Public Economics Commons^™

The Developmental Effect Of State Alcohol Prohibitions At The Turn Of The 20th Century, Mary F. Evans, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick, Ashwin Patel

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

We examine the quasi-randomization of alcohol consumption created by state-level alcohol prohibition laws passed in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. Using a large dataset of World War II enlistees, we exploit the differential timing of these laws to examine their effects on adult educational attainment, obesity, and height. We find statistically significant effects for education and obesity that do not appear to be the result of pre-existing trends. Our findings add to the growing body of economic studies that examine the long-run impacts of in utero and childhood environmental conditions.

Impact Of A Higher Minimum Wage On Enrollment Of Snap, Victoria Perez-Zetune

Gettysburg Economic Review

This paper investigates the effect that minimum wage policy has on enrollment in public assistance programs, specifically the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, SNAP. If raising the minimum wage decreases enrollment in SNAP, this could uncover a method to reduce spending without eliminating programs. Using a time-demeaned model to account for fixed effects, I take advantage of the variation in the minimum wage in the 50 states between 1998 and 2014. I estimated that on average an increase in minimum wage in a prior year results in a decrease in SNAP participation by 3.95%.

Effects Of Federal Grant Money On Economic Measures In The Community, Andrea L. Miller

Honors Undergraduate Theses

With the concentration of poverty increasing throughout the United States (Kneebone, 2014) there has been a recent emphasis on mixed-income housing as a means to alleviate this issue. By creating housing in one area with pricing for different income levels it is assumed that the burden imposed by concentrated poverty will be lowered. Many years and many dollars later however, the results of mixed-income housing projects on low-income residents seem to be mixed – while some projects have found success, others seem to suggest that it has little to no effect. The federal program HOPE VI is one example of …

Barriers To Prevention In Dengue Fever In Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Swat District, Abdul Zahir, Assad Ullah, Mussawar Shah, Arsalan Mussawar

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

The main aim of this study was to find out the barriers in dengue prevention in the Swat District of Khyber Pkhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. A sample size of 354 respondents were proportionally allocated to each Mahallah or street (Tahir Abad, Angaro Dheri, Usman Abad and Banr) and then randomly selected. The association of the independent variable (barriers to prevention) and dependent variables (practices for control) were tested by using a Chi Square test. The perception about barriers in dengue prevention shows that a highly significant association was found between practices for control and access to medical facilities (p=0.034), government agencies …

Exploring The Budget Deficit-Economic Growth Nexus: New Evidence From Ghana, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Emmanuel Orkoh, Augustine Mensah Owusu

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

In this paper, we combine Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach with trend analysis to assess the relationship between Ghana’s budget deficit and economic growth from 2000 to 2015 using quarterly data. The trend analysis reveals that since 2000, years of high budget deficit were usually followed by years of low economic growth and vice versa. This phenomenon was pronounced in 2009, when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate fell from 7.3 percent in 2008 to 4 percent in 2009, following an increase in the budget deficit from 8 percent in 2007 to 11.5 percent in 2008. The same phenomenon …

An Assessment Of Federal Outlay On Pivotal Growth Induced Sectors In Nigeria, Samson Adeniyi Aladejare, Eche Emmanuel, Charles Edobor Umonda

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

This study analyses government capital and recurrent spending outlays on sectors (education, health, defense agriculture and transport and communication) believed to be critical to the growth of the economy, for the period 1980 to 2014. The Error Correction Method was adopted to analyze the short-run impact of each spending division on the prosperity of the economy. The disaggregation into capital and recurrent expenditure was done to gauge the impact each has economic growth. Empirical findings of the study reveal that though capital outlays on the sectors concerned have been more significant than recurrent spending towards achieving the goal of economic …

Motivations For Luxury Consumption: Insights From Tunisia’S Emerging Market, Pranjal Gupta,, Mouna Zaghdoudi

