Political Economy Commons^™

Markets And Sovereignty, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The past few decades have witnessed the growth of an exciting debate in the legal academy about the tensions between economic pressures to commodify and philosophical commitments to the market inalienability of certain items. Sex, organs, babies, and college athletics are among the many topics that have received attention. The debates often have proceeded, however, as if they involve markets on one side and the state on the other, with the relevant question being the ways in which the latter can or should try to facilitate, restrict, or rely on the former. In this article, we approach the relationship between …

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: May 24, 2017, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) 1 fell by 0.88% during April of 2017. The decline followed three months of rapid increase in January through March, implying a moderation in the outlook for the Nebraska economy in late 2017. Among the components of the indicator, business expectations were strong during April while the value of the U.S. dollar fell, which is a positive sign for Nebraska’s export-oriented businesses. However, manufacturing hours, building permits and airline passenger counts all declined during April, while initial claims for unemployment insurance rose.

Bridges Out Of Poverty As An Anti-Poverty Strategy In Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Katlyn M. Uhler

Capstone Collection

This paper explores the initial results of the Bridges Out of Poverty (“Bridges”) community framework as implemented by the organization Kennett Area Community Service in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The aim of this research is to provide perspective on Bridges Out of Poverty’s contribution to the understanding of poverty in the United States and its potential as an antipoverty intervention. It does so first through an exploration of the historical and current discussion on poverty and anti-poverty interventions in the United States, followed by research on the Bridges model itself and its implementation in Kennett Square. This latter research includes content …

A Good Kiwi Isn't Acidic: How Ocean Acidification Is Affecting The New Zealand Economy, Lily G. Hurley

Student Theses 2015-Present

In a country that houses a mere 4 million people, it is no wonder that agriculture has become the main facet of New Zealand’s economy. However, while the sheep and produce have flourished from land protection laws, marine life has struggled in recent years due to an increase in oceanic carbon levels. In an area of the Pacific that is so rich in coral reefs, Great White breeding areas, and a plethora of fish species, any upset of the natural preexisting chemical balance has a tangible impact. New Zealand is dealing with a crisis with huge economic and ecological ramifications. …

Political Intrusion On Firms: Effects Of Elections On Bank Lending In India, Shivprasad Prabhakar Gunjal

Master's Theses

This paper examines the intrusion of political system on performance of Indian firms, employing state and constituency level financial borrowing panel data by firms from domestic banks from 2010 to 2015. Using conditional logistic and fixed effects regression models, the results suggests that firms located in regions aligned politically with the ruling party enjoy possible preferential access to financing from banks. We find average productivity efficiency loss of 2.77% in the short term as a result of politically motivated redistribution of scarce capital. These political effects are statistically robust to the inclusion of region fixed effects, time fixed effects and …

The Demilitarization Of Costa Rica, Patrick Buscone

College Honors Program

Costa Rica is one of the few developed countries in the world to be completely demilitarized. In the first chapter, this thesis explores why the country decided to demilitarize and how effective their demilitarization has been. Further statistical analysis is applied in Chapter 2 to determine the effect military spending has on growth in Latin America. With Costa Rica experiencing great stability and growth following their demilitarization and the statistical analysis showing military spending to have a negative impact on growth in Latin America, the third and final chapter explores other Latin American countries that could benefit from demilitarization.

Unemployment, Does It Really Hurt?, Claudia Vargas

Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes the consequences of changes in the unemployment rate in Colombia on the level of education attained for adolescents. Increases in the unemployment rate are associated with an increase in the average number of years of education. No significant effect was found for men of the same age.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Bad Public Pensions: An Analysis Of Illinois' Public Pension System, Trevor J. Rogers

Celebration of Learning

This project seeks to deeply analyze the public pension system of the State of Illinois and explains how its mismanagement has created an economic mess for Illinois.

