Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Tracy M. Turner / Obesity is a growing problem in the United States today. This study provides an econometric analysis of the relationship between child overweight status and neighborhood quality by using nationally representative data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) the 2002 PSID Child Development Survey, and Census data. In this study, the probability of a child overweight status is modeled as a function of neighborhood quality, child age, race and ethnicity, and parent obesity status, income, marital status, and education level. Next, the possible endogeneity between neighborhood quality and parent health is controlled for. Auxiliary regressions, modeling neighborhood quality and parent health on factors such as parent income, education, and marital status, are used to generate predicted values for neighborhood quality and parent health, which are then substituted into the child overweight equation to control for the aforementioned endogeneity. Census track and county level factors that might affect parent health or neighborhood quality are also controlled for. Based on a sample of 1917 children, this study finds evidence that neighborhood quality affects child overweight status.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Wayne Nafziger / This essay on AIDS examines the possible economic impact HIV and AIDS can have on an economy. AIDS is a growing problem throughout the world and has become one of the worst pandemics of the 21st century. Africa is one of the worst hit regions in the world, having seven countries with more than 15 percent of the population infected. This essay will have special emphasis on Botswana where 37.3 percent of the population is infected. Botswana has had various negative micro-level economic impacts which have begun to spillover and negatively affect macro-level economics. The International Monetary Fund predicts GDP growth is expected to fall from 5.5 percent a year without AIDS to between 1.5 and 2.5 percent a year with AIDS. There are various sectors in an economy that can be impacted by AIDS. This essay will look at factors affecting these various sectors, explain them and describe what impact they are having on Botswana’s economy.

Despite a wide assortment of problems that cover a broad range of topics, from questions and doubts about its theoretical underpinnings, to a host of application difficulties, economic base analysis still figures prominently in the geographic literature. This thesis uses the Arizona Community Data Set to examine two important issues that remain unresolved or inadequately addressed in the literature. The results presented support Tiebout's hypothesis that the Keynesian macroeconomic approach, emphasizing the role of all the sectors in an economy produces more reliable multipliers estimates than Hoyt's traditional approach. Additionally, it is shown that, through disaggregation, it is possible to use the relationships between sectoral basic and nonbasic employment to produce multipliers that resemble those obtained through input-output analysis. Overall the results suggest that with the use of reliable survey data the economic base concept can still produce valuable information on the effects of an impact in a small community.

<p> Much of the social capital literature focuses on unambiguous social situations where actors share generalized trust or interpersonal trust. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in northwest Azerbaijan, this thesis focuses instead on distrust and the negotiation of conflicting interpretations of shared norms within moments of informal social support. In such situations, participants engage in an on-going negotiation of the situation, drawing on available cultural conventions to make sense of situations and perform relational work. They ultimately create meaning out of on-going social interaction and accomplish locally viable forms of social support.</p>

The fact that user charges are a growing source of revenue for municipal governments reflects their increasing political popularity. The association between user charges and efficiency also make them an economically sound method of finance. The combination of these two factors creates the possibility for user charges to save U.S. cities billions of dollars a year. / User charges embody the idea of benefit-based finance. When user charges are set properly and are related to the costs of service, they provide incentives for efficiency. The bureaucracy theory of William Niskanen suggests that governments will be inefficient, either producing too much of a good, or producing it at too high a cost. User charges should counteract these effects by providing a link between consumption and payment (creating incentives to economize on quantity) and by reducing fiscal illusion (creating an incentive to economize on cost). / Municipal sewer service is chosen as the focus for the study because the service is relatively uniform across cities, and because many cities conform to EPA user charge guidelines. These EPA regulations are compared with the theoretically ideal user charge, and it is found that cities are using important economic cost criteria when setting user charges for sewer service. / A hypothesis to be tested is developed: increases in the extent to which cities rely on user charges to finance services should be associated with reductions in expenditures on those services. A model of municipal expenditure is developed and tested using 1990 Census data, and the results strongly support the hypothesis. Simultaneity and aggregation bias in the model are tested for and are rejected. The hypothesis is also confirmed with tests on parks and recreation and parking services. Possibilities for further development of user charge research are discussed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-07, Section: A, page: 2658. / Major Professor: Paul Downing. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

The study employs descriptive methodology in analyzing the changes in collecting patterns between 1985 and 1989 in the collective resources base of seventy-two ARL libraries. Data for the study were extracted from the 1991 edition of the OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis CD which contains a database of non-serial imprints for the ten year period 1979-1989. Two broad hypotheses were formulated: (1) that significant declines occurred in the number of non-serial imprints acquired by academic research libraries in the United States and (2) that significant shifts occurred in collecting patterns by subject and language groupings between 1985 and 1989. Rate of change was measured according to 108 Library of Congress classification categories by three broad subject groupings, humanities, social sciences, and sciences and by seven language groupings. Shifts in collecting patterns were measured by the change in the percentage of total imprints, percentage of unique titles to total, and the difference in the mean number of holding libraries per title between 1985 and 1989 by broad subject and language groupings. / The overall finding was that there was a decline of 27.76 percent in the rate of acquisitions from 1985 to 1989. The humanities declined at the highest rate, the social sciences at a lesser rate, with the sciences experiencing the lowest rate of decline. Foreign language imprints experienced a much greater decline than English language imprints. The ratio for English/non-English was 50/50 in 1985, changing to 60/40 in 1989. The five foreign language groups in the study all experienced steep declines, but the three western languages of French, German, and Spanish declined less than Russian and the Asian languages (CJK) which had the highest rate of decline. The only measure which showed little overall change was the mean number of holding libraries per title. The measure for percentage of unique titles showed that there was an increase in homogeneity in the acquisitions of the group of seventy-two ARL libraries in 1989 as compared to 1985. The study establishes that there was a steep decline in foreign language acquisitions, a decrease in the percentage of unique titles in many subject areas, and an increased concentration on core materials resulting in less diversity and more homogeneity in the collections of the seventy-two ARL libraries. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-04, Section: A, page: 0783. / Director: John N. DePew. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

