Educational Technology: Beyond the Basics

This paper addresses classroom technology as a much deeper concept than many would like to believe. It is not something to be taken lightly by only looking at what is currently available, but rather examined through a brief history, in-depth tests, and the consequences as well as the benefits of new developing technology. Furthermore it is not an issue only important for educators and administrators but requires involvement from parents and more importantly Christians to ensure that students are given the greatest opportunity possible for their future. Since technology is the future of children’s education, it is imperative that it be understood by all those involved to ensure that its benefits are maximized and its problems handled efficiently

The Wonderful War of Disney: Walt Disney and the Promotion of American Ideals in Cold War America

Graduate Textual or Investigativ

The Consequences of Rigid Wages in Search Models

The standard theory of equilibrium unemployment, the Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching model, cannot explain the magnitude of the business cycle fluctuations in two of its central elements, unemployment and vacancies. Modifying the model to make the present value of wages unresponsive to current labor market conditions amplifies fluctuations in unemployment and vacancies by an order of magnitude, significantly improving the performance of the model. Despite this, the welfare consequences of such rigid wages is negligible.

The Impact of Young Workers on the Aggregate Labor Market

This paper estimates the response of the unemployment rate and labor force participation rate to exogenous variation in the youth share of the working age population, using cross-state variation in lagged birth rates as an instrumental variable. A one percent increase in the youth share reduces the unemployment rate of young workers by more than one percent, and of older workers by more than two percent, holding conditions in other states constant. It raises the labor force participation rate by about a third of a percent for young workers, and by much less for older workers, again ceteris paribus. These results are consistent with increasing returns to scale ('thick market externalities') in the labor market. Young workers are frequently mismatched in their employment, and firms create jobs to take advantage of this mismatch. Data on gross job creation and destruction in manufacturing support this theory. I also reconcile these results with existing evidence on the labor market impact of young workers.

The cyclicality of hires, separations, and job-to-job transitions

This paper measures the job-finding, separation, and job-to-job transition rates in the United States from 1948 to 2004. The job-finding and job-to-job transition rates are strongly procyclical and the separation rate is nearly acyclical, especially since 1985. The author develops a simple model in which unemployed workers search for jobs and employed workers search for better jobs. The model predicts that an increase in either the job-finding rate or the separation rate raises the job-to-job transition rate, which is qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the available evidence. In contrast, if the job-finding rate were acyclical and the separation rate countercyclical, as is the conventional wisdom, the model predicts that the job-to-job transition rate would be counterfactually countercyclical.Job hunting ; Labor turnover

Taking a Deeper Look into the Lives of Disadvantaged Children through Visual Content Analysis

Asking children to draw a picture of family life is a simple and efficient way to assess their mental health.Children enjoy this activity and are more at ease as compared to filling out a questionnaire or having a formal interview. This past summer, I joined a research project in Ireland called the Healthy Schools Programme (HSP) that did just that. In total, 220 drawings of family life were collected from disadvantaged children aged eight to twelve years. The drawings gathered from this group were analyzed using a technique known as visual content analysis. This method involves examining drawings, pictures, or photographs to uncover common themes that can be coded and analyzed. The overall objective was to understand the connection between depression and how those who are depressed portray their family life, while determining whether visual content analysis is a valid tool for researchers to utilize

Liquidity and insurance for the unemployed

We study the optimal design of unemployment insurance for workers sampling job opportunities over time. We focus on the optimal timing of benefits and the desirability of allowing workers to freely access a riskless asset. When workers have constant absolute risk aversion preferences, it is optimal to use a very simple policy: a constant benefit during unemployment, a constant tax during employment that does not depend on the duration of the spell, and free access to savings using a riskless asset. Away from this benchmark, for constant relative risk aversion preferences, the welfare gains of more elaborate policies are minuscule. Our results highlight two largely distinct roles for policy toward the unemployed: (a) ensuring workers have sufficient liquidity to smooth their consumption; and (b) providing unemployment benefits that serve as insurance against the uncertain duration of unemployment spells.Insurance

Productivity Gains from Unemployment Insurance

This paper argues that unemployment insurance increases labor productivity by encouraging workers to seek higher productivity jobs, and by encouraging firms to create those jobs. We use a quantitative general equilibrium model to investigate whether this effect is comparable in magnitude to the standard moral hazard effects of unemployment insurance. Our model economy captures the behavior of the U.S. labor market for high school graduates quite well. When unemployment insurance becomes more generous starting from the current U.S. levels, there is an increase in unemployment similar in magnitude to the micro-estimates, but because the composition of jobs also changes, total output and welfare increase as well.

“The South’s Greatest Vindication”: Mildred Lewis Rutherford and the Belief of Southern Superiority

Graduate Histor