VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Overrated? The Impact of Oil Revenue on Nigeria's Creditworthiness, Debt Profile & Sustainability, 1973-2004
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
External Debt
Creditworthiness
Debt-servicing capacity
Thesis

One of the biggest challenges for an oil-producing country is how to use its oil wealth strategically to promote sustainable development. Almost fifty years after oil was discovered at Oloibiri in South Eastern Nigeria and after the country’s mostly-bitter romance with creditor organizations: How do we assess the debt crisis in which Nigeria found itself? What are the lessons to be learned? Certainly, these are some of the most important questions to be studied as the country embarks with a clean slate with private and bilateral lenders after the long soughtafter debt restructuring deal that came in April 2006. This thesis analyzes the lessons to be learned from Nigeria’s debt history, looking especially at the phenomenon of oil-led spending and borrowing that occurred during 1973-2004. Its objective is to determine whether Nigeria received a higher credit-rating than its domestic and macroeconomic fundamentals would have otherwise justified due to its oil revenues, and whether the debt-repayment crisis arose because oil windfalls from the early 1980s were not used to retire its debt.
Point Shaving in the NBA: An Economic Analysis of the National Basketball Association's Point Spread Betting Market
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
sports betting
gambling market
NBA
sports book
efficient markets
wager
Thesis

In this paper, I examine the point spread betting market of the National Basketball Association for indications of cheating through point shaving. Previous studies have illustrated the contradictory phenomenon of simple, profitable betting rules persisting in a market of informed traders. While normally dismissed due to the salaries earned by professional players, I propose point shaving as an explanation for this persistent market inefficiency. Through analysis of the distribution and symmetry of the forecast errors, I arrive at a rough approximation of point shaving’s prevalence. In studying in–game scores, I find conclusive evidence that the point spread influences game outcomes and has causative effects on the probability of the favored team covering the point spread. The key economic concept these results support is that with the non–linear payout structure of the point spread betting market creating a discontinuity over the value of final game margins, individuals are altering their behavior in response to these distorted incentives.
Poverty and Religion: An Investigation into Child Labor in Ghana
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
youth
work
schooling
income
poverty
Ghanaian
Thesis

Although the number of economically active children worldwide has diminished recently, the problem of child labor is still staggering. This paper examines supply-side determinants of child labor using data collected by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Ghana, through their Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC). Linear probability and probit models are used to analyze the importance of various child, household and community characteristics in determining whether a child works and attends school. Some support is found for Basu and Van’s (1998) belief that poverty determines child labor. However, religious affiliation, something not touched upon by previous literature, also tells a consistent story through the data. The results of this study could be used as a guide to policy and debate pertaining to child labor in Ghana.
Rethinking Urban Redevelopment in Saint Paul, Minnesota: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of The Bridges of Saint Paul
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
Urban Renewal
Urban Revitalization
West Side St. Paul
Twin Cities
Thesis

The Bridges of Saint Paul is a $1.5 billion development project proposed for the City of Saint Paul by the JLT Group, Inc. The Bridges project is a multi-use development consisting of office and retail space, condominiums, lodging, public space, and entertainment options. The project’s diverse offerings and large size have led to predictions of widespread and large impacts on the Twin Cities region. In considering the project, however, the City of Saint Paul made no attempt to weigh and consider interests in a systematic way. This study offers a method to weigh competing effects through a cost-benefit analysis. The analysis provides policy-makers in the city with a blueprint for consideration of future urban development projects for the proposed site and the Twin Cities region.
School Inputs and Educational Attainment in Jiangsu, China
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
Jiangsu Province
China
educational attainment
class size
teacher education
Thesis

This paper leverages panel data collected from Jiangsu Province, China from 2001 to 2004 for examining the effects of school inputs such as class size and teacher education on educational attainment, represented by the percentage of middle school graduates who advance to high school or equivalent education. The results show that while middle school class size and educational investment do not have much impact, lower historic elementary school class size and higher teacher education have significant, positive effects on educational attainment. These conclusions differ from what is generally supported in western literature and contain additional policy implications for a developing region.
The Determinants of Sniping on eBay: An Econometric Analysis
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
game theory
auction theory
second-price auction
internet auction
eBay
sniping
Thesis

