Economic Theory Commons^™

Public Choice Lessons From The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter, Marta Podemska-Mikluch, Darwyyn Deyo, David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

J. K. Rowling’s series of books about the underage wizard Harry Potter is an effective tool for introducing students to the key concepts of public choice. By keeping political figures at the forefront of the story, Rowling encourages students to recognize the different incentives individuals face in markets versus politics. To illuminate the pedagogical potential of the series and to ease its adoption, we discuss a set of examples that best illustrate the key concepts of public choice. We also share a classroom exercise showcasing how the series can be used to promote active learning.

Regional Economic Development―A Survey Of Theories In The Past Two Centuries (1800-2000), Xiaohong Quan

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to survey the evolution of theories in the field of regional economic development in the past two centuries (1800-2000) before the new millennium. Theories from the ‘spacial’ dimension and from the ‘economic’ dimension are understood as the classical foundation of the field. Important theories are identified and discussed for regional economic development. Specifically, the topics examined here first center around the mechanisms behind regional economic growth, answering questions such as why growth happens in certain regions, why growth can shift to other places, and what factors or environments can foster growth in certain regions. …

Coffee In China: Market Trend And Consumer Demand, Jesse W. Mattingly

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Although it remains a tea consuming nation, both production and consumption of coffee in China has been increasing at double-digit rates and is not expected to slow down (International Coffee Organization (ICO), 2015). With investments and upward trends in production and rapid increases in consumption of coffee in China it is important for producers and retailers of the bean¹ in China to understand the new Chinese coffee consumer. Using survey data from Wuhan, China we help understand the Chinese coffee consumer by explaining their consumption using standard OLS regression. Results show that whether or not consumers make/brew their own …

The Financial Power Of The Powerless: Socio-Economic Status And Interest Rates Under Weak Rule Of Law, Timur Kuran, Jared Rubin

ESI Publications

In advanced economies interest rates vary inversely with the borrower's socio-economic status, which itself depends inversely on default risk. These relationships depend on the impartiality of the law. Where the law is markedly biased in favour of certain groups, the latter will pay a surcharge for capital. Legal power, as measured by privileges before the law, thus undermines financial power, the capacity to borrow cheaply. Developing this argument, this paper also tests it through judicial records from Ottoman Istanbul, 1602-1799. Three privileged Ottoman groups—men, Muslims, and titled elites—all paid relatively high interest rates conditional on various loan characteristics.

Assorted Notes, Book Launch, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Shaikh, A. (2016, February 12). Capitalism: Competition, conflict, crises (Book launch flyer). The New School for Social Research (23-2_Assor... p. 2).
• Shaikh, A. (2013, November 3). Ch 4: production and costs (Unpublished manuscript outline) (23-2_Assor... p. 3).
• Shaikh, A. (2016, April 14). Classical macrodynamics (Unpublished manuscript notes) (23-2_Assor... p. 6).
• Shaikh, A. (2016, March 15). Develop of equity (Unpublished manuscript notes) (23-2_Assor... p. 7).

Informational Efficiency And The Reaction To Terrorism: A Financial Perspective, Nicholas Roland

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this study is to measure the message terror organizations hope to convey using the financial markets as a proxy of measurement to determine patterns within the marketplace and the effects on the terrorists’ ability to deliver a desired message due to the increased use of digital devices and access to instantaneous news, seen over the past decade. Using death count, geographic location, and event type, this study identified 109 attacks between 1985 and 2015 to be analyzed against 5 market indices and 5 securities. Measuring the effects within a 10-day sample window from the time of the …

Does Context Information Affect Perceptions Of The Intrinsic Value Of Visual Art?, Kelsey Ferguson

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This study is an application of cultural economic value theory within the context of visual art. Current literature supports an incompatibility between objective, empirical economic research and the subjectivity of artistic expression. While variables affecting the intrinsic value of art are difficult to identify and measure, this study quantified the effect of context information on university students’ perceptions of visual art. For this study, 118 randomly assigned University of Arkansas students viewed four identical works of art and answered identical questions designed to measure perceptions of intrinsic value. Despite a hypothesis that context would positively affect participants’ reports, when significant …

