Matching Items (243)
Description
This dissertation examines the intellectual debate over the concept of laissez faire in American political thought, which took place between 1880 and 1914. It presents an account of how the concept of laissez faire rose to prominence in American political thought during the Gilded Age as well as an account of how critics responded. The Gilded Age was a period of revolutionary economic change which prompted a renewed debate over the proper role of government. Much of the existing scholarship devoted to this period takes the form of historical overview or extensive focus on a particular thinker. My own analysis focuses on the specific arguments of three particular thinkers: Henry Demarest Lloyd, Thorstein Veblen, and Herbert Croly.
In order to explain the various features of this intellectual debate, I present a conceptual analysis of laissez faire and identify its key components. I also provide a critical comparison of the competing economic visions of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to illustrate the relationship between laissez faire thinking and the American Founding. I then present the laissez faire arguments of nineteenth-century thinkers, particularly the Social Darwinists. Finally, I critically appraise the arguments presented by Lloyd, Veblen, and Croly in order to show how the prevailing notions about the proper role of government were changing.
In this research, I show that the debate over laissez faire was about more than identifying the appropriate economic policy for the United States. It centered upon competing theories of society, human nature, and economic progress. In criticizing laissez faire, Lloyd, Veblen, and Croly also challenged the traditional American commitment to individualism, and in so doing, they laid the intellectual groundwork for a more affirmative government and the emergence of the welfare state in the twentieth century.
In order to explain the various features of this intellectual debate, I present a conceptual analysis of laissez faire and identify its key components. I also provide a critical comparison of the competing economic visions of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to illustrate the relationship between laissez faire thinking and the American Founding. I then present the laissez faire arguments of nineteenth-century thinkers, particularly the Social Darwinists. Finally, I critically appraise the arguments presented by Lloyd, Veblen, and Croly in order to show how the prevailing notions about the proper role of government were changing.
In this research, I show that the debate over laissez faire was about more than identifying the appropriate economic policy for the United States. It centered upon competing theories of society, human nature, and economic progress. In criticizing laissez faire, Lloyd, Veblen, and Croly also challenged the traditional American commitment to individualism, and in so doing, they laid the intellectual groundwork for a more affirmative government and the emergence of the welfare state in the twentieth century.
ContributorsBlanchard, Brian (Author) / Ball, Terence (Thesis advisor) / Simhony, Avital (Committee member) / Crittenden, William (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Traditional deterministic reserve requirements rely on ad-hoc, rule of thumb methods to determine adequate reserve in order to ensure a reliable unit commitment. Since congestion and uncertainties exist in the system, both the quantity and the location of reserves are essential to ensure system reliability and market efficiency. The modeling of operating reserves in the existing deterministic reserve requirements acquire the operating reserves on a zonal basis and do not fully capture the impact of congestion. The purpose of a reserve zone is to ensure that operating reserves are spread across the network. Operating reserves are shared inside each reserve zone, but intra-zonal congestion may block the deliverability of operating reserves within a zone. Thus, improving reserve policies such as reserve zones may improve the location and deliverability of reserve.
As more non-dispatchable renewable resources are integrated into the grid, it will become increasingly difficult to predict the transfer capabilities and the network congestion. At the same time, renewable resources require operators to acquire more operating reserves. With existing deterministic reserve requirements unable to ensure optimal reserve locations, the importance of reserve location and reserve deliverability will increase. While stochastic programming can be used to determine reserve by explicitly modelling uncertainties, there are still scalability as well as pricing issues. Therefore, new methods to improve existing deterministic reserve requirements are desired.
One key barrier of improving existing deterministic reserve requirements is its potential market impacts. A metric, quality of service, is proposed in this thesis to evaluate the price signal and market impacts of proposed hourly reserve zones.
Three main goals of this thesis are: 1) to develop a theoretical and mathematical model to better locate reserve while maintaining the deterministic unit commitment and economic dispatch structure, especially with the consideration of renewables, 2) to develop a market settlement scheme of proposed dynamic reserve policies such that the market efficiency is improved, 3) to evaluate the market impacts and price signal of the proposed dynamic reserve policies.
