Browsing by Author "Bajtelsmit, Vickie, committee member"
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Item Open Access Associations among sources of revenue and expenses at public bachelors and masters level higher education institutions(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Carmichael, John P., author; Kuk, Linda, advisor; Gloeckner, Gene, advisor; Bajtelsmit, Vickie, committee member; Foley, Jeffrey, committee memberUnderstanding how changes in revenue are associated with changes in spending at public higher educational institutions may have significant practical implications for policy makers. Finance data were drawn from the Integrated Post Secondary Data System (IPEDS) for bachelors and master-level institutions from 2003 to 2012. Fixed effects regression models were constructed to estimate the effect of changes in revenue on spending. Time effects (lagged models, fixed year effects, and time trends) were examined. Several institutional characteristics were considered for inclusion in the model: size of enrollment, institutional discount rate, selectivity, Carnegie classification, and state tuition policy. In addition to revenue and spending variables, the final regression model included year effects and enrollment. A large number of statistically significant effects of revenue changes on spending variables were observed, generally consistent with previous research focused on research universities (Leslie, Slaughter, Taylor, & Zhang, 2012). The effects of changes in revenue from tuition and appropriations on spending for instruction were notable. Within an institution, a one dollar change in tuition revenue was associated with a 33 cent change in spending on instruction (2012 dollars). A similar one-dollar change in revenue from appropriations was associated with a 32 cent change in instructional spending. For spending on institutional support, a one-dollar change in revenue from appropriations had a slightly larger effect (β=.18, p<.001) compared to a one-dollar change in revenue from tuition (β=.07, p<.001).Item Open Access Identifying issues related to integral aspects of collaborative contracts from their stakeholders' perspective(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Marathe, Anuj, author; Senior, Bolivar, advisor; Strong, Kelly C., advisor; Bajtelsmit, Vickie, committee memberPerformance in construction is strongly dictated by the processes, technologies, and the people involved. To increase performance, the construction industry has witnessed innovations in project delivery systems - partnering or collaborative contracts is one of those. This thesis focuses on the 'people' part as one of the major factor affecting the performance of a collaborative approach. In this thesis, dispute resolution and incentive provisions have been deemed to be the most vulnerable aspects of construction in which the 'people' part can play an influential role. Collaborative contracts often include a laddered dispute resolution method which includes negotiations as the first few steps and inherently attempts to avoid litigation. Such a process oriented method promotes an inexpensive and non-adversarial approach to dispute resolution. This thesis investigates if such process oriented dispute resolution methods can eliminate the effect of the 'people' part. Moreover, it identifies issues associated with dispute resolution methods and incentive provisions typically found in construction contracts. This thesis also identifies some of the benefits and drawbacks of using an Owner Controlled Insurance Program (OCIP).Item Open Access Lexical bundles in master's-level finance research articles(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Ali Drouhamane, Alhassane, author; Nekrasova-Beker, Tatiana, advisor; Becker, Anthony, committee member; Bajtelsmit, Vickie, committee memberLexical bundles are a type of formulaic sequences mainly identified on the basis of their frequencies and ranges. They have been found to consistently serve important discourse functions in academic prose, where, for example, they are used to evaluate or to refer to the size of something (Hyland, 2008a). Their forms, functions and uses were also found to be different in different academic disciplines. The present study extends this line of investigation by directly investigating the extent to which the four-word lexical bundles relied upon in master’s-level finance research articles differ from or are similar to those used in other academic disciplines, including business texts. Analyzing a corpus of 1,034, 587 words, the researcher found that more than 60% of lexical bundles in master’s-level finance research articles were identified in earlier studies on lexical bundles used in academic prose. However, 33 lexical bundles identified in the current study were not identified in previous literature. Structurally, like in previous literature, most bundles were found to be noun phrase and prepositional phrase fragments. Functionally, most bundles analyzed in the present study include research-oriented and text-oriented bundles, like in previous literature. They, however, differ from the bundles identified in the business studies sub-corpus of Hyland (2008a) by including more research-oriented bundles.Item Open Access Relationships between economic, political, demographic, and educational climate variables and state appropriations to research I universities(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Frantz, Rebecca L., author; Kuk, Linda, advisor; Bajtelsmit, Vickie, committee member; Gloeckner, Gene, committee member; Hughes, Rodney, committee memberHigher education appropriations have been a widely studied topic by researchers and became more of a concern after the Great Recession. Assessing factors influencing appropriations to Research I institutions is of particular interest as they possess substantial enrollment capabilities but can create great inequities and access issues without state subsidization (Weerts & Ronca, 2006). Two measures of appropriations were crafted using data from the Integrated Post Secondary Data System (IPEDS) for two year and above institutions from 2010 to 2015. Using fixed effects modeling, a series of twelve independent variables across four different categories (economic, political, demographic, and educational climate) were evaluated for predictive power on appropriations. Submodels where constructed on a set of the sample only including Research I institutions. A number of statistically