Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Foster, William
Description
This paper explores the potential impact of population aging trends on support for the financing of public education using an applied theoretical approach. As demographic projections anticipate significant increases in the relative share of elderly individuals in the population, the question of how age distribution in a population effects support for public goods such as education becomes increasingly significant. Conventional wisdom suggests that an upward shift in age distribution – increasing the share of elderly individuals relative to workers – will result in decreased support for public education due to elderly individuals’ lack of utility from investments in future productivity. This paper demonstrates that such conventional wisdom does not hold in a simple two-district overlapping generations model and shows that an increasing share of elderly individuals in the population may result in increased levels of funding for education due to changes in a district’s tax base.
The model developed in this paper builds on the work of Mark Gradstein and Michael Kaganovich who demonstrated that while increasing longevity in a two-generation OLG model with two municipal districts creates a downward pressure on tax rates, this effect is dominated by changing political incentives among workers. This paper expands upon the Gradstein-Kaganovich model by introducing endogenous migration rates between districts in the model in order to reflect households’ incentives to minimize tax burden in retirement. It can be shown that as consumers’ responsiveness to differences in tax rates increases, the difference in education funding levels between districts decreases despite the difference in the relative share of elderly individuals in each population increasing. This result stems from the changes in each districts’ tax base brought on by the endogenous migration rate. Based on this finding, this study concludes that retirees function as a positive financial externality when education funding is tied to consumption levels and reaffirms Gradstein and Kaganovich’s conclusion that increasing the relative share of elderly individuals in a population does not necessarily result in decreased funding for public education as conventional wisdom would suggest.
The model developed in this paper builds on the work of Mark Gradstein and Michael Kaganovich who demonstrated that while increasing longevity in a two-generation OLG model with two municipal districts creates a downward pressure on tax rates, this effect is dominated by changing political incentives among workers. This paper expands upon the Gradstein-Kaganovich model by introducing endogenous migration rates between districts in the model in order to reflect households’ incentives to minimize tax burden in retirement. It can be shown that as consumers’ responsiveness to differences in tax rates increases, the difference in education funding levels between districts decreases despite the difference in the relative share of elderly individuals in each population increasing. This result stems from the changes in each districts’ tax base brought on by the endogenous migration rate. Based on this finding, this study concludes that retirees function as a positive financial externality when education funding is tied to consumption levels and reaffirms Gradstein and Kaganovich’s conclusion that increasing the relative share of elderly individuals in a population does not necessarily result in decreased funding for public education as conventional wisdom would suggest.
ContributorsMerkle, Matthew Connor (Author) / Foster, William (Thesis director) / Murphy, Alvin (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Since Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez’s influential paper in 2003 that
merges school choice and mechanism design, research in the rapidly
growing school choice literature has been mainly focused on the
design of mechanisms with desirable properties or more realistic
assumptions. However, lab experiments often show that subjects do
not report preferences according to the experimenters’ expectation,
and the experiments rarely provide an in-depth analysis of why the
subjects behave in such confounding ways. My thesis formulates
preference reporting in school choice as a game by incorporating a
payoff schedule and proposes mixed strategy Nash equilibrium as a
way to predict preference reporting.
merges school choice and mechanism design, research in the rapidly
growing school choice literature has been mainly focused on the
design of mechanisms with desirable properties or more realistic
assumptions. However, lab experiments often show that subjects do
not report preferences according to the experimenters’ expectation,
and the experiments rarely provide an in-depth analysis of why the
subjects behave in such confounding ways. My thesis formulates
preference reporting in school choice as a game by incorporating a
payoff schedule and proposes mixed strategy Nash equilibrium as a
way to predict preference reporting.
