The Impact of Population Mobility on repayment Rates in Microfinance Institutions
By Allison Vernerey and Johan Hörnell Several studies have attempted to model the determinants of repayment rates for group-based loans administered by micro-finance institutions (MFIs). One of the main variables that have been identifies as playing a role in determining the repayment rate is social capital. Empirical research however has struggled with quantifying this qualitative […]
Is the Blind Side Tackle Worth It?: An Analysis of the Salary Allocation of the NFL Offensive Line
By Kelly Froelich The importance of the left tackle position in comparison to the other offensive line positions in the National Football League (NFL) has been widely debated amongst sports commentators, as the left tackle is traditionally the second highest paid player on a football team behind the quarterback; yet, this debate lacks empirical findings. […]
Fiscal Multicointegration and Sustainability in OECD Economics
By Rajlakshmi De Policies surrounding government expenditures and revenues are often concerned with the size of the national public debt and whether it is sustainable or unsustainable by employing the multi-cointegration framework and assertion corresponding criteria for sustainability. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Portugal, and Austria are found to exhibit sustainable fiscal policies during the […]
Tax Evasion and Tax Morale in Latin America
By Sofia Becerra Taschetti Tax evasion throughout the world is widely endured, but not widely understood. The decision making process of the taxpayer may include many concerns outside of the monetary payoffs. The tax compliance decision considers social norms and social sanctions in addition to deterrence levels. The goal of this paper is to illuminate […]
The Impact of Macroeconomic Surprises on Mergers & Acquisitions for Real Estate Investment Trusts
By John Battinelli and John Reid This paper examines the impact of various macroeconomics and real estate specific surprises on M&A transactions involving Real Estate Investment Trust. The 2008 financial crisis drastically affected merger & acquisitions activity, especially within the real estate market. The number of M&A transactions involving Real Estate Investment Trusts were very […]
Forecasting Beta Using Conditional Heteroskedastic Models
By Andrew Bentley Conventional measurements of equity return volatility rely on the asset’s previous day closing price to infer the current level of volatility and fail to incorporate information concerning intraday influntuctuations. Realized measures of volatility, such as the realized variance, are able to integrate intraday information by utilizing high-frequency data to form a very […]
Federal and Industrial Funded Research Expenditures and University Technology Transfer licensing
By Trent Chiang In this paper I relate the numbers of university licenses and options to both university research characteristics and research expenditures from federal government or industrial sources. I apply the polynomial distributed lag model for unbalanced panel data to understand the effects of research expenditures from different sources on licensing activity. We find […]
The Role of Income in Environmental Justice: A National Analysis of Race, Housing Markets, and Air Pollution
By Christopher Brown Historically, evidence has shown that minority populations in the United States suffer a disproportionate burden of pollution compared to whites. This study examines whether this burden could be the result of income disparities between whites and minorities, acting through the housing market. We look at 324 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA’s) in the […]
Evaluating the Motivation and Feasibility Theory in Predicting the Onset and Severity of Civil Conflict
By Ishita Chordia This paper looks at 187 countries from 1960-2004 and explores the economic indicators of the onset and the severity of civil conflicts, where civil conflicts are described as small clashes that result in 25 or more battle deaths per conflict. For conflict onset, I test a model that uses the Motivation Theory […]
