Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Applied economic'
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Chen, Zhihong. "Three essays in applied econometrics." Thesis, Boston College, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/0.
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Thesis advisor: Arthur LewbelThis dissertation consists of three self-contained papers in applied econometrics. The frrst chapter, Testing Multivariate Distributions (joint with Jushan Bai), proposes a new method to test multivariate distributions with a focus on multivariate normality and multivariate t distribution, motivated in part by examination of financial market data. Using Khmaladze's martingale transformation to purge the effect of parameter estimation, our test generates a distribution-free statistic and can be easily applied to cases with complicated parameters. Simulation shows our test has good size and power. Finally, we apply our test procedure to a real multivariate financial time series. The result is consistent with the well-known fat tail property of financial data. The second chapter, Measuring the Poverty Line in China - An Equivalence Scale Method, is motivated by the current urban poverty issue in China. The fundamental question is: given the poverty threshold for an individual, how should that threshold vary across households with different demographic characteristics? This paper uses urban Household survey (uHS) data of China to estimate the equivalence scales for Chinese urban households. The results provide a quantitative reference to calculate the comparable poverty lines for households with different demographic compositions. It also can be used to determine appropriate subsidy levels for demographically different households. A useful byproduct of this exercise is the specification of a demand system for China. The third chapter, Dynamics of City Growth: Random or Deterministic? Evidence From China (joint with Shihe Fu), tests the random growth theory and the endogenous growth theory in urban economics using Chinese city size data from 1984-2002. We implement unit root and cointegration tests on pooled heterogeneous cities in the country. Since China is still in the period of rapid urbanization, we can only tentatively conclude that the overall Chinese city growth does not follow either random growth or parallel growth. However, we find that a small number of cities with certain common characteristics do grow parallel
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2005
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Economics
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JANDAROVA, Nurfatima. "Essays in applied microeconomics." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2021. https://hdl.handle.net/1814/72563.
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Defence date: 21 September 2021Examining Board: Prof. Andrea Ichino, EUI, Supervisor, Prof. Giacomo Calzolari, EUI, Co-Supervisor, Prof. Stephen Machin, London School of Economics, Prof. Giulio Zanella, University of Bologna.
This thesis consists of four essays in applied microeconomics. Chapter 1 studies the effects of parental job loss on various outcomes of children and provides new evidence on the heterogeneity of these effects along the cognitive ability distribution of children. I find that higher intelligence score protects children from the negative effects, but only in the long run. In the shorter term, instead of protecting, high intelligence exacerbates the cost of parental unemployment in terms of educational outcomes. This forces high-intelligence children with unemployed parents to start their careers at lower-paying jobs. Nevertheless, they can prove themselves via work performance and switch to better-paying jobs. I also provide suggestive evidence that their lifetime earnings could be higher had they continued their education. Chapter 2, joint with Michele Boldrin and Aldo Rustichini, studies the relationship between fertility decisions and intelligence. We document that fertility may be negatively associated, at least in advanced societies, with higher intelligence. A possible explanation of the finding is provided in models describing the choice of individuals (in particular women) facing a trade-off between parenthood and career concerns. With positive complementarity between intelligence and effort in education and career advancement, higher intelligence individuals, particularly women, will sacrifice parenthood to education. Thus, current education and labor market policies may be imposing an uneven penalty on more talented women. We test and find support for the model in a large data set for the UK (Understanding Society), using several alternative measures of fertility. Our results provide a new interpretation of the well documented fact in demographic studies that education is negatively associated with fertility: it is not education as an outcome, but as an aspiration that reduces fertility. Chapter 3 investigates the joint effect of local economic conditions on educational decisions and subsequent labour market outcomes using the instrumental variable approach. I find that adverse economic conditions at age 14 reduce educational attainment, except for the children aiming at university degrees. Second, exposure to a higher unemployment rate at age 14 permanently reduces real hourly wages over the life cycle. The IV estimator suggests that a year of education lost due to initial economic conditions corresponds to about 8% lower wages at ages 26-30 and 6% lower wages at ages 41-45. Chapter 4, joint with Johanna Reuter, attempts to differentiate the degree attainment in the UK by type of higher education institutions. Historically higher education in the UK has been shaped by a dual system: elite universities on the one hand and polytechnics and other higher education institutions on the other. Despite the formal equivalence of both degrees, the two institution types faced different financing, target populations, admission procedures and subjects taught. Nevertheless, in survey data they are often indistinguishable. We overcome this problem using a multiple imputation technique in the UKHLS and BHPS datasets. We examine the validity of inference based on imputed values using Monte Carlo simulations. We also verify that the imputed values are consistent with university graduation rates computed using the universe of undergraduate students in the UK.
-- 1 Does intelligence shield children from the effects of parental unemployment? -- 2 Fertility Choice and Intelligence in Developed Countries -- 3 From bad to worse: long-term effects of recession in adolescence -- 4 Multiple Imputation of University Degree Attainment
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Moreno, de Barreda Ines. "Essays in applied economic theory." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/158/.
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This thesis consists of three essays, all of which use the tools of economic theory to analyze specific situations in which multiple strategic agents interact with each other. The first chapter studies the strategic transmission of information between an informed expert and a decision maker when the latter has access to imperfect private information relevant to the decision. The main insight of the paper is that the access to private information of the decision maker hampers the incentives of the expert to communicate. Surprisingly, in a wide range of environments, the decision maker's information cannot make up for the loss of communication and the welfare of both agents diminishes. The second chapter presents a model of electoral competition between an in- cumbent and a challenger in which the voters receive more information about the quality of the incumbent. If the incumbent can manipulate the information received by the voters through costly effort, the model predicts an incumbency advantage, even though the two candidates are drawn from identical symmetric distributions, and the voters have rational expectations. It is also shown that a supermajority re-election rule improves welfare, mainly through discouraging low-quality politicians from manipulating the information. Finally the third chapter uses a mechanism design approach to characterize the class of social choice functions which cannot be profitably manipulated, when the individuals have symmetric single-peaked preferences. Our result allows for the design of social choice functions to deal with feasibility constraints.
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Georgoutsos, D. "Essays in applied factor demand theory." Thesis, University of Essex, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.235460.
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Andrade, Isabel C. "Three essays in applied multivariate econometrics." Thesis, University of Southampton, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.241034.
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Al-Ali, Bilal Salah. "Asymptotic methods applied to problems in finance." Thesis, Imperial College London, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299324.
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Buyukyazici, Duygu. "Essays in Applied Economics." Thesis, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 2022. http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/359/1/Buyukyazici_phdthesis.pdf.
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The present thesis consists of three independent chapters. The frst chapter analyses the effect of religiosity on innovativeness. The empirical literature on the relation between religion and innovation hitherto applied regressions without considering endogeneity in the estimates, raising questions about spurious correlations. This chapter provides the frst empirical study to build a causal link between religion and innovation by employing the instrumental variables method to untangle possible endogeneity. The results strongly suggest that higher religiosity has a somewhat negative effect on innovativeness. Three possible causality channels from religiosity to innovation are discussed: time allocation argument, the fear of uncertainty, and traditional roles empowered by religion. The second chapter explores the importance of regional
capabilities, in the form of workplace skills, in the industrial diversifcation process of regions by exploiting two recently developed approaches: relatedness and economic complexity. Building on the network-based approach of evolutionary economic geography, the study shows that
workplace skills form two highly polarised clusters into social-cognitive and technical-physical skills. The econometric analysis indicates that industries have a higher (lower) probability of developing a comparative advantage if their required skill set is (not) similar to those available
in the region, regardless of the skill type. Nevertheless, similarity to technical-physical skills and higher complexity in social cognitive skills yield the highest regional competitive advantage probabilities. The third chapter analyses the Ramsey pricing of pharmaceuticals by using recently developed the debiased/double orthogonal machine learning method that allows for heterogeneous treatments in a dynamic panel setting. The study assesses the validity of the inverse elasticity rule by providing a cross-country analysis of pharmaceutical demand at the
molecule level. The results show that pharmaceutical prices vary inversely with price elasticities, both in high-income and low-middle-income countries, signalling the existence of Ramsey pricing.
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Lotti, Giulia. "Essays in applied economics." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2015. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/77521/.
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We live in a world where resources are limited and how we invest them has an impact on the citizens’ wellbeing. The goal of this thesis is to provide, through the tools of economic analysis, some insights for the optimal allocation of our resources in three different areas: economics of crime, economics of education and economics of labour. First, societies aim at lowering crime rates and this is why a great amount of resources is spent in punishing offenders. How effective is punishment in lowering crime rates is still unclear: what are the forms of custody that deter lawbreakers from resuming their life of crime? Through a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we show that keeping young offenders separate from their older peers and far from an overcrowded environment is beneficial only when rehabilitation is offered. Second, empowering women and enhancing children’s early childhood development are two important objectives that are often pursued by independent policy initiatives in developing countries. Understanding the consequences of exploiting potentially beneficial complementarities in pursuing both aims together can be relevant. Through a quasi-natural experiment we evaluate a program implemented in Quito, Ecuador, that targets both. We find that women who are involved in the education of their children are empowered in different dimensions, as reflected in their higher likelihood to find full-time employment in the formalsector and in their greater independence in intra-household decision-making. Children’s dropout rates decrease, while school grades and scores on cognitive tests increase, particularly for girls. Finally, governments can introduce and raise minimum wage levels in order to protect their workers. We want to understand the implications of minimum wages on informal markets in developing countries. By exploiting relative variation in minimum wages across labour market groups within countries we show that a higher minimum wage is associated with a larger selfemployment share.
