Department of Economics

Using longitudinal data from Growing America Through Entrepreneurship (GATE), I examine whether mentors improve nascent entrepreneurs’ new venture survival and growth. To perform the analysis, I develop a multi-level regression model with mentoring as the key independent variable and human capital as the moderator. The findings provide empirical evidence that having a mentor helps nascent entrepreneurs grow and improve their businesses’ chances of survival. Furthermore, mentorship helps new venture growth and survival for some entrepreneurs more than others. For survival, mentorship is more helpful for those without business education. For new venture growth, I find that mentorship helps those with no prior managerial experience. These results highlight the importance of mentoring for nascent entrepreneurs and the boundary conditions through which mentoring is most beneficial.

I assessed the impact of the Merge in Ethereum by analyzing the change in its market capitalization following the event. This study can provide insights into market preferences for proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake protocols. A difference-in-difference analysis was conducted, using Ethereum Classic as the control group and Ethereum as the treatment group to estimate the local average treatment effect following the Merge as the intervention. As a robustness check, the analysis was repeated using the Top 100 cryptocurrencies as the control group. I find no evidence that the Merge improved the market capitalization of Ethereum relative to Ethereum Classic or the Top 100 cryptocurrencies.

This empirical study examines the impact of a homeowners association (HOA) mandatory membership fee on residential real estate prices, a topic that has not been empirically addressed in the real estate literature. A mandatory membership fee is defined as an initiation fee charged by HOAs that grants homeowners country club access. Many studies have examined the impact of the presence of homeowners associations on price but only a few studies have examined the impact of homeowners associations on price by estimating the impact of homeowners association fees. This research expands the HOA literature by examining the specific HOA fee characteristics of a mandatory membership fee. In this analysis, hedonic price models (HPM) are used to estimate the impact of mandatory membership fee on price by analyzing 31,704 observations of single family home sales between 2018 and 2019 in Palm Beach County, Florida using data from a local multiple listing service. Specifically, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models using two dependent variables, sold price and natural log of sold price, with mandatory membership fee as the independent variable of interest are used to estimate the relationship between mandatory membership fee and sales price. By controlling for property, neighborhood, and market characteristics, the hypothesis I investigate states that the impact of the presence of a mandatory membership fee on sales price is negative.

Human knowledge is acknowledged as critically important to economic growth and prosperity. Economists focus on the past few decades’ emergence of a knowledge-based economy greatly dependent on individual-level knowledge. Knowledge is a key resource of many organizations, and the need for an educated workforce is believed to facilitate the creation, share, and use of firm-level knowledge going forward.
An economy where knowledge is the main asset is very different from traditional production systems that depend on tangible assets. These tangible assets often rely upon scarce resources such as minerals, thereby forcing price fluctuations and potential disruptions in inventory and sales. Logistics and supply chain issues can dwindle as we have experienced during the recent pandemic. However, when knowledge is the firm’s main asset, the firm’s intangible asset will not decrease as sales increase. Knowledge also does not spoil or dwindle over time. Instead, knowledge will grow and evolve, and as the philosopher Aristotle once stated, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. The fact that knowledge as the main asset does not decrease as a result of production makes the knowledge economy an interesting phenomenon to study and to understand.

The new Keynesian wage Phillips curve (NKWPC) is derived from the standard new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) that is examined and verified by many economists. The NKWPC model uses the structural wage equation to present the significant inverse relationship between wage inflation and the unemployment rate in the US economy with the significant assumption of a constant natural rate of unemployment. This study examines the NKWPC model using the generalized method of moments (GMM) and generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic-M (GARCH-M) to confirm the critical inverse relationship of the Phillips curve. In particular, this study tests the NKWPC separately targeting the official unemployment rate from Komlos (2019)’s real unemployment rate.
The estimated results of this study support the NKWPC re-confirming a significant negative relationship between wage inflation and unemployment, using two different econometric techniques of GMM and GARCH-M. Moreover, it is apparent that they do not distinguish the official unemployment rate from the real unemployment rate. The Phillips curve is not just a unicorn, or rarity, in the economic world. It is a substantial indicator and still holds merit. This study yields to another lending support to the importance of the Phillips curve.

Substantivism helps us appreciate two views on the meaning of the economy: the institutional view and the neoclassical view. This study analyzes the behaviors of producers and consumers in the supermarket industry and finds that the neoclassical school lacks a realistic behavioral theory. We observe that institutional behavioral theory is closer to reality because it recognizes that consumers are affected by their social environment through habit and emulation, and producers are survival maximizers. These social obstacles prevent humans from acting like homoeconomicus. We focus only on the supermarket industry, but this conclusion can be applied to all industries.

Analyzing the effect of military expenditure on economic growth has been an essential task for U.S economists. This thesis analyzed macroeconomic components for the last 70 years by estimating the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model and vector autoregressive model. To interpret the empirical analysis, historical analysis of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Wars in the Middle East, was made. One found the negative effect of military spending during wartime on the economic growth of the United States. This thesis suggests that the policymakers and military commanders should focus on shortening the state of war to minimize economic damage to the United States.

Florida Atlantic University Departmental Dashboard Indicators. Department program reviews for College of Business, Florida Atlantic University.

Florida Atlantic University Departmental Dashboard Indicators. Department program reviews for College of Business, Florida Atlantic University.

Florida Atlantic University Departmental Dashboard Indicators. Department program reviews for College of Business, Florida Atlantic University.