From time to time, students inquire whether I have any suggestions for thesis topics. From time to time, I get ideas about things that might be interesting for a student to explore. This page attempts to match the supply of sometimes-weird Jeff-related thesis topics with any demand that may be out there. I must warn you that some of these are top-of-the-head thoughts that I haven't researched at all. There may be a large literature out there that I'm unaware of.

Institutions and business cycles. There has been a lot of work on the effects on growth of political institutions such as central-bank independence and the form of government. What about the effects on business cycles? To the extent that central-bank institutions such as independence lead to greater emphasis on controlling long-run inflation, does that imply that business-cycle stabilization will suffer? Similarly for political institutions: how do the various forms of democratic and authoritarian governments affect the making of fiscal policy and its effectiveness?

• How does central-bank independence affect the response of short-term interest rates or money-supply growth to changes in unemployment?
• How does central-bank independence affect the amplitude of the business cycle?
• How do political institutions affect:
  • budget deficit?
  • responsiveness of deficit to cycle?
  • amplitude of cycle?

Inflation in Argentina/Brazil/Ecuador/Israel/... Modern monetary theory makes much of the effects of monetary institutions (such as various aspects of central bank independence) on economic outcomes. Much ink has been spilled looking at the Latin American and Israeli inflations of the post-war period. How did institutions in these countries (you'd only do one) evolve in response to inflation and how did inflation change in response to changes in institutions?

Modeling college decisions. How do the exogenous aspects of a college's economic environment (return on endowment, donations, demographics of the relevant student population, etc.) affect its decisions about major economic variables?

• How do tuition levels and financial aid expenditures respond to other elements of revenues and costs?
• What determines a college's room and board charges? How are they related to the local real-estate market and to other market factors affecting the college?
• How do changes in economic conditions affect the admission rate?
• What characteristics of a college affect the salary it pays its president?

Reed (and other colleges) in the Great Depression. The economics of higher education were very different in the 1920s than now, but the onset of the Great Depression must have had profound effects on the economic situation of colleges. How did Reed and other institutions change in response? This project would likely involve archival work in the Reed Library and perhaps in the archives of other colleges and universities.

Taxes in Portland and Vancouver, WA. Oregon has a high state income tax but no sales tax; Washington has the opposite. As earlier thesis examined the effects on the retail markets in Portland and Vancouver of the sales-tax differential. What about the income-tax differential? You have to pay Oregon income tax on money earned in Oregon even if you live in Washington. But unearned income (pensions, investment earnings, self-employed earnings, etc.) would not be subject to state tax in you live in Washington. Do people with large amounts of unearned income live in Vancouver rather than Oregon?

Small towns. Having grown up in a small town, I've always been interested in the factors that contribute to the growth or decay of small communities. What are the determinants of decadal changes in the population and income of small towns?

Cross-college peer effects. The most difficult aspect of peer effects to measure are the most important: the differences across colleges due to the quality and attitude of the student body. Because Reedies are Reedies, we can teach intermediate micro to beginners and Romer to all or most econ majors. Yet there is so much else that is unique to any given college that it is virtually impossible to isolate the effects of peers. However, one could, through a survey of some kind, ask faculty members at numerous institutions about their choice of textbooks, subjects covered in courses, the level at which courses are offered, and the kinds of classroom activities that they use, and about how these choices are constrained by the characteristics of the student body. This would provide some subjective evidence about the importance of peer effects in defining the classroom experience across institutions.

Indigenous boundaries, colonial boundaries, strife, and growth. In a more primitive culture where most transportation is by water, groups of indigenous peoples are likely to settle around rivers. In modern cultures, rivers are more of a barrier than a central artery thus colonial powers often used them as borders, presumably splitting indigenous groups and mixing different groups within their borders. Has the modern literature on the effects of colonialism on modern-day institutions and growth ever looked at the degree of fragmentation of indigenous boundaries?