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

Luxury consumption and the desire for luxury are well-accepted phenomena. Myriad studies have documented the pervasiveness of the luxury market in the West and the high growth and strong potential of Asian luxury markets. It is also evident that as resources have grown in a region, luxury consumption and the desire for luxury products have followed. Nevertheless, the need for more far-reaching studies that explore emerging markets are important to understand the differences in how luxury may penetrate these markets, given variations in resources and culture. This paper investigates a number of factors that may contribute to the emergence of …

Challenges Of Respecting Riparian Rights Around Hydroelectric Dams In Cameroon Since 1949, Séverin Nwaha

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

The impact of electric energy on socio-economic development has attracted the attention of all categories of people in society. This is because of the role power plays in the economic and industrial sectors of any country. Public authorities seem to be more concerned with protecting capitalist interests at the detriment of the riparian population. Despite regulations and legal provisions, authorities are still not able to implement a rigorous policy in this sector in Cameroon due to administrative bottle necks, among other factors. Furthermore, the existence of multiple regulatory and management bodies creates confusion. Legislation related to this issue is usually …

Mobile Facial Recognition System For Patient Identification In Medical Emergencies For Developing Economies, Kingsley C. Nwosu

Journal for the Advancement of Developing Economies

Medical emergencies are part of the common daily lives of people in developing and under-developed economies. Frequently, some of these medical emergencies end up tragically for many people in these countries due to many reasons, among which is the delivery of medical treatment when the patient is uncommunicative or unresponsive. The ability of the attending medical personnel to access a patient’s medical history is critical for the quality of the treatment rendered. Unfortunately, today many lives are lost in low income economies during medical emergencies due to lack or inaccessibility of a patient’s medical information. One of the major contributing …

Illiquid Capital: Are Conservation Easement Payments Reinvested In Farms?, Joshua M. Duke, Brian J. Schilling, Kevin P. Sullivan, J. Dixon Esseks, Paul D. Gottlieb, Lori Lynch

Center for Great Plains Studies: Staff and Fellows Publications

Agricultural conservation easements have positive externalities but few studies examine the supply-side. This paper explores whether easements may also overcome a credit-market failure, as banks may not be lending based on the full developed value of land. Original survey data test our research hypotheses and show profitable owners and nonoperators to be using easement payments to extract capital from their land by using the preservation programs as a bank. The results also show that the unprofitable owners and operators are reinvesting in their agricultural enterprises. Both results are consistent with an underlying credit-market failure, and the latter suggests that easements …

Coordination Of Monetary And Fiscal Policies: The Case Of Egypt, Sahar M. Abdel-Haleim

Business Administration

Coordination is defined as the necessary arrangements that assure that the decisions taken by monetary and fiscal authorities are not contradictory. The need for effective coordination of policies becomes pressing with the increasing independence of both authorities to implement their objectives. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the extent of coordination between monetary and fiscal policies in Egypt over the period (1974-2015). Quantifying the extent of coordination depends on the appropriate policy mix that responds effectively to different shocks. The results confirm that coordination of policies was absent or weak during most of the period under study, while …

Conditional Cash Transfers And Their Effect On Poverty, Inequality, And School Enrollment: The Case Of Mexico And Latin America, Maria Romano

CMC Senior Theses

Over the past two decades, conditional cash transfer (CCT) has become one of the most widespread approaches to social development in Latin America. Spurred in large part by the evident and immediate success of Mexico’s CCT initiative, a multitude of countries began to invest heavily in this strategy hoping to reduce poverty and inequality in the short and long run. This paper examines the relationship between CCT program breadth and poverty, inequality, and secondary school enrollment over a thirteen year span in order to determine whether or not programs with the largest coverage were the most efficient. This question is …

Neighborhoods By Assessment: An Analysis Of Non-Ad Valorem Financing In California, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ellen C. Seljan

