Integration & Exchange Rate Theory: Empirically Evaluating the Predictability of Individual Preferences

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Flakes, Gina
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science

Abstract

This dissertation comprises three articles that collectively speak to the predictability, or pliability, rather, of individual preferences. Likewise it highlights the liabilities that are assumed when, for simplicity's sake, scholars make the assumption that individual preferences are either endogenously or exogenously given. Using a dataset with observations spanning from 1973 to 2011, article one empirically scrutinizes Ronald Inglehart's Silent Revolution Theory, which holds individual preferences as endogenously given, a constructive product of societal and generational contexts. Consistent with the statistical findings of article two, individual preferences are neither solely a function of constructive or utility-based factors. Finally, article three, which features rare American public opinion data on the exchange rate, further substantiates this work's central theme of the perils associated with research that defines individual preferences as either exclusively endogenously or exogenously given.

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