Macroeconomics Commons^™

Three Essays On The Economics Of Defense Contracting, Output And Income Inequality, Edward M. Decambra

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes both the economics of the defense contracting process and the impact of total dollar obligations on the economies of U.S. states. Using various econometric techniques, I will estimate relationships across individual contracts, state level output, and income inequality. I will achieve this primarily through the use of a dataset on individual contract obligations.

The first essay will catalog the distribution of contracts and isolate aspects of the process that contribute to contract dollar obligations. Accordingly, this study describes several characteristics about individual defense contracts, from 1966-2006: (i) the distribution of contract dollar obligations is extremely rightward skewed, …

Implications Of Export Competitiveness And Performance Of Textile And Clothing Sector Of Pakistan: Pre And Post Quota Analysis, Nawaz Ahmad

Nawaz Ahmad

Textile and Clothing sector of Pakistan has been facing different international trade reforms i.e. Multi-fiber Arrangements, Quota elimination and for some of the developing countries European union, introduced special trade arrangements like GSP plus to improve their balance of trade conditions. In the light of pre quota elimination and post quota elimination periods, this paper highlights trade performance of textile and clothing sector in depth. This study focused on finding the extent of revealed comparative advantage of textile and revealed comparative advantage of clothing sector on overall textile and clothing trade performance of Pakistan. For this purpose study applied Johansen …

Do Hitters Boost Their Performance During Their Contract Years?, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

Each season, baseball fans and journalists alike identify which players are in the final years of their contracts because a lot rides on how the players produce in their “contract year.” Will a player boost his effort and performance in an effort to improve his value and bargaining power? Or will he crumble under the pressure? Or are players’ performances uncorrelated with where they stand in their contract cycles?

Medium Term Business Cycles In Developing Countries, Diego Comin, Norman Loayza, Farooq Pasha, Luis Serven

Dartmouth Scholarship

Business cycle fluctuations in developed economies (N) tend to have large and persistent e§ects on developing countries (S). We study the transmission of business cycle fluctuations for developed to developing economies with a two-country asymmetric DSGE model with two features: (i) endogenous and slow diffusion of technologies from the developed to the developing country, and (ii) adjustment costs to investment flows. Consistent with the model we observe that the flow of technologies from N to S co-moves positively with output in both N and S. After calibrating the model to Mexico and the U.S., it can explain the following stylized …

Amicus Brief In Maryland Comptroller V. Wynne, Michael S. Knoll, Ruth Mason

All Faculty Scholarship

The internal consistency test reveals that Maryland applies systematically higher “county” taxes to interstate commerce than to in-state commerce.

Economic analysis of Maryland’s tax regime — including its taxes on inbound, outbound, and domestic activities — confirms what the internal consistency test suggests, namely, that the Maryland “county” tax discourages interstate commerce. Specifically, the Maryland tax regime discourages Maryland residents from earning income outside of Maryland, and it simultaneously discourages nonresidents from earning income in Maryland. Maryland alone causes this distortion; the distortion does not depend on the taxes imposed by any other state.

Petitioner’s argument that Maryland’s outbound tax …

An Economic Analysis Of Housing Market Instability And Affordability In China, You Wang

Undergraduate Economic Review

Applying an intertemporal optimization model proposed by Aizenman and Marion (1991), this research quantifies instability in the Chinese housing market. Although the Chinese government established numerous real estate policies to ensure the stability of the housing market, the regression analyses indicate that housing policies had no significant impact on the stabilization of the Chinese housing market. Alternatively, macroeconomic factors are identified as significant explanatory variables to the instability of housing prices. In addition, this research computes the median multiple for major cities in China and provides an alternative means of investigating the abnormal housing price situation in China.

Responsiveness Of Nigeria's Short-Term Interest Rates To Changes In The Policy Rate, M. K. Tule

Economic and Financial Review

This paper appraises the efficacy of the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) as an anchor for other short-term interest rates in the economy. Adopting the vector autoregression approach, the responses of Nigeria's short-term interest rates to changes in the interbank rate (proxy for MPR) was modelled. The paper found that the pass-through from MPR to money market interest rates in the long-run is higher for the prime and lending rates than for changes in the Treasury bill rate and 3-month deposit rate. Overall, there seemed to be an asymmetric impact with an increase or fall in the interbank rate.

The Financial Sector And Inclusive Development In Africa: Essays On Access To Finance For Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises In South Sudan And Kenya, James A. Garang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation, consisting of three essays, uses data from field surveys of banks and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) conducted in South Sudan and Kenya from July 2011 through September 2012. The first essay examines the role of financial sector development in expanding access to finance by SMEs in Kenya. We find that while the financial system in general, and the Central Bank of Kenya in particular, have made headway in expanding financial inclusion in Kenya, small firms continue to face more constraints in access to finance compared to larger firms. The policy emphasis on financial inclusion, coupled with the …

The Development Pattern And Competitiveness Evaluation Research On China Inland Dry Port, Min Shi

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Essays On Fiscal Policies In Open Economies, Ahiteme Nicodeme Houndonougbo

Doctoral Dissertations

Investigating various fiscal policy issues in the context of an open economy, this dissertation consists of three essays.

The first essay addresses the question of the volatility of foreign aid and its impact on resource-constrained developing economies. A small open-economy business cycle model is developed that accounts for the effect of external shocks specific to developing economies. The model produces business cycle patterns consistent with the data and key stylized facts. The model is calibrated to reflect the structural empirical regularities of an aid-dependent developing country. The parameters of the exogenous stochastic shocks are estimated using Bayesian methods and 50 …

Government Versus Market Regulation: The Nanny State Or The Liberal State, Warren Coats

Warren Coats

The nanny state world is characterized by a growing list of regulations and government supervision of business in an effort to fix the most recently observed problems. The price of such protection is the increased cost of doing business, which tends to crowd out small businesses and favor large ones, which can more easily absorb the compliance costs. The benefit is often difficult to detect. Has Dodd-Frank really made it feasible to fail our largest banks (now larger than they were just before the Great Recession), i.e. are they no longer too big to fail?

