Mountain Scholar :: Browsing by Author "Cutler, Harvey, advisor"

Browsing by Author "Cutler, Harvey, advisor"

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Open Access
A computable general equilibrium analysis of aggregates materials recycling and waste disposal policy alternatives
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Miller, Michael D., author; Davies, Stephen, advisor; Cutler, Harvey, advisor
The work presented in this dissertation is intended to provide community leaders insights into possible aggregates material disposal and recycling policy alternatives. In this work four main policy alternatives are examined-a tax on landfill deposits, a subsidy for the purchase of recycled aggregates materials, a requirement that all industries in the community increase their consumption of recycled aggregates, and a requirement that the top five producers of aggregates waste supply greater amounts of materials to recycling facilities. The scenarios reported include "base case" situations and sensitivity analysis. For the sensitivity analysis, there are changes in the levels of taxation, subsidy, required use of the recycled materials, and required supply waste to be recycled. Additionally, the percentage of materials being sent to landfill and the percentage of materials being recycled is adjusted in order to measure the impacts of the tax and subsidy on communities with differing levels of recycling already in place. Two other policy alternatives are also analyzed and briefly discussed: (1) The model is allowed to respond to changes in the prices of intermediate goods; and (2) Tax and subsidy rates are changed simultaneously. This dissertation finds that, as a result of the limited economic impact of the aggregates materials industry (compared to the local economy in total), landfill deposit taxes and materials purchase subsidies have little impact on the community's economic well being. However, due to the rather "painless" nature of these policies, implementation of these policies do not preclude their use in laying the groundwork for other, more impactful solid waste material disposal approaches. The implementation of the two regulatory policy alternatives has significant positive impacts throughout the economy, but carries with them greater unknown liabilities that are beyond the scope of this dissertation.
Open Access
Essays on financing reform and the provision of local public education
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Li, Li, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Pena, Anita Alves, advisor; Mushinski, David, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee member
This dissertation investigates the provision of local public education from both theoretical and empirical aspects. In the theoretical sections, the existence of Pareto-improving reform (to redistribute education resources away from the rich community and toward the poor community) is examined under the current public education financing system. In the empirical section, the state financing system on public education in the state of Colorado is tested. Chapter 1 introduces the importance and motivation of my research topic. Chapter 2 directly follows the theoretical framework in Fernandez and Rogerson (1996). As far as I know, they are the first to examine the provision of public education under a multi-community and multi-income-group model and discuss reforms which might be Pareto-improving. By adding additional assumptions on population distribution and individuals’ preferences, I analytically show that under a two-community and three-income-group model, when local public education is financed by an income tax, the reform “to redistribute a fraction of education expenditures away from the rich community toward the poor community” is Pareto-improving. Since public education is mainly financed by a property tax, a general housing market with an upward sloping supply curve is introduced in Chapter 3. Simulations show that when local public education is funded by a housing property tax, the reform posed in Chapter 2 may still work. The redistributive fraction chosen by the state government determines whether the reform is Pareto-improving or not. In the empirical section, Chapter 4, I develop four regression models to examine the effects of the state financing policy on public education in Colorado. The results show that the Colorado state government is reducing disparity in per student spending across school districts. However, the current policy is not potentially Pareto-improving according to the theory developed in Chapter 2. Thus, policy suggestions are made. Chapter 5 summarizes and concludes my dissertation.
Open Access
Essays on fiscal decentralization and taxation
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Fitrady, Ardyanto, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Pena, Anita Alves, advisor; Mushinski, David, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee member
This dissertation investigates two important topics in economics. First, the impacts of spillovers of public goods on the potential benefits from decentralization in an urban economy. Second, the role of tax evasion and uncertainty on the optimal taxation for two-class economy. Theoretical model and numerical simulations are used to study the first topic in Chapter 2. The results from the numerical simulation shows that the spillover level has an impact on the potential gain of decentralization. The general results of the numerical simulations demonstrate that as the degree of spillovers increases, the potential gain of decentralization over centralization diminishes in both cases of metropolitan areas in developed and developing countries. These results celebrate Oates' decentralization theorem where decentralization is more beneficial when spillovers among jurisdictions are relatively low. However, the result also shows that the impact of the spillover level on the potential gain of decentralization varies across different levels of income vis-a-vis income inequality. It shows that a metropolitan area with lower mean income will be suffer more from the spillover than a metropolitan area with higher mean income. The numerical simulation also shows that a higher level of inequality amplifies the benefit of decentralization. It illustrates that the developed country--in this case the United States--that generally has higher income inequality, potentially gains more benefits from decentralization. Theoretical models are used in Chapter 3 to examine the importance of tax evasion in the optimal taxation theory that are built based on previous studies. Although one can find that most of the results are intuitive, the model shows that considering tax evasion and uncertainty is important in implementing tax policies, particularly in the process of setting the tax rates for income tax and sales tax. The income tax for the high-type individual will be higher as the degree of tax evasion increases and the income tax of the low-type individual decreases as the probability of being detected for the high-type increases, ceteris paribus. The result also shows that the optimal income tax rate for the low-type individual increases as the marginal utility of mimicking the low type or the marginal utility of income for the mimicker increases, ceteris paribus. In other words, income tax for the low-type will increase if the high type has more incentive to mimic the low-type.
