Completing a thesis is the capstone experience of the QMSS program. Students take this opportunity to apply the tools and methodologies developed through their coursework to questions of particular interest to them. The list of theses below demonstrates the broad array of substantive subject areas to which our graduates have applied their expertise.

The list is organized by the departmental affiliation of the faculty member who advised the thesis and the year in which it was completed. Though our program director has progressively advised more students we always encourage students to find additional advisors in our affiliate departments.

Business/Finance

  • Should Personalization Be Optional in Paid Streaming Platforms?: Investigating User Data as an Indirect Compensation for Paid Streaming Platforms (2022)
  • The Influence of Live Streaming Ecommerce on Customer Engagement on the Social Media Platforms (2022)
  • An overview of the COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Small Businesses in the U.S (2022)
  • Exploring Key Predictors of Subsequent IPO Performance in the United States between 2016 -2021 (2022)
  • The relationship between executive incentives and corporate performance under the background of mixed reform—Based on the empirical analysis of A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2018 (2022)
  • How Sovereign Credit Rating Changes Impact Private Investment (2022)
  • Chinese Mutual Fund Manager Style Analysis Based on Natural Language Processing (2022)
  • The Influence of COVID-19 on Cryptocurrency Price (2022)
  • Does Weather matter on E-commerce? Weather and E-commerce consumer behavior of Americans in four U.S. cities (2021)
  • ModellingCFPB Consumer Complaint Topics Using Unsupervised Learning (2021)
  • Vote For The Environment: Quantitative characteristics of shareholder resolution votes on environmental issues (2021)
  • Social Capital’s Role in Accessing PPP Funds & the Evolving Nature of Online Lenders in the Small Business Ecosystem (2021)
  • Predicting stock returns with Twitter: A test of semi-strong form EMH (2017)
  • Who Receives Climate Finance and Why? A Quantitative Analysis of Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Funds Allocation during 2003-2013 (2014)
  • The American Dream—Deferred (2013)
  • Job Satisfaction and Employee Turnover Intention: What does Organizational Culture Have To Do With It? (2013)
  • What Factors Are Associated With Poor Households Engaging in Entrepreneurship? (2013)
  • Uncertainty in measuring Sustainable Development: An application for the Sustainability-adjusted HDI (2012)
  • Homeownership and Child Welfare in Unstable Times (2012)
  • On the Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (2012)
  • Financial Crisis and Bank Failure Prediction: Learning Lessons from the Great Recession (2011)
  • Starbucks and its Peers: Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Financial Performance (2011)
  • Statistical Arbitrage Strategies and Profit Potential in Commodity Futures Markets (2011)
  • An Approach to Lending with Heterogeneous Borrowers (2010)
  • Changes in Perceived Risk and Liquidity Shocks and Its Impact on Risk Premiums (2010)
  • Equity Risk Premium Puzzle and Investors' Behavioral Analysis: A Theoretical and Empirical Explanation from the Stock Markets in the U.S. & China (2010)
  • Investing in Microfinance: A Portfolio Optimization Approach (2010)
  • Empirical Analysis of Value Investing Strategy in Times of Subprime Mortgage Crisis 2007-08 (2009)
  • Two Engines of Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank: Different Approaches. Different Results? (2008)
  • Searching for the "Sweet Spot": The Optimal Mix of Executive Compensation to Maximize Firm Performance (2005)
  • Differentials in Firm-Level Productivity and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Japanese Firm Data in 1998-2001 (2004) 
  • Where's the Brand Equity?: Further Investigations Into the Role of Brand Equity in Experiential, Luxury, and Other Products (2003)
  • An Account of Worth through Corporate Communication (2002)

