▼ General Motors' "acceptance" of its recent decline in market shares has prompted the company to make drastic changes in its production methods. These improvements will begin with a change from on-site assembly to modular assembly of certain car components. Along with a new production technique, General Motor's will also build new plants to accomodate modular assembly. These announced plans threaten existing plants, many of which desperately need capital improvements. Ultimately, those locations that are not selected for the new plants will probably witness the closing of their assembly plants. The General Motors plant in Lordstown, in particular, falls in this category. Built in 1966, the plant houses General Motors' small car operations, and, at that time, was the largest and most automated assembly plant. The plant has also become an important manufacturing firm for Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties. General Motors has not yet confirmed any plans to reinvest in Lordstown; therefore, if a shutdown occurs, the region may suffer serious economic consequences. This paper studies the possible ramifications of both a decision to build and a decision to shut down the plant on the Youngstown-Warren economy. Specifically, a regional econometric model is used in four different scenarios that reflect the two possible decisions. Scenario 1 and 2 focus on the selection of Lordstown for the new plant while scenario 3 and scenario 4 take the alternative view. Regional multipliers and time series graphs then are used to study these effects and draw conclusions for the scenarios. Advisors/Committee Members: Liu, Yih-Wu.

▼ Energy is an important input for production of all kinds, including agriculture. From 1992 to 2007, the agricultural market underwent many different changes with respect to the inputs they utilized, as well as the prices they paid for them. Among these changes, fuel prices displayed the most severe volatility. Using a Transcendental Logarithmic Production Function, the price elasticity of substitution was estimated for all agricultural inputs during the time period studied in order to determine how farms change production allocations due to increasing energy prices. It was found that price elasticities were very low between energy and other inputs, suggesting that farms do not change their input allocations due to increases in energy prices. Advisors/Committee Members: Palardy, Joseph.

▼ The study presented here researches subjective well-being, wages, educational attainment, and how well-being affects both wages and educational attainment through reverse causality. From Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Survey, a total of 187 metropolitan statistical areas were observed and 152 of these cities were used in our regression analysis for completeness reasons. This study adds to the literature of determinants of well-being, wage, and educational attainment, as well as the literature of approaches to endogeneity issues, and identifying and correcting reverse causality between variables in a system of equations through the use of two and three-stage-leastsquares methods. We found that well-being had a significant, but negative, effect on wage and a significantly positive effect on educational attainment. From this result, we approached the well-being equation with a two-stage-least-squares method in order to determine if the relationship between wage, well-being, and educational attainment were causing biased results when using ordinary least squares methodology. It was found that there was bias and a two-stage-least-squares method was helpful in correcting for this issue. We suggest that further research into how well-being affects other variables is important and necessary. Advisors/Committee Members: Palardy, Joseph.

▼ In this paper, I investigate the determinants of the rate of national saving in the United States over the period from 1959 to 1999. My analysis focuses on the relationship between aggregate national income accounts data and demographic data. Specifically, I test whether or not current data supports the life-cycle hypothesis with respect to changes in the age structure of the population, measured by the dependency ratio, and find it to have a significant effect upon saving behavior. Additionally, income and the growth of income, wealth, the rate of interest, and life expectancy are also found to significantly influence saving behavior in the United States. Advisors/Committee Members: Petruska, Dennis Andrew.

▼ Much of the literature focusing on peace and conflict studies has been severely limited in both scope and depth. This paper extends the previous research and looks to political and economic freedom as a cause of determining military effectiveness. Data of Military Interstate Disputes from the Correlates of War Project is used from the period of 1950 to 1992, over a large sample of countries to assemble an accurate and reliable foundation to test the effects of several liberal variables on military effectiveness. Two different models are used, first a simple logistic regression, followed by the more complex multinomial logistic regression. The results are found to generally support the hypothesis, that to some extent political and economic freedom can determine military effectiveness. Advisors/Committee Members: Palardy, Joseph.

