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In order to study whether college scholarships can be an effective tool in raising students’ performance in secondary school, we use one aspect of the Kalamazoo Promise that resembles a quasi-experiment. The surprise announcement of the scholarship created a large change in expected college tuition costs that varied across different groups of students based on past enrollment decisions. This variation is arguably exogenous to unobserved student characteristics. We estimate the effects of this change by a set of “difference-in-differences” regressions where we compare the change in student outcomes in secondary school across time for different student “length of enrollment” groups. We also control for student fixed effects. We find positive effects of the Kalamazoo Promise on Promise-eligible students large enough to be deemed important – about a 9 percent increase in the probability of earning any credits and one less suspension day per year. We also find large increases in GPA among African American students.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between state economic development incentives programs and entrepreneurial activity.

The authors use panel data and a fixed-effects model to examine the determinants of five measures of entrepreneurial activity. To measure state economic development incentives programs, they use a new and substantially improved data set from Bartik (2017). They also include a measure for economic freedom, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America index.

The authors find a robustly negative relationship between development incentives and patent activity. They find some evidence that incentives are negatively associated with small business establishments (<10 employees) as a percentage of total establishments but positively associated with the large business establishment (>500 employees) share. They also find evidence of a positive relationship between economic freedom and both patent activity and net business formation.

The results imply that economic development incentive programs are unlikely to increase entrepreneurial activity and may decrease it. They also imply increased economic freedom (lower taxes, lower spending, and lower governmental restrictions on labor markets) may increase entrepreneurial activity.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper provides the first examination of the relationship between development incentives and entrepreneurial activity that utilizes Bartik (2017), a new vastly improved data set of state economic development incentive programs. The paper also contributes to the literature on the relationship between economic freedom and entrepreneurial activity.

Tourism has grown to be one of the world's largest and fastest-growing economic industries. Tourism development is viewed as a tool to improve income distribution as it allows people at the bottom of the pyramid to get involved in the industry. This study aims to examine the impact of tourism on income inequality in the top income equality countries.

The paper employs fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares techniques to investigate the dynamic impact of tourism on income inequality in the world's most income equality countries, from 2001 to 2016.

The result shows that tourism is one of the major drivers of income equality. Thus, tourism can be used to reduce a country's income disparity.

As a result, policymakers should support the tourism industry to reduce income disparity and enhance income distribution.

Given the conflicting findings in the literature, this study reexamines this link and attempts to backwardly assess if the top equal-income countries in the world are heavily dependent on tourism.

This descriptive, non-experiment case study addresses the little-studied topic of martial arts tourism within the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; i.e., North Korea) to determine if it is a form of non-entertainment tourism.

The current research focusses on a single subject (Singaporean female; 36 years of age (at time of interview); Taekwon-Do 4th degree black belt) who travelled to the DPRK three times to practice the Korean martial art Taekwon-Do. After the initial contact, a questionnaire was used and direct interviews via Skype and Facebook were performed. A broad thematic discourse, as well as analysis of the subject’s travel and practice notes and photographs from her stay in the DPRK, were also incorporated into the findings.

The subject developed new Taekwon-Do skills, which permitted her to obtain higher Taekwon-Do ranks as well as enriched her personality and changed certain conceptions. Self-realization and self-improvement through martial arts are the dominant motives of martial arts tourism. Therefore, the subject’s motivation confirms martial arts tourism can be a variation of non-entertainment tourism.

This research is hindered by the standard case study limitations: it is difficult to generalize this study’s results to the wider DPRK population, the interviewee’s and researchers’ subjective feelings may have influenced the findings, and selection bias is definitely a factor because of the study’s population being a single female of non-DPRK origin.

As one of the first studies on DPRK martial arts tourism and practice, this research examines where research on the DPRK and martial arts tourism intersect. It is thusly unique in providing new insights into the DPRK’s intention for its tourism industry, as well as Taekwon-Do, arguably its most marketable cultural asset.