The Effect Of Nba Free Agency On Player Utility, Austin Erikson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Observably, free agents in the National Basketball Association often make misguided decisions during the free agency period. These decisions may have a direct effect on a player’s performance and salary, affecting their overall utility. Research exists confirming that moving through free agency leads to an effect on player performance, but no study has explored the effect of changing teams through free agency on a player’s salary. As a significant number of players enter this market every year, research on this area is crucially important. The null hypothesis for performance is: H0: moving to a different team through free agency leads …

Assorted Math Notes, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Strong normalization test.mcdx by Anwar Shaikh, PhD. (Unpublished work) (24-33_Asso... p. 2).
• Shaikh, A. (2016). RE: strong normalization (Unpublished manuscript) (24-33_Asso... p. 4).
• Brody, A. (1997). The second eigenvalue of the Leontief matrix. Economic Systems Research, 9(3), 253–258. Carfax Publishing Company (24-33_Asso... p. 15).
• dos Santos, P. (2015). I method (Unpublished manuscript) (24-33_Asso... p. 24).
• Shaikh, A. (2015). Eigenvalue paths and limiting function (Unpublished manuscript) (24-33_Asso... p. 26).
• Bidard, C., & Schatteman, T. (2001). The spectrum of random matrices. Economic Systems Research, 13(3), 289–298. Taylor & Francis (24-33_Asso... p. 27).
• Sun, G.-Z. (2008). …

The Effects Of The One-Child Policy On Household Financial Decisions, Sylvia M. Xu

Honors Theses

The Chinese One-Child Policy, enacted in 1979, was an attempt to decrease the population growth rate following a period of massive social and political confusion and uncertainty. While the policy was beneficial to curbing the population growth in China, it also introduced unintentional consequences, including sex imbalance, and other demographic differences. The goal of this paper is to examine the economic behavior and financial decisions of son-families and daughter-families across different provinces and regions of China, which have varying levels of sex imbalance, as a result of a cultural preference for sons. These financial decisions include the household saving rate, …

Deny, Deny, Deny, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Some commentators argue that new housing supply and less restrictive zoning will not reduce housing prices in high-cost cities. This article discusses and critiques their arguments.

Insatiability And Crisis: Using Interdisciplinarity To Understand (And Denaturalize) Contemporary Humans, Sean P. Macdonald, Costas Panayotakis

Publications and Research

This chapter illustrates how collaboration between different social sciences can encourage students to think critically about prevailing assumptions regarding human nature. Both the chapter and the pedagogical experience on which it is based investigate the distinctive type of human created by capitalist society. In so doing, it takes a heterodox approach to analyzing the concept of an insatiable human nature through a case study that invites students to critically assess this perspective. This discussion then leads to an investigation and critique of traditional neoclassical Economic assumptions about human behavior, which forms the basis for a case study on the causes …

Religious Identity And The Provision Of Public Goods: Evidence From The Indian Princely States, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin

ESI Publications

This paper describes a simple model of how a ruler’s religious identity affects public goods provision. Our primary insight is that rulers reduce public goods expenditures to a greater degree when there are privately-provided substitutes excludable by religion.The basic idea is that if the good is provided privately to the ruler’s co-religionists, the ruler faces weaker incentives to provide this public good because his co-religionists receive lower marginal utility from its provision. Testing such a conjecture is an empirical challenge, however, since the religious identity of rulers rarely varies over time and place. We address this problem by exploiting …

Book Launch, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Book launch planning notes by Anwar Shaikh, PhD

