Other Economics Commons^™

Comparison Of Country/Economies At Stage Of Development With Movement In Rankings Of Countries On Global Competitiveness, Pradip K. Shukla, M. P. Shukla, Y. P. Shukla, A. P. Shukla

Business Faculty Articles and Research

With close to 200 countries in the world today, these countries are at various stages of development from less developed to more develop; these stages are often labeled in a rising numerical sequence such as Stage 1 to 3. Countries in the world compete in a global economy to benefit their domestic firms and citizens. As countries move to a higher stage of economic development they offer more global competitiveness for global businesses seeking new markets for sales, offshore outsourcing, and investments.

“The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business …

Big Data In Economics, Matthew Harding, Jonathan Hersh

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Big Data refers to data sets of much larger size, higher frequency, and often more personalized information. Examples include data collected by smart sensors in homes or aggregation of tweets on Twitter. In small data sets, traditional econometric methods tend to outperform more complex techniques. In large data sets, however, machine learning methods shine. New analytic approaches are needed to make the most of Big Data in economics. Researchers and policymakers should thus pay close attention to recent developments in machine learning techniques if they want to fully take advantage of these new sources of Big Data.

Younger Federal District Court Judges Favor Presidential Power, Tom Campbell, Nathaniel T. Wilcox

ESI Working Papers

From 1960 to 2015, Federal District Court opinions involving challenges to Executive Branch authority show that U.S. Federal District Court judges (trial judges) support such authority less as they age, with a sharp decline beginning near age 57. We argue that District judges know that elevation to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals becomes increasingly improbable, and hence have less reason to ‘cooperate’ with the Executive, with advancing age. Political variables (and other variables) introduced as extra regressors do not reverse our main results. When there are contemporaneous vacancies on their Circuit courts, District judges in the eleven State Circuits …

Traveling With Joel, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Kovel’s contributions to a critique of psychiatry, of political theory and of the ruination of the biosphere have been pathfinding, highly revered, and reviewed and debated in highly prestigious journals and publications such as The New York Times. His work with revolutionaries around the globe (including sojourns in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution as just one of many examples), and his achievements alongside some of the leading political activists worldwide have secured for Kovel a premier place in the history of the left. But notoriety is not what drives Kovel’s work. What drives Kovel’s work is a relentless struggle for …

Partners Or Strangers? Cooperation, Monetary Trade, And The Choice Of Scale Of Interaction, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

ESI Working Papers

We show that monetary exchange facilitates the transition from small to large-scale economic interactions. In an experiment, subjects chose to play an “intertemporal cooperation game” either in partnerships or in groups of strangers where payoffs could be higher. Theoretically, a norm of mutual support is sufficient to maximize efficiency through large-scale cooperation. Empirically, absent a monetary system, participants were reluctant to interact on a large scale; and when they did, efficiency plummeted compared to partnerships because cooperation collapsed. This failure was reversed only when a stable monetary system endogenously emerged: the institution of money mitigated strategic uncertainty problems.

'To Sell Or Not To Sell': Licensing Versus Selling By An Outside Innovator, Swapnendu Banerjee, Sougata Poddar

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study various modes of technology transfer of an outside innovator in a spatial framework when the potential licensees are asymmetric. In addition to different licensing options, we also look into the option of selling the property rights of innovation and find the optimal mode of technology transfer. For licensing we find the optimal policy is to offer pure royalty contracts to both licensee firms when cost differentials between the firms are relatively small compared to the transportation cost, otherwise offer a fixed fee licensing contract to the efficient firm only. Interestingly, we show the innovator is always better-off selling …

The Connection Between Race And Performance Of Nba Draft Picks, Jeremiah Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between race and performance in terms of one of the highest forms of efficiency in basketball, field goal percentage, based on college statistics, with regard to draft position, career earnings and NBA win shares.

