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Author: James Dennis Herndon Publisher: ISBN: Category : Economics Languages : en Pages : 73
Book Description
In the first essay, I examine the price behavior of consumer goods in the strategically vital country of Pakistan. Results show that prices converge both temporally and spatially. A wage-adjusted Consumer Price Index shows that Pakistani cities have converging costs of living. Finally, a novel measure of cointegration ranks the most and least economically integrated cities. Divergence does not occur along provincial, linguistic, or ethnic boundaries. In the second essay, paper I examine private sector job growth in cities across the United States from 1990 to 2018. Defining "concentration" as a city's sectoral Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, I find that cities with greater economic concentration subsequently experience more job growth than comparable cities with less concentration. However, the skewed distribution of job growth by sector means that cities face a trade-off between risk and reward analogous to an investment portfolio. In the third and final essay, we examine how changes in rainfall affect the persistence of conflict in Africa using fine-grained grid cell level data. Using Markov transition matrices, we examine the persistence of conflict in grid cells across the African continent and the likelihood of transitioning into and out of conflict. We incorporate the Markov probabilities into a panel logit model to analyze how monthly variations in rainfall affect the probability that an area transitions from peace to conflict. We find that peace is highly persistent across Africa, while violence is more transient. We also find that insufficient rainfall early in the wet season is associated with conflict in several regions.
Author: James Dennis Herndon Publisher: ISBN: Category : Economics Languages : en Pages : 73
Book Description
In the first essay, I examine the price behavior of consumer goods in the strategically vital country of Pakistan. Results show that prices converge both temporally and spatially. A wage-adjusted Consumer Price Index shows that Pakistani cities have converging costs of living. Finally, a novel measure of cointegration ranks the most and least economically integrated cities. Divergence does not occur along provincial, linguistic, or ethnic boundaries. In the second essay, paper I examine private sector job growth in cities across the United States from 1990 to 2018. Defining "concentration" as a city's sectoral Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, I find that cities with greater economic concentration subsequently experience more job growth than comparable cities with less concentration. However, the skewed distribution of job growth by sector means that cities face a trade-off between risk and reward analogous to an investment portfolio. In the third and final essay, we examine how changes in rainfall affect the persistence of conflict in Africa using fine-grained grid cell level data. Using Markov transition matrices, we examine the persistence of conflict in grid cells across the African continent and the likelihood of transitioning into and out of conflict. We incorporate the Markov probabilities into a panel logit model to analyze how monthly variations in rainfall affect the probability that an area transitions from peace to conflict. We find that peace is highly persistent across Africa, while violence is more transient. We also find that insufficient rainfall early in the wet season is associated with conflict in several regions.
Author: Arman Khachiyan Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This dissertation contains three essays studying topics in applied microeconomics. The first chapter is a co-authored paper in which we use daytime satellite imagery and convolutional neural networks to model economic growth at the neighborhood level. In the second chapter, I use this model to examine the spatial distribution of residential impacts from fracking. The third chapter investigates methods of measuring skill distance between occupations and proposes a new method which matches patterns of observed occupational transition. Each chapter uses unconventional data sources and machine learning techniques to contribute to central questions in labor economics research and policy. In the first chapter we apply deep learning to daytime satellite imagery to predict changes in income and population at high spatial resolution in US data. Our model predictions achieve R2 values of and 0.32 to 0.46 in decadal changes, which have no counterpart in the literature and are 3-4 times larger than for commonly used nighttime lights. Our network has wide application for analyzing localized economic shocks. One such application is my second chapter, which studies changes in total neighborhood income and population in areas near fracking extraction and shale reserves. My microspatial approach identifies that fracking exposure as far as 20 miles away leads to a 2 percent decline in neighborhood income. The spatial gradient and associated mechanisms of this effect indicate that it is driven by local industrialization rather than direct environmental externalities. Examination reveals margins of policy and labor conditions which attenuate the observed impacts. In the third chapter I show that a regression framework generates a novel, empirical occupational skill distance norm which is disciplined by observed occupation switching patterns. This approach relieves key limitations of existing measures such as linearity and symmetry. It also allows for an analysis of which skill dimensions relate to the portability of human capital, and which do not. Implications for existing results on skill portability are discussed, along with immediate policy applications on employee adjustment costs.
Author: Brandon Joel Tan Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This dissertation consists of three independent essays. The first essay develops an urban spatial model with heterogeneous worker groups and incorporating travel to consume non-tradable goods and services. It estimates the model using detailed farecard and administrative data from Singapore to quantify the impact of the Downtown Line. It estimates large welfare gains for high-income workers, but near zero gains for low-income workers. All workers benefit from improved access to consumption opportunities, but low-income non-tradable sector jobs move to less attractive workplaces. Abstracting away from consumption travel results in a five-fold underestimation of the inequality effects and failure to capture the spatial re-organization of low-income jobs in the city. The second essay studies the consequences of letter grades serving as noisy measures of academic achievement. It exploits a regression-discontinuity design with marks as the running variable and finds that receiving a better grade in a single class results in $32 USD greater monthly earnings post-graduation. The effects are larger than expected from a corresponding cumulative grade point average increase via "employer-signaling", suggesting that future changes in behavior and outcomes may be important. It then finds that marginal students who receive a worse grade take significantly "easier" courses and earn lower grades in future semesters. The third essay uses administrative data from Karnataka, India on the universe of good shipments between any two establishments to measure the extent to which firms own and utilize production links for sourcing physical inputs. It calculates that 11% of input value can be potentially sourced from integrated upstream establishments and that 38% of products are sourced exclusively from within the firm. It compares its methodology to the literature and highlights two sources of bias in previous studies. Finally, it quantifies the extent to which firm boundaries serve as a barrier to trade and looks at factors associated with within-firm sourcing.
