Other Economics Commons^™

Examining The Role Of Immigration In Crime Decline Across United States Cities, Brianna J. Losoya

CMC Senior Theses

Despite previous research in this area, the relationship between immigration and crime in the United States remains ambiguous and surrounded by misconceptions. However, recently, scholars have suggested that, despite the claims of policy-makers and popularized sociological theories, large immigrant concentrations may be linked with lower as opposed to higher crime rates. In the past, research in this area has been imprecise due to it its implementation of cross-sectional analyses for a limited selection of geographic regions. However, through the implementation of time-series procedures and the use of annual data for metropolitan statistical areas during the 2005–2010 periods, the present study …

The Evolution Of The Music Industry In The Post-Internet Era, Ashraf El Gamal

CMC Senior Theses

The rise in the prevalence of the Internet has had a wide range of implications in nearly every industry. Within the music business, the turn of the millennium came with a unique, and difficult, set of challenges. While the majority of academic literature in the area focuses specifically on the aspect of file sharing within the Internet as it negatively impacts sales within the recording sector, this study aims to assess the Internet’s wider impacts on the broader music industry. In the same time that record sales have plummeted, the live music sector has thrived, potentially presenting alternative business models …

Buyer's Equilibrium With Capacity Constraints And Restricted Mobility: A Recursive Approach, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim

ESI Working Papers

We study a decentralized trading model as in Peters (1984), where heterogeneous market participants face a trade-o between price and trade probability. We present a novel proof of existence of a unique demand vector in Nash equilibrium, based on a recursive approach that exploits the monotonicity of matching functions.

Building And Rebuilding Trust With Promises And Apologies, Eric Schniter, Roman M. Sheremeta, Daniel Sznycer

ESI Working Papers

Using trust games, we study how promises and messages are used to build new trust where it did not previously exist and to rebuild damaged trust. In these games, trustees made non-binding promises of investment-contingent returns, then investors decided whether to invest, and finally trustees decided how much to return. After an unexpected second game was announced, but before it commenced, trustees could send a one-way message. This design allowed us to observe the endogenous emergence and natural distribution of trust-relevant behaviors and focus on naturally occurring remedial strategies used by promise-breakers and distrusted trustees, their effects on investors, and …

Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth: How The Tragedy Of The Anticommons Emerges In Organizations, Matthew W. Mccarter, Shirli Kopelman, Thomas A. Turk, Candace Ybarra

ESI Working Papers

In organizations, conflict often revolves around commons resources because they are critical for influence, performance, and organizational survival. Research on property rights, territoriality, and social dilemmas suggests that to reduce such conflict, organizations should facilitate the (psychological) privatization of commons resources. We complement these three literatures by drawing from the legal, organizational, and social psychology literatures to model how psychologically privatizing organizational commons resources – to prevent a tragedy of the commons (an overuse problem) – can lead to the emergence of equivalently problematic tragedy in organizations: the tragedy of the anticommons (an underuse problem). Our model contributes to these …

Experimental Evidence On The Properties Of The California’S Cap And Trade Price Containment Reserve, Rachel Bodsky, Domenic Donato, Kevin James, David Porter

ESI Working Papers

We report on a series of experiments to examine the properties of California’s Reserve Sale allocation mechanism to be implemented as part of the forthcoming cap and trade program and compare it with an alternative reserve sale mechanism. The proposed reserve sale mechanism allows covered entities to purchase allowances after the primary auction sale at fixed prices. If demand for units is greater the amount supplied in the reserve sale, a Proportional Rationing rule is used to distribute allowances based on submitted request for units. This rule is contrasted with to an alternative rule, Equal Rationing in which allowances are …

Information Effects In Multi-Unit Dutch Auctions, Joy A. Buchanan, Steven Gjerstad, David Porter

ESI Working Papers

We design a multi-unit descending-price (Dutch) auction mechanism that has applications for resource allocation and pricing problems. We address specific auction design choices by theoretically and experimentally determining optimal information disclosure along two dimensions. Bidders are either informed of the number of bidders in the auction, or know that it is one of two possible sizes; they also either know the number of units remaining for sale or are unaware of how many units have been taken by other bidders. We find that revealing group size decreases bids, and therefore revenue, if units remaining are not shown. When group size …

Do Liars Believe? Beliefs And Other-Regarding Preferences In Sender-Receiver Games, Roman M. Sheremeta, Timothy W. Shields

