Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Yang M. Chang / This paper empirically examines whether there is a tendency for trade-induced price convergence - in other words if price differences among city pairs separated by a border decline with increased levels of trade. The paper examines the prices of goods in cities across Brazil and Paraguay after the implementation of MERCOSUR. Evidence of a border effect - the failure of the law of one price - between Brazil and Paraguay is found. However, the data show that since the beginning of MERCOSUR, price dispersion between Brazil and Paraguay is less for those goods that are traded more between these partners.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / William F. Blankenau / The first essay examines the allocation of education spending. Human capital investment in early childhood can lead to large and persistent gains. Beyond this window of opportunity, human capital accumulation is more costly. Despite this, government education spending is allocated disproportionately toward late childhood and young adulthood. The consequences of a reallocation are examined using an overlapping generations model with private and public spending on early and late childhood education. Taking as given the higher returns to early investment, the model shows the current allocation may nonetheless be appropriate. With a homogeneous population, this can hold for moderate levels of government spending. With heterogeneity, this can hold for middle income workers. Lower income workers, by contrast, may benefit from a reallocation. The second essay provides a detailed review of the human capital proxies used in growth regressions. Economic theory and intuition tells us that human capital is important for economic growth, and now most empirical growth studies include a human capital component. Human capital is a complex concept that is difficult to quantify in a single measure. A number of proxies have been proposed, with most focusing on an aspect of education. The consensus is that human capital is poorly proxied. For each of the most commonly used measures, I give a description, discuss trends, summarize the literature and results, compare advantages and disadvantages, and list data sets. This review will serve as a useful reference for any researcher including human capital in a growth regression. The final essay explores the importance of a variety of human capital measures for growth using the Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) approach proposed by Sala-i-Martin, Doppelhofer, and Miller (2004). BACE combines standard Bayesian methods with the classical approach to address the problem of model uncertainty. A new data set is constructed that includes 35 human capital variables. The analysis shows that multiple human capital measures are robustly significant for growth. Some of these variables are IQ scores, the duration of primary and secondary education, average years of primary education, average years of female higher education, and higher education enrollment.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Wayne Nafziger / Although the ozone layer is vital to life on Earth, as a common resource it has been the subject of rational exploitation. With ozone depletion a global (rather than merely regional) problem, measures to address it have necessarily been international efforts. The international treaty that addressed ozone depletion, the Montreal Protocol (with its subsequent amendments), has widely been hailed as a success. However, the triumphs of the Montreal Protocol are inseparable from its Multilateral Fund, whose creation was a prerequisite for developing nations, including juggernauts China and India, to ratify the Protocol. Since its inception the Fund has supplied over $2.5 billion to initiatives that support the phase-out of ozone-depleting chemicals in developing nations. These projects have increasingly employed market mechanisms to achieve efficient results, and have generated positive profits for participating firms. Funded initiatives have included upgrading capital, educating maintenance workers, production buyouts, public awareness, and institutional strengthening. Aside from ensuring the success of the overall Protocol, this last item will likely be the Multilateral Fund’s most enduring legacy, as inherent shortcomings of the Fund have largely been attributed to its status as a pioneering financial mechanism. The Multilateral Fund has broken new ground in international environmental regulation and shown that success on ecological issues is indeed possible at the global level, leading many to hope that the Fund will serve as a model for future mechanisms to address climate change. While the more complex chemistry and economics of climate change make such a ready duplication of the Multilateral Fund’s success unlikely, the Fund’s role in strengthening institutions that address ecological concerns has undoubtedly smoothed the way for future international environmental action.