Governing The Urban Water Commons : Essays On Collaborative Policy Networks In A Polycentric Ecology Of Urban Water Policy Games., Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Governing social-ecological systems, such as the urban water commons, is a multi-scale and multi-sector (polycentric) human-environment process. This dissertation interrogates this process by situating itself within the Ecology of Games Framework by Norton Long (and updated by Mark Lubell) and the literature on polycentric governance by the Bloomington School of Political Economy. The dissertation’s three essays 1) offer both theoretical and methodological means to enact polycentric public economies within the ecology of games framework, and 2) explicate the conditions under which interoganizational collaboration is fostered within a polycentric ecology of policy games in governing the Middle Rio Grande urban watershed. …

The Design Of An Instrument To Assess Clinical Laboratories Efficacy Post Implementation Of The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, Harry Mcdonald Jr.

Dissertations

The healthcare system in the United States has undergone substantial changes in support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). On March 23, 2010, the implementation of the new healthcare law brought universal healthcare access to all Americans, while attempting to increase quality and decrease medical costs. The new law promotes more of a quality-focused, outcome-based model rather than a pay-for-fee service model; thus, moving the paradigm from infrequent to preemptive healthcare. The PPACA postulates as the only way to achieve cost savings while increasing quality and access. Never before has there been such an extensive change to …

Australian Government Information Resources, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides an overview of Australian Government information resources. Features content from Australian Government agency websites such as the Department of Environment and Energy, Department of Defence, Australian National Maritime Museum, ANZAC Memorial in Sydney, Department of Immigration & Border Protection, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Dept. of Agriculture and Water Resources, Australian Parliament, Australian Treasury, Australian Transport Safety Board, and Australian Parliamentary Library. Content includes a video excerpt from Australian parliamentary debate.

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.

Selecting An Alternative National Banking System Against Fractional Reserve Free Banking: The Greatest Modern Fraud?, Josiah J. Bardy

Senior Honors Theses

This paper serves as a compilation and analysis of different banking systems with an emphasis on fractional reserve free banking. Contemporary academic literature has debated fractional reserve banking with revisited scrutiny since the 2007–2009 financial crisis. The Austrian School, drawing conclusions from the Austrian business cycle theory, blames central banking for boom-bust economics. One proposed solution, fractional reserve free banking, eliminates the central bank’s control for a purer form of fractional reserve practice; however, this system may be inherently fraudulent and unethical. After completing an economic analysis of the western world’s banking system, this paper then explores an alternative solution.

Modelling Public-Education Spending Vs. Allocation As Independent Factors Of Educational Outcomes, Kevin Tasley

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper explores and expands upon the work of Hanushek and Wößmann (2007) whose accumulated findings propose increased educational spending provides only marginal returns in terms of student’s cognitive outcomes. This study constructs an OLS regression model to explore the significance of U.S. state education spending and financial allocations as independent factors of state-level average ACT scores over a 10-year time series. The model additionally accounts for self-selection and socio-economic status. The results of this study support Hanushek and Wößmann’s conclusions while also demonstrating evidence that shifts in allocations towards instructional spending, as opposed to increasing total expenditures, could have …

Will Politics Trump Economic Growth?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

While economic uncertainties remain, investors should not worry about the White House jeopardising the U.S. economy

Daycare, Decision-Making, And The Determinants Of Health: A Mother-Centric Approach To Understanding Childcare And Child Health In Rural Dharamshala, Arielle Rawlings

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Indian children have long suffered from some of the world’s worst rates of malnutrition. However, there is an evident mismatch between the macro proliferation of India’s intergenerational cycle of malnutrition and the micro ways in which it is often approached, as established views that place blame on mothers for the poor health status of their children have systematically removed blame from underlying structural determinants of health such as government policies, social inequalities, and economic conditions. Taking a mother-centric approach, this study examines the links between childcare practices and maternal decisionmaking in the context of Dharamshala, Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh. Interviews …

