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Fintech has been promoted as a tool for financial inclusion and in turn income inequality reduction. While previous research in large has shown a negative relationship between Fintech adaptation and income inequality there are discrepancies regarding whether this is the case across countries. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to answer if financial inclusion through an increase in active Fintech users reduce income inequality and if the relationship differs across regions and income groups. The study is based on cross sectional data for 86 countries, primarily sourced from the World Bank’s Global Findex and World Development Indicators databases. The relationship between Fintech and income inequality is initially estimated through an OLS multiple variable regression, but due to endogeneity issues a 2SLS instrument variable regression is employed. The results find a statistically significant negative relationship between Fintech and income inequality of -0,32 for the entire sample. A similar negative relationship is however only present among higher income countries and in Western Europe and North America, suggesting that Fintech may not be a panacea for income inequality reduction.

Thesis advisor: Joseph Quinn / The ease of spread of COVID-19 has posed a great challenge for governments, public health officials, and healthcare workers around the world. Leaders and officials need to make decisions that protect the health and well-being of their citizens, while balancing their rights as citizens and the stability of their economies. This study conducts a review of literature on COVID-19, the Spanish Flu, and the Swine Flu in an effort to understand the economic and health impacts of pandemics. Results show a clear trend suggesting the poor bear a greater burden of the impact of pandemics in regards to economic and health impacts. Further analysis suggests that these inequities are not limited to the United States healthcare system and remain apparent in national single-payer healthcare systems, like in the United Kingdom. To prevent similar disparities in future pandemics, governments should attempt to decrease inequality present in baseline health and economic measures. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Department Honors and Scholar of the College. / Discipline: Economics.

Technological progress, human capital, and tax policies play an important role in growth. Recent models of endogenous growth based on technological progress predict that high technological progress and growth are associated with a high relative supply of skilled workers who earn constant or relatively low wages. Chapter 1 of this dissertation reviews recent models of endogenous growth. The 1980s, however, are associated with high technological progress, high relative supply and increasing relative wages of skilled workers. Chapter 2 of this dissertation shows that, unlike most recent endogenous growth models, high rates of technological change can be accompanied by a high relative supply and a high relative wage for skilled workers. This chapter looks at the relative wage of educated to uneducated individuals within the same generation in an overlapping generations model. Individuals live for two periods and decide whether to invest in education in the first period of their lives. As more individuals invest in education, the wage of unskilled workers increases, increasing the opportunity cost of education. At the equilibrium, to make the individuals who invest in education indifferent between education and work, the intra generational relative wage of educated individuals must increase Chapter 3 studies the local stability of the relative wage model. It shows that the unique equilibrium can be a sink, source, or saddle point. The numerical examples study the effects of an increase in the productivity of education on the entire trajectory of investment in education. Chapter 4 looks at the effects of different types of taxes in an economy in which the allocation of resources is inefficient. It shows that different types of taxes affect the long run growth rate differently. In our setting, taxing income from human capital employed in final good production allocates more human capital to R&D, and increases the growth rate of the economy. However, this is a very selective tax, and the conclusion depends on the production function. / Ph. D.

The category of the entrepreneur has been increasingly adopted as a social identity in Brazil, a country where even the term ‘entrepreneurship’ was absent from ordinary language until recently (Melo, 2008). Where did this category come from? How does it disseminate in Brazil? And how do people come into contact and experience it? Research suggests that the end of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a socioeconomic agenda, policies, and discourses that placed entrepreneurship and the associated values of individualism, self-reliance, and enterprise culture in evidence (Audretsch, 2007; Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999; Gilbert, Audretsch, & McDougall, 2004; Keat & Abercrombie, 1991). These studies leave largely unaddressed the concrete mechanisms through which the category of the entrepreneur diffuses to the Global South. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature by applying an analytical framework that shines a spotlight on the practices of organizations that promote entrepreneurship in Brazil. Taking Empretec, Endeavor, and Online Networks of Support as case studies, I draw conceptual and methodological insights from policy diffusion and institutional analysis, science and technology studies, and organizational studies (Stone, 2012; Callon, 1998; Tomaskovic-Devey & Avent-Holt, 2019) to analyze data generated through interviews and content analysis. I argue that controversial aspects of post-War knowledge associated with the category of the entrepreneur gave way to an institutionalized normative and seemingly neutral depiction of the entrepreneur. I show how a growing number of organizations deploy varied strategies to encourage entrepreneurship and constitute entrepreneurial subjects in Brazil. It results in new groups performed across gender, racial, and class lines, with varying symbolic capital, and receiving support of different magnitude. Organizations that promote entrepreneurship are thus central in the dissemination of the category of the entrepreneur, but they inadvertently create a system of distribution of resources that exacerbates social inequalities.

