Variability in Jury Awards for Noneconomic Damages in Motor Vehicle Negligence Cases
By Max Cherman I analyze the efficiency of jury awards for noneconomic compensatory damages awarded to automobile accident victims suffering nonfatal injuries bringing motor vehicle negligence tort claims. Data from 1002 Jury Verdict Research (JVR) case abstracts was narrowed down to 218 observations of plaintiffs receiving noneconomic damages awards at trials involving motor vehicle negligence […]
Patrolling the Future: Unintended Consequences of Predictive Policing in Chicago
By Jenny Jiao In the past decade, police departments have increasingly adopted predictive policing programs in an effort to identify where crimes will occur and who will commit them. Yet, there have been few empirical analyses to date examining the efficacy of such initiatives in preventing crime. Using police and court data from the […]
How Expensive Is This Suit? An Analysis of Corporate Litigation Settlements and Brand Value
By Jenny Y. Zhang Two recent corporate trends include a rise in litigation and companies’ increased emphasis on branding. This paper examines whether there is a relationship between the two phenomena by analyzing corporate litigation outcomes and brand value. Specifically, I examine law suits resulting in a settlement in order to determine whether a company’s […]
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 […]
Does Media Coverage of Sexual Assault Cases Cause Victims to Go to the Police? Evidence from FBI Data and Google Trends
By Harry Elworthy This paper investigates the effect that national news coverage of prominent sexual assaults has on the reporting decisions of sexual assault victims. Estimates are based on time series data of reports made to police stations in the US from 2008 to 2016 and Google Trends data of search volume, along with an […]
Evaluation of the Impact of New Rules in FCC’s Spectrum Incentive Auction
By Elizabeth Lim, Akshaya Trivedi and Frances Mitchell On March 29, 2016, the FCC initiated its first ever two-sided spectrum auction. The auction closed approximately one year later, having repurposed a total of 84 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum. The “Incentive Auction” included three primary components: (1) a reverse auction where broadcasters bid on the price […]
Small Bidder Preferences in FCC Spectrum Auctions
By Alexandra Zrenner and Chidinma Hannah Nnoromele The Federal Communications Commission faces a congressional mandate to ensure the participation of small business in its spectrum auctions. The FCC addresses this mandate using preferences for small bidders. This paper examines the impact on auction competition and outcomes of two preferences: bid credits and closed licenses. Bid […]
Security Without Equity? The Effect of Secure Communities on Racial Profiling by Police
By Jack Willoughby Anecdotal and circumstantial evidence suggest that the implementation of Secure Communities, a federal program that allows police officers to more easily identify illegal immigrants, has increased racial bias by police. The goal of this analysis is to empirically evaluate the effect of Secure Communities on racial bias by police using motor vehicle […]
Marijuana Pricing Structure and State-Level Price Determinants
By Rebecca Li This study uses the PriceofWeed.com data set first examined in Thies (2012) to analyze the price-quantity relationship for marijuana transactions and to determine the effect of various state-level factors on marijuana prices. By applying the cost-based full fixed cost recovery pricing model developed by Britney, Kuzdrall, and Fartuch (1983), this paper finds […]
Market Power & Reciprocity Among Vertically Integrated Cable Providers
By Jeffery Shih-kai Shen This paper seeks to investigate the effects of vertical integration on the cable industry. There are two main goals that the research paper will attempt to address. The first is to build upon existing research on favoritism shown by multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to affiliated video programming networks. Second, the […]
