Public Economics Commons^™

Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper explores two political factors for their potential effects on urban land supply in China: corruption, and competition for promotion. We find that standard urban economic predictions hold in the sense that both population and income increases are strongly significant determinants for the increase in urban land supply. Conditional on these demand-side factors, we find that the usage of two-stage auctions (as a proxy for corruption) is highly correlated with the increase in land supply. The corruption effects are strongest for commercial land, followed by residential land and then industrial land. To shed light on the competition motives among …

Determinants Of Urban Land Supply In People's Republic Of China: How Do Political Factors Matter?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xiaolu Li, Yang Tang, Jing Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper explores whether and how corruption and competition-for-promotion motives affect urban land supply in the People's Republic of China. Conditional on demand-side factors, we find that corruption is highly correlated with an increase in land supply. The corruption effects are strongest for commercial land, followed by residential land, and then industrial land. To shed light on the competition motives among prefectural leaders, we examine how the number of years in office affects land supply and distinguish among different hypotheses. Our empirical results show robust rising trends in land sales. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that among prefectural …

State Of The Northwest Arkansas Region 2017 Report, Mervin Jebaraj

State of the Northwest Arkansas Region Report

The State of the Northwest Arkansas Region Report is an annual publication, commissioned by the Northwest Arkansas Council, that serves as a tool for evaluating the economic performance of the region. In January 2015, the Northwest Arkansas Council created a new blueprint for development that outlines the peer regions and a strategic action agenda for 2015-2017. In the three-year plan, the performance of Northwest Arkansas is benchmarked with other contemporary, high-performing regions, namely Austin, Des Moines, Madison, Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh. The 2017 State of the Region Report compares Northwest Arkansas with these geographies in the areas of gross domestic …

Growing Portland: Not Whether, But How, Richard Barringer Phd, Joseph Mcdonnell Phd

Faculty Publications

In the 400 years since European settlement, Portland has survived the ravages of war, invasion, pestilence, conflagration, and economic depression and recession. Once a renowned manufacturing, trade, and shipping center, it now enjoys what might be called a post-industrial renaissance as a vibrant center for the arts, education, entertainment, and banking, legal, and medical services; and is frequently cited as one of America’s best small cities. As a result, Portland is growing today and is positioned for more growth.

The question, then, is not whether Portland will grow, but how well it will grow; or, how best to manage the …

The Role Of Snap And Habit Formation On Household Consumption Behavior, Shaheer Burney

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This collection of essays examines the impact of two antecedents of household food consumption: SNAP and habit formation to nutrients. Household food choice invariably plays a substantial role in health outcomes such as obesity. Low-income households may be especially vulnerable to obesity as they face a more restricted set of food choices due to income constraints and may have less information on healthy eating relative to high-income households. This dissertation unravels this dynamic by providing causal estimates of the effect of two major determinants of food choice.

Chapter 2 and chapter 3 test the impact of SNAP participation on consumption …

Evaluation Of Monetary, Fiscal And External Inflationary Sources In Nigeria, Samson A. Aladejare

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

This study focuses on evaluating the monetary, fiscal and external inflationary sources in Nigeria. The Auto-Regressive Distributive Lag estimation technique was adapted to capture these effects. Empirical findings of the study showed that overall, the main determining cause of inflation in both short run and long run periods in Nigeria, are more of monetary and external factors and less of fiscal sources. Specifically, the problem of inflation in Nigeria appears to be more of structural phenomenon than monetary in the short run. However, in the long run, combinations of monetary and external factors tend to be the major cause of …

Land Tenure, Governance And Accountability In Nigeria: The Implications On Food Production To Feed The Present And The Future, Abiodun E. Obayelu, Aisha O. Arowolo, Olatokunbo H. Osinowo