eBay is the largest and most widely known of many internet auction sites designed to connect buyers and sellers around the world. An eBay auction consists of a set bidding period during which individuals submit “maximum bids” for an item. The winner the auction is the individual with the highest bid, and the price is equal to the second highest bid, plus a small bidding increment. This system is a close approximation to a second-price auction, for which William Vickrey proved in 1961 that a weakly dominant strategy is to bid one’s own private value for an item. A bidding strategy called “sniping,” whereby an individual withholds a bid until the last moment of the bidding period, is widely observed on eBay, but seems to violate rational behavior in the Vickrey model. Bidding late should not have any advantage over bidding early in a second-price auction, so economists have sought ways to rationalize its existence. In this paper, I create a data set from 515 eBay auctions and test several potential determinants of sniping behavior using a standard linear regression model. I incorporate a number of variables from previous literature (a common value indicator for an item, the feedback rating of an individual, and the number of opponents in an auction), as well as a new variable (the number of substitutes for an item), and achieve significant results.
U.S. Trade Policy and the Pacific Rim, from Fordney-McCumber to the Trade Expansion Act of 1962: A Political-Economic Analysis
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
United States
trade policies
Pacific Rim
tariffs
Thesis

From 1922 to 1962, United States trade policies changed dramatically, marked in the beginning by the heightening of protectionism and then the mobilization toward trade liberalization. The effect of these policies on the Pacific Rim, however, has been little studied. This thesis investigates the extent to which U.S. trade policies during this period impacted the Pacific Rim economies differently from the rest of the world. Empirical analysis demonstrates that U.S. trade with the Pacific Rim had consistently higher tariff barriers than U.S. trade with the rest of the world. This thesis then analyzes the reasons behind this phenomenon from both a political economy and a historical perspective. On both fronts, the Pacific Rim was at a disadvantage, and its higher barrier to trade with the U.S. was by no means historically accidental.
Volatility Forecasting with High Frequency Data
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
Realized Variance
High-Frequency Data
Instrumental Variables
Local Level Model
HAR model
linear forecasting
Thesis

The daily volatility is typically unobserved but can be estimated using high frequent tick-by-tick data. In this paper, we study the problem of forecasting the unobserved volatility using past values of measured volatility. Specifically, we use daily estimates of volatility based on high frequency data, called realized variance, and construct the optimal linear forecast of future volatility. Utilizing single exponential smoothing, we develop formulae that yield the optimal coefficients for our forecast. We compare the precision of our forecast with those of two popular forecasting models, the HAR regression model and the Local Level model, in terms of mean squared errors. In empirical analysis of the seven DJIA stocks, our model performs better than two competing models in most of the cases.
Why is Curly a Woman?!: Presentationality and Nostalgia in the Takarazuka Revue
Keywords: Theater and society
Text
Thesis

In this essay, I use an analysis of the presentational theatrical elements of Takarazuka musicals to enter into a discussion about how and why the Revue evokes nostalgia for a very specific image of American culture in their stage production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s American musical classic "Oklahoma!".
A Geoarchaeological Analysis of Adobe from the Presidio, San Francisco
Keywords: School of Earth Energy &amp; Environmental Sciences
adobe construction
Thesis

This thesis is a comparative study of adobe from two different sites in the Presidio de San Francisco: the Officer's Club, in the main quadrangle, and El Polin Springs, an extramural site in the Tennessee Hollow Watershed. By combining macroscopic descriptions of the texture and plant content of adobe samples with petrographic analysis and a review of the local geology, this study focuses on intersite and intrasite variability in texture and source materials to understand more about the history of the individual buildings and the social relationships surrounding architectural production in the Presidio. Because the adobe from El Polin Springs was found with fired soil in burnt building rubble at the site, analysis of this rubble also seeks to contribute to knowledge about the fire episode. Findings indicate that there is compositional and textural variation between the adobe from these two sites, which may be due to the use of different source materials, variation within a single source location, or, in the case of the mineralogical variation, high-temperature alteration of minerals during the fire at El Polin Springs.
Barite Accumulation Rates and Analysis of Sulfur Isotopes over the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum
Keywords:  Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences
School of Earth Energy &amp; Environmental Sciences
paleoclimatology
Thesis

The Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a global climatic event that occurred 55 million years ago. D18O values from benthic foraminifera indicate that temperatures rose 4-5C coeval with a precipitous drop in d13C values that indicate a new source of carbon rapidly entered the global carbon cycle. Marine barite (BaSO4) was used to evaluate the 1) barite accumulation rate that serves a proxy for export production and 2) the sulfur isotopic composition of seawater that reflects the mass balance of oceanic sulfate (SO4 2-). Increased barite accumulation rates at the PETM suggest that increased export production and CO2 sequestration was in direct response to the change in carbon source, although not all of the increases are accounted for. High resolution d34S values are lower but within reasonable range of previously observed values and indicate a decrease in sulfate removal by pyrite deposition.
Design of Photonic Crystal Cavities by Genetic Algorithms and Numerical Optimization Techniques
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Photonic crystals
Genetic algorithms
Semiconductors
Thesis

