<p> There is a consensus among economists and political scientists that institutions are crucial for economic development. Different attributes of institutions like rule of law, property rights, legal environment, and constraints on executive have profound effects on a nation's prosperity, growth and development. Recently economists have recognized that a system of strong institutions of property rights can enhance efficiency of financial sector. A significant part of the dissertation deals with the question that is it likely that causality operates the other way: Does a mature financial market acts as a strong catalyst for property rights? </p><p> The first essay develops a theoretical model of financial intermediation with incomplete information to augment the notion. The model predicts that the relationship does exist and is in fact nonlinear. Thus finance acts as propellant for property rights only after crossing a certain threshold. The second essay presents empirical evidence of threshold effects in the cross country relationship between property rights and finance that are consistent with the theory. Further, in a panel of countries, I show that the exogenous component of financial development helps predict property rights in a sample of countries where financial markets have crossed a threshold level of development. </p><p> The final essay of the dissertation deals with the effects of legal environment on financial market. More specifically, it explores the effects of collateral law reforms on firms' perceived access to finance by taking a panel of developing countries. I find evidence that collateral law reforms are effective in improving perceived access to credit. Moreover the effects are more pronounced when they are accompanied by established collateral registries for movable and intangible assets. Finally these beneficial effects seem to increase in the size of the firms.</p>

<p> These essays explore the microeconomic impact of federal, state and local public policies on individual behavior in three distinct settings. Chapter 1 examines the impact of municipal policies affecting retail liquor availability on the incidence of urban crime, based on a rapid 2012 expansion of liquor retailing in the City of Seattle. Chapter 2 examines whether state-level public sector employees are paid "wage rents" in excess of their outside options, based on an original survey of roughly 900 exogenously laid-off of government workers as part of a liquor privatization initiative in Washington State. Finally, Chapter 3 examines whether federal intergovernmental grants have a persistent long-term effect on state government tax policy, based on a 30-year panel of federal grants and tax revenue for the U.S. states. In all three cases I emphasize the identification of causal effects of policy characteristics on behavior, highlighting the importance of econometric program evaluation as a tool for understanding and developing well-designed public policy. </p>

Identifying who are the poor in Leon County may help to explain why poverty persists; and, of course, knowing why people are poor is a prerequisite for designing effective policies to eradicate the problem. / As the econometric models in this paper demonstrate, poverty has many causes--causes which appear to be mainly linked to economic traits. Among these economic traits that cause impoverishment are the lack of education, experience, and good health. Results of this study also suggest that intergenerational factors for certain groups--father's and mother's educations, father's and mother's occupations, and number of children of parents during one's youth--are probable causal factors. Finally, analysis of the possible causes of poverty imply that altering economic traits alone may be insufficient; market imperfections in the form of discrimination (race and sex) will have to be properly addressed. Poverty in Leon County amid such obvious affluence is a definite reality, and any meaningful and effective strategy designed to eradicate it must be long-term and multi-faceted and consists of programs that will address economic and social factors that create it. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-03, Section: A, page: 0868. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Factors influencing the compensation of electric utility executives are analyzed theoretically and empirically. A major conclusion of the study is that firm size (which is better measured by revenues, rather than KWH) explains over 80% of the variation in compensation. The growth rate, profit rate, and cost level of the firm have little or no relationship with compensation. Subsidiary and gas dummy variables were found to be statistically significant, as was the size of the city where the firm is located. Regulatory climate and region also proved to be insignificant. Cost of living differences were not found to have a significant influence on compensation, perhaps due to the relative immobility of electric utility executives, or deficiencies in the cost of living index. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-04, Section: A, page: 1227. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.

The optimism of Arthur Lewis's development model permeated other models appearing in its trail. Lewis pictured a steady process of expansion of the industrial sector on the basis of agricultural surplus available as wage goods and 'surplus labor' drawn from the agricultural sector, enabling both sectors to reap benefits of development. Ranis-Fei, too, identified agricultural suplus as key to growth, but revealed more awareness of snags like 'premature' migration from the rural sector to the urban sector, the 'terms of trade' between the sectors, etc. They minimized these by postulating the 'dualistic landlord' ensuring proper allocation of surplus between the two sectors for balanced growth. / Development experience belied these expectations. Benefits of development failed to reach subsistence agriculture in appreciable measure. Lewis' model was amiss in assuming a competitive industrial sector and a homogeneous agricultural sector. In India, the industrial sector is oligopolistic and the agricultural sector a multi-tiered hierarchy of big farmers, tenants, agricultural labor and small family-farmers, leading to sub-optimal allocation of resources, retardation of labor-absorption and premature, pre-emptive capital-intensity in production in a labor-rich, capital-poor economy, perpetuation of poverty, inequality and restricted home-market--the missing link of development. Hence the quest for policy to avoid these consequences. / In development experience Taiwan (starting with agrarian reforms) is an exception, combining high growth rate with benefits going more to bottom than top, contradicting the inverted U hypothesis (implied in Lewis' model) of prolonged accentuation of inequality preceding decline in it and raising the question whether equity can form the basis of growth elsewhere. In this study answer has been sought to this question, by cross-section analysis of district-level agricultural data and Gini indices of inequality of land-ownership in the first phase of 'green revolution' in India, in terms of how the size of agricultural surplus might have been affected by adequate agrarian reforms. The answer found is favorable to equity-based, decentralized growth and hence to feasibility of balanced growth with benefits to subsistence agriculture through higher labor-absorption, larger home-market for mass-consumption goods, etc. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-12, Section: A, page: 3974. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