Open Access
Essays on sustainable development: renewable energy, regional growth, environment, and welfare
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Jeon, Hwayoung, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Shields, Martin, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee member; Manning, Dale, committee member
Given the growing concerns about the consequences of climate change, development of renewable energy has attracted significant attention as a creditable alternative to fossil fuels. As a result, renewable energy has experienced significant growth in the U.S. as receiving government subsidies and support in the past decades. In order to confirm the efficiency and effectiveness of renewable support policies, this dissertation explores the role of renewable energy on regional economic growth, environmental quality, and residential electricity price in the U.S. Chapter 1 examines the effects of electricity generation from both types of energy sources on sustainable state economic growth. For the analysis, I extend the theoretical framework which incorporating the environmental externalities from energy use. Based on the theoretical model, I use the panel data set for 47 U.S. states from 1999 to 2017 by employing the two-step Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) model. The results show that renewable energy generation has a positive impact on state economic growth whereas non-renewable energy generation hampers economic growth. Furthermore, this paper finds that the effects of renew- able energy generation on economic growth are different at a level of development stage: at an early stage, electricity generation from renewable energy resources hampers economic growth while at an advanced-stage, renewable energy helps to grow the economy. The results imply that the very low operating costs for renewable energy could offset the huge financial burden of high initial investment costs in the long run. Chapter 2 demonstrates the linkages between energy-related CO2 emissions, economic growth, and renewable energy consumption for the 48 U.S. states over the period 1997-2017 by employing panel fixed-effects and the Method of Moments Quantile Regression with fixed effects developed by Machado and Silva (2019). The results provide strong evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation, consistent with what is known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve from fixed-effect estimation. Furthermore, this paper confirms that renewable energy consumption, electricity prices, and primary energy prices have negative impact on emissions whereas Heating Degree Days have a positive impact on emissions. Moreover, the panel quantile regression models confirm that the effects of all explanatory variables on CO2 emissions are heterogeneous at different quantiles. The main purpose of Chapter 3 is investigating the effect of renewable energy generation on retail residential prices while confirming the policy influences from Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) on the prices by using a sample of 48 U.S. states during the period 2001-2018. The empirical results of the feasible generalized least squares, and the two-step GMM models provide evidence that renewable energy generation leads to a reduction in residential electricity prices. Also, the renewable support policy, RPS, tends to increase residential electricity prices. The results imply that implementation of RPS requires additional fixed costs in the short-run however, these costs would be offset by very low operating costs of renewable energy generation in the long-run.
Open Access
Essays on the economics of natural disasters
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Hu, Yuchen, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Zahran, Sammy, committee member; Mushinski, David, committee member; van de Lindt, John, committee member
Natural hazards occur frequently, and the costs associated with these events are well into the billions of dollars. The rising frequency and costs from natural disasters require a comprehensive understanding of its impacts on the economic system and mitigation strategies for local communities that can minimize these losses. The purpose of Chapter 1 is to demonstrate a linkage between civil engineering and economic models to accomplish these objectives. To do this, I build a spatial computable general equilibrium model (SCGE) for Shelby County in Tennessee that requires an extensive data set dependent upon eight different data sources. I then develop advanced methods that integrate simulation models from engineering and economics. Civil engineers have created a range of simulation models that estimates the impact of a hypothetical earthquake on damages to buildings, utilities, and transportation network. These damages are integrated into the SCGE model to simulate a range of economic outcomes. I find that the SCGE model is more advanced in capturing the adjustment behaviors of businesses and households to external shocks compared to previous attempts. I also find that to better estimate the economic impacts, we need to simulate the model with the three types of physical damages jointly and not individually. Chapter 2 investigates a hidden layer of the impact of natural disasters, which is the spillover effect due to disaster-induced migration on the receiving areas' labor markets. Using the difference in difference approach, I empirically compare the hourly wage rates in areas that received the evacuees from Hurricane Katrina to areas that didn't. I find that in the export-oriented industry, the inflow of migrants due to Katrina slightly reduces the hourly wage rates for both the low and the high-skilled workers. However, in the localized industries where the inflow of the migrants also increased the demand for local goods and services, the inflow of evacuees raises the hourly wage rates the high-skilled workers and imposes no significant impacts for the low-skilled workers. These results are consistent with previous literature in that immigrants did impact the local labor markets but at a small magnitude. Chapter 3 proposes the setup of a Rainy-Day Fund (RDF) through tax increase/hikes for local governments in preparing for external shocks in the future. To minimize the costs of tax hikes to the economy and achieve the target amount of RDF, I use the SCGE model developed in Chapter 1 to solve for an optimal path of tax hikes over time. The process starts with an endogenized cost function measured by the foregone output that could be produced had there been no changes in the tax system. Built on the profit and utility maximization in response to changes in taxes, the cost function expands the theoretical setup of Barro (1979) and Ghosh (1995) by allowing any factors that influence the output to enter the optimization process. Moreover, the cost function in any period depends on not only the tax rates in that period but also the tax rates in previous periods, since any changes to the tax rates previously can influence the current economy through changes in investment and capital. I find that the optimal trajectory of the tax hikes tends to be rising in time. The rate of the increase depends on the magnitude of labor supply elasticity to real wages, and the interest of the regional planners to include economic outcomes beyond the planning horizon.
Open Access
Essays on the relationship between compensation and productivity--a regional analysis
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Blake, Christopher D., author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Shields, Martin, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee member
To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document.
Open Access
Export-led growth and crowding-out effect case study: a cointegration approach
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Ngo, Trung Quang, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor
During last three decades, development policies have major shifted from what is known as import-substitution to export-led growth in which many developing countries have focused on reducing their dependence on primary commodity export and increasing their manufactured exports. The important motivation supports for export-led growth policy is the vision of growing market which lead to increase specialization and division of labor. Developing countries can move up to the development ladder by specializing in exporting low-technology products to industrialized countries. In addition, with abundance of cheap and unskilled labor, developing countries will gain from international trade. These gains would allow them to graduate to the rank of middle or higher income countries by exporting more technologically sophisticated, skill-intensive products. While, export-led growth has been increasingly applied around the world, the deterioration in economic still occurred and created a new challenge for export-led growth model. In facts, it faces a fallacy of composition where exporters rely on growth of demand in export markets. Developing countries sell most of their export manufactured to industrialized countries markets. However, export markets demand does not grow fast enough to support the growth of export expansion of all developing country exporters. As a result, trade barriers and macroeconomic policies will be applied. If consider developing countries as a group, the problem of export-led growth can be described as export displacement or crowding-out effect. This means when one country tries to increase its export; it may displace the export shares of another. This study analyzes whether export-led growth exists in Vietnam and the crowding-out effect occurs among ASEAN countries. The approach in this study is the use of cointegration in a multi-equations model which allows us to examine the long-run relationship between exports and economic growth in Vietnam and the connection within ASEAN countries for export manufactured goods. The results lead to policy recommendation for Vietnam's export in particular and ASEAN's export in general to improve their economic growth and export benefits.
Open Access
Foreign direct investment and corruption
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Ardiyanto, Ferry, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Braunstein, Elissa, committee member; Vasudevan, Ramaa, committee member; Koontz, Stepehn, committee member
Corruption is the abuse of public authority and discretion for private gain. Corruption is perceived as detrimental to investment as it acts like a tax on investment by increasing the cost of doing business. However, the efficient grease hypothesis argues that corruption could increase investment as it acts as grease money that enables firms to avoid bureaucratic red tape and expedite the decision making process. This study attempts to build empirical models to investigate the relationship between foreign direct investment and corruption and identify the determinants of corruption itself. As tolerance towards corruption tends to vary from country to country, countries are disaggregated into developed economies and developing economies. Additionally, there are four regions within the developing economies group to take into account intrinsic differences in perceptions of and attitudes towards corruption, as well as cultural and geographical differences. The dissertation finds that corruption is deleterious for FDI inflows in developed countries, but is somewhat beneficial for attracting FDI inflows in developing economies. However, when developing countries are disaggregated into several regions, the effect of corruption on FDI inflows fades away. Furthermore, corruption can be caused by both economic and institutional factors. It is also confirmed that factors influencing corruption vary among developed countries, developing countries and within regions of developing countries. The importance of institutional factors makes it clear that the institutional framework is important for explaining corruption, no matter whether a country is a developed or developing one.
