Industrial Organization Commons^™

Expansibility And Army Special Operations Forces, Eric P. Shwedo

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article examines how Army Special Operations might prepare to expand in the event of a major war by resolving impediments to growth, improving recall procedures, and developing plans to expand training capacities.

Trade Union Trade-Offs: Unions, Voters, And The Rise Of Right-Wing Populism, Kim Gabbitas

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Trade union membership in European Union member states has been in decline for decades, which has many concerned about the future of workers’ rights. While existing work examines the reasons for this decline, my research shifts the focus from union density to the functions unions serve and how these functions affect and are affected by changing electoral behavior. I examine the rise of right-wing populist movements in Europe and how these movements and the challenges today’s labor unions face can be traced to the same underlying forces. I argue that, as the relevance of trade unions declines for blue-collar workers, …

Mega-Events And Tourism: The Case Of Brazil, Robert Baumann, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

Mega-sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup are expensive affairs. Host countries often justify the spending required to stage these events by predicting that mega-events will draw large numbers of tourists. This paper analyzes monthly foreign tourist arrivals into Brazil between 2003 and 2015 and finds that the 2014 FIFA World Cup increased foreign tourism by roughly one million visitors. This number far exceeded expectations, but we show that roughly a quarter of this increase in foreign tourism was caused by the fortuitous advancement of Argentina’s national team, and potential hosts should not count on the event to consistently …

Corruption In The Bidding, Construction, And Organization Of Mega-Events: An Analysis Of The Olympics And World Cup, Victor Matheson, Daniel Schwab, Patrick Koval

Economics Department Working Papers

In the processes required to host a sports mega-event, corruption has been prevalent on numerous occasions, leading to unnecessary costs becoming the ultimate responsibility of a host government’s taxpayers. Little progress has been made in the prevention of such behavior. In this chapter, we examine the history of corruption in sports mega-events, namely the Olympics and World Cup, to identify parts of the bidding and preparation processes that are vulnerable to illicit behavior. We propose potential solutions to be implemented at various levels in order to prevent further corruption.

Hidden Subsidies And The Public Ownership Of Sports Facilities: The Case Of Levi’S Stadium In Santa Clara, Robert Baumann, Victor Matheson, Debra O'Connor

Economics Department Working Papers

Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California is an example of a private financing / public ownership arrangement. While the stadium’s construction resulted in no direct tax increases, this ownership arrangement allows the San Francisco 49ers to avoid many types of taxes on the income generated from Levi’s Stadium. We estimate the total tax savings to the 49ers at between $106 and $213 million over the first 20 years of Levi’s Stadium compared with a privately financed and owned option. We argue that tax savings inherent in private financing / public ownership arrangements represent indirect and hidden subsidies.

On The Relationship Between Household Wealth And Entrepreneurship, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

Motivated by a substantial number of startup owners with negative household net worth, I present a model that incorporates credit borrowing into Evans and Jovanovic [1989]. The estimated model generates no relationship between household wealth and the propensity for business entry. Ignoring credit borrowing for potential business owners substantially overstates the efficiency loss from financial constraints in business entry. However, the efficiency loss in investments by the entrants is large even if credit borrowing is allowed. Individuals who start a business once credit borrowing is available are those whose business ideas are of a high-enough quality to compensate high financing …

Sewing Garments, Sowing Lives: Two Generations Of Migrant Workers' Back And Forth To The Chinese Coast, Alice Tzou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Migrant workers in China have been at the center of popular news media and scholarly attention for three decades, since they started to migrate to work in factories on the coast in the post-1978 Economic Reform era. As western and central China has developed and work opportunities have arisen in these migrant-sending regions, internal migrants have started to return home. Push and pull factors of internal migration have been reversed. Poverty and lack of job opportunities used to be the push factors; they are now replaced by new push factors—long hours of work and long-distance travel to and from the …

Beyond Moneyball: Changing Compensation In Mlb, Joshua Congdon-Hohman, Jonathan A. Lanning

Economics Department Working Papers

This study examines the changes in player compensation in Major League Baseball during the last three decades. Specifically, we examine the extent to which recently documented changes in players’ compensation structure based on certain types of productivity fits in with the longer term trends in compensation, and identify the value of specific output activities in different time periods. We examine free agent contracts in three-year periods across three decades and find changes to which players’ performance measures are significantly rewarded in free agency. We find evidence that the compensation strategies of baseball teams increased the rewards to “power” statistics like …

