Browsing by Subject "Applied economics"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

An analysis of the impacts of electricity subsidy removal on subsistence rice farmers in Tamil Nadu, India.
(2012-01) Lundberg, Jon David
Abstract summary not available
Distributional analyses on diet quality in the United States
(2014-08) Smith, Travis Alan
This dissertation takes a distributional approach to examining dietary quality in the United States. Diet quality is a direct input to health, is often used as a proxy for well-being, and is an outcome variable for a wide variety of economic interventions. This makes diet quality a particularly important, yet understudied, outcome for program evaluation and describing food bundles that individuals choose. The first chapter describes the evolution of adult dietary quality in the U.S. over the last two decades. Contrary to popular wisdom, there have been statistically significant improvements at all levels of diet quality. For the population as a whole, we find significant improvements across all levels of diet quality. Further, we find improvements for both low-income and higher-income individuals alike. Counterfactual distributions of dietary quality are constructed to investigate the extent to which observed improvements can be attributed to changes in the nutritional content of foods and to changes in population characteristics. We find that 63% of the improvement for all adults can be attributed to changes in food formulation and demographics. Changes in food formulation account for a substantially larger percentage of the dietary improvement within the lower-income population (19.6%) as compared to their higher-income counterpart (6.4%). The sheer myriad of overlapping policies and public awareness initiatives during this time period make it difficult to pin down the exact causes behind such improvements. This chapter motivates two program evaluation studies in the two chapters that follow.The second chapter estimates distributional effects of food consumed at school and away from home on child dietary quality. Using a fixed-effects quantile estimator, two non-consecutive days of food intake are used to identify the effect of eating away from home and at school. I find considerable heterogeneity in the estimated impacts. The study finds that food away from home, as compared to home-prepared food, has a negative impact on the distribution of dietary quality except at low quantiles. Main results suggest that school food has both positive and negative impacts across the distribution of dietary quality. I find positive impacts on dietary quality at low quantiles of the outcome distribution, whereas food from school has a negative impact at the upper end of the distribution of diet quality. While food consumed under the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs may not benefit every child, especially the average child, it does improve the diets of many children who otherwise would have poorer dietary quality. The implication is that U.S. schools are fertile grounds to improve nutrition skill formation, especially for the most nutritionally disadvantaged. This final chapter estimates the effect of replacing food assistance benefits, which typically come in the form of a food voucher, for an equal value of cash on the quantity and quality of food consumed in a household. We utilize an experiment in which a portion of beneficiaries were chosen at random to receive their benefits in the form of cash. We take a distributional approach because we believe it is important to analyze low-consuming households separate from high-consuming households. We find some evidence that a cash system would increase kilocalorie consumption in the portion of the distribution below recommended levels of consumption and decrease consumption in the portion of the distribution well above any reasonable threshold. This finding implies that a cash transfer system may both alleviate food insecurity and decrease overconsumption. The cash system appears to have a positive impact on the distribution of dietary quality in quantiles above 40. Virtually all of the improvement in quality comes from a decrease in consumption of less-healthy foods by the cash receiving group. Overall, these findings imply that beneficiaries are no worse off under a cash transfer system and in fact, may be better off.
Does public capital spur private investment in developing economies?
(2014-10) Zoff, Mark Steven
What drives private investment in a country is a question of paramount importance to both researchers and policy makers. Additions to a country's private capital stock help drive both faster growth and faster wealth creation, which often creates many positive spillover effects for a country's populace. In a study of twenty-two developing countries over a total of 660 country-year observations utilizing vector error correction models, this report found preliminary evidence that public capital stock growth positively caused growth in future values of the private capital stock in a country. Additionally, this study found that changes in the level of the population and changes in the strength of political institutions also caused changes in the level of the stock of private capital in a developing country. Tentative causal evidence also existed for changes in the domestic credit to the private sector as a share of GDP, financial openness, and the size of the economy causing changes in the stock of private capital in a country. Policy makers in developing countries should focus future efforts on improving the quality of their institutions and providing high quality infrastructure, both traditional and social, if they want to help increase their country's private capital formation and, consequently, growth.
