Colleges and Department Research
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Research, creative, and scholarly works created by the university community organized by college.
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Browsing Colleges and Department Research by Department "Finance and Economics"
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Item A Brief Exploration in Statistics and Quantum Mechanics(Texas State University-San Marcos, 2011-05) Blankmeyer, EricQuantum mechanics has some probabilistic or statistical features that have been considered paradoxical or exotic; at least, this impression is frequently conveyed in introductory textbooks on the subject and informal explanations of quantum theory. The often idiosyncratic treatment of statistics and probability seems unhelpful to the student and the interested layperson: it may tend to exaggerate and mystify the real differences between the microscopic and the macroscopic worlds. In this paper I try to show that some of the statistical esoterica of quantum mechanics can be made more transparent by their very close analogies to several macroscopic topics.Item Business Return in New Orleans: Decision Making Amid Post-Katrina Uncertainty(Public Library of Science, 2009-08-26) Lam, Nina S. N.; Pace, R. Kelley; Campanella, Richard; LeSage, James P.; Arenas, HelbertBackground: Empirical observations on how businesses respond after a major catastrophe are rare, especially for a catastrophe as great as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans, Louisiana on August 29, 2005. We analyzed repeated telephone surveys of New Orleans businesses conducted in December 2005, June 2006, and October 2007 to understand factors that influenced decisions to re-open amid post-disaster uncertainty. Methodology/Principal Findings: Businesses in the group of professional, scientific, and technical services reopened the fastest in the near term, but differences in the rate of reopening for businesses stratified by type became indistinguishable in the longer term (around two years later). A reopening rate of 65% was found for all businesses by October 2007. Discriminant analysis showed significant differences in responses reflecting their attitudes about important factors between businesses that reopened and those that did not. Businesses that remained closed at the time of our third survey (two years after Katrina) ranked levee protection as the top concern immediately after Katrina, but damage to their premises and financing became major concerns in subsequent months reflected in the later surveys. For businesses that had opened (at the time of our third survey), infrastructure protection including levee, utility, and communications were the main concerns mentioned in surveys up to the third survey, when the issue of crime became their top concern. Conclusions/Significance: These findings underscore the need to have public policy and emergency plans in place prior to the actual disaster, such as infrastructure protection, so that the policy can be applied in a timely manner before business decisions to return or close are made. Our survey results, which include responses from both open and closed businesses, overcome the “survivorship bias” problem and provide empirical observations that should be useful to improve micro-level spatial economic modeling of factors that influence business return decisions.Item Economic Base: San Marcos, Hays County, Texas (1959-1971)(Southwest Texas State University, 1972-01) Savage, V. Howard; Morgan, Celia A.; Yeargan, Howard R.No abstract prepared.Item Errors in Variables or Bad Leverage at Some Observations ?(Texas State University-San Marcos, 2011-10) Blankmeyer, EricErrors-in-variables is a long-standing, difficult issue in linear regression; and progress depends in part on new identifying assumptions. I characterize measurement error as bad-leverage points and assume that fewer than half the sample observations are heavily contaminated, in which case a high-breakdown robust estimator may be able to isolate and downweight or discard the problematic data. In simulations of simple and multiple regression where eiv affected 25% of the data and R2 was mediocre, one high-breakdown estimator had small bias, very good coverage, and precision that improved when the sample size increased.Item Has China’s Belt and Road Initiative Intensified Bilateral Trade Links between China and the Involved Countries?(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2020-08-20) Yu, Chunjiao; Zhang, Ren; An, Lian; Yu, ZhixingThe Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is designed to intensify reciprocal trade preferentiality between China and the Belt-Road countries. However, there has been little research empirically examining the policy effects on the trade links between China and the involved countries. This paper attempts to evaluate the BRI effects quantitatively by constructing a new bilateral revealed trade preference index to measure the bilateral trade preferentiality between China and its 114 trading partners. Using a difference in differences model, we show that the trade of China with the Belt-Road countries has become more preferentially linked since the implementation of the BRI. In particular, the bilateral revealed trade preference index between China and the Belt-Road countries has grown approximately 8% faster than has that with the non-Belt-Road countries. We further show that the BRI effects are heterogeneous across different regions. The bilateral trade links have been more significantly intensified in the regions of the China–Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, the China–Central Asia–West Asia Economic Corridor and the Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar Economic Corridor. The findings strongly indicate that BRI has been acting as a catalyst for intensifying bilateral trade preferentiality between China and the Belt-Road countries.Item How Robust is Linear Regression with Dummy Variables ?