Photonic Crystals are semiconductor material structures that show promise for a variety of photonic-based applications. The properties of photonic crystals are very design-dependent. In this paper, we investigate the design of photonic crystal cavities by using Genetic Algorithms and Numerical Optimization Techniques. We see that the Genetic Algorithm proves to be powerful and effective design tool for such cavity structures.
Full-System Power Analysis and Modeling
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Modeling
Information technology industry > Energy conservation
Electric power > Conservation
Thesis

The increasing costs of power delivery and cooling, as well as the trend toward higher-density computer systems, have created a growing demand for better power management in server environments. Despite the increasing interest in this issue, little work has been done in quantitatively understanding power consumption trends and developing models to predict full-system power and component power breakdown that are not hardware specific.
To quantitatively understand power consumption trends in server systems, we study the component-level power breakdown and variation, as well as temporal workload-specific power consumption of two instrumented systems: a power-optimized blade system and a compute-optimized Itanium-2 system. Using this analysis, we examine the validity of prior ad-hoc approaches to understanding power breakdown and quantify several interesting trends important for power modeling and management.
We also introduce Mantis, a non-intrusive method for modeling full-system power consumption and providing real-time power prediction. Mantis is not hardware-specific and uses a one-time calibration phase to generate a model correlating AC power measurements with standard user-level system utilization metrics.
We experimentally validate Mantis on the two instrumented systems using a variety of workloads (CPU, memory, or I/O intensive) and hardware configurations (number of processors, power supply and frequency settings). Mantis provides power estimates with high accuracy for both overall and temporal power consumption, making it a valuable non-hardware-specific tool for power-aware scheduling and analysis.
Hydrothermal Minerals Record Variations in CO2 Flux of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge: Reykjanes Geothermal System, Iceland
Keywords:  Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences
School of Earth Energy &amp; Environmental Sciences
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Iceland
Thesis

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge spreading center is exposed on land at the Reykjanes geothermal system in southwest Iceland. Seawater that penetrates this coastal geothermal system at depth reacts with the host rock basalt to form secondary geothermal minerals in progressively higher-grade mineral alteration zones with depth at temperatures over 300C. Within several alteration zones, epidote, prehnite, calcite and quartz form a trivariant assemblage that, under conditions of specified temperature and pressure, allows predictions of geothermal fluid pCO2 to be made as a function of the composition of the solid solution minerals epidote and prehnite.
Learning Effective BDD Variable Orders for BDD-based Program Analysis
Keywords: Computer Science.
Decision making > Mathematical models
Decision trees
Co-winner Ben Wegbreit Prize for Best Undergraduate Honors Thesis in Computer Science
Thesis

Software reliability and security are in jeopardy. As software has become ubiquitous and its capabilities have become more complex, code quality has been sacrificed in the race for the next ”killer app.” In response, program analysis researchers have mounted a revolution; they have developed new tools and methods, underpinned by traditional compilation techniques, in order to save software from its downward spiral. However, because these tools and analyses have also become more sophisticated, they too have suffered from scalability, reliability and complexity issues.
Just as program analysis researchers have set out to solve the problems of software developers, we have set out to solve the problems of program analysis researchers. The bddbddb (Binary Decision Diagram-Based Deductive DataBase) system has recently made possible many advanced, context-sensitive program analyses. Such analyses can be expressed in bddbddb as Datalog queries, which are quantifiably easier to write than a traditional implementation. The bddbddb system’s unique compilation mechanisms also yield analyses of exceptional performance. The key to this performance is the use of Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs), a compact representation that exploits repeated patterns in data, to represent the principle elements of an analysis. However, finding efficient BDD representations (i.e., BDD variable orders) for a particular analysis is nearly impossible to accomplish manually and, in some cases, is without a solution given an analysis and its formulation.
This thesis presents an algorithm that helps automate the discovery of efficient BDD representations. Our technique reformulates the search for BDD variable orders as an active learning process over the space of BDD variable orders and their execution times. This technique revolves around an iterative process of carefully sampling new orders and then reducing the search space by extracting features from high performance orders. The dominant features of the sampled variable orders can then be used to generate new orders, refine existing orders, or even revise analysis formulations. The variable orders generated by our algorithm outperform those obtained after months of manual exploration. And, more importantly, our results make bddbddb a viable and valuable tool for program analysis researchers in their quest for better quality code.
Planning Costs and Price Discrimination in Markets for Time-Specific Goods
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
prices
valuations
consumer
markets
Thesis

