Browsing by Author "Connolly, Michelle P"
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Item Open Access A Brief Review and Analysis of Spectrum Auctions in Canada(2017-05-08) MartinezCid, Ricardo; Jiao, WenfeiWe begin by explaining the importance of efficient spectrum allocation and reviewing Canada’s recent spectrum allocation history. We then use a dataset covering more than 1,200 licenses auctioned from 2001 to 2015 that seeks to account for each auction’s particular rules. Our results confirm that measures of demand such as population covered, income levels, frequency levels, bandwidth, etc. indeed drive license valuation. We also quantify the negative impact on price of setting aside particular license auctions for new entrants, suggesting that the set-aside provision constitutes an implicit subsidy for those firms.Item Open Access A Comparison Of Multiple Imputation Methods For Categorical Data(2015) Akande, Olanrewaju MichaelThis thesis evaluates the performance of several multiple imputation methods for categorical data, including multiple imputation by chained equations using generalized linear models, multiple imputation by chained equations using classification and regression trees and non-parametric Bayesian multiple imputation for categorical data (using the Dirichlet process mixture of products of multinomial distributions model). The performance of each method is evaluated with repeated sampling studies using housing unit data from the American Community Survey 2012. These data afford exploration of practical problems such as multicollinearity and large dimensions. This thesis highlights some advantages and limitations of each method compared to others. Finally, it provides suggestions on which method should be preferred, and conditions under which the suggestions hold.
Item Open Access A Perfect Storm: The Effect of Natural Disasters on Child Health(2022-08-01) Quijano, CheyenneTyphoons have destructive effects on child health, particularly by increasing the risk of waterborne disease, a leading source of illness and one of the foremost causes of death in children under age 5. To quantify this phenomenon, I examine the health effects of flooding after Typhoon Labuyo in the Philippines, a country at the center of the Pacific Typhoon Belt, the area most vulnerable to severe typhoons and flooding. I use a spatial regression discontinuity design, comparing children living in a flooded barangay (town) to children living just outside of a flooded area. Results do not show any significant relationship between flooding and incidence of waterborne disease. However, my specifications confirm previously established relationships between controls and incidence of disease. Because health and flood data were collected the day after Typhoon Labuyo left the Philippines, I am able to examine differences between the short-term and medium-term impact of flooding on child health. Subgroup analyses show that flooding decreases waterborne disease incidence, in contrast to my predictions, and that the effect is more pronounced in the medium-term than in the short-term. Discrepancies between my predictions and results may be due to the limited resolution of my flooding data, harming my ability to identify which children truly experienced flooding. This paper also introduces a flood measure that accounts for incidence and intensity using NASA satellite data. Overall, my research provides insight into the global effect of typhoons. Understanding the detrimental health effects of flooding is critical as climate change exacerbates natural disaster events, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable.Item Open Access Bias in Fact Checking?: An Analysis of Partisan Trends Using PolitiFact Data(2023-04-15) Colicchio, ThomasFact checking is one of many tools that journalists use to combat the spread of fake news in American politics. Like much of the mainstream media, fact checkers have been criticized as having a left-wing bias. The efficacy of fact checking as a tool for promoting honesty in public discourse is dependent upon the American public’s belief that fact checkers are in fact objective arbiters. In this way, discovering whether this partisan bias is real or simply perceived is essential to directing how fact checkers, and perhaps the mainstream media at large, can work to regain the trust of many on the right. This paper uses data from PolitiFact, one of the most prominent fact checking websites, to analyze whether or not this bias exists. Prior research has shown that there is a selection bias toward fact checking Republicans more often and that they on average receive worse ratings. However, few have examined whether this differential treatment can be attributed to partisan bias. While it is not readily apparent how partisan bias can be objectively measured, this paper develops and tests some novel strategies that seek to answer this question. I find that among PolitiFact’s most prolific fact checkers there is a heterogeneity in their relative ratings of Democrats and Republicans that may suggest the presence of partisanship.Item Open Access Do Evictions Cause Income Changes? An Instrumental Variables Approach(2019-04) Mok, GraceEvictions are an important aspect of the affordable housing crisis facing low-income American renters. However, there has been little research quantifying the causal impact of