ESI Working Papers

We examine subjects‟ behavior in sender-receiver games where there are gains from trade and alignment of interests in one of the two states. We elicit subjects‟ beliefs, risk and other-regarding preferences. Our design also allows us to examine the behavior of subjects in both roles, to determine whether the behavior in one role is the best response to the subject‟s own behavior in the other role. The results of the experiment indicate that 60 percent of senders adopt deceptive strategies by sending favorable message when the true state of the nature is unfavorable. Nevertheless, 67 percent of receivers invest conditional …

Are You A Good Employee Or Simply A Good Guy? Influence Costs And Contract Design, Brice Corgnet, Ismael Rodriguez-Lara

ESI Working Papers

We develop a principal–agent model with a moral hazard problem in which the principal has access to a hard signal (the level of output) and a soft behavioral signal (the supervision signal) about the agent's level of effort. In our model, the agent can initiate influence activities and manipulate the behavioral signal. These activities are costly for the principal as they detract the agent from the productive task. We show that the agent's ability to manipulate the behavioral signal leads to low-powered incentives and increases the cost of implementing the efficient equilibrium as a result. Interestingly, the fact that manipulation …

Why Do Corporations Donate? An Analysis Of Factors Affecting Corporate Philanthropy, Patrick Luensmann

Honors Program Theses

The purpose is to determine the influence of measureable economic variables on corporate philanthropy among the top 30 American companies between 2007 and 2009. The significant variables in the model, with a 10% significance level, are Net Income, Assets, Financial Leverage, PE Ratio, and Profit Margin. The model can account for 87.41% of the change between the two years.

Essays On An Asean Optimal Currency Area, Kathryn J. Whittaker Huff

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many regions of the world would like to replicate the financial and monetary integration of the European Monetary Union (EMU). Member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have shown an interest in such an arrangement. ASEAN is a political, cultural, and economic association that includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Many of these nations are experiencing rapid economic development while others are still relatively poor and under developed. As such, they appear to be an unlikely group for currency unification. Older studies suggest that multiple currency union groupings may be …

Accommodation Or Deterrence In The Face Of Commercial Piracy: The Impact Of Intellectual Property Rights (Ipr) Protections, Yuanzhu Lu, Sougata Poddar

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

In this paper, we address the issue of illegal copying or counterfeiting of the original product and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protections. The original product developer makes costly investment to deter piracy in a given regime of IPR protection. In the presence of a commercial pirate, we find that it is profitable for the original producer to accommodate the pirate when there is weak IPR protection, and deter when the IPR protection is strong. However, in the comparative statics analysis, we find that there is a non-monotonic relationship between the optimal level of deterrence (chosen by the original producer) and …

Who Enters The Foreclosure Process?, Eric Doviak, Sean P. Macdonald

Publications and Research

Since February 2010, detailed information on every home mortgage default and foreclosure in New York State must be filed with the New York State Banking Department (NYSBD). The data enables us to identify the financial characteristics that make a defaulted borrower more (or less) likely to enter the foreclosure process. Our analysis of the NYSBD data suggests that borrowers in default who took larger loans are more likely to progress to foreclosure. It also suggests that reducing principal balances may reduce the foreclosure rate, but might have an adverse effect on the mortgage industry. Given the frequent criticism of the …

Retail Peso Exchange Rate Discounts And Premia In El Paso, Raúl Muñoz, Michael J. Pisani, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Border Region Modeling Project

This paper studies the exchange rates at which Mexican pesos are accepted for retail purchases in El Paso, Texas. A stratified random sample of 586 participating firms is surveyed to examine two aspects of reverse dollarization in the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border region. The first is to determine the percentage of retail businesses in El Paso that accept foreign currency in the form of Mexican pesos. The results suggest that just over 13.1% (77/586) of all retail firms in this market accept pesos, which on average, comprise 4.35% of total sales for those firms. The second is to calculate the …

Evidence For A Peak Shift In A Humoral Response To Helminths: Age Profiles Of Ige In The Shuar Of Ecuador, The Tsimane Of Bolivia, And The U.S. Nhanes, Aaron D. Blackwell, Michael D. Gurven, Lawrence S. Sugiyama, Felicia C. Madimenos, Melissa A. Liebert, Melanie A. Martin, Hillard Kaplan, J. Josh Snodgrass

ESI Publications

Background: The peak shift model predicts that the age-profile of a pathogen’s prevalence depends upon its transmission rate, peaking earlier in populations with higher transmission and declining as partial immunity is acquired. Helminth infections are associated with increased immunoglobulin E (IgE), which may convey partial immunity and influence the peak shift. Although studies have noted peak shifts in helminths, corresponding peak shifts in total IgE have not been investigated, nor has the age-patterning been carefully examined across populations. We test for differences in the agepatterning of IgE between two South American forager-horticulturalist populations and the United States: the Tsimane …

