Student Research Conference: Academic Year 2004-2005
* Xun Bian did his honors research with Dr. Robert Leekley on Predicting Medal Counts: The Effects of Economic Development on Olympic Performance. ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the relationship between a country's Olympic performance and its overall economic condition, including population, economic resources, and political structures. A panel data set comprises yearly data of 1996, 2000, and 2004 are estimated by using a fixed-effect Tobit regression model. Following the previous studies on this topic, population size and economic resources are measured by using population and per capita GDP. One major focus of this research is the influence of political structure on national Olympic performance. Instead of using a socialist and non-socialist dummy variable like most previous studies, I used continuous variables, political freedom (PF) and civil liberty (CL), to estimate the impact of political structure.
Adrien Gatesman did her honors research with Dr. Margaret Chapman on Perceived Quality of Asian Brands in the Automobile Industry. ABSTRACT: The Big Three American automobile brands, Ford, Chrysler, and GM, have seen consistently dwindling market share in the US market for over a decade. They are in fierce competition with foreign brand names, specifically Asian companies such as Honda, Nissan, and Toyota. Asian brands have become best sellers in the passenger car market and American brands are redesigning their cars to try and keep up. My research uses Lancaster's Theory of Consumption, the view that people consume bundles of characteristics, to determine why Asian cars are becoming so popular. I use the hedonic pricing model to determine how much consumers are willing to pay for certain quality characteristics and brand names. I include dummy variables for each brand in the model as well as variables for size, performance, gas mileage, safety, and reliability.
Adam Houser did his independent research with Dr. Robert Leekley on Maximum Revenue vs. Maximum Wins: The Paradox of Major League Baseball.
ABSTRACT: The world of sports has become a multi-billion dollar industry, with the game of baseball being no exception to this rule. Countless players make more than $1 million dollars annually and a handful of teams are spending at or above $100 million on player salaries alone. The obvious question to ask is what can you buy with $100 million dollars in the game of baseball? Theoretically, the more money a team acquires, the more that team can afford to spend on players which in turn, should increase the success of the team. The goal of any team should be to maximize wins in an effort to advance to the playoffs, and ultimately, compete in the World Series for the championship trophy. Recent trends indicate that the highest revenue and payroll teams are necessarily winning the most amounts of games and advancing to the playoffs. However, empirical evidence suggests that a possible reason for this is that firms are paying for personnel in an effort to maximize revenue, not wins. Through review of literature, the reader comes to learn that spending money purely on offensive statistics is not the most cost-effective way to run a baseball franchise, but it is the most profitable. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests than an increase in firm revenues due to increases in player productivity is nullified by an increase through player salary.
Sean Moran did his independent research with Dr. Robert Leekley on Affordability in the Rental Housing Market: 1990-2000. ABSTRACT: During the mid/late-1990s, the U.S. witnessed housing bubbles spring up in various metropolitan areas across the country. A housing bubble occurs when the sales price of homes increase sharply, due to speculation, compared to all other goods. While bubbles in other industries, such as the tech bubble, have burst, the housing bubble has yet to stop rising. This paper analyzes how demand has driven up these bubbles, but more importantly, what sort of spillover effect this has had on the cost-burden among low-income rental households. When renters are spending more than 30% of their gross income on housing costs, they are considered to be cost burdened.
Elizabeth Planas did her honors research with Dr. Michael Seeborg on Language Deficiency and the Occupational Attainment of Mexican Immigrants.
ABSTRACT: The number of Mexican immigrants that have entered the U.S. has greatly increased over the past decade. The occupational attainment of these immigrants provides insight into how successful they are in the host country and language deficiency has an effect on this occupational attainment. By controlling for language proficiency, human capital characteristics and other variables from the IPUMS database, this project uses probit analysis to predict the probability than an immigrant will be employed in a favorable occupation in the U.S. Results show that language deficiency reduces the probability of attaining a favorable occupation, but having no English language skills decreases the probability by a lesser amount than if the immigrant had any English language skills. This information is important to the analysis of immigration policy and to language training for immigrants in the United States.
* Ana Maria Romero did her honors research with Dr. Diego Mendéz-Carbajo on Comparative Study: Factors that Affect Foreign Exchange Reserves in China and India. ABSTRACT: Foreign currency reserves in Asia are at an all-time high since the Asian crisis of 1997, despite experts' predictions that increased capital mobility and funds from financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund would decrease the need for foreign reserves. It is speculated that this hoarding of reserves is a by-product of a country's exchange rate regime. To test whether the exchange rate regime significantly affects a country's level of reserve holdings, China and India were selected as comparison countries in this study. China and India rank second and fifth in world reserve holding, respectively, and have reserve holdings that have been growing exponentially. They also have different types of exchange rate regimes; China has a fixed exchange rate while India has moved towards a more flexible managed float regime. However, both countries have been experiencing rapid growth due to the somewhat recent openings of their economies, making a comparison between the two viable.
Andrew Tarman did his honors research with Dr. Michael Seeborg on The Effect of Monopsony Power in Major League Baseball on the Salaries of Players with Less than Six Years in the Majors. ABSTRACT: This research attempts to measure the impact of monopsony power on baseball players with less than six years of experience. Past research indicates that players with less than six years of experience have lower salaries than players with the same productivity and more than six years of experience. To try and combat this monopsonistic behavior, baseball players formed the Players' Union and instituted an arbitration process. Through this process, a third party arbitrator listens to cases from both a player and owner and then chooses one salary bid. While this process is intended to help players gain market power, it is still unclear whether the actual process is effective. Therefore, it is important to measure the impact of this monopsonistic market to see if further changes in the arbitration process need to be made.
* Indicates papers presented at the Georgetown Carroll Round Conference.