Behavioral Economics Commons^™

How Gender Norms Impact Women's Access To Financial Inclusion, Caitlyn Goodman

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to determine if there is a relationship between gender norms and women's access to financial resources. Using data from the World Bank and the World Values Survey, I use a linear regression model to assess how attitudes toward education, jobs, and over-all equal rights impact women's account ownership.

Understanding Consumer Attitudes Towards Antimicrobial Risk Reducing Practices, Sabrina Gulab

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance is a natural evolutionary reaction to antimicrobial exposure. However, the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial drugs in human medicine and in agriculture are speeding up the process. Antimicrobials have been used in food-producing animals for therapeutic purposes as well as to promote growth by applying low concentrations in animal feed. Antimicrobial resistant pathogens can enter the food chain through food containing residues of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and cause infections in humans. In the United States, millions of people are infected every year with antimicrobial resistant bacterial diseases causing approximately 23,000 deaths (CDC 2013). This …

Assessing Rice Consumers’ Preferences And Willingness To Pay In Haiti, Cleeford Pavilus

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last 30 years, rice has become the number one food staple in Haiti, and rice imports have outpaced domestic production to supply the country’s increasing rice demand. Policy makers support the claim that increasing local rice supply will not only reduce the dependency on imported rice but also upheave the national economy. However, there is a lack of information on Haitian consumers’ preferences for rice to aid the development of the local rice supply chain. This research aims to bridge that gap by assessing Haitian consumer preferences and willingness to pay for selected rice quality characteristics. The results …

Spending Too Little In Hard Times, Alessandro Del Ponte, Peter Descioli

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

People’s decisions to consume and save resources are critical to their wellbeing. Previous experiments find that people typically spend too much because of how they discount the future. We propose that people’s motive to preserve their savings can instead cause them to spend too little in hard times. We design an economic game in which participants can store resources for the future to survive in a harsh environment. A player’s income is uncertain and consumption yields diminishing returns within each day, creating tradeoffs between spending and saving. We compare participants’ decisions to a heuristic that performed best in simulations. We …

Determinants Of Parking Fees On College Campuses, Hannah Huckeby

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The price of parking has recently been a hot topic around the Murray area, especially among the college students. Due to the drastic increase in parking pass prices there has been an abundant amount of discussion surrounding this idea of parking being a public good. Many individuals have been outraged which has brought up the questions of why there is a price tag on something that many people consider a public good. With that being said, this paper is going to take a deeper look into parking specifically pertaining to college campuses but also in the cities surrounding these institutions. …

Is Public Transit's 'Green' Reputation Deserved?, Justin Beaudoin

PSU Transportation Seminars

While public transit has a reputation as a potential means to ameliorate the adverse environmental effects of automobile travel, there have been very few empirical studies of the marginal effect of transit supply on air quality. We explore whether any of the substantial improvement in air quality observed in the U.S. from 1991 to 2011 can be attributed to increased public transit supply by developing an equilibrium model of transit and automobile travel volumes as a function of the level of transit supplied. We then empirically analyze the effects of the level of transit supply on observed ambient pollution levels …

Potential Crime Risk And Housing Market Responses, Seonghoon Kim, Kwan Ok Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study how information on local (dis)amenities is transmitted and manifested in housing markets. Using nationwide data on multifamily homes in South Korea, we analyze heterogeneity in the effect of a sex offender's presence on sale prices and rents of nearby homes. Our results demonstrate that the price effect of the offender's move-in varies significantly by spatial context. People react more strongly and persistently to the move-in of the offender in places wherein indicators of social connectedness are stronger, such as places with relatively low population density. We also find that, unlike housing prices, rents do not change in response …

Centrality And Cooperation In Networks, Boris Van Leeuwen, Abhijit Ramalingam, David Rojo Arjona, Arthur Schram

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We investigate the effects of centrality on cooperation in groups. Players with centrality keep a group together by having a pivotal position in a network. In some of our experimental treatments, players can vote to exclude others and prevent them from further participation in the group. We find that, in the presence of exclusion, central players contribute significantly less than others, and that this is tolerated by those others. Because of this tolerance, teams with centrality manage to maintain high levels of cooperation.

The Onset, Spread, And Prevention Of Mass Atrocities: Perspectives From Network Models, Charles H. Anderton, Jurgen Brauer

Economics Department Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Abandoning The Dream Of Omnipotence: On Autonomy And Self-Binding, Charlie Coil

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I offer a prolegomenon to the philosophical study of a uniquely human activity—the self-binding act. This philosophical interest directly connects with the Enlightenment project of centralizing personal autonomy and individual freedom as primary values of personhood. Self-binding represents an easily referenced action that introduces a possible clash between autonomy and freedom on the one hand seen as in conflict with other ancient basic human values like self-control and avoiding akrasia. This dissertation investigates the inverted manner whereby an act of self-binding, which voluntarily and effectively limits a person’s options, can end up augmenting rather than interfering with personal autonomy. I …

Has The Development Gap Between The Ethnic Minority And Majority Groups Narrowed In Vietnam?: Evidence From Household Surveys, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using household data for rural northern Vietnam between 1993 and 2014, we find that the ethnic minority group continued to lag behind the majority group in various development indicators despite the overall improvement in living standards. Our regression and decomposition analyses show that the structural differences between the two groups are an important cause of persistent development gap. However, the nature of structural differences changed over time and no single source of structural difference explains the persistent gap. We argue that more minority‐appropriate policies are needed to lift poor minority households out of poverty further and reduce the development gap.