This dissertation is about the competition among the economies of the sovereign nation-states and its impact on the optimality, from the point of view of the national government, of various economic policies. The competition among the economies of nation-states is reflected by any government (public) policy, regulation, or built-in institutional arrangement designed to influence the interaction of one economy with others. / A review of economic history is first presented to demonstrate that competition among the economies of sovereign countries has existed from the beginning of written history to the present. It changed throughout history in accordance with changing circumstances, but it has always been taking place in one form or another. Furthermore, its impact on the economies of independent states has always been substantial. / Based on this finding, the theoretical analysis is conducted to analyze the fundamental incentives which have caused governments to engage in international economic competition. The analysis reaches the conclusion that there have been numerous incentives for such behaviour of governments and thereby links the facts presented in the survey of economic history as well as the facts of current international economic interrelations to the theoretical contention that the incentive structure determines economic behaviour. / The next step in the inquiry is to analyze the effectiveness of various economic policies which, although frequently proposed in the economic literature, are derived from analyses that either exclude the phenomenon of competition among national economies, or treat this phenomenon in an oversimplified and unrealistic fashion. Through an empirical investigation focusing mainly on the period of the 1970's, it is demonstrated that such policies could not effectively deal with economic difficulties which are not strictly of domestic origin and nature. Some of those policies can be used to achieve short-term relief, but additional steps are required to counter the economic factors having an international scope if more than temporary relief is intended. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-12, Section: A, page: 3751. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

The first part of this paper presents the background information necessary for determining the direction of the study. The general forms of univariate and multivariate ARIMA models are presented, and time series and econometric models are compared and contrasted. Past work in both univariate and multivariate time series approaches to macroeconomic forecasting are reviewed. The definition of Granger causality is presented, along with Pierce's approach to measuring causality. / The second part of the study chooses a set of thirteen variables which describe the workings of the Florida economy. Using an analysis of causal flows among the variables, the variables are divided into clusters for purposes of estimating multivariate ARIMA models. The models are then estimated, described statistically and economically, and are compared to equations contained in an econometric model of the state's economy. Forecasts are derived from both types of models, and are compared using graphical analysis and four- and eight-quarter ahead root mean squared errors. / Multivariate ARIMA modeling is found to be successful when applied to a regional macroeconomy. The forecasts outperform those of the econometric model in eight of thirteen cases according to the four-quarter ahead root mean squared error and in nine of thirteen cases according to the eight-quarter ahead root mean squared error. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-08, Section: A, page: 2595. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.

In this study we have provided estimates of the economic impact of tourist exports on the Florida economy. To do so we constructed a small econometric model of the State. We derived two types of multipliers from our model. The standard econometric multipliers enabled us to analyze the pattern by which tourist expenditures impacted the State's economy. We also calculated tourist income and employment multipliers which enabled us to measure the share of State income and employment attributed to tourism. / From our study we can conclude that tourism plays a very important role in the Florida economy. We calculated that for the years studied, on average, close to 33.2% of Florida's personal income and 26% of the State's jobs are attributed to tourist exports. We have also established that a substantial portion of our state's beverage, cigarette, and sales taxes are paid by tourists. / Though our multiplier analysis has proven a useful tool in measuring the impact of tourism on the Florida economy, one should be made aware of some of the limitations of this type of analysis. First, the estimated value of multipliers are not invariant to the choice of model, the aggregation and specification of the model, and the data utilized to estimate it. The values of the multipliers estimated here should be used with caution outside of the context of this study and should only be applied to data comparable to that used in estimating this model. / Second, multiplier analysis assumes that supply is perfectly elastic. That is, that supply expands to accommodate tourist demand without diverting resources from other uses. The opportunity cost of providing tourist goods and services is thus evaluated at zero. / A final limitation is that multiplier analysis provides only a partial analysis of economic impact. Only the quantifiable benefits of tourism are measured. Not only is zero opportunity cost assumed, but no other social costs associated with tourism are accounted for. These costs include building and maintaining the infrastructure that supports the tourist industry, lost utility to residents due to congestion, and the cost of environmental damage. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-07, Section: A, page: 2666. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1986.

Multiple regression analysis was applied to a new cross section data set for the Kanawha Valley, West Virginia single family residential housing market to test the hypotheses that (1) individuals are willing to pay for freedom from exposure to hazardous materials released in an acute pollution event at a chemical plant and (2) there is an announcement effect on local property values following an actual catastrophic hazardous materials incident elsewhere. / Since reductions in the risk of exposure to hazardous materials are provided by distance from potentially hazardous facilities, economic theory predicts that if individuals are willing to pay for reductions in their risk of exposure, then property values will increase with distance from potentially hazardous facilities. Economic theory also predicts that as people have more experience with and thus become more cognizant of the consequences of a leak, spill or explosion of toxic chemicals, they increase their willingness to pay for the safety that is provided by distance from potentially hazardous areas. / Property value models were constructed to test the first hypothesis. Each model is a hedonic equation that relates residential property values (measured by sale prices) to a measure of the risk of exposure to hazardous materials as well as other factors that influence the value of housing. The results of OLS estimation of the models provided support for the hypothesis that individuals are willing to pay for reductions in their exposure to hazardous materials and that the market capitalizes this value into residential property values. These findings suggest that individuals have to be compensated in the form of lower housing expenditures to purchase property in areas with an elevated risk of exposure to toxic materials. / In tests of the second hypothesis property value models were estimated to determine if Kanawha Valley property values fell following the announcement of the December 3, 1984 catastrophic leak of methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. Results of these tests provide empirical evidence that the announcement of this event did have a depressing effect on area property values. This finding implies that the compensation necessary to induce people to purchase property in risky areas increases as they become more aware of the potential for and the consequences of a catastrophic hazardous materials incident. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-12, Section: A, page: 4452. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1986.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 32-04, Section: A, page: 1708. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1971.