Browsing by Author "Pena, Anita, committee member"
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Item Open Access Bitcoin price formation: an empirical investigation(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Light, Aric, author; Tavani, Daniele, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee memberCreated in 2008 and rising to prominence in 2017, Bitcoin continues to generate controversy as to whether it is a speculative asset or the harbinger of a future of global, decentralized commerce. The focus of this paper is to investigate the properties of Bitcoin and its market by assessing asset specific factors (users, hash rate, etc.) and traditional market factors (market risk, currency risk, etc.). The objective is to quantify the impacts of these forces as drivers of Bitcoin returns and to develop a risk measurement framework with the potential to inform future use cases. The analysis is broken out into two parts. The first seeks to quantify the impact of asset specific "supply and demand" factors with respect to Bitcoin's daily price return and volatility and to determine the relative efficiency of the nascent Bitcoin market. To do this a GARCH model is specified which enables the measurement of return impacts and volatility within a single model. A back test and forecast are then conducted to determine if the conditional value at risk and expected shortfall can be accurately captured by the model. We determine the Bitcoin market is weakly efficient, returns are highly impacted by supply and demand factors and that the specified value at risk model accurately describes the exceptional volatility. The second part incorporates a set of macro-financial variables into the model to determine Bitcoin's exposure to traditional sources of risk; such as stock and currency market returns. The results show that Bitcoin is largely unimpacted by broad macro-financial variables once supply and demand variables are properly accounted for. This suggests that although Bitcoin is a weakly efficient market it is generally disconnected from worldwide capital and currencies market. This further suggests that Bitcoin may have currently limited "real world" use cases which is an important consideration for investors.Item Open Access Climate shocks, adaptation policies, and human health in developing countries: an application to India(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Kishore, Siddharth, author; Manning, Dale, advisor; Suter, Jordan, committee member; Hill, Alexandra, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee memberMy dissertation is on climate change, policy adaptation, and human health in a low-income nation. Specifically, I focus on the impact of climate change on maternal and child health in India using secondary and spatial climate data. I use an advanced econometric approach to estimate causal effects. Rural economies in developing countries revolve mainly around agriculture, and many agricultural production operations depend on monsoon rains. Food shortages due to weather-induced crop failure, and the resulting nutritional deprivation can have a negatively impact on maternal and child health. Two of my dissertation chapters are dedicated to understanding the impact of climate change on maternal and infant health. Then there are the drought-relief programs. One is a workfare program, which is very important to the developing world. One of my dissertation chapters explores how the work program may influence the use of contraceptives. My results suggest that: (1) workfare programs have an effect on the use of family planning methods for rural Indian women; (2) higher soil organic carbon moderates the adverse effect of rain shock on children's health; (3) an early childhood exposure to drought is linked to the prevalence of disability later in life. These results help us understand the impact of climate change on human health in developing countries.Item Open Access Determinants of deforestation in Vietnam, 2008 – 2015(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Tran, Thai Binh, author; Roberts, Anthony, advisor; Mao, Kuoray, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee memberNew methods including satellite data, geographic information systems (GIS), and remote sensing processing have discovered human expansion over forest areas referred as forest degradation. This study acknowledges these findings but insists on using official data to address some drawbacks of previous studies. These drawbacks include (1) the focusing on limited areas, Central Highlands areas, instead of a national scale, (2) exclusion of resources trade from the analysis, (3) lacking consideration of the spatial and longitudinal autocorrelation, which is overlooked in panel analysis; and (4) the inconsistency of the relation between poverty and deforestation. This research investigated the effects of land-use change from agricultural expansion and timber extraction, resources trade, and community poverty on province-level forest coverage in Vietnam from 2008 to 2015 using panel and spatial autoregressive modelling. After accounting for resources trade, effect of agricultural expansion as well as forest extraction disappear. In addition, panel analysis suggests no covariate along poverty rate affects forest coverage while the spatial analysis suggests literacy rate and agricultural land are also have significant effects.Item Open Access Economic effects of oil and gas development on child health in Colorado(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Ekoh, Susan S., author; Seidl, Andrew, advisor; Suter, Jordan, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee memberThe oil and gas industry is a huge contributor to the economy of many countries and states worldwide. Even though the industry creates jobs and income, debates continue surrounding the environmental and human costs of the industry. There are many health concerns in particular because studies have shown that there is the potential for water and air pollution from emissions that are generated through oil and gas production processes. This study aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on