Open Access
In search of the incidence of the corporate tax on employment and wages: evidence from U.S. state tax reforms
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Kakpo, Eliakim, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Pena, Anita, advisor; Li, Cher, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee member
Several controversies emerged recently following a series of corporate inversions designed to minimize corporate tax liabilities. Moreover, secular stagnation and ever-decreasing levels of corporate tax collections by federal and state jurisdictions in the U.S contributed to the resurgence of a widespread interest in tax reform. To reduce corporate tax evasion and promote economic growth, policymakers passed the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" in 2017 which substantially reduced the corporate income tax rate. The opportunity of the reform remains a controversial debate across the political spectrum. This dissertation explores the experience of U.S. state policy changes related to the taxation of corporations to study the extent to which the tax is passed onto workers in the form of lower wages and employment in the short-run. The first chapter discusses the political economy of U.S. state corporate tax reforms. Using a unique dataset of state corporate tax rates, I observe that business tax changes are associated with tax competition, swings in economic cycles, and left-right political ideology. In contrast, long-term debt and budgetary pressures do not correlate with state corporate tax policies. Moreover, I document a regional heterogeneity and notice a slowdown in state tax changes after the Federal Reform Act of 1986. These findings matter for the empirics of corporate tax incidence, which is increasingly concerned with the endogeneity between tax reforms and other economic developments. The second chapter studies the responsiveness of wages and employment to state corporate tax changes in the presence of market concentration and combined reporting legislation. I exploit policy discontinuities at state borders by pairing counties in states featuring a tax change with their contiguous counterparts in control states. I observe that corporate tax cuts do not boost employment or wages while tax hikes reduce the growth of both. When controlling for market competition, I notice that the wage sensitivity to a tax hike decreases with the number of establishments and depends on legislation regarding corporate profit reporting rules. The third chapter evaluates the economic effects of a natural experiment created by the 2005 Ohio tax reform. The policy drastically reduced the corporate and personal income tax, as well as the property tax on machinery over the period 2006-2010. I observe several cross-sections of the Current Population Survey and compare groups of individuals in Ohio to similar individuals in (i) the Midwest and (ii) other U.S. states around the reform. Using a difference in difference identification approach, I conclude that the tax reform did not significantly boost wages and employment opportunities; but seems to have affected the reporting of self-employment earnings.
Open Access
Production function estimations and policy implications
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Khreisat, Mohammad Abdallah, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Mushinski, David, committee member; Shields, Martin, committee member; Davies, Stephen, committee member
The main purpose of the dissertation is to provide the decision makers in local governments in Colorado with a information regarding the economic characteristics of industries and firms they need to attract to their regions to mitigate the inverse impacts of job loss, and local government revenue decreases during economic down turns. The dissertation estimates four different production functions classified in two groups; homogeneous functions, and non-homogeneous functions. The estimation is held at the industry level using firm level data for six major counties in Colorado. This is the first empirical study that explores the importance of land in the production process, in addition to the primary inputs of capital stock and labor. The study also determines the production function that best fits the data structure instead of other studies which assume in priori the type of production function. In addition, the study will explore the returns to scale and elasticity of substitutions for the three input variables (land, labor, and capital) at the industry and firm levels. Furthermore, the dissertation explores the convergence of total factor productivity within industry and among counties, and within county and among the different industries in the same county. The main findings of the study are: (i) local governments have to attract the industries or firms with low elasticity of substitutions between labor and capital from one side; and industries or firms with low complementarity between land and labor, and capital and land; (ii) land is an important input variable in the production process, especially in Denver County; (iii) local government has to attract firms with increasing returns to scale because of their positive impact on employment, economic growth, local government revenues, and competitiveness outside the county; (iv) local governments have to encourage firms with high k/l ratio accompanied with low elasticity of substitutions; and (v) the negative relation between total factor productivity and partial scale elasticity, leads to the conclusion that the industries or firms either substitute TFP with RTS or firms with high RTS delay applying advanced technology.
Open Access
School choice impacts within a local school district
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Chisesi, Lawrence J., author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Alves Pena, Anita, committee member; Shields, Martin, committee member; Wallner, Barbara, committee member
In the mid 1990's, changes in Colorado state law and local school district policy resulted in the opening of magnet and charter schools within a school district in Northern Colorado. Parents now had multiple school choice options that were independent of school assignment based on residency. I use student level data to analyze school choice impacts within the district as they unfolded over time. I test first if there are student achievement gains that can be attributed to school choice. In theory, when parents can better match the needs of their children to the offerings at different schools, student achievement should increase. Using multilevel modeling I find little evidence that school choice yields achievement gains compared to residential based school choice, but do find that some schools that offered differentiated curriculums yielded gains. The negative impacts on student achievement attributed to low family income and from when students change schools explain much of the variation in test scores. I next examine how local public schools may compete for students once parents are given expanded school choice rights. Economic theory suggests that competition for students would force lower performing schools to improve or risk losing their students to higher achieving schools. I test to see if the choices that parents make to attend schools outside their neighborhoods are influenced by prior year academic achievement, the income and ethnic composition of a school and changes in the size of a local school's attendance zone. I find that shrinking attendance zones preceded students choicing into other schools, motivating schools to compete for students. Past performance matters as well, but so does the composition of the student body and how representative the student body is of the community that surrounds the school. Parents show preferences to associate with families with similar incomes and ethnic background. Finally, I study how school choice impacts housing decisions. If school choice breaks the link between residency and local schooling then house prices should reflect this change. Parents would be less willing to pay a premium to live near a higher performing school and should receive less of a discount to purchase a home near a lower performing school. Using prices paid by cohorts of home buyers that subsequently placed their children into district schools, I find support for the hypothesis that the house price-school quality link evaporates with school choice and that changes in housing valuations can be modeled as a function of the number of families choicing into and out of school attendance zones. Prices appear to be moving towards an equilibrium whereby local school quality and distance to the assigned school no longer contribute value to the price of a home.