Economics of air pollution: policy, mortality concentration-response, and increasing marginal benefits of abatement
(2014-12) Goodkind, Andrew Lloyd
This dissertation examines the economics of air pollution in three essays. The first two essays consider the implications of the possibility of increasing marginal benefits to pollution abatement. The third essay integrates a new model of air dispersion with an economic model to estimate the marginal damage caused by criteria pollutants in the United States. In the first essay, the optimal abatement policy is derived for a scenario with increasing marginal benefits of abatement and uncertainty in the marginal cost of abatement. Pollution taxes are preferred over quantity restrictions when marginal benefits are increasing in abatement. The second essay uses simulations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) dispersion and compares optimal source-specific pollution control policies with pollution concentration standards and uniform pollution taxes. Optimal policies for PM2.5 regulation yield substantial advantages over uniform policies that do not discriminate based on the location of emissions. The simulations also consider the shape of the concentration-response (C-R) relationship between PM2.5 pollution and mortality. With a log-log C-R, where marginal benefits of PM2.5 abatement are increasing, society should prefer fewer emissions and lower PM2.5 concentrations than if the C-R is log-linear, where marginal benefits of abatement are decreasing.The third essay estimates the marginal damages of criteria pollutant emissions for hundreds of the most heavily polluting sources in the U.S. Marginal damages vary substantially depending on the location of the emission source. The calculation of marginal damages is highly dependent on the choice of air dispersion modeling, the C-R relationship, and the value assigned to mortality caused by environmental risks.
Essays on agricultural production, risk, and productivity
(2015-02) Rao, Xudong
This dissertation takes two different research perspectives to address the central theme of agricultural production and productivity. The first two essays focus on household production, which, as the primary form of agriculture to date, not only affects the welfare of individual rural families but also food supplies on a global scale. Agricultural productivity hinges largely upon farmers' choice of technology, inputs, and management strategies. Specifically, the first two essays investigate land fragmentation, a common farming practice worldwide, and evaluate its impacts on agricultural production. Chapter 2 argues that land fragmentation enables farmers to reduce risk by diversifying production among discrete plots of land which may be subject to heterogeneous growing conditions. Using Tanzanian household survey data, this essay finds robust evidence to support a risk-reduction hypothesis and indicates that land fragmentation is positively associated with production efficiency. Chapter 3 develops a production model that incorporates risk, production efficiency, and risk preferences and shows that land fragmentation may encourage risk-averse farmers to increase labor intensity, thereby leading to higher efficiency. It is also shown that exclusion of risk preferences from efficiency analysis may lead to biased or even misleading estimates. The second focus of this dissertation is an assessment of the published evidence on the payoffs to investments in agricultural research and development (R&D). The related two essays focus on methodological as well as policy issues underlying the agricultural R&D evaluation literature. Specifically, Chapter 4 scrutinizes the prevailing internal rate of return (IRR) measure and argues that it is based on implausible assumptions that often lead to inflated estimates of the returns to research. This essay develops a novel method for recalibrating the reported rates of return using a more plausible modified internal rate of return (MIRR) measure and derives more modest estimates. Using the detailed information collected for each R&D evaluation, Chapter 5 examines how the wide variation in the reported IRR estimates can be explained by factors such as research type, research focus, commodity type, institutional aspects of the research, target region, and methodological specifications. The findings have important implications for future agricultural R&D policy as well as R&D evaluation methodologies.