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Maurer, Stephan. "Essays in applied economics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3546/.
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This thesis consists of three papers that belong to the broad realm of Applied Economics. The first chapter studies the causal connection between trade and development, using one of the earliest massive trade expansions in prehistory: the first systematic crossing of open seas in the Mediterranean during the time of the Phoenicians. For each point on the coast, we construct the ease with which other points can be reached by crossing open water. We show that an association between better connected locations and archaeological sites emerges during the Iron Age when sailors routinely crossed open water. We corroborate these findings at the world scale. In the second chapter, we use oil discoveries in the US South between 1900 and 1940 to analyse whether male-biased demand shocks reduce women’s labour force participation. We find that oil wealth has a zero net effect on female labour force participation due to two opposing channels. Oil discoveries raise male wages, which leads to an increased marriage rate of young women and thus could have depressed female labour supply. But oil wealth also increases demand for women in services, which counterbalances the marriage effect. Our findings demonstrate that when the nontradable sector is open to women, male-biased demand shocks in the tradable sector need not reduce female labour force participation. The third chapter analyses whether the German National Socialists used economic policies to reward their voters after coming to power in 1933. Using newly-collected data on public employment from the German censuses in 1925, 1933, and 1939 and addressing the potential endogeneity of the NSDAP vote share in 1933 by way of an instrumental variables strategy based on a similar party in Imperial Germany, I find that cities with higher NSDAP vote shares experienced a relative increase in public employment: for every additional percentage point in the vote share, the number of public employment jobs increased by around 2.5%.
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Cheng, Hui-Pei. "Essays on applied economics." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2018. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110627/.
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This thesis includes three empirical essays which cover different topics. Before moving to the main chapters, I would like to briefly discuss the research question and main findings of each project. Chapter 1 Black-White Wage Convergence in the United States This paper explores whether there is a pattern of heterogeneous wage convergence between black and white workers in the Southern US relative to the Non-Southern US during the post-Civil Rights era. Heterogeneity in relation to the South may be plausibly associated with a range of determinants: the region’s historical experience of slavery, different observable factors, or changing political and social institutions. My evidence from US Census data for 1980, 1990 and 2000 indicates that a strong pattern of “black-black” and “black-white” wage convergence exists between Southern born and Non-Southern born individuals. This wage convergence pattern, particularly amongst black workers, is similar across Southern states associated with different historical intensities of slavery, but it is stronger and more persistent for the low wage groups in the South. In addition, the wage convergence is mainly from the low wage quartile groups. My assessment of the impact of institutional changes as a driver of wage convergence suggests that the changes associated with rising political competition from 1960 to 1980 contributed to rising black wages. Chapter 2 Hate Crime and Victory of Obama This paper examines whether Obama’s 2008 electoral victory affected hate crimes. Hate crime data from 2005 to 2012 indicate that anti-black and total hate crimes declined significantly in Blue States after Obama won the election, relative to Red States. The drop is even more significant in States that supported the Democratic presidential candidates in the 2004 and 2008 elections. Moreover, this decline is highly associated with the decreasing education gap between black people and white people. These findings suggest that Obama’s victory played a role in reducing the number of hate crimes in the US. Chapter 3 The Long-Run Labor Market Consequences of Being Born in A Bad Economy Recent studies have shown that an economic or environmental shock at an early stage of life can have a negative long-term impact on health status as well as educational and labour market outcomes. In this study, I examine whether being born during an economic recession affects later-life earnings. By utilising 2000 US Census data, I find that males born between 1965 and 1979 experienced a 1 percent of earning loss with every one unit increase in the unemployment rate at year of birth. The effect is similar in those with and without college education. Moreover, the effect is stronger in the low wage quartile groups. These findings suggest that the labour market consequences of being born in a recession are negative and persistent.
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Valentino, Masucci. "Essays in Applied Economics." Doctoral thesis, Luiss Guido Carli, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/11385/212055.
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In this paper we investigate the causal role of the media in disseminating information among financial operators. For this scope we consider the coverage of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) by media outlets in the USA. As a proxy for this coverage we implement the daily news based economic policy uncertainty index introduced by Baker et al. (2016). This index builds on the number of articles about EPU - normalized by the total number of articles - coming from a large set of US newspapers ranging from national journals like USA Today to small local newspapers across the country. To identify exogenous swings in coverage of EPU, we exploit the crowding out effect of publishable stories brought about by newsworthy sport events. In particular, we show that the abovementioned index systematically goes down the same days of the Olympics, the Worlds Series and the NBA finals. We interpret this evidence as supportive of the idea that these important occasions lead newspapers to publish in proportion less news about EPU, regardless the policy uncertainty of the economy. Then, we use our instrument to evaluate the effects of variations in EPU coverage on the VIX, a popular measure for expected volatility of the US stock market. According to our results, an increase of the daily news based EPU index by one standard deviation leads to a positive variation of the VIX equal to 3.61 points on the same day. These results are in line with the theoretical framework presented by Pastor and Veronesi (2013), with the media playing a role in disseminating EPU news to investors.
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Deiana, Claudio. "Three essays in applied economics." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/18635/.
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This thesis comprises three essays. The first one focuses on the effect of a change in the labour market conditions induced by a trade shock on crime at the US local level. Using US Census data, I provide evidence that the increasing exposure to Chinese competitiveness has indirectly contributed to the change in the propensity to commit crime through a reduction of the expected labour market earnings. The second essay, which is co-authored with Vincenzo Bove and Roberto Nisticó, addresses the reasons why countries decide to transfer weapons only to specific recipients. We present novel empirical models of the arms trade and concentrate on the role of energy dependence, in particular of oil, in explaining the trade of weapons between countries. We find strong empirical support for the hypothesis that oil-dependent economies have incentives to provide security by selling or giving away arms to oil-rich countries and reduce their risk of political instability. Finally, the last essay, joint with Emanuele Ciani, has a specific focus on family economics. We provide evidence that parents who helped their adult children in the past are rewarded by higher chances of receiving informal care later in life. To this purpose we use Italian data containing retrospective information about help with housing received from parents at the time of marriage. We show a positive association with their current provision of informal care to them, which is robust to controlling for a large set of individual and family characteristics, and is confirmed by an IV regression using house prices as instrument. The results are in line with theories based on the presence of a third generation of grandchildren, such as those involving a demonstration effect or a family constitution.
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Belcourt, Tracey L. "Three essays in applied micro-economic theory." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq20552.pdf.
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Grinis, Inna. "Essays in applied computational economics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3580/.
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This thesis presents four distinct essays that lie at the intersection of economics and computation. The first essay constructs an abstract framework for defining skills gaps, mismatches and shortages geometrically and thinking about these phenomena in a unified, formal way. It then develops a job matching model with imperfect information, in which skills mismatches influence the job application decisions of the workers, while skills gaps and shortages shape the competition for workers on the resulting bipartite job applications network. The tools proposed in this chapter could in future work be employed as the main ingredients of an agent-based model used to investigate how skills gaps, mismatches and shortages affect equilibrium outcomes. The second chapter designs and tests machine learning algorithms to classify 33 million UK online vacancy postings into STEM and non-STEM jobs based on the keywords collected from the vacancy descriptions and job titles. The goal is to investigate whether jobs in “non-STEM” occupations (e.g. Graphic Designers, Economists) also require and value STEM knowledge and skills (e.g. “Microsoft C#”, “Systems Engineering”), thereby contributing to the debate on whether or not the “STEM pipeline leakage” – the fact that less than half of STEM graduates in the UK work in STEM occupations - should be considered as highly problematic. Chapter 3 relates to empirical growth. It proposes a programming algorithm, called “iterative Fit and Filter” (iFF), that extracts trend growth as a sequence of medium/long term average growth rates, and applies it on a sample of over 150 countries. The paper then develops an econometric framework that relates the conditional probabilities of up and down-shifts in trend growth next year to the country's current characteristics, e.g. the growth environment, level of development, demographics, institutions, etc. Finally, Chapter 4 studies credit risk spillovers in financial networks by modelling default as a multi-stage disease with each credit-rating corresponding to a new infection phase. The paper derives analytical and proposes computer simulation-based indicators of systemic importance and vulnerability, then applies them in the context of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
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Shanghavi, Amar. "Three essays in applied economics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2015. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3089/.
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This thesis consists of three chapters that fall under the broad banner of applied microeconomics. The first chapter analyses the role of the 2008 amendment to the USA Lacey Act in combatting international trade in illegal timber. Comparing US timber imports over time and across countries and products, I show that the US timber imports fell after the introduction of the Lacey Act. I find the fall in timber imports is accompanied by a fall in illegal trade as measured by the difference between importer and exporter reported statistics. Finally, using the case of Indonesia, I provide suggestive evidence in favor of a reduction in deforestation as a result of the policy. The second chapter analyzes the effect of a year long rolling blackout in Colombia on mothers’ short and long run fertility behavior and socioeconomic outcomes. We use an extensive period of power rationing in Colombia throughout 1992 as a natural experiment and exploit exogenous spatial variation in the intensity of power rationing as an instrumental variable. We show that power rationing induced a “mini baby boom” nine months later. In particular, it increased the probability that a mother had a baby by five percent. Women who were exposed to the shock and had an additional child find themselves in worse socio-economic conditions more than a decade later. The third chapter documents the way in which the types of people who are admired has changed, arguing that the responses to this question tells us something about the way in which society has been evolving - the 65 years of data are probably the longest consistent series on social attitudes. We present robust correlations between admiration and trust, allowing us to provide information on trends in trust on a consistent basis back to the late 1940s, earlier than most other data sources.
