Economics Commons^™

The Labor Market, Political Capital, And Ownership Sector In Urban China, Xi Pan

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past three decades, economic reforms have brought about dramatic changes in China. The wave of structural and economic reforms regarding the State-owned Sector (SOS), and the surge of the Non-State-owned Sector (NSOS), have influenced returns in the labor market, such as the returns concerning human capital and political capital in urban China. Presumably, the NSOS would be more marketed-oriented compared to the SOS, and it would have different returns concerning political capital, as represented by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) membership. This is likely because the NSOS would not value Party membership as much as the SOS does. The …

Career Interruptions: Wage And Gender Effects, Jill Kearns

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effects of career interruptions on workers’ wages. In chapter four I examine whether controlling for the type of interruption differently affects men’s and women’s wages and therefore can be used to explain the remaining gender wage differences. The increased participation of married women in the labor force has increased their wages from just 30% of men’s wages in 1890 to nearly 80% as of 2001. Thus, although the gender wage gap has narrowed over time, it has yet to be eliminated. One argument for the persistence of the gender wage gap is that previously researchers have …

Three Essays On The Determinants Of Foreign Direct Investment (Fdi), Haitao Liang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At first, a literature review of over 150 articles on the determination of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) proposes the main determinants of FDI. A meta-analysis tests the reliability of the previous studies on FDI.

Then, a cluster analysis on FDI data reveals the necessary to segment economies, especially by income level, in FDI analysis.

A large number of studies emphasize FDI determinants but ignore the income distribution on the results, which biases the estimates. In Chapter 3, I correct for heterogeneity due to income distribution by using the Blundell-Bond System GMM (Generalized Method of Moments), which controls for endogeneity problem …

The Relationship Between Information Technology And Construction Productivity, Dong Zhai

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past decades, information technology has been impacting industries, economics, the way of life and even the culture throughout the world. Productivity has been attracting much attention as an important indicator of economics, and numerous researchers have investigated the relationship between information technology and productivity. Construction is one of the largest industries in the United States, but little research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between information technology and construction productivity.

The major objective of this dissertation is to determine the degree (if any) to which information technology usage, specifically the use of information technology to automate and …

Public School Choice And The Public-Private School Decision, Kylie Goggins

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a compilation of three studies related to public school choice issues. Chapter 2 examines whether access to public schools of choice influences a household’s decision to choose private school for their child. I employ a multistate, individual-level data-set on students and their families — for which I have been granted access to restricted geo-code information. I supplement these data by matching students with their respective school districts using geographic information systems (GIS); I then examine whether relative measures of public school choice (PSC) in a school district influence the household’s public-private school decision. I find slight evidence …

Default Risk, Zeynep Topaloglu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The hazard rate models used in recent bankruptcy literature assume censoring and default are two independent events, which means the censored company will eventually default. However we believe there will be a portion in the censored group that will be long-term survivors and we propose a mixture model of survivors and risky companies. Moreover this dissertation models the event and the timing of default incident at the same time. For the event of default and the timing of default we utilize a logistic regression. The results have justified the advantage of our model over the standard hazard rate models and …

A Winning Proposition: The Economic Impact Of Successful National Football League Franchises, Michael C. Davis, Christian M. End

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Research has demonstrated that a Super Bowl victory increases the personal income of the individuals in the metropolitan area from which the winning teams come. We argue that the economic benefits should extend beyond just the championship team's city to the cities of teams that experience seasonal success, and thus, the winning percentages of National Football League teams were included in our model. When controlling for sources of bias, winning percentage of the local professional football team had a significant positive effect on real per capita personal income. Explanations for these conclusions are offered from a psychological perspective. © 2008 …

Site Value Tax, Tom Dunne

Articles

Tom Dunne discusses some of the issues surrounding property taxation in Ireland

Part 8: Partisan Politics In Hampton Roads: Color Us Purple, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Once dominated by Democrats and more recently by Republicans, Hampton Roads has become a swing region politically. Currently, we are disadvantaged by an absence of legislator seniority in Richmond and Washington.

Productivity Growth Of Us States, Bibhudutta Panda

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation makes a contribution to regional studies by constructing Multi-Factor Productivity (MFP) growth measures at the state level for the US. The first essay of the dissertation exploits a dual growth accounting technique to calculate sector-specific MFP growth for all US states from 1980 onwards. In the process, the essay contributes by constructing a data set on the state level real user cost of capital paying particular attention to inter-state variations in the composition of output, relative prices of investment goods, effective corporate taxes, and inflation rates for the manufacturing and service sectors. Some of the key implications of …

Firm And Industry Characteristics Of Exchange Rate Exposure And Optimal Hedging Strategy: Evidence On China, Fen Yan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Understanding the effect of foreign exchange rate movements on the value of firm is a critical element for the purpose of risk management. In this thesis, firm and industry specific exposures to exchange rate movements in the Chinese market before and after the exchange rate regime reform in 2005 are examined. We observe that at the one-week return horizon, among all the firms listed in the China Exchange Market before the year 2001, less than 10% of the firms exhibit significant "residual exposure" to bilateral exchange rate movements against China’s major trading partners before the reform. In contrast, the proportion …