Value, Cooperatives, And Class Justice, David Kristjanson-Gural

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article I argue that elimination of exploitation at the firm level is necessary to eliminate exploitation, but is not sufficient, in and of itself, to support class justice. I distinguish exploitation as one of several aspects in the more inclusive category of class justice developed by George DeMartino. I then demonstrate that when the formation and distribution of value at the more complex level of Marx’s analysis in volume 3 of Capital is considered, workers may collectively appropriate surplus value but nonetheless be subject to an unfair redistribution of labor time. I use the example of the Mondrago …

Inflammatory Gene Variants In The Tsimane, An Indigenous Bolivian Population With A High Infectious Load, Sarinnapha Vasunilashorn, Caleb E. Finch, Eileen M. Crimmins, Suvi A. Vikman, Jonathan Stieglitz, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Hooman Allayee

ESI Publications

The Tsimane of lowland Bolivia are an indigenous forager-farmer population living under conditions resembling pre-industrial European populations, with high infectious morbidity, high infection and inflammation, and shortened life expectancy. Analysis of 917 persons ages 5 to 60+ showed that allele frequencies of 9 SNPs examined in the apolipoprotein E (apoE), C-reactive protein (CRP), and interleukin-6 (IL-6) genes differed from some European, African, and north Asian-derived populations. The apoE2 allele was absent, whereas four SNPs related to CRP and IL-6 were monomorphic: CRP (rs1800947, rs3093061, and rs3093062) and IL-6 (rs1800795). No significant differences in apoE, CRP, and IL-6 variants across age …

Assessing Food Security Across Connecticut Towns For 2009, Kendall Erskine

Honors Scholar Theses

Assessing Food Security Across Connecticut Towns for 2009 Food security is an increasingly critical issue in the United States with health-related issues consistently on the rise. Community food security, an extension of household food security, should be measured in order to better understand the food systems of towns and cities in Connecticut.

This study measured community food security on the town level in Connecticut through quantifying approximately 40 indicators of food security including socio-demographic factors, community food resources, household food security, food resource accessibility, food availability and affordability, and community food production resources. The towns and cities in Connecticut are …

How Does Average Protein Consumption Affect Happiness?, Nina Wellander

Economics Honors Projects

This paper uses individual-level data to examine the potential link between average protein consumption and happiness within 87 countries between the years of 1981 and 2007. After controlling for other variables that influence happiness as outlined in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I find that average protein consumption has a statistically significant effect on average subjective well-being. Specifically, the results show that as average protein consumption as a percentage of total caloric intake increases, happiness increases.

Preventing Pandemics: Contributing Factors To Susceptibility During The H1n1 Pandemic, Melanie A. Zilora

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper uses Poisson and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression techniques on panel data from the United Nations World Health Organization’s FluNet to evaluate factors contributing to a country’s H1N1 influenza (swine flu) pandemic outcomes. Countries with higher development (as measured by gross domestic product and the United Nations Human Development Program’s development index) and higher mean annual temperature (as measured in the capital city) tended to have an earlier first reporting of cases. Though subject to reporting biases, the results also suggest that mass vaccinations have a negative effect on weekly reported cases. Countries that would vaccinate in the …

Economic Input–Output Life Cycle Assessment Of Water Reuse Strategies In Residential Buildings And Communities, Derek J. Gardels

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The objective of this study was to determine the environmental sustainability and economic feasibility of five water reuse designs using economic input-output life cycle assessments and benefit/cost analyses. These five water reuse designs were evaluated for four regions of the United States including the Northwest (Seattle), Southwest (Scottsdale), Midwest (Omaha), and Southeast (Tampa). The water reuse designs include a greywater reuse system with no treatment for sub-surface landscape irrigation for a single-family residential house (Model 1), an indoor greywater reuse system with treatment for toilet flushing and laundry washing for a single-family residential house (Model 2), a hybrid untreated greywater …

An Analysis Of Financial Leverage And The 2007-2009 Financial Crisis, Larissa A. French

Honors Program Theses

This thesis will analyze the recent financial crisis, attempting to find and explain sources that caused the crisis, which includes monetary excesses, mortgage-backed securities, the August 2007 bank panic, credit default swaps, and other causes. It will link together events and activities to provide a complete picture. Additionally, this thesis will compare financial leverage with Gross Domestic Product to determine if increases in financial leverage predate financial crises. Leverage, by itself, is not enough to cause a recession, as it exists at some level all the time. However, it may be possible that excessive amounts of leverage or increasing leverage …