Networked: An Investigation Into The Economic Contribution Of Manuel Castells, Darrick Brake

Dissertations

The central focus of this dissertation is contemporary network theory as discussed by Manuel Castells with an emphasis on his theoretical discussion on economic theory. This research centers on critically evaluating the works of Manuel Castells and discuss how his ideas on the theory of networks and the “network society” in relation to changes in the economic structure and information capitalism have made significant contributions to not only information society theory but also economic and sociological theory. This research was done as a two-part process in which there is a comparative analysis of the unique and underlying contributions contained within …

El Capitalismo Y El Ciudadano Del Distrito Federal: Evolución De La Identidad En La Ciudad De México En Respuesta A Los Cambios Económicos En Dos Épocas Desde La Óptica De La Región Más Transparente De Carlos Fuentes Y Hotel Df De Guillermo Fadanelli, Douglas Mitchell L. Emison

University Honors Theses

Throughout the history of Mexico, the country's gradual involvement with capitalism has given rise to different eras of profound economic change which have consequently generated a variety of influences implicating changes in Mexican sociocultural identity. This work investigates two specific eras of novel capitalist engagement to determine the relationship between these economic changes and the evolution of Mexican identity using the urban environment of Mexico City as the socio-spatial center. The sociocultural effects of Mexico's post-revolutionary era of economic development from the 1940s to the 1960s will first be explored, followed by an investigation of the post-NAFTA / WTO era …

Cost Of Governance And Fiscal Deficit In Nigeria: Evidence From State Government Data, P. Ekeocha, A. Ikenna-Ononugbo

Economic and Financial Review

Fiscal deficit has remained a predominant occurrence at both the Federal and state government levels, and this has become a source of concern for economic managers. At the individual state level, a quarter of the state governments consistently ran deficit for more than six consecutive years, from the period 2007 to 2014. More importantly, the combined overall fiscal balance of the state governments has resulted frequently in deficit in the past two decades. Fiscal deficit is not bad in itself, but most of the state governments are running fiscal deficit to sustain recurrent expenses, rather than infrastructure development. Available studies …

Weak Law V Strong Ties: An Empirical Study Of Business Investment, Law And Political Connections In China, Wei Zhang, Ji Li

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Based on a large-scale survey of Chinese entrepreneurs, our study explores how institutions (formal and informal) influence investment decisions made by private companies. The study finds that, consistent with the conventional view, a more effective legal system is correlated with short-term general investment, and that the judiciary is important mainly because of its restraint over the state. The role of effective courts, however, diminishes when private entrepreneurs consider making long-term investment. We find a positive association between the entrepreneurs’ political backgrounds and their R&D investment, suggesting that Chinese courts, in spite of decades of reform, are not yet viewed as …

Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper explores two political factors for their potential effects on urban land supply in China: corruption, and competition for promotion. We find that standard urban economic predictions hold in the sense that both population and income increases are strongly significant determinants for the increase in urban land supply. Conditional on these demand-side factors, we find that the usage of two-stage auctions (as a proxy for corruption) is highly correlated with the increase in land supply. The corruption effects are strongest for commercial land, followed by residential land and then industrial land. To shed light on the competition motives among …

Jobs For Justice(S): Corruption In The Supreme Court Of India, Madhav S. Aney, Shubhankar Dam, Giovanni Ko

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate whether judicial decisions are affected by career concerns of judges byanalysing two questions: Do judges respond to pandering incentives by ruling in favourof the government in the hope of receiving jobs after retiring from the Court? Does thegovernment actually reward judges who ruled in its favour with prestigious jobs? To answerthese questions we construct a dataset of all Supreme Court of India cases involving thegovernment from 1999 till 2014, with an indicator for whether the decision was in its favouror not. We find that pandering incentives have a causal effect on judicial decision-making.The exposure of a judge to …

Local Immigration Enforcement Entrepreneurship In The Punishment Marketplace, Daniel L. Stageman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The contemporary neoliberal economic order plays a significant role in American social organization and policy-making. Most importantly, neoliberal ideology drives the creation and imposition of markets in public goods and services and the valorization of free market ideology in cultural life. The neoliberal ‘project of inequality’ is in turn delimited and upheld by an authoritarian system of punishment built around mass incarceration, surveillance, and an unprecedented level of social control directed at the lowest strata of American society – a group that includes both the urban underclass, and unauthorized immigrants.

