Public Economics Commons^™

Financial Literacy And Retirement Preparedness In Sri Lanka: Evidence From The Private Sector Employees, Tiyani Lakshmi Rodrigo

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

The South Asian country of Sri Lanka has a rapidly aging population, but little attention has been paid to individuals and families' financial preparedness for retirement. This study aims to overview the current system of retirement preparedness in Sri Lanka, and to examine financial and pension literacy's role on the retirement preparedness. Specifically, this study evaluated three domains of retirement preparedness: planning for retirement and perceived retirement income adequacy (subjective measures, n = 142), and wealth accumulation (objective measure, n = 115). Results show that (1) financial literacy had a positive and statistically significant association with retirement preparedness (only with …

The Role Of Tax Incentives On Business Location And Economic Growth, Sadie Xi Rose Mazzola

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Behavioral Public Finance And Budgeting: New Approaches To Old Questions?, Salvador Espnosa, Kenneth A. Kriz, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) The growing interest in the use of behavioral insights in the study of public administration and policy is contributing to the emergence of behavioral public administration (James et al., 2017). This subfield focuses on the “analysis of public administration from the micro-level perspective of individual behavior” (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017, p. 45). For some scholars, this approach offers interesting opportunities to further the study of perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of citizens, public sector staff, or public managers (Tummers, et al., 2016). The combination of behavioral theory and experimental approaches can improve the standing of the field of public …

Developing An Institutional Arrangement For A Whole-Of-Government And Whole-Of-Community Approach To Regional Adaptation To Sea Level Rise: The Hampton Roads Pilot Project, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, J. Gail Nicula, Burton St. John Iii, Meagan M. Jordan, Michelle Covi, Carol Considine, Marina Saitgalina, Joshua Behr

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Adaptation to sea level rise (SLR) requires coordination among local, state, and federal entities and collaboration across governments, nonprofits, businesses, and residents. This coordination and collaboration are reflected in institutional arrangements associated with a whole-of-government and whole-of-community approach to regional adaptation. This study analyzes the development of an interlocal agreement (ILA), the Hampton Roads Sea Level Rise Preparedness and Resilience Intergovernmental Planning Pilot Project (the Pilot Project), as an example of such an arrangement. This study assesses how factors throughout three phases of ILA development (initiation, implementation, and execution) influence outcomes and effectiveness. Drawing upon participant observation, document analysis, survey …

Are Investment Banks Helpful Or Hurtful? An Analysis Of Intraday Volatility In The Direct Listing Process As Compared To Investment Bank-Involvement In Traditional Ipos, Alexis Paff

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I carry out an empirical analysis of the pricing volatility of direct listings as compared to traditional IPOs. Direct listings solve an efficiency problem in the US going-public market, in which well-funded, late-stage firms lack incentives to pursue a public listing, which would create liquidity for preexisting shareholders and allow for a more diverse body of public shareholders. Direct listings have been allowed on the New York Stock Exchange since early 2018, and four firms, Spotify, Slack, Asana, and Palantir, have gone public through this new listing mechanism. While underwriters are heavily involved in the IPO process, …

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 …

Impacts Of Forest Tax Programs On Property Tax Rates In Michigan's Upper Peninsula And Northern Wisconsin, Elsa Schwartz

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Forest tax programs offer reduced property taxes to private forest owners as incentive to sustainably manage their forests and to encourage the provision of ecosystem services. They also protect forests from conversion to other land uses and ensure the viable supply of timber for forest products industries. Despite the benefits that these programs provide, they can negatively impact local municipalities by reducing the property tax base, which can then cause local governments to increase tax rates for non-preferential properties in order to maintain revenue needed to run their services. This shifts the tax burden from participating properties to nonparticipating properties. …

Dropping The Ball: A Political And Economic Analysis Of Public Subsidization For Stadium Construction Projects, Max Fisher

CMC Senior Theses

The results generated by this research argue that the high cost of public subsidization does not outweigh the benefits associated with new stadiums. By using several cost-benefit analyses, my research adds to the current literature that these projects, while seemingly beneficial for communities, induces negligible or even negative outcomes. In particular, this study details the Las Vegas Raiders and the New York Yankees, explaining how these teams were able to achieve a new stadium. To understand why politicians continually support stadium construction despite extensive literature showing its harms, this research includes explanations based on the political theory from authors such …

‘It’S Like Baking A Cake’: An Analysis Of Conscience Voting In The New Zealand House Of Representatives Since The Introduction Of The Mixed-Member Proportional System In 1996, Harrison Hosking

CMC Senior Theses

Conscience voting in the New Zealand House of Representatives offers a unique opportunity to assess Sam Peltzman’s ‘Principal-Agent Theory’ as outlined in his 1984 paper, Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting.