Open Access
Spatial characteristics: improving model accuracy and providing regional research insights
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Crofton, Kevin, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Weiler, Stephan, committee member; Shields, Martin, committee member; Manning, Dale, committee member
The research presented in this dissertation began with an investigation of water transfers from rural Colorado to a growing urban region and how this would affect the rural economy. Chapter 1 focuses on the growing concern of water scarcity in the arid western region of the US. In this part of the country, it is widely known that water is limited, and as populations continue to increase, so will the demand for water, which is already in short supply. A multiregional Computable General Equilibrium (MRCGE) model using spatially detailed data was built to study the impact of urban growth on a rural community and is presented in Chapter 1. The construction of the MRCGE model led to consideration of how aggregation shapes output. This evolved into a comparison of a MRCGE model that utilized spatial details that explained the differences between a rural and urban economies with a single region CGE model that aggregated these regional differences. Chapter 2 discusses identical simulations in either model, demonstrates insights gained from refining the spatial details into a MRCGE model, and identifies specific elements lost when using a broader aggregated description blending different regions together. Different spatial qualities between locations are critical in expanding the understanding of skier behavior. Chapter 3 provides a skier behavior model of the US, which confirms the pull effect of destination snowfall shown in regional models of the ski industry. Additionally, this research demonstrates that skier origin weather also influences skier visitation by shifting the subjective interest of traveling to another region. The result of this model provides evidence of push and pull weather variables for a winter ski destination, filling a gap generally left by travel literature that often focuses on warm weather destinations. Chapter 1 describes a three-region CGE model that utilizes the unique spatial characteristics of urban, rural, and interface regions; the latter includes a blend of features of both the rural and urban regions. Using explicitly defined regions provides an enhanced analysis of each community's Ag and non-Ag sectors, while also describing the impact on households. This model connects the three regions via a water market, which allows for endogenous transfers of water to occur due to urban population growth. The model adds an interregional intermediate input market, allowing urban growth to demand greater domestic supply from the rural and interface industries. The interregional intermediate input market, which captures another link between the urban region and the rural region, is a new addition to the literature. These key modeling features refine the approach to investigate urban growth's influence on a rural economy by modeling multiple interregional markets and identifying regional specific characteristics. Chapter 1 allows for a more complete understanding of the dynamics between urban growth, water transfer from the rural region, and the resulting influence on the rural economy. Chapter 1 compares a model, which includes the water market and the intermediate input market, to two restricted models, either only trade water or only trade intermediate inputs, between regions to assess the impact these markets have on the rural economy. This comparison demonstrates that both markets can increase the cost of production due to greater urban demand, but when either is restricted, rural economies can expand in respond to urban growth. When water cannot be traded between regions factor prices become relatively cheaper in the rural region because there is not the greater urban demand causing higher water prices. With cheaper factors the rural economy can expand supply to meet the growing urban demand for intermediate inputs. When the water market is the only interregional market, the rural region transfers water (primarily from the agricultural sector resulting in Ag output decline), to the urban region. The rural agricultural sector subsequently reduces their demand for land and labor making it available to the rural non-Ag sector, thus expanding their output with these relatively cheaper factors. The greater output of the non-Ag sector offsets the Ag decline in output, resulting in a total domestic supply increase. The rural economy increases output in each alternative model due to different cross-regional effects but experiences a decline in output when all interregional markets are modeled. The inclusion of both markets generates higher cost of production that cannot be offset by substitution between sectors or by the greater urban demand for intermediate inputs. Past research has focused on how the rural region adjusts to water transfers with varied conclusions. For example, Berck et al. (1991) describes rural agriculture shifting to less water intensive production methods and benefitting from the combined payment for their water and the adjusted domestic supply. Alternatively, Seung et al. (2000) describes a decline in rural domestic supply in response to water transfers, relying on a Leontief factor substitution specification. Both research conclusions depended on the elasticity of factor substitution. The model used in Chapter 1 applies a constant elasticity of substitution that is similar to Berck et al. (1991) but describes a decline in rural domestic supply. This different economic outcome is due to the dynamics of markets that connect the multiple regions, rather than only modeling the rural region in isolation. The Watson and Davies (2009) model includes a water market that endogenously transfers water between sectors due to urban population growth. In their model, water is a factor input for all sectors of the economy, and as urban population expands, it shifts the demand for water to non-agricultural outputs, resulting in a higher water price. The higher price of water forces the agricultural sector to shift to less water intensive production methods resulting in less output. However, the large urban population demands greater agricultural output offsetting negative supply shift. One weakness of this model is that households and industries are not regionally identified, making it unclear how rural and urban regional economic outcomes differ. The