Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Chapter 1 analyzes how pre-play communication and evolution together do or do not lead to socially efficient equilibria in 2 x 2 symmetric coordination games. In our evolutionary dynamics, there are committed players who can choose only one particular action of the base game, as well as those players who can choose message contingent actions, and the evolution in the choice of message is faster than the evolution in actions. We show the Pareto efficient equilibria are selected if and only if the base game satisfies the self-signalling condition, which means that a player has an incentive to convince the opponent that he is going to play the Pareto efficient equilibrium strategy if and only if he is actually planning to play that strategy. Chapter 2 analyzes a stochastic evolutionary dynamics of Kandori-Mailath-Rob (1993) in Spence's job-market signaling model. In contrast to Nldeke and Samuelson's (1997) analysis which showed the Riley equilibrium is selected only if it is undefeated, we show that the Riley equilibrium is always selected. The key which makes this difference is how mutations affect players' behavior. While Noldeke and Samuelson allow a single mutation to change players' actions drastically, we consider a model where players change behavior only slightly if the number of mutations is small. Chapter 3 analyzes pure strategy Markov perfect equilibria in two player asynchronous choice repeated games where the stage game is a 2 x 2 game. We show that Markov perfect equilibrium leads players to behave differently from the static Nash equilibrium in some environments, while in other environment it gives equilibrium selection results. / by Kenichi Amaya. / Ph.D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics. Thesis. 1971. Ph.D. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 596-612. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2014. / Title as it appears in MIT commencement exercises program, June 6, 2014: Essays in labor economics Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 135-141). / This thesis consists of three chapters on aspects of labor market inequality. In chapter 1, I estimate the dynamic effects of federal affirmative action regulation, exploiting variation in the timing of regulation and deregulation across work establishments. I find that affirmative action sharply increases the black share of employees, with the share continuing to increase over time: five years after an establishment is first regulated, its black share of employees increased by an average of 0.8 percentage points. Strikingly, the black share continues to grow even after an establishment is deregulated. Building on the canonical Phelps (1972) model of statistical discrimination, I argue that this persistence is in part driven by affirmative action inducing employers to increase the precision with which they screen potential employees. I then provide supporting evidence. In chapter 2, I study the spatial mismatch hypothesis, which proposes that job suburbanization isolates blacks from work opportunities and depresses black employment. Using synthetic panel methods and variation across metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2000, I find that for every 10% decline in the fraction of metropolitan area jobs located in the central city, black employment (earnings) declined by 1.4-2.1% (1.1-2.3%) relative to white employment (earnings). This relationship is driven primarily by job suburbanization that occurred during the 1970's. To address the potential endogeneity of suburbanization, I exploit exogenous variation in highway construction and find that highways cause job suburbanization and declines in black relative employment in a manner consistent with spatial mismatch. In chapter 3, joint work with Isaiah Andrews, we analyze the effect of heterogeneity on the widely used analyses of Baily (1978) and Chetty (2006) for optimal social insurance. The basic Baily-Chetty formula is robust to heterogeneity along many dimensions but requires that risk aversion be homogeneous. We extend the Baily-Chetty framework to allow for arbitrary heterogeneity across agents, particularly in risk preferences. We find that heterogeneity in risk aversion affects welfare analysis through the covariance of risk aversion and consumption drops, which measures the extent to which larger risks are borne by more risk tolerant workers. Calibrations suggest that this covariance effect may be large. / by Conrad Miller. / Ph. D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics and Social Science. Thesis. 1965. Ph.D. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Christopher Joseph Mayer. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis, which consists of three essays, uses empirical methods to study questions in criminal procedure and employment antidiscrimination law. The first chapter measures the consequences for offenders of expanding constitutional criminal jury trial rights. I study the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000), which extended beyond-a-reasonable-doubt jury factfinding (and all the costs and complications it entails) to particular facts previously decided by judges using a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. The limited holding of Apprendi and the calculations required by the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines allow me to compare changes in the sentence lengths of groups of offenders who were differentially affected by the decision. I find that this expansion of jury trial rights benefited criminal offenders, reducing the average sentence for those most affected by more than 5 percent. The second chapter studies the prosecutorial charging response to the Supreme Court's Apprendi decision. / (cont.) Using federal arrest, charging, and sentencing data to evaluate prosecutorial behavior, I find evidence that prosecutors reacted to the higher costs of factfinding by reducing the number of counts filed against affected defendants by as much as 10 percent, presumably magnifying the sentence reduction that would have occurred had prosecutors not substituted charging resources toward unaffected defendants. The third chapter, co-authored with Christine Jolls, examines the employment consequences of the American's with Disabilities Act's (ADA) two major features-the discrimination prohibition and the "reasonable accommodations" requirement. Several studies have suggested that the passage of the ADA might have reduced employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities, but which particular feature or features of the ADA, if any, caused this disemployment effect are unknown. / (cont.) Using state-level variation in pre-ADA legal regimes to separately estimate the employment effects of the ADA's two substantive provisions, we find strong evidence that the immediate post-enactment employment effects of the ADA are attributable to the reasonable accommodations mandate rather than the firing costs associated with the antidiscrimination provision. Moreover, the pattern of effects across states suggests, contrary to prior findings, that declining disabled employment after the immediate post-ADA period may reflect factors other than the ADA. / by James J. Prescott. / Ph.D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 32-33). / This thesis, joint with F. Mezzanotti, provides a lower bound for the extent of strategic voting. Voters are strategic if they switch their vote from their favorite candidate to one of the main contenders in a tossup election. High levels of strategic voting are a concern for the representativity