Trade in differentiated manufactured goods from the same industry, between developed economies characterized by similar relative factor endowments, has been observed to be an important feature of international trade patterns since the 1960's. While the traditional, factor-proportions model of international trade still retains good explanatory power, it is not able to satisfactorily encompass this phenomenon of intra-industry trade (IIT) A number of new theoretical models have arisen, incorporating notions of (internal) economies of scale and preference diversity, which provide a range of testable propositions that seek to explain the proportion of a country's gross trade which is IIT in nature. Empirical investigation has focused on the trade of developed economies, with a general consensus emerging regarding the significance of a variety of industry and country level characteristics as factors influencing IIT. / This study extends the analysis of the structure and determinants of IIT to the bilateral trading arrangements of Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, three members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). These countries are all developing economies, representing countries at different levels of development. This study covers the period 1970-1989, enabling inferences to be drawn concerning the impact of the development process through time on IIT. IIT is found to be an important feature of the trade of these developing economies and has increased over time. The mix of products traded and the relative importance of trading partners has also changed as development has proceeded. As a result the three economies have become increasingly integrated into the world economy. Many of the factors influencing the IIT of developed economies are also found to be significant for these developing economies. A study of intra-ASEAN IIT provides some evidence regarding the potential for greater economic integration within this group of countries. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-10, Section: A, page: 3824. / Major Professor: J. H. Cobbe. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

The determinants of municipal debt for U.S. cities with population of 75,000 or more are examined using three alternative conceptual frameworks: public choice, pluralism, and neo-Marxism. Empirical models derived from these frameworks are tested for four time points (1984, 1987, 1989, and 1990). In addition, change in borrowing for two time periods (1984-1989 and 1987-1989) is also examined. / The results show that municipal borrowing was largely determined by: (1) government expenditures relative to the city's economic base; (2) reliance on property taxes and on intergovernmental revenues; (3) socioeconomic characteristics, such as per capita income and the city size; (4) partisan elections; and (5) business and labor organization activities. The public choice model had the strongest explanatory power and the most consistent empirical support of the three explanations. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-09, Section: A, page: 3588. / Major Professor: Richard C. Feiock. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

In 1949 a national organization formally recognized as the Joint Council on Economic Education, comprised of economists, educators, and persons in business and industry, began promoting economic literacy in pre-collegiate schools. A quarter century later, the Florida Legislature officially mandated the teaching of free enterprise and consumer education in grades K-12. / The purpose of this study was to critically examine and analyze the various forces and processes associated with the economic education movement in Florida. The population for the study were persons identified as having past or current connections with the 1974 law and to those who influenced subsequent K-12 economic education curriculum policy decisions. / The findings confirmed that the K-12 economic education curriculum in Florida was shaped by many conditions and circumstances. Legislative action has been most prominent and has influenced the development and expansion of economics within disciplines and across grade levels. / It was determined that economic education has sustained itself in Florida because of support from many sources including business and industry, higher education, and teachers and administrators in school districts across Florida. The study revealed, however, that despite two decades of continuous programming delivered to teachers and students, formal assessment of student knowledge has been limited. / The writer identifies several educational implications as well as numerous recommendations for future research on this subject. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: A, page: 1524. / Major Professor: John P. Lunstrum. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.

Conservation of petroleum reserves in the United States, from a production point of view, becomes problematic even in the case of well-defined surface property rights. The migratory nature of those resources and the common law rule of capture have combined to create a classic example of the problem of the common pool. In the race to reduce their underlying hydrocarbon reserves to possession, holders of sub-surface mineral rights (which evolve from initial surface ownership) have been seen to exemplify the common pool situation; excessive spending to capture the resource and premature depletion of the resource base. Some economic theory and early empirical evidence indicate that the potential losses from overcapitalization toward drilling and premature reservoir depletion can be large in terms of both physical and economic waste in oil field development. / Given the premise that early fieldwide consolidation of a particular reservoir is the optimal solution to conserve the nonrenewable hydrocarbon natural resource, this paper identifies and quantifies the relationship between two separate methods to accomplish this objective--compulsory and voluntary unitization. By comparing the production and drilling activities of a state with a long history of successful and early governmentally sanctioned unitization (Louisiana) to a state with no such statutory requirement (Texas), we are able to discern differences in potential welfare loss between the two regimes. After controlling for geology, price, cost and other state-specific factors, we find that, over the period examined and contrary to the naive economic view that does not allow for private bargaining, more wells are drilled in Louisiana than in Texas and the difference between production rates of the two states is not statistically significant. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-03, Section: A, page: 1240. / Major Professor: Philip E. Sorensen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.