The self-governing, liberal state—"Liberalism unrelinquished"—is …

Economic Impacts Of Increased Corporate Average Fuel Economy (Cafe) Standards, Ann K. Hunter-Pirtle

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

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandates that U.S. transportation fuel producers blend specific volumes of ethanol and other biofuels with fossil fuels to spur U.S. biofuel production and to minimize foreign oil imports. Ethanol is more corrosive to auto engines than gasoline, and although vehicles manufactured since 2001 are approved to use up to a 15% ethanol blend (E15) (Naylor & Falcon, 2011), E10 is much more widely available. Ethanol producers therefore face a so-called blend wall at 10 percent—a maximum amount of ethanol that is usable domestically based on the demand for gasoline.

Meanwhile, gasoline demand in the U.S. …

Monetary-Fiscal Policy Interaction: An Empirical Analysis In Egypt, Sahar M. Abdel-Haleim, Mohamed Hassan, Lobna M. Abdel-Latif

Business Administration

This paper examines the effect of the developments introduced since 2003 in Egypt on the nature of interaction of monetary and fiscal policies and the achievement of macroeconomic objectives. Utilizing the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) approach, the dynamic interaction of policies and their effects on macroeconomic aggregates are investigated. The findings support the success of the developments in eliminating the fiscal dominance. However, coordination between policies is still weak to achieve the macroeconomic stabilization objectives. The results also prove the conventional Keynesian effect of fiscal policy on real GDP. However, the fiscal multiplier is very small. Likewise, expansionary monetary policy …

Curriculum Vitae, Ronald R. Kumar

Ronald R Kumar

My updated CV

Resolution Of Bad Loan Problem: Bank-Level Evidence From A Low-Income Country, Abu S. Amin, Lucy Chernykh, Mahmood Osman Imam

WCBT Faculty Publications

How do banks resolve a severe bad loan problem in a capital-constrained, low income country when a government bailout is not an option? We address this question by examining new evidence of a sharp decline in bad loan ratios in a panel of domestic banks in Bangladesh. On the aggregate level, the share of nonperforming loans in this market has dropped six fold, from above 41% in 1999 to below 7% in 2010. Notably, this dramatic improvement did not involve the creation of any centralized asset management facilities but relied on the bank management and governance reforms. We find that …

On The Means Of Payment, Lester G. Telser

Lester G Telser

Economic Paradise: gold and free banking is the first topic. Paradise Lost: the Garden of Eden has a Serpent is the second topic. The third topic is Fiat Money and the Monetary Authority. It describes some banking reforms proposed by Henry Simons writing during the 1930’s when the U.S. economy was in the Great Depression. The main lesson relevant today is the danger inherent in linking the means of payment to credit. Restoring required reserves on all forms of deposit in banks as well as in firms that offer checkable accounts follows from Simons’ proposals. The fourth topic describes sources …

The Morality Of Fractional Reserve Banking, Jeffrey E. Haymond, Ryan T. Beach

Jeffrey E. Haymond, Ph.D.

Modern central banking allows banks to initiate new money creation while holding only a small fraction as cash reserves for possible deposit withdrawal. When extended throughout the banking system, the process of "multiple deposit expansion" leads to inflationary pressures. Christian writers that consider the morality of fractional reserve banking often criticize it, not only because of the inflationary impact, but the impossibility of meeting all legal requirements: when money is loaned out, it cannot at the same time be redeemed as a demand deposit. Given the promise to return demand deposits and the impossibility to do so for all depositors, …

A Backward Bending Supply Of Loanable Funds: An Examination Of The Interest Rate Elasticity Of Saving, Rachel M. Doehr Ms.

Undergraduate Economic Review

The market for loanable funds is presented as either a market with an upward sloping supply curve, or as one with a perfectly inelastic supply. This paper relates the supply of loanable funds to the supply curve in the labor market: backward bending. Once interest rates are high enough, people start to save less, creating the "backward bend.” This explains the discrepancies in previous literature that attempted to put a single value on the interest rate elasticity saving. The reason for the variation in values could be because the elasticity actually depends on the point on the curve.

Will The U.S. Velocity Of Money Step Up Again? New Evidence From The Random Walk Hypothesis, Anh Thu Tran Xuan

Undergraduate Economic Review

The recent decrease in U.S. money velocity raises debates about its unit root behavior. This paper revisited the random walk hypothesis (RWH) of the U.S. money velocity in 1960-2010 and two sub-periods 1960-85 and 1986-2010 by applying the Variance Ratio methodologies, including new nonparametric tests by Wright (2000) and Belaire-Franch and Contreras (2004). The results suggested that the velocity would likely increase, and the U.S. monetary policy will soon stimulate GDP and employment. Furthermore, past velocity is important to predict the future outcomes, and changes in financial structural could alter the empirical characteristics of the velocity series.

The Spanish Export Led Recovery, David Wagner

Undergraduate Economic Review

I researched the export-led recovery currently taking place in Spain. My thesis revolved around Mariano Rajoy and the Popular Party coming into power in 2011 and instituting reforms in three distinct categories; financial market reforms, fiscal measures, and labor market reforms. These reforms have had a significant impact in restoring credibility in Spain's capital markets and decreasing unit labor costs. In turn, Spain has shown impressive export growth in the past two years, especially compared to its neighbors Italy and France.