International remittances are an increasingly discussed topic for development economists; however, economists disagree about the motivations for remittance-sending. Additionally, there is divergence among economists about which variables determine remittance flows. This thesis examines the motivations of remittance senders from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as well as from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) through the introduction of a political instability variable. This thesis, representing 47 nations, contains 2 panel estimations of the macroeconomic and political determinants of remittances to LAC, and SSA. Annual remittances from 1970 to 2003 for the nations in the two regions were regressed on per capita GDPs of the host and recipient nations, the real interest rate differential between the recipient and host nations, and a political instability index for the recipient nation. The panel estimation for LAC revealed a statistically significant 5% decrease in remittances per unit increase in the political instability index. The panel estimation for SSA showed 0 effect with a unit increase in the political instability index. This result was not statistically significant. The result for LAC indicated altruism as the motivation for remittance sending, while the result for SSA was inconclusive. The evidence asserts that political instability affects remittance flows to LAC, while it does not impact remittance flows to SSA.

In recent years, the insufficient supply of electricity on ruch hours has not simply led to negative impact on hi-tech industries, but also impeded the normal operation of industries, such as factories, medical centers, hotel business, public administration organization, schools and so on. The most important thing we have to do is to come up with a solution to such a dilemma. This thesis is to propose a better way and suggestion for the places with high frequent operation of medium, large size air conditioner units, which achieves to make efficient use of energy. Generally speaking, such kind users lack sufficient knowledge concerning chillers equipments, pipe system, automatic control circuit, energy saving equipment. In addition, air conditioner industries do not care about such awareness of technology research of power demand, energy saving, and under power limited pressure. Therefore, this thesis also attempts to find a solution to the problems. Moreover, this thesis mainly makes use of graphic control software to assess actual various parameters with load capacity control, efficiency consume energy, and economic dispatch, and then to get into units system load monitor model management. Hopefully, such model and analysis of the experiment could be regarded as an efficient technique applied into actual units distribution monitor, and furthermore, would provide parallel medium, large air conditioner chiller units with not simply deeper discussion but also more efficient solution to the goal of energy saving.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 160 p.; also includes graphics. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Stan Thompson, Dept. of Agricultural, Environmental & Development Economics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 156-160).

My dissertation studies the application of economic theory in various settings. Each chapter begins with a basic intuition or question, and then develops the most appropriate methods to investigate. The questions addressed and results generated are interesting both from a theoretical and practical standpoint. The first chapter provides a general model for analyzing affiliate marketing contracts in online advertising, and presents a novel explanation for the diversity of contracts which exist in the industry. Affiliate marketing is an online, pay-per-performance advertising industry, where advertisers must specify the user action (impression of the ad, user click, final sale, etc.) on which to remunerate publishers "affiliates" who advertise on their behalf. In practice, many different actions are utilized. The main result here is that if users are heterogenous, and publishers know more about their users than advertisers, then the specified action serves as a selection mechanism that incentivizes the publisher to advertise only to a desirable set of users. Also, choosing the appropriate action minimizes expenses to the advertiser. When there are many different user types, each with varying worth to both the advertiser and publisher, achieving both of these goals requires a rich set of contractible actions. More generally, the approach used here can be implemented in other environments where asymmetric information and adverse selection play a role. The second chapter studies the rebound effect, or the increased use of energy services following an increase in the efficiency of that service. This effect is widely studied in the literature, but it usually only considered in a single-service environment. Such a framework ignores the potentially significant indirect rebound effects which occur through increased purchasing power for other services, and does not allow for joint efficiency improvements across many services, what we call ``efficiency correlation.'' We develop a household production model with two energy services and distinct but simultaneous efficiency changes to test the implications of efficiency correlation on net energy elasticities and the rebound effect. Positively correlated efficiency choices across end-uses increase technically feasible energy reductions but also drive additional rebound responses that erode these savings. Moreover, we find that negative correlation can significantly reverse any energy savings (e.g. a household installs energy-saving window panes but then trades in their sedan for a SUV), but that current Federal efficiency standards make this scenario unlikely. This paper offers new insight into a host of additional behavioral responses to efficiency improvements, particularly the incidence of efficiency correlation across different energy services, and highlights its implication for realized energy savings. The third chapter studies the effect of negative equity and landlock on household mobility and employment. This paper incorporates a novel friction -- that households which are both underwater and insolvent cannot sell their home -- into a search model where agents face a restriction of job opportunities based on their net asset positions. Ultimately, agents in deep-enough negative equity and insolvency quit searching altogether, reducing labor supply and mobility. Data from the Survey of Consumer Finances present empirical evidence which is consistent with this result. The welfare gains from removing this friction suggest that a median income earner is willing to pay about 2% of her income, or between 3-4 percentage points in additional interest on her debt to remove this constraint. This suggests that the landlock effect represents an incomplete lending market. If feasible, homeowners would be willing to compensate lenders to swap-out mortgage debt with other loans which do not constrain mobility. Removing the landlock restriction also results in higher search effort and lower durations, as households are better off being able to search and obtain better employment opportunities when they are underwater, rather than receiving interest reductions typical of current mortgage-finance policy. / text