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

Land is very vital for agricultural production, and for any nation that wants to be self-food sufficient. Different land reforms have taken place in Nigeria since 1960 with the aim of facilitating access to agricultural land, and make the nation self-sufficient in food production, but little changes have only been recorded. Bureaucracy by approving authorities in practice in communities where land is situated still hinders land acquisition for agricultural investment. This study therefore analyzes land policy, governance and accountability and draw out some implications on food production in Nigeria. The percentage of arable land to the total land area was …

Internal Control Activities As A Tool For Financial Management In The Public Sector: A Case Study Of Ghana Post Company Limited, Kwakye E. Agyapong

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

The case, Ghana Post Company Limited, allows for the observation of internal control activities as a tool for financial management in the public sector. The objective of the research is to examine the control environment of the Ghana Post Company to ensure there is segregation of duties, proper information and communication between employees and management; and monitoring of the policies implemented by management. The sample size of 36 included individuals from all of the departments within the company. The departments are Auditing and Finance, Human Resource, Mail and Parcels, and Financial Services. The work established had continued lapses in the …

Life Insurance: Nudges And Adverse Selection, Timothy F. Harris

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Death of a breadwinner can have devastating financial consequences on surviving dependents through lost earnings and medical expenses. Life insurance is designed to help mitigate these financial burdens. Nonetheless, there are documented shortages in life insurance coverage. Adverse selection---where higher risk individuals are more likely to purchase coverage leading to market failure---could be one of the causes of uninsured vulnerabilities. I analyze both the existence of and welfare costs from adverse selection in individual term life insurance and employer-sponsored life insurance (ESLI) at a large public university. In the individual term market, using a representative sample of purchasers, I do …

Essays On Intergenerational Dependency And Welfare Reform, Robert Paul Hartley

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays related to the effects of welfare reform on the intergenerational transmission of welfare participation as well as effects on labor supply and childcare arrangements. States implemented welfare reform at different times from 1992 to 1996, and these policies notably introduced work requirements and other restrictions intended to limit dependency of needy families. One mechanism reforms were intended to address was childhood exposure to a "culture" of ongoing welfare receipt. In Essay 1, I estimate the effect of reform on the transmission of welfare participation for 2961 mother-daughter pairs in the Panel Study of Income …

The Impact Of Public Educational Investments And Education Spillovers On The Economic Growth Of States: Are State Educational Investments Affecting Earnings And Employment?, Carla J. Nietfeld

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

The first chapter provides an introduction to my investigation of the impact of state-level educational investments in public K-12 education on future labor markets, specifically earnings and employment. In Chapter 2, the current literature supporting this investigation is examined while I offer a hole in the literature that I intend to fill. Then, in Chapter 3 I present a two-period, balanced-budget theoretical model in which I relate educational investments, mobility, and future earnings. This theoretical model is then implemented in Chapter 4 using state-level data and again in Chapter 5 using individual-level data.

Chapter 4 examines the impact of state-level …

Tuition Increases Geaux Away? Evidence From Voting On Louisiana's Amendment 2, Joshua C. Hall, Serkan Karadas

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

In many states, public institutions of higher education have the autonomy to raise tuition. This has not been the case in Louisiana since a 1995 constitutional amend-ment required a two-thirds majority of the state legislature for any tuition increase. In November of 2016, voters in Louisiana rejected Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment that would have given state institutions of higher education autonomy in setting tuition. We examine parish-level voting on Amendment 2 using an empirical political economy model and find that parishes with a greater percentage of African-Americans and university employees were more likely to vote yes. Student enrollment at …

In Classical And Keynesian Times: The Twentieth Century Economy Revisited, Lewis Karstensson

Molasky Family Department of Economics and Real Estate Faculty Research

A descriptive analysis of the performance of the United States economy with respect to production, employment, and average price level over the twentieth century by presidential administration.

