Master of Environmental Science, Miami University, 2013, Environmental Sciences

Through an environmental science internship with EMH&T, a private consulting firm, I conducted various environmental consulting projects. The four main projects that I worked on included a Nationwide Permit application, Level II Isolated Wetland Permit application, Level II Ecological Survey Report, and a monitoring report. For each of these projects, I conducted the field work, entered and analyzed the data, as well as wrote and submitted the final document for the appropriate regulatory agency. All of these projects involved the same stream and wetland assessments; however, each one of them was regulated very differently. Therefore, although similar field methods were used for various projects, the rules and regulations and ultimately the final document behind a particular project can vary greatly. Every project had a different scenario with varied requirements and client needs. Regardless of the project, coordination and communication with clients, agencies, and within EMH&T were crucial.

Committee: Thomas Crist Dr. (Advisor); Suzanne Zazycki Ms. (Committee Member); David Gorchov Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Economics

The two essays in my dissertation clarify the role of household debt and housing wealth in the U.S. economy because the effect of household debt and house prices on economic activity is conflicting based on existing empirical literature. In my first essay, Three Competing Effects of Expansion in Housing Finance on Consumption, I explicitly consider both debt service burden and wealth risk by adjusting income data with debt service and wealth data with its risk. Based on split-sample estimates of various consumption functions with different time horizons together with the data adjustment, I find that expansion in housing finance since the mid 1980s has three competing effects on consumption. First, housing finance expansion decreases the sensitivity of a household's consumption response to short-run and medium-run movements in income via a relaxed credit constraint. Second, an increase in the liquidity of housing wealth leads to a bigger response of consumption to changes in house prices. However, this increased housing wealth effect can be mitigated or magnified from the last competing effect of increased debt service, depending on the directions of movements in house prices and interest rates. Thus, the net effect of expanded housing finance on consumption depends on the relative magnitudes of the three competing effects in the face of movements in income, house prices, and interest rates. The second essay, The Role of Household Debt and Housing Wealth in the Recent Downturn of the U.S. Economy, uses state-level household debt and housing wealth data built from the Consumer Finance Monthly survey together with measures of economic activity at the state level during the business cycle of 2002-2009 in the U.S. to overcome limitations associated with national-level aggregate data. I find that increased household debt combined with large positive and negative fluctuations in housing wealth led to the recent severe downturn of the U.S. economy. While the increased debt (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Daniel Dupor (Advisor); Paul Evans (Committee Member); Lucia F. Dunn (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics