Other Economics Commons^™

Human Trafficking In The Wake Of Natural Disasters: Is The United States Any Different Than Third World Countries?, Samantha Stout

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research compares the impacts of devastating natural disasters on levels of human trafficking in developed countries to the impacts experienced in third world countries. The two disasters selected for this study were Hurricane Isaac in Louisiana and the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. Factors selected to measure the impacts of the natural disaster include income level, homelessness, and unemployment rates.

Human trafficking is a crime that touches nearly every country around the world. It is known that human trafficking levels are impacted by factors including poverty levels of regions, political unrest, and even natural disasters. There is …

Cryptocurrencies As An Alternative To Fiat Monetary Systems, David A. Georgeson

Applied Economics Theses

The recent popularity of cryptocurrencies is largely associated with a particular application referred to as Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency has a mix of properties that make it difficult to examine. These properties consist of being infinitely divisible, durable, transferable, fungible and can be controlled to be artificially scarce. Further, cryptocurrencies can act as a means of payment, a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. This thesis will analyze the technical features underlying cryptocurrencies and find out whether or not they can function as an alternative to fiat money. Since Bitcoin is the most commonly understood application …

Race And Gun Violence In The United States: A Case Study Of Policy Reform In Missouri, Morgan C. Williams Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gun violence remains an important contributor to racial differences in mortality within the United States. Despite the existence of these significant racial disparities in firearm homicide victimization, the relationship between gun control policy and racial disparities in homicide remains largely unexplored within the empirical crime literature. Previous research suggests that access to secondary firearm markets serves as a salient contributor to local gun violence with the regulation of private firearm sales falling exclusively within state-level jurisdiction. The role of state-level background check requirements for private firearm sales in reducing gun violence remains controversial in both the empirical literature and gun …

Impulsive Behavior In Competition: Testing Theories Of Overbidding In Rent-Seeking Contests, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Contests are commonly used in the workplace to motivate workers, determine promotion, and assign bonuses. Although contests can be very effective at eliciting high effort, they can also lead to inefficient effort expenditure (overbidding). Researchers have proposed various theories to explain overbidding in contents, including mistakes, systematic biases, the utility of winning, and relative payoff maximization. Using an eight-part experiment, we test and find significant support for the existing theories. Also, we discover some new explanations based on cognitive ability and impulsive behavior. Out of all explanations examined, we find that impulsivity is the most important factor explaining overbidding in …

Cooler Heads Prevail: An Experimental Study On The “Cooling” Effect Of The Strategy Method On Agent Resentment, Jing L. Davis

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This study investigates whether agents’ resentment of controls in a gift-exchange game can be effectively mitigated using the strategy method where agents’ effort choices are elicited contingent on all possible contract choices by principals. The results suggest that allowing agents to contemplate contract choices prospectively results in less resentment and that agents exert higher effort than without this “cooling” process.

Green Competition, Hybrid Equilibrium, And Establishment Of A Resale Market, Arthur J. Caplan, Reza Oladi

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

This paper investigates competition between firms whose choices of how much "green effort" to devote to building their reputations as socially responsible producers are determined in the contexts of simultaneous-move and hybrid simultaneous/sequential-move Bertrand equilibria. We derive conditions under which (1) the inter-temporal, green-effort reaction function of the firm with the less-aggressive green strategy is non-monotonic, (2) the level of green effort chosen by the firm with the more-aggressive green strategy increases when it views itself as the leader in a hybrid game rather than moving concurrently in a simultaneous-choice game, and (3) the establishment of a resale market by …

Challenges Facing Youth Entering The Labor Market, Martha Ross

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

As part of the Brookings Scholar Lecture Series, Brookings Mountain West invites you to a lecture titled "Challenges Facing Youth Entering the Labor Market" by Fellow in Metropolitan Policy, Martha Ross. Labor force participation and employment are declining among teens and young adults, suggesting that fewer young people are having the kinds of work experiences that prepare them for the world of full-time employment. Not everyone is equally affected, as there are marked differences by race/ethnicity, income, and education. This lecture will discuss employment trends among young people and the various strategies that cities and specific programs are using to …

The Economic Impact Of The Fort Martin Power Station On Monongalia County And West Virginia, Eric Bowen, Christiadi

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

The Economic Impact Of The Harrison Power Station On Harrison County And West Virginia, Eric Bowen, Christiadi

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

What Factors Drive Individual Misperceptions Of The Returns To Schooling In Tanzania? Some Lessons For Education Policy, Plamen Nikolov, Nursat Jimi

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Evidence on educational returns and the factors that determine the demand for schooling in developing countries is extremely scarce. Building on previous studies that show individuals underestimating the returns to schooling, we use two surveys from Tanzania to estimate both the actual and perceived schooling returns and subsequently examine what factors drive individual misperceptions regarding actual returns. Using ordinary least squares and instrumental variable methods, we find that each additional year of schooling in Tanzania increases earnings, on average, by 9 to 11 percent. We find that on average individuals underestimate returns to schooling by 74 to 79 percent and …

Income Distribution, Fertility Behavior And Demographic Transition In Egypt, Sarah El-Khishin

