Eastern Economic Journal

The focus of this study is to examine the differential impacts of economic volatility and governance on the flows of US manufacturing and non-manufacturing foreign direct investment (FDI) into African economies. A Generalized Autoregressive Heteroscedastic (GARCH) model is used to generate economic volatility indicators for each sample country. Different governance indices have also been used to test the robustness of the findings. The results of the study show that the influence of economic volatility and governance on aggregate US FDI is weak. For the flows of US manufacturing FDI, effects of economic volatility are undetectable; for this sub-sector, investor confidence, government policy commitment, and availability of labor stand out as major determinants. For US non-manufacturing FDI, however, both economic volatilities and governance have significant effects, although only when economic volatilities occur together with bad governance and high debt burden. Other economic factors, such as trade links between host countries and the US, and between host countries and the rest of the world, also boost the flows of both manufacturing and non-manufacturing US FDI in African economies.

In 2008, congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. This act relaxed the 90/10 rule requiring for-profit institutions to earn at least 10 percent of their revenue from non-Title IV funds by revoking eligibility after 2 years of non-compliance instead of 1 year. To comply with the 90/10 rule, for-profit institutions bundle campuses together. Unbundling the campuses doubles the number of 1-year violations though the number of 2-year violations remains the same. For-profit institutions receive almost one billion dollars, or about 4.5 percent, more federal aid under the 2-year violation rule than the 1-year violation rule.

We analyse the effects of sanctions implemented by the European Union against Russia following the latter’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Indirect effects of sanctions on its non-prohibited exports to Russia are examined using a gravity model of trade that includes a time varying sanction index. A per country analysis is also incorporated to increase the granularity of the results. We find that sanctions led to a decrease in exports of non-prohibited products from certain European countries (i.e., the “losers”) while increasing such exports from others (i.e., the “winners”), an outcome that qualifies as an “unintended consequence” of the sanctions.

We identify factors related to instructors’ choice of assessment methods in undergraduate economics courses, using national survey data collected in 1995, 2000, and 2005. Respondents were asked to indicate which of 10 different assessment methods they used in four different types of courses (principles, intermediate theory, econometrics and statistics, and other upper-division field courses), and to provide background information on school, department, and individual factors that might influence the choice of assessment methods, including time spent on research vs teaching, perceived incentives/rewards for those activities in their departments and schools, class size, and the individual instructor's rank, years of teaching experience, gender, and native language. Both probit and OLS specifications show most of these individual variables to be important in determining the choice of assessment methods in at least some types of courses, but only rarely across all types of courses. Two variables reflecting school missions and departmental policies are, however, important determinants of using essay questions and longer written assignments, such as term papers: class size (especially classes with more than 40 students) and semester teaching loads for faculty members.

This paper analyzes the net impacts of college football games on the sales tax revenues and taxable sales of four mid-sized cities in Texas. The paper addresses the question in the title, but also asks whether state policy-makers might be justified in encouraging schools in their state to play one another based on the local economic impact those games will have. In general, our evidence suggests the answer to that question is no.

This study investigates the relationship between migrant savings, remittances, and crime. Using a model in which the migrant maximizes utility over the choice of storing savings in the United States or in Mexico, the migrant’s decision is determined in part by the potential of losing part of his income to theft. Using probit and Tobit analysis I test this model, finding evidence that higher probabilities of victimization lead migrants to alter their remitting behavior. In particular, I find that increased robbery rates reduce the size and incidence of remittances, whereas increased burglary rates increase the size and incidence of remittances.

This article explores the possibilities for greater engagement between neoclassical and heterodox growth theorists. Simple structural models are used to identify the essential “mechanics” of the growth process in both the neoclassical and heterodox traditions, and these are shown to point to important areas of theoretical overlap and even observational equivalence. In particular, the interaction of trend and cycle — and more specifically, the influence of demand on long-run growth — is identified as an emerging “common front” in growth theory. Rhetorical and sociological obstacles to greater engagement are identified, but it is argued that these should not be allowed to thwart profitable interactions among researchers from different traditions.

We use a vector autoregressive model to examine the relationship between monetary policy and labor market transitions. We use these impulse response functions in a Markov chain to examine the link between monetary policy and the unemployment rate. We find that an increase in the federal funds rate increases the probability of moving from an employed to an unemployed status, and causes the probability of moving from an unemployed to an employed status to decrease. The probability of transitioning from unemployed to not-in-the-labor-force decreases, but the same shock increases the probability of moving from not-in-the-labor force to unemployed.