Thesis ideas 2b

Notes for Thursday, October 16, 2014

Yet more thesis action plans.

  1. Dani is still on climate change, probably comparing cap and trade with carbon taxes. Philosophy and economics.

  2. Marissa isn’t doing a thesis, but is going to research how to compare the overhead costs of non-profits. In particular, it may make more sense to compare them using the marginal benefit of a donation rather than the average benefit of a donation: some non-profits have big start-up costs but, once they are met, a dollar goes farther than it would at the alternatives. She became interested in the topic while working in the Career Development Office. Roughly, why aren’t more students interested in working for non-profits?

  3. Matt is going to apply Szymanski’s study of English football to the American version. Specifically, he’s going to look at whether there is a racial disparity in pay relative to performance. One problem he faces is in quantifying performance in a complex team sport like football.

  4. Patrick, like Danny, is interested in questions about the application of happiness research in politics and policy.

  5. Xiaoyu is interested in state owned enterprises, especially energy companies. His big question is whether it’s better to privatize them or not. He’s still working on narrowing that down.

  6. Sally is going to look at the upcoming connection between the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets. Companies currently listed on both exchanges have different valuations, which is interesting. There are also questions about the effect that the connection will have on volatility. And there are questions about the politics behind it: why now, for instance.

  7. Scott is pursuing questions about Catalan sovereignty from Spain. He got into this by looking at education policy. He’s interested in how the EU affects the emergence of small country sovereignty movements and the philosophy behind national sovereignty. For the latter, he’s trying to decide which philosophical traditions best suit his project: the familiar characters from Philosophy 33 (and their intellectual descendants) or the post-structuralists, like Derrida. Maybe both! Politics and philosophy.

This page was written by Michael Green for Freedom, Markets, and Well-being, PPE 160, Fall 2014. It was posted October 24, 2014.
Freedom, Markets, and Well-being