Broken Glass: The Decline Of Corporate Paternalism And Welfare Capitalism, A Critical Analysis Of One Company’S Systematic Socio-Economic Metamorphosis, Doug Bruno

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

Does Wage-Inflation Targeting Complement Foreign Exchange Intervention? An Evaluation Of A Multi-Target, Two-Instrument Monetary Policy Framework, Taojun Xie, Jingting Liu, Joseph D. Alba, Wai-Mun Chia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We assess the inclusion of wage inflation as an intermediate target of an emerging central bank using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky wages and prices calibrated for the South Korean economy. The model includes wage inflation as an additional target jointly with domestic price inflation and the output gap in a Taylor- type interest rate rule operating with a sterilized foreign exchange (FX) intervention rule. Our results show a complementary relationship between wage inflation targeting and price inflation targeting. That is, by supplementing price inflation targeting with wage inflation targeting, welfare improves for cases with and without …

P14. Estimating The Effects Of File-Sharing On Movie Box-Office, Zhuang Liu

Western Research Forum

Background:

File-sharing and on-line piracy have caught great public attention. There is a public debate on whether or not we should close torrenting sites like Piratedbay.com. Copyright holders argue yes and claim substantial loss due to filesharing while Pirates claim that file-sharing is welfare-improving and the effects on sale are negligible. Right now no consensus has been reached on how file-sharing affects industry revenue in economics literature.

Methods:

Using a novel dataset of downloads from Bit-Torrent network, this paper quantifies the effects of file-sharing on movie box-office revenue. I estimate a random coefficient demand model of movies to …

Structural Change And Industrial Policy: A Case Study Of Ethiopia’S Leather Sector, Michael Mbate

Journal of African Trade

Recent empirical evidence underscores the vital role of industrial development in fostering structural change and promoting a country's long-run development objectives. Devising sound industrial policy institutions emerges as a key policy option to promote the reallocation of human, physical and financial resources to high value added sectors of the economy. This paper examines the rationale for industrial policy, why it has been ineffective in most African countries and what policy lessons should be distilled from past experiences. Using the Ethiopian leather and leather product sector, it examines how industrial policies are formulated and implemented in practice. The paper concludes by …

Empathy Conservation: Experiments Suggest A Need For More Attention In Policymaking, Natalia V. Czap, Hans J. Czap, Gary Lynne, Mark E. Burbach

CAFIO: Policy Research Group Policy Pagers

One of the major challenges of environmental policy with regard to conservation is that it must often rely on voluntary and non-selfish actions of individuals. Traditionally policy makers rely on direct regulation and financial incentives, but both approaches face problems. Regulations may lead to resentment and the costs of perfect enforcement are prohibitively high. Financial incentives can be perverse and may lead to unintended consequences, including crowding out of intrinsic motivation. In addition, behavioral economics and economic psychology studies demonstrate that the assumptions of the neoclassical economic models (such as self-interest only, rationality, and willpower) on which the policy design …

Renewable Portfolio Standards May Reduce Green Energy Used In Electricity Production, Karina Schoengold, Suparna Bhattacharya, Konstantinos Giannakas

CAFIO: Policy Research Group Policy Pagers

Rising energy prices, dependence on foreign oil supplies, and consequences of climate change have prompted governments worldwide to initiate policies to shift from fossil fuels to renewables for electricity generation. One of the most commonly used policy instruments is the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires electricity providers to procure green energy (e.g., wind, solar, biomass) for a portion of their electricity supplies. To date, RPS has been a state-mandated program in the United States. As of February 2017, 29 states, Washington DC, and 3 territories have adopted RPS policies.

The Potential And Limits Of Extended Producer Responsibility: A Comparative Analysis Study, Jessica Bass

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis draws on the concept of product stewardship and its focus on incorporating all of the actors in a product’s lifecycle into steps to take responsibility for waste management. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) recognizes the producer’s distinct potential to consider and drive change in waste management. Producers often serve like mediators between the design and use phases of a product’s lifecycle. Through EPR policies, the producer takes on the costs of ensuring safe end-of-life waste disposal. In this way, EPR can be expected to help relieve the public of some of the costs of waste disposal, and to support …