In the COVID-19 stock market industries reacted and were affected in different ways. This paper will use Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes to look at how sectors and selected industries fared after a whole year in a pandemic. This will be accomplished by comparing 2019 stock returns to 2020 stock returns with a t-test and estimating the effect of COVID-19 positive case and death increases using a pooled OLS regression. All SIC sectors A-J were analyzed as well as 18 selected industries such as food stores, real estate, oil and gas extraction, health services, and communications. Results show a significant variation in the monthly returns of 2019 and 2020. Regression results show that there is a small but positive correlation of sector and industry returns to COVID-19 positive case and death increases. This contrary result can confirm the short influential window of COVID-19 outcomes on the stock market as shown in related research. This also confirms that regardless of the continued escalation of the pandemic, the stock market follows sentiment, not substance. This paper will contribute to the existing literature by conducting a yearlong event study of the United States' sectors and industries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The level of labor productivity differs among the European Union countries, especially when you compare a developing country to a more developed country in the EU. This is an issue because the achievement of high labor productivity is a necessary stipulation for a developing economy to realize economic growth and more economic development. On the other hand, the more individuals in an economy with access to the internet (internet connectivity) depicts how developed the economy is in terms of information and communication technology (ICT). Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether there is a positive relationship between countries having high internet connectivity and labor productivity in the EU. In doing so, Political and entrepreneurial decision-makers can use these findings to decide how much attention or budget to put on the ICT sector to improve labor productivity. To understand the factors that affect labor productivity, Adam Smith and Karl Marx’s theory on labor productivity is used to gain a better understanding. A panel data analysis using a fixed-effect model and pooled OLS regression model is applied in the study to predict the relationship. The result of the study indicates that internet connectivity does not have a significant impact on Labour productivity, or there was not enough evidence showing that they are positively correlated with each other.

This paper examines the effect of governance on inequality, specifically if improvements in the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators affect inequality as measured by two Gini coefficients: Market Gini, before taxes and redistribution, and Net Gini, after taxes and redistribution. The data for the Gini measurements was taken from the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) and the data for the Worldwide Governance Indicators was taken from the World Bank. Data for fifteen (15) years, from the start of the Worldwide Governance Indicators until 2013, was combined with data from SWIID for the same years. In all, data from one hundred fifty-six (156) countries with a full set of six (6) indicators for the years that had at least one corresponding Gini measurements were used in this study: in total one thousand seven hundred and forty-seven (1747) observations. In a pooled OLS regression, controlling for growth with the variable GDP per Capita expressed as a per cent (%) change on an annual basis, the individual indicators gave the following results, where a positive sign indicates increased inequality and vice versa: Control of Corruption and Regulatory Quality showed a positive sign for both Gini measurements. Rule of Law, Government Effectiveness, Political Stability and the Absence of Violence/Terrorism, gave a negative sign for both Gini measurements. Voice and Accountability showed a positive sign for Market Gini and a negative sign for Net Gini. The fact that an improvement in Control of Corruption increased inequality both before and after taxes and redistribution was unexpected and should be further researched.

La presente investigación, ganadora del Concurso Anual de Investigación CIES 2018, cuenta con el auspicio de Global Affairs Canada (GAC), el Centro Internacional de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo (IDRC, por sus siglas en inglés), la Fundación Manuel J. Bustamante De la Fuente y la Superintendencia Nacional de Aduanas y de Administración Tributaria (SUNAT). / Este documento examina el impacto de la membresía cooperativa agropecuaria sobre los rendimientos financiero y productivo en los años 2015 y 2016. Empleamos los modelos Propensity Score Matching y Pooled OLS sobre los datos del Censo de Cooperativas y de la Encuesta Nacional Agropecuaria. Nuestro análisis revela que la membresía cooperativa afecta positivamente los rendimientos en los sectores agrario y agropecuario, pero no en el sector pecuario. Dicho impacto supera los impactos estimados para otras formas de asociatividad. Asimismo, se encuentra un efecto spillover positivo de una localidad con alta presencia cooperativa sobre localidades aledañas. Finalmente, se descubre que la participación femenina en directorios cooperativos agropecuarios también influye positivamente sobre los rendimientos de los productores agropecuarios. / This research examines the impact of agricultural cooperative membership on financial and productive performance in 2015 and 2016. We use the Propensity Score Matching and Pooled OLS models on the data from the Cooperative Census and the National Agricultural Survey. Our analysis reveals that cooperative membership positively affects yields in the agrarian and agricultural sectors, but not in the livestock sector. This impact exceeds the estimated impacts for other types of associativity. Likewise, there is a positive spillover effect of a locality with high cooperative presence over nearby localities yields. Finally, it is discovered that the participation of women in agricultural cooperative directories also positively influences the yields of agricultural producers.

In this thesis I capture the effect of oil prices on the economic growth of net oil exporters and net oil importers of the world. The existing literature on this topic only covers some parts of the world, major oil exporters and oil importers and some covers only a single country. So, in this work I take a larger set of countries and enlarge the time period. This work covers the time period 1972-2021. The effect is examined by using the pooled OLS and two way fixed effect. I get significant results for both the net oil exporters and net oil importers. The results of both net oil exporters and net oil importers are significantly different from zero. But these results are opposite from the existing literature. I found that an increase in oil price has a negative impact on the economic growth of net oil exporters, but it has a positive effect on the economic growth of net oil importers. So, these results also do not support the theoretical and empirical literature.