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We examine the impact of coach gender on the probability that NCAA Division I women’s basketball teams advance to the end-of-year NCAA tournament. Results of our full sample analysis show that coach gender has no significant impact on the likelihood of advancing, providing no evidence for ability as a potential explanation for the decline in women coaches. In the subsample analysis, while we find that men coaches have higher predicted probabilities of tournament appearances in non-Power Five conferences, women coaches are more successful in the elite Power Five conferences, where they have been losing the most ground in coaching positions.

We describe the Fed Challenge Project, an experiential learning project for a Money and Banking course. In this project, modeled after the College Fed Challenge Competition, student teams present on the current state of the economy and create and defend monetary policy recommendations. The project gives students an opportunity to enhance their knowledge of monetary policy and develop important economic skills including data analysis and visualization, critical thinking, research, communication, and collaboration. Three elements of the project—relevancy of content, a combination of individual and collaborative work, and the inclusion of common and creative aspects—combine to enhance learning objectives.

Many developing countries lack universal sanitation services for residents. Years of inappropriate disposal of solid waste and wastewater have increased the potential for devastating environmental and health issues. An economic valuation of sanitation services may help in planning investment projects by demonstrating the benefits that households derive from having access to improved sanitation. We examine Guatemala as a case study and employ a series of hedonic models to estimate the value that households in Guatemala assign to the sanitation services of solid waste collection and connections to sewer infrastructure. Findings indicate that residents are willing to pay higher rents for both wastewater and solid waste removal. Policy implications are discussed.

Given the lack of market-based property price data in developing countries, imputed rental prices have been recently used to estimate the implicit value of some home characteristics and related amenities. This study assesses the validity of using imputed rental prices to estimate hedonic models in a developing country context. Using data from Guatemala, we compare the derived implicit values of housing characteristics from hedonic models using hypothetical and actual rental prices. We estimate an endogenous switching regression model to control for potential endogeneity of the decision to rent a home. Our results indicate that hedonic models with hypothetical and true rental prices yield statistically different estimates of marginal values for some housing characteristics.

This study examines the impact of economics education on student performance on the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test in Business. We demonstrate that grades in introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics courses have a positive relationship with overall exam performance as well as sub-scores in most content areas of the test. Furthermore, we use a measure of \"extranormal\" ability in economics and demonstrate its positive relationship to test performance. \"Extranormal\" ability represents the portion of course grades that cannot be explained by prior academic achievement. Finally, we show that the relationship between \"extranormal\" ability and exam performance is much more limited for female students than for male students.

The authors describe a unique approach to enhancing student learning at the introductory economics level that utilizes a multi-section, team-based competition. The competition is structured to supplement learning throughout the entire introductory course. Student teams are presented with current economic issues, trends, or events, and use economic tools and theories to comprehensively examine the topics. Students present their analyses in their own sections with one team from each section moving on to compete in an inter-section round. Students are judged on technicality, creativity, and applicability of economic concepts. The competition has the potential to advance students' creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical and analytical thinking skills, while enhancing their ability to apply foundational economic concepts to real-world settings.

Debates on climate change have conceded to most parties acknowledging the existence of negative impacts of changing weather patterns. However, these impacts have not fully been assessed. One way which changing climates can negatively impact an economy is by changing the market structures of its most influential industries; making these markets more imperfectly competitive and taking value away from consumers. This dissertation draws on this fact and suggests accurate ways to both identify and quantify the costs of climate change. In the first chapter of this dissertation, the ski industry is used as a case study. A unique data set along with the econometric technique of discrete time survival analysis is used to estimate the impact of weather on the survival of ski areas over time. Results suggest that changing weather patterns have been an influential factor in the closure of many ski areas throughout the region. For this reason, the ski industry has become much less competitive allowing ski area managers to increase the price of their lift tickets over their marginal costs. The second chapter builds off the first to show that since many of the industries which are vulnerable to climate change are imperfectly competitive in nature, there is a need to more precise theoretical techniques of valuing non-market, climate related goods in these industries in which firms can artificially increase the price. Huang (2013) builds off of Feenstra (1995) and adapts the traditional hedonic valuation method to account for imperfect competition in the market. The theoretical technique is discussed and employed against current approaches to show its feasibility in measuring the true value of goods which are marked up when firms enjoy market power. Together the two chapters of this dissertation develop a strategy for increased precision in the measurement of the costs of climate change. By first identifying vulnerable industries with the econometric techniques used in chapter one and then estimating the value of the climate related goods in these industries with the model presented in chapter two, researchers could determine important factors which have the ability to influence policy debates on climate change.

[...]the companies in this second group scored ROI next to last in importance.\\n

While it's true that charcoal barbecues generate more carbon emissions than gas grills, there are benefits of cooking with charcoal. Unlike fossil fuels, charcoal is made from a renewable resource. The key is to look for lump charcoal (as opposed to composite briquettes) and to know where your charcoal is coming from. Making sure to use a grill with a lid is very important in increasing the efficiency of charcoal cooking. Luckily, many kettle-style barbecues are available for under $200. Ceramic, kamado-style barbecues increase the charcoal's efficiency even more and create very little ash.