of democracy and the allocation efficiency of government goods and services. Recent work in economics has estimated that up to 80% of voters are strategic. We use a clean quasi experiment to highlight the shortcomings of previous identification strategies, which fail to fully account for the strategic behavior of parties. In an ideal experiment we would like to observe two identical votes with exogenous variation in the party victory probability. Among world parliamentary democracies 104 have a unique Chamber, 78 have two Chambers with different functions, and only one nation has two Chambers with the same identical functions: Italy. This allows us to observe two identical votes and therefore a valid counterfactual. In addition, the majority premia are calculated at the national level for the Congress ballot and at the regional level for the Senate ballot. This provides exogenous variation in the probability of victory. Because the two Chambers have identical functions, a sincere voter should vote for the same coalition in the two ballots. A strategic voter would instead respond to regions' specific victory probabilities. We combine this intuition with a geographical Regression Discontinuity approach, which allows us to compare voters across multiple Regional boundaries. We find much smaller estimates (5%) that we interpret as a lower bound but argue that it is a credible estimate. We also reconcile our result with the literature larger estimates (35% to 80%) showing how previous estimates could have confounded strategic parties and strategic voters due to the use of a non identical vote as counterfactual. / by Giovanni Reggiani. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis consists of three chapters on Economic Growth and Informational Frictions. Chapter 1 investigates the relation between financial development, R&D expenditure and aggregate growth. It provides empirical evidence that financial development has a large positive effect on both growth and R&D, and that the effect of financial development on growth is likely to be explained by its effect on R&D. I also study a general equilibrium model in with predictions which are consistent with the empirical regularities mentioned above. In particular, aggregate growth increases as financial development increases. The model also predicts that financial development produces large welfare gains, specially at low levels of financial development. Finally I show that the model studied suggests that R&D policy is welfare improving and that policy should be conditional on the level of financial development. Chapter 2 gives an empirical assessment of the world income distribution. In particular, I take a CES production function implied by a Skill-Biased technical change model and fit this production function to the data. The calibration results give evidence of the importance of including different skills to account for the observed income differences over time. I also show that the calibration exercise is validated by the estimated values of the parameters of the model. In Chapter 3 I study a model of entry under uncertainty. In particular, I analyze an economy where potential entrants make entry decisions after receiving noisy signals of the true demand levels for the different sectors of the economy. I show that equilibrium strategies depend on the precision of the signals received by agents. When precision is low the equilibrium of the game is a pure strategy equilibrium where agents enter the sector for which they receive a higher signal. On the other hand when precision is high the optimal strategy is to randomize over which sector to enter. The model also highlights the non-monotonic relations between the discrepancy between the equilibrium and efficient entry levels and both the precision of the signal and the true relative demand between sectors. / by Samuel Pienknagura. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-126). / by Ludwig Boris Chincarini. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-198). / This dissertation consists of four chapters on empirical and experimental macroeconomics and other experimental topics. Chapter 1 uses a laboratory experiment to test the predictions of a dynamic global game designed to capture the role of information and coordination in speculative attacks. The game has a large number of heterogeneously informed agents deciding whether to attack a status quo; the status quo in turn collapses if enough agents choose to attack. The theory predicts that the equilibrium size of the attack is decreasing in both the underlying strength of the status quo and the agents' cost of attacking. Furthermore, the knowledge that the status quo has survived a past attack decreases the incentive to attack, implying that a new attack is possible only if agents receive new information. Our experimental evidence supports these theoretical predictions. We identify the agents' beliefs about the actions of others to be the main channel through which the relative strength of the status quo, the cost of attacking, and learning impact observed behavior. However, we also find that the subject's actions are overly aggressive relative to the theory's predictions. Once again, we find that the excess aggressiveness in actions stems from the aggressiveness of their beliefs about others' actions. Chapter 2 studies gender inequality in performance. One explanation for this inequality is that the genders perform differently under competitive conditions, as previous experimental studies have found a significant gender gap in competitive tasks that are perceived to favor men. We use a verbal task that is perceived to favor women and find no gender difference under competition per se. / (cont.) We also reject the hypothesis that a "stereotype threat" explains the inability of women to improve performance under competition: even in verbal tasks, competition does not increase women's performance. We offer an alternative explanation for this finding: namely, that women and men respond differently to time pressure. With reduced time pressure, competition in verbal tasks greatly increases the performance of women, such that women significantly outperform men. This effect appears largely due to the fact that extra time in a competition improves the quality of women's work, leading them to make fewer mistakes. On the other hand, men use this extra time to increase the quantity of work, which results in a greater number of mistakes. Chapter 3 studies the effects of institutions on development in post-Communist Russia. Even though Russia transitioned to a democratic institutional system in 1991, old Communist institutions persist in some of its regions. These "shadow institutions" have a significant effect on economic outcomes and, in particular, on small business development. We show that regions run by old Communist elites have had lower levels of economic development than regions led by newcomers to the political arena. Chapter 4 uses a laboratory experiment to investigate whether an uninformative announcement by an outsider can help us detect multiplicity in a dynamic global game setting. When theory predicts a unique equilibrium, the announcement should have no effect on behavior. In the presence of multiplicity, the announcement may serve as a coordination device. The experimental results suggest that the effect of the uninformative announcement is significant only in circumstances where information dynamics result in multiple equilibria. Moreover, the announcement seems to impact observed behavior through its effect on the subjects' beliefs about others' actions. / by Olga Shurchkov. / Ph.D.