significant effects on appropriations were found in the results and were largely consistent with findings in past research (Tandberg & Griffith, 2013). The largest statistically significant R2 value was found in need to pay overall model. When focusing on this research project's focus evaluating factors influencing appropriations at Research I institutions both Income Disparity (β=-161.951, p<.05) and Citizen Ideology (β=85.50, p<.01) stood out in the results with notable effect sizes. Personal income, citizen ideology, and tuition were significant in three of the four regression models.Item Embargo Two essays on entrepreneurship, bankruptcy and employment concentration, and a detour on homelessness(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Correas, Ignacio Maria, author; Weiler, Stephan, advisor; Alves Pena, Anita, committee member; Bernasek, Alexandra, committee member; Bajtelsmit, Vickie, committee memberThis doctoral thesis is composed of two chapters that attempt to explain some of the causes for the decline of entrepreneurship in the United States since the late 1980s, and a third chapter the motivation for which arose while researching the other two. Chapter one looks at the laws protecting certain assets from repossession in the event of personal bankruptcy and their possible influence on entrepreneurship. As the US Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the raison d'être behind the bankruptcy statutes is to provide individuals with an unencumbered "fresh-start" in life, and that this is done both to promote entrepreneurship and for "humanitarian reasons", it was only logical to follow up this chapter with another one exploring whether bankruptcy exemptions indeed offer some relief from destitution. This became the second chapter in this dissertation. Lastly, the third chapter circles back to the topic of entrepreneurship and looks at whether the concentration of economic activity (particularly employment) in larger enterprises, as is the case with the US labor market when compared to other OECD countries, has an effect on new business creation. As stated, chapter one looks at how the changes in personal bankruptcy laws from 1986 to 2017 influence entrepreneurship. There are two components of the bankruptcy law explored in this section: its debt forgiveness or "fresh start" provision, and the protection from repossession that it extends to certain personal asset categories. The paper finds that the implementation of the 2005 BAPCPA law restricting access to debt discharge during bankruptcy was the most detrimental to entrepreneurship of the two, being strongly associated with a decrease in firm creation. Asset exemptions from repossession have an impact on entrepreneurship also, and larger (inflation adjusted) protections are paradoxically linked to fewer start-ups in general. However, this chapter also finds that immediately following a statutory increase in the exemption amounts there is a transitory rise in firm creation which only lasts for two years. The final verdict is that when it comes to personal bankruptcy law, it is debt forgiveness that encourages entrepreneurship; property protections offer at best a temporary boost to new firm creation but are in general detrimental to it. Alas, and since humanitarian reasons have historically and legally been recognized as a second premise for the US personal bankruptcy law, might asset protections during bankruptcy at least help in this regard? The second chapter in this dissertation thus looks at the connection between the rate of homelessness in a state and the bankruptcy laws applicable to that state from 2007 to 2017. More generous homestead exemptions are surprisingly found to be associated with a significant increment in the rate of homelessness that is between 26 and 30 per 100,000 people. The wildcard exemption on the other hand (which can be used for any asset category) has an opposite effect: a one percent increment in its amount, when measured as a percentage of median household income, lowers homelessness by 219 to 230 individuals for every 100,000 people. Traditional economic indicators such as growth in per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have the foreseeable impact on homelessness, which is in fact not as strong as that of the asset protections: each one percent increase in GDP per-capita lowers homelessness by roughly 2 people per 100,000. Surprisingly, protections shielding filers from having their homes being taken away during bankruptcy are associated with increases in homelessness, whereas similar safeguards applicable to any asset, although comparatively smaller in amount, are effective in reducing it. The last chapter in this dissertation goes back to the topic of entrepreneurship, and explores the effect that workforce concentration in large employers, regardless of their nature, may have on new firm creation. As such the paper serves as a test of the 'Chinitz's hypothesis of agglomeration being the catalyst for local economic dynamics, and it is new in its approach in that it looks at total general employment in a given area (instead of focusing on particular industries), and because it takes into consideration the share of the workforce in large employers both in the private and the public sectors. The analysis uses economic and demographic data at the county level; given the possibility of feedback effects between the variables measuring the share of the workforce in large employers and the creation of new business, an instrumental variable approach is utilized for estimation. The findings in this last chapter confirm the Chinitz hypothesis, while also considering the effect of public sector employment on the private economy: concentration of the workforce in large employers, regardless of their nature, is determined to be a crucial driver for the local economy as it relates to entrepreneurship and is in fact deleterious to firm creation. The evidence from these three essays suggests that bankruptcy debt forgiveness fosters entrepreneurship, but asset exemptions from repossession and employment concentration in large organizations negatively affect it. However, exemptions allowing a would-be filer to shield any item of their choice from repossession, even if they are modest in amount compared to other exemption categories, help in reducing homelessness. After all, people do need boots if they are to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, as Dr Martin Luther King once noted.