Econometrics Commons^™

How Federal Pollution Discharge Permits Affect U.S. Water Quality: A Study On Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, Cloe C. Mueller

Theses and Dissertations

This paper uses difference-in-difference regression models to examine how state-level pollution discharge permits on concentrated animal feeding operations affect U.S. water quality. I ultimately deem the permitting to be ineffective at improving water quality, calling attention to the need to re-evaluate the ``socially optimal level of pollution."

Universal Basic Income And The Alaska Permanent Fund: Impact On Labor Outcomes And Skill Composition, Michele Cafasso

Theses and Dissertations

To analyze the effects of universal basic income on labor supply and human capital, I estimate the effects of Alaska’s Permanent Fund on employment, hours worked, and skills using data from the Current Population Survey and O*NET. My method combines synthetic control and difference-in-differences regressions.

Medicaid Expansion: Changes In Individual Health Outcomes, Julie Norman

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

The Affordable Care Act is one of the biggest changes in the American healthcare system in the 21st century. One element of the ACA is medicaid expansion, which opened up federal funding for states to cover any individual earning below 138% of the federal poverty line. 21 states expanded medicaid in 2014 while 12 haven’t expanded. This paper utilizes the disparity for a natural experiment to determine the efficacy of the program. Outcome variables of interest include measurements of individual health, health access and utilization, and premature death rates. The results indicate positive, but small improvements due to the policy, …

Crime Reduction And Reformation In South Carolina: An Analysis Of Sb 1154, Matthew Torres

All Theses

This thesis evaluates the policy response to the criminal justice crisis of South Carolina, Senate Bill (SB) 1154, dubbed the Omnibus Crime Reduction and Sentencing Reform Act of 2010. SB 1154 adopted a series of “common sense” reforms, including new charges constituting as violent crimes, redefined sentences in the form of reduced penalties and harsher penalties for nonviolent and violent crimes respectively, mandated supervision of individuals on probation or parole, and credit programs for early release of inmates among other provisions intended to reduce inmate population, recidivism and violent crime rates.

I examine three key factors: inmate, imprisonment and violent …

The Economic Returns To Bilingualism In The U.S Labor Market, Mara Macdonald

All Theses

This paper uses pooled cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey to analyze the economic returns of bilingualism to adults in the U.S labor market. Bilingualism in the US is defined as English proficient individuals who also report speaking a foreign language “very well” or “well”. Using OLS Least Squares regression estimation where the dependent variable is the logarithm of earnings, I modify the Mincer earnings function to include foreign language skill variables and controls for observed demographic characteristics. Holding all levels of human capital constant, bilinguals earn 7.7% less than English monolinguals in the U.S labor market; however, this …

Can The Olympics Spur Local Socioeconomic Development? Evidence From Brazil, Alex Matandos

All Theses

Countries pledge ever increasing budgets and commitments to host the Olympics. The region whose bid emerges victorious puts in motion the reallocation of inputs, labor, and capital to build all the promised infrastructure to run the event, while the remaining areas in country remain largely unaffected by the intervention. This quasi-experiment scenario is proper for the usage of the Synthetic Control Method but few papers have exploited it. This paper fills the gap by being the first to offer an analysis at local level for a developing economy on the impact of the Olympics. Using Rio de Janeiro's winning bid …

The Mangrove Walks: An Econometric Analysis Of Climate Migration Drivers From Coastal Bangladesh And Their Geopolitical Impacts, Kendall Scott Byers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coastal Bangladesh is subject to extreme climate change forces upon poor, rural populations. The aim of this thesis is to determine the strength of environmental drivers of migration and discern whether planned or catastrophic migration predominates in the polder areas of Bangladesh. I use regression analysis on a 1,025 household, 2016 IRRI/IWMI analysis of Polder 28/1, 28/2, and 30 within Satkhira district to determine factor correlations with migration. Progressive salinization is the strongest environmental driver, while flooding decreases migration through trapping household capital investment. Religion has the greatest correlation with migration. Hindus migrate less frequently, but do so with more …