evictions, which poses challenges for academics interested in understanding inequality and policy-makers interested in reducing it. Merging two datasets both new to the literature, I address this gap in the causal literature by using an instrumental variables strategy to examine the impact of evictions on household income over time in Durham, North Carolina. Exploiting gentrification-related evictions as an instrument, I find a 2.5% decrease in household income after eviction. This is a small, but significant decrease in income given that median household income for households at time of eviction is about $15,000.Item Open Access Illuminating the Economic Costs of Conflict: A Night Light Analysis of the Sri Lankan Civil War(2023-07-29) Wijesekera, NicholasThis paper investigates the economic consequences of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009) by using event-based data on civilian and combatant fatalities in addition to night light imagery as a proxy for economic activity. By looking at regional economic activity across the island of Sri Lanka, this paper seeks to identify how violence led to declines or undershoots of economic activity in the areas in which it was most prevalent. The use of night light data gives a hyper-localized proxy measurement of this activity for each year of the war. The investigation finds that government and rebel deaths have strong, negative effects on economic activity, and that these effects spill over across time and space. Additionally, the manner in which civilian deaths occur is an important determinant of their subsequent economic impact. The paper offers new findings on the economic legacy of the Sri Lankan Civil War and extends existing work on the use of night light data to measure economic activity during conflict.Item Open Access Impact of Language Access Laws on LEP Infant Mortality Rates(2023-04) Griffin, AndrewStarting with Executive Order 13166 in 2000, the United States federal government began to address the language disparity issues in health care. Around the same time, several states have begun to pass language access (LA) legislation mandating translation and interpretation services at hospitals for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals. This study uses these multiple discontinuities to evaluate the effect of language access laws on infant mortality rates, adequacy of care, Apgar scores, and the number of prenatal visits from the years 1995 to 2004 for limited English proficient families. I find ambiguous results of language access laws positively impacting infant mortality rates or Apgar scores, but I find clear positive impacts on the adequacy of care and the number of prenatal visits. These findings suggest that language access laws have a clear effect on reducing barriers for limited English proficient mothers, and improving the care mothers receive. Furthermore, there is limited evidence that it improves infant health or outcomes, but the increase of prenatal visits and adequacy of care likely indirectly leads to improving infant mortality rates and Apgar scores. More research is needed into discovering how those mechanisms work and the costs of language services.Item Open Access Impact of Medicare Advantage Supplemental Benefit Expansion on Startup Funding(2023-08-05) Zhong, JudyIn 2018, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that they would expand the supplemental benefits that can be included in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. The goal was to encourage insurers to innovate and test new benefit offerings that could improve health outcomes and reduce healthcare spending. A key player in this transformation is the MA vendor that provides supplemental benefit offerings to insurance plans, but this market is rather underdeveloped. To assess the implementation of this supplemental benefit expansion, this study examines the flow of funding into the emerging market of MA vendors. This paper uses a longitudinal approach and Crunchbase data on funding for 79,004 firms from 2014 to 2018 to determine whether there is a significant jump in funding toward MA vendors with supplemental benefit services following the policy change. The results show that both the average amount of funding per deal and the number of deals a MA vendor firm receives significantly increased following the expansion when compared with all other firms. This suggests that the policy may have been successful in promoting the development of the MA vendors market and the innovation of benefit offerings as more funding goes towards these companies.Item Open Access Investigating the Costs of Religious Observance: Cross-Country Analysis of Islamic Banking(2019-04) Vargo, Richard; Swallow, MylaThis study regresses key variables that influence the profitability of Conventional and Islamic banks as measured by Return on Average Assets, to determine the impact of Islamicity on the profitability of the banks in a given country. The study compares 36564 banks in 77 countries belonging to both Islamic and non-Islamic countries. We find that Islamic banks have higher operating costs and overall experience lower return on average assets.Item Open Access Peer Effects & Differential Attrition: Evidence from Tennessee’s Project STAR(2022-04-08) Satish, SanjayThis paper explores the effects of attrition on student development in early education. It aims to provide