Political Economy Commons^™

Adam Smith And The Creative Role Of Imagination, Keith Hankins, Brennan Mcdavid

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

That imagination plays a fundamental role in Smith’s accounts of both sympathy and scientific inquiry is well documented. Smith scholars have also long recognized that the accounts of these roles presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the History of Astronomy are broadly Humean. In particular, the exercise of imagination in both the social and scientific domains is limited by the extent of our experience. Whether we are “changing places in fancy” with our fellows, thereby giving rise to that all-important sentiment of sympathy, or conjecturing relations between observed phenomena in an effort to quell the sentiments of wonder …

Navigators As A Means Of Overcoming Administrative Burdens: A Quantitative Study Of State-Administered Federal Assistance Programs, Jonathan Sternesky

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

Administrative burdens are the psychological, compliance, and learning costs experienced by individuals interacting with public entities that may shape and reshape their relationship to citizenship and/or access to benefits and rights. It has long been hypothesized that third-party entities, designated as navigators, could be leveraged to mitigate the impact of administrative burden costs on citizens. For effective delivery of service, easing administrative burden costs in application processes may increase applicant likelihood of successfully navigating the bureaucratic process towards a desired end.

This research used data from recently implemented assistance programs in two separate state-level jurisdictions to conduct logistical regression analyses …

Complexities Of Community Consultation In Chile's Lithium Industry, Isabella R. Whelan

Honors Theses

Echoed by November’s COP27 in Egypt, the climate crisis has become an increasingly pressing and global issue, with the need to move away from fossil fuels more urgent than ever. In attempts to decarbonize the global economy, many countries and companies have turned to electrification –particularly within the transportation sector, one of today’s largest contributors of greenhouse gasses. A crucial component of energy storage and batteries is lithium, now considered a “critical mineral.” Demand for lithium has skyrocketed in recent years and is only expected to continue growing. More than fifty percent of the world’s lithium supply is found within …

Local Or Import? A Compositional Analysis Of Aztec Ritual Ceramics In The Tuxtlas Frontier, Veracruz, Mexico, Matthew T. Meyer

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

At the time of Spanish Contact in the early 16th Century the western Tuxtlas region formed part of the Aztec imperial frontier in the southern Gulf lowlands. The most apparent material manifestation of this imperial connection was Aztec-style Texcoco-Molded Censers, recovered primarily from sites that served local centralizing functions. While rare, these symbols may provide valuable information on the dynamics of frontier politics and the relations between this region and the distant core to which they were sending tax payments. Initial consideration of this adopted imperial style implies political linkages, but the mechanisms of introduction, knowledge transmission, imperial versus local …

Leadership And Performance In Informal Institutions: The Internal Dynamics Of Brics, Zhen 'Arc' Han, Mihaela Papa

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

How does leadership affect the performance of informal institutions? Leadership in BRICS is particularly puzzling: this informal institution rapidly grows despite the disparate interests of its members, some of which are in longstanding conflict. This article examines how three forms of leadership – intellectual, entrepreneurial, and structural – affect institutional performance using BRICS cooperation data. It demonstrates the importance of intellectual leadership, particularly in strategically framing the cooperation problem in a way that creates mutual gains, as essential for realising collective outcomes in informal institutions. Collective action is catalyzed through the interplay of the three leadership forms. However, the activating …

Hoarding Lifesaving Knowledge While Millions Die: The Political Economy Of Global Covid-19 Vaccine Apartheid, Kenneth Stancil

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Coronavirus vaccines saved millions of lives, but experts estimate that the suboptimal production and inequitable distribution of shots resulted in nearly 3 million preventable Covid-19 deaths in 2021 and 2022 as well as millions of indirect deaths during the pandemic. These avoidable fatalities are inseparable from the grotesquely unequal vaccination rates between rich and poor nations. Dose hoarding by high-income countries contributed to vaccine inequality, but the “vaccine apartheid” inflicted on low-income countries reflects an even more fundamental injustice: knowledge hoarding by profit-maximizing pharmaceutical corporations—aided and abetted by wealthy governments—which deprived generic manufacturers of the right to produce additional lifesaving …