Efficiency, But At What Cost? Evidence From A Dea Analysis Of Wv School Districts, Eduardo Minuci, Amir B. Neto, Joshua C. Hall

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

West Virginia schools are consistently below the national average on the NAEP. Using Data Envelopment Analysis, we estimate the technical efficiency of West Virginia school districts. We find less variation in technical efficiency in West Virginia than in similar studies conducted in other states. This appears to be because of state policy imposing homogeneity of input usage. Due to the limited variation in technical efficiency across districts, we cannot analyze how non-school inputs such as socioeconomic factors affect technical efficiency across districts. Summary statistics organized by county economic status, however, suggest that socioeconomic status plays a role. Our results highlight …

Modelling The Economic Impact Of The Tripartite Free Trade Area: Its Implications For The Economic Geography Of Southern, Eastern And Northern Africa☆, Andrew Mold, Rodgers Mukwaya

Journal of African Trade

This study evaluates the economic impact of the proposed COMESA-SADC-EAC Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) on 26 African countries. It uses the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and database to measure the static effects of the establishment of the TFTA on industrial production, trade flows and consumption in the TFTA. The results indicate a significant increase in intra-regional exports as a result of tariff elimination, boosting intra-regional trade by 29%. Particularly encouraging is the fact that the sectors benefiting most are manufacturing ones, such as light and heavy manufacturing, and processed food. Concerns have been …

Party Polarization, Political Alignment, And Federal Grant Spending At The State Level, William B. Hankins, Gary Hoover, Paul Pecorino

Research, Publications & Creative Work

Research on the distribution of federal expenditures has provided mixed evidence showing that states with more legislators who belong to the president’s party and states with more legislators in the chamber majority tend to receive a larger allocation of federal funds. We add to this research by considering how political polarization and political alignment impact these presidential and congressional determinants of how the domestic US budget is distributed to the states. Our results show that states with a larger percentage of senators in the majority can secure a larger share of federal grant expenditures per capita when political polarization is …

A Deep Dive Into Technological Unemployment: A State-Level Analysis On The Employment Effect Of Technological Innovations, Yuqing "Jenny" Cang

CMC Senior Theses

Ever since the first Industrial Revolution, during which many textile artisans lost their jobs to weaving machines, the relationship between technological progress and unemployment has been explored and examined by researchers and policy makers. Existing empirical research, mostly at the microeconomic level, has presented ambiguous results. Procuring data on 51 U.S. states for a period of 19 years and a large number of controls, this paper studies the employment effect of technological innovations with a novel state-level macroeconomic analysis. Using commercially-supplied Research and Development expenditure as a proxy, this paper finds that although technological innovations have a non-significant effect on …

A Better Calculus For Regulators: From Cost-Benefit Analysis To The Social Welfare Function, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

The “social welfare function” (SWF) is a powerful tool that originates in theoretical welfare economics and has wide application in economic scholarship, for example in optimal tax theory and environmental economics. This Article provides a comprehensive introduction to the SWF framework. It then shows how the SWF framework can be used as the basis for regulatory policy analysis, and why it improves upon cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

Two types of SWFs are especially plausible: the utilitarian SWF, which sums individual well-being numbers, and the prioritarian SWF, which gives extra weight to the well-being of the worse off. Either one of these …

Four Essays On A Student's Expectation That They Will Complete College, Martin Gray Hunter

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

It has been common practice in the economics literature to utilize data on observed outcomes and negate what individuals believe or expect will happen in the future. Using responses to a unique set of questions in the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) I show that the literature could benefit in several ways by incorporating such data. The leading essay documents a positive association between a student's subjective probabilistic belief that they will complete a four-year college degree and whether or not they attend and complete college. The results indicate the following. First, although overconfident, individuals as young as …

Essays On The Political Economy Of Intergovernmental Grants, Steven A. Gordon

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation focuses on how distributive politics influences the geographic allocation of federal grants to state and local governments. A secondary focus is the role of social trust in the growth of government. In the first essay, I test the degree to which the earmark ban of 2011 prevented legislators from directing federal competitive grants to their home congressional districts and whether earmarking distorted equality in the distribution of federal grants across demographic groups. I find that earmarking skewed the distribution of federal grants toward wealthy congressional districts and away from poor congressional districts. This is a groundbreaking finding, considering …