Economic Theory Commons^™

Decrypting Bitcoin Prices And Adoption Rates Using Google Search, Varun Puri

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I analyze Bitcoin price formation and adoption rates at a global and national level. In determining Bitcoin prices, I consider contemporaneous and lagged values of traditional determinants of currencies, such as inflation and industrial production, and digital currency specific factors, primarily public interest. Using monthly time-series data across five years (2011 – 2016), I find that global public interest in Bitcoin, measured by Google searches for the keyword ‘Bitcoin,’ has a positive and significant impact on Bitcoin prices. I extend the analysis to a country level by employing a proxy for adoption rates, represented by the number …

Craft Beer Expansion In The United States, Alex J. Herrera

CMC Senior Theses

For centuries the world’s biggest breweries, including Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors, have been producing America’s favorite beers like Budweiser and Coors Light. However, more recently smaller, craft breweries have seen significant expansion as a growing number of Americans are drinking craft beers. How has this recent trend affected the beer market in the United States? More specifically, how has the recent success of craft breweries affected Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors? I examine the economic factors that have led to craft beer’s success in a highly competitive market, and further, how this success has impacted Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors. My study …

Bitcoin: Is Cryptocurrency Viable?, Austin Hill

CMC Senior Theses

Bitcoin, a virtual currency invented in 2009, was created as a peer-to-peer currency that eliminated the need for a third party authority, such as banks or government, to be involved in monetary transactions. Having no intrinsic value but carrying no government guarantees relegates bitcoin and its competitors to the perpetual role of investment opportunity, deriving value not from a practical use, but from a nominal, dollar value. This will continue to be the case until the U.S. Government sanctions virtual currency as a viable store of value. Because the dollar plays such a large role in the world’s economy, other …

Los Bancos Del Tiempo En España: Combatiendo La Recesión Con La Moneda Social, Marco Martellini

CMC Senior Theses

Un banco del tiempo (BDT) es el nombre formal que se le da a unas instituciones comunitarias que operan con horas de tiempo personal y laboral como moneda oficial. Son sistemas organizados de moneda social que permiten a sus usuarios intercambiar su propio tiempo y destreza en forma de créditos de servicio. La unidad de moneda es una hora de trabajo. Los BDT son parte de la categoría de moneda alternativa social y representan una evolución moderna de entidades clásicas como los trueques.

Los BDT valoran conceptos como compartir, igualdad y mutualismo. Así, funcionan como un sistema alternativo a los …

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.

Estimating The Effects Of Integrated Film Production On Box-Office Performance: Do Inhouse Effects Influence Studio Moguls?, Daniel M. Polyakov

CMC Senior Theses

Each year well over one billion movie tickets are sold to an audience who knows very little about what they are getting themselves into. Why is it that despite the uncertainty, people return to the theaters to see what Hollywood has in store for them? In efforts to provide answers regarding the driving forces behind Hollywood’s blockbuster hits, this study takes into account the integration levels of the studios. Specifically, does a movie produced in-house at a large studio have a better chance of being a blockbuster hit than one which is outsourced to an independent production company? Further, I …

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.

Financial Liberalization And International Capital Flows, Nancy Neiman Auerbach, Yoonmin Kim, Thana Sompornserm

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

It is interesting that domestic and international financial liberalization are among the most often cited causes of the 1997–98 crisis. Liberalization in the Asian crisis countries took place prior to the crisis as did large capital inflows, many of which reversed during the crisis in the classic pattern of capital flow bonanzas ending in sudden stops (Calvo, Izquierdo, and Mejía 2008; Reinhart and Reinhart 2008; Sula and Willett 2009). Furthermore, China and India, with much less general financial liberalization and a continuing array of capital controls, were little hit by the crisis. Malaysia’s experiment with increasing capital controls during the …

The Political Economy Of Perverse Financial Liberalization: Examples From The Asian Crisis, Nancy Neiman Auerbach, Thomas D. Willett

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Debates continue to rage about the causes of recent currency and financial crises around the globe and their implications for the desirability of domestic and international financial liberalization. Beneath the heated exchanges of the most vocal disputants, a quiet consensus is beginning to emerge among serious scholars and policy officials. The big lesson from these crises is that while financial liberalization is still a desirable goal, it must be approached very carefully. It’s not just that without the proper pre-conditions liberalization will not provide full benefits. The results can sometimes be disastrous. What was once considered to be an arcane …