Schar School Graduate Student Research
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A collection of working papers and other research by Schar School graduate students
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Item Credit Ratings & Climate Change Resilience: A Framework for Assessing Airports, Seaports, & Toll Roads(2022-05) Brown-Neuhaus, Virginia Gale; Harloe, Christopher; Kwekam, Gilles David; Lu, George; Quenga, Joseph; Snyder, WilliamThis report provides a framework for incorporating climate change resilience in Fitch Ratings’ credit rating assessments of airports, seaports, and toll roads. We build on current transportation resilience practices and climate-related assessments, key credit rating drivers, stakeholder interviews, and analysis of nonrecourse municipal securities official statements to develop a conceptual resilience framework that may be useful in expanding into Fitch Ratings credit rating process for transportation projects. This proposed framework can help develop quantifiable information to determine a project’s resiliency by analyzing these factors: project type, asset level; asset productivity; and strategic response planning. By focusing on the vulnerabilities and portfolio exposure, the framework provides a means to assess a project’s climate-related risks and resilience that can be easily distinguished between a high, medium, and low risk-resilience metric.Item Artificial Neural Networks in Public Policy: Towards an Analytical Framework(2020-04) Lee, JoshuaInterviews created during the course of research for the dissertation "Artificial Neural Networks in Public Policy: Towards an Analytical Framework."Item Non-democratic regimes as bargaining process(2010-02-25T20:52:07Z) Aslam, GhaziaMany questions about the characteristics of dictatorships and the process and likelihood of their transition towards democracy remain unanswered. In this paper, we contend that in order to get a comprehensive picture of a dictatorial regime and its prospects of democratization, we need to highlight the importance of “free activity” in the strategic interaction between the dictator and the citizens–the dynamics of “bargaining, for the reaching of understandings and misunderstandings, for accommodation and co-operation and for conjectures about each other’s decision processes, value systems and information” (Schelling, 1961). We specifically analyze three strategies that participants use under different circumstances in an attempt to achieve their most favorable outcome: changing the payoffs of the opponents, “burning” money by a participant to signal his intentions about the future action and the use of brinkmanship. In doing so, we learn about the behavior of the participants that usually remains out of reach of straightforward analysis. The framework generates a variety of potential behavior within a framework of a few variables and constraints and is therefore able to generate hypotheses about relationships among various variables of interest.Item Revisiting the Constitution: A Case For Parliamentary System in Central Asia?(2007-05-16T15:11:20Z) Abdukadirov, SherzodInstitutional design can impact the dynamics of power relations in authoritarian regimes. Under the presidential system in Central Asian states, the elite factions agree upon a presidential candidate before the elections and then ensure their candidate’s victory by manipulating the elections. As the cost of exclusion in this process is very high, every elite faction is forced to collude with the other factions. Under a parliamentary system, bargaining among the elites in selection of the head of state would occur after the elections as the elites would have to first secure parliamentary seats to be able to vote for the head of state. Such a process would reduce the stakes in each particular election, making it harder for the elites to manipulate elections yet safer to allow some opposition. Furthermore, the balance of power among the elites in parliament would be decided by the people, giving them a voice in the process.Item Constrained Optimization: The State and the Indian Entrepreneur(2007-01-29T20:43:14Z) Banerjee, PritamThe quality of entrepreneurship has been considered by many scholars as a critical factor in the economic development of a society. While some scholars have sought to explain the difference in entrepreneurial quality among societies based on cultural grounds, this paper argues that entrepreneurship is a function of the incentives derived from institutions and the historical context that entrepreneurs face. It also argues that entrepreneurs are not inert actors in the institutional and historical process, but are actively engaged in shaping the political-economic landscape which they inhabit. The paper undertakes an historical analysis of Indian entrepreneurship in the last hundred years as an illustrative example of this theory of entrepreneurial dynamics in a society.Item The Determinants of Hybrid-Electric Vehicle Adoption: Insights from State Registration Data(2006-12-15T18:08:14Z) Diamond, David; Auerswald, PhilipThis paper examines the effect of tax incentives, gasoline prices and other socio-economic factors on the demand for Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) in different U.S. states. As hybrid sales increase, it is important for policymakers to understand how these factors influence demand in order to judge the effectiveness of competing HEV incentive policies. The paper develops a demand model for per-state market-share, and uses cross-sectional time-series data on new Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) registrations in different U.S. states in 2003 and 2004 to evaluate the significance of difference factors. In 2003, a number of predictors were significant, suggesting different policy alternatives for promoting adoption. In 2004, when demand for the Toyota Prius exceeded supply, HEV registrations were explained almost entirely by dealer location.