This thesis analyses the contemporary phenomena of globalisation, the knowledge economy and internationalisation in terms of their synergistic impacts on higher education and with special reference to China and New Zealand. Globalisation and the knowledge economy are seen to fuel each other as well as driving trends in higher education. Internationalisation is shown to be intimately related to, but conceptually distinguishable from, globalisation, and to occur partly as a consequence of the latter (and of developments in the knowledge economy) but partly also as a response to these forces. All three phenomena are addressed through assessments of their dominant economic imperatives. As a prerequisite to understanding and critiquing these forces and their dominant imperatives, the early chapters expound a further tripartite structure, this time of political-economic theories: neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and Giddens' 'Third Way'. The lens through which the analysis is made is explicitly neo-Marxist. The thesis critiques the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the discourse of globalisation, and the knowledge economy and the internationalisation of higher education. Neoliberalism's ascendancy is shown to be promoted through global, regional, national and sub-national entities, and this promotion is found to be often covert. The middle section of the thesis traces the effects on higher education of the economic, and specifically neoliberal or global-capitalist imperatives that the foregoing analysis reveals. Policies of deregulation, liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation are shown to exert largely negative influences on universities and, by extension, on other higher education institutions. They over-emphasise the private value of both knowledge itself and higher education as a knowledge agent, something which leads to a homogenising, devaluing 'commodification' of higher education. Having made the general case, the thesis then considers the Asia-Pacific region before focusing in depth on China and New Zealand. This structure makes for a macro-meso-micro approach to the development of the inquiry but with emphasis on the macro and the micro. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the establishment of a 'counter-hegemony' to oppose the dominance of neoliberal principles and policies. The study culminates by recommending the emergent concept of interculturalism as both an accurate description of the intersection of cultures on campus and a desirable nonnative policy which should complement internationalisation as part of national and institutional response strategies. The thesis argues for the legitimation and encouragement of neo-Marxist interculturalisation and outlines its relevance to New Zealand higher education institutions, which host many international and new immigrant students, above all from China. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

This thesis analyses the contemporary phenomena of globalisation, the knowledge economy and internationalisation in terms of their synergistic impacts on higher education and with special reference to China and New Zealand. Globalisation and the knowledge economy are seen to fuel each other as well as driving trends in higher education. Internationalisation is shown to be intimately related to, but conceptually distinguishable from, globalisation, and to occur partly as a consequence of the latter (and of developments in the knowledge economy) but partly also as a response to these forces. All three phenomena are addressed through assessments of their dominant economic imperatives. As a prerequisite to understanding and critiquing these forces and their dominant imperatives, the early chapters expound a further tripartite structure, this time of political-economic theories: neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and Giddens' 'Third Way'. The lens through which the analysis is made is explicitly neo-Marxist. The thesis critiques the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the discourse of globalisation, and the knowledge economy and the internationalisation of higher education. Neoliberalism's ascendancy is shown to be promoted through global, regional, national and sub-national entities, and this promotion is found to be often covert. The middle section of the thesis traces the effects on higher education of the economic, and specifically neoliberal or global-capitalist imperatives that the foregoing analysis reveals. Policies of deregulation, liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation are shown to exert largely negative influences on universities and, by extension, on other higher education institutions. They over-emphasise the private value of both knowledge itself and higher education as a knowledge agent, something which leads to a homogenising, devaluing 'commodification' of higher education. Having made the general case, the thesis then considers the Asia-Pacific region before focusing in depth on China and New Zealand. This structure makes for a macro-meso-micro approach to the development of the inquiry but with emphasis on the macro and the micro. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the establishment of a 'counter-hegemony' to oppose the dominance of neoliberal principles and policies. The study culminates by recommending the emergent concept of interculturalism as both an accurate description of the intersection of cultures on campus and a desirable nonnative policy which should complement internationalisation as part of national and institutional response strategies. The thesis argues for the legitimation and encouragement of neo-Marxist interculturalisation and outlines its relevance to New Zealand higher education institutions, which host many international and new immigrant students, above all from China. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