Essays on natural resources management with potential regime shift
(2014-10) Ren, Bijie
This dissertation includes three essays on natural resources management with potential regime shift, which is a rapid and persistent change of ecosystem processes leading to decline in the economic value of natural resources. The first essay analyzes the impact of a regime shift that reduces the natural growth of a renewable resource and shows that aggressive management is optimal under reasonable conditions. This is in contrast to the precautionary principle discussed in recent literature of resource economics. The second essay focuses on the allocation of risk of regime shift. It is shown that the regime shift that only threatens a portion of the resource stock causes more aggressive management, and the effect of regime shift changes non-monotonically as the share of threatened stock increases. The third essay considers a duopolistic resource market where the regime shift has asymmetric effects on two Cournot players' private resource stocks. Some examples are used to show that Cournot competition causes distortions that depend on the relative sizes of two Cournot players' stocks and the share of stocks that are under the threat of regime shift. It is found that the largest loss in social welfare occurs in the case where the regime shift affects the entire stock of one Cournot player's stock and has no impact on the other Cournot player's stock.
“How cash for clunkers has affected low-end used car prices”
(2012-05) Rubin, Bess Michelle
On June 24, 2009, President Obama enacted the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009. The goals of this act were to increase the average fuel efficiency of vehicles on the road, to reduce vehicle emissions pollution, and to stimulate the economy (NHTSA, 2009). Within the act was the creation of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) that offered consumers the opportunity to turn-in their less fuel efficient vehicles in exchange for credit toward a new vehicle purchase. The CARS program became more widely known across the United States as the Cash for Clunkers program. This study aims to look at a potential unintended side effect of the program—the increase in affordable used car prices as a result of the Cash for Clunkers program’s impact on the supply of used vehicles, and in turn what this price increase could mean to low-income families looking to low-cost used vehicles as a solution to their transportation hardships. This research will examine the effects of Cash for Clunkers on the retail price of the top ten vehicles turned in by participants of the program. Automobile characteristics and other economic indicator variables were placed into pooled OLS, random effects, and fixed effects panel studies in order to separate out the effects of the program on used car prices after the program’s initialization in July, 2009.The results of the studies show that despite obvious increases in used car prices since the program’s initialization, the Cash for Clunkers program has had a minuscule impact on the price of used cars. On average, used car prices increased $13 as a result of the program.
Investigating the choice of transaction channels and national trade among U.S. nurseries.
(2011-05) Guo, Xiaofang
This thesis includes two projects: investigating the transaction channel choices by U.S. nurseries and national trade among U.S. nurseries. Alternative transaction channels including trade show, telephone, in-person, mail, and internet sales contribute to the growth of nursery crops in the United States. However, literature about the choice of transaction channels on nursery crops over time is sparse. In our study, we investigated the impacts of nurseries’ business characteristics, product characteristics, locations, and promotional activities on the sales through different transaction channels. Based on the national survey data of 2003 and 2008, we used Tobit models to investigate the main factors that affect the sales of plants through five transaction channels: trade show, telephone, in-person, mail and internet. We found that the firms’ choice of different channels changed over time; plant type affected the channel choice and different promotional activities also affected the choice of different channels. Based on national survey data of years 1998, 2003 and 2008, we used augmented gravity models to investigate the main factors affecting the trade value for both large and small nurseries. We found that the impact of distance on trade value was different between large nurseries and small nurseries; the impact of distance on nursery trade has been decreasing over time; and the impact of distance on nursery trade differs across regions. Additionally, nursery trade value was affected by plant types the nurseries carried and other business characteristics.
The irrational investor’s risk profile.
