This thesis investigates the relationship between online restaurant reviews and gentrification in U.S. ZIP codes from 2005 to 2022. This study highlights the underexplored role of cultural capital, specifically as captured through Yelp restaurant reviews, and the way it influences neighborhood desirability and housing prices. The data used for this analysis is derived from the Yelp Open dataset for the treatment variables, Zillow Housing data to measure gentrification, and the American Community Survey to add demographic and socioeconomic controls. Using multiple regression methods, the results provide robust empirical evidence that positive restaurant reviews and the number of businesses on Yelp are significantly associated with rising housing prices. Surprisingly, however, total review volume shows a negative association and the average stars in a ZIP code show no statistically significant relationship. Implications for policymakers include the potential to use digital consumer data as early signals of neighborhood change, enabling more proactive and equitable urban planning.

This study provides a theoretical and empirical understanding to the vulnerabilities of agricultural trade networks to rapid groundwater depletion in the last two decades. By extending current models of non-renewable resources to the semi-renewable space, an understanding to the effects of changes in groundwater level to agricultural yields and domestic prices in agriculture can be found. A conceptual framework in a farmers’ decision to plant water-intensive crops for trade versus subsistence farming was used to inform the creation of a Cobb-Douglas production function for agricultural production. This was refined into a panel regression model to understand the effects of changes in groundwater levels on agricultural yields and prices for trade. Here, I find that changes in groundwater level have an analogous relationship with yields and an inverse relationship with prices, which is exacerbated for high water-intensity crops as compared to low water-intensity crops. An optimal resource allocation model was constructed as an addition to determine the optimal amount of groundwater for extraction and derive a price for groundwater as scarcity increases. These results showed that extraction must drastically decrease in order to maintain the socially beneficial aspects of aquifers. The implications of these findings are of particular relevance to governing bodies, farmers, water-regulating agencies, and international organizations as it highlights the growing danger of the current status quo of groundwater depletion on agricultural trade networks.