Honors Projects for Financial Economics and Institutions
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ItemJapanese Labor in the Hawaiian Sugar Industry(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)During the spring semester of 1977, I took a course fro Professor Mak entitled the ‘Hawaiian Economy.’ One of the subjects we covered was the growth of the Hawaiian sugar industry. In the course of reading about the history of the sugar industry, I became particularly interested in the chapter dealing with the importation of foreign contract laborers. Faced with a rapidly expanding sugar industry amid a declining native population, the sugar planters and the Hawaiian government looked towards the importation of foreign laborers as the only possible means of securing an adequate supply of labor essential to the well being of the sugar industry. Thus, was instituted under government auspices a system of assisted immigration which tapped the labor resources of almost every part of the world in its search for satisfactory labor in Hawaii. Yet, after the signing of the Emigration Convention between Japan and Hawaii in 1886, and especially after the passage of the Chinese restriction act by the local government in 1887-1888, the majority of the laborers coming to Hawaii were Japanese. In the first part of this thesis, I will attempt to present a study of the chronological development of the Japanese labor force in the Hawaiian sugar industry. The methodology is essentially that of historical research. The period under consideration is from 1868 and the arrival of the ‘First Year People’ to 1924 when all further emigration from Japan was ceased with the enforcement of the Federal Immigration laws. In the second part of this thesis, I will explore the question of ‘how profitable was it for the sugar planters to import Japanese contract laborers to the Islands under the Convention-control System.’ Specifically, I shall attempt to measure the profitability of Japanese contract labor importations in terms of modern capital theory.
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ItemThe Application of Conservation Economics on Coastal Resources(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)Recently there has been widespread interest in and concern over coastal land and marine communities in providing natural resources under growing demand pressures with increases in population, income, mobility, and leisure time. This is because conflicts over the “who, when, and how” of use are arising with greater frequency. This has resulted in the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, with which Congress has encouraged water interface states to establish programs for managing its coastal areas. Hawaii has completed its management program. It is no the intention of this paper to make economic analysis and inventory of specific coastal conflicts nor to evaluate the adequacy of the program’s management structure and economic tools towards achieving stated goals. An attempt, however, is made in the first chapter to give economic meaning to the general nature of conflicts through the use of resource conservation economics as developed by Ciriacy-Wantrup. In other words, to interpret the problems associated with the coastal zone resources using an economic rationale. The multi-faceted meaning of conservation will be defined and confined to its economic meaning and implications, in the explanation of coastal problems.
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ItemSources of Gender-Based Occupational Segregation a Comparison of the United States and Japan(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)The problem does have a name in the work force; identifying, quantifying, and explaining it, however, may pose quite a challenge. The fact is that women do not earn as much as men in the United States. A survey of 1 990 annual salaries published in a recent issue of U.S. News & World Report (1991 ) revealed that, on the average, "despite more than two decades of battles for equal opportunity, women still earn less than men in almost every field. . . " (40). For example, female lawyers and judges earned 70% of the salaries enjoyed by their male counterparts. For financial managers, the ratio was 67% for those in production jobs, 59% and for sales jobs, 58%. For many, these statistics are not surprising-but neither are they unique to the United States. Mincer (1985) shows both the persistent and the universal nature of wage gaps between male and female workers.
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ItemResponding to Pandemic Influenza in Hawaii(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)Pandemics have arisen throughout history, and despite numerous present-day advances, the response of humanity to medical disaster has changed little. Major influenza outbreaks have appeared three times in the past century, the most dangerous being the Spanish Influenza pandemic in 1918. Within two years over a billion people, approximately halfofthe world's population at the time had been infected, resulting in over forty million deaths. Less than a century later, Avian Influenza has reappeared in the global arena, and the global community must respond.
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ItemDemand of Automobiles in Canada(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)According to the report published in 1958 by the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly (6), all together there are six major studies which have been made on the elasticity of demand for automobiles which utilize historical data. Among them, the studies by Suits (7) and Chow (2) were singled out for more detailed discussion in their report, prin cipally on the grounds that they are the two most recent analyses and the only studies incorporating post-World War II data.
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ItemIndicies of Socioeconomic Development their Evolution, Application, and Future(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)In this paper, I hope to delineate the problems of measuring socio economic development, comment on the appropriateness of Gross National Product per Capita, the traditional and most commonly used measure, review the currently proposed alternatives to this index, and propose my own in a general form.
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ItemA Economic Model of Current Black Market with Applications to the Republic of Vietnam(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)Since before World War II, the area then known as a part of French Indo-China and now known as the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam, has been continuously embroiled in war. This small corner of Southeast Asia first felt the presence of man perhaps twelve thousand years ago. Since that time, many peoples have inhabited the land. By the first century A.D. , the area was controlled by Khmer people. About that time, the Indianized kingdom of Funan gained con trol or' the region and was a major power for perhaps five hundred years. There was trade and contact with China to the north. And until the tenth century A.D., when the Sinicized Vietnamese culture and people began pressing southward from North Vietnam (Tonkin) along the Indo-Chinese peninsula, the area was alternately under Indianized Champa and Khmer control. From 1257 to 1258, the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty from China invaded the central portion of Vietnam (Annam), and, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Chinese Ming dynasty ruled the Vietnamese for twenty-five years.
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ItemHawaiian Airlines, Inc. and Aloha Airlines, Inc.: A Study of Predatory Behavior(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)The purpose of this paper is to determine whether Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. behaved as a predator during the period 1968 to 1971.
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ItemThe Lock-In Effect of Capital Gains Taxation some Microeconomic Formulations(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)The personal income tax in the United States is, at best, an imperfect approximation of the "ideal" tax system regarding its neutrality, or benefical non-neutrality, in terms of equity, allocation, and stabilization influences. 'Thl..s paper will be an attempt to introduce an analytical system which will aid in clarifying one of the most controversial areas in modern tax policy - the preferential tax treatment of capital gains. In particular, the discussion will focus on the alleged "lock-in" effect on investable funds as a direct result of the existing capital gains tax.
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ItemA Survey of the Theory of Income Distribution(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-01-15)Economic theory is generally divided into three main categories: (1) value, price and allocation theory, (2) factors of production and distributive shares, and (3) aggregative and monetary theory. This paper is a study of the second area -- the theory of income distribution.