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Caramellino, Gianpaolo. "Essays in applied microeconomics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3786/.
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This thesis consists of three chapters that belong to the realm of Applied Microeconomics. The first two chapters are empirical projects that assess the role of time for human capital development of immigrants in the U.S. The third one is a theory project that studies how managerial career concerns and experimentation influence risk-taking behaviours. Chapter 1 studies how age at arrival in the U.S. affects the skill development of young immigrants in the U.S. Using the within family variation across siblings entered in the U.S. at different ages, I document a cognitive/non-cognitive tradeoff induced by age at arrival. As for cognitive skills, the effect of age at arrival is negative, in particular for the ability to learn English. The effect on cognitive skills is reflected in immigrants’ educational achievements. However, age at arrival plays a positive role for illicit behaviours. Children of immigrants arrived later tend to show less problematic behaviours than their siblings arrived earlier, also controlling for their English ability. Through an indirect accounting exercise, I estimate the negative effect of age at arrival on the labor market performance of immigrant adults. I conclude the paper showing that more educated parents anticipate the arrival of their children in the U.S. Chapter 2, co-authored with Leonardo Felli, Carola Frege and Yona Rubinstein, studies the intergenerational assimilation of immigrants in the U.S. In our study, we observe the outcomes of several immigrant generations. Moreover, we link immigrant mothers and their children, thus observing the outcomes of two immigrant generations belonging to the same cohort. Controlling for the selection into migration and return migration, we document that it takes two immigrant generations to exhaust the full potential of cognitive and educational assimilation, while it might take longer for other social outcomes, such as the attitude towards problematic behaviour and the likelihood of having children. Chapter 3, co-authored with Francesco Sannino, studies the effect of managerial career concerns and experimentation on risk-taking. We model an economy where managers create value through their ability to learn at an intermediate stage about the intrinsic profitability of a risky investment. Managers are heterogeneous in their ability to extract information from experiments, and care about their reputation. Their incentive to take on risk is distorted by career concerns, and can result in under or over risk-taking. When, following the experiment, better managers discard risky projects more often than bad ones we observe over risk-taking. Our result is in contrast with Holmstr ̈om (1999) where managers’ ability affects the project’s success rate, and career concerns can only produce inefficiently low risk-taking. We show that the inefficiency is reduced in one extension of the model, where the market can also observe the outcome of similar projects. The novel implication is that markets more plagued by career concerns distortions are those where managers engage in more idiosyncratic activities.
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Rossi, Federico. "Essays in applied macroeconomics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3631/.
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This thesis consists of three chapters, examining the interrelation between human capital and country-level outcomes from different perspectives. Chapter 1, co-authored with Marta De Philippis, studies the contribution of parental influence to cross-country gaps in human capital performance. We compare the school performance of second-generation immigrants from different nationalities but educated in the same school, and find that those whose parents come from high-scoring countries in international standardized tests do better than their peers. The gap is larger when parents have little education and have recently emigrated, suggesting the importance of country-specific cultural traits that parents progressively lose as they integrate in the new host countries. Parental influence accounts for between 14% and 20% of the cross-country variance in test scores. Chapter 2 studies the macroeconomic consequences of the inequality of educational opportunities. I discuss how family income shapes college opportunities for US students, even when its correlation with academic ability is taken into account. I propose a general equilibrium model to estimate the productivity losses deriving from the fact that human capital investment is not always allocated where its marginal product would be highest. Using the equilibrium conditions of the model, I back out the value of barriers to college investment for disadvantaged students from data on family income, ability, schooling and wages. Counterfactual experiments suggest that a more meritocratic access to college education could boost output by approximately 11%, and wages by between 9% and 12%. I conclude that returns from policies aimed to expand college opportunities are potentially very large. Chapter 3 studies how the relative productivity of skilled and unskilled labor varies across countries. I use both micro-data for countries at different stages of development and other sources to document that the skill premium varies little between rich and poor countries, in spite of large differences in the relative skill supply. This pattern is consistent with the view that the relative productivity of skilled workers is higher in rich countries. I propose a methodology based on the comparison of labor market outcomes of immigrants with different levels of educational attainment to discriminate between technology and unobserved human capital as drivers of these patterns. I find that human capital quality plays a minor role in explaining cross-country differences in relative skill efficiency.
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Pinder, Jonathan. "Essays in applied macroeconomics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3672/.
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I present a thesis in three chapters in the broad field of Applied Macroeconomics. The first chapter is an empirical investigation into the “granular hypothesis” - the hypothesis that shocks to extremely large firms can have aggregate economic consequences. Identifying this channel is nontrivial as it may be the case that large firms respond more to aggregate shocks than most firms. I present a new way to identify true firm-level shocks by looking at stock price movements around the times that firms release financial information. I argue such movements reflect firm-specific, rather than aggregate information. Using a measure of firm shocks recovered using this information suggests that the importance of such shocks for aggregate economic outcomes has been overestimated by previous work in the literature. A good univariate representation of US GDP is a random walk with drift. The second chapter shows that nonetheless US recessions have been associated with predictable short-term recoveries with relatively small changes in long-term GDP forecasts. To detect these predictable changes, it is important to use a multivariate time series model. We discuss reasons why univariate representations can miss key characteristics of the underlying variable such as predictability, especially during recessions. The third chapter develops a general equilibrium model to investigate the macroeconomic consequences of liquidity regulation, a form of regulation which was strengthened substantially after the 2008 financial crisis. The model is used to identify two separate channels through which liquidity regulation can affect the cost of capital: the “crowding out” and “financial repression” channels. In the absence of these, I establish a neutrality result in which liquidity regulation does not affect the wider economy. The principal policy implication of this chapter is that regulators should not count safe assets which they require banks to hold for liquidity purposes against bank capital requirements.
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Dal, Maso Carlo. "Essays in applied econometrics." Thesis, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 2016. http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/183/1/DalMaso_phdthesis.pdf.
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Intense political debate surrounded the Italian university system
in the last ten years. The latter was widely perceived
as auto-referential and inefficient so that each government
proposed its own solutions and reforms. These targeted the
number of classes offered, the way professors are recruited
as well as parameters and amount of public funding toward
universities. The present dissertation investigates how interventions
affected Italian professors. The first work look at
recruitment through the lens of game theory and represent
the selection process as a bargain between members of the
evaluation committee over the possible candidates. We bring
the model to the data and evaluate how the reform of selection
rules affected some of the parameters of the model. The
second essay, focus on the funding system and in particular
on the norms that limit personnel expenses of universities.
We exploit the variation of budget constraints in time and
across institutions in a quasi-experimental framework and estimate
the effect of staff turn over limits on the probability of
voluntary leaving academia. Finally, the last work looks directly
into the political process and studies the formation and
break of coalitions in the Italian parliament through concepts
of complex network literature.
Chapter 2
A common observation is that individuals strive to neutralize
the effect of procedural rules designed to drive choices
away from their private optimum. An example of this phenomenon
is offered by the reaction of Italian academia to two reforms that modified the procedures of recruitment and promotion,
by introducing random selection of the examiners
not appointed by the recruiting school and reducing from two
to one the number of candidates to be qualified. We model
the negotiation occurring within evaluation committees and
test the decision rule implied by the theoretical model on the
sample composed of all selections to associate and full professorship
initiated by the Italian schools of economics between
2004 and 2011. Particularly, we investigate whether
these reforms decreased the relative weight of the examiner
appointed by the recruiting school on committee’s decision.
Empirical results suggest that both reforms had little if no effect
on examiners’ weights.
Chapter 3
The number of professors employed in Italian universities
dropped by 15% between 2008 and 2013. This resulted from
two opposite trends: a reduction in new hires and an increment
in professors leaving academia. While the first trend
can be easily explained by government limits on personnel
expenses the second one deserves further explanations. In
this paper we investigate whether budget constrains on personnel
expenses backfired by pushing Italian professor to quit
their positions for private companies or foreign institutions.
We exploit the selectivity of the new regulation along with
its time variation in a quasi-experimental framework. Results
indicate an increase in voluntary leaves among institutions
with more severe staff limitations. Surprisingly the latter
show lower voluntary leaves on average in both pre and
post reform periods. We provide some explanations for these
results and point out the limits of our methodologies for future
investigations. Chapter 4
We analyze the network of relations between parliament members
according to their voting behavior. In particular, we examine
the emergent community structure with respect to political
coalitions and government alliances. We rely on tools
developed in the Complex Network literature to explore the
core of these communities and use their topological features
to develop new metrics for party polarization, internal coalition
cohesiveness and government strength. As a case study,
we focus on the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament,
for which we are able to characterize the heterogeneity
of the ruling coalition as well as parties specific contributions
to the stability of the government over time. We find
sharp contrast in the political debate which surprisingly does
not imply a relevant structure based on establised parties.
We take a closer look to changes in the community structure
after parties split up and their effect on the position of
single deputies within communities. Finally, we introduce a
way to track the stability of the government coalition over
time that is able to discern the contribution of each member
along with the impact of its possible defection. While our case
study relies on the Italian parliament, whose relevance has
come into the international spotlight in the present economic
downturn, the methods developed here are entirely general
and can therefore be applied to a multitude of other scenarios.
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Higginson, Lisa. "Linking economic development and spatial planning in South Africa : a case study of state-market relations in Cape Town." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20368.
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In South African cities institutional practices and market forces are seen to reinforce spatial divisions. This dissertation reflects on the relationship between location fixed resources, market forces and state intervention and how the interaction of these factors influence urban spatial outcomes. It first develops the underlying economic theory that could inform good planning practice and then illustrates how state-market relations have had an impact on urban spatial outcomes in South Africa's recent history. These insights are then used to describe the spatial development of Cape Town and identifies ineffective and counterproductive interventions and illustrate how economic theories and concepts can be used to inform good planning practice. It concludes with the direction for further research and collaboration between economists and planners to improve planning and policy making in South Africa's cities.
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Lee, Hoan Soo. "Essays on Applied Microeconomics." Thesis, Harvard University, 2013. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10837.
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Empirical and theoretical topics in applied microeconomics are discussed in this dissertation. The first essay identifies and measures managerial advantages from access to high-quality deals in venture capital investments. The underlying social network of Harvard Business School MBA venture capitalists and entrepreneurs is used to proxy availability of deal access. Random section assignment of HBS MBA graduates provides a key exogenous variation for identification. Being socially connected to peer venture capital firms and private equity seeking startups leads to more deal flow, larger asset under management and better performance in the inaugural funds of HBS-executive run venture capital firms. The second essay presents a two-stage model of competing ad auctions. Search engines attract users via Cournot-style competition. Meanwhile, each advertiser must pay a participation cost to use each ad platform. Advertiser entry strategies using symmetric Bayes-Nash equilibrium that lead to the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves outcome of the ad auctions are derived. Consistent with the model predictions, empirical evidence shows that multi-homing advertisers are larger than single-homing advertisers. Comparative statics on consumer choice parameters, quality, and user welfare are used to analyze the prospect of joining auctions to mitigate participation costs. The analysis provides conditions when such joins do and do not increase welfare. The third essay develops and computes a dynamic model of search in internet advertising. Micro-level browsing data from Microsoft's Bing.com (formerly known as Live.com) is used for structural estimations. The model predicts that users do not click on any ad with weak signals due to accumulating search cost and monotonicity of the value function. Rational search reveals a cascading pattern: the user clicks on a sufficiently high, highest-signal ad first, then moves on to the ad with the next highest conditionally expected probability of match once his assessment on the current ad degrades over time. The user exits when maximum assessment of likelihood of match over all ads is below a threshold value. The essay provides a novel approach to understanding rational herding behavior when product quality is only partially unraveled.
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Pinna, Fabio. "Essays in applied microeconomics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/930/.
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This thesis is composed by three essays and applies econometric methods to analyze different economic research questions using microeconomic data. The first essay (chapter 2) analyzes consumer searching behavior in a grocery context. The second essay (chapter 3) studies the implications of the introduction of a bonus scheme in a principal-agent context using data from furniture sales. The third essay (chapter 4) proposes an empirical strategy to estimate the impact that a worsening in banks’ wholesale funding opportunities (such as the Italian sovereign debt crisis of 2011) has on borrowers’ ability to repay their loans. Chapter 5 concludes the thesis and provides some directions for future work. The first essay (chapter 2), written jointly with Stephan Seiler, estimates the effect of time spent searching in a supermarket on consumers’ expenditure. The analysis is implemented using a unique data-set obtained from radio frequency identification tags which are attached to supermarket shopping carts. This allows us to record consumers’ purchases as well as the time they spent in front of the shelf when contemplating which product to buy, giving us a direct measure of search effort. We estimate the effect of extending search on the price consumers pay within a category while controlling for a host of confounding factors such as category-level price variation over time and measurement error. Our results show that an additional minute spent searching lowers category-level expenditure by $1.40. Extending search-time by one standard deviation allows consumers to appropriate 8 percent of the possible category-level price savings. The second essay (chapter 3) uses data on the staff of a furniture firm to show that, when a fixed bonus scheme conditional on revenues was introduced, it increased the revenues generated by all sales employees, but I find no significant heterogeneous effect of the bonus scheme depending on whether the employee is given control over price or not. The essay also shows that giving the sales staff control over price does not significantly increase revenues. The effect of the bonus scheme and of price delegation on gross profits minus paid bonuses, commissions, and wages were similar. These results are robust to a number of checks, and are consistent with a model of moral hazard and price delegation. The effect of the bonus scheme and of price delegation on gross profits minus paid bonuses, commissions, and wages were similar. These results are robust to a number of checks, and are consistent with a model of moral hazard and price delegation. Chapter 5 concludes and discusses the limitations of the current work and provides some directions for future research.
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Burchardi, Konrad Burchard. "Three essays in applied microeconomics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3790/.
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This thesis comprises three independent chapters, spanning the range of my interests. The first chapter provides estimates of the causal effects of social ties on aggregate, firm level and individual level economic outcomes. The second chapter is a first step at understanding the joint determination of language change and economic structural change which seems to have occurred over the past centuries and probably continues today. A joint theme in these papers is the attempt to contribute to our understanding of the extent to which cultural and social factors can impact market outcomes. The second paper is as well interested in a specific channel through which economic outcomes can feed back on a cultural aspect of societies. The third paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of a more traditional economic question, namely individual behaviour in strategic situations. In particular it uses a novel experimental design to investigate individual behaviour in unprecedented strategic situations and estimate the parameters of a structural non-equilibrium model of behaviour. I like to belief that the chapters of this thesis, especially the second and third chapter, tie up closely the theoretical and empirical work and make a humble contribution to our understanding of economic behaviour and market functioning.
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Bargagli, Stoffi Falco Johannes. "Essays on applied machine learning." Thesis, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 2020. http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/311/1/BargagliStoffi_phdthesis.pdf.
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In this Dissertation, we deal with a series of applications of machine
learning in the fields of social and health sciences. We introduce a set
of novelties in the traditional usage of machine learning algorithms for
predictive and causal inference tasks. In Part 1, we explore the field of
machine learning for causal inference and we introduce two innovative
techniques that combine state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms
with causal inference methodologies. In the first Chapter, we introduce a
novel Bayesian tree-based methodology to draw causal inference on heterogeneous
effects in quasi-experimental scenarios. In the second Chapter,
we account for possible drawbacks of tree-based methodologies by
proposing a composite algorithm with a high level of interpretability and
precision. In Part 2, we introduce applications of machine learning predictive
power to forecast students’ financial literacy scores and firm’s financial
distress. In the third Chapter, we innovate the applied machine
learning literature by proposing a novel sensitivity analysis for predictions.
Finally, in the fourth Chapter, we show how economic intuition
can boost the performance of machine learning algorithms. The Dissertation
contributes to the literatures on causal and predictive machine learning
mainly by: (i) extending the current framework to novel scenarios
and applications (Chapter 1 - Chapter 3); (ii) introducing interpretability
in the learning models (Chapter 1 - Chapter 2); (iii) developing a novel
methodology to assess the robustness of predictions (Chapter 3); (iv) informing
the choice of the technique used by specific economic knowledge
on the field of investigation (Chapter 4). In the applied Sections of
each Chapter, we answer policy relevant questions that pave the way to
the usage of machine learning for targeted interventions.
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Ager, Philipp. "Essays in applied economics." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/119325.
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This thesis consists of four essays. In the first essay, I examine how the historical planter elite of the Southern US affected economic development at the county level between 1840 and 1960. I find that counties with a relatively wealthier planter elite before the Civil War performed significantly worse in the post-war decades and even after World War II. In the second essay we investigate the link between religious membership and rainfall risk across US counties in the second half of the nineteenth century. Our results indicate that church membership and seating capacity were significantly larger in counties likely to have been subject to greater rainfall risk. In the third essay, we examine the effect of removing restriction to bank entry on bank failures exploiting the introduction of free banking laws in US states during the 1837-1863 period. Our main finding is that counties in free banking states experienced significantly more bank failures. In the fourth essay we examine the effects that within-county changes in the cultural composition of the US population had on output growth during the age of mass migration. Our main finding is that increases in cultural fractionalization significantly increased output, while increases in cultural polarization significantly decreased output.Aquesta tesi consisteix en quatre articles. En el primer assaig, s’examina com l’èlit històrica del sud dels EUA va afectar el desenvolupament econòmic a nivell de comtat entre 1840 i 1960. He trobat que els comtats amb una èlit relativament més rica abans de la Guerra Civil empitjoraven significativament en les dècades de la postguerra i fins després de la Segona Guerra Mundial. En el segon assaig s’investiga la relació entre l’afiliació religiosa i el risc de pluja a través dels comtats dels Estats Units en la segona meitat del segle XIX. Els nostres resultats indiquen que la comunitat de l’església i el nombre de seients van ser significativament majors en els comtats amb probabilitats d’haver estat subjectes a un major risc de pluja. En el tercer assaig, s’analitza l’efecte de l’eliminació de restriccions a l’entrada de bancs en la fallida de bancs que exploten la introducció de les lleis del “free banking” als estats dels EUA durant el període 1837-1863. La nostra principal conclusió és que els comtats en els estats amb “free banking” experimentaven significativament més fracassos bancaris. En el quart assaig s’examinen els efectes que els canvis dins del comtat en la composició cultural de la població dels EUA, van tenir en el creixement de la producció durant l’era de la migració massiva. La nostra principal conclusió és que l’augment de fragmentació cultural, van augmentar significativament la producció, mentre que l’augment de la polarització cultural, disminuia significativament la producció.
