Abtract: Decades of empirical research has found mixed results on whether poverty traps do and do not exist in many contexts. In this paper, I revisit the question of their existence and propose an explanation for the mixed evidence using behavioral theory. I formulate a poverty trap using a credit market. When agents have a reference-dependent bequest motive, they change their preferences in response to vicious cycles, can slow and even stop downward transitions which makes the model sensitive to income shocks. These dynamics are not accounted by previous poverty trap models and can make the trap invisible to empirical identification. I confirm that that if reference-dependence exists but is unaccounted for in the empirical specification then the poverty trap will not be identified by simulating the model and testing two common empirical methods. I analyze a tax-redistribution and ``big push" policy, the different policies employed by different empirical results, formulate an implicit tax rate, and I find interventions can have welfare-reducing consequences if the poverty trap is mis-identified.
In this proposal, I outline a new method to study the effects of large firms operating in two markets: the labor market and consumer product market. To study the effects of a minimum wage, I allow firm concentration to change endogenously, which allows rich spillover effects into the cproduct market. Preliminary results indiciate non-monotionic increases in welfare towards the optimum, different than previous papers with fixed firm power.
For this project, I study the effects of smaller and community-oriented banks on their community impact. Banking ownership models have changed drastically over the past century. Credit unions since the 1930s require little to no relationship with the intended community. Small banks, like MDIs, have often failed (like in 2008) and have been bought up by larger banks (i.e. SunRise bank in Chicago, 2010). By using data on loans and flow of funds, we can study use changes in ownership to study how community-based banks have differentially supported or changed community wealth.
Abstract. In this paper we present explicit and analytical solutions to the Stokes equation on the half-space, R3, with data for initial velocity and boundary velocity. Our approach to a solution for velocity and pressure involves integral transformations, Green’s functions, and a Helmholtz decomposition. Our main results demonstrate that the velocity derived from this initial value and boundary value problem can be expressed as the curl of the convolution of vorticity and the fundamental solution to the Laplace equation in our domain.