Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-149). / In this thesis, I study the behavior of industrial firms in India in the electricity market and with respect to locational choice and environmental regulation. In the first chapter, I study the competitive effects of transmission infrastructure on market outcomes in the Indian day-ahead electricity market. Transmission constraints may increase local market power by limiting competition across regions. I find that bidders in import-constrained regions do raise bid prices in response to congestion and I simulate the effects of relaxing transmission constraints using a structural model of power-market bidding. The welfare gain from infrastructure expansion is large as a share of market surplus and mostly due to the strategic responses of bidders to a better-integrated market. In the second chapter, I study the agglomeration of manufacturing activity in India. Industry in India is shown to be spatially agglomerated to an extent similar to that observed in the United States and perhaps slightly greater. All the Marshallian forces of linkages in goods, labor and ideas between industries are important for industrial colocation, with hiring similar workers the strongest predictor of coagglomeration patterns. Finally, in the third chapter, my advisors, Esther Duflo and Michael Greenstone, Rohini Pande and I measure the effects of auditor independence on the reliability of reports by third-party environmental auditors and the regulatory compliance of the firms they audit, using a field experiment. We find that a reformed audit system in which auditors were randomly assigned to plants, monitored and given incentives for accuracy greatly improves the accuracy of auditor reporting, as measured by independent backchecks of true pollution levels. Moreover, the treatment plants subject to greater scrutiny under the reformed audit system responded by reducing pollution output relative to the control group. / by Nicholas James Ryan. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-232). / by Thomas-Olivier Nasser. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Doug Staiger. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1983. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY / Bibliography: leaves 169-170. / by Whitney Kent Newey. / Ph.D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics. Thesis. 1968. Ph.D. / Vita. / Bibliography: p. 146-149. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Chapter 1 focuses on corporate governance and business cycles. The delegation of control to insiders fosters initiative but it also gives them the opportunity to expand their firm beyond the profit-maximizing size. When goods markets are imperfectly competitive, firms are too small relative to the social optimum. In such circumstances, insiders' tendency to increase investment, employment and output are at once costly for shareholders and beneficial for the economy. Under plausible assumptions, I show that firms find it optimal to delegate control when demand is high, and that delegation choices provide a powerful amplification mechanism. Finally, the model predicts that an increase in firm volatility can decrease aggregate volatility and I present evidence consistent with this prediction. Chapter 2 studies the implications of higher product market competition and capital market integration for unemployment in Europe. These changes are likely to increase efficiency and output in the long run, but it may take time for economic actors to fully understand them and adapt. In the presence of collective bargaining and slow learning by unions, these changes can generate first a rise, then a decline in unemployment. This fits the general evolution of unemployment in Europe since the 1970s. The speed of learning by unions is likely to depend on the degree of trust between labor and capital. The empirical evidence suggests that countries where trust was lower have had more of an increase, and a later turnaround, in unemployment. Chapter 3 compares the impact of shocks to U.S. interest rates and emerging market bond spreads on domestic interest rates and exchange rates across several emerging market economies with different exchange rate regimes. / (cont.) Consistent with conventional priors, the results indicate that interest rates in Hong Kong react much more to U.S. interest rate shocks and shocks to international risk premia than interest rates in Singapore. The results are less clear-cut in the comparison of Argentina and Mexico: while interest rates in Mexico seem to react less to U.S. interest rate shocks, they react about the same to bond spread shocks, in addition to a significant impact on the exchange rate. / by Thomas Philippon. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-51). / by Luis Antonio Ubeda Rives. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-314). / This thesis contains three chapters which empirically study how dynamic decision making affects the allocation of public resources. In the first chapter, I study the problem of allocating public housing. In the U.S., public housing authorities (PHAs) allocate apartments using a wide range of choice and priority rules. I evaluate how these allocation mechanisms affect the efficiency and redistribution achieved through assignments. Using waiting list data from Cambridge, MA, I estimate a structural model of public housing preferences, finding substantial heterogeneity in applicant outside options and preferred apartment types. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the range of mechanisms used by PHAs involves a significant trade-off between efficiency and redistribution. However, some commonly used mechanisms are never optimal. In the second chapter, joint with Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Michael Rees, and Paulo Somaini, I study the allocation of deceased donor kidneys. In the U.S., patients on the kidney waiting list are offered organs in order of priority, and may decline an offer without penalty. This paper establishes an empirical framework for analyzing the design of these waiting lists. We model the decision to accept an organ as an optimal stopping problem and use waiting list data to estimate the value of accepting various kidneys. We then show how to solve for counterfactual equilibria under different priority rules, and search for mechanisms that improve the match quality of transplants and reduce organ waste. In the third paper, joint with Sydnee Caldwell and Scott Nelson, I investigate how beliefs about risky future income influence households' financial decisions. We quantify one contributor to income uncertainty by surveying low-income tax filers' expectations of and uncertainty about their tax refunds, and link the survey with administrative tax and credit report data. Households face substantial refund uncertainty, and both refund expectations and surprises influence financial behavior. Households borrow in anticipation of their tax refunds, and this pattern is less pronounced for more uncertain households, consistent with precautionary behavior. Surprisingly, positive refund surprises induce higher debt levels by relaxing down-payment collateral constraints. / by Daniel Cane Waldinger. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2010. / "June 2010." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-131). / This dissertation studies the interaction of liquidity and incomplete or asymmetric information. In Chapter 1, I study a dynamic economy with illiquidity due to adverse selection in financial markets. Investment is undertaken by borrowing-constrained entrepreneurs. They sell their past projects to finance new ones, but asymmetric information about project quality creates a lemons problem. The magnitude of this friction responds to aggregate shocks, amplifying the responses of asset prices and investment. Indeed, negative shocks can lead to a complete shutdown in financial markets. I then introduce learning from past transactions. This makes the degree of informational asymmetry endogenous and makes the liquidity of assets depend on the experience of market participants. Market downturns lead to less learning, worsening the future adverse selection problem. As a result, transitory shocks can create highly persistent responses in investment and output. In Chapter 2, I study why firms can choose to be illiquid. Optimal incentive schemes for managers may involve liquidating a firm following bad news. Fragile financial structures, vulnerable to runs, have been proposed as a way to implement these schemes despite their ex-post inefficiency. I show that in general these arrangements result in multiple equilibria and, even allowing arbitrary equilibrium selection, they do not necessarily replicate optimal allocations. However, if output follows a continuous distribution and creditors receive sufficiently precise individual early signals, then there exists a fragile financial structure such that global games techniques select a unique equilibrium which reproduces the optimal allocation. In Chapter 3, I study speculative attacks against illiquid firms. When faced with a speculative attack, banks and governments often hesitate, attempting to withstand the attack but giving up after some time, suggesting they have some ex-ante uncertainty about the magnitude of the attack they will face. I model that uncertainty as arising from incomplete information about speculators' payoffs and find conditions such that unsuccessful partial defenses are possible equilibrium outcomes. There exist priors over the distribution of speculators' payoffs that can justify any possible partial defense strategy. With Normal uncertainty, partial resistance is more likely when there is more aggregate uncertainty regarding agents' payoffs and less heterogeneity among them. / by Pablo Kurlat. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics and Social Science, 1962. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 431-437). / by Albert Joseph Simone. / Ph.D.