This thesis analyses the contemporary phenomena of globalisation, the knowledge economy and internationalisation in terms of their synergistic impacts on higher education and with special reference to China and New Zealand. Globalisation and the knowledge economy are seen to fuel each other as well as driving trends in higher education. Internationalisation is shown to be intimately related to, but conceptually distinguishable from, globalisation, and to occur partly as a consequence of the latter (and of developments in the knowledge economy) but partly also as a response to these forces. All three phenomena are addressed through assessments of their dominant economic imperatives. As a prerequisite to understanding and critiquing these forces and their dominant imperatives, the early chapters expound a further tripartite structure, this time of political-economic theories: neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and Giddens' 'Third Way'. The lens through which the analysis is made is explicitly neo-Marxist. The thesis critiques the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the discourse of globalisation, and the knowledge economy and the internationalisation of higher education. Neoliberalism's ascendancy is shown to be promoted through global, regional, national and sub-national entities, and this promotion is found to be often covert. The middle section of the thesis traces the effects on higher education of the economic, and specifically neoliberal or global-capitalist imperatives that the foregoing analysis reveals. Policies of deregulation, liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation are shown to exert largely negative influences on universities and, by extension, on other higher education institutions. They over-emphasise the private value of both knowledge itself and higher education as a knowledge agent, something which leads to a homogenising, devaluing 'commodification' of higher education. Having made the general case, the thesis then considers the Asia-Pacific region before focusing in depth on China and New Zealand. This structure makes for a macro-meso-micro approach to the development of the inquiry but with emphasis on the macro and the micro. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the establishment of a 'counter-hegemony' to oppose the dominance of neoliberal principles and policies. The study culminates by recommending the emergent concept of interculturalism as both an accurate description of the intersection of cultures on campus and a desirable nonnative policy which should complement internationalisation as part of national and institutional response strategies. The thesis argues for the legitimation and encouragement of neo-Marxist interculturalisation and outlines its relevance to New Zealand higher education institutions, which host many international and new immigrant students, above all from China. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

This thesis analyses the contemporary phenomena of globalisation, the knowledge economy and internationalisation in terms of their synergistic impacts on higher education and with special reference to China and New Zealand. Globalisation and the knowledge economy are seen to fuel each other as well as driving trends in higher education. Internationalisation is shown to be intimately related to, but conceptually distinguishable from, globalisation, and to occur partly as a consequence of the latter (and of developments in the knowledge economy) but partly also as a response to these forces. All three phenomena are addressed through assessments of their dominant economic imperatives. As a prerequisite to understanding and critiquing these forces and their dominant imperatives, the early chapters expound a further tripartite structure, this time of political-economic theories: neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and Giddens' 'Third Way'. The lens through which the analysis is made is explicitly neo-Marxist. The thesis critiques the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the discourse of globalisation, and the knowledge economy and the internationalisation of higher education. Neoliberalism's ascendancy is shown to be promoted through global, regional, national and sub-national entities, and this promotion is found to be often covert. The middle section of the thesis traces the effects on higher education of the economic, and specifically neoliberal or global-capitalist imperatives that the foregoing analysis reveals. Policies of deregulation, liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation are shown to exert largely negative influences on universities and, by extension, on other higher education institutions. They over-emphasise the private value of both knowledge itself and higher education as a knowledge agent, something which leads to a homogenising, devaluing 'commodification' of higher education. Having made the general case, the thesis then considers the Asia-Pacific region before focusing in depth on China and New Zealand. This structure makes for a macro-meso-micro approach to the development of the inquiry but with emphasis on the macro and the micro. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the establishment of a 'counter-hegemony' to oppose the dominance of neoliberal principles and policies. The study culminates by recommending the emergent concept of interculturalism as both an accurate description of the intersection of cultures on campus and a desirable nonnative policy which should complement internationalisation as part of national and institutional response strategies. The thesis argues for the legitimation and encouragement of neo-Marxist interculturalisation and outlines its relevance to New Zealand higher education institutions, which host many international and new immigrant students, above all from China. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