evidence that student departure in elementary schools has educational impacts on the students they leave behind. Utilizing data from Tennessee’s Project STAR experiment, this paper aims to expand upon the literature of peer effects, as well as attrition, in public elementary schools. It departs from previous papers by utilizing survival analysis to determine which characteristics of students prolonged participation in the experiment. Clustering analysis is subsequently employed to group departed students to better understand the various channels of attrition present in STAR. It finds that students who left Project STAR were more likely to be of lower income and lower ability than their peers. This paper then uses these findings to estimate the peer effects of attrition on students who remained in the experiment and undertakes a discussion of potential sources of bias in this estimation and their effects on the explanatory power of peer effects estimates.Item Open Access Regulatory Uncertainty: The Impact of the 2015 Open Internet Order on Broadband Infrastructure Investment(2018-04-18) Burkholder, Dane; Lim, Chin JieThis paper analyzes the impact of the United States Federal Communication's (FCC) March 2015 Open Internet Order (OIO) on broadband infrastructure investment outcomes such as changes in speed of services, market entry. We find that higher broadband investment levels deter potential entrants and may weed out competition amongst incumbent ISPs from December 2014 to December 2016. The 2015 OIO appears to have negatively impacted the probability of an ISP entering a census block for the first time by 7.17% during any six-month time periods from June 2015 to December 2016 compared to the time period from June 2010 to December 2014.Item Open Access Sister competition and birth order effects among marriage-aged girls: Evidence from a field experiment in rural Bangladesh(2018-04) Zhong, StephanieEarly marriage before the age of 18 is prevalent among adolescent girls in Bangladesh, but the timing of marriage is not uniform across daughters within a household, with some sisters marrying earlier than others. Using survey data from a novel field experiment from rural Bangladesh, I find that girls ages 10-21 with lower birth order tend to be married at a younger age, even when controlling for confounding nature of household size on birth order. Additionally, girls with younger sisters are more likely to be married and at a younger age than girls with younger brothers. The findings on dowry are inclusive.Item Open Access Social Capital and Financial Development after Economic Shocks: Evidence from Italy after the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009(2019-04-12) Lampert, Ethan; Rao, SujayLike traditional forms of capital, social capital – an intangible measure of an individual’s social networks, trust in institutions, and participation in civic life – has implications for personal and financial behavior. Individuals from educated, well-established backgrounds with fruitful family ties may be more amenable to opening new lines of credit or investing in stock markets due to their trust in and connectedness with society. But what happens after a major economic shock, such as the financial crisis of 2008? Using Italy as a case study and panel data from the Survey of Household Income and Wealth, we find that social capital has significant effects on an individual’s credit card usage, informal borrowing, and choice to invest in securities.Item Open Access The Effect of Slum Redevelopment on Child Health Outcomes: Evidence from Mumbai(2016-06-07) Jalota, SuhaniAs the population of urban poor living in slums increases, governments are trying to relocate people into government-provided free housing. Slum redevelopment affects every part of a household’s livelihood, but most importantly the health and wellbeing of younger generations. This paper investigates the effect of slum redevelopment schemes on child stunting levels. Data was collected in forty-one buildings under the slum-redevelopment program in Mumbai. The study demonstrates through a fixed effect regression analysis that an additional year of living in the building is associated with an increase in the height-for-age Z-score by 0.124 standard deviations. Possible explanations include an improvement in the overall hygienic environment, sanitation conditions, indoor air pollution, and access to health and water facilities. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that water contamination, loss of livelihood and increased expenses could worsen health outcomes for residents. This study prompts more research on the health effects of slum redevelopment projects, which are becoming increasingly common in the rapidly urbanizing developing world.Item Open Access The Effect of Workforce Participation and Household Income Contribution on Women’s Healthcare Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh(2022-04-08) Wang, HannahWomen in Bangladesh have gained increased access to paid work in the past decade yet still experience limited choices and access to resources, which threatens their ability to exercise control over healthcare for themselves and their children. Several collective household bargaining theories hypothesize a link between women’s workforce participation and empowerment. This paper uses a cross-sectional approach and survey data collected