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Brixen, Peter. "The financial sector in applied general equilibrium models : the case of Ecuador." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.389710.
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Marin, Giovanni. "Essay in applied environmental and innovation economics." Thesis, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 2012. http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/60/1/Marin_phdthesis.pdf.
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Changes in consumption patterns, technological change and
environmental innovations are essential to achieve the reduction of environmental externalities, to slow down the exploitation of natural resources and to reduce the likelihood of environmental disasters (e.g. climate change). The current dissertation touches some of these aspects by performing empirical applications in the fields of innovation and environmental economics. The dissertation is composed by two main blocks. The first block (chapters 2 and 3) employs a sector-level approach to investigate the patterns of emission efficiency in EU countries (chapter 2) and the extent to which aggregation bias affects the estimate of the amount of emissions induced by final con
sumption activities by means of environmentally extended
input-output models (chapter 3). The second block (chapter
4) relies on firm-level data with the aim of investigating the drivers of environmental innovation activities of firms and their effect on firm-level productivity. Finally, appendix A describes in detail the methodology I used to match firms in AIDA to patent applicants in the PATSTAT database. These data have been used in chapter 4.
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Di, Lillo Armando. "Essays in Applied Economics, Migration, and Conflict." Thesis, IMT Alti Studi Lucca, 2018. http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/280/1/DiLillo_phdthesis.pdf.
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This dissertation is a collection of three independent essays
in Applied Economics, Migration and Conflict. Chapter 2 focuses on the interconnectedness between labour market division, economic rents concentration, political extremism, and
ethnic conflict. A natural experiment of history that occurred
in the late 1960s in South Tyrol, a northernmost and predominantly German-speaking region of Italy, is exploited to investigate whether frictions in the labour market may induce a
move in the voting preferences of a privileged minority group
towards a more extremist political party. Chapter 3 builds
on propositions from Latane’s Dynamic Social Impact Theory ´
(Latane, 1981, 1996) to analyse the evolution and diffusion ´
of anti-immigrant attitudes across European NUTS2 regions
between 2002 and 2014. The identification of a spatially dependent diffusion and clustering process of anti-immigrant
attitudes has a significant bearing for the understanding of
the rise and fall of populist movements across Europe and
changing electoral support for xenophobic parties across European regions over time. The last chapter explores the extent
to which scientific migration and mobility barriers shape processes of scientific knowledge production and dissemination
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Costa, Francisco. "Essays in applied economics : evidence from Brazil." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/742/.
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This thesis contains three essays. In the first essay, I examine whether a temporary policy can affect long-run house hold behavior. I look at evidence from a nine-month compulsory rationing imposed on Brazilian households’ electricity use in 2001, exploiting differences in the policy’s implementation across regions as a quasi-experiment to test its short-and long-run impacts on households’ electricity consumption patterns. I find that the rationing program led to a persistent reduction in electricity use of 14% even ten years later. Unique household level microdata on appliance ownership and consumption habits suggest that the main source of persistence is changes in the utilization of electricity services, rather than technology adoption. In the second essay, we examine the effects of China’s recent emergence into the world economy in local labour markets in Brazil. Much of the literature have viewed China as a competitor. However, China is also an increasingly large consumer of goods produced abroad, and an increasing share of its import demand is for primary goods. Using census data, we compare trends in migration, unemployment, employment structure (primary/manufacturing/services), informality and participation on Bolsa Família program in areas affected by the ‘China competition shock’ and the ‘China demand shock’. We find significant and heterogeneous effects from these two ‘shocks’. In the third essay, we employ an unified theoretical framework to structurally estimate the effect of changes within China on the production in Brazil and in the rest of the world. Based on the Ricardian model of trade of Costinot et al. (2012), we perform counterfactuals exercises to analyze how countries and industries in Brazil would have performed in the absence of the recent Chinese ascension. Results suggest that changes in China’s comparative advantage hampered manufacturing sector abroad. We find no support for the idea of China demand (taste) shock towards raw materials.
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Sivakul, Aganitpol. "Essays in applied microeconomics." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:617fabeb-e47b-4194-bfab-a7601c0edce1.
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This thesis is a collection of three independent essays that applies microeconometrics techniques to empirically study topics in development and labour economics. The first chapter uses evidence from a natural experiment in Bangladesh, where households were treated to different types of transfer, food grains and cash, at different periods in time, to test the effect of these transfers on household consumption behaviour. Using the fixed effect instrumental variable model, the estimation results show that though in-kind transfers did cause households to consume more grain than they would have chosen under equal-value cash transfers, the impact on calorie consumption and children health status is minimal. Households that received cash were able to reallocate their funds more effectively, and chose to spend their extra income on clothing and children's non-food consumption, while at the same time spending no more on vices. The second chapter investigates the dynamics of living standards in Thailand. Income and earnings processes are first modelled after the statistical Galton-Markov process before being extended to follow a more structural permanent earnings model. Empirical estimations of income and earnings persistence in Thailand employ both constructed pseudo-panel data from Thailand's Labour Force Surveys and the Townsend Thai panel data. Galton-Markov estimates found conditional persistence to be low in Thailand. However, quantile regression estimates find that persistence is low at the bottom of the distribution but high at the top, indicating a divergence in earnings as time passes. A study of the covariance structure of earnings finds that total variation in the earnings process is predominantly driven by moderately persistent transitory components following the AR(1) process. The third chapter attempts to empirically fit the power-law distribution and study the dynamics of inequality, especially at the upper end, of the income and consumption distribution in Thailand. We find that using the popular but incorrect method based on the linear regression approach will lead to researchers drawing a wrong conclusion. Regression estimates of the power-law exponent, a, provide strong evidence of power-law fit in Thailand. However, from the implementation of the superior Clauset et al. method, the evidence in support of the power-law fit is much weaker. Estimates of a for both income and consumption suggest that there is low inequality at the top in Thailand but further inspection finds that there is a high level of persistent between-group inequality between the top and bottom ends of the distribution. In addition, following Battistin et al. (2009), we find weak support for Gibrat's law of proportional random growth as the income-generating process in Thailand.
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Anderstig, Christer. "Applied Methods for Analysis of Economic Structure and Change." Doctoral thesis, Umeå universitet, Centrum för regionalvetenskap (CERUM), 1988. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-53044.
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The thesis comprises five papers and an introductory overview of applied models and methods. The papers concern interdependences and interrelations in models applied to empirical analyses of various problems related to production, consumption, location and trade. Among different definitions of 'structural analysis' one refers to the study of the properties of economic models on the assumption of invariant structural relations, this definition is close to what is aimed at in lire present case. Although the subjects cover widely differing aspects of the economic system, applied models and methods, i.e. entropy maximizing (information minimizing) models and random utility maximizing models, are in many cases closely connected. Tlic first paper reports on a regional input-ouput study applied to Norrbotten, Sweden. The paper is mainly concentrated on developing and estimating an econometric model, describing the structural interdependences in the Norrbotten economy. The chapter is composed of three parts. The first part concerns the theoretical basis of the model, the main fields of application and principal problems in connection with the estimation. The core of the estimated model is defined by the intersectoral dependences in the Norrbotten economy. This model can be viewed as a part of a more general model of the regional economy, and such a general model is briefly outlined. The second part reports on the collection and arranging of data, and the methods used for the estimation of the model. In the third part the results are presented. A special interest concerns the effects of production changes in the basic industries in the county, as to the expected impact on different industries and occupational groups. The second paper concerns some aspects of the problem of predicting trade flows in the forest sector. The model, based on information theory, is predicting current trade flows by adjusting the historical, a priori, trade flows to satisfy current export and import totals. In the third paper an entropy model is employed to decompose the interregional and intraregional employment change in Sweden and Stockholm, during the period 1960 - 1980, into effects attributed to regions (zones), industries, occupations and interaction effects. The fourth paper presents an empirical analysis of housing choice, based on individual data of households in Stockholm. The consumer choice is regarded as a complex choice from a finite set of discrete alternatives and a probabilistic choice mode! (multinomial logit) is employed, where secondary dwelling is included in the housing choice decision. In the final paper spectral analysis is used for identifying the significant components of cycle behaviour in time series of Swedish exports of forest products over a twenty year time period.digitalisering@umu
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Kurniawan, Ferry. "Essays on applied time series econometrics." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2014. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/61711/.
