Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

A bug in the system: speculations on cybernetics, superorganisms, and simulated serendipity

Publication Date
2016-January-01
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What is a cybernetic organism in the age of digital imagining? Where can we find a historical nexus between the methods used to models systems and the increasing velocity of digital images? How do bodies fracture and congeal when integrated...

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Black Women on the White Screen: How American Popular Culture affects the Visuality of the Black Female Body

Publication Date
2014-January-01
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Department or Program
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In the past, poignant controlling images and stereotypes have run prevalent in the American historical framework. However, these tropes are routinely challenged by black feminists and black entertainers in contemporary popular culture. This thesis will garner a comprehensive analysis of...

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Do fringe benefits cause layoffs?

Publication Date
1990-October-01
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Department or Program
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It is commonly believed that firms prefer layoffs to worksharing, in part, because layoffs economize on fringe benefit costs. We find that when labor markets are characterized by optimal implicit contracts, layoffs will never occur in equilibrium, regardless of the...

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How budget deficits cause trade deficits: The simple analytics

Publication Date
1989-November-01
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Department or Program
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The traditional classroom presentation of international macroeconomic issues obscures the link between budget deficits, exchange rates, and the trade deficit. The article offers a simple supply and demand framework to clarify the role of budget deficits in creating trade deficits...

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Optimal implicit contracts and the choice between layoffs and work sharing

Publication Date
1989-October-01
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Department or Program
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Implicit contract models of labor market equilibrium under work sharing and layoffs are constructed to examine several common explanations for the observed market bias in favor of layoffs. We first establish the optimality of work sharing in the absence of...

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