When consumers have constant or non-existent planning costs firms can always achieve maximum profits with a single fixed price. However, when planning costs vary with consumers’ valuations a single fixed price is not always sufficient for profit maximization. In such cases it is optimal for the firm to provide an array of purchasing options. High valuation consumers will purchase with certainty at a high price while lower valuation consumers will opt for a lottery which gives some probability of being allowed to purchase at a discounted price and no opportunity to purchase otherwise. In general this type of mechanism may be difficult to implement, but in markets for time-specific goods any menu of lotteries can be realized by a descending price path with quantity restrictions at the discount prices.
Post-Explosion Nuclear Attribution and Deterrence
Keywords: CISAC
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Stanford University
nuclear weapons
nuclear attribution
deterrance
Thesis

Nuclear attribution or post-explosion forensics is the process of determining the origin of nuclear material after a nuclear incident. While nuclear terrorism has been well-explored in academic literature, there are no technical assessments of attribution capability. This thesis attempts to fill that gap by combining an assessment of the current technology with the contribution that attribution can make toward deterrence. I find that the technology behind attribution is well-developed but not foolproof, and I conclude that if the current capabilities were publicized more thoroughly and the post-explosion process of assessing the evidence were internationalized, states and individual actors might be deterred more than they already are. I explore other possible policy options, including a nuclear database and nuclear tagging, and these are found to be useful but to add less to deterrence.
Putting the House in Order: The Rise and Fall of the Homeland Security Council
Keywords: Center for International Security and Cooperation
CISAC
security policy
Homeland Security Council
National Security Council
organizational structure
Thesis

The Homeland Security Council (HSC) coordinates homeland security policy across the government. Recently, there has been enormous pressure to merge the HSC with the National Security Council. This thesis seeks to answer why the HSC is on the verge of this merger, despite the importance of homeland security to overall US security policy. The hypotheses, derived from the literature, consider whether a “flawed mandate,” under-resourcing, or presidential leadership style best answers that question. In analyzing these hypotheses, the study relies heavily on interviews. Somewhat surprisingly, the evidence suggests that the most compelling explanation is not any of these obvious factors, but rather something much more mundane: the organizational immaturity of the HSC. The thesis ends with recommendations to guide policymakers that are facing similar questions of presidential decision-making and the organization of the government at the highest levels.
Rearming the Law Popular Motivations for Amendment of Japan’s Pacifist Constitution
Keywords: CISAC
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Stanford University
Japan
military
foreign relations
national security
Thesis

Article IX of the Japanese Constitution stipulates that the nation shall not fight wars or maintain military power. Despite Japan’s possession of significant “Self-Defense Forces,” opinion polls indicate that the Japanese public remained largely opposed to amendment of Article IX until September 2001. After that time, poll responses favoring amendment have been significantly higher (though not always above 50%), and this paper seeks to determine the cause of increased support for change. Three overarching theories are evaluated as possible explanations: realism (which views Japan’s security situation as the cause); domestic politics (which views political forces within Japan as the instigators of change); and normative theory (which attributes the shift to cultural changes that go deeper than either security or politics).
The main finding of this paper is that, while various changes in Japanese security, politics, and culture enabled a change, the political leadership of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirô was the primary determinant of the timing of the opinion shift on Article IX. Factors that likely helped enable a change in public attitudes include: growing threats from China and North Korea; demise of Japan’s leftist political parties; marginalization of reform opponents in the governing party; the public’s gradual acceptance of increasingly assertive Japanese defense policy and of the Self-Defense Forces; and emergence of a norm of contributing to international peace. Factors that do not appear directly linked to the Article IX shift include: reduced trust in the United States for protection; vulnerability in Japan’s economic security; generational change; and rising nationalism. International terrorism does not seem to have contributed to the initial change in Article IX opinions but may have helped keep poll numbers high after the shift.
These findings tend to discredit realist and normative explanations and tend to support the domestic politics set of arguments. To the extent that these findings support speculation about Japan’s future, they suggest a continuation of gradual change in Japanese defense posture. They suggest that Japan may well amend Article IX but maintain its alliance with the United States, perhaps eventually making more substantive contributions of Japanese forces to joint operations with the United States and the United Nations.