Student Research Conference: Academic Year 2000-2001

Pritam Banerjee did his honors research with Dr. Ilaria Ossella-Durbal investigating Factors Influencing Growth of Exports of Manufactured Products in South East Asia.

ABSTRACT: This paper is an investigation into the possible causes of the development of manufacturing exports in South East Asian countries. Several studies in the 1970's and 1980's, and empirical work carried out by the UNCTAD, have confirmed the fact that developing countries with higher shares of manufacturing exports tend to have higher rates of economic growth. The South East Asian countries have been particularly successful in pushing export growth in manufacturing and might hold important lessons for other developing countries. The paper postulates that the South East Asian success at promoting export of manufactures can be ascribed to six main factors. Two of these factors are population density and level of development, which are fixed in the medium run. The other four are subject to policy changes, and are variable in the medium run, they are; openness of the economy, labor skills, Infrastructure and level of privatization. All these factors are hypothesized to be positively correlated to share of manufacturing exports. The result of my statistical research show that all the four policy variables have a direct and significant effect on the export of manufactured goods as hypothesized for four of the five countries under consideration.

Samuel Kwainoe did his independent research with Dr. Michael Seeborg entitled Will New Immigrants Survive? Now You Know The Rest...

ABSTRACT: Currently, the United States is experiencing an unprecedented wave of new immigrants. Undoubtedly, this presents questions of how immigrants fare after their arrival in the United States. Historically, immigrants to the Unites States started out initially with lower wages but with time they were able to catch up to natives and eventually overtake them. However, some observers think that things may be changing for the worse for new immigrants. George Boras, for example, argues that recent decreases in demand for less skilled workers has put many immigrants at a disadvantage. He predicts that the wages of less skilled workers will no longer converge quickly to the levels of native workers and may even remain below native wages throughout the life of the immigrant. The purpose of this paper is to use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to follow the earnings history of a unique sample of young natives. In addition, it uses multiple regression analysis to determine if factors like education and language do affect immigrant wages.

Alicia Marie Lange did her independent research with Dr. Michael Seeborg on The Price of Parenthood: A Study of the Family Pay Gap.

ABSTRACT: This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to study how different family decisions contribute to higher earnings for men than for women. Special attention is paid to why women with children earn less than women without children. Multiple regression models are used to show how family variables such as marriage, the presence of young children, and family size cause these pay differences. Even after considering the number of hours worked, the results suggest that family variables are important determinants of income. For example, the presence of a young child is shown to increase the earnings of married men and significantly decrease the earnings of married women. This result, and other results reported in this study, support the hypothesis that there is a significant family pay gap in earnings between men and women. In addition, a slight family pay gap among women with different family conditions was found to exist.

Amber Munday did her honors research with Dr. Robert Leekley, studying AFQT, The Bell Curve, and Future Earning Potential.

ABSTRACT: "The average black and white differ in IQ at every level of socioeconomic status...." state Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in 1994's controversial book, The Bell Curve (269). Implicit in this statement is the idea that blacks are genetically less intelligent that whites, and it is because of this that the gap in black and white median incomes persists. Herrnstein and Murray believe that the portion of IQ, as measured by the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), that is influenced by environmental factors is virtually irrelevant. This is due ot the fact that less intelligent people live in less desirable environments because of their lower earnings potential.

My research provides a more optimistic conclusion regarding the future earnings potential of the youth of the disadvantaged. Regression analysis shows that AFQT scores are, in fact, dependent on neighborhood characteristics, especially measure of school quality. The data also show that poor neighborhood conditions affect whites as well as blacks. The resulting implications suggest that the racial divergence in AFQT scores, and the future earnings that they predict, could be the culminating result of the years of segregation of blacks into areas with poorer neighborhood conditions, rather than a function of some genetic difference. Policy implication of this research support the need to equalize public schools and other neighborhood conditions in order to provide equal opportunities for all.

Nicole Skalski did her honors research with Dr. Michael Seeborg on Explaining the Wage Gap Between Contingent and Noncontingent Workers.

ABSTRACT: An important labor market trend is the rapid increase of the contingent workforce. Contingent workers are the individuals who do not perceive themselves as having an explicit contract for continuing employment. Under this definition, it is estimated that 6 million workers are classified as contingent.

Researchers have discovered a pay gap between contingent and noncontingent workers. Hipple, in his 1998 study, argued that median earnings were $266 per week for contingent workers, compared with $444 of the noncontingents. The purpose of this project is to explore what causes this income differential by using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and multivariate regression analysis. It is hypothesized that this pay gap can be explained by differences between contingent and noncontingent workers such as hours worked, training received, occupation chosen, and discrimination.

The principle finding suggests that contingent workers have fewer opportunities for training and also do not realize the benefits of training compared with noncontingent workers.

Michelle Stone did her honors research with Dr. Ilaria Ossella-Durbal, addressing the question of Militarization and Misery? A Study of High Military Expenditure and Minimal Development in India.

ABSTRACT: India has been noted to be a predominant military power in the region after the large and consistent allocations to defense over time. Indian military expenditure has been a top priority of the government consistently, as seen by looking at Indian history.

Concurrently, India cannot claim to have reached notable levels of economic and social development and its ability to sustain a consistent democracy, the level of development is stereotypical of a less developed country. Despite a half-century push towards modernization and development, India fits quantitatively into the mold of a typically less-developed country in terms of "urbanization, industrialization, secularization, education, media consumption, and welfare."

The question at hand therefore is, has India, in the words of the Secretary of State, "divert[ed] resources at the expense of the needy, or through the indifference to the plight of the poor?" To answer this question sheds light on the goal of this paper, examining the effect of militarization on development in India. Therefore, by examining economic and social variables over the 1974 to 1995 period, this paper will determine the relationship between military expenditure on economic and social development in India.

Yuet Wen Wan did her honors research with Dr. Michael Seeborg, examining The Cost of Achieving Inflation Convergence in Monetary Integration: A Glimpse at High Inflation Countries of the European Monetary Union.

ABSTRACT: The European Monetary Union established in 1992 was part of an effort to bring economic integration to new levels by creating a common currency area for Europe - a monetary union that would abolish the transaction costs of converting one European currency to another, as well as eliminating exchange rate variability and uncertainty among traders and investors. Since the formation of the European Monetary System in 1979, lowering inflation had become the main monetary policy priority. My research centers on the Phillips Curve, which implies that decreasing inflation rates would always be coupled with increasing unemployment rates. This study uses the trends of inflation and unemployment in these countries to test the validity of the Phillips Curve. Regression analysis found that inflation had a significant inverse relationship with unemployment. Further analysis found that the institutional effort towards dininflation during the implementation of the European Monetary System was a major cause of increasing unemployment in the 1980s to 1990s.