This study lays out the theory of the punishment marketplace …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …

The Failure Of Post-War Reconstruction In Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Indebtedness, Caste Exclusion And The Search For Alternatives, Ahilan Kadirgamar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reconstruction of contemporary war-torn societies can lead to further dispossession and social exclusion, particularly through neoliberal development policies and financialized indebtedness. This dissertation analyses post-war reconstruction of the Jaffna District in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka after the end of a brutal three decade long civil war in May 2009, through a survey and ethnographic study of one village, Pathemany and its oppressed caste quarter, Bharathy Veethy. Drawing on a study of Pathemany village on agrarian change before the war, this study addresses contemporary questions about land, rural incomes, rural debt and caste structure. The study evaluates reconstruction policies …

Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In People's Republic Of China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper explores whether and how corruption and competition-for-promotion motives affect urban land supply in the People's Republic of China. Conditional on demand-side factors, we find that corruption is highly correlated with an increase in land supply. The corruption effects are strongest for commercial land, followed by residential land, and then industrial land. To shed light on the competition motives among prefectural leaders, we examine how the number of years in office affects land supply and distinguish among different hypotheses. Our empirical results show robust rising trends in land sales. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that among prefectural …

Updated Estimates Of The Effects Of Earnings Taxes On City Growth, Howard J. Wall

Center for Applied Economics

This study provides estimates of the effect of earnings taxes in Saint Louis and Kansas City on population growth in the two cities and their surrounding metro areas. The results of this analysis are consistent with the proposition that the earnings taxes had negative effects on population growth in the City of Saint Louis and Kansas City, and positive effects on the rest of their metro areas. In net, the estimates indicate that the metro areas lost population because of their central cities’ earnings taxes. To summarize:

• About one-half (14,700) of the population decline in the City of Saint Louis …

Wanted: Positive Arguments For Markets, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Many people believe that some things, like kidneys or sex, should not be for sale. Let us call these things “contested commodities.” Against this, Brennan and Jaworksi defend “markets without limits” (hereafter: MwL). According to this thesis: “If you may do it for free, you may do it for money.” Since we can give away our kidneys for free and have sex for free, we should be able to do these things for money. Brennan and Jaworksi deftly blend rigorous philosophical argument with the latest research in social science to counter some of the most prominent against commodification. But, I …

The Unexpected Effects Of Criminal Violence Along The Mexico-Texas Border, Gaspare Genna

Selected Works Temporary Series

The violence and insecurity that Mexico suffered during formerPresident Calderon’s war on the Mexican drug cartels havecome at a grave economic cost to many cities. The criminalviolence had an impact on interdependent borderlands, whichare geographic areas that have a symbiotic link between citiesand communities of adjoining territories. Mexican businesspeople and consumers that live in cities along the sharedborder with the United States have the ability to shift theireconomic transactions away from their insecure environmentsand to US border communities. In addition, US residents thatwould normally travel south for economic transactions woulddecide to avoid violent areas and therefore conduct businesson the northern …

The Effects Of Military Budget On American Perception, Charlie Hollis Whittington

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

How do Americans' perception of a state formulate based on the state's military expenditure? Conventional research theories indicate that Americans might feel a shared political culture with other democratic nations. Such feelings of solidarity may engender Americans' trust and favorability of some states' military development, but provoke negative feelings toward others. Using data mostly from Gallup and the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, this study examines Americans' attitudes toward major states' in the world (vis-à-vis military expenditure).