As more non-dispatchable renewable resources are integrated into the grid, it will become increasingly difficult to predict the transfer capabilities and the network congestion. At the same time, renewable resources require operators to acquire more operating reserves. With existing deterministic reserve requirements unable to ensure optimal reserve locations, the importance of reserve location and reserve deliverability will increase. While stochastic programming can be used to determine reserve by explicitly modelling uncertainties, there are still scalability as well as pricing issues. Therefore, new methods to improve existing deterministic reserve requirements are desired.
One key barrier of improving existing deterministic reserve requirements is its potential market impacts. A metric, quality of service, is proposed in this thesis to evaluate the price signal and market impacts of proposed hourly reserve zones.
Three main goals of this thesis are: 1) to develop a theoretical and mathematical model to better locate reserve while maintaining the deterministic unit commitment and economic dispatch structure, especially with the consideration of renewables, 2) to develop a market settlement scheme of proposed dynamic reserve policies such that the market efficiency is improved, 3) to evaluate the market impacts and price signal of the proposed dynamic reserve policies.
ContributorsWang, Fengyu (Author) / Hedman, Kory W. (Thesis advisor) / Zhang, Muhong (Committee member) / Tylavsky, Daniel J. (Committee member) / Ayyanar, Raja (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This study evaluates the potential profitability and environmental benefit available by providing renewable energy from solar- or wind-generated sources to electric vehicle drivers at public charging stations, also known as electric vehicle service equipment (EVSE), in the U.S. Past studies have shown above-average interest in renewable energy by drivers of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), though no study has evaluated the profitability and environmental benefit of selling renewable energy to PEV drivers at public EVSE. Through an online survey of 203 U.S.-wide PEV owners and lessees, information was collected on (1) current PEV and EVSE usage, (2) potential willingness to pay (WTP) for upgrading their charge event to renewable energy, and (3) usage of public EVSE if renewable energy was offered. The choice experiment survey method was used to avoid bias known to occur when directly asking for WTP. Sixty percent of the participants purchased their PEVs due to environmental concerns. The survey results indicate a 506% increase in the usage of public pay-per-use EVSE if renewable energy was offered and a mean WTP to upgrade to renewable energy of $0.61 per hour for alternating current (AC) Level 2 EVSE and $1.82 for Direct Current (DC) Fast Chargers (DCFC). Based on data from the 2013 second quarter (2Q) report of The EV Project, which uses the Blink public EVSE network, this usage translates directly to an annual gross income increase of 668% from the original $1.45 million to $11.1 million. Blink would see an annual cost of $16,005 per year for the acquisition of the required renewable energy as renewable energy credits (RECs). Excluding any profit seen purely from the raise in usage, $3.8 million in profits would be gained directly from the sale of renewable energy. Relative to a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine passenger vehicle, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are 42% less for the U.S. average blend grid electricity-powered electric vehicle and 99.997% less when wind energy is used. Powering all Blink network charge events with wind energy would reduce the annualized 2Q 2013 GHG emissions of 1,589 metric tons CO2 / yr to 125 kg CO2 / yr, which is the equivalent of removing 334 average U.S. gasoline passenger cars from the road. At the increased usage, 8,031 metric tons CO2 / yr would be prevented per year or the equivalent of the elimination of 1,691 average U.S. passenger cars. These economic and environmental benefits will increase as PEV ownership increases over time.
ContributorsNienhueser, Ian Andrew (Author) / Qiu, Yueming (Thesis advisor) / Rogers, Bradley (Thesis advisor) / Macia, Narciso (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation consists of two essays. The first measures the degree to which schooling accounts for differences in industry value added per worker. Using a sample of 107 economies and seven industries, the paper considers the patterns in the education levels of various industries and their relative value added per worker. Agriculture has notably less schooling and is less productive than other sectors, while a group of services including financial services, education and health care has higher rates of schooling and higher value added per worker. The essay finds that in the case of these specific industries education is important in explaining sector differences, and the role of education all other industries are less defined. The second essay provides theory to investigate the relationship between agriculture and schooling. During structural transformation, workers shift from the agriculture sector with relatively low schooling to other sectors which have more schooling. This essay explores to what extent changes in the costs of acquiring schooling drive structural transformation using a multi-sector growth model which includes a schooling choice. The model is disciplined using cross country data on sector of employment and schooling constructed from the IPUM International census collection. Counterfactual exercises are used to determine how much structural transformation is accounted for by changes in the cost of acquiring schooling. These changes account for small shares of structural transformation in all economies with a median near zero.