Opening The System: (Re)Writing Value Theory Discursively, David Kristjanson-Gural

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article I argue that modern and postmodern critics of value theory share the premise that Marx’s theory of value disables the project of emancipatory social change. The modern critics claim the theory is logically flawed and must be either resituated in a consistent logical framework or replaced by a Sraffian alternative. The postmodern critics claim that the theory is necessarily reductionist and excludes or renders secondary important axes of social struggle. I argue that by using a poststructural logic, Marx’s theory of value can be interpreted in a way that both overcomes the perceived consistencies of the modern …

Growing Farmers’ Markets: Measuring The Competitiveness Of The Byron Farmers’ Market With Other Local Food Sources, Audrey Gross

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Farmers’ markets are growing across the world at an exponential rate. However, there is little research that challenges the competitiveness of these farmers’ markets in competing with other food distribution locations, including supermarkets and local food stores. The following report focuses on using the principles of perfect competition to evaluate the competitiveness of the Byron Farmers’ Market with other local food sources in Byron Bay, NSW.

Data was collected through 120 consumer surveys (60 from the Farmers’ Market, 30 from Woolworths, and 30 from local food stores: Santos, Fundamentals, and Green Garage), 31 stallholder surveys from the Farmers’ Market, price …

Target Industry Study: An Empirical Analysis Of Intertemporal Trends In Regional Industrial Base Composition, David M. Smith

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This paper follows existing literature on local industrial conditions and agglomeration economies in an adapted shift-share framework. The purpose of this study is to develop a cost-efficient empirical model that meets the needs of local government in analyzing changes in industrial composition. The data for this model is obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) with nondisclosed data provided by the Virginia Employment Commission which is sorted by North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) 2-digit industrial sectors. The model developed in this paper identifies certain industrial sectors which exert significant influence on the …

A Cross-Sectional Examination Of Factors Affecting Graduation Rates Across The School Divisions In The State Of Virginia., William Perrow

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

When citizens look to the government, there are multiple services that are expected to be provided. One of the most fundamental services is the access to an education to better prepare the nation’s children for the future. Education is not just a service that is expected, it is a necessity in the global world that the United States is competing in. Currently the United State of America is facing large numbers of high school students who are dropping out. This is a major concern for the future productivity and welfare of the nation. What is the problem that has caused …

Father Death And Adult Success Among The Tsimane: Implications For Marriage And Divorce, Jeffrey Winking, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Human fathers are heavily involved in the rearing of children around the world. While there is great cross-cultural variation, the father is a recognizable role in all populations. This deviates from the standard mammalian pattern of little paternal investment. A logical explanation offered early by evolutionary theorists is that human fathers evolved the capacity for paternal concern because human children are remarkably needy and impose a great encumbrance on the mother (Lancaster & Lancaster, 1983; Lovejoy, 1981). Thus, fathers have greater opportunity to enhance the wellbeing of child and mother, as there is a deeper well of need to fill. …

The Effect Of U.S. State Taxes On State Economic Prosperity, Casey Dainsberg

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Policy makers today are faced with trying to create solutions for economic troubles that become increasingly more complex and foreboding. Tax cuts and tax hikes are proposed and considered as possible solutions to various economic problems. However, the question still remains regarding which policies are most effective. The purpose of this research is to asses these competing claims. It seeks to find evidence that will shed light on one of these views. I have done this by accumulating tax and economic data from the fifty U.S. States between the years 2001-2009. Previous research has concluded that taxes do affect the …

Using Drew Carey In The Classroom, Matthew J. Holian

Faculty Publications

This teaching note describes how to use Drew Carey’s short public policy documentaries in the classroom, and as part of a writing assignment for an introductory microeconomics class. Students are challenged to identify the core microeconomic concepts that are relevant to real-world policy matters, including healthcare, immigration and jobs.

Firm And Industry Effects In Accounting Versus Economic Profit Data, Matthew J. Holian, Ali M. Reza

Faculty Publications

This article presents estimates of firm and industry fixed-effects on profit rates for large US corporations, using both Economic Value Added (EVA), the popular measure of profits produced by Stern Stewart and Company, as well as simple (unadjusted) accounting measures as the dependent variable. We find that the improvement in explanatory power of the fixed-effect model is substantially greater when using EVA than has been documented with alternative measures.