Public Economics Commons^™

Happiness Index Methodology, Laura Musikanski, Scott Cloutier, Erica Bejarano, Davi Briggs, Julia Colbert, Gracie Strasser, Steven Russell

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

The Happiness Index is a comprehensive survey instrument that assesses happiness, well-being, and aspects of sustainability and resilience. The Happiness Alliance developed the Happiness Index to provide a survey instrument to community organizers, researchers, and others seeking to use a subjective well-being index and data. It is the only instrument of its kind freely available worldwide and translated into over ten languages. This instrument can be used to measure satisfaction with life and the conditions of life. It can also be used to define income inequality, trust in government, sense of community and other aspects of well-being within specific demographics …

Happiness In Communities: How Neighborhoods, Cities And States Use Subjective Well-Being Metrics, Laura Musikanski, Carl Polley, Scott Cloutier, Erica Berejnoi, Julia Colbert

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

This essay, the fourth and last of a series published by the Journal of Social Change, is intended as a tool for community organizers, local policy makers, researchers, students and others to incorporate subjective well-being indicators into their measurements and management of happiness and well-being in their communities, for policy purposes, for research and for other purposes. It provides case studies of community-based efforts in five different regions (São Paulo, Brazil; Bristol, United Kingdom; Melbourne, Australia; Creston, British Columbia, Canada; and Vermont, United States) that either developed their own subjective well-being index or used the Happiness Alliance’s survey instrument …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Designing Urban Policy For A Thriving New Jersey • New Jersey Urban Mayors Association Addresses Policy Priorities, Thomas Edison State University, Evan Weiss, New Jersey Urban Mayors Association

Urban Mayors Policy Center

Cities are the Solution, Not the Problem:

While decades of suburban development might suggest otherwise, New Jersey is at its core an urban state. It is dense, covered by one of the largest transit networks in the country and incredibly diverse. Every region of the state has great livable cities, with small, midsized and large cities all represented — most states are lucky to have just a handful. But, for decades, new jersey cities have too often been portrayed as problems that need to be fixed. As the economic and lifestyle preferences of future generations shift back toward cities and …

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 …

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.

An Overview Of Sports Betting Regulation In The United States, Brad Humphreys

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

The United States employs an ad hoc, unconventional method of regulating sports betting, banning it almost everywhere while granting a monopoly to firms in a single state, Nevada. This approach encourages illegal sports betting markets, ignores negative externalities, and generates welfare losses among the large population of responsible recreational gamblers. I review the current state of sports betting regulation in the U.S. and assess its economic viability in advance of the Supreme Court of the United States decision on the landmark Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association case.

Economic Freedom And Government Efficiency: Recent Evidence From China, Shaoment Jia, Yang Zhou

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

We investigate the effects of economic freedom (marketization) on governance efficiency defined with the newest provincial level economic indicator data (NBSC, 2017) and economic freedom data (Fan et al., 2017) from 2008 to 2014 in China. With two different measures, the results suggest that economic freedom is positively correlated with governance efficiency. Moreover, the liberalization and marketization progress in the “factors market” is the single most significant area for both governance efficiency measures, while other areas like “market intermediary & legal system” have no significant effects.

The Economic Impact Of City-County Consolidations: A Synthetic Control Approach, Joshua Hall, Josh Matti, Yang Zhou

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Although more rapid development is a primary motivation behind city-county consolidations, few empirical studies explore the impact of consolidation on economic development. No studies look at government consolidation in the United States using modern causal inference methods. We use the synthetic control method (SCM) to examine the long-term impact of city-county consolidations on per capita income, population, and employment. The results from the three cases explored indicate that consolidation does not guarantee development and actually can have negative effects. Additionally, consolidation can deepen the urban-rural divide by accelerating the decline of rural populations relative to those of urban areas. The …