this issue by exploring the potential economic effects of oil and gas development on child respiratory health. Using state in-patient data from the Agency for Research and Health Quality (ARHQ)-Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), I estimate difference-in-difference results to measure the potential effects of oil and gas production in Colorado over time, between the years 2004 and 2013 and for children between ages 0 and 19. Results reveal that over time from 2004 until 2013, oil and gas had no significant effect on child respiratory health. For individual years, results for 2013 show significant effects. The overall lack of effect of oil and gas development on child respiratory health from this study could be that the respiratory cases reported were as a result of factors other than air pollution from oil and gas activities.Item Open Access Economic essays on wildlife-aircraft conflict in the United States(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Navin, Jordan, author; Weiler, Stephan, advisor; Anderson, Aaron, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee member; Mushinski, David, committee memberWildlife-aircraft conflict poses a substantial economic and safety threat in the United States (US). Dolbeer, Wright, Weller, Anderson, and Begier (2014) estimates direct costs related to wildlife strikes burdened the US economy by approximately $157 million annually between 1990 and 2014. In 1995, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) collaborated on a project with the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Wildlife Services to investigate the magnitude and nature of the wildlife strike problem, ultimately resulting in the creation of the National Wildlife Strike Database (NWSD). However, reporting strikes (and associated information, such as repair costs) to the NWSD is not mandatory, and information used to calculate economic damage estimates from wildlife strikes in the US relies on voluntarily reported cost data. This dissertation focuses on the direct costs of wildlife strikes in the US and the associated disclosure behaviors of large domestic American airlines. Chapter 1 investigates the relationship between the likelihood of voluntary repair cost disclosure after a wildlife-strike event by such airlines and market competitiveness and idiosyncratic firm profits. Results show changes in competitiveness and profitability impact the voluntary disclosure of wildlife-strike repair costs by major US airlines to the NWSD. Chapter 2 similarly examines airline voluntary disclosure accuracy, employing emerging methods from economics and accounting literature that test the accuracy of self-reported data based on a statistical property exhibited by large datasets, known as Benford's Law (de Marchi & Hamilton, 2006; Dumas & Devine, 2000; Nigrini, 1996; Zahran, Iverson, Weiler, & Underwood, 2014). Analogous to Chapter 1, findings indicate the accuracy of repair costs American air carriers report to the NWSD is linked to market competition and profits. Chapter 3 relates to developing a method for interpolating missing repair costs in the NWSD using machine learning techniques. Results show that a neural network outperforms both linear regression and random forest models when predicting out-of-sample data, and furthermore, interpolating missing costs in the NWSD with a neural network delivers an average annual estimate of the direct costs of wildlife strikes in the US that is approximately $75 million, significantly less than prior estimates. Specifically, the neural network approach yields estimates $19 and $82 million lower, respectively, than when using mean cost assignment and Dolbeer et al. (2014)'s reported estimate derived using a variation of the same method.Item 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 memberGiven 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.Item 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 memberTo view the abstract, please see the full text of the document.Item Open Access Evaluating the efficiency of conservation efforts: a frontier regression approach(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Keenan, Andrew, author; Kling, Robert, advisor; Anderson, Aaron, committee member; Goemans, Chris, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee memberConservation efforts in the United Kingdom began in 1949 with the Nature Conservancy Act. The goals of this legislation were to preserve natural areas and areas inhabited by threatened and endangered species, as well as provide the opportunity for research. The objective of this thesis is to apply stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to better evaluate the efficiency of threatened and endangered species conservation efforts. SFA will build upon previous analysis that uses cost-utility analysis to measure the effectiveness of a Species Action Plan (SAP). This new application of a SFA will help improve the assessment of efficiency of government programs, and is an improvement from existing conservation efficiency measures because the analysis does not require assumptions of the value of a species. The absence of assumptions on value helps the analysis reflect actual funding decisions and better allows for interspecies comparisons. The results will not only provide a more robust analysis, but also have practical application in evaluating the efficiency of a species recovery and give conservation efforts a better measurement tool. With an effective efficiency measure in place, programs will be better judged and shifts in funding or changes to specific plans are possible.Item Open Access Food insecurity among immigrant populations in the United States(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Norris, Caroline, author; Berning, Joshua, advisor; Cleary, Rebecca, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee memberAs households immigrate to the United States, abrupt environmental changes may impact household food security, health, and productivity. Persistent, cultural food preferences may affect a household's ability to achieve food security when removed from