model in Chapter 1 applies a similar endogenous water market driven by urban growth but concludes that rural domestic supply and household income both decline due to regional price variations derived from the multiregional approach. Chapter 2 compares a spatial disaggregated MRCGE model to a single region model that uses the same data to expose the importance of spatial aggregation in CGE modeling. This analysis isolates the influence of how aggregation shapes output, revealing the differences between the two models with identical simulations. The performance of the two models highlights that spatial data must be correctly leveraged by a disaggregated structure to explain unique regional output. This comparison demonstrates that qualities in the analysis are lost when CGE models use larger aggregated regions rather than a spatially sensitive MRCGE approach, which illustrates the importance of modeling spatial details. The water model from Chapter 1 is transformed into a single region model and compared to the original specification. The same data is used in each model, leaving only the regional specification as the structural difference between them. The data used in this model is based on PUMS data that describe community level labor and household characteristics, refining the disaggregated descriptions of regional economies. Additionally, county assessor's data provide parcel level descriptions of land and building values, thus improving the descriptions of residential and business in the model. Each of these data sets refine spatial details, which enhance the multiregional specification. When these details are aggregated into a single region, many of the county level insights are obscured. For example, rural labor markets have greater wage gains compared to similar labor groups in different regions in response to a total factor productivity increase. This outcome is unique to the rural region, and under the aggregated single region model, this labor group does not experience an increase in wages. The model comparison demonstrates how spatial characteristics represented by the MRCGE structure can shape output by preserving spatial characteristics, which determine unique model behaviors that enhance economic analysis. The literature has recognized the benefits of the MRCGE specification. However, the justification for the MRCGE improvements over past aggregated approaches is due to adjusting the older aggregated structure with spatially descriptive data and revealing new outputs. The problem with this approach is that the new model has both a change in structure from a single region to a multi-region, and it includes additional spatial descriptive data. This method cannot determine whether improved spatial data or the spatial disaggregation is responsible for the improvement. To address this, the model presented in Chapter 2 aggregates a disaggregated model so that the spatial data values are the same but have been transformed from spatial to aspatial. This approach allows the spatial structure to be analyzed without the influence of additional data, revealing how this uniquely impacts and shapes the output. Chapter 3 describes how weather motivates skiers to travel from one region to another in the US. It is widely known that skiing benefits from winter conditions and that skiers are willing to travel to other locations to pursue better quality ski experiences. This model considers seasonal weather variations of destination ski areas and the origin weather variables that could impact their decision-making process. Destination and origin weather variables are significant determinants of skier visits, as confirmed by the research. Snow accumulation at a destination can pull greater visits, and colder weather at the origin makes ski trips more appealing. Chapter 3 fits within the broad literature on travel that has focused on weather's influences on travel decisions. The travel literature describes the desirable weather variables that pull travelers towards those destinations. Additionally, this literature provides push variables where the weather of a traveler's origin changes their subjective demand for leaving their home for vacation. The push and pull effects of destination and origin weather have been applied extensively to warm weather destinations, but there are many fewer applications for the winter season and cold-weather destinations. This model tests the push and pull effect for ski areas in the US and confirms that colder, snowy destination weather pulls a greater number of skier visits and that colder weather at a skier origin further pushes them to ski in any region. The gap in the travel literature is also shared by the ski industry studies that have exclusively focused on how destination temperature and snowfall contribute to skier attendance. The ski industry research has not examined how the skier's origin influences attendance. This model addresses the smaller scope of the ski industry research that focuses on one ski area instead of skier behavior across the whole country. Across each of the chapters in this dissertation, spatial details motivate unique economic activity. From western water markets to the differences between rural and urban labor markets to the impact of destination snowfall on skier visits, the inclusion of spatial characteristics improves model analysis and provides key insights into regional research. The diverse application in the following chapters provides strong evidence of the importance of spatial characteristics, highlighting how they shape individual behavior and drive unique research and economic outcomes.
Open Access
The economic impact of Massachusetts healthcare reform on employment
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Blumenshine, Jared, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Mushinski, David, committee member; Costanigro, Marco, committee member
In 2006, the state of Massachusetts pass a law entitled, "An Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care", which reformed the healthcare market within the state in an attempt to achieve universal coverage. This paper attempts to establish a link between healthcare and employment. Using the National Inpatient Sample, North American Industry Classification System and data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, a time series model was created to test the impact of Medicaid and private insurance before and after the implementation of the healthcare reform. Additionally, the state of California is used as a control to ensure the accuracy of the model.
