Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Juan González III. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter explores the effect of Wal-Mart expansion on local retail employment. The phenomenal expansion of Wal-Mart provides a clean case for studying the labor-market effects of increased efficiency. I estimate the effect of Wal-Mart entry on retail employment at the county level. Using an instrumental-variables approach to correct for both measurement error in entry dates and possible endogeneity of the timing of entry, I find that Wal-Mart entry increases retail employment by 100 jobs in the year of entry. Half of this gain disappears over the next five years, leaving a statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs at the five-year horizon. The decline in retail employment in the years immediately following entry is associated with the closing of both small and large retail establishments. At the same time, retail employment in neighboring counties declines by approximately 30 jobs, and wholesale employment in the entered county declines by a similar number. In the second chapter, I explore several differences between the migration and job-search behavior of workers with different levels of education, both theoretically and empirically. I start with two stylized facts. First, the propensity to migrate increases with education. Second, conditional on migration, the probability that a worker moves with a job in hand (rather than moving to search for a job in the new location) also increases with education. I present a simpleconsumer-choice model that captures these facts and generates a number of predictions about differential sensitivity of migration to observed variables by education. These predictions are verified using CPS data. / (cont.) The third chapter documents a small permanent effect of idiosyncratic shocks to agricultural revenues - due to variation in crop yields and crop prices - on the number of farms in the United States. Using county-level data on the number of farms by size and ownership structure (family-owned vs. corporate-owned), I show that following negative deviations from expected revenue, the number of farms declines; this decline is disproportionaly due to a decline in the numbers of small and/or family-owned farms. / by Emek Basker. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation consists of three papers that explore the links between corporate finance and corporate pension policy. The first chapter exploits the funding rules for defined benefit pension plans in order to identify the dependence of corporate investment on internal financial resources. Capital expenditures decline with mandatory pension contributions, even when allowing for very generalized correlations between the pension funding status itself and the firm's unobserved investment opportunities. The effect is particularly evident among firms that appear to face financing constraints based on observable variables such as credit ratings. There is some evidence suggesting that firms which do not sponsor defined benefit pension plans may undertake some of the capital investment that pension sponsors in their industry are unable to take up when required contributions are high. The second chapter tests a corporate control hypothesis to explain why managers might encourage employees to hold company stock in their 401(k) plans. Since employees often vote for incumbent managers in proxy contests, managers may encourage them to hold stock as a defense against a change in corporate control. When a state's laws change to provide more takeover protection for managers, employee ownership of firms incorporated in that state would be expected to decline relative to employee ownership at other firms. I find that the validation of the poison pill through Delaware case law in the mid 1990s had a statistically significant negative effect on employee ownership shares of up to 1.7 percentage points. / (cont.) The third chapter, co-authored with Daniel Bergstresser and Mihir Desai, analyzes variation in firms' assumed long-term rates of return on pension assets. We show that this is a lever that can affect reported earnings and provide evidence that managers use this mechanism opportunistically. The sensitivity of reported earnings to the pension return assumption is an important determinant of the assumption itself. Managers increase assumed rates of return as they prepare to acquire other firms and as to exercise stock options. Decisions about assumed rates of return, in turn, influence asset allocation within pension plans. / by Joshua David Rauh. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis exploits a major overhaul in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care system to answer various questions about publicly-provided health care. The VA restructuring involved the adoption of a capitated payment system and treatment methods based on the managed care model. This reorganization was accompanied by a major expansion in the population eligible to receive VA care. Chapter one analyzes both the efficiency of providing public health care in a managed care setting and the effectiveness of expanding coverage to healthier and wealthier populations. I estimate that between 35 and 70 percent of new take-up of VA care was the result of individuals dropping private health insurance. While utilization of services increased, estimates indicate that the policy change did not result in net health improvements. Regions providing more care to healthier, newly-eligible veterans experienced bigger reductions in hospital care and larger increases in outpatient services for previously-eligible veterans. This shift away from specialty care may help to explain the aggregate health declines. Chapter two examines the impact of the introduction of a VA-sponsored drug benefit on Medicare-eligible veterans. Results suggest that a drug benefit does not result in changes in the quantity of drugs consumed, but does lead to an increase in spending and a shift in who pays for the prescriptions. The benefit appears to have a larger effect on lower-income individuals. Results also show suggestive evidence of positive health effects as a result of the drug benefit, an outcome which could be cost-saving in the long run. / (cont.) Chapter three utilizes the change in government health care coverage for veterans to test whether employer-provided insurance leads to inefficiencies in the labor market, and the degree to which such inefficiencies might be alleviated by expanding public health insurance programs. We examine the impact of health care coverage on labor force participation and retirement by comparing veterans and non-veterans before and after the VA expansion. Results indicate that workers are significantly more likely to cease working as a result of becoming eligible for public insurance, and are also more likely to move to part-time work. / by Melissa Ann Boyle. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-127). / by Alejandro M. Werner. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation analyzes the impact of various financial incentives on firm behavior. The first two chapters examine product-market and input-market effects of a firm's capital structure and the incentives they create. The third chapter analyzes how incentives from the tort system affect physician location decisions. Chapter 1 examines the impact of union bargaining on capital structure determination. If a firm maintains a high level of liquidity, workers may be encouraged to raise wage demands. In the presence of external finance constraints, a firm has an incentive to use the cash flow demands of debt service payments to improve its bargaining position. Using both cross-sectional estimates of firm-level collective bargaining coverage and state changes in labor law to identify changes in union bargaining power, I show that firms indeed appear to use financial leverage strategically to influence collective bargaining negotiations. These estimates suggest that strategic incentives from union bargaining have a substantial impact on financing decisions. A firm's financial structure can also impact investments in marketing and operations management. Chapter 2 examines how capital structure affects a firm's provision of product availability - an important dimension of product quality in the retail sector. / (cont.) Using U.S. consumer price index microdata to measure the prevalence of out-of-stocks, I find that supermarket leveraged buyouts, which reduce liquidity, increase out-of-stocks by 10 percent. These findings suggest it is important for firms to consider these sorts of real effects on their operations when setting financial policy. Chapter 3 examines financial incentives created by medical malpractice liability. If patients bear the full incidence of cost changes and market demand is inelastic, then marginal changes in malpractice liability will not affect physicians' net income or location decisions. Using county-level, specialty-specific data on physician location from 1970 to 2000, I find that damage caps do not affect physician supply for the average resident of states adopting reforms. On the other hand, caps appear to increase the supply of specialist physicians in the most rural areas by 10 to 12 percent. This is likely because rural doctors face greater uninsured litigation costs and a more elastic demand for medical services. / by David Abraham Matsa. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113). / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / This thesis consists of three studies of labor markets where differences in talent are associated with very large differences in income. The unifying theoretical feature is the view that the analysis of such labor markets should take into account the scarcity of jobs, which is a natural consequence of the combination of finite demand and positive production costs. In Chapter 1 we propose a model where an industry-specific talent can only be revealed on the job and publicly. Individual inability to commit to long-term contracts leaves firms with insufficient incentives to hire novices, inducing them to bid excessively for the pool of revealed talent instead. This causes the market to be plagued with too many mediocre workers, inefficiently low output levels, and excessive rents for the known high talents. We argue that high wages in professions such as entertainment and entrepreneurship may be explained by the nature of the talent revelation process in those markets, and suggest potential natural experiments for estimating the welfare loss and the excessive talent rents predicted by the model. Chapter 2 is an analysis of the labor market of CEOs. We present an assignment model of managers and firms of heterogeneous talent and scale, and show how the value of underlying ability differences can be distinguished from scale effects using the observed joint distribution of CEO pay and market value. The empirical results suggest that the observed size-pay relation in the US is mainly due to differences in firm characteristics rather than differences in managerial ability. Chapter 3 uses a combination of simple versions of the models of the first two chapters to analyze the role of transfer fees in professional sports. There workers are able to commit to long-term wage contracts, and a transfer fee is the price of a remaining contract. / (cont.) We show that the abolition of transfer fees would reallocate playing time towards older players and increase salaries by more than the current transfer fees. All clubs, including the bigger clubs that are the current net payers of transfer fees, would lose out in the reform. / by Marko Terviö. / Ph.D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics. Thesis. 1971. Ph.D. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 233-237. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Antonio Spilimbergo. / Ph.D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 19). / Amador Werning Angeletos (2006) characterize the conditions under which optimal saving/ consumption decision are determined by a minimum savings policy. I test this model empirically against data from the Townsend Thai Monthly Survey. Each household's income distribution, measure of risk aversion. and hyperbolic discount rate are estimated and then inputted into the model. In the overall sample., the minimum saving value as predicted by the model does register a statistically signficant relationship with the actual amount saved by the household. This is expected. since minimum saving policy is not optimal for all households. Limiting the sample to the appopriate subgroup produces a strong positive correlation. / by Parit Sripakdeevong. / S.M.