Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2020, Economics

This paper explores the relationship between Ohio municipal tax rates and their revenues. Using a panel regression for the years 2013 to 2017, it is estimated where municipal tax rates are along the Laffer curve relative to the revenue-maximizing rate. The evidence from the regressions suggest that there is an inverted-u relationship between municipal tax rates and revenues as predicted by the Laffer curve, and Ohio municipalities are operating well below the revenue-maximizing rate. Further, the degree to which the diminishing effects occur depends on city size and median income. Additionally, in conducting robustness checks upon population and median income, diminishing effects were not found in municipalities with incomes above the median appreciation.

Committee: Steven Landgraf (Advisor); Gabriel Courey (Committee Member); Staci Rhine (Committee Member) Subjects: Economic Theory; Economics

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Journalism (Communication)

In Western world, government intervention via media policy is supposed to help correct market failures such as the existence of external cost/benefit on third parties, the lack of public goods, or the abuse of monopoly power (Rolland, 2008; Hoskins et al., 2004; Picard, 1989). In communist nations, government intervention is more often viewed as to protect political ideas (Lee et al., 2006; Silverblatt & Zlobin, 2004; Siebert et al., 1978). However, in the post-communist era, communist governments were steered towards a market economy with a socialist orientation, leading to the ambiguity of their media policies' goals and subsequently, their policy outcomes. In this study, I choose to analyze media policies in Vietnam, a still communist nation, to understand its current policy goals and to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy on news quality and financial performance of Vietnamese press organizations. The study is done based on Freedman's (2008) definition of media policy, normative analyses and the public interest theory outlined by Hoskin et al. (2004), and financial commitment model developed and tested by many media economists (Lacy, 1989; Martin, 2003; Lacy & Martin, 2004). Three research questions are asked as following: (1) What changes in press laws have occurred in Vietnamese history in terms of Freedman's identified key policy tools, such as regulations regarding ownership, subsidies, taxes, advertising and content restrictions?; (2) Can the current, state-run news media policy be justified on the grounds of market failures according to the economic theory of government intervention?; and (3) How do news organizations perform under the current news media policy, assuming the positive relationship between media competition, as a result of changes in market structure, and media performance, including financial performance and news quality? A qualitative document analysis of 270 legal documents drawn from the Ministry of Information and Communication Arc (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Hugh Martin (Committee Chair) Subjects: Journalism

Undergraduate Honors Program, Malone University, 2015, Honors Thesis

This Honors Thesis project explores the fungibility of sin tax revenues in relation to K-12 public schools. Comparing Ohio and Colorado's revenues from nontraditional approaches (i.e. marijuana, casinos, and lottery revenues), I researched the reality and sustainability of these funding sources and the level to which they are receiving promised funds. This project evaluates if traditional funding reductions have occurred due to the addition of these nontraditional revenue streams. Also, an assessment is made of the moral implications brought forth through these nontraditional revenue streams educating the United States' K-12 students. My three primary conclusions were as follows: 1) even though every state does not actively move around funds, sin tax revenues are highly fungible; 2) while sin tax revenues may be a quick-fix funding initiative, they are not sustainable for long-term funding; 3) and funding K-12 public schools through sin tax revenues raises a number of moral issues, specifically the issue of teaching our children to not do the very activities that are helping fund their education.

Committee: Julia Frankland Dr. (Advisor); Elizabeth Postlewaite (Committee Member); Scott Waalkes Dr. (Committee Member); Susan Wechter Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics; Education Finance; Finance; School Finance; Sustainability

