Browsing by Author "Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor"
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Item Open Access A history of interest(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Palmer, Daniel Dwight, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Vasudevan, Ramaa, committee member; McCulloch, Michael L., committee memberA History of Interest uses methods inspired by the work of Michel Foucault to uncover institutional aspects of credit and debt. It explores three hypotheses and covers the period 1290-1914. During this period, Anglo-American society went from a system of debt conscription and usury restrictions in the Middle Ages to a system of voluntary bankruptcy and credit reporting by the late 19th century. This thesis explains how that transition occurred. Situating these changes in Foucault's notion of disciplinary writing, it also suggests what that transition means for the modern world.Item Open Access Addressing the religious free-rider problem via religious consumption signaling and religious capital accumulation(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Simpson, Jason J., author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Zahran, Sammy, committee member; Dickinson, Greg, committee memberThe aim of this paper is to investigate and illustrate the religious free-rider problem within church congregations while investigating religious consumption signaling patterns and the ability, or lack thereof, to form religious capital. From an institutional perspective, this paper will address stigma-screening processes via three economic models in an effort to understand and evaluate the overall effectiveness of institutional responses towards free-riding members. In addition, this paper will explore incentives behind perverse consumption signaling as a method of communicating membership, as well as the overall impact of restricting religious capital accumulation for both members and free-riders alike.Item Open Access Empirical examination of the determinants of corruption: cross-sectional and panel analysis(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2008) El-Bahnasawy, Nasr Galal El-Din, author; Revier, Charles F., advisor; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisorThis study explores the determinants of corruption, using cross-sectional, panel random-effects, and dynamic panel analysis to check the robustness of the results to alternative specifications and estimation methods. The study uses two different indexes of perceived corruption, the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and the Control of Corruption measure (CC), to check the robustness of the results with alternative corruption measures. The study also uses a large array of explanatory variables that may influence corruption, including a large set of economic variables, a set of political variables, and a group of sociocultural variables. The first interesting result indicates that the rule of law strongly impacts corruption and that a better quality of law enforcement is correlated with lower corruption. Moreover, rich countries are perceived to have lower corruption than poor countries. This work highlights the importance of the rule of law and per capita GDP in the battle against corruption. Furthermore, this study finds the following. Lagged corruption impacts current level of corruption. Larger countries seem to have higher perceived corruption. A larger percentage of the population that is rural is associated with higher perceived corruption. Higher proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament is associated with lower corruption. Political stability, regulatory quality, ethnic fractionalization, and natural resource abundance do not impact corruption in my analysis. This study also examined the impact of some other factors on corruption such as voice and accountability, government effectiveness, the cost of business start-up procedures, the ratio of average government wage to per capita GDP, the degree of openness to international trade, membership in various religions, the level of economic development, and the legal system origin.Item Open Access Estimating the shadow economy in Jordan: causes, consequences, and policy implications(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Alkhdour, Rajeh, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Fan, Chuen-mei, committee member; Pena, Anita Alves, committee member; Yasar, Gamze, committee memberEconomists have been paying increasing attention to the study of the shadow economy in many developed and developing countries in recent years. This attention is due to the consequences and the policy implications related to the shadow economy. Due to the unobserved and hidden nature of the shadow economy, it is difficult to get accurate estimates of its size. However, there are some techniques that have been used by economists to indirectly estimate the size of the shadow economy. This dissertation estimates the annual size of the shadow economy in Jordan during the period 1976-2010 using two methodologies: the currency approach and the multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) approach. It also analyzes the economic consequences and the policy implications of the shadow economy, estimating the amount of tax evasion in Jordan during the aforementioned time period. This is the first study that differentiates the effect of taxes on imports (custom duties) on the shadow economy from the effect of other taxes (income and sales taxes). It hypothesizes, unlike other studies, that taxes on imports negatively affect the size of the shadow economy. The currency approach results are consistent with this hypothesis. This study is also the first one to take into consideration religious factors as one of the determinants of the demand for money in circulation which is used in the currency approach to estimating the shadow economy. It is hypothesizes that the number of Islamic banks in Jordan negatively affects the demand for money in circulation. The coefficient of this variable has a negative sign, which is consistent with this hypothesis; however, this variable is insignificant at the 10 percent level. The other determinants of the demand for money in circulation in Jordan are: the effective tax rate on sales, the effective income tax rate, the effective tax rate on imports, the weighted average of interest rates on savings, and a dummy variable for the depreciation of the Jordanian dinar in 1988. According to the MIMIC approach, the causal variables for the shadow economy in Jordan are found to be: the total effective tax rate (tax revenues/GDP), the unemployment rate, the extent of government regulation (government intervention in the economy), and depreciation of the Jordanian dinar in 1988. The growth rate of real GDP and the growth rate of real private consumption are found to be indicators of the shadow economy in Jordan. The MIMIC approach results are consistent with previous studies that have found taxes and regulations to be the main causes of the shadow economy. The results also support the hypothesis that the depreciation of the Jordanian dinar in 1988 has a positive effect on the shadow economy in Jordan. The unemployment rate is found to have a negative effect on the shadow economy in Jordan. This indicates that the income effect of unemployment is greater than the substitution effect. In this dissertation, the main consequences and the policy implications of the shadow economy are analyzed. Tax evasion in Jordan is estimated for the period of study based on the results of the currency demand and the MIMIC approaches. It has been shown that the shadow economy has a distorting effect on the accuracy of a country's national accounts statistics. In addition, some policy recommendations are presented to reduce the distorting impact of the shadow economy. Taking into consideration the existence of the shadow economy when conducting the economic policy will increase the efficiency of this policy. There is a need for further research into the impact of the shadow economy on some economic policy issues in Jordan.Item Open Access Female participation in research and development: the role of government and defense spending(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Saxon, Tyler, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Fisher, Ellen, committee member; Li, Hsueh-Hsiang, committee member; Weiler, Stephan, committee memberThis study analyzes how defense spending has biased research and development (R&D) institutions and the path of technological change in a specifically gendered way. Military considerations have long played a significant role in the development of science, technology, and industry. The large role played by military spending in shaping R&D has biased R&D institutions towards militaristic purposes, especially in the United States. Furthermore, this relatively militaristic organizational culture in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) may affect men and women differently. Prior research indicates that women may be more likely than men to self-select out of STEM due to a greater aversion to militarism, and militaristic institutions may be more likely to discriminate against women and/or reinforce occupational segregation frameworks based on more traditional gender roles. Chapter 1 applies a difference-in-difference methodology to demonstrate how changes in Federal defense R&D spending in the U.S. can alter the gender composition of engineers in the U.S. Chapter 2 uses panel data from 46 different countries to assess the effects of defense spending on the differing gender compositions of research workers across countries. Using the institutional framework of ceremonial encapsulation of technology, Chapter 3 analyzes the broader institutional structures of STEM work and R&D, specifically the ways in which defense spending implicitly genders the institutional structures of STEM in the United States, and proposes avenues for future research on this topic.Item Open Access Gender and racial inequality in U.S. credit markets(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Wentzel-Long, Melanie G., author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Pressman, Steven, committee member; Weiler, Stephan, committee member; Daum, Courtenay, committee memberOutstanding household debt in the U.S. has grown dramatically since the 1980s, and households' borrowing activity is on track to return to levels unseen since the 2008 Financial Crisis. There has been limited research in economics on how patterns of credit use reflect and reproduce inequality by gender and race. In this study, I apply an intersectional feminist lens to household finance with four empirical investigations of women's position in credit markets. The papers are situated in an historically informed theoretical framework positing that women have been subject to three interconnected phenomena as consumers of credit: stigmatization, conditional inclusion, and exclusion. Chapter 2 investigates the relationship between borrowing from friends or family and financial exclusion, motivated by work in sociology suggesting that such informal borrowing has long-run costs and may be disproportionately used by women. I find that Black women are two to three times more likely than White respondents to plan on using informal borrowing as their primary coping strategy in the case of an emergency expense. Unobserved factors such as access to bank branches appear to link financial exclusion and informal borrowing. Chapter 3 explores differences by gender and race in U.S. high school students' aversion to borrowing for college and in the impacts of debt aversion. Female students and Black students are more likely to have a low but positive willingness to borrow for college than other groups. Moderate debt aversion is linked to lower levels of college enrollment, less borrowing, and lower costs of attendance, while strong debt aversion reduces the probability of enrolling in college for men only. Chapters 4 and 5 identify gendered and racialized trends in the growth of household debt surrounding the 2008 Financial Crisis. The results provide mixed evidence that high-cost mortgage lending targeted women or Black or Hispanic respondents. These groups experienced greater growth in consumer debt levels and debt burden relative to income than other groups post-crisis.Item Open Access Gender, race, and credit rationing of small businesses: empirical evidence from the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Mijid, Naranchimeg, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisorRapid rates of growth of small business ownership among women and minorities have motivated research on issues related to small business performance. The importance of access to credit for the success of small businesses, as well as evidence that women and minorities have less access to credit than male and white business owners has led researchers to explore the reason for this. The purpose of this study is to determine whether credit rationing in the small business credit market is different based on gender and/or race of the business owner. This study examines two types of credit rationing and uses a comprehensive measure that includes discouraged borrowers. In addition, we examine how loan amounts are determined. We utilize three different types of methodologies to analyze data from the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances. Our results are consistent with previous studies that have found higher loan denial rates and lower loan application rates among women and minority business owners. Testing the robustness of the results, we find an asymmetry in the response of women business owners compared with minorities. The results suggest that women tend to ration themselves in the credit market, whereas minorities are rationed by banks through what appear to be prejudicial lending practices. The results for discouraged borrowers that estimate joint decisions of lenders and borrowers suggest that among those who apply for a loan, minority-owners have a higher chance of approval. This indicates that only higher quality firms apply for a loan, confirming the discouraging effect of banks' probabilistic offers. We also find that women and minority owners are more likely to be given a smaller loan than they request (type 1 rationing) than men and white owners. In addition, women-owned firms receive significantly smaller loan amounts than men-owned firms. There is no difference, however, in the approved loan amount between minority and white-owned firms.Item Open Access Inequality as a cause of macro-instability and productive inefficiency(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Friedman, Mark, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member; Tavani, Daniele, committee member; Vasudevan, Ramaa, committee memberThese essays will examine the impact of inequality from both macro and micro perspectives. The first issue to be raised will be the contribution of inequality to macroeconomic instability. In the third chapter the focus will expand to determine whether an optimal level of inequality can be found. Much of the examination will be informed by principles outlined in the Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) developed by the philosopher P. R. Sarkar. As this dissertation was written during the recovery from the Great Recession, a timely controversy is addressed in the first chapter – whether growing inequality contributes to economic instability. Arguments for and against the proposition are critically examined in detail. It is concluded that the accumulated weight of the arguments favor the position that inequality can indeed help destabilize economies. In the second chapter econometric evidence is presented to show that high inequality contributes to the severity of economic downturns, both in terms of GDP declines and in consumption losses. Attention is also given to the impact of inequality in contributing to the global crisis leading to the Great Recession. While the initial evidence presented here cannot be considered conclusive in demonstrating a causal link between inequality and that specific crisis, it is shown that rising inequality was present in most of the 15 countries included in the study which were suffering recessions. An attempt to define an efficient limit to inequality will be the focus of the third chapter. The discussion will extend from the PROUT principle that any inequality that is accepted by society is only justified to the extent that it provides incentives for greater service to society by those receiving more than others. Any amount of income or in-kind amenities provided to a person that is beyond the minimum requirements by the standards of that society should not exceed the value of the extra services coaxed from that person by the extra incentives. A humanistic model of motivation for productivity is developed that suggests that people are productive for a variety of reasons besides material rewards. This is intended to place the need for incentives, and by extension inequality, in a perspective that suggests wide inequality is unnecessary and economically inefficient. Diagramatic analysis that introduces the Sarkarian Individual Productivity Curve demonstrates reasonable limits to inequality.Item Open Access Our childcare problem: three essays on the childcare decision-making process from a gendered perspective(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Cole, Paula M., author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Fan, Chuen-mei, committee member; Braunstein, Elissa, committee member; Kneller, Jane, committee memberChildren bring great joy and love to families, but for many families childcare entails significant stress, worry, sacrifice, and financial hardship. Social and cultures norms in the United States place these care difficulties in the private sphere to be handled by individuals, primarily women. The challenges families face in choosing between quality, affordability, and availability demonstrate that our childcare system is not the best that it could be and that all of us need to become stakeholders in the care of children. This research examines the childcare decisions of families using the ideas of neoclassical, feminist, and institutionalist economists. The childcare choice is explored with quantitative and qualitative methodology enabling critique of both the outcome and the process. Research findings demonstrate the importance of gender in the care of children, the need for more complete data on childcare, and that a solution to the childcare problem requires an ethic of care.Item Open Access Suicide mortality, economics and subgroup segregation(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Briggs, Thomas, author; Pena, Anita Alves, advisor; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Zahran, Sammy, committee