archives@tulane.edu / This dissertation examines how fiscal policy affects gender inequality using a comparable and comprehensive framework and data from Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Uruguay. Using the harmonized household microdata provided by the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Institute at Tulane University, this study assesses how fiscal policy in these countries affects households and beneficiaries with gender equity as the focus. This is the first cross-country comprehensive gendered fiscal incidence analysis evaluating the impact of direct and indirect taxes (including consumption taxes and subsidies), direct and indirect subsidies (e.g., cash transfers), and in-kind education and health transfers combined. The study reveals that male breadwinner households are more disadvantaged pre and post government intervention as compared to female breadwinner households. However, female headed households are more disadvantaged than male headed households. In fact, female headed households are the most severely disadvantaged group compared to any other gender variable. In all countries analyzed in this study, fiscal policy as a whole does improve the wellbeing of those who are more disadvantaged pre fisc (i.e., the poor, defined as those who earn less than US$5.50 PPP per day) regardless of their gender. Further research is needed to determine why female breadwinners are better off than male breadwinners, but female headed households are more disadvantaged than any other type of gender household classification. Additionally, more research should be done to determine the most effective gender variables necessary to assess fiscal policy. / 1 / Samantha Greenspun

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Subsampling is an important method in the analysis of Big Data. Subsample size determination (SSSD) plays a crucial part in extracting information from data and in breaking the challenges resulted from huge data sizes. In this thesis, (1) Sample size determination (SSD) is investigated in multivariate parameters, and sample size formulas are obtained for multivariate normal distribution. (2) Sample size formulas are obtained based on concentration inequalities. (3) Improved bounds for McDiarmid’s inequalities are obtained. (4) The obtained results are applied to nonuniform subsampling in Big Data high dimensional linear regression. (5) Numerical studies are conducted. The sample size formula in univariate normal distribution is a melody in elementary statistics. It appears that its generalization to multivariate normal (or more generally multivariate parameters) hasn’t been caught much attention to the best of our knowledge. In this thesis, we introduce a definition for SSD, and obtain explicit formulas for multivariate normal distribution, in gratifying analogy of the sample size formula in univariate normal. Commonly used concentration inequalities provide exponential rates, and sample sizes based on these inequalities are often loose. Talagrand (1995) provided the missing factor to sharpen these inequalities. We obtained the numeric values of the constants in the missing factor and slightly improved his results. Furthermore, we provided the missing factor in McDiarmid’s inequality. These improved bounds are used to give shrunken sample sizes.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第20147号 / 経博第545号 / 新制||経||280(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)准教授 遊喜 一洋, 教授 劉 徳強, 教授 神事 直人 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM

Female and minority innovators raise fewer resources from investors for novel ideas, even when their ventures are similar or identical to those of all white male teams. This disparity is concerning for investors aiming to identify value-creating opportunities. Evaluating the potential of innovation requires making decisions on innovators and their ideas in conditions of uncertainty where information on past performance is unavailable. Under these conditions, evaluators typically rely on easily-accessible ascriptive characteristics to make decisions – which perpetuates demographic disparities in innovation contexts. Extant research has examined mitigation strategies focused on the resource-seeker – how resource-seekers can pitch their ideas to overcome investor biases. Few have examined the system itself: how investment organizations’ collective evaluation processes shape the diversity of founders that receive venture investment. How do the evaluation processes investment organizations use shape the demographic diversity of innovators funded? To examine this overarching question, I conducted field research and two field experiments with one global VC fund/accelerator hybrid organization, and its broad, global, co-investor network across different phases. I produced a dataset of over 170 hours of observational data, interviews with 98 investors, and experimental data with close to 3,000 investment decisions on startups in which $320,000 was invested. Leveraging this data, I identified moments in investment organizations’ evaluation processes that inhibited commensuration across startups, and produced demographic disparities in collective investment decisions. I theorize the importance of the role of investor inquiry during evaluation, and test how changes to organizations’ evaluation templates can affect both individual investor’s processes of inquiry and real investment decisions. I identified a causal link between tiny tweaks to investment organizations’ evaluation templates and increased investments in startups with female founders. Rather than focus on how to prepare startups for evaluation, which can produce short-term outcomes that may be only relevant to a specific set of investors, my research explores a more systemic question: how can organizations change their systems of evaluation? These contributions are relevant not to only entrepreneurship theory and practice, but also to organizational scholars interested in cultivating diversity, equity and inclusion. I unpack the role that organizations play in designing, executing and perpetuating systems that evaluate innovators heterogeneously, based on their demographic characteristics. It is also relevant to any organization considering how to evaluate innovators. / 2025-05-30T00:00:00Z

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the influence of race and gender specific economic disadvantage, gender inequality, and other social disadvantage indicators on female non-violent and violent property crime offending. This dissertation found that economic marginality, gender inequality, and exogenous factors of social disorganization do explain some of the variation in women's offending. Economic marginality predicted total women's non-violent and violent offending, but only Black women's non-violent offending. Gender inequality was associated with women's non-violent property crime offending for total, white, Black, and Hispanic women. Generally, the key independent variables are better able to explain variation in non-violent offending than violent property crime offending for Black and Hispanic women.