1,720,957 research outputs found
Has COVID-19 Changed Marijuana Use in the United States?
Full text linkPandemic-related stress, depression, and anxiety might be important motivations for marijuana use. In this paper, we study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of marijuana among people aged 12 and older in the United States. We use data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) and different econometric models to investigate this impact on national and state levels. We also consider the impact of the pandemic on the use of other illicit drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine. We find evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in marijuana use at both state and national levels
Essays on Financial Crises
Full text linkThe global financial crisis made clear that the financial sector and financial frictions play an integral role in the macroeconomy. Modelers are quickly incorporating these in different ways. This dissertation research also investigates both the causes and effects of financial crises. The first essay, which is mostly empirical, analyzes the impact of the recent U.S. financial crisis on Mexico while the second one, which is theoretical, introduces the Minsky financial friction into the literature as one of the causes of banking and financial crises. In the first essay, we simulate the impact of the U.S. financial crisis on Mexico, a major trading partner with close financial linkages, with the Gali and Monacelli (2005) small open economy DSGE model under two exchange rate regimes: the actual floating and the counterfactual fixed exchange rate regime. We assume the financial crisis generates a supply side shock (a productivity shock) and a demand side shock (a preference shock), which are the driving forces of the model. The results indicate that for both the demand and supply side shocks, the floating exchange rate ameliorates much of the impact on the Mexican economy vis-à-vis the counterfactual fixed exchange rate regime. Then I consider interest rate adjustments initiated in response by both the U.S. and Mexican monetary authorities. For the fixed exchange rate regime the impulse responses due to the productivity shock on most of Mexico’s macroeconomic variables dissipate in less than thirteen quarters, with inflationary effects on price variables and permanent effects on the CPI and Mexico’s home goods prices. Under the flexible exchange rate regime the effects of this shock are much smaller, and there is a deflationary effect and negative permanent effects on the nominal exchange rate, the CPI and Mexico’s home goods prices. The variance decompositions indicate that the effects on real variables are larger under the fixed exchange rate regime and the external linkages are tighter. Welfare analysis shows that losses under the float are also less vis-a-vis the fixed and two other alternative central bank policy rules. The second essay introduces a new mechanism for financial frictions in a monetary dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model following Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis (1977). We expand the Christiano, Trabandt and Walentin (2011) model by introducing three different types of entrepreneurs or borrowers: hedge, speculative and Ponzi borrowers. We change the role of banks from a non-risk taking financial intermediary in the CTW (2011) model to a risky debt accumulator. Then we link the accumulation of debt to the endogenous state of nature, which is absent in the current DSGE literature. The state of nature is endogenously a function of past history and the relative state of the business cycle. So ultimately the bank’s profit function is a function of business cycle fluctuations. We also introduce a new type of shock, which we call the “Minsky system risk” shock. This shock captures excessive system risk that occurs within a banking network due to intermediation and interconnection among banks. Then we calculate the likelihood of a Minsky moment (or financial crisis) endogenously based on the bank’s profit maximization problem
Women on CEO-Only Boards and ROAA
No full textWomen on the Board (WOB) have been increasing both in the United States and Europe and much of the research to date is not U.S. focused. This paper studies the impacts of WOB on Return on Average Assets (ROAA). We employ different panel data models to investigate the impacts on 145 S&P 500 CEO-only board companies between 2016 and 2019. CEO-only board companies have a type of board that developed as a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to be a fully independent board other than the CEO. Our results illustrate positive impacts of WOB on ROAA when controlling for sector, time and state fixed effects. Moreover, interest rate has a positive and statistically significant impact on ROAA. Additionally, we study the cultural impacts of Red vs. Blue states. Our results support a positive impact of WOB on ROAA in favor of Blue states
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The Impact of Women Board Members on ROA and Sustainability in CEO-Only Boards
Full text linkGender diversity has changed the board of directors and now with more women on the board (WOB), they can make significant changes in corporations and possibly outcomes. This study addresses the relationship between ratio of women on CEO-only boards with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), words disclosed in 10-K financial reports and Return on Assets (ROA). We found a significant negative relationship between ratio of WOB and CSR type words in the 10-k annual report and a significant positive relationship between ratio of WOB and ROA. Our results indicate no significant relationship between high or low WOB and sustainability type reports
Exchange Rate Regimes and Welfare Losses from Foreign Crises: The Impact of the US Financial Crisis on Mexico
No full textWe modify the Gali and Monacelli small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, calibrate to Mexican data and simulate the impact of the financial crisis on Mexico, under floating and counter factual fixed exchange rates. The floating exchange rate ameliorates welfare losses for Mexico. They are greater under fixed exchange rates because the return paths to equilibrium are more volatile (higher variance) and output, consumption and employment impulse response functions (IRFs) overshoot. Monetary policy, inflation targeting with floating exchange rates, clearly reduced the welfare costs vis-à-vis other counter factual policies including consumer price index-based Taylor rule, domestic inflation Taylor rule and fixed exchange rates
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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