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Vol. XIX, Spring 2007

August 9, 2007 / Leave a comment

The Duke Journal of Economics is published each year to showcase outstanding research in economics by Duke undergraduates. This volume contains both honors theses and essays. The articles are examples of research written by Duke Undergraduates at various stages of their economics education at Duke. Honors theses which were presented at the 2006 undergraduate research symposium and are to be published in the special edition of the Duke Journal of Economics devoted to that symposium are not included here.

The Allen Starling Johnson, Jr, award for the best thesis was shared by R. Selin Dilmenter and Tzuo Hann Law. Dilmenter’s thesis “A Theory of Evacuation as a Coordination Problem” is published in the symposium issue of the DJE, and Law’s thesis, “The Elusiveness of Systematic Jumps,” is published in this issue.

We dedicate this issue to the memory of Peggy East. Peggy joined the Duke economics department in 1979, serving as secretary and eventually the administrative assistant and continuing to return to help after her retirement from full time work. At our service in her honor this spring several members of the department spoke. We include their reflections on Peggy here. At the service Tom Nechyba announced that henceforth the economics department conference room would be known as “The Peggy B. East conference room.” Her name is on the door and her picture on the wall facing those of the past chairs of the department.

Some honors theses lead to publication in the profession’s peer reviewed journals. Pauline Abetti (Duke BS, Economics, 2006) will be publishing a revision of her honors thesis, “Congressional Voting on DR-CAFTA: A Focus on Environmental Lobbying” in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Economic Policy Reform.

Five undergraduate and master’s students wrote book reviews in the spring of 2007, which have been scheduled for publication in scholarly journals. We are delighted that their critical skills are being appreciated by the profession. These are:

Indra Astrayuda, On the Wealth of Nations, by P.J. O’Rourke. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006. Econochannel (published by State University of Jakarta, Indonesia) forthcoming in September 2007 and also on the journal’s website.
Simon Blank, A Corporate Solution to Global Poverty: How Multinationals Can Help the Poor and Invigorate Their Own Legitimacy, by George Lodge and Craig Wilson. Princeton University Press, 2006. Journal of Economic Ideas.
Agung Budilaksono, East Asia, Globalization, and the New Economy, by F. Gerard Adams, Routledge, 2006. South Asia Economic Journal, (published in India) forthcoming in September 2007.
Katelyn Donnelly, The Marketplace of Christianity, by Robert B. Ekelund, Robert Hébert, and Robert Tollison. MIT Press, 2006. History of Political Economy.
Annah Peterson, Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier, by Harry G. Broadman, The World Bank, 2007. Africa Today, forthcoming in early 2008.

Our department is pleased when undergraduates organize house seminars for themselves and other undergraduates. Joshua Kazdin developed and chaired a course titled “Investment, Political Economy and Economic Regionalism in Asia.” The syllabus for that course is available on the “Open Courseware for the Study of China’s Economy” website: http://ics.nccu.edu.tw/eced/eocw/.

We congratulate the students mentioned above and the authors of the research presented in this issue.

Thanks go to Chris Genwright, who put the journal online.

Charles Becker & Ed Tower, Faculty Advisors to the Journal

Honor’s Theses

Occupation Segregation and Gender Earnings Differentials in Slovenia by Arup Banerjee

Cultural Capital in Ghana: How the Cooperative Maximizes its Potential to Create Locally Driven Economic Development in Rural Communities by Dan Baum

A Case Study on the Informational Role of Futures Markets: Can Weather Futures Forecast Electricity Consumption? by Ying Chiat Ho

An Empirical Study of the Anticommons Effect on Public vs. Private Researchers by Serena S. Lam

The Elusiveness of Systematic Jumps by Tzuo Hann Law

Modern ART: Determining a Couple’s Most Cost-Effective Embryo Transfer Decision by Theresa A. Poulos

Articles

Cursed by Bounty: The Natural Resource Curse and Policy Recommendations to Correct the Curse by Nick Anderson

The Impact of Globalization on U.S. Workers: Discussion of the Issue in American Society by Ikee Gardner