ContributorsSchreck, Paul (Author) / Herrendorf, Berthold (Committee member) / Lagakos, David (Committee member) / Schoellman, Todd (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Research on the consequences of gang membership is limited mainly to the study of crime and victimization. This gives the narrow impression that the effects of gang membership do not cascade into other life domains. This dissertation conceptualized gang membership as a snare in the life-course that disrupts progression in conventional life domains. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Cohort of 1997 (NLSY97) data were used to examine the effects of adolescent gang membership on the nature and patterns of educational attainment and employment over a 12-year period in the life-course. Variants of propensity score weighting were used to assess the effects of gang joining on a range of outcomes pertaining to educational attainment and employment. The key findings in this dissertation include: (1) selection adjustments partially or fully confounded the effects of gang joining; despite this (2) gang joiners had 70 percent the odds of earning a high school diploma and 42 percent the odds of earning a 4-year college degree than matched individuals who avoided gangs; (3) at the 11-year mark, the effect of gang joining on educational attainment exceeded one-half year; (4) gang joiners made up for proximate deficits in high school graduation and college matriculation, but gaps in 4-year college degree and overall educational attainment gained throughout the study; (5) gang joiners were less likely to be employed and more likely to not participate in the labor force, and these differences accelerated toward the end of the study; (6) gang joiners spent an additional one-third of a year jobless relative to their matched counterparts; and (7) the cumulative effect of gang joining on annual income exceeded $14,000, which was explained by the patterning of joblessness rather than the quality of jobs. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings, as well as directions for future research, are addressed in the concluding chapter of this dissertation.
ContributorsPyrooz, David (Author) / Decker, Scott H. (Thesis advisor) / Pratt, Travis C. (Committee member) / Sweeten, Gary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Despite a wealth of academic literature critiquing current tensions within the Fair Trade (FT) movement, very little work has focused on examining the birth and evolution of the FT movement within the broader context of the international political economy (IPE), specifically in reference to the ideological and policy changes that ushered in an era of free trade and deregulated markets for both trade and finance. From such an optic, it is no longer enough to merely question the extent to which the market should be engaged. Rather, one must question whether the engagement of the market strips the movement of its power to affect long term development in local economies. Drawing upon the historical record, this thesis focuses attention on the complexity of the linkages that exist between political ideology, trade policy, and development. While Fair Trade is commonly understood to be a responsive effort to create more equitable trade relations with producers in the least developed countries, less emphasis is placed on understanding the state-centered political structures that contributed to a capitalist push-back and the implementation of today's liberalized trade policy, and yet to do so is absolutely critical if we are to gain a deeper understanding of the limits and constraints of Fair Trade. Full engagement with mainstream markets has led to robust growth in the FT market per annum, yet countries that are heavily engaged with the FT market show little evidence of development or poverty reduction at a macro-level. Thus, Fair Trade must define itself as more than principled opposition to labor exploitation if it is to present itself as a credible instrument of economic development.
ContributorsSugata, Michihiro (Author) / Simmons, William (Thesis advisor) / Stancliff, Michael (Committee member) / Haglund, LaDawn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This thesis pursues a method to deregulate the electric distribution system and provide support to distributed renewable generation. A locational marginal price is used to determine prices across a distribution network in real-time. The real-time pricing may provide benefits such as a reduced electricity bill, decreased peak demand, and lower emissions. This distribution locational marginal price (D-LMP) determines the cost of electricity at each node in the electrical network. The D-LMP is comprised of the cost of energy, cost of losses, and a renewable energy premium. The renewable premium is an adjustable function to compensate `green' distributed generation. A D-LMP is derived and formulated from the PJM model, as well as several alternative formulations. The logistics and infrastructure an implementation is briefly discussed. This study also takes advantage of the D-LMP real-time pricing to implement distributed storage technology. A storage schedule optimization is developed using linear programming. Day-ahead LMPs and historical load data are used to determine a predictive optimization. A test bed is created to represent a practical electric distribution system. Historical load, solar, and LMP data are used in the test bed to create a realistic environment. A power flow and tabulation of the D-LMPs was conducted for twelve test cases. The test cases included various penetrations of solar photovoltaics (PV), system networking, and the inclusion of storage technology. Tables of the D-LMPs and network voltages are presented in this work. The final costs are summed and the basic economics are examined. The use of a D-LMP can lower costs across a system when advanced technologies are used. Storage improves system costs, decreases losses, improves system load factor, and bolsters voltage. Solar energy provides many of these same attributes at lower penetrations, but high penetrations have a detrimental effect on the system. System networking also increases these positive effects. The D-LMP has a positive impact on residential customer cost, while greatly increasing the costs for the industrial sector. The D-LMP appears to have many positive impacts on the distribution system but proper cost allocation needs further development.