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The thesis consists of three self-contained essays. These are Business Cycles in ASEAN-5 Countries (Chapter 1), Nowcasting Indonesian Economy (Chapter 2), and Data Revisions in Indonesia (Chapter 3). In the first chapter, I investigate the extent to which business cycles coincide in five ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries. I employ unobserved component models to decompose output into its trend and cycle. I find that the business cycles co-movements are high for some pairs of countries. However, the magnitude of the business cycles and the source of output fluctuations are different. The findings suggest that these countries may not yet be ready to step further beyond the formation of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015 to a monetary union. In the second chapter, I exploit monthly indicators to forecast the current quarter Indonesian output growth (nowcast). In particular, I employ three nowcasting approaches; mixed-frequency factor model, bridging equation and MIDAS (MIxed DAta Sampling) regression, and evaluate their performance. The nowcasts are computed and evaluated on the basis of real-time and latest available data. In general, the encompassing tests recommend that neither mixed-factor model nowcasts nor MIDAS nowcasts encompass the other. Hence, I adopt a nowcast combination approach and find that the combination increases the accuracy relative to individual nowcasts. The last chapter focuses on real-time data issues. I construct a real-time data set for Indonesia, investigate the nature of data revisions, and assess the impact of the revisions on real-time output gap estimates and through this, the effect on monetary policy. The results suggest that the preliminary data is not an efficient forecast of the revised (final) value. By comparing the output gap estimates, extracted using the Hodrick-Prescott filter to both preliminary and final data, I find that output gap revisions is mainly due to data revisions, rather than due to one-sided nature of the filter. Further, I find that the potential impact of data revisions on monetary policy, measured by the difference between policy rate recommendations based on first released and revised data, can be substantial. Finally, I show that by taking into account data revisions, the reliability of real-time output gap estimates can be improved, and hence policy regret may be reduced.
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Mulei, Mutava Michael. "Derivatives and Economic Growth in South Africa: Lessons for Kenya." Master's thesis, Faculty of Commerce, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/31049.
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Kenya is now at advanced stages of introducing a derivatives market. Its aim is to enhance Kenya’s medium-term growth prospects as outlined in the capital markets master plan 2014- 2023. This study interrogates the effect of derivatives on economic growth and growth volatility, learning from the South African experience. The study also identifies some of the factors that drove South Africa’s implementation of derivatives as a development tool - Some countries have enacted legislation for it yet have never transitioned to successful operations. The study paints a picture of the current global and regional view of derivatives and examines empirical evidence from previous studies. Using a GMM approach, the study finds no significant relationship between trading derivatives and economic growth in South Africa. Thereafter, economic growth volatility is modelled using the GARCH method and the effects of derivatives on that volatility are tested. No effect is found. The study finds that the derivative market in South Africa is not yet sufficiently developed to benefit the economy. Finally, the relationship between economic development and derivatives is appraised using a Granger causality test: this suggests that development tends to engender the evolution of derivatives in the long run.
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Rono, Lorraine. "Socio-economic inequality and ethno-political conflict : evidence from Kenya." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9008.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-70).This study examines the influence of socio-economic inequalities on the probability of conflict in Kenya and aims to synthesise various causal hypotheses in the literature. This research extends to a regional analysis of a cross-national sample to understand the extent to which structural cleavages account for a cause of potential conflict in Kenya. The post-election violence that emerged in 2008 shed light on the urgency for policy reforms to address the root causes of what was viewed as an imminent outbreak of violence. Various analysts trace the origin of conflict to nepotism, ethnic stratification, historical injustices, poor governance and disparities in resource allocation. Given these sources of dissent, this study proposes that the most fundamental factors that considerably influence the probability of conflict in Kenya are pervasive poverty and extreme inequality, intensified by ethnic divisions. Based on Kuznets theory, we argue that the booms of economic growth experienced from 2003 perpetuated the stark economic and social inequalities prevalent in Kenya. As a result, there is strong evidence that suggests that these sharp inequalities fuelled the post-election violence and deeply influence the probability of conflict in Kenyan society. Another key contribution from the study is the conclusion that the existence of sharp horizontal inequalities result in a bias towards ethnic conflict. It is imperative to identify the underlying causes of conflict so as to neutralise polarisation which exacerbates tension and breeds further conflict. In light of this view, the probability of conflict in Kenya can be minimised effectively and such mitigation can be used as a mechanism for future growth and economic development in Kenya.
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Campos, Filho Leonardo. "Brazilian trade policy in the 1980's and 1990's : an applied general equilibrium analysis." Thesis, University of London, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.300292.
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Driffield, Tarn Melanie. "Real options theory applied to decision making in health care : a series of case studies." Thesis, University of York, 2003. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9771/.
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Zhang, Qi. "Applied game theory and optimal mechanism design." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2014. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/370438/.
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This thesis applies game theory to study optimal toehold bidding strategies during takeover competition, the problem of optimal design of voting rules and the design of package bidding mechanism to implement the core allocations. It documents three different research questions that are all related to auction theory. Chapter 2 develops a two-stage takeover game to explain toehold puzzle in the context of takeover. Potential bidders are allowed to acquire target shares in the open market, subject to some limitations. This pre-bid ownership is known as a toehold. Purchasing a toehold prior to making any takeover offer looks like a profitable strategy given substantial takeover premiums. However actual toehold bidding has decreased since 1980s and now is not common. Its time-series patter is centred on either zero or a large value. Chapter 2 develops a two-stage takeover game. In the first stage of this two-stage game, each bidder simultaneously acquires a toehold. In the second stage, bidders observe acquired toehold sizes, and process this information to update their beliefs about rival's private valuation. Then each bidder competes to win the target under a sealed-bid second-price auction. Different from previous toehold puzzle literature focusing on toehold bidding costs in the form of target managerial entrenchment, this chapter develops a two-stage takeover game and points another possible toehold bidding cost - the opportunity loss of a profitable resale. Chapter 2 finds that, under some conditions, there exists a partial pooling Bayesian equilibrium, in which low-value bidders optimally avoid any toehold, while high-value bidders pool their decisions at one size. The equilibrium toehold acquisition strategies coincide with the bimodal distribution of the actual toehold purchasing behaviour. Chapter 3 studies the problem of optimal design of voting rules when each agent faces binary choice. The designer is allowed to use any type of non-transferable penalty on individuals in order to elicit agents' private valuations. And each agent's private valuation is assumed to be independently distributed. Early work showed that the simple majority rule has good normative properties in the situation of binary choice. However, their results relay on the assumption that agents' preferences have equal intensities. Chapter 3 shows that, under reasonable assumptions, the simple majority is the best voting mechanism in terms of utilitarian efficiency, even if voters' preferences are comparable and may have varying intensities. At equilibrium, the mechanism optimally assigns zero penalty to every voter. In other words, the designer does not extract private information from any agent in the society, because the expected penalty cost of eliciting private information to select the better alternative is too high. Chapter 4 presents a package bidding mechanism whose subgame perfect equilibrium outcomes coincide with the core of an underlying strictly convex transferable utility game. It adopts the concept of core as a competitive standard, which enables the mechanism to avoid the well-known weaknesses of VCG mechanism. In this mechanism, only core allocations generate subgame perfect equilibrium payoffs, because non-core allocations provide arbitrage opportunities for some players. By the strict convexity assumption, the implementation of the core is achieved in terms of expectation.
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Tian, Nan. "Military spending, economic growth and endogeneity a panel analysis 1988-2010." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11178.
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Includes bibliographical references.This paper examines the impact of military expenditure on economic growth on a large balanced panel, using an exogenous growth model and dynamic panel data methods for 104 countries over the period 1988-2010. The prime objective of the paper is to consider the possibility of non-linearity, group heterogeneity and endogeneity within the sample. Having estimated and appraised a full sample, it is stratified based upon a range of potentially relevant factors; different levels of income, conflict experience, natural resource abundance, openness and aid. Following the stratification process, a set of instrumental variables are taken for military spending. Using 2SLS and a dynamic Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method, the sample is regressed to identify for military expenditure.
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Suarez, Moran Eugenia. "Three essays in applied economics." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/17717/.
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In this thesis I present three essays that explore various economic situations on strategic choices from different perspectives: the individuals’ strategic decision to work on the informal/formal sector, the US strategic decision on the provision of foreign aid, and the firm’s strategic decision to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The first essay presents an analysis on the effect of income taxes and its effect on worker’s transitions towards informality. We find that an increase in average tax rate leads to a statistically significant increase in transitions towards informality for women and those with low incomes. The second essay offers evidence of how patterns of US foreign aid to Latin America differ from aid allocation observed elsewhere. We find that while political institutions and events in recipient countries greatly influence US aid allocations, the ideological orientation of US administrations can explain part of the divergent patters of aid towards Latin America. Finally, the third essay studies two possible mechanisms that affect the decision of a firm to engage in CSR: the role of growth in value added and workers’ preferences. The results suggest that firms engage in CSR in times of economic prosperity; peer effects are increasingly important in a firm’s decision to engage in CSR when the proportion of firms within an industry increases. And finally, I find a weak link between workers’ preferences and a firm’s decision to engage in CSR activities related with diversity.
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SACCAL, ALESSANDRO. "Essays in applied macroeconomics." Doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata", 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2108/208145.