The National Innovation System Of Singapore, Winston T. H. Koh, Phillip Phan

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

Obedience, Schooling, And Political Participation, Davin Chor, Filipe R. Campante

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the joint evolution of cultural norms and human capital investment, and how these affect patterns of political participation. We first present some empirical evidence that cultural attitudes towards obedience systematically influence an individual's propensity to engage in different political activities: obedience discourages more confrontational modes of political activity (such as public demonstrations), while raising participation in non-confrontational civic acts (such as voting). These cultural attitudes further appear to be determined in part by cultural transmission across generations. Motivated by this evidence, we develop a dynamic model in which human capital and obedience are …

Nonparametric Tests For Poolability In Panel Data Models With Cross Section Dependence, Sainan Jin, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we propose a nonparametric test for poolability in large dimensional semiparametric panel data models with cross-section dependence based on the sieve estimation technique. To construct the test statistic, we only need to estimate the model under the alternative. We establish the asymptotic normal distributions of our test statistic under the null hypothesis of poolability and a sequence of local alternatives, and prove the consistency of our test. We also suggest a bootstrap method as an alternative way to obtain the critical values and justify its validity. A small set of Monte Carlo simulations indicate the test performs …

Estimation Of High-Frequency Volatility: An Autoregressive Conditional Duration Models Approach, Yiu Kuen Tse, Tao Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a method to estimate the intraday volatility of a stock by integrating the instantaneous conditional return variance per unit time obtained from the autoregressive conditional duration (ACD) models. We compare the daily volatilities estimated using the ACD models against several versions of the realized volatility (RV) method, including the bipower variation realized volatility with subsampling, the realized kernel estimate and the duration-based realized volatility. The ACD volatility estimates correlate highly with and perform very well against the RV estimates. Our Monte Carlo results show that our method has lower root mean-squared error than the RV methods in most …

Numerical Analysis Of Non-Constant Pure Rate Of Time Preference: A Model Of Climate Policy, Tomoki Fujii, Larry Karp

Research Collection School Of Economics

When current decisions affect welfare in the far-distant future, as with climate change, the use of a declining pure rate of time preference (PRTP) provides potentially important modeling flexibility. The difficulty of analyzing models with non-constant PRTP limits their application. We describe and provide software (available online) to implement an algorithm to numerically obtain a Markov perfect equilibrium for an optimal control problem with non-constant PRTP. We apply this software to a simplified version of the numerical climate change model used in the Stern Review. For our calibration, the policy recommendations are less sensitive to the PRTP than widely believed.

Managing Capital Flows: The Case Of Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

The resurgence of private capital inflows into Asia in recent years has raised the question of whether the region is susceptible to yet another financial crisis. While a sudden large-scale reversal of capital flows is not likely to result in a liquidity crunch or balance of payments crisis, the attendant sharp corrections in asset prices will have an adverse impact on the economy particularly through indirect channels. We present, in this study, Singapore’s experience in managing the risks posed by capital flows as well as the retention of control over exchange rates and monetary conditions. It is the overall package …

Enhancing Income Opportunities, Rashiel Verlarde, Tomoki Fujii, Ulrich Lächler

Research Collection School Of Economics

Accelerating growth is essential for poverty reduction. As argued earlier, poverty has failed to decline significantly since the East Asian Crisis due to insufficiently dynamic growth, a high degree of income inequality that reduces the income elasticity of poverty reduction, and an apparent worsening of the income distribution. The first step toward addressing this failure is to accelerate growth, which will not be easy in the short run while the global slowdown continues to run its course. Moreover, even though the global crisis is gradually bottoming out, the post-crisis external environment is likely to be much less favorable than before, …

Functional Coefficient Estimation With Both Categorical And Continuous Data, Liangjun Su, Ye Chen, Aman Ullah

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a local linear functional coefficient estimator that admits a mix of discrete and continuous data for stationary time series. Under weak conditions our estimator is asymptotically normally distributed. A small set of simulation studies is carried out to illustrate the finite sample performance of our estimator. As an application, we estimate a wage determination function that explicitly allows the return to education to depend on other variables. We find evidence of the complex interacting patterns among the regressors in the wage equation, such as increasing returns to education when experience is very low, high return to education for …

Testing Linearity In Cointegrating Relations With An Application To Purchasing Power Parity, Seong Hyun Hong, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article shows that when applied to nonstationary time series, the conventional Regression Error Specification Test (RESET) leads to severe size distortion and its asymptotic distribution involves a mixture of noncentral chi(2) distributions. Nonstationarity introduces bias terms in the limit distribution, and appropriate corrections for the bias are presented leading to a modified RESET test that has a central chi(2) limit distribution. In simulations, this modified test is shown to have power not only against nonlinear cointegration but also against the absence of cointegration. In an empirical illustration, the linear purchasing power parity (PPP) specification is tested using five Organization …