College of Agriculture & Natural Resources
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1598
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Linking stormwater Best Management Practices to social factors in two suburban watersheds(PLoS, 2018-08-23) Maeda, P. Kanoko; Chanse, Victoria; Rockler, Amanda; Montas, Hubert; Shirmohammadi, Adel; Wilson, Sacoby; Leisnham, Paul T.To reduce nutrient pollution in urban watersheds, residents need to voluntarily practice a range of stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs). However, little is known about the underlying social factors that may act as barriers to BMP implementation. The overall goal of this study was to better understand barriers to BMP implementation by exploring the links among resident demographics, knowledge, and behaviors so that appropriate education can be more effectively developed and targeted. In 2014-2015, a detailed questionnaire was administered door-to-door to 299 randomly selected households in two sub-watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay basin to test relationships among resident demographics, knowledge and attitudes towards water resources and BMPs, and BMP implementation. Multifactor regression models showed that respondents who had greater knowledge of water resources and BMPs lived in households that implemented greater numbers of BMPs. In turn, resident BMP knowledge, or familiarity with BMPs, strongly varied with race and ownership status, with respondents who identified as Caucasian or within a collection of `Other' races, and who were home owners, having greater BMP knowledge than respondents who identified as African American and who were home renters, respectively. Renters and members of homeowner's associations were also less likely to implement BMPs independent of knowledge, possibly reflecting perceived or real bureaucratic or procedural barriers to good stormwater management. Overall, respondents preferred to receive educational materials on stormwater via pamphlets and YouTube videos. These results suggest that resident ownership status knowledge is important to determining the number of household BMPs, and that education outreach should probably target African American and renting households that have lower BMP knowledge and landlords and administrators of homeowner's associations using well-planned print and video educational media.Item High Frequency Market Dynamics An Analysis of Market Depth & Quoting Behaviors in Crude Oil Futures Markets(2018) Roberts, John Spencer; Kyle, Albert S; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Most derivative and equity transactions occur in electronic order driven markets and depend on a limit order book. Yet many questions remain regarding the way traders interact with the limit order book, especially the role of algorithmic and high frequency trading. This dissertation investigates how the limit order book evolves over time. We study the nature of fleeting liquidity and flash quotes to deepen our understanding of the way modern markets operate. This research is based on raw message data sold by the exchange and contains every update to the limit order book linked to the top ten levels. We rebuild the limit order book and define quote segments to divide the day into non-overlapping intervals based on observed changes in the best quotes and the bid-ask spread. We propose a novel way to visualize dynamics of the limit order book by combining changes in best quotes and visible depth. Using the limit order book and quote segments, we define a measure for offered liquidity and then a measure to capture the responsiveness on both sides of the market during sub-second intervals. Flash quotes are identified and are combined with measures of offered liquidity to study why such behavior is observed in the market. We find empirical evidence that movement in market depth explains movement in the bid-ask spread. We show how combining movements in best quotes and visible depth provides a clearer picture of the direction of the market. Evidence is presented that breaks down the dynamics of offered liquidity into both trade response and prior movement of depth. We find standard measures of market liquidity, such as the bid-ask spread, can appear normal while responsiveness can remain elevated following a major market movement. Depth data assists with best execution, but this research highlights alternative uses that are important to consider when participating in modern markets. The observed dynamics of the limit order book contain relevant information that need to be captured in a full discussion of market liquidity.Item Formal Savings & Informal Insurance in Villages: A Field Experiment on Indirect Effects of Financial Deepening on Safety Nets of the Ultra-Poor(2011) Flory, Jeffrey Allen; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis exploits a unique micro dataset that uses a natural field experiment to identify indirect effects of formal savings access on de facto ineligibles residing in the same community. Despite widespread interest in microfinance as a poverty-reduction tool, the indirect effects on the very poor of expanding formal financial services remain largely unexplored. This study examines evidence from a large field experiment which helps fill this gap. It also contributes to an important emerging literature on the indirect impacts of policy interventions in developing countries, often (incompletely) evaluated solely on the basis of how they impact participants and beneficiaries. In developing regions, households vulnerable to extreme poverty often benefit from long-standing local safety nets based on cash gifts and other transfers from relatives and friends, which help them smooth consumption across food-deficits and household shocks. To date, little is known about how these pre-existing practices are affected as community members begin adopting newly available formal financial services, and there remains much unexplored in the interaction of formal financial markets with informal safety nets. This paper addresses that gap by examining how formal savings expansion affects inter-household wealth transfers, with a particular emphasis on receipts by the most vulnerable. Using a rich panel dataset from Central Malawi that includes over 2,000 households, I find that experimentally boosting local savings uptake in rural areas leads to a strong positive effect on assistance receipts by non service-users during peak periods of hunger. The difference is strongest among the most vulnerable households. That is, the entrance of formal savings appears to complement local informal support systems for the highly vulnerable through an indirect mechanism, channeling greater wealth to such households during periods of food-deficits. The positive impacts of formal savings expansion on non service-users suggests that formal savings may have substantially greater benefits than would be suggested by focusing exclusively on the impacts experienced by the service-users themselves.