An Analysis of Passive and Active Bond Mutual Fund Performance
By Michael J. Kiffel and Surya Prabhakar The literature on the performance differential between passively and actively managed equity mutual funds is thorough: passively managed funds generally outperform their active counterparts except in the rare presence of highly-skilled managers. However, there exists limited academic research regarding fixed income mutual funds. This study utilizes the Fama-French […]
The Effect of Competition on Strategic Discharge at Long-Term Acute-Care Hospitals
By Michael Karamardian Because Medicare’s prospective payment system for long-term acute-care hospitals (LTCHs) makes a large lump-sum form of payment once patients reach a minimum length-ofstay threshold, LTCHs have a unique opportunity to maximize profits by strategically discharging patients as soon as the payment is received. This analysis explores how the level of competition between […]
Global Warming and Obesity: The Effect of Ambient Temperature on BMI
By Aakash Jain Previous research has shown that ambient temperature affects human metabolism and behavior. Inspired by these findings, this study examines the effect of lagged annual temperatures in the United States on average reported BMI. The results indicate that higher temperatures in the future will lead to increases in average BMI. A conservative estimate […]
The Impact of Environmental Disamenities on Property Values: Evaluating the Municipal Fringe
By Ryan B. Hoecker This paper analyzes the municipal fringe of cities in Eastern North Carolina between 2006-2016, and how the values of individual properties on the outskirts can fluctuate after they are incorporated within a city. A large portion of the research process consisted of manually recreating annexation ordinances from scanned photocopies on ArcGIS, […]
Measuring the Long-term Effects of Orphanhood
By Nicholas Thomas Gardner This paper works towards developing the narrative of orphans whose parent or parents died from natural disaster. By taking advantage of the unanticipated nature of death from the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, orphanhood can be treated as much closer to random than similar literature using data centered on HIV/AIDS related deaths. We […]
24K Magic: Evidence on Maternal Asset Ownership and Children’s Long Term Outcomes in Indonesia
By Maya Durvasula Household resource allocation in response to economic shocks is of central importance for policy makers, especially given widely documented evidence of gender biases. In this paper, I exploit a plausibly exogenous shock to maternal asset holdings in Indonesia to examine gender biases in resource allocation in the wake of the 1998 East […]
What Fosters Innovation? A CrossSectional Panel Approach to Assessing the Impact of Cross Border Investment and Globalization on Patenting Across Global Economies
By Michael Dessau and Nicholas Vega This study considers the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on innovation in high income, uppermiddle income and lowermiddle income countries. Innovation matters because it is a critical factor for economic growth. In a panel setting, this study assesses the degree to which FDI functions as a vehicle for […]
Are Hollywood Stars Worth the Price Tag?
By TJ Cole and Chris Foote We investigate the effect of a lead actor’s popularity on the profitability of films. Google search data is used as a proxy for actor popularity. We then investigate if lead actor’s popularity has a different effect on movies that are not part of a sequel or franchise, and those […]
Regulatory Uncertainty: The Impact of the 2015 Open Internet Order on Broadband Infrastructure Investment
By Dane Bourcy Burkholder and Chin Jie Lim This paper analyzes the impact of the United States Federal Communication’s (FCC) March 2015 Open Internet Order (OIO) on broadband infrastructure investment outcomes such as changes in speed of services, market entry. We find that higher broadband investment levels deter potential entrants and may weed out competition […]
Reforming Turkey’s Judiciary to Meet European Union Standards: A Cost-Benefit Analysis
By Alican Arcasoy Membership in the European Union has long been a goal of the Turkish Government. The economic benefits of access to the single European market are highly attractive for a developing country like Turkey. However, joining the European Union requires a number of costly reforms. The institutional, political, and economic changes demanded by […]
