College of Behavioral & Social Sciences

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..

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    Mapping 2000–2010 Impervious Surface Change in India Using Global Land Survey Landsat Data
    (MDPI, 2017-04-13) Wang, Panshi; Huang, Chengquan; Brown de Colstoun, Eric C.
    Understanding and monitoring the environmental impacts of global urbanization requires better urban datasets. Continuous field impervious surface change (ISC) mapping using Landsat data is an effective way to quantify spatiotemporal dynamics of urbanization. It is well acknowledged that Landsat-based estimation of impervious surface is subject to seasonal and phenological variations. The overall goal of this paper is to map 2000–2010 ISC for India using Global Land Survey datasets and training data only available for 2010. To this end, a method was developed that could transfer the regression tree model developed for mapping 2010 impervious surface to 2000 using an iterative training and prediction (ITP) approachAn independent validation dataset was also developed using Google Earth™ imagery. Based on the reference ISC from the validation dataset, the RMSE of predicted ISC was estimated to be 18.4%. At 95% confidence, the total estimated ISC for India between 2000 and 2010 is 2274.62 ± 7.84 km2.
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    Mapping 2000–2010 Impervious Surface Change in India Using Global Land Survey Landsat Data
    (MDPI, 2017-04-13) Wang, Panshi; Huang, Chengquan; Brown de Colstoun, Eric C.
    Understanding and monitoring the environmental impacts of global urbanization requires better urban datasets. Continuous field impervious surface change (ISC) mapping using Landsat data is an effective way to quantify spatiotemporal dynamics of urbanization. It is well acknowledged that Landsat-based estimation of impervious surface is subject to seasonal and phenological variations. The overall goal of this paper is to map 2000–2010 ISC for India using Global Land Survey datasets and training data only available for 2010. To this end, a method was developed that could transfer the regression tree model developed for mapping 2010 impervious surface to 2000 using an iterative training and prediction (ITP) approachAn independent validation dataset was also developed using Google Earth™ imagery. Based on the reference ISC from the validation dataset, the RMSE of predicted ISC was estimated to be 18.4%. At 95% confidence, the total estimated ISC for India between 2000 and 2010 is 2274.62 +/- 7.84 km2.
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    Three Essays on China's Economic Reform
    (2008-05-30) Li, Lixing; Murrell, Peter; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation contains three essays. In Chapter 2, I investigate the causal factors of the soft budget constraint (SBC) problem. Based on a panel dataset from a survey of Chinese enterprises, the test results support the policy burden hypothesis but not the ownership hypothesis. The findings emphasize the importance of creating a sound social security system in the process of China's enterprise reform. The other two essays focus on the upgrading of counties to cities in China. Chapter 3 examines its role in providing local governments with incentives on economic growth. Using a large panel data set covering all counties during 1993-2004, I find that the official minimum requirements for upgrading are not enforced in practice. Instead, a county's economic growth rate plays a key role in obtaining city status. Furthermore, I conduct an empirical test to distinguish between a principal-agent incentive mechanism and political bargaining. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the central government uses upgrading to reward local officials for high growth, as well as aligning local interests with those of the center. This essay highlights the importance of both fiscal and political incentives facing the local government. Chapter 4 examines the consequences of upgrading by looking at various economic, fiscal and public service outcomes. I find that city status increases government size and revenues, and creates more urban employment opportunities. However, there is no significant improvement in local public services after counties were upgraded, and their high growth rates dropped. These results are interpreted by analyzing the incentive structure of local government officials.