Other Economics Commons^™

Will Seasonality Patterns For Beef Export Sales And Commitments Hold In 2021?, Elliott James Dennis

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

First two paragraphs:

Trade occurs when price differences between the two locations are large enough after accounting for transportation cost, exchange rates, tariffs, etc. Exports vary throughout the year since prices reflect current and future supply and demand situations. Seasonality in cattle production, meat demand, and market disruptions are some examples of why wholesale beef prices increase and decrease within a year.

The inability to market cattle in the second quarter of 2020 and increased demand for retail beef products due to government gathering restrictions in restaurants caused wholesale beef prices to rise to historical levels. Beef wholesalers can choose …

Foreign Direct Investment And Economic Growth: A Panel Data Analysis, Yuan Yao

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the influences of FDI on economic growth of selected Latin American and Asian countries both directly and indirectly through factors such as technology, knowledge transfer, and trade openness. The study uses the growth regression to examine and identify not only the relationship between the FDI and economic growth of the underlying countries but also the interaction effects of FDI with human capital and trade openness on the economic growth based on the statistical performance of the interaction terms in the model. The evidence from the study shows that FDI does have an impact on economic growth both …

Star Player Bias In The Nba: A Quantile Regression Approach, Daniel Barrett

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the impact of an NBA player’s salary on the number of fouls drawn by them in a season. NBA referees have complete discretion in making calls of whether a player does or does not commit a foul in game, with decisions susceptible to bias, favoring certain players with more fouls called in their favor than another player. The study uses salary to determine a player’s value, using a panel dataset of all players from the 2015-16 NBA season through the 2018-19 NBA season for salary and game statistics. The impact of salary is determined using a quantile …

The Place And Role Of Pharmacy Benefit Management (Pbm) Companies In Us Healthcare System, George Mattis Ii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On average, prescription drugs cost US consumers more than any other developed country in the world. US drug makers claim that intermediaries in the prescription drug supply chain, companies called pharmacy benefit managers (PBM), are forcing them to increase their drug prices. PBMs counter that the discounts they receive from drug makers are channeled to insurers. This thesis will examine the role that PBMs play in the prescription drug supply chain and determine what effect they have on drug prices. This thesis will utilize a comparative static model, Structure, Conduct, Performance (SCP) framework to analyze the pharmaceutical manufacturing and the …

Trade Liberalization And Economic Performance: An Empirical Analysis, Brandon Fontaine

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

Trade liberalization has long been a debated topic; free traders will argue it makes all involved parties more prosperous while protectionists say that it costs jobs and hurts countries’ economies. This paper will study the relationship between a country’s trade freedom, as measured by the Heritage Foundations trade openness metrics, and the nation’s economic performance. This study will incorporate indicators such as gross domestic product, unemployment, and investment flows across 56 countries of different income levels to determine whether free trade policies lead to greater economic performance. The three income levels analyzed will be high-income, medium-income, and low-income. The empirical …

The Effect Of Poor Working Conditions And Income Inequality On Gdp Growth, Trent Remillard

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper looks to see if there is a relationship between poor working conditions and growth in GDP annually. Many nations have historically treated their workers very poorly, and offered little in support or protection to them. Consequently, many of these same nations have seen large boosts in annual GDP growth. This paper aims to see if there is a correlation between this treatment of workers, and these subsequent boosts of GDP growth, and if there is, is it possible to predict the expected level of growth based on these factors.

Macroeconomic Drivers Of Reit Stock Prices, Nicholas Mulligan

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates several variables as potential drivers of REIT stock performance. The results show that four of the six independent variables, all of positively correlated ones, were significant. The combination of variables proved to be very predictive, yielding an R-squared of 0.9712. The two variables that were added in this study versus the benchmark Morgan Stanley study proved to be highly significant. The two negatively correlated variables proved to be insignificant.