Innovation, Parallel Trade, and the Pharmaceutical Industry by Owen Gehrett

Modifications and Implications of Pricing Models: A Study of Assessed Property Values in Durham County, North Carolina by Meg Kedrowski

TRIPS and the Pharmaceutical Industry: A Welfare Analysis by Ashley Kustu

Hydrogen Fuel—An Economically Viable Future for the Transportation Industry? by Toby Kraus

Growth: A Tale of Trade by Sanjay Narayan

Symposium Edition 2007

August 9, 2007 / Leave a comment

The Fifth Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium was held on Friday, April 20 and Saturday, April 21, 2007, in the Social Sciences Building on Duke’s campus. This year, 13 papers from five North Carolina colleges and universities were presented. This was the first year that students from Wake Forest, Salem College, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte presented papers at the Symposium, and we hope that students from these institutions will continue to submit papers in the coming years.

Financial economics was the most popular topic area this year, with five papers. Three of the five papers investigated the behavior of particular financial prices. Michael Stanley focused on a new approach to modeling the moment-to-moment movement of prices of large stocks in “High Frequency Jump Characteristics of Large Capitalization Common Stocks.” In her paper, “The Value of Unsolicited “Buy” Recommendations to Investors,” Angela Aldrich used event-study methodology to analyze the behavior of small stocks that are touted by so-called spam emails. Tyler Patla compared pricing behavior between traditional bookmaking markets and electronic exchanges in his paper, “The Effect of Market Structure on Pricing Efficiency: An Empirical Study of Sports Betting Markets.” Two other financial economics papers focused on interesting questions in corporate finance. Chris Lin presented his paper “Corporate Swap Use and Its Effect on Swap Spreads,” while Amrith Krishnakumaar presented his paper entitled “Which Method of Pricing and Selling IPOs, Book-building or Auctions Might Be More Effective in Promoting an Issuer’s Aims?” All of these financial economics papers were authored by Duke students.

Several papers used economic analysis of large microeconomic data sets to examine current educational and social policy questions. Eddy Leal of Duke presented “Public Education in Puerto Rico: Does Class Size Matter?” which featured hard-to-obtain data on the performance of individual schools in Puerto Rico. Jessica Sprinkel of Wake Forest, who worked with the huge Census Bureau data sets, presented “Breaking Down Increasing Income Inequality in the U.S. over the Past Decade.” Stephen LaFata of Duke presented “Maternal Labor Decisions and the Effect on Adolescent Behavior,” which used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. And Andrew Nowobilski, also of Duke, utilized several microeconomic data sets in order to construct data for his paper, “Running from Money? The Puzzle of Bars and Liquor Stores Locating in Black Neighborhoods.”

Two papers also examined current policy questions, but used non-empirical methods of economic inquiry to produce interesting and distinctive analyses. David Hansen of UNC-Charlotte used both philosophical arguments as well as theoretical analysis to examine the economics of eminent domain in his paper, “Kelo vs. New London: Economics and Ethics.” And Xanthine Basnet, of Salem College, used case study evidence she collected on a study trip to Nepal in her paper entitled “Microcredit Strategies and Their Challenges in Nepal.”

The two remaining papers developed theoretical models. Ryan Wesslen of UNC-Chapel Hill built a macro model that incorporated his idea that social constraints on women’s opportunities were relaxed as countries industrialized, and that this affected economic performance. His paper was entitled “An Endogenous Dynamic General Equilibrium Model of Fertility: England 1881-1931.” Selin Dilmener of Duke, on the other hand, built a microeconomic model to explain why some people refuse to evacuate when a hurricane is forecast to land on their city. Her paper was called “A Theory of Evacuation as a Coordination Problem.”

Congratulations and thanks go out to all the authors, who wrote outstanding papers and gave polished and clear presentations. Special congratulations go to Selin Dilmener, whose excellent paper was perfectly matched by her enthusiastic and well structured presentation. She won the Best Paper Prize. Andrew Nowobilski earned the runner-up prize for his paper and presentation, both of which compressed a staggering volume of work into an interesting and accessible package.

Connel Fullenkamp
Faculty Sponsor