Economics

  • Deciphering Federal Reserve Bank Statements Using Natural Language Processing (2022)
  • Gender Wage Gaps (2022)
  • The Relationship between the Overall Sentiment on Twitter and Stock Market Performance during COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 (2022)
  • The U.S. Stock Market’s Influence on China Stock Market between 2014 and the first half of 2019 (2022)
  • Social Protection and the SDGs: A Data-Driven Bayesian Network Analysis (2022)
  • Overeducation: The Effects of the Great Recession on the Labor Market (2021)
  • Investor Sentiment and Stock Returns: Evidence from China's A-Share Market (2021)
  • Difference-in-Differences Analysis (2017)
  • Rapid Transition: A Comparison of Subway Usage and Rent Data to Predict Gentrification in New York City (2017)
  • Female Labor Force Participation Rate and Economic Development: Time-Series Evidence in China (2016)
  • Linkage Between Stock and Commodity Markets' Volitility in Both the U.S. and China (2016)
  • Will Urbanization be the Next Economic Growth Engine for China? (2014)
  • Solar Electricity's Impact on Germany's Wholesale Electricity Market (2014)
  • How Does Quantitative Easing Policy Impact Emerging Markets: Evidence from the Effects on Long-Term Yields Structure of Hong Kong and Singapore (2014)
  • The Effect of Income Taxes in Mexico: Evidence and Implications for Permanent Taxpayers (2014)
  • Jumping on the Bandwagon: Conformity and Herd Behavior (2014)
  • Effects of War After War: A Quantitative Comparison of the Economic Performance of Jewish World War II Veterans to Non-Jewish World War II Veterans (2013)
  • Basel III Agreement: Will Higher & More Strictly Defined Capital Standards Impede on the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises? (2013)
  • Unemployment and Economic Growth in Peru: 2001-2012 (2013)
  • The Informal Market for Foreign Direct Investment: The Attractive Power of Country-Specific Characteristics (2012)
  • Evaluating the impact of the Workfare Income Supplement Scheme on Singapore's Labour Market (2012)
  • Innovation and Fiscal Decentralization in Transitional Economies (2012)
  • International Trade and Economic Growth: Evidence from Singapore (2012)
  • Economic Openness and Welfare Spending in Latin America (2012)
  • Assessing the Costs of Fractional Reserve Banking: A Theoretical Exposition and Examination of Post-Meiji Japan (2012)
  • Pricing Emerging Market Corporate Bonds: An Approach Using the CDS-Bond Basis Spread (2012)
  • The Geographical Distribution of Mixed-Income Housing in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Developments (2012)
  • An Economic Theory of Voting: Can we Explain, through Digital Inequalities, Why People Vote Less? (2011)
  • Super-Pornstar Economics: Investigating the Wage Premium for Pornstar-Escorts (2011) 
  • The Dynamic Linkages among International Stock Markets: The Case of BRICs and the U.S. (2011)
  • Revisiting the Financing Gap: An Empirical Test from 1965 to 2007 (2010)
  • Antitrust Law and the Promotion of Democracy and Economic Growth (2010)
  • An Analysis of Keynesian Economics (2010)
  • Who Will Pay to Reduce Global Warming?  A Multivariate Analysis of Concern, Efficacy, and Action (2010)
  • Wage Difference Between White, Non-White, Local, and International Professional Players in the NBA (2010)
  • Is Microlending Sustainable? Discerning the Relationship Between Microfinancial Participation, Measures of Acute Morbidity, and Expectations of the Characteristics of Village Organizations (2009)
  • Application of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory to Consumers' Choices about Environmentally Responsible Decisions (2009)
  • Trade Openness and Poverty Reduction: What is the Evidence? (2009)
  • Crude Oil Prices: Mean Reversion in the Spot? Futures Know the Future? (2008)
  • Evaluating the Impact of Supply-side Factors on Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: The Case of Nicaragua (2008)
  • Females: Less Likely to Be Entrepreneurs? A Multi-level Analysis of the Effect of Gender on Entrepreneurial Activity (2008)
  • Banking the Mexican Immigrant Population: Analysis of Profiling Variables (2008)
  • A Comparison of Microfranchising to Independent Microenterprises in Ghana (2008)
  • From Autarky to Free Trade: Will China Overtake the U.S. as the Major Trading Power in the Global Economy? (2006)
  • Cluster Patterns of Age and Racial/Ethnic Groups Within Privately Developed Section 8 HUD Rent Subsidy Properties in New York City (2004)
  • The Impact of Decimalization on Market Volatility and Liquidity (2004)
  • Strategic Delegation with Unobservable Incentive Contracts: An Experiment (2002)
  • Exchange Rate Market Pressure and The Quality of Governance (2001)