An Analysis Of Demand-Pull Inflation In The United States Post-Pandemic, Isabella A. Moynihan

Honors Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a global shutdown of the economy resulting from both demand and supply shocks. Also, the significant decline in output and employment in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic led to a fast reaction from the government in the form of large fiscal rescue packages. At the end of 2021, the acceleration of inflation, which had been dormant for more than four decades, became the main topic of macroeconomic debates. The debate has revolved around the influence of cost-push versus demand-pull causes of inflation. The dominant view in the United States has been that inflation resulted …

The Labor Share In The Post-1980 Economy: An Analysis Of The Contributing Factors, Mia Bellucci

Honors Theses

During the Neoliberal period, which roughly began in the early 1980s in the U.S., there was a substantial slowdown in the growth rate of real hourly compensation, while productivity had continued to grow. The last two decades of the Neoliberal period (2000 – 2020) also experienced somewhat of a substantial decline in the labor share. In recent decades, there has been a growing amount of literature attempting to explain the major factors that have contributed to these recent labor market developments. This study provides a means of investigating the changes in the labor share and its components (i.e., real hourly …

A Qualitative Study On The Financial Education Of Young Black Men, Sue M. May

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Financial literacy awareness is low among young adults, and financial literacy among Black college students is significantly lower than in other groups (Singh, 2018). However, there is little to no research on why financial literacy is so low among young Black men between 18 and 25. Few studies specifically show how financial literacy and decision-making may be related to their family economics and socialization for young Black men. Using Critical Race Theory and Family Financial Socialization theoretical frameworks, this dissertation project examined a sample of seven young self-identified Black men ages 24 to 25 years old in Northern California Bay …

Association For The Promotion Of Political Economy And The Law (Appeal): Transforming Law And Economic Power, Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

This article reflects on the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and Law (APPEAL), formed in 2012 as the first contemporary scholarly group named for the emerging field of Law and Political Economy (LPE). APPEAL organizes academics and allies to address urgent social problems by exploring possibilities for reorienting the economy toward justice, equality, and democracy. To mobilize ideas for change, APPEAL emphasizes collaborative intellectual communities. I situate APPEAL in the context of a neoliberal political movement to capture law’s power by investing in the Law and Economics message that economic power inevitably limits democracy and social justice. Though …

Is Democracy Good For Growth? Development At Political Transition Time Matters, Di Sima, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Is democracy a better political regime for economic prosperity than autocracy? This paper shows that the answer depends on the initial economic development level during the democratic transition when the foundation of institutions was laid. Democracy facilitates growth only in countries that already have adequate development at transition time. These countries are more likely to create and sustain growth-enhancing institutions than others. Without appropriate development, democracy does not improve growth; this applies to about 40% of the third-wave democratized countries. These results are based on a sample of 153 countries in 1960–2010 and robust to various specifications and endogeneity issues.

New School Economic Journal Roundtable, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• New School Economic Review Editorial Board. 2023, December 1. Roundtable discussion questions for Duncan Foley, Anwar Shaikh, Isabella Weber, and Jonathan Cogliano, with handwritten annotations by Anwar Shaikh, PhD. Unpublished correspondence. New York.
• The Editorial Board. 2023. Introduction to the special issue honoring Duncan Foley, Anwar Shaikh, and the New School political economy tradition. New School Economic Review, volume 12. New York: New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
• Ramachandran, Madhav Tipu. 2023. An interview with Sanjay Reddy. New School Economic Review, volume 12. New York: New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
• Blanc, …

A Philosophical And Empirical Investigation Into Buddhist Economics, Hannah Doyle

CMC Senior Theses

There is a growing body of literature on Buddhist economics from a philosophical perspective; however, no work to date has sought to empirically validate it as an effective economic theory at a global scale. In my paper, I draw on the long history of Buddhist metaphysics to construct an account of Buddhist ethics and then proceed to derive a set of Buddhist economic principles. I draw on the World Happiness Report’s methodology to quantitatively demonstrate the relationship between Buddhist economic principles and the psychological wellbeing of a country’s citizens, as measured through their own evaluation of their quality of life …

Raising The Bar: The Impact Of Gender Quotas On Legislator Quality, Viola Hernandez-Derbez