This thesis begins with a brief assessment of the principal-agent model (and other literature regarding parliamentary representation) before looking at the New Zealand Parliamentary system and the phenomenon of private member’s bills and how they aid the legislative process. This is followed by an exploration of a constructed dataset of conscience votes that have occurred since the inception of the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system in 1996. An analysis …

The Road Less Traveled: Economic Analysis Of Roads And Highways, Margaret C. Bock

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Roads are an integral component of civilization, connecting people, markets, and ideas. In different settings and geographies, roads can take on many different purposes. In rural, more isolated areas, roads can serve as a cost-saving benefit and can be used as tools to increase accessibility. In urban, more congested areas, roads can be seen as an externality-producing hindrance. Naturally, given this view, the overall analysis of roads should reflect these different settings. To date, however, the study of roads in the economics literature has surprisingly large pitfalls, notably in terms of topics of study and methodologies used.

Spending on roads …

Property Rights, Consequences Of Electrical Blackouts, And Measures Of Institutional Quality, Kerianne Nicole Lawson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation is comprised of three essays. Chapter 1 is about a house titling program, called Khaya Lam, in South Africa. Despite it being legal in South Africa to acquire a title deed to a government-issued home, roughly 20 million South Africans do not hold title to their property. Millions of homes are eligible to have ownership transferred from the government to the individuals living in them, but legal costs and lack of awareness keep these renters from going through the steps to secure title deeds. Though they may occupy the property for years, without a title deed South Africans …

Certain Effects Of Random Taxes, James R. Hines Jr., Michael J. Keen

Articles

This paper explores the implications of tax rate randomness, identifying circumstances in which revenue-neutral rate variability increases profitability, economic activity, and the efficiency of resource allocation. Furthermore, with heterogeneous taxpayers, tax rate variability is shown to perform an efficiency-enhancing screening function, imposing heavier expected tax burdens on less responsive taxpayers. And while efficient tax randomness enables governments to reduce average costs of taxation, it necessarily increases the marginal cost of taxation over some ranges of expected revenue, so may reduce efficient levels of government spending.

The Effects Of Racial Capitalism On Poor White Laborers, Amy Whittaker

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

While always remembering that racial capitalism’s very nature ensures that non-white Americans suffer incomparable racial oppression, this paper will endeavor to expose the devastation caused to American society as a whole by explaining the ways in which racial capitalism destroyed poor white labors ability to participate fully in the economic system and strangled its chances of living the American dream. It is my hope that by discussing the missing piece of the poor white laborers’ experience under racial capitalism will unite poor white laborers and poor black laborers to work together to end racial capitalism, policing, and the carceral system. …

Systematizing Confidence In Open Research And Evidence (Score), Nazanin Alipourfard, Beatrix Arendt, Daniel M. Benjamin, Noam Benkler, Michael Bishop, Mark Burstein, Martin Bush, James Caverlee, Yiling Chen, Chae Clark, Anna Dreber Almenberg, Timothy M. Errington, Fiona Fidler, Nicholas Fox, Aaron Frank, Hannah Fraser, Scott Friedman, Ben Gelman, James Gentile, Jian Wu, Et Al., Score Collaboration

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Assessing the credibility of research claims is a central, continuous, and laborious part of the scientific process. Credibility assessment strategies range from expert judgment to aggregating existing evidence to systematic replication efforts. Such assessments can require substantial time and effort. Research progress could be accelerated if there were rapid, scalable, accurate credibility indicators to guide attention and resource allocation for further assessment. The SCORE program is creating and validating algorithms to provide confidence scores for research claims at scale. To investigate the viability of scalable tools, teams are creating: a database of claims from papers in the social and behavioral …

The Impact Of Disparity In Infrastructure Development On Aceh's Economic Performance: An Inter-Provincial Analysis, Mutiara Fahmi

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

This study provides empirical findings on regional disparity in infrastructural facilities in 23 districts/municipalities of Aceh Province and the impact of the disparity on the economic performance of Aceh Province, specifically on those of economic growth, poverty, and unemployment. The unit of analysis is the district level and the Infrastructure Development Index (IDI) is used as the variable computed by using the multivariate method. Regional disparity is measured by the Coefficient of Variation and the impact of IDI on the provinces economy is analyzed using the econometric model. The analysis shows that infrastructure development disparity exists and that IDI generally …