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A representative agent dynamic stochastic general equilibriummodel is to be exploited so as to encapsulate,
within one single framework, news oriented permanent and transitory technology shocks as well
as noise ones. Real news driven long-run effect aside, the channel by which such are to encroach upon
short-run production and consumption, and, thereby, replicate the germane multifarious empirical growth
patterns, is to be a labour augmenting and consumption amplifying signal coalescence empowered up to a
finite volition degree, altogether representing the so-called confidence, to itself influence the representative
intermediate goods production function as well as the representative household utility function. In such a
way, all empirical economic activity responses to confidence shocks, to be normally captured by reduced
form empirical VARs, are to be well reproduced, thus facilitating prediction and forecasting tasks. An empirical
application to Western Europe, whereby orthogonalised impulse response functions in real activity
upon consumer confidence shocks are to be appraised alongside forecast error variance decompositions
and a panel data regression to account for the underlying causes behind confidence, is to, in fact, be
conducted. Moreover, proof in favour the following contentions is provided: a V AR(p) in the measurable
linear state-space system transition entries is to always be obtained upon full non-expected endogenous
model variables measurability; a new structural shocks canonical empirical recovery check (SCERC) is
to exist upon symmetric non-expected endogenous model variables measurability and immeasurability;
upon asymmetric measurability and immeasurability thereof a standby minimal linear state-space system
representation to the literature is to exist; Matlab suite DSGE solver Dynare is to generate non-minimal
state-space systems.
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Martins, Abreu Luis Carlos. "Essays in Applied Economic Theory of Online News and Networks." Thesis, Toulouse 1, 2022. http://www.theses.fr/2022TOU10015.
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Le premier chapitre de cette thèse considère une entreprise de médias financée par la publicité qui choisit l'emplacement idéologique de ses nouvelles et cible les consommateurs qui peuvent partager les nouvelles avec leurs abonnés sur les médias sociaux. Après avoir étudié comment l'incitation de chaque consommateur ciblé à partager les nouvelles est façonnée par l'emplacement des nouvelles et la distribution des emplacements idéologiques de ses abonnés, nous étudions la stratégie de l'entreprise pour maximiser l'étendue du partage des nouvelles et constatons que lorsque la moyenne (respectivement, la variance) des localisations idéologiques des suiveurs est une fonction convexe (respectivement concave) de la localisation d'un consommateur ciblé, l'entreprise est susceptible de produire des informations polarisées.Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous considérons une plate-forme monopolistique fournissant un continuum de contenus différenciés verticalement et étudions la conception des contrats de filtrage optimaux lorsque les consommateurs ont des types binaires. Un contrat précise un ensemble de contenus, un prix et si la consommation de contenus fait ou non l'objet d'une publicité. Nous distinguons les allocations de contenu descendantes des allocations ascendantes et permettons le regroupement d'informations d'un ensemble de contenus. Nous constatons que la publicité peut inciter la plate-forme à utiliser une allocation ascendante pour les consommateurs de type faible, tandis que les contrats basés sur un abonnement utilisent toujours des allocations descendantes. La publicité a tendance à inciter la plateforme à augmenter la quantité de contenu consommée en recourant au regroupement d'informations, ce qui augmente le surplus du consommateur. Lorsque la consommation de contenu ne peut pas être subventionnée par un prix négatif, la plateforme peut trouver optimal de proposer un contrat freemium, qui étend (réduit) l'ensemble de consommation, par rapport au cas de la subvention à la consommation, pour des allocations ascendantes (allocations descendantes ) et augmente (réduit) ainsi le surplus du consommateur. Enfin, lorsque les types élevés subissent une nuisance publicitaire plus importante que les types faibles, la plate-forme peut avoir une incitation socialement excessive à montrer de la publicité aux types faibles afin d'extraire la rente d'information des types élevés.Dans le troisième chapitre, nous étudions les réseaux de licences de brevets à l'équilibre qui surgissent entre des entreprises concurrentes symétriques. Nous envisageons des accords de licence qui ne peuvent pas spécifier de redevances mais qui peuvent utiliser des frais fixes et se concentrer sur des réseaux efficaces sur le plan bilatéral. Nous constatons que le réseau complet, qui génère le résultat le plus compétitif, est toujours efficace bilatéralement. Lorsqu'il y a trois firmes symétriques, nous fournissons une caractérisation complète de tous les réseaux de licences bilatéralement efficaces. Lorsque les brevets sont indépendants, nous constatons que le réseau en étoile menant au monopole n'est jamais bilatéralement efficace. En particulier, lorsque la réduction des coûts du brevet est suffisamment importante, il y a un grand contraste : bien qu'un accord de licence multilatéral permette aux entreprises de mettre en œuvre le résultat du monopole, le réseau complet est l'unique réseau bilatéralement efficace. Nous fournissons une condition générale dans laquelle le réseau complet est à la fois le résultat unique efficace sur le plan bilatéral et le résultat unique de maximisation des profits de l'industrie pour un nombre donné d'entreprises. Nos résultats offrent des implications politiques claires en faveur des licences à prix fixe par rapport aux licences à tarif en deux parties, y compris les redevancesThe first chapter of this thesis considers an ad-financed media firm that chooses the ideological location of its news and targets consumers who can share the news with their followers on social media. After studying how each targeted consumer's incentive to share the news is shaped by the location of the news and the distribution of her followers’ ideological locations, we study the firm's strategy to maximize the breadth of news sharing and find that when the mean (respectively, the variance) of the followers' ideological locations is a convex (respectively, concave) function of a targeted consumer's location, the firm is likely to produce polarized news.In the second chapter, we consider a monopoly platform providing a continuum of vertically differentiated content and study the design of the optimal screening contracts when consumers have binary types. A contract specifies a set of content, a price and whether or not the content consumption is subject to advertising. We distinguish top-down content allocations from bottom-up allocations and allow for informational bundling of a content set. We find that advertising can induce the platform to use bottom-up allocation for low-type consumers while subscription-based contracts always use top-down allocations. Advertising tends to induce the platform to expand the amount of content consumed by resorting to informational bundling, which increases consumer surplus. When content consumption cannot be subsidized by a negative price, the platform may find it optimal to offer a freemium contract, which expands (reduces) the consumption set, relative to the case of consumption subsidy, for bottom-up allocations (top-down allocations) and thereby increases (reduces) consumer surplus. Finally, when high types experience larger ad nuisance than low types, the platform may have a socially excessive incentive to show advertising to low types in order to extract the information rent of high types.In the third chapter, we study equilibrium patent licensing networks that arise among symmetric competing firms. We consider licensing agreements that cannot specify royalties but can use fixed fees and focus on bilaterally-efficient networks. We find that the complete network, which generates the most competitive outcome is always bilaterally efficient. When there are three symmetric firms, we provide a complete characterization of all bilaterally-efficient licensing networks. When patents are independent, we find that the star network leading to monopoly is never bilaterally efficient. In particular, when the cost reduction from patent is large enough, there is a big contrast: although a multilateral licensing agreement allows the firms to implement the monopoly outcome, the complete network is the unique bilaterally-efficient network. We provide a general condition under which the complete network is both the unique bilaterally-efficient outcome and the unique industry-profit-maximizing outcome for any given number of firms. Our results offer clear-cut policy implications in favor of fixed-fee licensing relative to two-part tariff licensing including royalties
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Knoll, Martin [Verfasser]. "Economic Assistance Modalities in Bi- and Multilateral Development Cooperation : Essays in Applied Development Economics / Martin Knoll." Berlin : Freie Universität Berlin, 2013. http://d-nb.info/1037343174/34.
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Dafnos, Stavros. "Five essays in applied economic theory and times series econometrics with applications to accounting and economics." Thesis, Brunel University, 2017. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/15618.
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We employ some of the modern tools of economic theory and time series econometrics to consider a number of economic problems. The communication and coordination problems we study are relevant in accounting, business, economics and finance. The thesis begins by examining the behaviour of people and organisations, who are supposed to share a common goal. Then it considers the equilibriating mechanisms of behaviour by groups of economic agents, who usually have conflicting interests. We apply the tools of non-cooperative game theory, which constitutes a large part of modern economic theory. In the sequel, we address the question of why people behave the way they do in their economic a↵airs. Peoples' economic behaviour is mirrored in the aggregates of macroeconomics. We propose a Time Varying Autoregressive model to study the movements in the five main macroeconomic variables. The methods come from standard Time Series Analysis, but we do introduce some innovative time series techniques. Finally, we conduct an empirical investigation of the movements in one of the five main macroeconomic variables, the rate of inflation. Among the econometric tools employed are standard Autoregressive models (AR), Autoregressive Distributed Lag models (ADL) and the more recent Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) methodology.
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Poupakis, Stavros. "Three essays in applied microeconometrics." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/22028/.
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Chapter 1 develops a specification test for a single index binary outcome model in semi-parametric estimation. The semiparametric estimator examined does not rely on any distributional assumption, but it still relies on the single-index assumption. The violation of this assumption creates a source of heteroscedasticity. I extend a set of attractive LM statistics, constructed using auxiliary regressions for the case of logit and probit models, to the semiparametric environment. I derive its asymptotic distribution and show that is has well-behaved finite properties in a Monte Carlo experiment. An empirical example is also provided. Chapter 2 proposes a novel estimation strategy that accounts for asynchronous fieldwork, often found in multi-country surveys. The resulting biases are substantial and this is likely to provide misleading cross-country comparisons. I highlight the importance of accounting for the heterogeneity induced by seasonality in the context of regression modelling in order to obtain unbiased comparisons. This is illustrated with a comparison between a synchronous national survey and an asynchronous cross-national one. Chapter 3, joint work with Thomas Crossley and Peter Levell, proposes a novel estimator useful for data combination. Researchers are often interested in the relationship between two variables, with no available data set containing both. For example, surveys on income and wealth are often missing consumption data. A common strategy is to use proxies for the dependent variable that are common to both surveys to impute the dependent variable into the data set containing the independent variable. We consider the consequences of estimating a regression with an imputed dependent variable, and how those consequences depend on the imputation procedure adopted. We show that an often used procedure is biased, and offer both a correction and refinements that improve precision. We illustrate these with a Monte Carlo study and an empirical application.