CMC Senior Theses

We analyze the effect of a legislative candidate quota on the quality of congresspeople elected. We study a landmark legislation passed in 2014 in Mexico that required all parties to have an equal number of male and female congressional candidates. We observe a 31% increase in number of bills proposed in legislative sessions after the quota and a significantly higher likelihood for greater educational attainment among male and female deputies alike, controlling for an array of factors that could influence our quality measures. Since not all states had the same level of female representation when the quota was introduced, we …

Global Trade Implications Of A Russia And Ukraine-Like Conflict Between China And Taiwan, Jay Morris

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the effects of global trade in general from a Russia-Ukraine-like conflict between China and Taiwan as well as the consequences to the worldwide semiconductor industry. A main component of these effects comes from two assumptions: trade between Taiwan and the rest of the world will cease when the conflict occurs and a group of geopolitically aligned and developed countries called the “Allies” will sanction China across a range of product categories. The main effect of the sanctions is the reduction in imports to China in key strategic goods that help in winning military battles and or promote …

Presidential Economic Approval Rating And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Zilin Chen, Zhi Da, Dashan Huang, Liyao Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We construct a monthly presidential economic approval rating (PEAR) index from 1981 to 2019, by averaging ratings on the president’s handling of the economy across various national polls. In the cross-section, stocks with high betas to changes in the PEAR index significantly under-perform those with low betas by 1.00% per month in the future, on a risk-adjusted basis. The low PEAR beta premium persists up to one year, and is present in various sub-samples and even in other G7 countries. PEAR beta dynamically reveals a firm’s perceived alignment to the incumbent president’s economic policies and investors seem to misprice such …

An Examination Of Transitioning Meso-Institutions And Markets In The Landscape Of American Politics, Devin Thomas Marconi

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper bridges the gap in the literature between sociological accounts of market actors provided by Mark Granovetter and Douglas North, meso-institutional examinations of polarization provided by Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler, and the psychological exploration into cross-cutting identities provided by Liliana Mason. I argue that the nationalization and concentration of markets, identities, and politics have led to a transition within the meso-institution of the market from maintaining self-regulating punishment mechanisms to replacing them with self-reinforcing mechanisms, exacerbating affective polarization. Previous works explore the transition within the meso-institutions of the media, interest groups, and political parties. I include the market …

Three Essays On Political Economy, Colin Michael Steitz

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first chapter studies the impact of conventions and multi-day events on
hotel demand in the Indianapolis metro area. Using hand-collected data on
sporting events and conventions, we study the impact on hotel metrics: ADR,
Occupancy, Daily Rate, and Revenue. We show that traditional sporting
events generate little impact when compared to multi-day conventions. We
show that mega-events such as major championship games generate significant
increases in hotel demand. We find large and statistically significant effects for
multi-day conventions on hotel demand with very little evidence of crowding
out. A single day of a multi-day convention brings in approximately $928,000 …

Unwilling Gamblers And Loaded Dice: Considering Recession And Crisis As A Natural Effect Of Financial Capitalism, Darlene N. Moorman

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

Under financial capitalism, ordinary people are increasingly becoming 'unwilling gamblers' of a risky and unstable system. This paper explores the social and institutional change behind the neoliberal movement and considers how the politics and policies of neoliberalism have contributed to a certain environment of financial instability. Looking at the changing nature of the economy, the rapid expansion of the financial sector, and the persisting issue of moral hazard underlying risky and speculative behaviors among other items, reveals a financial system in which recessions and crises can be considered a natural, although not inevitable, effect.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go: The Impact Of Crossing Migrants In Local Communities In Mexico, Norma M. De La Rosa-Bustamante

Whittier Scholars Program

The interactions between migrants and Mexican local communities have positive and negative outcomes. A report by Human Rights First found that more than 630 violent crimes against asylum seekers were reported in the first few months of the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Still, some migrants have been able to assimilate and stay in Mexico, particularly in large cities such as Tijuana, Baja California and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. This research project combines qualitative data collected through interviews with local NGOs between September 2020 to February 2021 and secondary research data. It focuses on the living conditions of migrants who have stayed …