ContributorsHsieh, Yee-Yang (Author) / Foster, William (Thesis director) / Douglas, Kacey (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This paper proposes that voter decision making is determined by more than just the policy positions adopted by the candidates in the election as proposed by Antony Downs (1957). Using a vector valued voting model proposed by William Foster (2014), voter behavior can be described by a mathematical model. Voters assign scores to candidates based on both policy and non-policy considerations, then voters then decide which candidate they support based on which has a higher candidate score. The traditional assumption that most of the population will vote is replaced by a function describing the probability of voting based on candidate scores assigned by individual voters. If the voter's likelihood of voting is not certain, but rather modelled by a sigmoid curve, it has radical implications on party decisions and actions taken during an election cycle. The model also includes a significant interaction term between the candidate scores and the differential between the scores which enhances the Downsian model. The thesis is proposed in a similar manner to Downs' original presentation, including several allegorical and hypothetical examples of the model in action. The results of the model reveal that single issue voters can have a significant impact on election outcomes, and that the weight of non-policy considerations is high enough that political parties would spend large sums of money on campaigning. Future research will include creating an experiment to verify the interaction terms, as well as adjusting the model for individual costs so that more empirical analysis may be completed.
ContributorsCoulter, Jarod Maxwell (Author) / Foster, William (Thesis director) / Goegan, Brian (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
In June of 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum for its citizens to decide whether to remain a part of the European Union or take their leave. The vote was close but ultimately the U.K. decided to leave, triggering the two-year process of negotiations that would shape the U.K.’s departure (Brexit). The question of what will become of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is heavy with implications for the national identity of people living on either side of the border, and this makes it one of the more pressing concerns in Brexit discourse. This research analyzes how national identity is used as a rhetorical tactic in media to influence and persuade readers to vote in accordance with the author’s political goals. It does so by evaluating how borders shape national identity and analyzing newspaper articles from the two highest circulating Northern Irish daily newspapers (The Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph) during the week leading up to the June 23rd, 2016 referendum. In analyzing news articles relating to the Irish border issue of Brexit from The Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph during the time frame of June 16th-23rd, 2016, four analytical categories of how identity-related rhetoric was used were discovered: fear, self-interest, Irish Nationalism, and a negative association of the past. Further, it was hypothesized and confirmed the political leanings of the papers influenced which type of rhetorical tactic was used. In the broad realm of Brexit and media related discussion, this research could help strengthen understanding of how traditional media uses national identity to persuade readers to and influence voting behavior in the midst of such a divisive referendum.
Key Words: Brexit, Irish border, national identity, rhetoric, newspapers
Key Words: Brexit, Irish border, national identity, rhetoric, newspapers
ContributorsCaldwell, Tara (Author) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Thesis director) / Ripley, Charles (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This paper analyzes responses to a survey using a modified fourfold pattern of preference to determine if implicit information, once made explicit, is practically significant in nudging irrational decision makers towards more rational decisions. Respondents chose between two scenarios and an option for indifference for each of the four questions from the fourfold pattern with expected value being implicit information. Then respondents were asked familiarity with expected value and given the same four questions again but with the expected value for each scenario then explicitly given. Respondents were asked to give feedback if their answers had changed and if the addition of the explicit information was the reason for that change. Results found the addition of the explicit information in the form of expected value to be practically significant with ~90% of respondents who changed their answers giving that for the reason. In the implicit section of the survey, three out of four of the questions had a response majority of lower expected value answers given compared to the alternative. In the explicit section of the survey, all four questions achieved a response majority of higher expected value answers given compared to the alternative. In moving from the implicit to the explicit section, for each question, the scenario with lower expected value experienced a decrease in percentage of responses, and the scenario with higher expected value and indifference between the scenarios both experienced an increase in percentage of responses.
ContributorsJohnson, Matthew (Author) / Goegan, Brian (Thesis director) / Foster, William (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Individual’s outcomes are significantly affected by occupation share changes. This is supported by regression analysis of the Displace Workers Survey a supplement to the Current Population Survey – a nationally representative panel data set. Regression analysis is used to demonstrate that individuals in occupations that are increasing as a share of the total number of workers are better off across the gamut of outcomes than their counterparts in occupations that are decreasing as a share of the total number of workers. Workers in occupations with increasing shares are more likely to find jobs quickly, less likely to experience significant wage losses, less likely to change occupation, and less likely to go on to welfare.
ContributorsGaughan, Patrick Michael (Author) / Veramendi, Gregory (Thesis director) / Foster, William (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05