Open Access
The impact and optimization of the urban industrial mix
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Burnett, Perry A., author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor
The industrial mix is a relevant issue facing urban economies as the modern economy transitions from an industrial to a post-industrial service-based. The first essay estimates the changes and effects of density that result from relative variations in urban industrial composition. This essay demonstrates that identical increases in aggregate metropolitan employment originating from growth in individual productive sectors result in different average urban density measures. The results suggest that certain urban characteristics are important in determining density's relationship to productivity and that city finances are strained as cities lose manufacturing and gain service sectors.
Open Access
The use of conditional convergence between economies to estimate steady state incomes within economies
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) DelVecchio, Micah, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Tavani, Daniele, committee member; Braunstein, Elissa, committee member; Costanigro, Marco, committee member
This dissertation introduces a panel data method to estimate country-specific steady state levels of output in an augmented Solow growth model. The use of panel data permits the estimation of a country-specific effect which can explain the surprising result that many developing economies are above their steady states. These empirical results also confirm that the augmented Solow model can explain the present cross-country income divergence of developed and developing economies. Another application finds evidence that the post-Soviet economies began their transition toward markets with initial conditions of overcapitalization. Finally, when the results are sufficient, there is also the possibility of describing an entire period of growth and gaining insights into future periods. This is shown with the OECD economies. In Islam (1995), panel data is first used to estimate the parameters of the Solow growth model. The following year, Cho and Graham (1996) published a small paper which illustrates a simple way to compute steady state levels of per capita income by using the results of cross-sectional convergence tests. This dissertation simply combines these two methods with the result that the interpretations are more satisfying. In sum, we find that countries can begin a period of development above or below their steady states and that countries converging from above should be considered to be overcapitalized. This implies that development through investment can only succeed when there is convergence from below the steady state. Above the steady state, total factor productivity is too low to sustain the relatively high levels of capital. The organization of the dissertation is linear with an introduction preceding the second chapter's literature review and the development of a theoretical and empirical model in the third chapter. The applications of the method then follow. Chapter 4 uses a worldwide sample to compare the result to other work and to show that this fundamental model of growth theory can explain the observed increasing levels of international inequality. Chapter 5 takes a look at the transition economies. In addition to finding evidence of overcapitalization, this dissertation finds a positive correlation between growth and the privatization of small business under transition. Additionally, there is a negative impact of price liberalization under the conditions of repressed inflation experienced by many Soviet-era planned economies. Chapter 6 uses a sample of OECD economies to obtain a significant deterministic, technological growth rate. This is possible because the countries are similar enough to make the assumption that they have the same growth rate more realistic. This enables an understanding of steady states after the initial period and leading into the most contemporaneous period of the sample.
Open Access
Three applications of regional CGE models
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Hannum, Christopher M., author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Shields, Martin, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee member; Villupuram, Sriram, committee member
This dissertation focuses on the development of the basic Colorado (CO) CGE model, a generalized multi-sector, multi-household dynamic, myopic, single region CGE model created for the State of Colorado in GAMS MPSGE. Three model variants are constructed and described, built in order to analyze specific policies in areas of the model for the same region with maximum detail while maintaining general model tractability. The first model variant, the Colorado Real Estate (CO-RE) model, adds significant detail to capital and property markets including one critical feature of such markets not generally found in CGE models - sluggish price and quantity adjustment. The second model variant, the Colorado Energy (CO-E) model adds significant detail to production and consumption of electricity. The third model variant, the Colorado Demography (CO-D) model, adds significant detail to the process of long-run, endogenous demographic change and the production of higher education. The three model variants are used to analyze the impacts on the Colorado economy of, respectively, a transition to alternative workplace strategies, Colorado energy and climate polices and the potential defunding of higher education in the state. This dissertation is an embodiment of and evidence for the greatest strength of the CGE modeling technique - such models are flexible and broadly applicable to nearly any economic issue or phenomenon. Simulation results from the CO-RE model suggest that the economic impacts of a transition to alternative workplace strategies would be modest in terms of macroeconomic aggregates, but positive. The transition results in a fall in investment as shrinking office capital stock outweighs increased investment into other property types. However, the productivity enhancement leads to increases in incomes, consumption and employment that offset the drop in investment. Increases in consumption and employment are small. Within the office property market, effects of such a transition would be dramatic with vacancy rates rising to 40% in and rents falling as much as 80%. A transition to AWS is expected to lead to falling property tax revenues for local governments as the size of the commercial property tax base shrinks. As specified in the CO-E model, given a set of plausible assumptions regarding levelized costs of generation over the lifetime of a project, costs associated with intermittency and future federal subsidies the Colorado renewable portfolio standard has a positive impact on economic aggregates in the state relative to a baseline scenario. The impact of the Clean Air - Clean Jobs Act which accelerates a transition towards natural gas is negative on macroeconomic aggregates. The economy of the State of Colorado is found to be substantially exposed to rising natural gas prices due to decreasing natural gas sector productivity. The RPS is not a job creator, but the RPS adds to consumption and incomes in all scenarios but that with extremely low natural gas prices. The RPS is found to serve as a hedge for the state against rising natural gas prices, and a hedge with positive net benefit in many scenarios. Defunding higher education reallocates money from higher education subsidies to production of government services. The defunding of higher education, by reducing production and consumption of higher education in the state, is found to reduce economic output and total real per capita consumption in the state though it does not always reduce employment in spite of the fact that the baseline scenario includes "excessive" production of higher education that causes the wage premium for college educated workers to fall. When total factor productivity is assumed to rise, the negative impact of defunding increases. Estimates for the real net per capita consumption impact of defunding are found to be sensitive to a variety of plausible parameter estimates for the responsiveness of higher education demand to tuition and the wage premium, though impacts of defunding remain negative.
