether the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) …

A Business Case For Return On Investment: Understanding Organizational Change, Rya S. Henderson-Carter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Since 2010, 2,000 U. S. leaders spent {dollar}150 billion on return on investment (ROI) training, yet questions still exist on how to measure the benefits of organizational change. The purpose of this embedded single-case study was to explore how business leaders could use ROI to characterize the benefit of intervention strategies for organizational change. Stakeholder theory and Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory formed the conceptual framework for this study. A purposive sample of 20 civilian personnel managers located at a medical facility for veterans in central Texas participated in semistructured interviews. The 5 primary themes that emerged using thematic analysis …

Relationships Between Political Competition And Socioeconomic Status In The United States, Trevor K. Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Over the past 30 years there has been an increase in socioeconomic inequities between Black and White persons in the United States. Some research suggests that political ideology, which in turn impacts political competition levels, may at least partially explain these disparities, though the body of academic literature in this area is sparse. Little is known about how Black political ideology is formed by perceptions of inequality. The purpose of this study was to examine the phenomenon of Black political ideology, political competition, and socioeconomic status to determine how political competition relates to social inequities between Blacks and Whites. The …

Unilateral Measures And Emissions Mitigation, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal, Sean Walsh, John Whalley

Research Collection School Of Economics

We discuss global climate mitigation that builds on existing unilateral measures to cut emissions. We document and discuss the rationale for such unilateral measures argue that such measures have the potential to generate positive spillover effects both within and across countries. In a simple dynamic model of learning we show that while single countries on their own may never get to the point of switching completely to low emission activities, a learning process with positive spillovers across nations is more likely to deliver a global switch to low emissions. We discuss the key features of a new global Intellectual Property …

Reclaiming Prosperity: Repositioning Southern Nevada For The Next Economy, Bruce Katz

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

The outlines of the next American economy are coming into focus, yet the future remains uncertain in Southern Nevada as America's newest metropolis labors through a major recession. It is time therefore to get back on track and begin laying the foundation for a new and more durable kind of growth in metropolitan Las Vegas and across the Intermountain West. To help with that, urban visionary Bruce Katz advanced a powerful depiction of the next American economy in a major UNLV lecture and articulated a bold agenda for helping Las Vegas reclaim prosperity in the new era.

Monopoly, Regulation, And Innovation, Matt Bogard

Economics Faculty Publications

Recently the Justice department has started investigations into alleged anti-trust violations by Monsanto. This has helped fuel a lot of already hyped discontent with one of the world’s leaders in innovative solutions for sustainable agriculture. This article discusses how the regulatory environment could possibly have contributed to more concentration and power in the biotech industry. Increasing regulation would likely have the opposite effect of creating a level playing field in the agriculture industry. From AgWeb, March 27,2010 http://www.agweb.com/blog/Economic_Sense_190/Monopoly_Regulation__and_Innovation_10771/

See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George

Seattle University Law Review

Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.

Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang

Seattle University Law Review

This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.