Browsing by Author "Jadidzadeh, Ali"

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    The connection between professional sporting events, holidays and domestic violence in Calgary, Alberta
    (The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, 2017-06) Boutilier, Sophia; Jadidzadeh, Ali; Esina, Elena; Wells, Lana; Kneebone, Ron
    There are some days in Calgary, Alberta when domestic violence is more likely to happen than other days. There is a statistically significant connection between higher rates of domestic violence and certain Calgary Stampeders’ football games as well as the arrival of the Calgary Stampede. During the 10-day-long Calgary Stampede, domestic violence calls on the seventh, ninth and tenth day of Stampede, were up 15 per cent compared to an average day. Weekends and summer months were also generally associated with the highest rates of domestic violence reports in Calgary. When it came to Calgary Stampeders’ football games, calls were higher only when the Stampeders faced off against the rival Edmonton Eskimos – with a 15 per cent increase in domestic violence reports. Grey Cup games in which Calgary played were associated with a 40 per cent increase in reports of domestic violence. However, games played by the Calgary Flames seemed to have no relationship to domestic violence calls, even those against the rival Edmonton team. Also, New Year’s Day appears to be associated with a significant spike in domestic violence, going by a four-year count of phone calls reporting domestic violence to both police and a local help line for those experiencing domestic and sexual abuse. There are also increases in calls associated with Good Friday, Easter, Canada Day, Labour Day, Valentine’s Day and Halloween. Meanwhile, the 2013 catastrophic floods in Calgary resulted in an increase in reports of domestic violence to police and the Connect help line, averaging an additional 6.6 reported incidents of domestic violence per day during the flood, 14 per cent higher than average.
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    Essays on Applied Macro- and Micro-Econometrics
    (2015-12-18) Jadidzadeh, Ali; Serletis, Apostolos; Emery, Herbert; Walls, David
    This thesis consists of three essays on applied macro- and micro-econometrics. The first essay examines the interactions and comovements between the crude oil and natural gas markets with multivariate time series analysis. The second essay investigates interfuel substitution and the demand for a limited number of energy goods with proper microeconomic foundations. The last essay augments the approach used in the second essay for a large number of goods and services in the market for money. An abstract of each essay follows. In essay 1, I employ a structural Vector AutoRegressive model to disentangle demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market and investigate their effects on the real price of natural gas in the United States. I identify the model by assuming that innovations to the real price of crude oil are predetermined with respect to the natural gas market and show that close to 45\% of the variation in the real price of natural gas can be attributed to structural supply and demand shocks in the global crude oil market. Essay 2 focuses on the aggregate demand for electricity, natural gas, and light fuel oil in Canada as a whole and six of its provinces in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. I employ the locally flexible normalized quadratic (NQ) expenditure and cost functions and provide evidence consistent with neoclassical microeconomic theory. My results indicate limited substitutability between electricity and natural gas, but strong substitutability between light fuel oil and each of electricity and natural gas in most cases. Essay 3 uses a highly-disaggregated demand system to estimate the degree of substitutability among monetary assets and to address the issue of optimal monetary aggregation in the United States. I address the problems of dimensionality and nonlinearity, estimating a very detailed monetary asset demand system encompassing the full range of assets based on the NQ expenditure function. I believe that our estimates of disaggregated monetary demand responses are of importance in resolving paradoxes associated with the measurement of money, in solving the Barnett critique, and in understanding the effects of potential monetary policy actions.