A Conditional Linear Combination Test With Many Weak Instruments, Dennis Guo Wei Lim, Wenjie Wang, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a linear combination of jackknife Anderson-Rubin (AR) and orthogonalized Lagrangian multiplier (LM) tests for inference in IV regressions with many weak instruments and heteroskedasticity. We choose the weight in the linear combination based on a decision-theoretic rule that is adaptive to the identification strength. Under both weak and strong identifications, the proposed linear combination test controls asymptotic size and is admissible. Under strong identification, we further show that our linear combination test is the uniformly most powerful test against local alternatives among all tests that are constructed based on the jackknife AR and LM tests only and invariant …

Household Preferences Of Decentralized Solar Photovoltaic And Thermal Systems, Roozbeh Ghasemi, Yue Li, Zhongming Lu, Ju-Chin Huang, Weiwei Mo

Student Research Projects

Small-scale, residential solar systems have been increasingly recognized as a key sector of future solar capacity growth and carbon emission reduction in cities. This study investigated customer preferences of solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) systems to facilitate their broader residential penetration. A discrete choice experiment was designed and administered through Amazon Mechanical Turk targeting two testbeds: Boston, Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia. Six system features were investigated, including system type, ownership, upfront cost, annual savings, environmental benefits, and neighbor’s choices. The collected data were then analyzed using latent class choice modeling to identify the hidden classes of unique preference characteristics and …

Change In Subjective Well-Being, Affluence And Trust In State Governments In India, Vani S. Kulkarni, Veena S. Kulkarni, Katsushi Imai, Raghav Gaiha

Population Center Working Papers (PSC/PARC)

The present study explores the relationship between trust in state governments and changes in subjective well-being in India, drawing upon the nationally-representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS) panel data for 2005 and 2012. Our econometric results confirm that people’s trust in state governments is positively associated with changes in their subjective well-being in economic aspects. To take into account the endogeneity of people’s trust in the state government, we have used the 2SLS model where the trust is instrumented by (i) whether the winning legislators belonged to the ruling party, and (ii) whether the margin of victory over the closest …

Bayesian And Machine Learning Methods With Applications In Asset Pricing, Yaohan Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The dissertation consists of three essays on asset pricing by constructing new data set and developing new methodologies. In the first chapter, we conduct empirical studies on the volatility-managed portfolios in the Chinese stock market. Using data from the Chinese stock market, we have found that the main empirical findings in Moreira and Muir (2017) break down. Based on the empirical findings, we exploit a comprehensive set of $99$ equity strategies in the Chinese stock market to analyze the value of managed portfolios. Based on these $99$ equity trading strategies, we find that there exists no systematic gain from scaling …

Spatial Panel Data Models: Unbalanced Panel, Threshold Effect And Network Structure, Xiaoyu Meng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This thesis studies the estimation and inference problems for spatial panel data models when the panels are unbalanced, when the panels contain threshold effects, or when the panels contain time-varying network structures. These three scenarios divide the thesis naturally into three chapters.

The first chapter considers estimation and inferences for fixed effects spatial panel data models based on unbalanced panels that result from randomly missing spatial units. The unbalanced nature of the panel data renders the standard method of estimation inapplicable. In this chapter, we proposed an M-estimation method where the estimating functions are obtained by adjusting the concentrated quasi …

How Presidential Disapproval Affects Bitcoin Returns: A Product Of The President, Joseph Libretti

Honors Theses

There has been a growing fascination for decentralized electronic assets, and Bitcoin has emerged as the face and leader of the movement. There have been three different presidents coinciding with the growth of Bitcoin. Since the creation of Bitcoin, each president has faced periods of net disapproval, and these periods have been the norm throughout Obama’s, Trump’s, and Biden’s presidencies. There is currently no existing literature on Presidential ratings as a predictor of Bitcoin, however, there has been research on the predictors of Bitcoin and Presidential ratings as a predictor of financial markets. I hypothesized that increases in net disapproval …