Economics

Abstract - Demographic-economic interrelationships have been broadly examined in the literature from a macro perspective using mostly cross-country panel regressions. A limited strand of literature has emphasized the need to examine the demographic-economic dynamics in a reversed way; inspect dual-causality relation between demographic and economic factors. In this paper, I examine the effect of changes in income distribution and fertility behavior on the speed of demographic transition. I moreover examine the reverse relation by testing effect of changed household structure on income distribution and income disparities in Egypt. Empirical results show that wealth redistribution in Egypt and moving up to …

Preference Conformism: An Experiment, Enrique Fatas, Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap, David Rojo Arjona

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This paper reports on an experiment designed to test whether people’s preferences change to become more alike. Such preference conformism would be worrying for an economics that takes individual preferences as given (‘de gustibus es non disputandum’). So the test is important. But it is also difficult. People can behave alike for many reasons and the key to the design of our test, therefore, is the control of the other possible reasons for observing apparent peer effects. We find evidence of preference conformism in the aggregate and at the individual level (where there is heterogeneity). It appears also to be …

Goal Setting In The Principal-Agent Model: Weak Incentives For Strong Performance, Brice Corgnet, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, Roberto Hernán-González

ESI Publications

We study a principal–agent framework in which principals can assign wage-irrelevant goals to agents. We find evidence that, when given the possibility to set wage-irrelevant goals, principals select incentive contracts for which pay is less responsive to agents' performance. Agents' performance is higher in the presence of goal setting despite weaker incentives. We develop a principal–agent model with reference-dependent utility that illustrates how labor contracts combining weak monetary incentives and wage-irrelevant goals can be optimal. The pervasive use of non-monetary incentives in the workplace may help account for previous empirical findings suggesting that firms rely on unexpectedly weak monetary incentives.

Mutual Economic Incentives For Urban Tree Canopy Restoration, Paul E. Thompson Jr.

Undergraduate Economic Review

Potential alignment of economic incentives for tree canopy restoration are modeled using data from a 2015 Louisville Metro Government (KY) Urban Tree Canopy Assessment. The study revealed marked declines in urban canopy coverage from 2004-2012; accelerating losses are forecast through 2050. Tree coverage conveys substantial financial benefit to private property owners, primarily through increased property valuations. Benefits to local government may be derived from the corresponding increase in property tax assessments. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis demonstrates the economic efficiency of tree purchase vouchers (issued by government to private property owners) as a potential contributing solution to urban canopy loss.

A Theory Of Focal Points In 2x2 Games, Jonathan W. Leland, Mark Schneider

ESI Publications

Since the classic work of Schelling, the notion of a focal point has been widely applied to explain coordinated behavior. However, focal points remain largely outside the formal apparatus of game theory. This paper develops a model of play in 2 × 2 games where payoff differences determine what strategy players will perceive as “salient” and choose to play. The model uniquely predicts which outcome will emerge for virtually the entire class of 2 × 2 normal form games. For the subset of such games involving coordination and asymmetric payoffs, payoff differences identify focal outcomes and strategies in the same …

Clarity Trumps Content: An Experiment On Information Acquisition In Beauty Contests, Sanjay Banerjee, Hong Qu, Ran Zhao

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

We provide experimental evidence that under strong beauty contest incentives, players ignore signals from an information source with high content if the source has low clarity. Instead, they acquire equally costly signals from a source with higher clarity despite its lower content. Content measures how precisely an information source identifies an economic situation, whereas clarity measures how precisely the source content is commonly interpreted. Low clarity impairs players' ability to coordinate. When signals are provided exogenously, our experimental results are less severe than theoretical predictions, but consistent with level-2 reasoning in a cognitive behavioral model. When players acquire signals endogenously, …

Sex Differences In Political Leadership In An Egalitarian Society, Christopher Von Rueden, Sarah Alami, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

We test the contribution of sex differences in physical formidability, education, and cooperation to the acquisition of political leadership in a small-scale society. Among forager-farmers from the Bolivian Amazon, we find that men are more likely to exercise different forms of political leadership, including verbal influence during community meetings, coordination of community projects, and dispute resolution. We show that these differences in leadership are not due to gender per se but are associated with men’s greater number of cooperation partners, greater access to schooling, and greater body size and physical strength. Men’s advantage in cooperation partner number is tied to …

Monetary Policy Implications Of Cash, Other Money Supplies, And Cryptocurrencies In Singapore: A Growing Cashless Society., Sarah Kesler

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The country of Singapore has been a growing cashless society for years. Analyzing their money supplies relative to their gross domestic product and their consumer price index can give insight into how the central bank of Singapore are able to maintain control over their monetary policy. Using data from 1974 to the present, I tested the effect of physical cash and other money supplies on the economic and inflationary growth of this country. With this in mind, I expected to see a positive correlation between these money supplies, GDP, and inflation. However, what I found in my regression analysis was …

Your Money Or Your Time? Experimental Evidence On Overbidding In All-Pay Auctions, Adriana Breaban, Charles N. Noussair, Andreea Victoria Popescu

