This paper investigates the potential welfare gains resulting from variable parking fees in the presence of heterogeneous agents. We begin by defining a modified linear city model with two lots located at separate distances from a central business district, and two types of agents with heterogeneous values of time. Agents...
MSME development has emerged at the forefront of economic policy, with the majority of policy mechanisms aimed at creating the regulatory and institutional environments, which have historically proven to augment entrepreneurial activity. In the case of Europe a large portion of entrepreneurial policy resides within the European Community framework, however...
This dissertation addresses issues of strategic behavior of firms in oligopoly markets. In the first study we analyze how generic advertising affects brand advertising and firm profits in differentiated oligopoly markets. We develop two models, one with vertical differentiation and another with horizontal differentiation. In the case of vertical differentiation,...
In this paper, I estimate efficiency and productivity change in the U.S. banking industry. The data consist of annual observations of 25 banks from 2004 to 2008. The paper follows a two-stage procedure. In the first-stage, utilizing the non-parametric methodologies, input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model and DEA based Malmquist...
The Bolivian government is using a portion of the rent generated from its fossil fuel reserves to fund unconditional cash transfers as a means of redistributing resources. Although some countries have enacted conditional cash transfers in the past, these unconditional transfers are unique since they only have been implemented in...
This paper empirically examines the effects of population aging on international trade using a cross-country panel data set for a select group of 22 OECD countries. Other recent studies have examined the effects of population age on other economic variables such as growth, savings, and investment but none till now...
A considerable amount of research and literature exists that attempt to explain the policymaking processes of central banks and, in particular, the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB). As with those studies, the purpose of this study is to explain FRB policymaking in order to understand FRB policy shifts during financial crises....
This dissertation is composed of two self-contained essays, which examine two
different factors that could affect human capital accumulation in a developing country.
Both essays utilize cross-sectional data from the second round (2003/04) of national level
household survey from Nepal.
In the first essay, I estimate the impact of remittances...
Electricity is a vital energy source for modern life, and is used in almost every aspect of daily life. United States electricity consumption totaled nearly 3,886,403 gigawatt hours in 2011. Residential electricity consumption accounts for 37 percent of total electricity consumption in the United States. Between 1990 and 2007, the...
This dissertation addresses issues concerning the behavior of firms, which has significant effects on performance. In the first study, we empirically investigate the effect of the reduction in number of firms on price competition in the U.S. macro-brewing industry. The number of macro brewing firms decreased from 766 in 1935...