The Effects Of Recreational Marijuana Dispensaries On Local Opioid Mortality, Patrick Morrison

Honors Theses

This study examines how recreational marijuana dispensaries in Colorado affect opioid mortality at the county level. Using a difference-in-difference model with county and year fixed effects, I estimate the impact of recreational marijuana dispensary access on fatal opioid overdoses. Additionally, I employ distance from a major roadway and border as two instrumental variables to help limit the endogeneity associated with the location of dispensaries. Previous studies have shown that medical and recreational marijuana dispensary access decreases opioid mortality at the state level. Still, no study has explored the connection between recreational marijuana dispensaries and overdoses at the county level. Using …

Mental Health Is Wealth Too: Did The Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion Improve Mental Health Outcomes?, Dereck Wang

Honors Theses

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has greatly exacerbated mental health, which has long been a growing problem in the United States; poor mental health not only jeopardizes the well-being of Americans but also has severe implications for America’s economy. Not only do mental health conditions have significant costs of treatment, but the absenteeism, presenteeism, early retirement, and mortality stemming from poor mental health also severely impact productivity. One health policy that could alleviate this problem is Medicaid expansion. The Affordable Care Act gave states the choice to expand Medicaid eligibility for individuals with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty …

Political Legitimacy In Historical Political Economy, Avner Greif, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Political legitimacy has long been recognized in the social sciences as an integral component of governance. It encourages obedience without the threat of force, thus lowering governing costs and improving the efficacy of policies. This chapter begins by overviewing the extensive literature on political legitimacy, classifying studies by whether they are based on the beliefs (regarding the legitimacy of the authority) or effectiveness (good governance is legitimate governance). Among the studies focusing on beliefs, most take legitimacy as an exogenous element of political authority. We develop a conceptual framework to study how beliefs regarding political legitimacy form endogenously and impact …

300 Anniversary Of Smith’ Birth, Vernon L. Smith

ESI Working Papers

Thousand-word brief on key quotes from Adam Smith’s two books (TMS, WN) modelling Society and Economy.

A Consistent Specification Test For Dynamic Quantile Models, Peter Horvath, Jia Li, Zhipeng Liao, Andrew Patton

Research Collection School Of Economics

Correct specification of a conditional quantile model implies that a particular conditional moment is equal to zero. We nonparametrically estimate the conditional moment function via series regression and test whether it is identically zero using uniform functional inference. Our approach is theoretically justified via a strong Gaussian approximation for statistics of growing dimensions in a general time series setting. We propose a novel bootstrap method in this nonstandard context and show that it significantly outperforms the benchmark asymptotic approximation in finite samples, especially for tail quantiles such as Value-at-Risk (VaR). We use the proposed new test to study the VaR …

Weak Identification Of Long Memory With Implications For Inference, Jia Li, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shuping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper explores weak identification issues arising in commonly used models of economic and financial time series. Two highly popular configurations are shown to be asymptotically observationally equivalent: one with long memory and weak autoregressive dynamics, the other with antipersistent shocks and a near-unit autoregressive root. We develop a data-driven semiparametric and identification-robust approach to inference that reveals such ambiguities and documents the prevalence of weak identification in many realized volatility and trading volume series. The identification-robust empirical evidence generally favors long memory dynamics in volatility and volume, a conclusion that is corroborated using social-media news flow data.

Win: How Public Entrepreneurship Can Transform The Developing World, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

This book provides a story about the Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) written from the perspective of its first full-time Chief Executive Officer. For those who have never heard of IDCOL, it was created in 1997 by the Government of Bangladesh as a nonbank financial institution to fill the financial gap for developing medium- to large-scale infrastructure. IDCOL had a very modest start with a nominal paid-up capital of less than US$2,000, but its capital, equity, and reserves increased to US$110 million by 2020. During this massive expansion, IDCOL met various challenges. This book gives an account of these challenges …