Faculty Scholarship

Non-ad valorem assessments on property are a fiscal innovation born from financial stress. Unable to raise property taxes due to limitations, many localities have turned to these charges as an alternative method to fund local services. In this paper, we seek to explain differential levels of non-ad valorem assessment financing through the analysis of property tax records of a large and diverse set of single family homes in California. We theorize that assessments, as opposed to other forms of taxation, will be used when residents hold anti-redistributive preferences. We show that assessment financing is most common in cities with high …

Years Of Good Life Based On Income And Health: Re-Engineering Cost-Benefit Analysis To Examine Policy Impact On Wellbeing And Distributive Justice, Richard Cookson, Owen Cotton-Barrett, Matthew D. Adler, Miqdad Asaria, Toby Ord

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Three Essays On Unemployment Insurance In The 21St Century, Lewis H. Warren

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

My dissertation consists of three essays focusing on unemployment insurance (UI) and how it affects recipients. The first essay examines how UI generosity affects the search intensity of recipients through matching American Time Use Survey respondents to all of their observations in the Current Population Survey (CPS), the population from which they are drawn. Earnings from the CPS are then run through a benefit calculator that determines eligibility and benefit amounts which are used to determine how UI generosity affects search times. The second essay uses the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine how lesser known policies affecting …

Vocational Rehabilitation Outcomes For Hispanic Consumers In Traditional Settlement Areas And New Immigrant Destinations: A 17-Year Trend Analysis, Karen E. Waddle Cinnamond

Theses and Dissertations--Social Work

At the end of the 20^th century, economic and political forces converged to create an unprecedented migration of Hispanics across and within U.S. borders. Many migrated for work in new destinations like the Southeast instead of traditional regions in the Southwest. In the Southeast many communities struggled to meet the economic and social needs of its newest members of a population that grew seemingly overnight.

The state-federal vocational rehabilitation system is an important service to meet the economic and social needs of people with disabilities that impair their ability to work. Current scholarship suggests Hispanics and other minorities experience …

A Comparative Examination Of International Carbon Trading Mechanisms, Allison Moors

CMC Senior Theses

A Comparative Examination of International Carbon Trading Mechanisms

Peer Misbehavior Effects In The Classroom, Alex Hwung

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to evaluate the effects of peer misbehavior in the classroom on student learning outcomes--namely, if there is any truth behind the old saying that “one bad apple ruins the bunch”. Using experimental data, I show that there is a strong initial relationship between the level of misbehavior in a given classroom and performance on a mathematics evaluation; however, the inclusion of lagged peer achievement in the model causes most of that relationship to be absorbed away, suggesting that the bulk of peer effects stem more from the academic performance of other students than from their behavior.

The Impact Of State-Provided Paid Family Leave On Wages: Examining The Role Of Gender, Aimee Samantha Abrams Widdicombe

Scripps Senior Theses

The U.S. is the only OECD country that does not offer any form of federal paid parental leave. Only three states—California, New Jersey and Rhode Island—have state-provided paid leave policies; implemented in 2004, 2009 and 2014, respectively. Through descriptive statistics and difference-in-difference-in-difference regression analyses of the wages of women and men of childbearing age (19-45 years) in those three states, we assess whether the paid leave programs have effected wages, and whether these effects vary depending on gender. Our results show that wages of women of childbearing age saw negligible net effects post-policy in policy states, although statistically insignificant. On …

A Sustainability-Based Project Selection Algorithm: Socio-Technical-Economic Project Selection (Steps) Algorithm, Bharathi Bhattu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Multi-dimensional aspects play a vital role in the task of project-decision making. Environmental effects are to be considered in addition to other technical and non-technical aspects in order to avoid undue environmental damage. This current work introduces a new decision-making algorithm (Socio-Technical-Economic Project Selection or STEPS) that is demonstrated with the use of RCA (recycled concrete aggregate) as riprap for slope stabilization and erosion control which leaches chemical arsenic when in contact with water. Arsenic has long been recognized for its lethal properties. The main intention of introducing this new algorithm is to use sustainability concepts of social, technical, and …