member; Canetto, Silvia, committee memberIn the United States, suicide is typically theorized as an individual act, and as symptom of a mental disorder. However, evidence shows that those who die of suicide (e.g., by sex, race) varies depending on cultural, social and economic factors. Research on the contexts of suicide has been marked by several limitations, including a tendency to analyze social and economic factors separately, and also a disregard for the combined role of sex and ethnicity in the relationship between social and economic factors and suicide. This study compares current statistics with past research and offers a different methodology in the estimation and model construction of the socioeconomic determinants of suicide. By examining the association between social and economic indicators and suicide among African descent men and women, as compared to European descent men and women in the United States, this study isolates the impact of business cycle fluctuations (as indicated by the unemployment rate) on socioeconomic flows in marital, educational and age groups. The first chapter compares previous research on suicide mortality conducted in Ruhm, (2000) over business cycles by exploiting socioeconomic data from 2005-2012. Using detailed suicide mortality data, I observe that previous trends in state level suicide determination via the unemployment rate, hold over this time period. My research also expands upon Ruhm (2000) by accounting for race and gender specific socioeconomic means and suicide rates, I determine that the strong correlation between the unemployment rate and the suicide rate, only holds for whites, in particular white males. The association is insignificant for every other demographic at the state level. I also estimated the association at the county level. In a comparison of the regions, county level aggregates found significance for each subgroup. A significant and negative association was found for blacks and significant and positive for whites. These results suggest that the detrimental effects of unemployment (alone) only affects whites, although the mechanism that increases suicide for blacks could be through other socioeconomic variables that are themselves impacted by the unemployment rate. The findings imply that the modeling technique used in previous research is not sufficient to obtain the appropriate results for every demographic subgroup or subregion. The second chapter studies the impact of socioeconomic status variables such as marital status, educational attainment, income level and inequality on the suicide count as well as regional controls on gun ownership and level of unemployment insurance. This section employs a zero-inflated negative binomial model, with modification for panel data. Results indicated that unemployment was significantly positive only for white males. Marriage has a significant and negative impact on every demographic subgroup with the exception of black females. The impact of inequality on black males and females was much more positive and significant by magnitude than that for white males and females. These findings suggest inequality as a significant factor on suicide during economic downturns, especially for blacks. Furthermore, these results suggest that business cycle fluctuations impact the black suicide rate through inequality thus, not through unemployment directly. The third chapter addresses economic frustration as a reason for the notable increase in suicide rates, particularly amongst poor whites. It is argued that the externalization of economic frustration by poor whites once led to homicide of blacks. Through changing social norms and penal consequences current economic and social frustration is internalized and leads to increased morbidity and suicide mortality in whites. I refer to the past perspective of one of the most influential black leaders, W.E.B. Dubois. I also provide a history of economic violence and analyze current phenomena using the philosophies of Dubois and add further evidence of the current state of affairs offered by Jonathan Metzl. Together these chapters suggest an alternative reasoning for increased suicide mortality in the U.S. As demonstrated, the current etiology does not universally account for the socioeconomic determinants of suicide mortality in the United States by subgroup or subregion. Furthermore, there has been s substantial disregard for the cultural changes in America that may account for rising suicide mortality in America, such as racial/ethnic saturation and the internalization of economic frustration in economic analysis.Item Open Access The economic and the real: reflections on justice, methodology, and ontology in economics(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Teather-Posadas, Edward R., author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Ziliak, Stephen T., advisor; Fremstad, Anders, committee member; Vasudevan, Ramaa, committee member; Foskin, Kevin, committee memberThe role of perspective is often overlooked within economics. While the scale and scope of economics has expanded greatly in the last decades, less and less time has been devoted to introspection. Yet, as economics grows, so does the need for introspection, in order to explore the origins and relations of, and between, our own perspectives. This dissertation is an attempt to turn our gaze inwards in three different themes: justice, methodology, and ontology. Chapter Two reassesses the Seattle/Denver Income Maintenance Experiments (1970-1976) seeking to correct many misconceptions that have been taken as conventional wisdom about the experiments. Chapter Three expands on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities list through the inclusion of negativity and a "zeroth" capability. Chapter Four redefines the nature of economic pluralism through the use of parallax ontology.Item Open Access The economic benefits of bird control in U.S. cherry production(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Elser, Julie, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Shwiff, Stephanie, committee member; Anderson, Aaron, committee member; Dalsted, Norman, committee memberBird damage is a common and costly problem for fruit producers, who try to limit damage by using control techniques. This analysis used a survey presented to