Two Essays in Public Economics PDF Download

Author: Marianne Frances Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

View

Book Description

Author: Marianne Frances Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 424

View

Book Description

Author: Xiandeng Jiang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781369138955
Category : Campaign funds
Languages : en
Pages : 109

View

Book Description
This dissertation contains two self-contained chapters. Although each essay examines a different question and each contributes to several distinct bodies of literatures, the essays are linked by findings and implications related to public economics. The first chapter contributes to dynamic contest theory by examining the effects of a relative performance based-prize scheme on the expected effort and the final results in best-of-N contests. The second chapter investigates the relation between a sitting governor's popularity and the incumbent's tax policy choices. Chapter 1 contributes to existing literature on contest and tournament. It examines the effects of a relative performance prize scheme on participants' efforts and final results in best-of-N contests. In most best-of-N contests the winner-take-all scheme is widely used to allocate prizes. Under this scheme, the prizes are awarded only to the winning individual or group. Each participant's incentive in a round is highly related to outcomes of previous rounds. If a participant losses several early rounds and has little chance of winning the contest, he or she may no longer continue to exert effort in subsequent rounds. Chapter 1 first develops a two-player best-of-N contest model with a relative performance prize scheme under which prizes are distributed based on the participants' relative performance. The essay then contrasts this model's efficiency to the winner-take-all scheme. In a simplified best-of-three contest model it is found that the relative performance prize scheme increases the participants' expected effort level only in certain conditions; furthermore, the relative performance prize scheme lowers the expected total effort of the entire contest relative to the winner-take-all scheme. Moreover, the model suggests that, contrasted with the winner-take-all scheme, the relative performance scheme raises the expected number of sets played in contests. Empirically, the first chapter investigates these theoretical predictions using a volleyball dataset from FIVB (Federation Internationale de Volleyball) World League and FIVB World Grand Prix between 2004 and 2013. The results indicate that the relative performance prize scheme only intensifies effort exerted by the participating teams; however, it does not significantly affect final results in the contest. The second chapter contributes to the literature of political competition and the policy choices of public officials. The chapter discusses whether, and to what degree, a governor's popularity affects his or her tax policies. The model predicts that holding high levels of popularity lead a governor to tend to adopt tax policies arguably contrary to the interests of independent voters. In the empirical analysis, each governor's popularity is measured by an index that was developed for this study and based on the results of presidential and gubernatorial elections. The analysis investigates the impact of a governor's popularity on her or his tax policies between 1970 and 2010. The results support the prediction that high levels of popularity may induce governors to act contrary to the interests of voters. The chapter also finds that popular Democratic governors have more incentives to increase corporate taxes while popular Republican governors are more likely to raise sales taxes. Further analysis suggests that popular term-limited governors are more likely to increase total taxes than their counterparts who are eligible for re-election. In addition to explaining the role of popularity in incumbents' policy choices, these findings improve our understanding of the interaction between voters' behavior and the political attitude of public officials in a representative democracy. In conclusion, this dissertation examines three relevant questions in public economics. The essays not only develop comprehensive theoretical frameworks for these questions but also provide abundant supporting empirical evidence for the theoretical predictions. Addressing these questions both enhances our understanding of several contemporary real-world issues and provides theoretical and practical implications for further work linking social interests and economic policies.

Author: Yu Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 216

View

Book Description
This dissertation consists of two essays. The common theme is Public Economics: to understand the effects of government policies in order to improve their design and to understand how special interest groups affect the local fiscal policies.

Author: Margarita M. Kalamova
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN: 9783631621394
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 131

View

Book Description
The essays of this book are contributions to the empirical Literature in International Trade and Public Economics. They deal with the relationship between the structure and quality of the public sector and the process of economic integration. Two of the essays add to the empirical determinants of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) and to the numerous applications of the theory of government decentralization. Decentralization tends to discourage inward FDI and domestic trade and to increase imports and exports. A third essay focuses on the effect of governments' intangible assets - such as consumer perceptions about countries and products from these countries - on FDI. A country's nation brand is shown to have a significant and large positive effect on investment flows.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 426

View

Book Description
This dissertation explores three questions in empirical public economics: we investigate the impact of social networks on labour market outcomes in the first essay; we explore the determinants of volunteering behaviour and estimate the effect of employment on volunteering in the second essay; and we examine the impact of political and fiscal decentralization on public provision in the third essay. In each case, we provide consistent estimates by utilizing an exogenous source of variation in key economic outcomes introduced by randomized policy experiments in the first two essays and by a natural experiment in the third essay. In the first essay, we find that among social networks, weak ties have a significant effect on labour market outcomes but strong ties do not have. In the second essay, we find that employment has a significant effect on volunteering behaviour, and that the effect varies in different contexts and depends on the precise channels through which the two are connected. In the final essay, we find that decentralization has a big effect on public provision. But we also find that decentralization affects different public goods differently, and that the key to its impact lies in the incentives facing politicians at the local level.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789189081567
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description

Author: Matias Giaccobasso Amorena
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
This dissertation is comprised of a series of essays in public economics, development economics, labor economics, and behavioral economics, that provide a comprehensive illustration of the core of my research agenda. In the first paper, Ifocus on the transfer side of public economics. More specifically, I study the effects of a cash transfer program on individuals' transition to adulthood. In the second and third papers, I focus on the taxation side of public economics. In the second paper, I focus on top-income earners and how they react to a change in the top personal income tax rates. Finally, in the third paper, I focus on how individuals make their tax compliance decisions, in particular, in the role of tax morale mechanisms. Collectively, this series of essays contribute to building our understanding of how individuals interact with tax and transfer policies. Empirical evidence on these interactions are key inputs for the discussion of optimal policy design.

Author: Michael Chirico
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

View

Book Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters on topics in public economics. The first chapter examines the labor market for public school teachers in Wisconsin. By stitching together publicly available cross-sectional data to form a 20-year panel of teachers, I am able to replicate and extend the work of Hanushek, Kain and Rivkin who performed a similar analysis in Texas. The main takeaway is that teachers appear to select on wages, but that student characteristics appear more important in predicting teacher churn. In the second chapter, I present short-term analysis of a randomized-controlled trial designed to test the efficacy of active learning methods for teaching intermediate calculus to first-year college students. The results were in- conclusive, suggesting substantial heterogeneity in student preferences and aptitudes for different styles of learning. The final chapter presents the analysis of a large-scale randomized-controlled trial evaluating the potential for messaging-based nudges to elicit increased real estate tax compliance in Philadelphia. Our primary conclusions are that most proposed messaging strategies are indistinguishable from a plainly-worded reminder bill (the exception being consequentialist letters threatening repercussive action absent compliance), but that the saliency per se of a plainly-worded bill can induce late payers to remunerate more quickly.

Author: R. H. Coase
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226111032
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

View

Book Description
How do economists tackle the problems of the economic system and give advice on public policy? Nobel laureate R.H. Coase reflects on some of the most fundamental concerns of economists over the past two centuries. In 15 essays, Coase explore the history and philosophy of economics and evaluates the contributions of a number of outstanding figures.