Public Health

  • Analysing the Performance of Supervised ML models in Breast Cancer Diagnosis (2022)
  • Portability of Polygenic Scores for QuantitativeTraits using Continuous Genetic Distance in the UK Biobank (2021)
  • A Report on the Correlation between COVID-19 pandemic and Unemployment Rate through Visualization (2021)
  • Spatial Summary of Outdoor Dining and COVID-19 Rates in NYC (2021)
  • The COVID-19 Infodemic: Narratives from the US & India (2021)
  • Exploring the Experiences of People Living with HIV in the United States: Modelling Muscle Ache/Pain and Medicaid Expansion (2017)
  • An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: An Algorithm Using Non-Health Indicators to Predict Health Risks of an Individual (2017)
  • Does Racial Concordance in Clinical Encounters improve Providers’ Accessibility and Patients’ Satisfaction with Providers? (2016)
  • Proportionality of Death Sentences in Alabama (2014)
  • Zombies, Brains, and Tweets: The Neural and Emotional Correlates
    of Social Media (2013)
  • Asexuality as a Spectrum: A National Probability Sample Comparison to the Sexual Community in the UK (2013)
  • Parent-reported and Child Self-reported Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorder and their Relationships to Independent Living Skills in a Clinical Sample of Perinatally HIV-infected and Perinatally HIV-exposed but Uninfected Adolescents: An Exploratory Analysis (2013)
  • The Sperm Shopper: How Consumer Segments and Evolutionary Pyschology Shape Choice of Sperm Donor (2012)
  • Social Context and Impoverished Youths' General Health Outcomes: Community Disorder and Violence Predicting Self-Rated Health and Body Mass Index (2012)
  • Location Theory and the Supply of Primary Care Physicians in Rural America (2012)
  • Perception of Neighborhood Safety and Overweight/Obesity Status among Non-Metropolitan Adolescents in the U.S. (2011)
  • Factors Affecting the Extent of Depression Treatment (2011)
  • Beyond Gender Binary in Survey Design (2010)
  • Junk Food and BMI: A Look at Schools Banning Candy, Snacks, and Soft Drinks and the Effect on Fifth Graders' BMI (2009) 
  • Delivering Maternal Health: An Examination of Maternal Mortality on a National Scale (2008)
  • Public Health and the Conrad Visa Waiver Program (2007)
  • Alzheimer's Disease, Migration, and Social Environment: A Study of Caribbean Hispanics (2005)
  • The Influence of Physician Attributes on Cesarean Likelihood (2004)
  • Natural or Human-Made Disaster: Dimensions of Impact Measurement (2003)
  • Healthy Life Choices Project: Efficacy of Nutritional Intervention with Normal Foods and Cognitive/Behavioral Skill Building on HIV/AIDS Associated Diarrhea and Quality of Life (2002)