(Texas State University-San Marcos, 2006-11) Blankmeyer, EricResearchers in education and the social sciences make extensive use of linear regression models in which the dependent variable is continuous-valued while the explanatory variables are a combination of continuous-valued regressors and dummy variables. The dummies partition the sample into groups, some of which may contain only a few observations. Such groups may easily contain enough outliers to break down the parameter estimates. Models with many fixed or random effects appear to be especially vulnerable to outlying data. This paper discusses the problem at an intuitive level and cites sources for the key theorems establishing bounds on the breakdown point in models with dummy variables.Item Improving the Small-sample Efficiency of a Robust Correlation Matrix: A Note(Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007-04) Blankmeyer, EricThis paper reports small-sample simulations of a correlation matrix estimated robustly by P. J. Rousseeuw's MCD algorithm. It appears that the statistical efficiency of MCD can be improved significantly if a pairwise-difference transformation is first applied to the data.Item Increasing Access to Care for the Underserved: Voices of Riders, Drivers, and Staff of a Rural Transportation Program(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2022-10-19) Schwartz, Abby; Richman, Alice; Scott, Mallary; Liu, Haiyong; White, Weyling; Doherty, CarolineThe qualitative data presented in this paper was part of a larger concurrent mixed methods study evaluating the effectiveness of a transportation program (Project TRIP) for low-income residents in rural eastern North Carolina. Twenty stakeholders involved in TRIP were interviewed, including riders (n = 12) of which 83% were over 50 years old, program staff including the program coordinator and 5 case managers (n = 6), and transportation providers (n = 2). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, interviews were completed by phone with each participant. Themes from the qualitative data included the: (1) Emotional, health, & financial impacts of TRIP, (2) Changes that should be implemented into TRIP when replicating the program, and (3) Unique aspects of how TRIP operates that could inform other rural transportation programs. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcript data. The findings are couched in the context of how TRIP potentially defrays the impacts of cumulative disadvantage that residents experience over the life course by increasing access to healthcare.Item Log-linear Indexes of Nominal Wage Rates and Employment in Eight U. S. Regions(Texas State University-San Marcos, 2008-02) Blankmeyer, EricThis paper illustrates the use of log-linear indexes to estimate and test hypotheses about interregional differences in nominal wages and employment. A two-way analysis of variance is applied to cross sections of U. S. retailing and service categories in eight regions. The robustness of the estimated indexes is examined, and a test of consistent aggregation across sectors is proposed.Item Monetary Transfers in the U.S.: How Efficient Are Tax Rebates?(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2013-11) Vacaflores, Diego E.Recent debate on the effectiveness of tax rebates has concentrated on the degree to which they can affect economic activity, which depends on the methodology, the state of the economy, and the underlying assumptions. A better approach to assess the effectiveness of these monetary transfers is by comparing this method to alternative policies—like the traditional monetary injections through the financial intermediaries. A limited participation model calibrated to the U.S. economy is used to show that the higher the proportion of the monetary injection channeled through the consumers—instead of banks—leads to a less vigorous recovery of output but softens the detrimental effect on the utility of the representative household from the inherent inflationary pressure. This result is robust to the relative importance of the injection (utilization of resources) and alternative utility functions.Item Percentiles of an Inflation Index by Quantile Regression(Texas State University-San Marcos, 2006-06) Blankmeyer, EricThis paper gives a methodology for estimating an inflation index using the quantile regression of Bassett and Koenker. The regression, which is orthogonal in the logarithmic price changes, is computed by linear programming for each percentile of inflation. The procedure is applied to