The goal of this dissertation is to improve our understanding of the driving forces behind short-term movements in important aggregate variables such as exports, imports, the trade balance, output, investment, and employment. The first chapter contrasts the cyclical behavior of the trade balance and trade flows in a group of...
This dissertation consists of three essays on the identification analysis of econometric models.
The first essay explores the identification question in semiparametric binary response models when all regressors have discrete support. I suggest a recursive procedure that finds sharp bounds on the parameter of interest and can be applied to...
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....
Several semiparametric estimators recently developed in the econometrics literature are based on the rank correlation between the dependent and explanatory variables. Examples include the maximum rank correlation estimator (MRC) of Han (1987), the monotone rank estimator (MR) of Cavanagh and Sherman (1998), the pairwise-difference rank estimators (PDR) of Abrevaya (2003),...
The expansion of public education at the beginning of the twentieth century had a profound effect on the American economy. This dissertation explores the impact of changing educational institutions on both individuals and communities with a study of Iowa during its introduction of modern grammar schools and high schools during...
This dissertation develops dynamic models to examine markets with product differentiation where both firm conduct and consumer behavior is jointly influenced by switching costs, network effects and technological innovation. In Chapter 1 I propose a structural model of competition where firms set prices, introduce new products and scrap obsolete models....
This study investigates the causes and welfare consequences of unravelling in two-sided matching markets. "Unravelling" arises when agents contract with one another at an early stage, before much of the relevant information is available. Such early matches may lead to ex-post inefficiencies and are perceived as socially harmful. This study...
In this thesis, I study the effects of spillovers in all-pay auctions and the effects ofregulating wages and hours on the labor market. In the first chapter, I study a model of
asymmetric all-pay auctions with spillovers. In this model, players compete for a prize, and
the sunk effort players...
Many estimation and inference procedures rely on asymptotic approximations for quantities that are unknown to researchers. While often convenient, such approximations can be poor in practice, even when the number of observations is ostensibly large. One response is to eschew asymptotics in favor of finite sample bounds. While remarkable progress...
This dissertation consists of three chapters about education policies in developing countries. The first chapter examines two extrapolation approaches to make out-of-sample predictions using cash transfer experiments in Malawi and Morocco. The second chapter evaluates India's workfare program in terms of targeting efficiency and effects on school enrollment, in comparison...