Growth and Development Commons^™

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.

Do Marketing Strategies Impact Condom Sales In Uganda?, Meyhar Mohammed

Master's Theses

What attracts people to buy condoms? HIV/AIDS remain one of the biggest health dangers of the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. A lot of efforts have been pursued in the past two decades to drastically reduce prevalence of HIV and increase awareness about preventive mechanisms. In order to prevent relapse of success achieved so far, it is important to recognize transformation of consumer behavior due to growth in social networks, education and awareness over time. There are a lot of behavioral triggers captured by social marketing interventions in the field of public health. In an attempt to investigate the role …

Aspirations As A Component Of Life Satisfaction: A Look At Female Microfinance Borrowers In Oaxaca, Mexico, Joseph E. Kemler

Master's Theses

This research is an extension to the Oaxaca Hope Project by B. Wydick and T.J. Lybbert. How does an individual gauge her own satisfaction with life? Previous research has noted that many domains make up overall life satisfaction, i.e. career satisfaction, family life satisfaction & social life satisfaction. A burgeoning topic in this regard is the role that aspirations play in life satisfaction. Using survey data from female microfinance borrowers in Oaxaca, Mexico this project attempts to analyze the affect previous aspirations have on life satisfaction. By creating an “aspirational window” we objectively attempt to gauge the relationship between “high” …

Generating Prevalence Estimates Of Sensitive Behaviors Through List Randomization: Survey Experiment Among Indian Males, Abha Indurkar

Master's Theses

Survey respondents may under-report or misreport sensitive behaviors due to social desirability bias. List randomization is an indirect way of asking questions which allows respondents to answer sensitive questions without the surveyor knowing their actual response. This has emerged as a new technique to ask sensitive questions as it reduces respondent’s discomfort while reporting sensitive behaviors. In this study, we apply list randomization to generate prevalence estimates of sensitive behaviors and perception related to homosexuality, molestation of women and notion of partner purity in the sample of young, college educated Indian males. Our findings are consistent with the literature on …

Income Shocks And The Acceptance Of Intimate Partner Violence In Indonesia, Matthew N. Krupoff

Master's Theses

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive issue affecting 1 in 3 women worldwide. Despite the negative welfare impacts, it is still seen as acceptable in some parts of the world, even amongst women. This paper examines how elastic these accepting attitudes towards IPV are to changing economic conditions. Specifically, this paper focuses on changes in intra-household resources from negative shocks to male-sourced income. The setting and context takes place in coastal communities in Indonesia, where fishing is a main source ofincome generated primarily by men. This paper uses satellite-derived fishing conditions to measure how women's attitudes towards IPV change …

Competitive Mothers: An Experimental Study Of Female Competitiveness And Polygamy In Togo (West Africa), Aminata Cissokho

Master's Theses

Are women in a patriarchal society like Togo as competitive as men? How does being a parent, in a polygamous vs. monogamous marriage and having high income affect one’s willingness to compete? With an incentivized experiment, we explore whether there are gender differences in selecting into competitive environments, especially when the incentives switch from cash to voucher. This experiment is conducted in Togo, West Africa, with 428 subjects including females-males, parent-non parent. Overall, the findings reveal no significant differences between the females and males’ willingness to compete. Female parents are more competitive than male parents regardless of the incentive. Subjects …

Financing And Productivity: Evidence From Indian Manufacturing Industry, Tingyi Wu

Master's Theses

India grows rapidly in recent years, not to mention its high-technology industry. What are secrets behind this fast-growing situation? This paper intends to find the answer using a firm-level panel data in India and examine the loan-productivity relationship via both contemporaneous and lagged models. I find positive and statistically significant results that loans play an important role in firms’ performances.

Feeding Globalization : Madagascar And The Provisioning Trade, 1600–1800, Jane Hooper

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Between 1600 and 1800, the promise of fresh food attracted more than seven hundred English, French, and Dutch vessels to Madagascar. Throughout this period, European ships spent months at sea in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but until now scholars have not fully examined how crews were fed during these long voyages. Without sustenance from Madagascar, European traders would have struggled to transport silver to Asia and spices back to Europe. Colonies in Mozambique, Mauritius, and at the Cape relied upon frequent imports from Madagascar to feed settlers and slaves.
In Feeding Globalization, Jane Hooper draws on challenging and previously …

Ambiguity Aversion: Adoption, Uptake, And Trends, Adam Franklin

Master's Theses

What is ambiguity aversion and what is its role as a determinant of technology adoption? This study develops and implements a novel ambiguity preference instrument in the context of an ongoing RCT pilot program in southwest Uganda promoting adoption of an improved variety of sweet potato. No correlation between ambiguity aversion and crop adoption is observed, although it is suspected that RCT treatment arms including supply- and demand-side information reduced the ambiguity of the new variety, probably overcoming any ambiguity-preference-related constraints and clouding the picture. Methodological lessons learned regarding the development and implementation of an apporopriate ambiguity preference measure point …

An Analysis Of Income Inequality Reduction In Brazil Under President Lula Da Silva, Victoria Rose Belcher

Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes trends in income inequality reduction across different regions of Brazil from 2000 to 2010. This period was selected because it was a period of consistent economic growth and national inequality reduction, as measured by the GINI Index, as well as a period that witnessed the introduction of new government policies by President Lula da Silva. This thesis provides extensive background information about Lula’s presidency and income inequality in Brazil before conducting an economic analysis of the trends in income inequality reduction through the country. This thesis concludes that the trend of inequality reduction favored certain regions of …

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 Dream Act: A Retrospective On Immigration Policies Across Time And Nations, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

The United States has a long tradition of assimilating diverse peoples into a shared culture and thus developing a transformative, holistic national identity. Despite this historical affinity for immigration, there have also been points during which rose issues with migrants entering the country illegally. Once this happens, politicians must decide how to deal with an influx of undocumented aliens. This paper focuses on amnesty acts, particularly ones past through the American Congress in the past century. The relationship between amnesty legislation and immigration flow will be investigated. Also, an exploration of European policies towards immigration will all be conducted in …

Pride And Prejudice In U.S. Trade, Lan Cao

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

The purpose of this Article is to provide a micro evaluation of trade in two particularly thorny areas: (1) job loss; and (2) import vs. export and the trade deficit in a trading system of globally fragmented production. This Article also provides a broad, macro view of trade and its relationship with other parts of the international order—security and finance. This is because trade is a vital component of an integrated international system. Looking at trade in isolation will result in even more incoherence and disequilibrium, perhaps creating unintended consequences in ways that impact negatively on U.S. security and finances. …

Trump And Asia, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The American president is off to an uncertain start in his first 100 days in office but his administration could yet develop a coherent foreign policy

In Pawn: Kurdish Economic Development In The Context Of Conflict, Stephen E. Mcavene Iii

Sustainability and Social Justice

In this paper the author examines the struggle of the Kurdish people for self-determined social, political, and economic development in the whirlwind of conflict in the Middle East. It uses a case study of how a Kurdish minority in Iraq interact with multiple stakeholders in their struggle for nationhood, and implications of these interactions for overall Kurdish social and economic development. Studies on economic development while interested in social, economic and political aspect of development, are less concerned with the implications of right to self-determination on development; the unique case of the Kurdish struggle provides an opportunity to expand the …

A Tanzanian Woman's Place Is On Top: An Exploration Of Women's Participation In Kilimanjaro's Trekking Tourism Industry, Margeaux Prinster

Sustainability and Social Justice

While high poverty rates persist for women in Tanzania, the growing trekking tourism industry surrounding Mount Kilimanjaro and its resulting demand for labor presents these impoverished women with a potential avenue for economic empowerment. This paper examines the national and local realities of women’s work in Tanzania, analyzing culturally informed gendered patterns of employment against the colonial and sexist histories of tourism and commercial mountaineering on Mount Kilimanjaro to identify barriers to women’s economic participation in Kilimanjaro’s trekking tourism industry. This analysis is followed by a cross-cultural comparison with Nepal, focusing specifically on women’s barriers to participation in commercial mountaineering, …

The Impact Of Commercial Banking Development On Economic Growth: A Principal Component Analysis Of Association Between Banking Industry And Economic Growth In Europe, Hugh L. Davis Iii

Dissertations

There are significant differences in the economic growth trajectories of Western, Central and Eastern Europe since the beginning of the democratic movements of the early 1990s. It may be observed that the more developed the region, the lower the growth rate. There are a number of explanations for this growth rate variance, e.g. cultural, resources, institutional and/or political. An explanation this research is pursuing is institutional - the correlation between banking development and economic growth. More specifically, does banking development have a greater impact on growth where economic development begins at a lower level?

Very little research has been directed …

Delta Hands For Hope: A Force For Reconciliation And Sustainable Development In The Delta?, Mary D. Travis

Honors Theses

This case study focuses on the question of whether Delta Hands for Hope, a distinctive, possibly unique faith-based organization, is able to facilitate racial reconciliation and sustainable community development in the Delta community of Shaw. If so, is it a potential model for sustainable development for other communities of the Delta and beyond? This thesis builds on existing literature about sustainable development and development in the Mississippi Delta. The original, empirical research is based on Grounded Theory methodology, a participant/observer perspective, and data gathered through in-depth, open-ended interviews. This research work suggests that racial division is pervasive in every area …

The Effects Of Gentrification: Inhabitants, Education, And Displacement, Marilyn Pineda

Honors College Theses

Locally and internationally, cities that face decades of disinvestment and neglect at one point experience a resurgence and revival in that location. A city’s resurgence and revival is seen in the form of new houses, businesses, and the migration of middle to upper middle class individuals is known as gentrification. Subjectively, gentrification is beneficial to those who are home owners because they can sell their houses for a higher price than what they bought it for; it is beneficial to the landlord who is able to increase the rents of units (Atkinson 2002). In light of all this, while the …

Unconventional Wisdom: Estimating The Economic Impact Of The Democratic And Republican National Political Conventions, Victor Matheson, Lauren R. Heller, E. Frank Stephenson

Economics Department Working Papers

We use daily hotel occupancy, price, and revenue data to analyze the economic impact of the 2008 and 2012 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. We find that political conventions generate approximately 29,000 room nights of lodging, though this figure is offset by lower hotel occupancy during the week before and, to a lesser extent, after conventions. Conventions increase hotel revenue by approximately $20 million on average, a figure which suggests that host cities’ claims of economic impacts of $150 million or more may be implausible.