Political Science

  • Encouraging Voter Registration Among Minority Voters: A Field Experiment Using Radio Advertisements (2022)
  • Public Opinion Transition in China: Evidence from Weibo (2022)
  • Gender and Co-sponsorship in U.S. Congress (2017)
  • Accessing Social Influences of Congressmen with Keyword Network (2016)
  • How presidential election in 2016 affects the stock market – A Twitter sentiment analysis perspective (2016)
  • Assessing Assessors: A Study on Anti-Corruption Strategies in New York City’s Property Tax System (2016)
  • Demographic Trends in Virginia 2013
  • The determinants of Party and Coalition Identification in Chile: The effect of long and short-term factors (2013)
  • Radical Moderation: Factors Affecting Support for Islamic Extremism (2012)
  • Accommodationists versus Hardliners in Slovakia: Correlates of Public Opinion on Selected Foreign Policy Topics 2004 - 2010 (2012)
  • Measurement and Belief: Determinants of Federal Funding for Public Diplomacy Programs (2010)
  • Consumerism and Political Connectedness in Socialist Czechoslovakia (2010) - History
  • Civilizations and Social Tolerance: A Multi-Level Analysis of 58 Countries (2008)
  • How Does the 1965 Immigration Act Matter? (2006)
  • 7200 Revolutions per Minute: An Economic Analysis of the Struggle between the Recording Industry and Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Networks (2005)

 

Psychology

  • Classifying Myers-Briggs Personality Type based on Text (2021)
  • Hiding Behind the Computer Screen: Imposter Phenomenon in the Tech Industry (2022)
  • Relation between dark tourism on-site experience and visitors’ satisfaction (2022)
  • Evaluating the Impact of Self-perceptions of Creativity and DemographicFactors on Arts Participation: Evidence from the United States (2021)
  • Classifying Myers-Briggs Personality Type based on Text (2021)
  • Running head: QUEER HAPPINESS AND SUPPORTExamining Happiness in LGBTQ+ People and its Relationshipwith Worsened Parental Relationships After Coming Out (2021)
  • The Impact of Donating Behavior on the Level of Happiness (2021)
  • Birds of a Feather, or Do Opposites Attract? THE IMPACT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS ON CONSTRAINT AND HOMOPHILY WITHIN SOCIAL NETWORKS (2017)
  • Predicting Social Value Orientation from Personal Information and Survey Metadata (2017)
  • All the Feels: Sentiment Analysis Between Emoji and Text (2017)
  • Social Media Interface and the Next Generation Cognitive Mapping in New York City (2016)
  • Is Prospective Memory Ability Flexible?  Manipulating Value to Increase Goal Significance (2011)
  • Will a Nation Be Happier with a More Even Income Distribution? (2007)
  • Behavioral Extensions to the Topology of Fear: A Gedankenexperimen (2007)
  • Psychological Control and Preschoolers' Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors in China (2003)

