In the Shadow of War: Assessing Conflict-Driven Disruptions in the Kyrgyzstan-Russia Labor Pipeline via a Gradient Boosting Approach to Nowcasting
by Michelle K. Schultze Abstract Kyrgyzstan, where remittances made up 30% of GDP before the Russo-Ukraine war, is central to understanding Russia–Central Asia labor migration. Wartime trends, however, are obscured by informality and limited Russian data. This study introduces a novel “nowcasting” method using XGBoost and Yandex Wordstat, a Russian search query database largely overlooked […]
Reel Representation: The Economic Impact of Gender on Bollywood Box Office Revenue
by Sidharth Ravi Abstract The Hindi Film Industry, known as Bollywood, is seen as a gatekeeper of Indian culture. Annually thousands of films are produced, half a million workers across India are employed and millions in revenue is created. Although Bollywood has ensured increased employment and wage opportunities for women on and off screen, the […]
How Foreign Direct Investment Impacts Domestic Productivity: The Case of Vietnam
by Minh Phuong Nguyen Hoang Abstract Foreign direct investment (FDI) has long been known as a vital driver of economic growth in many developing countries by providing capital boosts, generating employment, and introducing advanced technology. This paper focuses on a more long-term economic impact of FDI — the productivity spillover effect — in the specific […]
Economic Effects of the War in Donbas: Nightlights and the Ukrainian fight for freedom
Paper available to internal Duke affiliates only upon request. Professor Charles Becker, Faculty Advisor Professor Grace Kim, Faculty Advisor JEL Codes: F51; H56; O52; N44 View Data
The Impact of Conflict on Economic Activity: Night Lights and the Bosnian Civil War
by Stephanie Dodd Abstract The tendency of violent conflict to suppress economic activity is well documented in the civil war economic literature. However, differential consequences resulting from distinct characteristics of conflicts have not been rigorously studied. Utilizing new conflict data on the 1992-1995 Bosnian civil war from Becker, Devine, Dogo, and Margolin (2018) and DSMP-OLS […]
Investigating the Impact of Chinese Financing on Productivity in the African Continent
By Kedest Mathewos Given that productivity is a key component of long-term economic growth and that China has become an important source of external financing in Africa, this study aims to investigate the impact of Chinese foreign direct investment and government-to-government loans on productivity. Using a panel of the top fourteen African recipients of […]
Investigating the Costs of Religious Observance: Cross-Country Analysis of Islamic Banking
By Myla Swallow and Richard Vargo This study regresses key variables that influence the profitability of Conventional and Islamic banks as measured by Return on Average Assets, to determine the impact of Islamicity on the profitability of the banks in a given country. The study compares 36564 banks in 77 countries belonging to both Islamic […]
Asylum Determination within the European Union (EU): Whether Capacity and Social Constraints Impact the Likelihood of Refugee Status Determination
By Louden Paul Richason This paper analyzes whether capacity and social constraints impact acceptance rates for asylum seekers in the European Union from 2000-2016. Theoretically people should receive asylum based on the criteria outlined in international law – a well founded fear of persecution – but the influx and distribution of applicants in the European […]
The Future of Economic Geopolitics: Network Effects in Intercultural Trade
By Joshua Curtis Using a regression discontinuity design on a gravity model of trade among 36 Middle Eastern and East Asian countries between 1980 and 2014, this study demonstrates network effects in trade. A small improvement in trade between subsets of two cultural blocs diminishes the effect of cultural similarity on trade between all members […]
The Impact of a Fixed Exchange Rate Regime on Growth and Volatility in an Oil-‐‑dependent Economy
By Shihab Osman Malik and Faisal Bandar Alsaadi This study examines the relationship between the fixed exchange rate regime, economic growth, and output volatility in oil-‐‑producing Saudi Arabia over the post-‐‑Bretton Woods period (1973–2016). We assess the implications of the current exchange rate regime on macroeconomic and growth performance, and evaluate its sustainability in the […]