<p> This dissertation studies the applications of reputation games in social media and finance as well as decision games in political economy. Chapter 1 develops a reputation game in which a biased but informed expert makes a statement to attract audiences. The biased expert has an ideological incentive to distort his information as well as having a reputation concern. The expert knows that his expertise may vary in different topics, while the audiences cannot identify such differences. The biased expert is more likely to announce his favorite message when he knows less about it. Moreover, the biased expert is less willing to lie when the audiences have better outside options, and such improvements in outside options may benefit both the expert and the audiences. </p><p> Chapter 2 studies a credit rating game with a credit rating agency(CRA), an issuer and an investor. The privately informed and biased CRA provides a rating on the issuer's project, and the investor decides to purchase the project or not according to the report. As long as the CRA obtains a contract, he will inflate the rating. When the default risk is high, the CRA tells the truth. Moreover, he is more likely to tell the truth when the issuer's private benefit is larger. When the default risk is low, the CRA sends a good rating. He is more likely to inflate the rating if the issuer has a higher private benefit. </p><p> Chapter 3 presents a model in secessions and nationalism, with a special emphasis on the role of civil war. In our model, a disagreement on secession between the central government and the minority group leads to disastrous military conflicts. As a result, the tremendous potential cost of the war distorts the political choice of the minority group, and helps the central government to exploit them both economically and politically. Several key ingredients, such as population, per capita income and perceived winning chance of the civil war, play an essential role in the decision making process of the minority group. I also conduct an empirical test of this model, which supports the major findings stated above.</p>

<p> Local returns to housing investment across the U.S. cities are estimated and applied to explain the stockholding puzzle, i.e. the tendency for US homeowners to hold only housing and risk free assets in their portfolios. Several empirical problems exist in the previous studies: first, rental returns are always ignored or just assumed to be constant across cities; second, the CAP rates at the city level are often based on the problematic BLS Rent Index (the BLS CAP rate) which is questioned by Ambrose et al (2014). </p><p> Using micro data from American Housing Survey (AHS), CAP rates for 38 of the largest MSAs in the U.S. (the AHS CAP rate) are estimated. Pooled OLS methods are used to control the heterogeneity in individual housing characteristics and quality differences across tenure types. As expected based on Ambrose et al (2014), AHS CAP rates are much more volatile than BLS CAP rates. Standard deviations of annual AHS CAP rates (national average value is 2.27%) are much larger than those of BLS CAP rates (national average value is 0.57%). Moreover, in inland cities, especially those in Rust Belt, AHS CAP rates reflect more rental risk than BLS CAP rates do. This divergence is smaller in coastal cities where housing price appreciation is more volatile. This implies that past research using the BLS Rent Index to analyze rental risk may be biased. </p><p> After formulating CAP rate measures for a panel of cities, this data is used to test the dividend pricing hypothesis (DPH) in housing by studying the trade-off between the capitalization rate and subsequent house price appreciation. In previous tests, even allowing for the fact that actual appreciation does not equal expected appreciation, evidence for the DPH has not been strong. This research has included an implicit assumption that risks associated with housing investment are common across housing markets. In addition, many previous tests have used BLS CAP rates or assumed that the CAP rate was constant across cities and/or over time. In this second essay, statistically constructed estimates of the AHS CAP rate and the variance in total return are used to conduct tests of the DPH. The result is far stronger than those obtained in previous studies of a cross section of U.S. cities. But, when the BLS Rent Index is used to measure CAP rates and risk, the results are not consistent with the DPH. </p><p> Finally, these findings about total return to housing investment are used to explain the stockholding paradox. Homeowners tend to hold housing and risk-free assets, but not equities or bonds in their personal portfolios. This has been called the "stockholding paradox" and has been explained by observing that the correlation between the rate of appreciation of national housing prices and returns to the S&P; 500 is relatively high. The common conclusion in the literature has been that homeowners derive only modest diversification benefits from holding stocks and choose instead to amortize their mortgages. In contrast to the empirical literature on the stockholding paradox, Brueckner (1997) has demonstrated the theoretical proposition that consumption constrained households, those whose wealth is a fraction of housing value, will not find holding the market portfolio efficient. This research proceeds from Brueckner's observation. First, total return to homeownership, including both appreciation and AHS CAP rate is measured. Second, properties of optimal portfolios for households under various degrees of consumption constraints are identified. Third, optimal portfolios of individual stocks are determined. The results show that portfolios of individual stocks, which vary by city, are far more attractive than the market portfolio for homeowners. This suggests a resolution to the stockholding puzzle. Homeowners could benefit from holding portfolios designed to offset the unique risk of the cities where they live but they lack information on what these portfolios might be. Given this information gap, holding the market portfolio is not particularly attractive for most homeowners.</p>

No description available.

While sanctions proliferated after the Cold War, concerns remain about their effectiveness and humanitarian impact. In addressing these concerns, scholars have offered diverse frameworks generally emphasizing sanctions' design or application. This thesis argues that the proper focus of concern is conceptually prior to each of these. In fact, lacking political will has been characteristic of sanctions cases and the root of sanctions' failures. Significantly, the cost-benefit calculus informing policymakers' political will has been systematically incomplete. Sanctions are often judged on their lifting, in the country on which they were imposed, yet this unreasonably crops out broader sanctions' impact. Sanctions have an understudied capacity for creating vacuums filled by indigenous influences, for lastingly restructuring societies, and for affecting human capital, each in a manner obstructive of post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction. This has vital policy relevance given its impact on substantive international peace and security, the breech of which initially spurs sanctions. Contemporary efforts in Iraq, Haiti, Serbia, and South Africa are explored in illustration.

Thesis (MReg&UrbPlan)--University of South Australia, 1999

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.