Open Access
Two essays on regional labor markets for the Denver area
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Wang, Chiung-Hsia, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Mushinski, David, committee member; Shields, Martin, committee member; Weiler, Stephan, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee member
Borts and Stein (1964) and Mathur and Song (2000) presented a general theoretical framework regional growth model, which shows regional growth based on labor demand and supply simultaneously. However, most previous empirical work estimated only either the regional demand curve or regional supply curve due to limited data availability, and nearly all of these empirical works use a reduced form model. The first goal is to build a more inclusive data set, including cost of production, output, demographic data, and dynamic externality indices, so a complete structural regional labor market model can be estimated. The second goal is to use this dataset in two applied studies. The first applied study is the impact of building a new stadium in the Denver area, and the second is a dynamic externality study on regional growth in the Denver area. The results show building a stadium in the Denver area had a positive impact on employment on labor demand in the Construction and Professional, Scientific and Technical Services sectors and had a positive impact on labor supply in the Professional, Scientific and Technical, and Accommodation and Food Services sectors. These results differ from previous research. The next chapter examines the various diversity indices and econometric techniques that have been used in previous studies in determining the local economic growth for the Denver area. This study compares the dynamic externality results directly across different econometric specifications in order to shed light on the issues of possibly omitted variables bias, endogeneity, and simultaneous bias issues. In addition, comparing the various diversity indices could show a sensitivity of index choice which may affect policy makers' decisions regarding regional development policy. The results of this study indicate that the choice of diversity index does affect empirical results. Moreover, different econometric techniques provide mixed results for most diversity indices.
Open Access
Using a computable general equilibrium model to explore economic impacts of agglomeration economies on wages in northern Colorado
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Gongwe, Anne Grace, author; Cutler, Harvey, advisor; Fan, Chuen-mei, committee member; Shields, Martin, committee member; Davies, Stephen, committee member
Agglomeration economies are forces that lead to concentration of workers and businesses in one location, and are also known as external economies of scale. This dissertation explores the economic impacts of agglomeration economies on nominal and real wages using a data intensive computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The dissertation is divided into three essays. The first essay focuses on establishing the impacts of export-led expansions on nominal and real wages for two cities of different sizes and labor market characteristics in northern Colorado. Results of this essay show that when employment is expanded for each sector separately, nominal and real wages increases more in Loveland (a thinner labor market) than Fort Collins (a thicker labor market). A larger number of households are attracted to Fort Collins as opposed to Loveland and this leads to high supply of labor. Increased labor supply causes a downward pressure on wages in Fort Collins. These results suggest that "labor supply effects" outweigh "productivity effects" in the thicker labor market. The second essay analyzes the performance of nominal and real wages when two cities of different sizes and labor market characteristics are exposed to various levels of production externalities. The results demonstrate that when sector-specific export demand and production externalities is increased, the nominal and real wages increase more in Fort Collins than Loveland supporting previous studies findings that productivity increases with city size. The results also reflect that wages increases more with the level of production externalities. The results also show that different sectors are impacted differently with the same economic shock, making sector-wise analysis more appropriate than the aggregate analysis. The third essay has two major parts. The first part focuses on the economic impacts of consumption externalities on nominal and real wages. The results show that an increase in sector-specific export demand and level of migration elasticity increase nominal wages in all labor groups in all three productive sectors with the exception of labor group three in the retail sector in both cities. The second part of this essay focuses on the net economic impacts of production and consumption externalities wages in these two cities. The results show that nominal wages and real wages increase in all sectors for all labor groups except for the higher skilled workers in the retail case in Loveland. Results also show that, the nominal and real wage increase is less with the higher level of consumption externalities. These results suggest that when the level of consumption externalities is sufficiently higher than production externalities, real wages will decrease.

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