Marital Violence And Fertility In A Relatively Egalitarian High-Fertility Population, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Ultimate and proximate explanations of men’s physical intimate partner violence (IPV) against women have been proposed. An ultimate explanation posits that IPV is used to achieve a selfish fitness-relevant outcome, and predicts that IPV is associated with greater marital fertility. Proximate IPV explanations contain either complementary strategic components (for example, men’s desire for partner control), non-strategic components (for example, men’s self-regulatory failure), or both strategic and non-strategic components involving social learning. Consistent with an expectation from an ultimate IPV explanation, we find that IPV predicts greater marital fertility among Tsimané forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia (n = 133 marriages, 105 women). This …

Toxic Effects Of Lead Disposal In Water: An Analysis Of Tri Facility Releases, Patrick Koval

Economics Department Working Papers

Using county-level TRI data from 2003 to 2016, I find evidence that lead emissions in water adversely affect birth weights within the emitting county, especially with respect to the percentage of births considered low birth weight within that county (less than 2,500 grams). I find that a one percent increase in lead emissions per square mile increases the proportion of low birth weights by 0.27 percentage points. For a county with an average number of births in a particular year, this one percent increase in lead per square mile translates to an additional $475,000 in hospitalization costs from complications with …

Correction To: 'Greater Wealth Inequality, Less Polygyny: Rethinking The Polygyny Threshold Model', Cody T. Ross, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Seung-Yun Oh, Samuel Bowles, Bret Beheim, John Bunce, Mark Caudell, Gregory Clark, Heidi Colleran, Carmen Cortez, Patricia Draper, Russell D. Greaves, Michael Gurven, Thomas Headland, Janet Headland, Kim Hill, Barry Hewlett, Hillard Kaplan, Jeremy Koster, Karen Kramer, Frank Marlowe, Richard Mcelereath, David Nolin, Marsha Quinlan, Robert Quinlan, Caissa Revilla-Minaya, Brooke Scelza, Ryan Schacht, Mary Shenk, Ray Uehara, Eckart Voland, Kai Willführ, Bruce Winterhalder, John Ziker, Christopher Von Rueden

ESI Publications

No abstract provided.

Greater Wealth Inequality, Less Polygyny: Rethinking The Polygyny Threshold Model, Cody T. Ross, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Seung-Yun Oh, Samuel Bowles, Bret Beheim, John Bunce, Mark Caudell, Gregory Clark, Heidi Colleran, Carmen Cortez, Patricia Draper, Russell D. Greaves, Michael Gurven, Thomas Headland, Janet Headland, Kim Hill, Barry Hewlett, Hillard Kaplan, Jeremy Koster, Karen Kramer, Frank Marlowe, Richard Mcelreath, David Nolin, Marsha Quinlan, Robert Quinlan, Caissa Revilla-Minaya, Brooke Scelza, Ryan Schacht, Mary Shenk, Ray Uehara, Eckart Voland, Kai Willführ, Bruce Winterhalder, John Ziker, Christopher Von Rueden

ESI Publications

Monogamy appears to have become the predominant human mating system with the emergence of highly unequal agricultural populations that replaced relatively egalitarian horticultural populations, challenging the conventional idea—based on the polygyny threshold model—that polygyny should be positively associated with wealth inequality. To address this polygyny paradox, we generalize the standard polygyny threshold model to a mutual mate choice model predicting the fraction of women married polygynously. We then demonstrate two conditions that are jointly sufficient to make monogamy the predominant marriage form, even in highly unequal societies. We assess if these conditions are satisfied using individual-level data from 29 human …

Sleep Variability And Nighttime Activity Among Tsimane Forager‐Horticulturalists, Gandhi Yetish, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Objectives

A common presumption in sleep research is that “normal” human sleep should show high night‐to‐night consistency. Yet, intra‐individual sleep variation in small‐scale subsistence societies has never been studied to test this idea. In this study, we assessed the degree of nightly variation in sleep patterns among Tsimane forager‐horticulturalists in Bolivia, and explored possible drivers of the intra‐individual variability.

Methods

We actigraphically recorded sleep among 120 Tsimane adults (67 female), aged 18–91, for an average of 4.9 nights per person using the Actigraph GT3X and Philips Respironics Actiwatch 2. We assessed intra‐individual variation using intra‐class correlations and average deviation from …

The Economic Impact Of Apple Growing And Processing On The West Virginia Economy, Christiadi, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

The Economic Impact Of Coal In West Virginia, Christiadi, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

Coal Production In West Virginia, Brian Lego, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

Unconventional Natural Gas Industry Value Chain And Representative Companies, Ednilson Bernardes

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

This report defines a framework for the unconventional natural gas value chain and identifies representative companies in each stage, as per definition of the value chain adopted for the study. The main focus of the report is on major companies in the up and midstream stages of the value chain. However, the report presents major companies in stages further downstream covered by the study. The reason for the focus on up and midstream stages is two‐fold. First, given the current level of development of the unconventional natural gas value chain in the state, those are the stages where most opportunities …

Applied Economics (Clayton), Sheryne Southard, Christie Burton, Bryan Labrecque, Xueyu Cheng, Elnora Farmer

Computer Science and Information Technology Grants Collections

This Grants Collection for Applied Economics was created under a Round Ten ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.

Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process.

Documents are in .pdf format, with a separate .docx (Word) version available for download. Each collection contains the following materials:

• Linked Syllabus
• Initial Proposal
• Final Report

The Impact Of Remittances On Education Attainment: Evidence From Dominican Republic, Tahiya Begum

Honors College Theses

This paper will examine the relationship between remittances and education attainment focusing on Dominican Republic in 2002. This study will focus on households in Dominican Republic using surveys from IPUMS international and the data is cross-sectional. Sending remittances increases the income for households, which in return, influences the spending on education. The study of remittances is analyzed in a more cultural and social value rather than entirely economic. The dynamic and structure of a family is crucial when studying the effects of remittances in a developing country. Key findings from this analysis is that the relationship between education attainment and …

Equilibrium Wage Rigidity In Directed Search, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim

ESI Working Papers

Matching frictions and downward wage rigidity emerge as equilibrium phenomena in a twosided labor market where firms sustain variable wage adjustment costs. Firms post wages to attract workers and matches are endogenous. Reducing the wage relative to the wage previously posted is costly to the firm, where the cost is proportional to the size of the proposed cut. Shocks to the firm’s profitability may yield an equilibrium wage above what the firm would offer absent proportional adjustment costs. Wage cuts can be partial or full, immediate or delayed, and are non-linear in the shock size. Importantly, wages are sticky even …

Land Assembly With Taxes, Not Takings, Mark Desantis, Matthew W. Mccarter, Abel Winn

ESI Publications

We use a novel tax mechanism – ‘rejected offer reassessment’ (ROR) – in laboratory experiments to discourage seller holdout and facilitate land assembly. Under this mechanism, if a landowner rejects a developer’s offer, his taxable property value is reassessed to be equal to the rejected offer, increasing his taxes. We find that, relative to a control treatment, ROR discourages the magnitude of seller holdout (but not its frequency) and increases the rate of successful land assembly by almost 60%. It also increases the gains from trade by 22.1% relative to the control treatment, but the difference is not statistically significant.

Moderate Growth With A Stronger Industrial Sector, Eric Thompson

Business in Nebraska

Nebraska will record solid economic growth during the forecast period but will lag U.S. growth. While Nebraska’s large farming sector has stabilized, it will not contribute much to economic growth during the forecast period. Job growth also will be sluggish in transportation, retail trade and state and local government. Job growth, however, will be stronger in the services, finance, manufacturing and construction. Projected growth rates for 2018 to 2020 are presented in Table 1.

Employment will grow by 0.8% to 1.0% per year, below the national rate. Non-farm income will grow between 3.6% and 3.8% each year. This growth is …

Romania -- Systematic Country Diagnostic: Background Note-Agriculture (English), Edinaldo Tebaldi, Anatol Gobjila

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Agriculture plays a significant socio-economic role in Romania and its transformation to a modern, vibrant, and market-oriented sector is central to fighting poverty, promoting social inclusion, and reducing the urban/rural development divide. Most of Romania's poor live in rural areas and earn their living from agriculture or agriculture-related activities. In 2016, eight out of ten people who were at risk of poverty or social exclusion lived either in rural areas or in towns and suburbs that were predominately rural. Using microdata from the 2013 Household Budget Survey (HBS), this report finds that individuals living in rural areas are 16.5 percent …

Buddhist Economics: Problems And Possibilities, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

The Impacts Of Natural Disasters On Educational Attainment: Cross-Country Evidence From Macro Data, Lois Onigbinde