Sociology

  • Prevalence and success of diversity-and-inclusion projects on education crowdfunding platform (2022)
  • Does gentrification cause the displacement of urban black populations? (2022)
  • Feedback and Gender in the Workplace: Should You Expect Equal Evaluation from Men and Women? (2021)
  • What are the determinants for art practitioners to choose self-employment? (2022)
  • An empirical research for studying the influence of star popularity on the box office of movies (2022)
  • Couple Dissolution Between Couples Who Meet Offline Versus Couples Who Meet Offline (2021)
  • Masculine Men Who Wear Makeup: Exploring the Evolving Masculinity (2021)
  • Do Individual Or Environmental Factors Play a Greater Role in Shaping the Intentions of Female High School Students to Enrol in STEM (2021) Programmes in University?:Evidence from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (2021)
  • COVID-19 Information Narrative Beliefs Across Social Media Platforms (2021)
  • Spatial Wage Penalty for Young Mothers: Exploring the Discrepancy of Education Return between Metro and Non-metro Areas (2016)
  • Inequality Matters: A new Empirical Framework for Studying the Impact of Rising Socioeconomic Inequality on the Poor (2016)
  • Immigration, Income, and Occupation: Peruvian Immigrants in the Chilean Labor Market (2014)
  • Preferring France's 35-Hour Workweek: The Effects of Media on Work-Life Balance Preference Formation (2014)
  • The Effect of College Education on Individual Social Trust in the United States– An Examination of the Causal Mechanisms (2013)
  • Socio-economic Inequality and Socio-emotional Relationship Quality: Cause and effect? (2013)
  • Examination of the Relationship between mother's employment status and one's family gender role attitudes (2012)
  • A Study of Materialism Level among Mid-Atlantic residents (2012)
  • Relation Recombination - A Sociological Patent Analysis (2012)
  • The Relationship between Religious Attitudes and Concern for the Environment (2012)
  • Marrying Down: The Gender Gap in Post-Secondary Completion & Education Hypogamy between 1960 and 2010 (2012)
  • 2.0 Social Networks Have an Impact on our Real Lives (2011)
  • Evidence of Ethnic Solidarity in Marriage Patterns of Hmong and Sino-Vietnamese in United States (2011)
  • What Explains the Racial Disparity in Employment Discrimination Case Outcomes? (2010)
  • Reading Race: The Changing Views of Human Difference in American History Textbooks, 1870-1930 (2010)
  • Satisfaction with Life (2010)
  • Entering the "Real World": An Empirical Investigation of College Graduates' Satisfaction with Life (2010)
  • The Relationship between the Establishment of Marine Protected Areas and Biomass Productivity of Municipal Fisheries in the Philippines (2010)
  • Performance Surveys, Citizen Respondents, and Satisfaction of Public Services: An Analysis of NYC Feedback Citywide Customer Survey (2009)
  • Analysis of Job Retention Programs of the Center for Employment Opportunities of the Formerly Incarcerated (2009)
  • The Intergenerational Transfer of Human Capital: The Role of Grandparents' Education in Grandchildren's Cognitive Abilities (2009)
  • Are Homicide Trends Fads? Diffusion Analysis of the Urban-rural Spillover Effects on Homicide Incidents from 1960-1990 in the South Atlantic States (2008) 
  • Rejection Sensitivity and the Contagious Effect of Mood Regulation in Romantic Couples (2008)
  • Women and the Homeostasis of the Inmate Population
  • An Examination of the Relationship between Government Funding Allocation and Services Provided by Nonprofit Organizations in Brooklyn and the Bronx, 1997-2000 (2007)
  • The Concurrent Validity of Maternal Self-report: The  Impact of Social Desirability on Substance Use and Prenatal Care (2006)
  • The Effect of Housing Programs on the Economic Outcomes: Utilizing Observation Study Results from Minnesota Family Investment Program (2005)
  • The Influences of Physician Attributes on Cesarean Likelihood (2004)
  • Effects of Unemployment, Female Labor Force Participation, and Divorce on Suicide in Turkey: A Durkheimian Evaluation in a non-Western Milieu (2004)
  • An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem (2002)
  • The Relationship between Welfare Participation and Social Support (2002)
  • Sound and Silence: A Structural Analysis of Conversation Topics (2002)
  • A Reexamination of the Police and Crime Relationship: The New Role Community Policing Plays in Crime Prevention (2001)
  • DNA Evidence in Court: Jurors, Statistical Training, and Pre-instruction in the Procedural Law (2001)
  • The Role of Race in Education: An Analysis of Children in Brazil (2001)

Statistics/Computer Science

  • Predicting Spotify's songs' popularity (2022)
  • Hiding Behind the Computer Screen: Imposter Phenomenon in the Tech Industry (2021)
  • An Unsupervised Learning Approach to Address Crime in Mexico, 2012 – 2016 (2017)
  • Imputation of a variable completely unobserved in one wave of a panel: father’s earnings in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (2016)
  • An Analysis of Pairwise Preference (2016)