Public Health Spending, Governance Quality And Poverty Alleviation, Mohamad Komarudin

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

Poverty alleviation has become the main priority program in most developing countries. This research empirically studies the correlation between public health spending, governance quality, and poverty alleviation in developing countries. The panel data were estimated via a random-effects (RE) model and robustness check using instrumental variables (IV) (two-stage least-squares [2SLS]) and first-difference generalized method of moments (GMM) because of the endogeneity problem. The results suggest that public health spending has a significant effect on reducing the poverty rate, and that countries with better governance tend to reduce poverty than countries with poor governance. Increasing public health spending by one percentage …

The Role Of Banking Services In Determining The Destination Countries For Indonesia's Non-Oil And Gas Export, Rini Satriani

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

This study aims to examine whether the risk factor and banking services play a significant role in determining not only the export performance of a country but also the pattern of export destination markets, with the reference to the case of Indonesia. These two indicators are interrelated because the risk factor in export transactions can be mitigated by banking sector. Using the data of export Letter of Credits (LCs) for non-oil and gas exports of Indonesia as a banking instrument to mitigate special risk transactions to 102 export destination countries as well as a panel data methodology for the 2011-2018 …

A Decomposition Analysis Of Fertility: Evidence From Dki Jakarta And East Nusa Tenggara, Farma Mangunsong

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

Fertility control has been one of the priorities of development in Indonesia. However, the 2000 and 2010 population censuses showed an increase in fertility indicators. To identify the sources of increased fertility in developed and less developed areas, DKI Jakarta and East Nusa Tenggara Provinces were selected for comparison. Using 2000 and 2010 census data, the decomposition analysis shows that the increase in Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of DKI Jakarta was dominated by the increase in nuptiality rate, while the increase in TFR of East Nusa Tenggara was mainly caused by the increase in Marital Fertility Rate (MFR). The highest …

Business Vulnerability And Credit Access For Agriculture-Based Micro And Small Women Entrepreneurs, Dewi Ratna Sjari M

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

Micro and Small Industries (MSIs) constitute the largest share of Indonesia's manufacturing sector and play an important role in providing employment opportunities and value-added creation. However, their business sustainability and scaling up are often hindered by various factors, one of which is access to credit. The subsidized loan scheme provided by the government, namely People's Business Credit (KUR), appears to be insufficiently attractive to entrepreneurs, especially to Micro and Small Women Entrepreneurs (MSWEs). Employing a logit regression method and utilizing the BPS-Statistics Indonesia's 2015 MSI survey data, this study aims to investigate factors affecting MSWEs decision to apply for bank …

The International Tourism Performance Amidst Several Intervention Events: More Than 20 Years Of Multi Input Intervention Analysis In Bali, Jakarta, And Kepulauan Riau Provinces, Taly Purwa

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

As one of the priority sectors in economic development of Indonesia, tourism is expected to be the main key in accelerating economic and social growth, hence reducing poverty. The tourism performance, especially international tourism market, is highly prone to intervention events that can reduce the number of inbound tourists and produce a negative impact on economic development of the destination country. Therefore, anticipating and mitigating various intervention events is necessary to maintain the performance of the tourism sector in Indonesia. This study investigates the magnitude and patterns of impact of several intervention events on the number of international visitor arrivals …

Should I Bribe? Re-Examining The Greasing-The-Wheels Hypothesis In Democratic Post-Soeharto Indonesia, Irfan Kurniawan

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

During the Soeharto Era corruption was considered to grease the wheels of growth in Indonesia, a country once considered to be the most corrupt country in the world. Indonesia began to experience instantaneous decentralization and democratization after the Soeharto Era abruptly ended. While vastly celebrated, these episodes have their unintended consequence: coercive regulation. We employed the extensive firm-level Large and Medium Manufacturing (Industri Besar Sedang/IBS) census data combined with the Indonesian Democracy Index (Indeks Demokrasi Indonesia/IDI) at provincial level spanning from 2009 to 2015 and found that bribery hampered Indonesian firm output and productivity growth by 9.8% and 12.6%, respectively. …

Islamic Financial Literacy Index Of Students: Bridging Sdgs Of Islamic Finance, Arief Dwi Saputra, Alfina Rahmatia