Master's Theses

Do natural disasters impact educational attainment? Education as a paramount factor of economic development suffers from the uncontrollable effects of these increasing events from storms to floods, earthquakes to wildfires. Globally, educational resources are destroyed, directly and indirectly, students and teachers are displaced or killed, parents’ income is affected because of natural disasters. Investments in human capital for rich- and low-income countries are exposed to the uneven impact of natural disasters that adjusts household and country-level decisions, leaving them to short and long-run losses. Exploring the influence of natural disasters on secondary school attainment across a sample of 85 countries …

The Impacts Of Natural Disasters On Educational Attainment: Cross-Country Evidence From Macro Data, Lois Onigbinde

Master's Theses

Do natural disasters impact educational attainment? Education as a paramount factor of economic development suffers from the uncontrollable effects of these increasing events from storms to floods, earthquakes to wildfires. Globally, educational resources are destroyed, directly and indirectly, students and teachers are displaced or killed, parents’ income is affected because of natural disasters. Investments in human capital for rich- and low-income countries are exposed to the uneven impact of natural disasters that adjusts household and country-level decisions, leaving them to short and long-run losses. Exploring the influence of natural disasters on secondary school attainment across a sample of 85 countries …

Swimming For More Than Gold: How Swimming Participation And Success In Elite International Swimming Events Can Decrease Drowning Rates Across The World, Joshua R. Cottle

Undergraduate Economic Review

International swimming provides an opportunity for thousands of swimmers to compete at the highest level of the sport. In this paper, I argue that participation and success in these events can influence drowning rates across the world. My analysis suggests that one of the most notable negative influences on drowning rates is swimming participation in countries that have the smallest roster sizes and the lowest average income levels. My analysis shows that swimming success in the Olympics has a significant positive effect on drowning rates in countries in the middle-income brackets.

Transitions From Higher Education To The Labor Market: Merit Aid, Time To Degree Signals, And Major Choice, Christopher P. Erwin

Economics ETDs

Human capital production is central to economic wellbeing from a national perspective: it improves productivity, spurs technological innovation, and promotes sustainable economic growth over time. Equally important, investments in human capital are central to economic wellbeing at the individual level. College graduates tend to earn more money, are more employable, are better able to manage economic downturns, and have even been shown to have better health. Moreover, for many students, the college experience is an important lesson in living independently, developing social and professional networks, and generally taking on more responsibility in one’s life. It has been said that pursuing …

A Portable Method Of Eliciting Respect For Social Norms, Erik O. Kimbrough, Alexander Vostroknutov

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Recent models of prosociality suggest that cooperation in laboratory games may be better understood as resulting from concern for social norms than from prosocial preferences over outcomes. Underlying this interpretation is the idea that people exhibit heterogeneous respect for shared norms. We introduce a new, abstract task to elicit a proxy for individual norm-following propensity by asking subjects to choose from two actions, where one is costly. We instruct subjects that “the rule is” to take the costly action. Their willingness to incur such a cost reveals respect for norms. We show that choices in this task are similar across …

Karl Marx And Liberation Theology: Dialectical Materialism And Christian Spirituality In, Against, And Beyond Contemporary Capitalism, Peter Mclaren, Petar Jandrić

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This paper explores convergences and discrepancies between liberation theology and the works of Karl Marx through the dialogue between one of the key contemporary proponents of liberation theology, Peter McLaren, and the agnostic scholar in critical pedagogy, Petar Jandrić. The paper briefly outlines liberation theology and its main convergences with the works of Karl Marx. Exposing striking similarities between the two traditions in denouncing the false God of money, it explores differences in their views towards individualism and collectivism. It rejects shallow rhetorical homologies between Marx and the Bible often found in liberation theology, and suggests a change of focus …

Trends And Disparities In Leave Use Under California's Paid Family Leave Program: New Evidence From Administrative Data, Sarah H. Bana, Kelly Bedard, Maya Rossin-Slater

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We use novel administrative data to study trends and disparities in usage of California's first-in-the-nation paid family leave (PFL) program. We show that take-up for both bonding with a new child and caring for an ill family member increased over 2005–2014. Most women combine PFL with maternity leave from the State Disability Insurance system, resulting in leaves longer than 6 weeks. Most men take less than the full 6 weeks of PFL. Individuals in the lowest earnings quartile and in small firms are the least likely to take leave. There are important differences in take-up across industries, especially for men.