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics

The first part of the dissertation entitled “Energy Intensity in Japan”, discusses the causes of the increase in Japan's energy intensity, defined as energy consumption divided by GDP since the early 1990's. The significant reduction in Japan's energy intensity ceased in the early 1980's and has even slightly increased since the early 1990's, indicating that Japan seemingly has reached the limits of its ability to improve energy use. However, further analysis at prefecture level and sector level provides additional insight on energy intensity trends. Our result indicates that the non-uniform energy intensity trends between prefectures are attributed to a high variability in energy efficiency. At sector level, we estimate the income elasticity of energy consumption in each sector and find that a structural change in energy consumption behaviors occurred in all sectors at different time points. More importantly, the structural changes occurred in 1981 in the industrial sector and in 1988 in the commercial sector are presumably responsible for the deterioration of Japan's energy intensity since the early 1990's. The second part of the dissertation, entitled “The Demand for Residential Electricity”, estimates the residential electricity price elasticity in Japan. The Japanese government has not imposed a residential electricity tax because the price elasticity of electricity consumption has been considered to be very low. However, there has been little study to provide empirical evidence for the consensus. This paper is intended to fill the gap by estimating the residential electricity price elasticity in Japan. In order to avoid dynamic panel bias, we use the Arellano-Bond estimator to estimate the residential electricity price elasticity. The results show that the estimated price elasticities of residential electricity consumption are -0.1963 in the short run and -0.2298 in the long run at national level. These estimates predict that contrary to the consensus, an inc (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Timothy Haab (Advisor); Brent Sohngen (Committee Member); Eugene Jones (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics; Energy; Environmental Economics; Environmental Law; Public Policy; Statistics

Doctor of Business Administration, Cleveland State University, 2010, Nance College of Business Administration

For at least the last six decades optimal portfolio selection has been one of the main focuses of financial research. Since Markowitz (1952) many authors have developed ideas about the optimal allocation of assets that have reached today's mainstream portfolio decision-making. However, many of them miss the single largest investment most people make in their lifetime, their home. Therefore, this research seeks to analyze the impact of the owner-occupied home on the portfolio in order to determine its optimal allocation. The motivation for this analysis is derived from the individual investor who spends a lifetime saving in order to maximize their long-term wealth. The advantage of this study over previous research is the use of directly available assets through the use of Vanguard Funds. By using this dataset, three goals are achieved: (1) investing over the largest set of asset classes included in the research to date, (2) minimizing the cost of investing for the portfolio owner, and (3) providing a source of investable assets that are available to the small investor.The results have a substantial impact on the wealth accumulation of owner-occupier investors. First, the results show that including unleveraged owner-occupied housing in the portfolio is beneficial only at low levels of portfolio risk. Second, the results show that including leveraged owner-occupied housing in the portfolio is beneficial across all levels of portfolio risk. At low levels of portfolio risk all of the MSAs have some allocation to leveraged owner-occupied housing, however this allocation changes as the Loan-to-Value (LTV) Ratio increases. However, regardless of the LTV ratio, risk reduction at the lowest portfolio risk level is visible, but less so as the LTV ratio increases. Third, investors looking to allocate their investable funds across their portfolio without adding the mortgage will be over-investing in leveraged housing and potentially taking on too much unsystematic risk for the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ken Borokhovich PhD (Committee Chair); Haigang Zhou PhD (Committee Member); Walter Rom PhD (Committee Member); Brian Mikelbank PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Finance

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2006, Operations Research

This dissertation consists of four essays related to supply chain competition and coordination of operational and financial decisions. The first essay models dynamic oligopoly supply chain games. The results include circumstances in which an echelon base-stock policy is not a best competitive response. The second essay investigates how airlines might determine their network structures through a three-stage duopoly game. We find that at equilibrium either both airlines use hub-and-spoke networks or both use point-to-point networks. Furthermore, a hub-and-spoke network does not necessarily dominate a point-to-point network; and a high demand variance or a low mean demand generally favors a hub-and-spoke network. The third essay examines a model with a financial criterion and investigates the interdependence of a firm's capital structure and its short-term operating decisions concerning inventories, dividends, and liquidity. We conclude that the optimal inventory policy does not depend on the firm's capital structure, but the optimal dividend and liquidity policy does depend on the inventory decisions. The optimal capital structure depends only on the marginal tax rate, the interest rate for long-term bonds, and the decision maker's interest rate for intertemporal tradeoffs. The fourth essay studies a serial multi-stage manufacturing system whose decision-maker maximizes the expected present value of dividends via periodic decisions concerning production quantities at each echelon, dividends, and short-term borrowing. We show that the liquidity constraint and multiple stages cause echelon base-stock policies to be sub-optimal.

Committee: Matthew Sobel (Advisor) Subjects: