Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Fifty Shades of Green - Essays on Eco-friendly Consumption, Public Policy, and Income Inequality(2023) Gutiérrez Mendieta, Aldo; Uler, Neslihan; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation offers a thorough examination of the impact of income inequality on environmental quality, with particular attention to the obstacles encountered by low-income individuals and families in adopting sustainable and environmentally friendly consumption practices. Through the development of a general theoretical model, I provide a novel approach on understanding the dynamics of this relationship. By examining various income inequality scenarios, I assess their effects on environmental quality. Based on these findings, I propose a policy recommendation that addresses both income inequality and environmental concerns. Additionally, I propose an innovative laboratory experiment to empirically validate the theoretical predictions of the general model.In Chapter 1 I present a brief introduction emphasizing the significance of examining the impact of income inequality on the environment. he importance of exploring the individual trade-offs associated with consuming environmentally friendly goods (referred to as 'green goods'), which are more expensive, compared to their environmentally harmful counterparts (referred to as 'brown goods'), which are cheaper to buy. Building upon this framework of green and brown goods, I introduce a general model in Chapter 2 to comprehend individual behavior and investigate the impact of income inequality on environmental quality. This theoretical model offers insights into why income inequality can lead to improved, worsened, or neutral outcomes for the environment, which provides an explanation for the mixed empirical evidence found in previous studies. In Chapter 3, I propose a solution to address the issues of income inequality and the externality generated by the consumption of brown goods simultaneously. I propose the implementation of a permit market in which a regulatory agency issues a limited number of permits to cap the total demand for brown goods, thereby preventing environmental quality from falling below a predetermined threshold. Consumers have the opportunity to trade these permits, enabling income transfers from buyers to sellers and ultimately reducing income inequality. Finally, in Chapter 4 I present the design and analysis of a novel laboratory experiment aimed at empirically testing the theoretical predictions derived from the model introduced in Chapter 2. The experimental results reveal a positive effect of income inequality on environmental quality across all treatments, contradicting the predicted negative effect in specific scenarios. To account for these deviations, I augment the theoretical model by integrating two behavioral motivations, which effectively elucidate the observed behavior. These extensions not only contribute to a deeper understanding of the empirical findings but also offer promising prospects for further research exploration.Item Income Inequality and Household Debt: Assessing the Relationship Using Household Panel Data(2022) Brauer, Max; Graham, Carol; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Is income inequality positively associated with household debt? Previous scholarship suggests that widening income inequality could stimulate household debt, particularly in advanced economies. Furthermore, this potential link could be associated with negative consequences including reduced GDP and secular stagnation, financial fragility and crisis, and decreased capabilities, mobility, and well-being. Yet, until recently, this “income inequality/household debt” link has been understudied. The first chapter discusses two theoretical bases for the link and synthesizes the burgeoning empirical research to identify gaps. Theoretically, income inequality could bolster credit supply because marginal propensity to save increases with income. But income inequality could also stimulate credit demand through the relative income hypothesis. Empirically, income inequality is positively associated with rising debt-to-income ratios (DTI) in developed countries. However, this empirical research generally lacks controls for an important omitted variable (financial deregulation) and an alternative explanation (wealth effects). Moreover, few studies explore changes in the intensive margin of household DTI, which has been the largest contributor to rising overall DTI and is most likely linked to negative consequences. The second chapter examines the relative impacts of various measures of state-level income inequality, financial deregulation, and wealth effects on both the intensive margin and overall DTI of United States households using household panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Results indicate that income inequality is significantly, positively associated with household DTI, but only for the Gini coefficient and the top 10 percent income share. Yet for these measures, income inequality has the strongest and most significant impact on the intensive margin of household DTI as compared to alternative explanations. The third chapter explores a potential microfoundation for the income inequality/DTI link: whether subjective well-being is associated with household DTI. A long literature notes how income inequality and relative income preferences affect subjective well-being. If subjective well-being also affects debt, it could function as a measure of credit demand. Again using data from the PSID and a fixed effects method, results show that subjective well-being has a positive, significant, contemporaneous association with household DTIs. Such a positive association could indicate a “tunnel effect” -- that households with a positive, aspirational outlook take on increasing amounts of debt. However, reverse causality is a potential issue, and additional models designed to address reverse causality with a two-year lag do not find significant results, perhaps due to data limitations for lag specifications. The key finding of this dissertation is that income inequality is positively associated with household DTI, and, in fact, contributes more to driving indebted households deeper into debt than alternative explanations. Yet when viewed from the lens of subjective well-being, happier households are more likely to take on additional debt. These findings suggest that, in the United States, income inequality may lead some households to go deeper into debt as they ostensibly chase the “American dream” and aspire to the same living standards as higher income earners.Item Income Inequality and the capacity of the state in South Korea, 1965-2004(2006-05-15) Lee, Chang Won; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This paper focuses on the relationship between income inequality and state capacity in South Korea. Korea achieved rapid economic growth accompanied by equity from the 1960s to the mid 1990s. However, after the 1997 IMF financial crisis, income inequality in Korea increased dramatically. This change in income inequality is closely related to increases in unemployment and underemployment. I argue that such failures in the labor market are attributed to the rapid decline of the state's capacity after financial liberalization in 1993. During the developmental era, the state had been able to form institutions for low income inequality, due to its relative autonomy from business owners. After the financial liberalization no such autonomous capacity to build employment-protective institutions existed, as these reforms increased the influence of domestic and international capital. Further, the weakening of the state's capacity also reflects changes in the relationship of the Korean economy to the world system.