Physics Colloquium, University Of Maryland, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• University of Maryland physics colloquium folder notes by Anwar Shaikh, PhD (23-25_Univ... p. 1)
• Taxi receipt from College Park Marriott Hotel to New Carrollton train station by Taxi-Taxi Inc. (23-25_Univ... p. 2)
• Hotel guest folio by College Park Marriott Hotel & Conference Center (23-25_Univ... p. 4)
• Amtrak electronic ticket by Amtrak (23-25_Univ... p. 6)
• University of Maryland physics colloquium presentation notes by Anwar Shaikh, PhD (23-25_Univ... p. 7)
• Correspondence regarding Amtrak ticket printing by Anwar Shaikh, PhD (23-25_Univ... p. 8)
• Correspondence regarding itinerary for visit to University of Maryland by Victor Yakovenko (23-25_Univ... p. 11)
• Spring 2016 …

The Impact Of State-Provided Paid Family Leave On Wages: Examining The Role Of Gender, Aimee Samantha Abrams Widdicombe

Scripps Senior Theses

The U.S. is the only OECD country that does not offer any form of federal paid parental leave. Only three states—California, New Jersey and Rhode Island—have state-provided paid leave policies; implemented in 2004, 2009 and 2014, respectively. Through descriptive statistics and difference-in-difference-in-difference regression analyses of the wages of women and men of childbearing age (19-45 years) in those three states, we assess whether the paid leave programs have effected wages, and whether these effects vary depending on gender. Our results show that wages of women of childbearing age saw negligible net effects post-policy in policy states, although statistically insignificant. On …

Video Shoot - Three Questions, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

as an archivist detailing a new entry, analyze the uploaded file and give an outline of the material with all dates standardized, all bullet-point item formatting, and sentence case for titles, and italics for all titles, 1.5 spacing between paragraphs, and expand the published items into full apa references with publisher details and journal information but without internet links, or any further description of the different items, standardize the handwritten notes, emails, and comments into full apa-style manuscript citations so they match the level of formality of the published papers, with all handwritten notes credited to anwar shaikh, phd unless …

Linnearity Calculations, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Linearity calculations by Anwar Shaikh, PhD (pp. 1-2)
• Measuring curvature by Anwar Shaikh, PhD (p. 4)
• Your library materials are overdue by New York University and Consortium Libraries (p. 14)
• White, A. D. (1896). Fiat money inflation in France: How it came, what it brought, and how it ended. D. Appleton and Co. (p. 14)
• O'Brien, T. J. (1991). A simple binomial no-arbitrage model of the term structure: With applications to the valuation of interest-sensitive options and interest-rate swaps. Salomon Brothers Center for the Study of Financial Institutions. (p. 14)
• Curvature measure: Numeric calculations by …

Compounding The Sacred And The Profane: How Economic Theory Brings New Insight To The Growth And Decline Of American Protestantism, Bretton Chad

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, economic theory and models will be used to analyze trends of religious growth and decline within the United States. These theories and models, such as Rational Choice Theory, will be applied in order to better understand and gain new insight into shifts and changes within the religious landscape of the United States. Recent trends of growth and decline within Protestantism, the most prominent Christian tradition in America, will be the focus of the investigation. As its main focus, this thesis will ultimately demonstrate that the trends of decline in the mainline Protestant tradition opposed to the trends …

Toronto Historical Materialism Conference & General Notes, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

as an archivist detailing a new entry, analyze the uploaded file and give an outline of the material with all dates standardized, all bullet-point item formatting, and sentence case for titles, and italics for all titles, 1.5 spacing between paragraphs, and expand the published items into full apa references with publisher details and journal information but without internet links, or any further description of the different items, standardize the handwritten notes, emails, and comments into full apa-style manuscript citations so they match the level of formality of the published papers, with all handwritten notes credited to anwar shaikh, phd unless …

Tlos And Global Financial Markets: The Case Of Derivatives, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