producers in five states to estimate the damage sustained to sweet and tart cherry crops with and without the use of bird control. A modified partial equilibrium model was applied to the data to estimate the change in marginal cost of production resulting from a ban on bird control, incorporating both decreased output and elimination of control costs. Welfare analysis was conducted for both crops with short and long run supply elasticities derived from time-series data using geometric distributed lags. Total surplus for both crops combined decreases by about $166 to $216 million in the short run and $23 to $31 million in the long run with no bird management, indicating that bird control has a large impact on cherry production and associated market outcomes.Item Open Access The effect of human capital on total factor productivity growth in the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council countries(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Algarini, Abdullah, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Mushinski, David, committee member; Kling, Robert, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee memberThis study is based on the understanding that economic growth in the long run can be achieved not only by increasing accumulation of capital and labor, but also through a sustained growth in total factor productivity (TFP). Therefore, knowledge of factors that explain TFP growth is important in explaining economic growth in the long run. Previous studies emphasize that in general education and health have very important effects on TFP growth, but the effects of these factors have not been widely studied in the AGCC countries. The first step in understanding the problem is to estimate TFP growth by using the Solow Model (1957) and Kalio Model (2012) and the second step is to determine the factors that affect TFP growth by using the Miller and Upadhyay (2000), Khan (2005), and Kalio (2012) models. The results from this study show that the contribution of the accumulation of capital and labor is higher than the contribution of TFP to economic growth over the period 1990-2014 and that it is still low or negative in these countries compared to developed countries. The most positively impactful variables on TFP growth in the AGCC are trade openness, oil revenues, and government consumption, while education, health, manufacturing, and FDI show little if any effect in most AGCC countries. In contrast, Jordan shows a positive effect of education, FDI, and manufacturing on TFP growth that may make Jordan more productive in the long term than AGCC countries.Item Open Access Three essays on connections between personal life and economic outcomes(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Curley, Christina, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Zahran, Sammy, committee member; Mushinski, David, committee member; Canetto, Silvia Sara, committee memberThe theme of this collection is the intersection of individuals' personal lives and economic lives. Personal traits may be influenced by gender, life events, and socioeconomic class. Personal traits can affect productivity and therefore are important in determining what happens in the labor market. In other words, what happens at work and what happens at home are not entirely separate. The first essay explores how sexual orientation and sexual experiences are related to individual income. Previous literature indicates that gay, lesbian, and bisexual (LGB) individuals experience an income differential when compared with heterosexuals. Recent data indicate that self-identification as an LGB individual and/or same-sex sexual behavior are still correlated with a lower income, however, not all of the results are statistically significant. In addition, there is a statistically significant negative income differential of 32% for men who report having had a same sex partner at some point, but identify as straight/heterosexual. The second essay analyzes parental divorce and how this may affect children later in life. Previous literature indicates that a multitude of issues exist for children whose parents divorced. The impact of parental divorce on children's income later in life is tested. Results from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) indicate that negative income effects from parental divorce persist for young men, however, young women and older age groups do not experience negative impacts on income. The third essay investigates a relationship between student loan debt and probability of marriage. Using the Baccalaureate and Beyond Survey 2008-2012, and with gender differences in mind, the impact of student loan repayment burden on the probability of marriage occurring in the four years following graduation is tested. Results indicate that increased payment-to-income ratio on student loan debt is negatively related to the probability of getting married for women who indicate a delay in marriage due to education debt.Item Open Access What factors affect school attendance? Quantitative and qualitative study of evidence from Nepal(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Bhattarai, Niroj Kumar, author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Pena, Anita Alves, advisor; Vasudevan, Ramaa, committee member; Kent, Suzanne, committee member; Canetto, Silvia, committee memberThere exist many factors that impact school attendance of students in developing countries. Factors range from the distance to school from a student's home to the availability of gender-specific restrooms. A project in the south east part of Nepal that built gender-specific restrooms and brought running water to the school increased enrollment and attendance of the students, particularly of girls. To study what other factors impact attendance, a survey was conducted in and around Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. An econometric study of the data generated by the survey showed that time spent studying at home, having an educated mother and an employed mother, all had positive effect on students' attendance. Distance to school, presence of siblings, and lack of computers had negative effects on attendance. The data also demonstrated gender differences in what and how various factors affected attendance at the secondary level of education in Nepal.