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Publication Soverign Debt Restructuring An Assessment of Investor Pricing Behavior(2023-05-01) Stewart, OliverThis research paper focuses on the analysis of investor behavior in sovereign bonds, with the aim of assessing their ability to detect impending default risk. Using a dataset of external sovereign bonds spanning from 1820 to 1980, the paper performs a dynamic difference in difference regression. The paper finds that sovereign bond investors begin to react to early signs of default, with defaulting bonds beginning to be priced down 40 months before default. The prices reduce steadily relative to non-defaulting bonds until around 10 months before the default date. At around 10 months the drop in prices accelerates until the default date. Post-default, the prices continue to decrease, but at a decreasing rate, reflecting the uncertainty in the haircut.Publication The Effect of Upzoning on Single-Family Building Permits: An Intermediate Term Analysis of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan(2023-04-01) Selvamani, SonaIn 2020, over 30% of households had unaffordable rent. Policymakers currently believe the solution to this affordable housing crisis is to allow for denser development in areas by implementing less restrictive zoning policies. While evidence shows that increased restrictiveness in zoning can negatively affect prices or the supply of housing, there is little evidence on whether upzoning can reverse these consequences. This paper uses Minneapolis city’s 2019 ban on single-family (R1) zoning to close this gap and find out what effects a more liberal change in zoning policy might have on building permits in the area. I use the U.S Census Bureau Building Permits Survey to test the effect of this policy on construction permitting from 2016-2021. Statistical results prove that there was a reduction in single-family permitting in Minneapolis after the policy implementation date compared to other communities in Hennepin County, MN. However, there is no conclusive difference in total units and multi-family units permitted after the policy was implemented. This paper sheds light on the intermediate term effects of upzoning and encourages policymakers to assess these policies more carefully.Publication Analyzing Key Events & Casual Factors Impacting Cryptocurrency Lending Rates(2023-05-01) Bobovich, NicoleDigital asset markets reached peak valuations of more than 3 trillion in 2021. However, the strong growth in crypto asset value in 2021 was met with turmoil and value destruction in subsequent years with a series of bankruptcies of cryptocurrency-related businesses in a period dubbed the "crypto winter." This study considers the impacts of the events of the crypto winter on decentralized lending protocols, specifically using the Aave protocol as a case study. Looking at data centered on interest rates, available liquidity, and the total value of invested funds on the Aave protocol, this study seeks to better understand how investors' perceptions of the safety of borrowing cryptocurrencies have changed after the events of the crypto winter. The study will aim to look at predicting spreads between variable and stable interest rates with an OLS regression and analyze the impacts of the crypto winter using historical Aave lending data.Publication Congressional AI: A Framework for Task Generalization and Alignment with Expert Language Modes(2024-04-08) Ramji, KeshavAs foundation models have facilitated rapid adaptation to downstream tasks, a challenge remains in efficiently and flexibly improving their instruction-following capabilities and alignment to human preference distributions. We propose a novel modular architecture, Congressional AI, consisting of parallel trained "experts", such that the top-k relevant experts can be activated during inference. These experts are obtained by fine-tuning LoRA adapters on interpretable data mixtures; for instruction-tuning, each dataset corresponds to a task cluster, while for preference alignment to improve steerability, each dataset represents a group or persona. Our experiments show that instruction-tuning with Congressional AI through low-rank adapter merging is effective via evaluation of cluster-specific adapters across various domains on the MMLU benchmark. These findings demonstrate that Congressional AI is a hardware-efficient and interpretable mixture-of-experts (MoE)-style framework for adapting language models to new tasks and domains, and can be used to further improve both pre-trained and fine-tuned LLMs.Publication Stories Told in Multistakeholder Governance Inititatives: Understanding the Grievance Process of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)(2024-12-01) Shen, AngelaThe Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) brings private sector and civil society groups under a system of governance to ensure the sustainable, equitable, and humane production of palm oil. The RSPO includes a grievance mechanism that seeks to remedy the reported violations of its members. This paper builds upon a large body of scholarship examining the effectiveness of the RSPO’s conflict resolution through an in-depth investigation of the published correspondences of a complaint case involving PT. PP London Sumatra Indonesia Tbk (a subsidiary of Indofood Agri Resources Ltd) and three non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Using methods of textual analysis through NVivo and temporal analysis, this research identifies and distinguishes narratives of collaboration, opposition, and compliance used by the RSPO, NGOs, and palm oil suppliers to influence outcomes in a grievance process. The interaction of these narratives highlights strengths and gaps in the RSPO’s ability to produce trust and mediate conflict.Publication