A Sustainability-Based Project Selection Algorithm: Socio-Technical-Economic Project Selection (Steps) Algorithm, Bharathi Bhattu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Multi-dimensional aspects play a vital role in the task of project-decision making. Environmental effects are to be considered in addition to other technical and non-technical aspects in order to avoid undue environmental damage. This current work introduces a new decision-making algorithm (Socio-Technical-Economic Project Selection or STEPS) that is demonstrated with the use of RCA (recycled concrete aggregate) as riprap for slope stabilization and erosion control which leaches chemical arsenic when in contact with water. Arsenic has long been recognized for its lethal properties. The main intention of introducing this new algorithm is to use sustainability concepts of social, technical, and …

Battle Of The Beds: The Economic Impact Of Airbnb On The Hotel Industry In Chicago And San Francisco, Katherine Goree

Scripps Senior Theses

The sharing economy is the private redistribution of goods via peer-to-peer sharing. Since internet use has saturated the U.S., the sharing economy has become widely internet-based. Airbnb, a website and app that facilitates the short-term rental of space to stay in another person’s home, has become a major component of the sharing economy.

This study includes an empirical analysis of the hotel occupancy rates in two major markets, San Francisco and Chicago, and how they have or have not changed, from the 2008 launch of Airbnb through the end of 2014. The study hypothesizes that Airbnb has had a statistically …

Marx Keynes Poster, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Mexico Nov 2016 Marx - Keynes poster by Anwar Shaikh, PhD
• Anwar Shaikh en la Facultad de Economía by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Robust Information Cascade With Endogenous Ordering, Yi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyze a sequential decision model with endogenous ordering in which decision makers are allowed to choose the time of acting (exercising a risky investment option) or waiting. We show the existence of a unique symmetric equilibrium and characterize information cascade under endogenous ordering. Further, if there are two or more risky investment options, individuals tend to wait longer with competition. Hence, we could end up with a dilemma: more options might be worse.

Price Signaling In A Two-Market Duopoly, Matthew Hughes

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Within any industry, firms typically produce related products over multiple subsequent periods in an attempt to build consumer loyalty and achieve continued sales. Apple releases new iPhones and car companies produce new models every year, relying on consumers believing each new product is of high quality. Firms rely on the spillover effects from previous markets, where firms are able to more easily demonstrate their product's quality to the consumers before purchase. The goal is to find a range of prices which allows the high quality firm to distinguish its type to consumers via the price pH and if spillover effects …

Subreption, Radical Institutionalism, And Evolutionary Economics, John B. Hall, Alexander Dunlap, Joe Mitchell-Nelson

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This inquiry seeks to establish the importance of subreption as an approach to economic and social evolution that also proves integral to the tradition of radical institutionalism. We relate subreption’s etymology and appearances in Roman, Canon and Scots Law, as well as in Philosophy, to its applications found in writings advanced by Thorstein Veblen and carried on later as William Dugger details the rise of corporate hegemony. Understood as an approach derivable from selected philosophical writings of Immanuel Kant, in social science subreption is suggested to occur through the introduction of an outside value that sets off a form of …

American Obesity: Rooted In Uncertainty, Institutions And Public Policy, James Woodward

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Despite the efforts of policymakers, medical professionals, and other stakeholders, obesity and related health problems show no signs of receding from their record-high rates. Public policy has largely taken the form of consumer advice, (e.g., USDA’s Dietary Guidelines). Since consumers bear most of the costs associated with their obesity, the goal of obesity prevention appears to be incentive-compatible, prima facie. That is, there is no a priori case for much further policy intervention unless existing advice is deficient or consumers’ exhibit systematically poor decision-making.

My review of the literature shows that scholars have long conveyed a consistent narrative regarding …

Career And Technical Education Completers' Perspectives Of College And Career Readiness, Dandi Daniels

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

At a southeast United States high school career center, career and technology education (CTE) programs failed to meet the state career and college readiness benchmarks. Meeting these benchmarks is necessary for students who transition from high school to the workplace or a postsecondary education program. Bandura's social learning theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. The purpose of this bounded, qualitative case study was to explore students' perspectives of their career and college readiness or nonreadiness after completing a CTE program. Purposeful sampling was used to identify 10 participants who had completed a vocational technical center (VTC) CTE …

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 …