their country of origin, resulting in a higher incidence of food insecurity (FI) for immigrant households. Alternatively, a positive immigrant self-selection effect could result in healthy, wealthy, and highly motivated households deciding to immigrate, thus leading to a scenario where immigrant households are less likely to be food insecure than their native counterparts. Using a subsample of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, this study compares food security levels between immigrant and non-immigrant populations in the United States across Chinese, Indian, Mexican, and African immigrant populations and across varying household compositions. To compare the food security status of particular immigrant groups with their respective native counterparts, we implement a coarsened exact matching (CEM) method to match households on various observable characteristics. Following CEM, we estimate a linear probability model for each subgroup of matched strata, with immigrant status acting as the variable of interest. Additionally, we employ an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to decompose differences in FI that are explained by mean native/immigrant differences in household characteristics and the relationship of those characteristics to FI. I find that immigrant populations vary greatly in FI incidence across both country of origin and household composition, and that the drivers of differential FI also varies between groups. For immigrants from Mexico and West Africa, immigrant status is associated with a 3.53% and 7.59% decrease in the likelihood of achieving household food security respectively. Conversely, for immigrants from India and China, immigrant status increases the likelihood of achieving food security, at 5.98% and 2.51% respectively. Among Mexican immigrants, differential characteristics are the primary driver of the gap of food security, namely differences in education and occupation endowments. For Chinese and West African immigrants, however, differential returns to characteristics are the primary drivers of the gap in food security.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 Modeling tax competition in developing countries: a theoretical and empirical analysis(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Nguyen, Hiep Quang, author; Mushinski, David, advisor; Braunstein, Elissa, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee member; Kroll, Stephan, committee memberWhile much attention has been paid in the literature to tax competition in developed countries, little research has focused on tax competition among developing countries. These two groups of countries are very different, even opposite in many aspects of tax competition. One cannot apply research results in developed countries to developing countries. This dissertation fills that gap in current literature. The paper develops theoretical models of tax competition for developing countries and empirically tests the theoretical results using a sample of data from developing countries. The paper discusses an asymmetric tax competition model where countries are different in capital, labor, total factor productivity, investment in public inputs, unemployment rate and foreign aid. The paper provides insights into the existence of tax competition and the impact of the several variables on tax competition in developing countries. The empirical models test theoretical results with dataset from 63 developing countries. A spatial econometric model is used to estimate tax competition in developing countries. The paper found several theoretical and empirical results related to tax competition in developing countries that have not been addressed in previous literature. Unemployment rate and foreign aid affect tax competition in multiple ways. Foreign aid can create both tax competition and fiscal competition. Tax competition is stronger in high unemployment rate countries. The results also confirm the existence of tax competition in developing countries in both statutory and effective corporate tax rates. Countries compete differently over these two rates. Productivity, investment in public inputs, trade openness, education, exchange rate and population variables affect tax competition behavior in developing countries. With theoretical and empirical results, the paper presents several policy implications for governments in developing countries. Appropriate tax competition policies provide developing countries the opportunities to attract more investments and to gain faster economic growth.Item Open Access Potential economic implications of a U.S. – ASEAN FTA on agriculture(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Miller, Chelsey Alexandra, author; Countryman, Amanda, advisor; Hill, Alexandra, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee memberThe Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is both an agricultural trade partner of the U.S. and a key contributor to the global agricultural market. The implementation of a free trade agreement (FTA) between the U.S. and ASEAN has the potential to reduce or eliminate tariffs on agricultural commodities. This research employs a computable general equilibrium modeling framework to simulate the economic implications of agricultural trade liberalization between the U.S. and ASEAN. Results focus on simulated changes in import quantities and prices, agricultural export sales, production, GDP, and welfare in the U.S. and ASEAN given the full elimination of tariffs on agricultural trade between the two partners. Results show that the U.S. is expected to generate a net welfare gain of $1.9 billion, while the ASEAN region is likely to have a net welfare loss of $415 million.Item Open Access Potential impacts of hard infrastructure development on agricultural trade(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Al-Maamari, Aaisha, author; Countryman, Amanda, advisor; Thilmany, Dawn, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee memberThe development of hard infrastructure has the potential to enhance agricultural production and international agricultural trade. Good quality physical networks