Assessing Impacts of ALS Medicare Coverage Expansion on Patient Insurance Crowd-Out(2023-04-01) Yang, MiaThis paper examines health insurance crowd-out in the context of the 2001 Medicare expansion for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients. It first identifies the number of patients with ALS in the US over 1998-2004, and then estimates the extent of crowd-out among patients under 65 years of age before and after the policy. Last, it examines correlations between Medicare enrollment and hospital length-of-stay. The key finding is a statistically significant increase in the probability of Medicare enrollment status for ALS patients under 65 years after the policy change, while overall ALS patient demographics and inpatient admissions stayed relatively constant. Comparisons with counterfactual predictions demonstrate similar correlations. Together, these results imply a large crowd-out rate of approximately 64.5 percent, though it is difficult to identify which private insurance types new Medicare coverage replaced. Preliminary analysis also suggests expansion may have helped improve outcomes for ALS patients under 65 years old.Publication Efficacy of Game-Based Learning in the Teaching of Abstract Concepts(2023-04-01) Zhang, EdwardGame-based learning has been around for quite some time, but serious games have emerged as a promising field for education. Games provide a structured learning experience with built-in incentives that motivate players to master the game's rules and objectives. In addition, modern game technologies have enabled the use of immersive graphics, which can enhance the players' understanding of the underlying concepts. Overall, serious games and graphics have the potential to revolutionize education by making it more engaging, interactive, and effective. This thesis highlights the potential for game-based learning and computer graphics technology to expand beyond the realm of computer science and teach abstract concepts in other fields. By leveraging the unique features of games and graphics, such as their interactive nature and immersive experiences, it may be possible to create effective educational tools for a wide range of subjects. The attached resources and materials provide a foundation for future research and development in this field, with the ultimate goal of improving education and expanding the ways in which people learn and understand complex concepts. Though results remain inconclusive, this novel take on serious games and hopes to act as a stepping stone for future work in serious games exercising the mediums’ strengths in ways that go beyond the traditional routes of immersion and competitiveness.Publication Crocodile Teeth: Dancehall Music and its Association with Crime(2024-04-01) Salmon, TahleaDancehall serves as the most popular music genre among youth in Jamaica. Despite dancehall’s popularity, the Jamaican government has enacted policies to censor dancehall songs that include violent content amidst high crime rates in Jamaica. This research explores the popularity of violent dancehall music and its relationship with homicide levels. The analysis of a sample of 1626 dancehall songs from 2013-2022 shows that there is a lack of evidence to support that violent dancehall is extremely popular with listeners, and a lack of evidence to support the claim that dancehall music is a driver of violence in Jamaican society. In conclusion, it is more important to view violence in Jamaica through a historical and economical lens rather than through a musical lens.Publication Why Disclose ARR?(2023-05-01) Bag, RitwikOver the last 25 years, two of the three major market sell-offs in the American stock market have followed large bull markets in the technology industry. Technology firms thrive on innovation, which has led to distinct operating models relative to firms in other industries. These operating models are not well covered by traditional valuation models, leading to the use of non-GAAP metrics in industry and a gap in academic literature. This paper aims to better understand ARR, a proxy for revenue commonly used in industry. To investigate when and why managers disclose ARR, this paper looks at ARR disclosure frequency based on the firm’s rank on various performance variables. Firms with low return on assets, accruals, and revenues were found to mention ARR more often in their annual reports, potentially indicating that managers strategically disclose when operational performance is poor. To investigate ARR’s use as a tool in valuation, this paper examines the relationships between current ARR, current revenue, and future revenue and finds that future revenue is best predicted by a combination of ARR and revenue.Publication Leveraging Mental Accounting to Mitigate Tax Aversion and Evasion(2023-05-01) Song, AshleyTaxes are a critical part of funding vital public services; however, many taxpayers strongly dislike paying taxes, demonstrating substantial tax aversion that can lead to tax evasion, exacerbating the pre-existing ‘tax gap’. Through a three-phase experiment consisting of a real-effort task, tax-filing simulation, and post-experiment questionnaire, this study examined the effect of a mental accounting treatment on mitigating tax aversion attitudes and tax evasion behaviors, as well as its impact on both voluntary and enforced tax compliance measures. The study found that participants who were exposed to a mental accounting treatment were more likely to honestly report their taxes and engage in mental accounting behaviors. However, the treatment did not affect the likelihood of complete evasion, increase the percentage of the total tax owed that was paid, or affect voluntary and enforced tax compliance measures. Potential implications of and explanations for these outcomes are discussed.