Pretrial Release And Failure-To-Appear In Mclean County, Il, Jonathan Monsma

Student Research – Stevenson Center

Actuarial risk assessment tools increasingly have been employed in jurisdictions across the U.S. to assist courts in the decision of whether someone charged with a crime should be detained or released prior to their trial. These tools should be continually monitored and researched by independent 3^rd parties to ensure that these powerful tools are being administered properly and used in the most proficient way as to provide socially optimal results. McLean County, Illinois began using the Public Safety Assessment-Court^TM (PSA-Court or simply PSA) risk assessment tool beginning in 2016. This study culls data from the McLean County Jail …

How Do Restaurant Menu Calorie Labeling Requirements And Exercise Impact Consumer Food Decision Making?, Nigina Rakhmatullaeva

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The percentage of the U.S. population that is obese has increased markedly over the past fifty years. Obesity is driven in part by imbalances in energy consumption and expenditures. There are two main behavioral factors that influence that balance: food consumption and exercise. In this thesis, I report the results of two experiments that encompass both food choice and exercise.

The consumption of food prepared away from home is growing rapidly. Since individuals do not control the ingredients in foods prepared away from home, these foods are frequently less healthy than home-cooked foods. The role of calorie labeling for foods …

Examining Moral Hazard In The Healthcare Insurance Market, Samuel Ashby

Honors College Theses

This study aims to examine the effect of insurance coverage on medical expenditure in the United States. The data was gathered from the Household Component Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and is a cross-sectional data set with a sample size of approximately 1500 observations. The study also distinguishes between public and private insurance coverage to compare the potential moral hazard in the two separate markets. The results of this study suggest that insurance status, specifically public, has a strong positive effect on healthcare expenditure. This result, combined with a negative relationship between household income and healthcare expenditure, suggests that the source …

Boosting Demand For Biofortified Foods: The Case Of Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato Bread In Tamale, Ghana, Tchassanty Ouro-Gbeleou

Master's Theses

Abstract: In the context of introducing biofortification of staple crops as a food-based approach to combat micronutrient malnutrition in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), we carried out a survey in Tamale, Ghana to elicit consumers’ preference of and willingness to pay for one of the highly nutritious biofortified staple crop processed product: the Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato (OFSP) bread. Our results indicate that scores of respondents in the sample show preference for OFSP bread. The most important determinants of OFSP bread preference are its sweet taste and soft texture and consumers are willing to pay 0.634 pesewas more for the attribute …

The Impact Of Goal Settings And Self-Help Groups To Support Small Businesses: Experimental Evidence Using Female Entrepreneurs In Abuja Nigeria., Nneoma Nwobilor

Master's Theses

Approximately 57% of women in Nigeria from age 15-64 are involved in some form of employment, but there are still 17 million unemployed women (World Bank, 2016). Most of these women are involved in informal entrepreneurship due to external constraints. According to the World Bank, women who have no access to schooling are forced to find informal work to provide for themselves and their families. This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of goal settings and support groups on small businesses among female small-scale business owners in Abuja Nigeria. The research conducted uses the experimental design created by the Family …

Patriarchal Norms, Bargaining, And Gendered Attitudes On Intimate Partner Violence, Anna Eckenrode

Master's Theses

How do the underlying mechanisms of social norms and bargaining power relate to the acceptance of intimate partner violence within households? How do short run and long run determinants of gender norms affect attitudes toward IPV? This study begins to decompose the dynamics of the acceptance of IPV within couples using data from the Demographic Health Survey, as well as examine the relationship in the context of patriarchal societies using data from the Ethnographic Atlas. I find that females are more accepting than males of intimate partner violence, and females becoming more educated is associated with her being less accepting …

Using Monetary Incentives To Support Female Entrepreneurship: An Experimental Test Of Monetary Incentives In Abuja, Nigeria, Imuetinyan Aiguwurhuo

Master's Theses

Gender gaps in entrepreneurship are a major problem everywhere, but especially in developing countries like Nigeria. Women across the world face high levels of discrimination and abuse. The process of empowering women in a society has the potential to boost economic growth and development. Inspired by the success of the Family Independence Initiative (FII), we designed a field experiment to estimate the impact of using monetary incentives to motivate female entrepreneurs in achieving their goals in collaboration with the National Center for Women Development (NCWD) in Abuja, Nigeria. Our results suggest that being in a peer support group, setting a …

Don’T Worry Be Happy: Analysis Of Happiness As An Economic Measurement, Kofi Boadu

Master's Theses

Everyone wants to be happy. Happiness however never seems to be a national goal. A possible answer is that happiness is subjective and on its own may not be reflective of the economic status of a country. Therefore, should people’s happiness should be treated equally with other traditional economic measurements? This cross-country level study looks at the relationship between happiness and traditional economic measurements; mainly GDP per capita. Questions concerning whether GDP per capita indeed captures the overall well-being of a citizen and happiness’ eligibility as an economic measurement are addressed. Findings confirm that happiness and GDP per capita are …

Female Risk Aversion: Experimental Evidence From Myanmar, O Mandalay

Master's Theses

Present literature shows that the risk tolerance of females is generally lower than that of males, but in some circumstances, it can exceed – when concerning the welfare of the offspring, for example. Many experiments and data suggest that the dynamics of female risk tolerance depend on context and type of rewards involved as well as cultural norms. In our experiment, holding the culture and the context fixed, we found that females took less risk than males. Our experiment was conducted in Myanmar using a lottery selection method to measure risk over five consecutive rounds. We found 1) female risk …