ESI Working Papers

Competition for a prize frequently takes the form of dedicating time toward winning a contest. Those who spend the most time become more likely to obtain the prize. We model this competition as an all-pay auction under incomplete information, and report an experiment in which expenditures and rewards are in terms of time. In the experiment, subjects must stay in the laboratory doing nothing for an initially prespecified length of time. However, they can bid, in terms of time, to leave early. The auction has an allpay structure so that if an individual does not submit the highest bid within …

Entrepreneurship Education Empowers Youth To Change Their Lives, Marianna Brashear, Jason Riddle

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) aims at equipping Title 1 schools with free, hands-on, engaging materials that any teacher can facilitate either individually or in a classroom setting with no background in entrepreneurship necessary. These versatile lessons, courses, and workshops teach the entrepreneurial mindset optimizing opportunities for grades 8-12 students no matter which life/career path they choose.

2018 Updated Tables And Figures For Ec 845 Nebraska Cash Soybean Prices And Basis Patterns, Jessica J. Groskopf, Cory Walters

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

No abstract provided.

Experimental Evidence On The Cyclicality Of Investment, Cortney S. Rodet, Andrew Smyth

ESI Working Papers

We report laboratory experiments investigating the cyclicality of investment. In our setting, optimal investment is counter-cyclical because investment costs fall following market downturns. However, we do not observe counter-cyclical investment. Instead, heuristic investment models where firms invest a fixed percentage of their liquidity, or a fixed percentage of anticipated market demand, better fit our data on average than does optimal investment. We also report a control treatment without cost changes and a treatment with asymmetric investment liquidity. Both of these extensions support our main result.

Indefinitely Repeated Contests: An Experimental Study, Philip Brookins, Dmitry Ryvkin, Andrew Smyth

ESI Working Papers

We experimentally explore indefinitely repeated contests. Theory predicts more cooperation, in the form of lower expenditures, in indefinitely repeated contests with a longer expected time horizon, yet our data do not support this prediction. Theory also predicts more cooperation in indefinitely repeated contests compared to finitely repeated contests of the same expected length, but we find no significant difference empirically. When controlling for risk and gender, we actually find significantly higher long-run expenditure in some indefinite contests relative to finite contests. Finally, theory predicts no difference in cooperation across indefinitely repeated winner-take-all and proportional-prize contests. We find significantly less cooperation …

2018 Updated Tables And Figures For Ec 846 Nebraska Cash Corn Prices And Basis Patterns, Jessica J. Groskopf, Cory Walters

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

No abstract provided.

Low Perceived Control Over Health Is Associated With Lower Treatment Uptake In A High Mortality Population Of Bolivian Forager-Farmers, Sarah Alami, Jonathan Stieglitz, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Indigenous people worldwide suffer from higher rates of morbidity and mortality than neighboring populations. In addition to having limited access to public health infrastructure, indigenous people may also have priorities and health perceptions that deter them from seeking adequate modern healthcare. Here we propose that living in a harsh and unpredictable environment reduces motivation to pursue deliberate, costly action to improve health outcomes. We assess whether variation in Health Locus of Control (HLC), a psychological construct designed to capture self-efficacy with respect to health, explains variation in treatment uptake behavior among Tsimane Amerindians (N=690; age range: 40–89 years; 55.8% female; …

Testing The Boundaries Of The Double Auction: The Effects Of Complete Information And Market Power, Erik O. Kimbrough

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We report boundary experiments testing the robustness of price convergence in double auction markets for non-durable goods in which there is extreme earnings inequality at the competitive equilibrium (CE). Following up on a conjecture by Smith (1976a), we test whether the well-known equilibrating power of the double auction institution is robust to the presence of complete information about traders’ values and costs and the presence of symmetric market power. We find that complete information is insufficient to impede convergence to CE prices; however, introducing market power consistently causes prices to deviate from the CE, whether or not subjects possess complete …

The Tug-Of-War In The Laboratory, Cary Deck, Roman Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

The tug-of-war is a multi-battle contest often used to describe extended interactions in economics, operations management, political science, and other disciplines. While there has been some theoretical work, to the best of our knowledge, this paper provides the first experimental study of the tug-of-war. The results show notable deviations of behavior from theory derived under standard assumptions. In the first battle of the tug-of-war, subjects often bid less, while in the follow-up battles, they bid more than predicted. Also, contrary to the prediction, bids tend to increase in the duration of the tug-of-war. Finally, extending the margin necessary to win …

The Economic Impact Of Medicaid On West Virginia's Economy, Christiadi, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

The Economic Impact Of Natural Gas Capital Expenditures In West Virginia, Eric Bowen

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Behavioral Finance/Economics On Investment Decisions, Vidur Relan

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the impact of certain behavioral and psychological factors on financial investment decisions. The study of behavioral finance underlines the impact of psychological elements on financial markets progression. This paper will further explain how certain cognitive and emotional factors influence irrational decision making by people. Generally financial investors have very limited number of deviations from rational behavior. They lay emphasis on taking rational decisions which are focused on achieving the maximum amount of returns from their investments with a certain degree of bearable risk involvement. The behavioral finance paradigm suggests that financial decisions are largely influenced by emotional …