Corporate Governance in State-Owned and Privately-Owned Enterprises
by Despoina Chouliara
Abstract
In this paper I examine the principal/agency relationship in corporate governance and introduce it in a steady state growth model. More specifically, I will model a profit-maximizing privately-owned enterprise and a series of state-owned enterprises with varying economic goals. I will use the insights of agency theory to revisit the debate about public versus private ownership with the objective of exploring how ownership a↵ects a firm’s performance and whether the sole objective of profit-maximization is optimal for the firm and the aggregate economy. Hence, the scope of this paper is to enhance our understanding of the channels through which corporate governance influences the aggregate economy.
Professor Pietro Peretto, Faculty Advisor
Professor Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: D2, D21, O40
Inflation Volatility and Economic Growth: A Disaggregated Analysis
By Nicholas Becker
Inflation volatility has been theorized to negatively affect real economic growth, but empirical analyses have returned somewhat mixed results. Constructing my own dataset of household group inflation rates by disaggregating and linking Consumer Expenditure Survey data with Consumer Price Index data, I analyze inflation volatility and economic growth from the ground-up. Calculating inflation volatility using a moving-window methodology, I find: 1) significant heterogeneity of inflation volatility across household groups; 2) a negative correlation between inflation volatility and economic growth from 2000-2012 for all household groups, with a stronger negative correlation at lower income levels; 3) a positive correlation between volatility and growth during expansions and a negative correlation between volatility and growth during recessions. Results suggest reducing inflation volatility and refining policymaking to account for the heterogeneity of inflation volatility could improve growth over the longrun. Further analysis is warranted.
Advisor: Nir Jaimovich, Alison Hagy | JEL Codes: E31, E32, O40 | Tagged: Inflation, Economic Growth
After the Storm Impacts of natural disasters in the United States at the state and county level
By Danjie Fang
Empirical research on the impact of natural disasters on economic growth has provided contradictory results and few studies have focused on the United States. In this thesis, I bridge the gap by examining the merits of existing claims on the relationship between natural disasters and growth at the states and county level in the U.S. I find that climatological and geophysical disasters have a small and negative impact on growth rates at the state level, but that this impact disappears over time. At the county level, I find that tornados have a slight but negative impact on per capita GDP levels and growth rates over a five year period across three states that experience this natural phenomenon. Controlling for FEMA aid, I find that there may be upward omitted variable bias in regressions that do not include the amount of aid as a variable. I find evidence that FEMA aid has a small but positive impact on growth and per capita GDP levels at both the county and state level.
Advisor: Christopher Timmins, Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: O11, O40, Q58 | Tagged: Aid, County, FEMA, Natural Disasters, State, United States