at the end of a randomized trial field experiment in rural Bangladesh from 2007 to 2017 to examine health empowerment outcomes for 7,151 young women ages 14 to 32. The results show that women who work for income are expected to be more health empowered, specifically due to an increased ability to make their own health decisions. As a woman contributes more income to her household, her health empowerment is expected to increase, through increased abilities to make her own health decisions, purchase medicine for herself, and seek medical treatment independently. Greater mobility and stronger female-positive attitudes towards gender norms are potential mechanisms through which paid work and household income contribution can translate into health empowerment. Furthermore, higher total household income, having children, and being more educated than her husband are expected to increase a woman’s health empowerment. These results are significant while controlling for the effects of various individual and household characteristics.Item Open Access The Effects of Religion and Patriarchal Norms on Female Labor Force Participation(2017-05-09) Nnoromele, ChidinmaThis paper provides an empirical study of the influence of religion, religiosity, and patriarchal norms on female labor force participation across 40 countries. Using micro-level data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2012: “Family and Changing Gender Roles IV and macro-level data from World Bank Group’s Women, Business, and the Law 2012 database, the study examines religious and patriarchal aspects that influence female labor force participation among working women, ages 15 to 64. The analysis supports the hypothesis that more religious and socially conservative women are less likely to have paid work. However, the analysis, which examines ten different religions, finds that the specific religion a woman practices, excluding the cultural religions (Judaism and Hinduism), does not influence female labor force participation when controlling for national and environmental cultural factors. This suggests that a country’s institutions, socio-political context, and geographic cultural heritage matter in the way that religiosity is expressed in women’s economic participation.Item Open Access The Evolution of U.S. Spectrum Values Over Time(Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID) Working Paper, 2018-02-12) Connolly, Michelle P; Sá, Nelson; Zaman, Azeem; Roark, Christopher; Trivedi, AkshayaItem Open Access The Impact of Violence in Mexico on Education and Labor Outcomes: Do Conditional Cash Transfers Have a Mitigating Effect?(2019-04-12) Barton, HayleyThis research explores the potential mitigating effect of Mexico’s conditional cash transfer program, Oportunidades, on the education and labor impacts of increased homicide rates. Panel data models are combined with a difference-in-differences approach to compare children and young adults who receive cash transfers with those who do not. Results are very sensitive to specification, but Oportunidades participation is shown to be positively associated with educational attainment regardless of homicide increases. Homicides are associated with decreases in likelihood of school enrollment and compulsory education completion; however, they also correspond with increases in educational attainment, with a larger effect for Oportunidades non-recipients.Item Open Access The Market for Apples: A Theory of Identity and Consumption(2016-06-08) Lee, ClementThis paper presents an economic model of the effects of identity and social norms on consumption patterns. By incorporating qualitative studies in psychology and sociology, I propose a utility function that features two components – economic (functional) and identity elements. This setup is extended to analyze a market comprising a continuum of consumers, whose identity distribution along a spectrum of binary identities is described by a Beta distribution. I also introduce the notion of salience in the context of identity and consumption decisions. The key result of the model suggests that fundamental economic parameters, such as price elasticity and market demand, can be altered by identity elements. In addition, it predicts that firms in perfectly competitive markets may associate their products with certain types of identities, in order to reduce product substitutability and attain price-setting power.Item Open Access The Puzzle of Mobile Money Markets: An Example of Goldilocks Conditions(2017-05-04) Martinez-Cid, Ricardo; Pernas, GonzaloThis paper investigates the supply-side and demand-side factors that explain the success of mobile money markets. Namely, we argue that there exists a set of Goldilocks conditions that best supports mobile money services. A population must have exposure to financial services to understand mobile money and have a high enough level of income to have a use for these services. However, the population must also not have access to highly developed banking architecture, such that their banking needs are already satisfied. By comparing El Salvador and Kenya, countries in different stages of development, we find empirical support for our hypothesis. Our evidence suggests that low income regions and households with some exposure to financial services are more likely to use mobile money than fully banked people who enjoy a higher income.