This thesis analyses the contemporary phenomena of globalisation, the knowledge economy and internationalisation in terms of their synergistic impacts on higher education and with special reference to China and New Zealand. Globalisation and the knowledge economy are seen to fuel each other as well as driving trends in higher education. Internationalisation is shown to be intimately related to, but conceptually distinguishable from, globalisation, and to occur partly as a consequence of the latter (and of developments in the knowledge economy) but partly also as a response to these forces. All three phenomena are addressed through assessments of their dominant economic imperatives. As a prerequisite to understanding and critiquing these forces and their dominant imperatives, the early chapters expound a further tripartite structure, this time of political-economic theories: neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and Giddens' 'Third Way'. The lens through which the analysis is made is explicitly neo-Marxist. The thesis critiques the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the discourse of globalisation, and the knowledge economy and the internationalisation of higher education. Neoliberalism's ascendancy is shown to be promoted through global, regional, national and sub-national entities, and this promotion is found to be often covert. The middle section of the thesis traces the effects on higher education of the economic, and specifically neoliberal or global-capitalist imperatives that the foregoing analysis reveals. Policies of deregulation, liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation are shown to exert largely negative influences on universities and, by extension, on other higher education institutions. They over-emphasise the private value of both knowledge itself and higher education as a knowledge agent, something which leads to a homogenising, devaluing 'commodification' of higher education. Having made the general case, the thesis then considers the Asia-Pacific region before focusing in depth on China and New Zealand. This structure makes for a macro-meso-micro approach to the development of the inquiry but with emphasis on the macro and the micro. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the establishment of a 'counter-hegemony' to oppose the dominance of neoliberal principles and policies. The study culminates by recommending the emergent concept of interculturalism as both an accurate description of the intersection of cultures on campus and a desirable nonnative policy which should complement internationalisation as part of national and institutional response strategies. The thesis argues for the legitimation and encouragement of neo-Marxist interculturalisation and outlines its relevance to New Zealand higher education institutions, which host many international and new immigrant students, above all from China. / Subscription resource available via Digital Dissertations only.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dennis L. Weisman / This first essay empirically tests the Peltzman Effect utilizing a unique dataset that is used to investigate the behavior of Formula One race car drivers. The race-level dataset was culled from various sources and includes detailed information from a total of 547 Formula One races. A fixed effects model is used to determine whether or not Formula One race car drivers alter their behavior in response to changes in the conditional probability of a casualty given an accident. The empirical estimates support economic theory; Formula One race car drivers become more reckless as their cars become safer, ceteris paribus. Furthermore, the behavioral response of drivers is larger when the analysis is confined to changes in the conditional probability of a fatality given an accident. The second essay utilizes data from the National Youth Survey to reevaluate key conclusions from Fair (1978). This study supports some of Fair's empirical findings; however, the estimates obtained from this research contradict Fair in several key ways. For example, this paper finds that the coefficients of occupation and education are both statistically significant but the signs are opposite to those in Fair (1978). An even more noteworthy contradiction is the negative relationship between years of marriage and infidelity; this suggests that marriage longevity is positively related to that of match quality of the relationship. Also included in these new specifications are independent variables that better control for individual heterogeneity, factors such as general health, race, and alcohol consumption. This essay presents a simple model to characterize the outcome of a land dispute between two rival parties using a Stackelberg game. This study assumes that opposing parties have access to different technologies for challenging and defending in conflict. Conditions are derived under which territorial conflict between the two parties is less likely to persist indefinitely. Allowing for an exogenous destruction term as in Garfinkel and Skaperdas (2000), it is shown that, when the nature of conflict becomes more destructive, the likelihood of a peaceful outcome, in which the territory's initial possessor deters the challenging party, increases if the initial possessor holds more intrinsic value for the disputed land.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Yang M. Chang / College football thrives on the ideas that each school has what it takes to be the best, rivalries are of major importance, and either team can win the game. Competitive balance is what keeps these thoughts alive, offering the last team in the conference the chance to beat their top-ranked opponent, or the mediocre middle-rank team the chance to win a post-season bowl game. Competitive balance provides the level of uncertainty of game outcome that keeps fans coming back every season. Previous research has examined many variables that have an effect on competitive balance. The purpose of this report is to step forward from where previous studies left off and examine the effect of the conference championship game on competitive balance. Five of the eleven NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision conferences currently determine their conference champion by holding a championship game at the end of the season. Recent conference realignments bring about the possibility for two more conferences to establish championship games. Does hosting a conference championship game improve competitive balance within the league? This study examined several measures of competitive balance, including standard deviation measures, the competitive balance ratio, and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. Results suggest a slightly higher level of competitive balance for conferences hosting championship games versus those that do not. However, these results are not statistically significant, and this higher level of competitive balance could be explained by the larger membership of conferences hosting championship games.