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Randle, Paul Matthew. "Essays in applied microeconomic theory : crime and defence." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2899/.
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The first part of this thesis is concerned with tax competition when the tax receipts fund an anti-crime measure. Both the capital and criminals are mobile between two jurisdictions. The resulting pure strategy Nash equilibrium tax rates are distorted from the optimal tax by the equilibrium migration response of the rich; if positive at the equilibrium then tax competition will result in taxes that are too high whilst if it is negative taxes will be too low compared to the optimum. The best response functions of the model are tested using data from England and Wales. The possibility that they engage in tax competition cannot be ruled out. It is possible for a central government to devolve tax raising powers without the distortion occurring if they can impose an optimal sanction. This, though, is independent of the harm caused by the crime and could be politically difficult to introduce. The second part looks at the Ministry of Defence’s procurement policy since 1985. The role of competition has increased but scant attention was played to the trade-off between maximising the benefits of current competition and obtaining future competition. The Ministry of Defence always chose to take the benefits in the short term arguing any loss of competition merely eliminated excess capacity which the Ministry of Defence would no longer have to pay for. Whilst the empirics suggest this is true during the 1990s, the problems encountered on the Type 45 project at the start of the millennium demonstrate the difficulties they have in procuring given the limited number of domestic firms they can contract with. An alternative mechanism of directed buys, with recourse to a competitive market off the equilibrium path, is suggested as a way in which the Ministry of Defence can preserve competition into the future.
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Nazare, Ronaldo. "Essays in applied factor analysis with structural breaks." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2013. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/360375/.
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Iregui, Ana María. "Three essays on multiregional applied general equilibrium modelling." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1999. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110878/.
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In this thesis three policy issues that are of particular relevance in the economic debate are analysed using multiregional CGE models. The first of these issues is related to the welfare effects of the decentralised provision of quasi-private goods by the government. The second issue refers to the exportation of domestic taxes from developed to developing countries. And, the third issue is related to the efficiency gains from the elimination of global restrictions on international labour mobility. Two types of multiregional CGE models can be distinguished. The first type of models disaggregates the national economy into regions, whereas in the second type, regions consist of countries or groups of countries. In this thesis both types of models are used. Chapter 2 quantifies the welfare effects of decentralisation in Colombia, using a multiregional CGE model. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate to what extent will the Colombian population be better off when goods such as health and education, are delivered locally as against centrally. A provision scheme based on the median voter is considered. Neither multiregional CGE models nor schemes for public provision of quasi-private goods have been previously applied when assessing the effects of decentralisation. According to the results, the provision of health and education by regional governments improves the welfare of the Colombian population as a whole, since regional governments provide goods and services in a way that better caters to local preferences. More importantly, these welfare gains vary from 1.3% to 2.3% of GDP, a substantial magnitude especially when compared with the efficiency gains associated to the tax reforms of the early nineties. Chapter 3 investigates whether developed countries export taxes to developing countries, contributing to the deterioration of their terms of trade and welfare; that is to what extent the distribution of gains from trade is being affected not by existing tariffs in developed countries, which are already at low levels, but by their domestic taxation. An eight-region CGE model for the world economy is used. The results indicate that when factors of production are internationally immobile, developed regions do not export domestic taxes to developing regions. On the contrary, when capital is assumed to be internationally mobile developed region export capital taxes to developing regions. Regardless of the assumptions on international capital mobility, the effects of import tariffs on welfare and terms of trade are larger than those of domestic taxes. Chapter 4 computes the world-wide efficiency gains from the elimination of global restrictions on labour mobility using an eight-region CGE model. A distinctive feature of the analysis is the introduction of a segmented labour market, as two types of labour are considered: skilled and unskilled. According to the results, when labour is a homogeneous factor, the elimination of global restrictions on labour mobility generates world-wide efficiency gains that could be of considerable magnitude. When the labour market is segmented and both skilled and unskilled labour migrate, welfare gains reduce since the benefits and losses of migration are not evenly distributed within each region. When only skilled labour migrates, the world-wide efficiency gains are smaller, since this type of labour represents a small fraction of the labour force in developing regions.
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Dawkins, Christina. "New directions in applied general equilibrium model calibration." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1999. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110874/.
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This thesis develops extensions to current techniques in applied general equilibrium (AGE) model calibration that improve existing practice and expand the use of AGE modelling to economic history applications. Chapter I introduces the thesis. Chapter 2 summarizes the origin and practice of calibration in economics, focussing on its role in AGE modelling. Chapter 3 proposes two related sensitivity analysis procedures for AGE models: calibrated parameter sensitivity analysis (CPSA) and extended sensitivity analysis. Existing sensitivity techniques are incomplete because they only capture the robustness of the model's results to uncertainty in a subset of the parameters, the elasticities. The remaining parameters determine the model's static structure, but are ignored in the sensitivity literature. CPSA fills this gap. When combined with an existing elasticity sensitivity technique in 'extended sensitivity analysis,' CPSA permits sensitivity analysis with respect to uncertainty in the values of all of a model's parameters. Chapter 4 examines the significance of the data adjustments required for calibration. It proposes that the measure of this importance should be the effect of the adjustment algorithm on the statistical properties of the model results. Simulations show that the performance of various algorithms differs significantly under such criteria, and illustrate fora specific policy experiment the link between algorithm performance and the relative magnitudes of the data. The experiments imply that the choice of data adjustment procedure is an important, if neglected, component of calibration. Chapter 5 shows how AGE techniques can be adapted to explore decompositional issues in economic history. By incorporating information about the combined effect of several shocks to an economy in calibration, AGE models can quantify the relative contributions to change of each shock. Furthermore, the effects ol shocks are non-additive, so that the marginal contribution of a shock is conditional on the presence or absence of other shocks. Chapter 6 concludes.
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Blanchenay, Patrick. "Essays in applied microeconomics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/816/.
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This thesis addresses three questions using the same tool of microeconomic modelling. In the first chapter (joint with Emily Farchy), I examine the role of individual’s decision to acquire broad versus specialist knowledge. I show that a worker can afford to become more specialized on a narrower set of skills by relying on other workers for missing skills. This yields a new explanation of the urban wage premium, and in particular of why workers tend to be more productive in bigger cities, where the existence of better networks of workers provides more incentives to acquire specialized skills. This conclusion matches well established empirical findings on workers’ productivity in the literature. In the second chapter, I look at the dynamics of human capital acquisition over time and show the possibility of what I term a social poverty trap. Namely, parents who do not instil in their offspring the culture of social cooperation (modeled as a higher discount rate) deny them the possibility of future good outcomes; in turn, this new generation will be unable to invest resources in the socialization of their offspring, and so on. This creates a poverty trap where some dynasties are stuck in a bad equilibrium. In the last chapter, I model political parties campaigning on different issues to voters with limited attention. I assume that the relative salience of the different issues depend on how much time parties devote to each issue. In this setting, I show that campaigning might result in excessive focus on divisive issues (for political differentiation) to the detriment of Pareto-improving ones.
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Rialland, P. C. R. P. "Three essays in applied microeconomics." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/23688/.
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This thesis focuses on three vulnerable groups in Europe that have recently been highlighted both in media and in the economics literature; and that are policy priorities. Chapter 1 is a joint work with Giovanni Mastrobuoni which focuses on prisoners and peer effects in prison. Studies that estimate criminal peer effects need to define the reference group. Researchers usually use the amount of time inmates overlap in prison, sometimes in combination with nationality to define such groups. Yet, there is often little discussion about such assumptions, which could potentially have important effects on the estimates of peer effects. We show that the date of rearrest of inmates who spend time together in prison signals with some error co-offending, and can thus be used to measure reference groups. Exploiting recidivism data on inmates released after a mass pardon with a simple econometric model which adjusts the estimates for the misclassification errors, we document homophily in peer group formation with regards to age, nationality, and degrees of deterrence. There is no evidence of homophily with respect to education and employment status. Chapter 2 evaluates a policy in the English county of Essex that aims to reduce domestic abuse through informing high-risk suspects that they will be put under higher surveillance, hence increasing their probability of being caught in case of recidivism, and encouraging their victims to report. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), it underlines that suspects that are targeted by the policy are more 9% more likely to be reported again for domestic abuse. Although increasing reporting is widely seen as essential to identify and protect victims, this paper shows that policies to increase reporting will deter crime only if they give rise to a legal response. Moreover, results highlight that increasing the reporting of events of that do not lead to criminal charges may create escalation and be more detrimental to the victim in the long run. Chapter 3 investigates how migrants in the United Kingdom respond to natural disasters in their home countries. Combining a household panel survey of migrants in the United Kingdom and natural disasters data, this paper first shows, in the UK context, that male migrants are more likely to remit in the wake of natural disasters. Then, it underlines that to fund remittances male migrants also increase labour supply, decrease monthly savings and leisure. By showing how migrants in the UK adjust their economic behaviours in response to an unexpected shocks i.e. natural disasters, this paper demonstrates both how UK migrants may fund remittances and that they have the capacity to adjust their economic behaviours to increase remittances.