  • Measuring Political Risk and Market Returns (2014)
  • Which Yelp Reviews will be Voted Useful?- Predicting the Number of Useful Votes Yelp Reviews will get using Machine Learning Algorithms (2014)
  • Polities and Size: Legitimizing or Limiting? (2013)
  • The Role of Domain Knowledge in Environmental Concern and Willingness-to-Pay for Environmental Protection: Results from a U.S. Survey of Public Opinion (2013)
  • The Power to Judge: Social Power Influences Moral Judgments of Simple and Complex Transgressions (2013)
  • A Time Series Analysis of Crime Rates and Concern for Crime in the United States: 1973-2010 (2012)
  • TV Gets Social: Evaluating Social Media Data to Explain Variability among Nielsen TV Ratings (2012)
  • Unit Root or Mean Reversion in Stock Index: Evidence from Nigeria (2010)
  • Homogeneity in Political Discussion Networks and its Factors (2007)
  • Why Shift Policy? (2006)
  • Point Detection for Poisson Disorder - Application in Earthquake Occurrence in Northern California, 1910 - 1999 (2004)
  • Stock Volatility and Economic Activity: A Causal Analysis (2004)
  • Strategic Information Transmission in Lobbying (2003)
  • Economic Theory and Happiness in Mexico: An Extension (2001)
  • Sales Forecasting Methods: A Consumer Products Company's Perspective (2001)
  • Soccer Teams Need to Win at Home: The Fans that Increase those Chances (2001)

Education

  • The impact of school management on student performance (2022)
  • An investigation of the relationship between educational attainment and COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy in the US (2022)
  • Does Accountability Help or HinderSchools?: The Mississippi School Accountability Model and its Effect on School Performance (2021)
  • The Relationship between Education and Health (2021)
  • Quantifying Variation in American School Safety with Explainable Machine Learning:An Application of Machine Learning Feature Importances for the Social Sciences (2021)
  • Age, Gender, and Comorbidities Affect Prevalence of Dyscalculia and Dyslexia, A Large-Scale Study of Specific Learning Disabilities Among Chinese Children (2021)
  • Validation of Fitbit for use in Objective Measurement of Physical Activity and Sleep in Children and Adults (2014)
  • Do Experienced Principals Fare Better? Estimates of Principal Value-Added (2014)
  • Beyond the Test Score Gap: Non-Cognitive Skills, High School Graduation, and Post-Secondary Employment (2012)
  • The Impact of the Level of Native Language Proficiency on the Literacy Achievement of English Language Leisures (2012)
  • The Effect of School Building Design on Student Achievement (2011)
  • Measuring Universal Primary Education Using Household Survey Data: The Case of the Millennium Villages Project (2011)
  • An Additional Burden for Urban Schools: Teacher Transfer Policies and School Performance (2011)
  • Evaluating Dual Enrollment Programs: Do Location and Instructor Matter? (2010)
  • A Multi-level Growth-curve Analysis of the Association between Student Body Composition and English Literacy Development among Language Minority Students in New York City Public Schools (2010)
  • Methods Supporting Policies in Education Reform (2010)
  • Have Inclusionary Policies in Higher Education Really Helped?:  Looking at College Accessibility and the College-wage Premium, 1962-2007 (2010)
  • NCLB and Curriculum Standards: What Really Impacts Teachers' Decisions to Leave the Profession? (2010)
  • Exploring the Relationship between Video Games and Academic Achievement via Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Analyses (2009)
  • Racial Disparities in Collegiate Cognitive Gains: A Multi-level Analysis of Institutional Influences on Learning and its Equitable Distribution (2009)
  • Hoping for Higher Ed: The Differential Effects of Parental Expectations of Education Attainment (2009)
  • The Impact of Family Communication on Risk Behavior among Boston Public High School Students (2009)
  • Path Towards an Attainable Future: The Effect of College Access Programs on High School Dropout (2009)
  • Traditional vs. Non-traditional College Students and Future Job Satisfaction: A Statistical Approach (2008) 
  • A Multi-level Analysis of Student Assignment to Out-of-field and Uncertified High School Math Teachers: Implications for Educational Equity and Access (2008)
  • The Impact of Obesity on Education (2005)
  • The Gender Gap in Standardized Math Tests: Do the Gender Gaps in Math Self-concept and Other Affective Variables Contribute to the Gender Gap in Scores? (2004)
  • An Alternative Approach to Selection Bias in School Choice: Using Propensity Score Matching to Examine School Sector and Teacher Quality Impact on Educational Outcomes (2003)

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