ContributorsKiefer, Brian Daniel (Author) / Heydt, Gerald T (Thesis advisor) / Shunk, Dan (Committee member) / Hedman, Kory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Mutual monitoring in a well-structured authority system can mitigate the agency problem. I empirically examine whether the number 2 executive in a firm, if given authority, incentive, and channels for communication and influence, is able to monitor and constrain the potentially self-interested CEO. I find strong evidence that: (1) measures of the presence and extent of mutual monitoring from the No. 2 executive are positively related to future firm value (Tobin's Q); (2) the beneficial effect is more pronounced for firms with weaker corporate governance or CEO incentive alignment, with stronger incentives for the No. 2 executives to monitor, and with higher information asymmetry between the boards and the CEOs; (3) such mutual monitoring reduces the CEO's ability to pursue the "quiet life" but has no effect on "empire building;" and (4) mutual monitoring is a substitute for other governance mechanisms. The results suggest that mutual monitoring by a No. 2 executive provides checks and balances on CEO power.
ContributorsLi, Zhichuan (Author) / Coles, Jeffrey (Thesis advisor) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Committee member) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The current study was a benefit cost analysis that examined mental and behavioral health and prescription drug service use data of 347 participants (212 youth and 135 caregivers) from a bereavement intervention, the Family Bereavement Program (FBP).The preliminary goals of the current study were to compare the FBP intervention and the Literature Control (LC) groups at the six year follow-up on: (a) number of participants using mental/behavioral health services and prescription drugs, (b) the frequency of use of mental/behavioral health services and prescription drugs, and (c) the costs of mental/behavioral health services and prescription drugs. The final, and primary goal, was to (d) calculate the benefits of the FBP by analyzing the monetary difference between the LC and FBP groups in terms of cost of services used and then by applying those benefits to the cost of the intervention. Data representing participating youths' and caregivers' mental health service use and prescription drug use at the sixth year post-intervention were collected, as were the costs of those services. Results indicated that fewer FBP participants used services and prescription drugs than the Literature Control (LC) participants, but FBP participants, particularly the youth, used some low intensity services more frequently whereas the LC youth used more intensive and costly services more frequently. Consequently, service costs were greater for participants in the LC group than for participants in the FBP group. The benefit cost ratio revealed that the FBP, as delivered, saved society between $.15 and $.27 in mental and behavioral health costs for every dollar spent on the intervention. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.
ContributorsPorter, Michèle M (Author) / Hanish, Laura D. (Thesis advisor) / Sandler, Irwin N. (Committee member) / Wolchik, Sharlene A (Committee member) / Johnson, William G. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This paper discusses the matching between CEOs of different talent and firms of different size, by considering boards' costly monitoring of CEOs who have private information about firm output. By incorporating a costly state verification model into a matching model, we have a number of novel findings. First, positive assortative matching (PAM) breaks down as larger firms match with less talented CEOs when monitoring is sufficiently costly despite of complementarity in firms' production technology. More importantly, PAM can be the equilibrium sorting pattern for large firms and high talent CEOs even it fails for small firms and low talent CEOs, which implies that empirical applications relying on PAM are more robust by using samples of large firms. Second, under positive assortative matching, CEO compensation can be decomposed into frictionless competitive market pay and information rent. More talented CEOs extract more rent, which makes their wage even higher. Third, firm-level corporate governance depends on aggregate market characteristics such as the scarcity and allocation of CEO talent. Weak corporate governance can be optimal when CEO talent is sufficiently scarce. My analysis yields a number of empirical predictions on equilibrium sorting pattern, CEO compensation, and corporate governance.
ContributorsLi, Zhan, Ph.D (Author) / Chade, Hector (Thesis advisor) / Kovrijnykh, Natalia (Committee member) / Manelli, Alejandro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015