Quality Analysis Of Lift Ticket Prices In The United States Using Logistic Regression, Jared Murphy

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the possibility of a relationship between Lift Ticket Prices and quality of resorts in the United States of America. The study incorporates information from a number of past research papers analyzing the price of lift tickets and the individual characteristics of the ski area. In recent years, the price of lift tickets has increased far greater than the rate of inflation. With over 350 companies operating in the industry in the United States, they combine for annual revenue greater than $2 billion. Consumers who enjoy the sport have seen a sharp increase in prices throughout the past …

Economic Determinants Of Within-Country Political Instability And Violence: A Panel Data Examination Of Central And South America, Michael Biskupic

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the potential impact of economic factors on withincountry violence and instability utilizing a panel data approach. More specifically, this paper examines the impact of within-country income inequality on a measure of political stability and a measure of within-country violence. Utilizing a Generalized Least Squares method, this paper finds that only in countries with a per-capita income less than $5000 is there a significant relationship between income inequality and violence. This paper concludes with a discussion of the results, recommendations for future research, and a section on policy recommendations based on the empirical results and potential risks not …

Student Achievement In Rhode Island Charter Schools: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, Edward Golas

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

Using standardized test results from the school year 2018-19 this study compares the performance of 3rd through 8th graders in Rhode Island charter schools to their peers in traditional public schools (TPSs). This study also uses OLS techniques to test if Rhode Island charter schools help to bridge the achievement gap between minority (black and Hispanic) students and white students. The results show that in approximately ¾ of comparable instances, Rhode Island charter schools outperform TPSs on both English and math standardized tests. Additionally, it was found that Hispanic students attending a charter school are predicted to score higher on …

A Time Series Analysis Of Determinants Of Pce Inflation In The United States, Elliot Charron

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the factors contributing to the PCE inflation rate in the United States. The study incorporates economic determinants in a time series analysis to examine the influence of economic variables on the PCE Inflation rate in the United States. The economic variables include the unemployment rate, wages, inflation expectations, the federal funds rate, the money supply, import prices, and the labor force participation rate. The ADF unit root test shows that the first difference is stationary while the Johansen test of cointegration shows that there is cointegration of 7 and that a vector error correction model (VECM) must …

Comparing Machine Learning Techniques For Predicting Bank Failure, Armen Eghian

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

The study of machine learning has helped create and refine many types of predictive models. These models have been applied to countless problems, but the importance of banking stability has led many researchers to create models predicting if a bank will be active in future years. Neural networks, support vector machines, and traditional regression models, have been used to predict bank failure, but random forests have not been fully explored. This paper shows random forests can offer prediction power greater than neural networks and logit models when used to predict bank failure. This aligns with work comparing random forests and …

The Relationship Between Transportation Accessibility And Economic Development, Abigail Kiggen

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the possible relationship between transportation infrastructure accessibility and economic development in a given region. The study will incorporate data from counties in the state of Massachusetts to compare development from previous studies in the New York area. The independent variable will be transportation infrastructure accessibility, and the dependent variable will be measures of economic development. The results show that there are generally not correlations between better accessibility and economic development in a given region.

Evaluating Nuclear Energy As A Component Of U.S. Energy Innovation Systems, Bryce Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nuclear energy is contentious in policy discussions that evaluate its role in the current U.S. clean energy innovation system. OECD nations, on average, have begun to reduce their dependence on nuclear energy. However, the United States has remained invested in its nuclear energy infrastructure and the role that it plays within federal research and development. This thesis examines the Neo-Schumpeterian perspective and the National Innovation System’s approach, the economic history of nuclear energy in the United States, and given insight from these factors, discusses the current role of nuclear energy in the U.S. energy innovation system. The objective is to …

Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Covid-19 Policy Intervention At The State And National Level, James L. Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This study analyzes the benefits of statewide policy intervention in reducing COVID-19 deaths and the costs of that intervention in lost jobs and lower real gross state product (RGSP). Policy interventions are measured by the Oxford stringency index which places a daily numerical value on the level of a state’s policy intervention.

Empirical evidence is provided that shows policy interventions have reduced COVID-19 deaths by 375,000 lives in 2020. On the cost side, it was found that policy intervention resulted in a loss of 7.3 million jobs and a decline of $410 billion in RGSP.

The study concludes by integrating …

Follow-Up Enforcement, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

Firms sometimes break the law. When they do, a host of government agencies have power to bring enforcement actions against them, which serve to punish past wrongs, compensate victims, disgorge unlawful gains, deter others, and prevent recidivism. Each of these purposes but one—preventing recidivism—is either met or not once the case reaches settlement. Whether recidivism will occur, however, remains uncertain at the time a case is settled. In light of that uncertainty, this Article takes a critical look at how enforcers currently address recidivism prevention—what it dubs the “clawback” approach—under which defendant firms receive penalty credit today in exchange for …

Pandemics, Paid Sick Leaves, And Tax Institutions, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

The COVID-19 pandemic is currently ravaging the world, and the United States has been largely unsuccessful at containing the coronavirus. One long-standing policy failure stands out as having exacerbated the pandemic in our country: the lack of a national mandate of paid sick leaves, without which workers face financial and workplace-cultural pressures to attend work while sick, thus spreading the virus to their fellow employees and the public at large.

This Article provides the blueprint for a national, subsidized mandate of paid sick leaves and two additional insights about our tax institutions as mechanisms of effectuating broader societal goals. It …

Prospects And Challenges For Supply Chain Trade Under The Africa Continental Free Trade Area☆:, Jaime De Melo, Anna Twum

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

The Afcfta And African Trade—An Introduction To The Special Issue:, Hippolyte Fofack, Andrew Mold

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

Estimating The Effect Of Afcfta On Intra-African Trade Using Augmented Ge-Ppml:, Hippolyte Fofack, Richman Dzene, Omar A. Mohsen Hussein

Journal of African Trade

No abstract provided.

Quantifying The Impact Of Remapping Floodplains On Residential Property Values In Snohomish County, Washington: A Hedonic Approach, Carson Joseph Risner

All Master's Theses

Flood events are the most common and costly natural disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) quantifies flood risks in the form of Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMS). These FIRMS delineate flood risks and are used to set flood insurance premiums. Changes in land use, the augmentation of the natural environment, is threatening the validity of the Nation’s FIRMS. Therefore, Congress has approved remapping programs to update these FIRMs ensuring that current flood risks are known. This remapping presents another issue, specifically for properties that are remapped into a flood zone. Current literature suggests that properties within flood zones are …

Do Global Pandemics Matter For Stock Prices? Lessons From The 1918 Spanish Flu, Marco Del Angel, Caroline Fohlin, Marc D. Weidenmier

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We study the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu on U.S. stock prices. We use the death rate to control for the impact of the global pandemic and war news reported in the New York Times to capture the positive effects of the end of World War I on stock prices. Using a new weekly hand collected NYSE stock price index, we show that there is a -.73 correlation between the aggregate stock market and the death rate. Furthermore, vector autoregressions demonstrate that the death rate can explain up to 24 percent of the forecast error variance in the aggregate …

Ways Forward In Energy Markets And The Environment, Jacob Nelson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Renewable energy sources have come to the forefront of energy production policy over the last twenty years. Studies of external and direct costs of both renewable and nonrenewable energy sources have contributed to growing understandings of ways in which these energy sources can be compared in a monetary context. Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) alongside international data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) among other sources, we have developed forecasts for the future costs, both direct and social, of each energy source as well as a difference-in-difference experiment to determine potential effects of state-level energy …

Are You Ready For Some Football? Estimating The Effect Of American Football Season On Labor Supply In The United States, Luke Petach, Dustin Rumbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

American football season reduces the Monday labor hours of employed men by two-thirds of an hour. A similar effect is found for Friday labor hours. We term these effects the “hangover effect” and “happy hour effect.” Consistent with a wide class of labor market models, the labor supply effect varies over the business cycle, increasing in expansions. The hangover effect implies an intertemporal elasticity of labor supply on the order of 0.014. Evaluated at the median hourly wage, our estimates imply an annual economic cost of foregone earnings associated with football season in the neighborhood of $5.06 billion.

Three Essays In Applied Urban Economics, Alexander Cardazzi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first chapter examines the effect of policing strategies on housing prices. Crime has been shown to negatively affect housing values. However, there is not much empirical evidence documenting the amenity value of how people are policed. Stop & Frisk was a particularly salient policing tactic employed in New York City until a judge ruled it to be unconstitutional. This chapter uses exogenous variation in Stop & Frisk behavior resulting from landmark events in a federal class action lawsuit as well as exposure to Operation Impact, a high intensity policing strategy, to explain variation in property sales. Results indicate a …

Natural Resource Curse, Economic Freedom, Economic Growth And Development: Case Of Africa, Oluwatomisin Shalom Akinbo

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Over the years, there has been discord or lack of agreement on the effect that natural resources have on economic growth and development. This study adopts output approach to investigate the effect that natural resources and institutions (Economic Freedom) have on economic growth for the period of 1960 to 2020 using World Bank data. The analysis employs Multiple Regression Analysis based on augmented Ordinary Least Squares Regression methods. The results are mixed, as the outcome indicates that, while natural resources are positively related to economic growth, there exists a crowding out effect between natural resources and two sectors of the …

Perkembangan Teknologi Informasi, Tfp, Dan Emisi Gas Co2 Di Indonesia, Ganiko Moddilani, Irwandi Irwandi

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This paper examines the development of information technology, total factor productivity (TFP), and urbanization of CO2 gas emissions in Indonesia from 1975–2014. To discuss empirically, this study uses the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. There are several results in this study. Firstly, the TFP coefficient value in the short term is lower than the long term, so that the Enviromental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is not proven. This is one of the causes of rising CO2 gas emissions. Secondly, information technology has a significant impact on the increase of CO2 gas emissions. Thirdly, Indonesia’s urbanization has reduced CO2 gas emissions.

Three Essays In Applied Econometrics: Agricultural And Energy Economics, Kuan-Ming Huang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examines three empirical issues in energy and agricultural economics using econometrics models whose titles are: 1) Do Natural Hazards in the Gulf Coast Still Matter for State-Level Natural Gas Prices in the US? Evidence After the Shale Gas Boom; 2) Do Exploitations of Marcellus and Utica Shale Formations Improve Regional Economy in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia? A Synthetic Control Analysis; and 3) How Did Covid-19 Impact US Household Food Spending? An Analysis Six Months In.

The first essay assesses the impact of natural hazards on state-level natural gas prices and evaluates the effects of the shale gas …

Differences In Cognitive Reflection Mediate Gender Differences In Social Preferences, Antonio M. Espín, Valerio Capraro, Brice Corgnet, Simon Gächter, Roberto Hernán-González, Praveen Kujal, Stephen Rassenti

ESI Working Papers

Previous studies have shown that women tend to be more egalitarian and less self-interested than men whereas men tend to be more concerned with social efficiency motives. The roots of such differences, however, remain unknown. Since different cognitive styles have also been associated with different distributional social preferences, we hypothesise that gender differences in social preferences can be partially explained by differences in cognitive styles (i.e., women rely more on intuition whereas men are more reflective). We test this hypothesis meta-analytically using data from seven studies conducted in four countries (USA, Spain, India, and UK; n=6,910) where cognitive reflection and …

Strategically Revealing Intentions In General Lotto Games, Keith Paarporn, Rahul Chandan, Dan Kovenock, Mahnoosh Alizadeh, Jason R. Marden

ESI Working Papers

Strategic decision-making in uncertain and adversarial environments is crucial for the security of modern systems and infrastructures. A salient feature of many optimal decision-making policies is a level of unpredictability, or randomness, which helps to keep an adversary uncertain about the system’s behavior. This paper seeks to explore decision-making policies on the other end of the spectrum – namely, whether there are benefits in revealing one’s strategic intentions to an opponent before engaging in competition.We study these scenarios in a well-studied model of competitive resource allocation problem known as General Lotto games. In the classic formulation, two competing players simultaneously …