Department of Economics
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A reassesment of minimum wage impacts with pooled synthetic control.
(2018-04-30)I analyze state minimum wage increases with pooled synthetic control. State minimum wages are deferentially binding depending on the level of the federal minimum wage. These results are consistent with but more robust than ... -
Does Medicare increase opioid drug usage? A regression discontinuity study.
(2018-04-22)Recently, the overuse of opioid medications in the United States has garnered national attention, spurring many leaders to declare it a national epidemic. Medicare Part D provides prescription drug coverage for various ... -
The impact of hiring chief diversity officers on college student diversity.
(2018-04-26)Diversity has become an increasingly important component of American education. In the past decade, many postsecondary educational institutions have established long-term goals to increase minority representation and ... -
How has the effect of the WTO on bilateral trade changed over time?
(2018-05-01)Using the most recent data set on bilateral trade from 1962 to 2015 and a Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator with and without country-pair fixed effects, this thesis shows the overall effect of WTO/GATT ... -
State-level political party effects on the war on drugs.
(2018-04-17)The United States' drug arrest rate and incarceration rates have been increasing steadily for over two decades. Additionally, there is a general perception that Republicans are "tougher on crime" than Democrats. This thesis ... -
Unintended consequences of well-intended regulation : the procyclical effects of the Basel I capital regulations on the U.S. banking industry.
(2018-04-20)Numerous solutions have been posed to address the risks that fractional reserve banking systems cause for depositors. The newest regulatory trend to combat these issues has been capital regulation. Many critics have accused ... -
Romneycare : a boon to employment.
(2017-11-28)Using Massachusetts Healthcare Reform passed in 2006 we explore the casual effect that universal insurance has on labor market outcomes in the healthcare care industry. Using aggregated data, we find an increase in employment ... -
Effects of debt relief under the enhanced HIPC Initiative and the MDRI on developing countries using a time-shifted difference-in differences strategy.
(2017-06-28)The IMF and World Bank launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative in 1996 to alleviate the debt overhang problem in developing countries. They amended the program to the Enhanced HIPC Initiative in 1999 ... -
Payday bankruptcy.
(2017-07-19)Payday loans are short term small dollar amount loans that are easy to acquire. Using 1997-2015 U.S. Courts data from all 50 states and Washington D.C., I analyze the effect of payday lending bans on non-business personal ... -
International trade and economic growth : a network perspective.
(2017-07-31)International trade is a complex network of import and export relationships, which is commonly referred to as the World Trade Network. It displays many topological characteristics that were recently suggested to be tightly ... -
Dollarization and growth : a synthetic control approach to Ecuador and El Salvador’s cases.
(2016-04-21)This thesis examines the impact of full dollarization on economic growth in Ecuador and El Salvador by employing the synthetic control method. We find that, relative to the counterfactual built, these currency substitutions ... -
Religion and economic growth : an analysis at the city level.
(2016-05-02)This paper looks at the effect of religious beliefs on economic growth using a Brazilian city-level survey data as opposed to the more popular country-level data, thus separating the effect from different social and ... -
A baseline admissions prediction model with textual analysis and confidence interval estimations.
(, 2014-09-05)Essays submitted out individuals applying to Baylor University may contain hidden information that would assist the admissions department in their decision to accept the appicant. Through textual analysis, this paper ... -
Impact of childhood exposure to family problem gambling on adult gambling pathology.
(, 2014-06-11)Does the apple fall far from the tree? Proverbs 22:6 says: "Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it." One theory from the social sciences termed Social Learning Theory would ... -
The determinants of Chinese housing price inflation.
(, 2013-05-15)Housing prices in major Chinese cities have been soaring since 2003. Some economists believe that this represents a dangerous speculative bubble while others argue that Chinese housing price inflation is a normal consequence ... -
What did you say? The effect of language distance on international service trade.
(, 2012-08-08)Service trade is more heavily dependent on communication than commodity trade because its production and consumption occur simultaneously. "Linguistic distance," a measure of how closely the majority languages of two nations ... -
Unintended consequences : how agricultural subsidies are fueling the drug trade.
(, 2011-12-19)The United States has historically subsidized its farmers directly and indirectly through a variety of different methods. In recent years, there has been evidence that OECD agricultural subsidies are leading farmers in ... -
Determinants of faculty salaries at elite liberal arts colleges.
(2011-01-05)In this paper we focus on the determinants of faculty salary levels at elite liberal arts colleges for specific years over the past decade. We address the role regional personal income per capita and endowment play in ... -
Valuing the environment : a comparison of Western Europe, the US, and Canada.
(2011-01-05)Using the World Values Survey, we evaluate the differences in environmental preferences between the United States and two other global leaders, Western Europe and Canada, in order to discover whether there is evidence, at ... -
Export sophistication and catching up.
(2010-10-08)The catching up model predicts that countries who continue to increase technology through economic policies will experience sustained growth and success in closing the gap between themselves and the current technology ...
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