could reduce the transport costs for producers and suppliers, thereby increasing the volume of agricultural bilateral trade. For most countries, tariff rates, transport costs, geographic drawbacks, and other nontariff barriers are considered to be the most significant potential impediments to trade. This study estimates the role of hard infrastructure on agricultural bilateral trade among North and Latin American countries, as one determinant of transport costs. By using panel data for agricultural imports from 2006 to 2014, we measure the potential impact of the quality of overall hard infrastructure as well as specific modes of transport networks such as roads, railroads, ports and airports infrastructure on the prevalence and patterns of agricultural trade. A modified gravity model of trade has been used to measure the impact of different trade barriers on the trade of food, animal, vegetable and aggregated agricultural products. Results show that the distance between countries and hard infrastructure are statistically significant and play an important role in determining transport costs as well as the variation in agricultural bilateral trade. For both aggregated and disaggregated agricultural trade, the estimated coefficients show that exporters' infrastructure has a larger impact on trade than importers' infrastructure. Results show that a 10 percent improvement in the quality of an exporters' hard infrastructure may increase total agricultural import volume by 8.6 percent, while a 10 percent improvement in importers' hard infrastructure may increase aggregated agricultural imports by 6.0 percent.Item Open Access The economic consequences of health shocks(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) McKee, Sophie, author; Zahran, Sammy, advisor; Mushinski, David, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Stallones, Lorann, committee memberThis dissertation is composed of three chapters which examine the extent of reverse causation or the causal pathway in going from health to financial components of social economics status (SES) on the heath-SES gradient in Western Europe. In Chapter 1, I construct two population health metrics for survey-based data suitable for analysis across time and populations. To do so, I combine objective health indicators with the information available in the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset regarding health functioning and prognosis, and develop a strategy to assess and quantify a multidimensional concept of health that minimizes the influence of subjective factors (country, wave, age, and labor status) in the assessment process. The first variable, Health Stock, is an objective comprehensive health metric, which is a composite of an individual's level of function at a point in time as well as their expected transition to other levels of health in the future. The second variable - referred to as Functioning Stock – is restricted to the objective measures of an individual's level of function. In Chapter 2, I investigate the short term impacts of negative health shocks on the labor outcomes of working individuals across levels of education and country of residence in Western Europe. I propose a new definition of negative health shock as the onset of a decrease between two consecutive periods in the Functioning Stock, whose magnitude exceeds a given threshold (in percentage terms). The analysis identifies three countries (Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain) that are best at mitigating the occurrence of negative health shocks, other things held equal. I then show that on average in the European countries examined, labor outcomes are dose-responsive with the intensity of the health shock, and that the impact of a health shock is "U-shaped" across levels of education: compared to workers with a medium or high levels of education, the probability of having work as the only source of personal income ("working only") for low-skilled workers and for college-educated workers is less affected by the occurrence of a health shock. Assuming the loss of earned income is not fully compensated by benefits, we could infer that in the short term, reverse causation for negative health shocks could be steepening the slope of the SES-Wealth gradient for workers with the middle range level of education. I then investigate the cross-country variation in the magnitude of the impact of a health shock on the probability to continue "working only". First, we find that the rates of people left without labor income or benefits are extremely low in every country considered, indicating that social safety nets are effective. Without delving into the complexities of the country-specific social insurance systems and the associated variation in benefit generosity, it is impossible to conclude on the relative magnitude of reverse causation across countries. However, two groups of countries stand out by the way workers maintain a connection to employment following a decline in health. In Switzerland, where health impaired workers have the highest probability to continue working, the short term impact of reverse causation is smallest. A hybrid labor force status is prevalent in Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and to a lesser extent in France and Denmark, where a substantial fraction of health impaired workers start receiving benefits but do not sever ties completely with work. In Chapter 3, I investigate the determinants of the probability of working in the second period for middle-age male individuals in Western Europe, examining in particular the weight of their work force status in the first period. I show that the impact of the initial work force status is magnified in the case of an improvement in health: individuals whose mental or physical capacities improve and who were working while receiving benefits are about 25% more likely to have work as their only source of income in the following two-year period than comparable individuals whose health did not improve. By contrast, these numbers hover around zero for males who had severed all ties with work, confirming the existence of a benefit