▼ "European Monetary Union and an Analysis of Greece's Economic Efforts to Meet the Maastricht Criteria" is a thesis that mainly focuses on how an old European vision became a reality. More specifically the thesis is divided into two main axis. The first is the presentation of Europe's needs for coexistence and unification after WW2, and the illustration of the steps that different European countries took over the years towards the establishment of this unification under the formation of the European Union (EU). The second deals with the creation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the attempts by Greece (an EU member) to join the union. Advisors/Committee Members: Milley, Donald J.

▼ The center of interest of this paper is anti-competitiveness of the infant formula industry. Following the analysis of the industry behavior and legal activities concerning it, this essay hypothesizes that the U.S. government will not succeed in obtaining a legal judgement that would regulate the policies of the major infant formula firms. The infant formula industry is a heavily concentrated oligopoly. The main market share holders serve more than eighty percent of the market. Industry behavior is characterized by simultaneous, almost identical price increases by the industry leaders. The subsidiaries that produce and market formula are the most profitable sections of their organizations. The marketing practices of formula producers are highly controversial. Top producers adhere to the concept of ethical advertising or advertising formula through licensed physicians only. This type of advertising severely limits the entrance of new competition into the industry and may violate antitrust laws. Demand for formula by women who do not breast-feed is relatively inelastic, which results in a high level of brand loyalty and price following behavior by the producers. Also at the center of interest is the government’s Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) Program, which provides formula at low or no cost to mothers in lower income brackets. Numerous court cases were brought against infant formula producers, alleging price fixing behavior and restraint of competition in the market. These cases were not successful in winning judgements against the formula producers so far. The paper argues that the specific market climate, as well as the ambiguity of certain concepts in antitrust statutes, will allow the formula producers to continue with their behavior without the government’s interference. Advisors/Committee Members: Ruffer, Rochelle.

▼ The United States federal government has a substantial budget every year for various programs in the public interest. The money for these programs must come from somewhere: usually, either taxes or deficit spending. The concern of this paper is the latter element. Specifically, it is the goal of this paper to uncover whether annual budget deficits are affected by the partisan makeup of the institutions that decide how to spend money and how to obtain it: namely, Congress and the presidency. Does a Democratic president tend to cause higher deficits than a Republican? Is the behavior of a party any different in Congress than it would be in the presidency? These questions will be explored. After an historical overview and a literature review, I formulate a simple theoretical model to provide a basis for what I am trying to find. Then, I frame the questions of the paper into hypotheses and test manifold empirical models. After establishing which I find to be most fitting and subsequently revising that model, I discuss its implications and suggest areas for future research. Advisors/Committee Members: Palardy, Joseph.

▼ With the effects of the 2007 world financial crisis still overshadowing the country's financial security, the US is looking to cut back in many areas, including health care. The US currently spends twice the average amount on health than the average of the other OECD nations. Despite these levels of expenditure, we see lower outcomes and elatively smaller improvements in outcomes than these countries. This paradox has led many researchers to explore other factors influencing health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between health expenditure and health outcomes with the inclusion of lifestyle variables. Another unique aspect of this study was the use of happiness and satisfaction as measures of health. We hypothesized that once lifestyle choices had been accounted for, health expenditure would lose significance and we would see that lifestyle factors had a greater influence on health. The lifestyle variables included measures of education, alcohol consumption, and tobacco use. Education was found to be negatively associated with both infant mortality and PYLL. Alcohol consumption was found to be positively associated with infant mortality, and tobacco use was negatively associated with life expectancy and positively associated with PYLL. While the results from the lifestyle variables align with the hypothesis, it is important to note that we had expected to see health expenditure lose significance once lifestyle variables were accounted for. This was not the case. In addition to these unexpected findings, the variables accounting for well-being (happiness and satisfaction) did not appear to act as hypothesized either. Advisors/Committee Members: Uppal, Yogesh.