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

This research aims to measure the level of Islamic financial literacy among students by reviewing 2 dimensions, 8 variables, and 33 indicators obtained from literature studies and experts. This study applied mix method to qualitative and quantitative data with a total sample of 273 respondents. The data were obtained from interview and online FGD and then processed by word similarity analysis as well as validity and reliability tests, the results of which are used as reference and conclusion. The analysis shows that the level of understanding of financial literacy among students remains significantly low, proven by the value of the …

Stock Market Correlations To Economic Indicators, Anthony K. Quandt

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

For this project, I researched how representative the S&P 500 (a common index of choice to represent the market) is of the economic well-being of the US. I found that stock market data can be used an as indicator of the economic well-being of the U.S.. The results do not indicate that the stock market leads to recovery, but it does suggest that it is correlated with recovery. In my analysis, I compared the S&P 500 performance to four different economic indicators: Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), The Consumer Price Index (CPI), Average Weekly Private Wages, and Unemployment Rate. A …

The Economic And Health Impacts Of Community Gardens On Refugee Populations: Cric Garden Case Study, Joseph Montoya

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this paper is to examine the economic benefits of community gardens and incubator farms, both of which support the populations they serve from an economic viewpoint as well as socially, and as a benefit to public health and nutrition. The findings were gathered from the large body of research concerning the benefits of community gardens as well as program evaluation responses conducted with gardeners at the Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection (CRIC) garden in Logan, Utah in 2020. They are also informed by experiences had and lessons learned while working as the garden manager. There is a …

An Economic Analysis Of Using Retired Vessels To Create Artificial Reefs In Costa Rica, Josué González

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The Republic of Costa Rica is a Central American country with only 0.03% of the world’s landmass, but 5% of the world’s biodiversity, making it a leading ecotourism destination. Ecotourism is one of the main sources of revenue for the country, but the degradation of coastal reefs has resulted in a significant loss of financial income for developing areas. As a result, many of these areas are searching for methods to revert the degradation of coral reefs.

Artificial reefs play an important ecological role in marine ecosystems due to their complexity and size. They help in the development of …

Impact Of Government Expenditure On Economic Growth In Nigeria, 1970-2019, Aluthge Chandana, Jibir Adamu, Abdu Musa

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study investigates the impact of Nigerian government expenditure (disaggregated into capital and recurrent) on economic growth using time series data for the period 1970-2019. The paper employs Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. To ensure robustness of results, the study accounts for structural breaks in the unit root test and the co-integration analysis. The key findings of the study are that capital expenditure has positive and significant impact on economic growth both in the short run and long run while recurrent expenditure does not have significant impact on economic growth both in the short run and long run. The study …

Does Bitcoin Use Affect Crime Rates?, Kevin Keane

The Corinthian

Bitcoin is the most widely used cryptocurrency in the world because of its decentralized network that completes user-to-user transactions, eliminating the need for intermediaries. During 2017, the volume of Bitcoin transactions totaled $94.3 trillion. Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public database called the blockchain. Although the blockchain can keep track of how many transactions there are, it can’t identify the people involved in transactions. The lack of identity increases the anonymity of Bitcoin transactions, making it less detectable when used for crime. Using the Uniform Crime Reporting’s state-level crime rate data and blockchain’s Bitcoin transaction information, I estimate the …

The Influence Of Foreign Elite Rhetoric: National Identity, Emotions, And Attitudes Toward Austerity, Alessandro Del Ponte

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

How does foreign elite rhetoric affect citizens’ emotions and attitudes about austerity? In a survey experiment conducted on the online blogs of the two major Italian newspapers, participants read a fictional news article where the German Chancellor addressed Italians. Across treatments, I varied whether the message blamed or praised Italians, and whether the message focused on economic or symbolic concerns. Praise generated enthusiasm whereas blame spurred anger and anxiety. Moreover, respondents with a strong national or European identity who read a message of praise were more enthusiastic, less angry, and less opposed to austerity. Finally, people who identify strongly with …

Writing Tips For Economics Research Papers, Plamen Nikolov

Economics Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Producer Services: An Engine For High-Wage Job Growth, Spencer Cook, Eric Thompson

Business in Nebraska

Producer services providers are firms that sell services primarily to the business community rather than to individuals and households. Many producer services businesses are classified in the professional, scientific, and technical service (PSTS) industry. Accounting firms, consultants, and computer design services are prominent examples of PSTS businesses that are worth studying for three reasons:

1. SUPPORT OF OTHER INDUSTRIES: PSTS industries supply the broader business community, making them a critical segment of the economy.

2. RAPID HIGH WAGE JOB GROWTH: Many PSTS industries are rapidly growing and pay high wages. The producer services sector, in fact, is the principal source …