monthly data on 25 raw materials.Item Predictors of Business Return in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina(Public Library of Science, 2012-10-24) Lam, Nina S. N.; Arenas, Helbert; Pace, R. Kelley; LeSage, James P.; Campanella, RichardWe analyzed the business reopening process in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, which hit the region on August 29, 2005, to better understand what the major predictors were and how their impacts changed through time. A telephone survey of businesses in New Orleans was conducted in October 2007, 26 months after Hurricane Katrina. The data were analyzed using a modified spatial probit regression model to evaluate the importance of each predictor variable through time. The results suggest that the two most important reopening predictors throughout all time periods were the flood depth at the business location and business size as represented by its wages in a logarithmic form. Flood depth was a significant negative predictor and had the largest marginal effects on the reopening probabilities. Smaller businesses had lower reopening probabilities than larger ones. However, the nonlinear response of business size to the reopening probability suggests that recovery aid would be most effective for smaller businesses than for larger ones. The spatial spillovers effect was a significant positive predictor but only for the first nine months. The findings show clearly that flood protection is the overarching issue for New Orleans. A flood protection plan that reduces the vulnerability and length of flooding would be the first and foremost step to mitigate the negative effects from climate-related hazards and enable speedy recovery. The findings cast doubt on the current coastal protection efforts and add to the current debate of whether coastal Louisiana will be sustainable or too costly to protect from further land loss and flooding given the threat of sea-level rise. Finally, a plan to help small businesses to return would also be an effective strategy for recovery, and the temporal window of opportunity that generates the greatest impacts would be the first 6∼9 months after the disaster.Item Southwest Texas State University and the San Marcos Community: An Economic Impact Analysis(Southwest Texas State University, 1985-01) Southwest Texas State UniversityNo abstract prepared.Item SWT and San Marcos: An Economic Impact Analysis, 1990(Southwest Texas State University, 1990-01) Savage, V. Howard; Kishan, Ruby P.At the request of President Robert Hardesty of Southwest Texas State University, the economic relationship between Southwest Texas State University, the economic relationship between Southwest Texas State University and San Marcos was studied for fiscal year 1985. This study was carried out through the use of the Caffrey-Isaacs cash flow model. In the 1985 fiscal year the university dominated the local economy.Item SWT and San Marcos: Economic Impact Study, 1999(Southwest Texas State University, 1999-01) Southwest Texas State UniversityNo abstract prepared.Item The Biggest Myth in Spatial Econometrics(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2014-12) LeSage, James P.; Pace, R. KelleyThere is near universal agreement that estimates and inferences from spatial regression models are sensitive to particular specifications used for the spatial weight structure in these models. We find little theoretical basis for this commonly held belief, if estimates and inferences are based on the true partial derivatives for a well-specified spatial regression model. We conclude that this myth may have arisen from past applied work that incorrectly interpreted the model coefficients as if they were partial derivatives, or from use of misspecified models.Item The Economic Impact of Texas State University [2014](Texas State University-San Marcos, 2014-08) LeSage, James P.The impact of Texas State on the local, regional and state economics is greater than the direct spending by the University since money spent by the University is spent by employees, businesses, and their workers. As these expenditures give rise to additional business spending, this sets in motion a chain reaction of additional indirect and induced spending. These economic ripple effects impact the local, regional and state economics, and economists use an economic technique known as Input-Output Analysis to analyze the multiple impacts that arise. The IMPLAN input-output model was used to carry out this economic impact study.Item The Economic Impact of Texas State University-San Marcos [2007](Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007-09) LeSage, James P.The impact of Texas State on the local, regional and state economics is greater than the direct spending by the University since money spent by the University is spent by employees, businesses, and their workers. As these expenditures give rise to additional business spending, this sets in motion a chain reaction of additional indirect and induced spending. These economics ripple effects impact the local, regional and state economics, and economists use an economic technique known as Input-Output Analysis to analyze the multiple impacts that arise. The IMPLAN input-output model was used to carry out this economic impact study.