Due to all the changes in the economy recently the goal of the study is to see how specific macroeconomic factors have affected the housing market in the past to gain some insight into where the overall housing market may trend in the future. This paper offers evidence from a state- level panel data analysis from 1975-2021 on the effects that macroeconomic factors have on home prices in the United States. This analysis focuses on state and country level variables to determine their effect on the housing price index. The results produced by this model indicate that increases in the unemployment rates, the annual supply of new homes, and the federal funds effective rate are connected to decreases in the housing price index. While increases in state minimum wages and inflation can be attributed to increases in home prices. All the variables in the model are statistically significant at the 1% level and the model has an R-squared of .89.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the United States’ current government spending on foreign assistance is efficient for the economic development of the recipient countries. The relationship between foreign aid and economic growth is a highly debated topic, as evidenced by its literature. Some believe that qualitative factors such as institutional quality may be the driving force behind economic growth in developing countries. Others have proved that factors such as institutional quality have no effect on the economic development of a nation at all. In my study, I analyze the relationship between disbursed U.S. economic aid and GDP per capita growth in developed countries from 2002 to 2021. I take into account the potential impact of institutional quality on the economic growth of developing nations. My results showed a positive relationship between GDP per capita growth and foreign aid. Additionally, institutional quality may have a positive influence on the economic growth of receiving countries. I used a primary regression to create three sub-regressions that show how institutional quality affects each income level: low income, lower-middle income, and upper-middle income. What I found is that voice and accountability affect low-income countries, rule of law affects lower-middle-income countries, and political stability and control of corruption affect upper-middle-income countries. This breakdown may be used to inform policymakers in the United States to reconsider their approach to foreign aid disbursement.

The purpose of this study was to dissect the impact of COVID-19 cases on stock price of the largest public companies by market capitalization in each of the 11 Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) sectors, from March 9th, 2020, until December 27th, 2021. This topic is so interesting considering the behavior of the S&P 500 index for example, which rose 58.50% while COVID-19 cases soared well over one hundred thousand new cases per week throughout the same period. Research done on a pandemic’s effect on stock markets have had the opposite response, at least for a year or so until the markets stabilize, including the Spanish Flu (1918-1920), Asian Flu (1957-1958), and more recently the SARS virus (2003). This study was conducted using panel regression analysis, and using observations gathered on a weekly occurrence. This study concluded that there is a highly significant positive relationship between the closing price of the 11 companies with new weekly COVID-19 cases, meaning that every time there was an increase in COVID-19 cases by 1%, the closing price of the 11 companies would increase by 1.9%. The outcome can be explained by an increased number of people having time to day trade due to layoffs or working from home, COVID-19-related stimulus packages offering the average American more funds to invest, or the most likely – investors looking past the catastrophic event to eventually return to normality as the reason to invest.

Ricardo’s Distribution theory (1817) proposes that, as the economy faces diminishing profits/returns on capital, there would be an increasing shortage of investments. Income inequality exacerbates this problem, by causing income not to be reinvested back in production timely. Therefore, the result is a stagnant economy, where economic growth is significantly slowed down. Literatures on the relationship between income inequality or overall inequality, and economic growth, which is usually measured by GDP growth, have revealed different and robust results. Forbes, 2000 and Partridge, 1997 found a significantly positive correlation between income inequality and GDP growth. However, Tabellini et al, 1994 produced a significant and negative correlation. Interestingly, Squire et al, 1998 found no significant relationship between aggregate inequality and GDP growth, but a significantly negative relationship between poverty and GDP growth. More recently, Brueckner and Lederman, 2017 found a significantly negative impact of income inequality on GDP transitional growth in countries with high initial incomes. Nonetheless, overall, recent literature has been leaning towards the hypothesis that the relationship between income inequality and GDP growth is non-linear. This paper is going to empirically study 146 countries in the world over 27 years from 1992 to 2018, to confirm that the relationship between income inequality and GDP growth is non-linear as suggested in recent literature. Moreover, this research will show that the effects of income inequality on GDP growth is heterogeneous; the impact of income inequality on economic growth is more positive on high income countries than on lower income countries. The method used is regression that aims to explain the GDP movements of countries, in terms of consumption, export, capital formation, poverty, and GINI coefficient. This research is at preliminary level; there can be further improvements to the model.

The primary goal of this study is to observe the relationship between the fluctuation of the oil price and the increasing number of sales of electric vehicles based on data from 20 developed and developing countries. As the number of electric vehicles on the market is growing, the demand in the world oil market is declining slightly and, as a result, oil prices are also declining due to several factors. Consumer theory tells us that oil prices could decline due to a rise in the number of electric vehicles sold. Electric vehicles can minimize carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants even when considering indirect emissions from power production and battery generation. Soon, the world may start banning regular gasoline vehicles as a part of the solution to climate change which has already started in Norway. The result shows us there is a slight negative relationship between the oil price and sales of electric vehicles. I can expect that the sales of electric vehicles will keep increasing and after a certain time, it will become a perfect substitute for regular gasoline vehicles.