Economic impact studies have been conducted on natural resource-related activities throughout the United States. However, a comprehensive analysis of impacts of USDA Forest Service activities has never been conducted in Mississippi. This study provided the needed analysis of economic impacts of National Forests and Research Units in Mississippi. The Impact Analysis for Planning (IMPLAN) software and data were used to create a state economy model and the state economic data were analyzed for the fiscal year 2011. With US $117,864,243 in direct expenditures and revenues generated in the state, for the items considered, by the USDA Forest Service, the total economic impact was US $222,340,891 in 2011 dollars. This supported 2,962 full- and part-time jobs, and resulted in a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) total output multiplier of 1.89. This information showed the value of the National Forests to the state’s economy, along with contributions from the state-based Research Units.

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Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

The object of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it endeavours to present a general study of monetary policy. Secondly, it attempts a detailed description or analysis of a particular period. Chapters one and two consider the nature of monetary policy, chapter three, the circumstances surrounding its implementation and chapter four is a survey of Canadian monetary policy from 1955 to 1965. The plan is to proceed from the general to the particular. Thus, when the actual events are presented in chapter four, it is possible to derive an appreciation of the underlying factors and complexities so that any conclusions one may wish to form can be done with perspicacity. Chapter five is a concluding chapter which serves as a summary to the paper, an outline of the salient points, and a statement of the observations made and the conclusions arrived at. Monetary policy has been the object of considerable discussion in recent years. Within a period of five years, from 1959 to 1963 inclusive, the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada prepared major studies of their financial systems. The studies (Commissions) were undertaken in response to the growing concern over the ability of financial systems to contribute to the economic advancement of their countries. Monetary policy is an integral part of the whole of the financial structure. And as the financial system progresses and new elements are introduced, monetary policy must take account of such changes and introduce its own new elements. In addition to the many studies carried out by these Commissions the literature on the subject is indeed abundant. The dominant characteristic of the writings on monetary policy is controversy. Controversy stimulates discussion but unfortunately not always illumination. It is hoped that what follows can serve to shed some light on the intricacies of monetary policy. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

No / Adopting a distinctive structural political economy approach, this book uniquely explains the blind spots of alternative political economy approaches to international aid, and presents an original framework for evaluating likely reformers' strength of commitment and potential alliances with donors. / Australian Development Research Awards, AusAID

The idiom goes, "what is one man's trash is another man's treasure." In our 21st century economy, one man's trash is less commonly another's treasure as often as it is pollution. It is well documented that the majority of human waste ends up in on the side of roads, or in forests and oceans if not in landfills or incinerated. The disposability of items in our consumer culture is now commonplace. We are exacerbating our problems by throwing away single-use and barely-used items again and again without a feasible, realistic, and responsible solution for the end their life cycle. While our habitual buying and scrapping is continually increasing, the industrial buildings that process our waste are pushed to the outskirts of urban centers where they are most needed due to aesthetics, noises, and odors. These suburban and rural locations put an enormous economic and resource strain on cities. Architecture has the opportunity and responsibility to play an important role in remedying these issues related to waste facilities and processes. Architecture as an art form has largely abandoned these and similar industrial typologies as building design problems. They are mostly undertaken by engineers who design them for economic and process efficiencies. But there are unique challenges to be overcome with creative solutions, what architects do best. As a part of this process, architects can better design facilities so that they can be located within city limits and fight the "not in my backyard" stigmas associated with waste management. Ultimately architects can strive to improve civic life for citizens while also improving the means and methods of city-maintenance issues related to waste. At this intersection of waste and architecture, this thesis explores how a facility that settles into the dense urban fabric of Washington D.C. can play a role in the city's waste steam in order to benefit the local community and economy. / Master of Architecture / The idiom goes, “what is one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” In our 21st century economy, one man’s trash is less commonly another’s treasure as often as it is pollution. It is well documented that the majority of human waste ends up in on the side of roads, or in forests and oceans if not in landfills or incinerated. The disposability of items in our consumer culture is now commonplace. We are exacerbating our problems by throwing away single-use and barely-used items again and again without a feasible, realistic, and responsible solution for the end their life cycle. While our habitual buying and scrapping is continually increasing, the industrial buildings that process our waste are pushed to the outskirts of urban centers where they are most needed due to aesthetics, noises, and odors. These suburban and rural locations put an enormous economic and resource strain on cities. Architecture has the opportunity and responsibility to play an important role in remedying these issues related to waste facilities and processes. Architects rarely design waste-management buildings and other industrial-use buildings. Usually it is engineers who undertake these buildings. They tend to design them in ways that put cost and process efficiency above everything else. One of the main skill-set architects have is problem-solving through design. Waste-management buildings face a lot of challenges beyond cost and process efficiency so it would make sense for architects to be a part of this process. Architects can better design these facilities so that they can be located within city limits and fight the “not in my backyard” stigmas associated with waste management. Ultimately architects would strive to improve civic life for citizens while also improving the means and methods of city-maintenance issues related to waste. At this intersection of waste and architecture, this thesis explores how a facility that settles into the dense urban enivironment of Washington D.C. can play a role in the city’s waste steam in order to benefit the local community and economy.