(2011-05) Mooreland, James Jay
Abstract summary not available
Land market integration, structural change, and smallholder farming in Zambia
(2014-08) Larson, Andrew Mark
As developing economies grow, structural transformation affects not only sector shares of labor, value added, and consumption, but also intrasector marketing channels. One of the most dramatic examples of this transformation is in the evolution of food marketing channels in countries such as Zambia. Reardon's supermarket revolution research shows how supermarkets enter and transform food marketing channels in historically short periods of time compared to the earlier experience of developed nations. This study employs a dynamic general equilibrium model to examine the effect of this structural transformation story on smallholder farmers in Zambia. Two policy experiments are carried out against the baseline case.In the first experiment, the bifurcation of Zambia's agricultural land markets prevents smallholder farmers from participating in modern food marketing channels. High transaction costs in terms of time and financial resources make conversion of customary land into commercial land title prohibitively expensive for smallholder farmers. The simulated conversion of land title, without changing ownership, instigates a reallocation of capital and labor resources in the modeled economy that benefits smallholders in their roles as producers and household owners of factors of production. With the increase in commercial land area, labor becomes scarce and farm production becomes more capital intensive, thus increasing labor productivity and smallholder household income. This analysis highlights the importance of integrating land markets and giving smallholders an effective increase in the range of their resource allocation decisions.In the second experiment, constraints to smallholder participation in modern food marketing channels are relaxed in order to understand the effects on not only smallholder farmers, but also on Zambia's factor and output markets. Participation in modern marketing channels allows smallholders to supply not only greater downstream value-added processors, but also the world wholesale market. The results show that policies to open modern channels to smallholders benefit smallholders as households and producers.
Measuring geographic access to higher education: a county-level analysis.
(2012-04) Haynes, Monica R.
This thesis defines college access measures that are dependent on county of residence, rather than individual student characteristics. Access to college was quantified by determining the physical availability (college seats, distance to nearest institution) and prices (minimum and average tuition) that students would face within driving distance from their county of residence. While geographic measures have been used in previous research, most have used state-wide measures, if at all, whereas this analysis uses weighted county-level measures, a technique that is more precise than any previously implemented. The results suggest that, of the access measures included in the analysis, lower minimum tuition levels do the most to improve educational attainment regionally. Proximity to public two-year institutions seem to provide the greatest benefit to associate-level degree attainment, particularly in areas with large Hispanic populations, whereas proximity to four-year public institutions provide the greatest benefit to bachelor’s degree attainment. Finally, four-year minority serving institutions are more effective at serving their target populations, and also provide benefit to the entire region, regardless of race.
Minnesota highways: revenue sink or revenue source.
(2011-06) Coyle, David D.
This paper looks at VMT (vehicle miles traveled) fees along public finance principles, and considers the policy implications and potential revenue that could be generated if we took advantage of one of our most valuable resources: the highways. Instead of seeing highways and all roadways as a revenue sink, this thesis envisions them as a significant revenue source. Demand models for VMT both at the national and state level are estimated, and used to estimating the potential revenue that could be raised through VMT fees. This thesis explores the possibilities, both at the federal level and for the state of Minnesota, of using VMT fees to not only provide funds for the highways and other transportation purposes, but to also provide a significant revenue source for general funds. It is shown, that for relatively low and economically harmless VMT fee levels, great amounts of revenue could be raised. These revenues could not only fund the transportation system, but could save the state of Minnesota from harmful program cuts or tax increases, and could potentially help avert a fiscal crisis that could derail the United States‟ economic rebound.
The role of Tribal Colleges and Universities in the improving Native American post-secondary education.
(2011-05) Lee, Hyun Koo
This thesis examines the role of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) in improving Native American post-secondary education in counties that Native Americans comprise 5 percent or more of the population, or that they have more than 500 Native Americans in their populations. This thesis presents evidence that increased access to TCUs, using distances to measure access, helps post-secondary education of Native Americans. As a community college, TCUs have both democratization and diversion effects, and the thesis indicates that democratization effects outweigh diversion effects.
Trade flow of U.S. recalled consumer products: a gravity model analysis
(2014-09) Lindgren, Brian James Swanson
This paper examines the hypothesis that the trade flow of recalled products and harm caused by recalled products will conform to economic theory in a similar way as the flow of goods in general. A Bergstrand-based gravity model is used in the analysis. My application uses a novel data set that includes measures of U.S. consumer product recalls from 2006 and 2007. The results of the analysis show that the flow of recalled goods corresponds to theory. The type of consumer products imported into the U.S., as well as those later recalled, are found to tend to be labor intensive. Better exporting country institutions corresponded to a relatively greater amount of goods later recalled.

University Digital Conservancy

Browse by Subject

Browsing by Subject "Applied economics"