Chapter 1: (Bounds on the Counterfactual Revenue Distributions in Auctions with Reserve Prices) In first-price auctions with interdependent bidder values, the distributions of private signals and values cannot be uniquely recovered from bids in Bayesian Nash equilibria. Non-identification invalidates structural analyses that rely on exact identification of the model primitives....
The main theme of this dissertation are departures from standard assumptions in economic theory, specifically, departures from the model of subjective expected utility in decision theory.
Part 1 axiomatizes the robust control criterion of multiplier preferences introduced by Hansen and Sargent (2001). The axiomatization shows that the class of multiplier...
In the first chapter we analyze profits and efficiency implications of a relation between an upstream duopoly and downstream monopoly in Hotelling linear city model. While exclusive contracts maximize the monopolist's profit, at the same time socially they are inefficient. Linear prices, while more efficient, usually also do not achieve...
Perhaps because of the influence of the central limit theorem, it is common for scientists to assume distributions in the real world are singly peaked and unimodal. However, many quantities in nature are actually better represented by multimodal distributions. One must provide an explanation for this disconnect between the central...
This dissertation examines three empirical questions related to human capital in developing countries. Chapter 1 studies the educational and labor market impacts of the telesecundarias, Mexican secondary schools that use televisions to deliver instruction. In areas where there is an insufficient supply of qualified teachers, delivering instruction through technology may...
As the global population grows, consumption of water, energy, and food will also increase, placing stresses on these sectors, raising the importance of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus (WEFN). However, operation of WEFN systems are currently not sustainable. It is thus crucial to design WEFN systems to be sustainable from local to...
I study three topics in applied microeconomics. My first chapter concerns the effect of daily school start times on academic achievement in Florida. Exploiting the sharp discontinuity in school start time relative to sunrise, I track children who move between schools on either side of the time zone boundary in...
Understanding the role of heterogeneity across agents is crucial in predicting how the macroeconomic outcomes are affected by these differences. This dissertation presents three papers in which I study labor market outcomes of different segments of the population according to their choice of education and how labor market characteristics affect...
We tackle two important theoretical problems in macroeconomics and international economics. First, in macroeconomics, especially monetary economics, the models with a standard Taylor rule have multiple equilibria. This multiplicity is problematic since we do not have a theory to determine a price level. We propose a theory to pin down...
This dissertation contains three chapters on two broad topics in labor economics: the determinants of early career outcomes and the impact of an aging population (and related policies). The first chapter investigates how the retirement slowdown among older Americans has affected the labor market prospects of younger Americans in recent...