Lowmansville: Poems is a collection of poems exploring a mythic location in southern Appalachia, which bears the name of an actual community in Kentucky but is not intended to be a literal depiction of that community. Various speakers narrate and meditate on the often bleak, bizarre circumstances of this mythic community, in which the residents of Lowmansville attempt to endure an existence marked by physical deformity, loneliness, poverty, and violence through love, religion, and art. / Master of Fine Arts

The present project provides a survey of contemporary work relations in the context of the so-called gig economy (also known as the sharing, collaborative, platform, and on-demand economy). Against the background of recent concerns over automation replacing work at a large scale, the project argues instead that the displacement of work warrants more critical attention. The project examines how the gig economy presents their services as automating technologies while downplaying the ways that workers' employment, not to mention lives, are made increasingly precarious by these alleged improvements. Specifically, the project surveys three gig-economies, the ride-hailing service Uber, the home-sharing service Airbnb, and the online labor marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). Methodologically, the project employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from political economy, critical theory, discourse analysis, and ethnographic research. A qualitative assessment of the respective work environments shifts a relatively apolitical discourse on the future of work not only toward a more pronounced critique of the gig economy, but also toward a renewed discussion on the kinds of jobs that earn the labels of freelance and entrepreneurship. Professionals and scholars concerned with the future of work stand to benefit from the findings of the research, particularly as it challenges some commonplace assumptions in the discourse of what has been termed postcapitalism. / Ph. D. / The present project provides a survey of contemporary work relations in the context of the so-called gig economy (also known as the sharing, collaborative, platform, and ondemand economy). Against the background of recent concerns over automation replacing work at a large scale, the project argues instead that the displacement of work warrants more critical attention. The project examines how the gig economy presents their services as automating technologies while downplaying the ways that workers’ employment, not to mention lives, are made increasingly precarious by these alleged improvements. Specifically, the project surveys three gig economies, the ride-hailing service Uber, the home-sharing service Airbnb, and the online labor marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). Methodologically, the project employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from political economy, critical theory, discourse analysis, and ethnographic research. A qualitative assessment of the respective work environments shifts a relatively apolitical discourse on the future of work not only toward a more pronounced critique of the gig economy, but also toward a renewed discussion on the kinds of jobs that earn the labels of freelance and entrepreneurship. Professionals and scholars concerned with the future of work stand to benefit from the findings of the research, particularly as it challenges some commonplace assumptions in the discourse of what has been termed postcapitalism.

Thesis advisor: Fabio Ghironi / This dissertation is a collection of three essays which examine issues at the intersection of international economics, political economy, and macroeconomics. A common theme which emerges in the subsequent chapters is a reliance on intuitive models of economies populated by rational agents engaging in both political and economic decisionmaking. Each chapter also presents empirical evidence using aggregate data to highlight new angles on issues related to macroeconomic development policy. Concurrent cross-country political change, such as the recent ``Arab spring" revolutions in the Middle East, the experience of South American military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, and political transition in former Soviet-bloc countries at the end of the Cold War, suggests that global forces impacting multiple countries can serve as a trigger for intrastate conflict. A common conjecture is that economic forces have been a primary impetus for such episodes. In the first chapter, I analyze the effects of worldwide commodity price fluctuations in generating political conflict in developing countries. I develop a simple model to show that shocks to both the level and uncertainty of commodity export prices can elicit conflict events in developing countries. Econometric evidence from a dataset combining major intrastate political resistance campaigns and global food commodity price data lends support to this hypothesis. In the second chapter, I examine whether corruption within one country affected by corruption within another. Understanding the interactions between political-economic culture across countries can allow us to better grasp the implications of greater global and regional integration in recent history. Until now, few studies have examined this question in detail due to the difficulty of measuring corruption and paucity of consistent data over an adequate time span. I use a panel dataset of countries in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East over a span of fifteen years to examine how domestic corruption reacts to the culture of corruption in the region in which the country is located. Contrary to the results of past literature, I find evidence that a reduction in regional corruption can actually lead to a worsening of corruption within a country, and vice versa. If in an open economy, regional graft lowers the level of income that a rent-seeking government can tax, a reduction in regional corruption can increase the marginal benefit of imposing a more extractive domestic policy by increasing the pool of exploitable funds. My results offer an economic reason for why corruption will be an enduring institution in a more interconnected world. Finally, are less democratic governments more apt to intervene in the prices of imported goods than exported goods? In the third chapter of this dissertation I offer an explanation for why this might be the case, focusing on a government's choice between two alternative interventionist trade policies: import tariffs and export subsidies. If governments have incentives to exploit their political power to extract rents from citizens, they can achieve this by taxing imports rather than subsidizing exports. However, if citizens are able to discipline their governments through elections, the extent of this rent-seeking behavior can be constrained. I present a model that captures this behavior, distinguishing between the level of electoral accountability of a government and the level of bargaining power that citizens have in negotiations. Preliminary empirical evidence is presented which suggests that more authoritarian countries spend greater amounts on import tariffs than on export subsidies. These findings give insight into some of the challenges in establishing free trade amongst countries with different attitudes toward democratic institutions, both on a bilateral basis and within multilateral organizations. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.