trap. Flexible benefit schemes that enable work and the receipt of benefits appear to perform the dual function of catch and release: such schemes cushion individuals from the impact of a decline in health with the receipt of benefits while maintaining an attachment work, allowing closer alignment of the individual’s work trajectory with their preferences and capacities. As European populations age and become more frail, results from this dissertation suggest that the impact of reverse causation should steepen the health-wealth gradient, particularly for individuals with secondary school education. To limit this effect, public policies should (1) mitigate the occurrence of health shocks in the first place, (2) support individuals who wish to continue working as long as they are physically and mentally able, and (3) offer hybrid solutions that incentivize work together with the receipt of benefits to health impaired individuals. Other European countries could draw on the experiences of Switzerland and Sweden, who have proven to be most successful at implementing such policies.Item Open Access The effects of undocumented immigration on the employment opportunities of low skill natives in the United States(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Schultz, Russell W., author; Shields, Martin, advisor; Weiler, Stephan, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Davies, Stephen, committee memberThe economic effects of immigration have been well studied, but the majority of this research has not attempted to isolate the effects of undocumented immigration. Isolating this effect is a difficult task because dearth amounts of data exist for these individuals. This paper provides a substantial contribution to the economic impact of immigration for two reasons. First, it emulates a methodology adopted by notable immigrant demographers to generate annual state level estimates of the undocumented population between 1994 and 2010 in the United States. These estimates alone are very important to this topic because no other entity has attempted to accomplish this task. Secondly, this paper incorporates these estimates into a fixed effect dynamic model to capture the economic impact of undocumented immigrants on low skill native labor force participation rates (LFPR) and unemployment rates across the United States between 1994 and 2009. Overall, undocumented immigrants have a menial impact on the native low skill LFPR and do not affect low skill unemployment rates. Additionally, the methods used in this paper allow us to isolate the effects of documented immigrants on the same native low skill employment indicators. The results suggest that documented immigrants do not have a statistically significant effect to either low skill employment indicator, which is also an important conclusion.Item 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 memberThis 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.Item Open Access Three essays on regional economic development(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Deming, Kristopher, author; Weiler, Stephan, advisor; Barbier, Edward, committee member; Pena, Anita, committee member; Thilmany, Dawn, committee memberThis dissertation explores factors that contribute to regional economic growth. The first two chapters focus on one of the key drivers of regional economic growth: entrepreneurship. In the first two chapters I examine how the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) contributes to entrepreneurship. Chapter 1 focuses on the labor demand side of regional entrepreneurship, finding the introduction of state EITC policies reduces the number of new establishments and the number of establishment expansions relative to counties in states without such a policy. In Chapter 2, at the individual level, I find that increasing the amount of the EITC increases the likelihood that the child of the credit recipient becomes a business owner as an adult. The third chapter focuses directly on what caused economic growth in Pre-Colonial India. I propose that the introduction of a New World crop, a form of an agricultural productivity shock, caused economic growth in India. I find that the introduction of maize did contribute to economic growth in Pre-Colonial India.Item Open Access Water quality and fishery impacts(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Wilson, Michelan, author; Barbier, Edward, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Tavani, Daniele, committee member; Manning, Dale, committee memberFishery production is an important source of income for many people across the world. Marine and freshwater fisheries provide jobs in local communities and is also important for trade in both developing and developed economies. Climate change and human activities pose a threat to the fish production by changing habitat quality. Changes in fish production have direct impacts on economic welfare (consumer and producer surplus) and the goal of fishery management is to improve both biological and economic fishery outcomes. This dissertation explores the relationship between fish production and various water quality indicators in the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence (EGSL) and examines the economic impact of changes in water quality in fisheries. It examines the pathways through which water quality impacts fish stocks and subsequent impacts on harvest and economic welfare, and suggests policies for fishery management. Chapter one examines the impact of water quality in a marine fishery under regulated access. It particularly focuses on how hypoxia impacts welfare in a large fishery that has different degrees of hypoxia. Chapter two examines water quality in a freshwater fishery and focuses on the direct and indirect mechanisms through which nutrient pollution impacts fisheries. Finally, chapter three acts as an extension to chapter one, examining the impact of hypoxia on a marine species with an additional assumption that the impact of this water quality indicator may be different at different life stages, which may change the possible welfare impacts of variations in water quality.