Economics Commons^™

Essays In Public Economics, Kathleen Player

All Dissertations

The first two chapters of this dissertation are closely related and pertain to small business reactions to income tax changes. The final chapter investigates the value consumers place on residential community associations.
Small businesses file taxes in accordance with the personal income tax code because they are considered flow-through entities. Thus, personal income tax reforms directly affect the incentives small business owners face regarding employment and operations. I use the changes in personal income-tax rates during the 1993 and 2001-2003 reforms and micro-level data to estimate the effect of statutory tax-rate changes on small-business employment decisions. I add two contributions …

The Influences Of Syndication On Broadcast Programming Decisions, Christina Whitehead

All Dissertations

Syndication is a major factor in the market for television programming. These papers analyze the effects of the off-network syndication market on prime time programming decisions that are made by broadcast networks. The first paper investigates the effects of the off-network syndication (rerun) market on the optimal number of seasons for a prime time television series. The theoretical model predicts that syndication could potentially either increase the number of seasons if the price elasticity of demand for syndication is elastic or vice versa. The empirical analysis consists of a duration model and estimates the effects of first run ratings and …

Measurement Error And The Black-White Wage Differential, Jared Huff

All Dissertations

This dissertation encompasses two papers. The first paper examines the impact of measurement errors in potential experience and reported education on Black-White wage differentials. I show that measurement error is not mean zero, is distributed differently for Black and White males and, for experience, is correlated with the value of the variable measured with error. Possible conditional distributions of the true values of education and experience, given reported values, are estimated using auxiliary data. This paper introduces a Maximum Likelihood method to deal with these errors, and evaluates this method as well as other methods currently used in the gender …

The Potential Of Downtown Las Vegas Becoming A Creative Milieu, Ana Magdalena Barragan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The city of Las Vegas is attempting to revitalize downtown through a creative economy by bringing cultural and experiential activities to the area in a mixed use arrangement with residential, business and civic uses. This study looks at the possibility of not only revitalizing downtown, but on it becoming a true creative milieu - a place that fosters creativity and innovation. It does so by first identifying three major forces working upon the realization of these goals: 1) the regional socio-economic conditions, 2) the government strategies, and 3) the creative population's participation.

The study conducts a quantitative assessments of each, …

State Juvenile Justice Spending Decisions: The Effects Of Federal Aid, Race, Politics, And Other Socioeconomic Factors, Willie B. Coleman Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Historically, juvenile justice in the United States has been the responsibility of state governments with limited federal support. There is a notable gap in the empirical literature on factors that affect funding policies for state juvenile justice programs. In this dissertation research, I used two theoretical perspectives to examine determinants of juvenile justice spending: economic theory on intergovernmental aid and tenets of the Politics of Social Order Framework, developed by Stucky, Heimer, and Lang (2007) to investigate corrections spending. Two research questions were considered: 1) What impact does federal aid have on state spending on juvenile justice programs? and 2) …

Efficiency Of Fiscal Expenditures In Nevada Elementary Schools Using Data Envelopment Analysis, Todd Patrick Yocum

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

For decades educational researchers have attempted to find links between school funding and student achievement. These attempts have generated many contradictory viewpoints and have produced many unanswered questions. Ever increasing accountability on states, districts and schools combined with severe financial strain has made measuring school fiscal efficiency a valuable tool for school leaders looking to get more student achievement with fewer resources.

The methodology for this study was comprised of two phases. Phase I analyzed the per pupil expenditures of Nevada elementary schools over a three-year period and developed descriptive statistics that revealed the expenditure patterns by category. Phase II …

Securing South Africa's Future Grandmothers Against Poverty And Aids As A Model For Social Development Change, Savannah Lynn Eck

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Focusing on the role of elder women in South Africa as a lens to understand the central connections among HIV/ AIDS, poverty and Human Security provides a distinct approach to analyze women's contributions to community development and social change. Drawing from the theories of Gender and Development and Human Security, this research aims to highlight HIV/ AIDS as a social and political security issue, while underscoring the vitality of the inclusion of women in the processes of peace building, reconciliation, education and social development. Furthermore, the influential role of elder women in South Africa will serve as a model in …

Determining An Optimum Cropping Pattern For Egypt, Loujaina M. El Sayed

Theses and Dissertations

Agriculture is considered to be the major economic activity in Egypt despite the government policies that favored other sectors since the second half of the 20^th century. However, Egypt currently faces a food security challenge that stems from the increasing demand for food in light of huge population growth and the inability of the agricultural sector to fulfill the abovementioned increasing demand.

This research focuses on the vertical expansion of the agricultural sector through attempting to determine the optimum cropping mix for Egypt in the year 2017. A fuzzy goal programming (FGP) approach for optimal land allocation is utilized. …

The Recession Of 2008: For Better Or For Worse, Kelsy Litchenburg

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

With nonstop discussion about the current recession in the government, news, classroom, social media, and any other type of communication outlet, there is seldom a minute that Americans are not impacted by our current economic condition. Constantly, we are faced with pitfalls of the recession, like job loss and a declining house market, but who is to say that the motion of our economy doesn't follow Newton's third law stating that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? Meaning that for each negative this recession brings, might there also be a positive social effect as well? After …

Off The Cliff And Back? Credit Conditions And International Trade During The Global Financial Crisis, Davin Chor, Manova Kalina

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the collapse of international trade flows during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis using detailed data on the evolution of monthly U.S. imports over the November 2006 - April 2009 period. We show that credit constraints and the reduction in the availability of external capital were an important channel through which the crisis affected trade volumes. We identify the effects of credit tightening by exploiting the variation in the cost of capital across countries and over time, as well as the variation in financial dependence across sectors. We find that countries with higher interbank interest rates and thus tighter …

Wage-Vacancy Contracts And Coordination Frictions, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a directed search model with risk-averse workers and risk-neutral entrepreneurs who can set up firms that post wage-vacancy contracts, i.e., contracts where firms can make payments to more than one applicant, and where the payments can be different for each applicant and be contingent on the number of applicants. We establish that the type of contracts the literature focuses on are not offered if firms can post wage-vacancy contracts. We show that there exists an equilibrium satisfying a Monotonic Expected Utility property which is efficient. Furthermore, we investigate the role of wage-vacancy contracts on welfare and competition.