Author: Ioana Sofia Pacurar Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
This doctoral dissertation comprises essays in Applied Microeconomics with focus in Health and Regional Economics. The first investigates a neo-classical hospital production model for cost and quality implications by payment source in the context of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The second essay demonstrates positive crime effects induced by Hurricane Katrina population migration. Specifically, the first essay evaluates hospital cost efficiecies emanating from changes in public reimbursement levels and/or shifts in hospital care demand or health care budgets. Using 2000-2008 data from Tennessee Joint Annual Reports of Hospitals, hybrid generalized translog multi-product cost functions were estimated with controls for multi-dimensional quality, diagnostic mix, and hopital heterogeneity. The production technology cost model, accounting for technological change and geographic effects, was estimated using the Iterative Seemingly Unrelated Regression methodology. Factor demand elasticities, alternative conceptual measures of the elasticites of substitution, scale and scope economies were evaluated. This is the first study to quantify opportunities for exploiting scope economies by payer type (e.g., Medicaid/Tenncare with private payers). Policy implications were explored. Using a natural experiment, the second essay tests an empirical link between the forced evacuation and crime types countrywide and in Houston, TX, while avoiding concerns of endogeneity due to selection or simultaneity. Few prior economic studies of Katrina probed impacts on host labor markets or on evacuees' labor and schooling outcomes, overlooking potential effects on local crime in spite of anecdotal evidence. To ensure identification with a Difference-in-Difference specification, the number of evacuees going to a metropolitan area was instrumented by its distance to New Orleans, LA. Katrina immigration was found to rise the incidence of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, and motor vehicle theft. The analysis of Houston post-shelter consequences of Katrina on crime showed increases murder, aggravated assault, illegal possession of weapons, and arson. While the regional analysis was based on the Current Population Survey and data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Houston study used data provided by the Police Department. Robustness checks evaluating self-selection utilized the Displaced New Orleans Resident Pilot survey. It remained undetermined whether the crimes were committed by the evacuees, or triggered by their presence.
Author: Adam Shumway Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The three chapters of this dissertation use tools of applied microeconomics to study topics related to education and regulation. The first chapter, "Where Doctors Work," studies how openings and closures of medical schools in the United States have affected the geographical distribution of doctors. The principal contribution is the construction of a novel dataset based on the American Medical Association's comprehensive physician directories. Using both an individual-level approach and a broad county-level, differences-in-differences strategy, I show that medical school location influences the geographical distribution of doctors, signaling a potential lever for policymakers to address the ongoing shortage of rural physicians.The second chapter, "University Presidencies at a Glance," examines wage-setting in the context of university presidents. Using data from The Chronicle of Higher Education, my coauthors and I study determinants of salary in both public and private settings. University size is the overriding factor in salary considerations, although alumni and internal hires are often willing to take a small cut in wages. Remarkably, universities setting pay for presidents seem to behave similarly to large companies setting pay for CEOs. The final chapter, "Immigrants in the Age of Information: Earnings, Language Skills, and Technology," studies immigrant earnings and how the returns to education vary with language skills. I additionally provide results and summary statistics regarding the expanding female immigrant workforce, which generally mirrors the results for male immigrants, with some notable caveats.
Author: MARIA LUCIA YANGUAS Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 120
Book Description
This dissertation contains three essays in Applied Microeconomics. Chapter 1 provides the first causal estimates of the effect of children's access to computers and the internet on adult educational outcomes such as schooling and choice of major. I exploit cross-cohort variation in access to technology among primary and middle school students in Uruguay, the first country to implement a nationwide one-laptop-per-child program. Despite a notable increase in computer access, educational attainment has not increased. However, college students who had been exposed to the program as children, were more likely to select majors with good employment prospects. Chapter 2 provides the first empirical evidence of the historical effects of natural disasters on economic activity in the United States. Although the literature has focused on salient natural disasters, more than one hounded strike the country every year, causing extensive property destruction and loss of life. My coauthors and I construct an 80 year panel data set that includes the universe of natural disasters in the United States from 1930 to 2010 and study how these shocks affected migration rates, home prices and poverty rates at the county level. Severe disasters increased out-migration rates by 1.5 percentage points and lowered housing prices/rents by 2.5-5.0 percent, but milder disasters had little effect on economic outcomes. Chapter 3 exploits the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, the first successful environmental science book, to investigate whether public information can influence popular demand for environmental regulation. Protecting the environment is often plagued by collective-action problems, so it is important to understand what motivates politicians to act. Combining historical U.S. congressional roll-call votes and census data, I find that the propensity of politicians to vote in favor of pro-environmental regulation increased by 5 to 33 percentage points after the publication of the book. The response to the informational shock varies with the constituency's level of education, income, and exposure to pollution.
Author: James Dennis Herndon
Author: James Dennis Herndon
Author: Carlo Menon
Author: Michail Fragkias
Author: Arman Khachiyan
Author: Brandon Joel Tan
Author: Ioana Sofia Pacurar
Author: Adam Shumway
Author: Masa K. Naito
Author: MARIA LUCIA YANGUAS
Author: Maksim E. Belenkiy