Changing Unchanged Inequality: Higher Education, Youth Population, And The Japanese Seniority Wage System, Ken Yamada, Daiji Kawaguchi

Research Collection School Of Economics

Wage inequality declined in the 1990s and rose after 2000 among full-time male workers in Japan. Narrowing wage inequality in the 1990s can be accounted for by a decline in between-group inequality resulting from a stable return to education and decreased returns to experience and tenure. Widening wage inequality after 2000 can be accounted for by a rise in within-group inequality resulting from a relative increase in educated and experienced workers, as well as changes in heterogeneous returns to human capital.

Organizing The Global Value Chain, Pol Antras, Davin Chor

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a property-rights model of the firm in which production entails a continuum of uniquely sequenced stages. In each stage, a final-good producer contracts with a distinct supplier for the procurement of a customized stage-specific component. Our model yields a sharp characterization for the optimal allocation of ownership rights along the value chain. We show that the incentive to integrate suppliers varies systematically with the relative position (upstream versus downstream) at which the supplier enters the production line. Furthermore, the nature of the relationship between integration and “downstreamness” depends crucially on the elasticity of demand faced by the final-good …

An Economic Analysis Of Optimum Population Size Achieved Through Boosting Total Fertility And Net Immigration, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

Without net immigration, the population size is projected to decline from 2025 onward. Does it matter? To answer this question, the paper proceeds in two main parts. In the first part, taking a citizen's utility as a measure of welfare, we identify the channels through which a larger population size reduces welfare, on the one hand, and increases welfare on the other hand. The optimum population size is achieved when the net resultant effect of all these channels leaves citizens' welfare at the maximum. When current and projected total fertility rates without net immigration lead to a projected path of …

Isolated Capital Cities, Accountability And Corruption: Evidence From Us States, Filipe R. Campante, Quoc-Anh Do

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show that isolated capital cities are robustly associated with greater levels of corruption across US states. In particular, this is the case when we use the variation induced by the exogenous location of a state’s centroid to instrument for the concentration of population around the capital city. We then show that different mechanisms for holding state politicians accountable are also affected by the spatial distribution of population: newspapers provide greater coverage of state politics when their audiences are more concentrated around the capital, and voter turnout in state elections is greater in places that are closer to the capital. …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: The Value Of Political Connections In Social Networks, Quoc-Anh Do, Yen Teik Lee, Bang Dang Nguyen, Kieu-Trang Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the impact of social-network based political connections on firm value. We focus on the networks of university classmates and alumni among directors of U.S. public firms and congressmen. Comparing firms connected to elected versus defeated politicians in the Regression Discontinuity Design of close elections from 2000 to 2008, we provide evidence that political connections enhance firm value. However, the value of political connections varies in a more complex way than expected. While connections to powerful members of the Senate generate strong positive impact on firm value, connections to newly elected congressmen are less valuable to firms than …

Measuring The Upstreamness Of Production And Trade Flows, Pol Antras, Davin Chor, Thibault Fally, Russell Hillbery

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose two distinct approaches to the measurement of industry upstreamness (or average distance from final use) and show that they yield an equivalent measure. Furthermore, we provide two additional interpretations of this measure, one of them related to the concept of forward linkages. We construct this measure for 426 industries using the 2002 US input-output Tables. We also construct our measure using data from selected countries in the OECD STAN database. Finally, we present an application of our measure that explores the determinants of the average upstreamness of exports at the country level using trade flows for 2002.

Evidence Of The Shaming Effect: A Look At Ncaa Football, Holmes Hill

All Theses

This paper addresses the general theory of shaming and the effects it has on criminal behavior. There has been much debate of the use of shaming in the criminal justice system and the effects it has on criminal behavior. The lack of quantitative data has limited such debates to theory without evidence. This paper applies the theory to NCAA football statistics to study the behavior of football players on the field, to explain the way people and how people respond to shaming. The analysis is based on seasonal team statistics of all division I football teams in correlation with a …

Players' Performance Index For Major League Soccer, Joel Correll

All Theses

This paper analyzes player compensation and team finances within Major League Soccer's 2007 season by calculating salaries with respect to the player's marginal revenue product and performance parameters. The player's performance index is a calculated overall value which takes into account variations of weighted in-game actions. This performance index is tied together with a player's marginal revenue product to determine their actual economic value with respect to their 2007 rating. The paper concludes that on average, Major League Soccer as a whole compensates players based on the team's marginal revenue product, and not the individuals. The study also finds clear …

Understanding Urban Sustainability And Quality Of Life: A System Dynamics Approach, Abby Elizabeth Beck

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

For an urban area to be sustainable, its resources cannot be depleted faster than they can replenish. If an urban area is to provide a high quality of life (QOL), it must offer and maintain an amenity package that satisfies its resident's preferences. Past studies on these topics all have a common thread: sustainability and QOL both pertain to people's relationship to capital. Capital is something that can accumulate and add value to a person or society. If sustainability and QOL are a function of people's relationship with capital, how they use it, deplete it, replenish it and transform it …