Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-201). / by Gordon H. Hanson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-113). / by Christine Siegwarth Meyer. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1988. / by Hidehiko Ichimura. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-107). / by David A. Riker. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis investigates the impact and adoption of three types of technologies mobile money, a leading financial technology in Kenya, the colonial railway, an important transportation technology in Nigeria, and two prevalent savings investment technologies for the provision of retirement income: inter-generational transfers (pay-as- you-go systems) and capital markets investments. Access to mobile money services is shown to have a significant impact on economic activity. Areas with access to mobile money services grow faster, especially when they are initially richer, urban, and connected to roads and to banks. The heterogeneity of the the short- and long-run effects of railroads on individual and local development in Nigeria is found to be substantial. Unlike in areas further away from the coast, the railway had no impact in areas that had access to ports of export and those areas barely adopted the railway as it did not reduce their shipping costs. The cross-country heterogeneity in the adoption of savings investment technologies is shown to be accounted for by rational, welfare maximizing decisions based on distinct underlying economic characteristics. / by Tite Yokossi. / Introduction -- Mobile money and economic activity : the impact of a financial technology -- Colonial railroads in Nigeria : the heterogeneous transportation technology -- Pay-as-you-go vs. capital markets : a rational model of the adoption of savings investment technologies. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2002. / MIT Institute Archives copy: p. 105 and p. 106 bound reversed; microfiche filmed in the same manner. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-108). / In Chapter 1, we estimate equilibrium dollar wages for 15 transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union. Equilibrium dollar wages are interpreted as full employment wages consistent with a country's physical and human capital endowment, and estimated by regressing actual dollar wages on productivity and human capital proxies in a short (1990-95) panel of 85 countries. The main results are: (1) equilibrium dollar wages have appreciated steadily in the Baltic countries and fast-reforming CEE transition economies, but have been flat in most CIS countries; and (2) 1996 actual dollar wages remained below estimated equilibrium dollar wages for most but not all transition countries covered. Chapter 2 investigates the effects on firms' budget constraints and on bank loan allocation of introducing a strict bankruptcy law in a transition economy. A stylized model of soft budget constraints suggests that bank loans tend to remain available for financially weaker firms due to the bank's financial commitment problem. The introduction of a strict bankruptcy law helps counter soft budget constraints for firms. As a result, the allocation of financial resources becomes more efficient in the sense of better firms receiving larger loans. Using data for a panel of Hungarian firms in 1989-92, I find evidence that introducing a strict bankruptcy law helped harden the firms' budget constraints. / by Kornélia Krajnyák. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis studies the long-term benefits of preschool interventions, the impact of promotions on heart disease, and the effects of light trucks on traffic fatalities. The first chapter examines the long-term effects of preschool interventions. Several influential experiments - Abecedarian, Perry, and Early Training - have convinced many economists that preschool interventions have super-normal returns. This chapter implements a unified statistical framework to present a de novo analysis of these experiments, focusing on core issues that received little attention in previous analyses: treatment effect heterogeneity by gender and over-rejection of the null hypothesis due to multiple inference. The primary finding of this reanalysis is that girls garnered substantial short- and long-term benefits from the interventions. However, there were no significant long-term benefits for boys. These conclusions change little when allowance is made for attrition and possible violations of random assignment. The second chapter, coauthored with Sir Michael Marmot, investigates the effect of promotions on heart disease. The positive cross-sectional relationship between socioeconomic status and health is well documented, but little evidence exists regarding the causal effect of social status on health. / (cont.) This chapter uses data on British civil servants from the Whitehall II study. It identifies differences in departmental promotion rates as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in promotion opportunities and exploits this variation to estimate the causal effect of promotions on heart disease. The results suggest that promotions can reduce the probability of heart disease by 3 to 13 percentage points over a 15 year period. The third chapter analyzes the traffic safety impact of the increasing popularity of light trucks. It combines estimates from a state-level panel data set with an accident-level micro data set. The results suggest that a one percentage point increase in light truck share raises annual traffic fatalities by 0.41 percent, or 172 deaths per year. Of this increase, approximately one-quarter to one-third accrue to the light trucks' own occupants, and the remaining two-thirds to three-quarters accrue to other roadway users. Using standard value of life figures, the implied Pigovian tax is approximately 4,650 dollars per light truck sold. / by Michael L. Anderson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-202). / This thesis consists of three chapters studying dynamic economies in general equilibrium. The first chapter considers an economy in business cycles with potentially imperfect financial markets. The second chapter investigates an economy in its balanced growth path with heterogeneous firms. The third chapter analyzes dynamic competitions that these firms are potentially engaged in. The first chapter, "Asset Price and Real Investment Volatility with Heterogeneous Beliefs," sheds light on the role of imperfect financial markets on the economic and financial crisis 2007-2008. This crisis highlights the role of financial markets in allowing economic agents, including prominent banks, to speculate on the future returns of different financial assets, such as mortgage-backed securities. I introduce a dynamic general equilibrium model with aggregate shocks, potentially incomplete markets and heterogeneous agents to investigate this role of financial markets. In addition to their risk aversion and endowments, agents differ in their beliefs about the future aggregate states of the economy. The difference in beliefs induces them to take large bets under frictionless complete financial markets, which enable agents to leverage their future wealth. Consequently, as hypothesized by Friedman (1953), under complete markets, agents with incorrect beliefs will eventually be driven out of the markets. In this case, they also have no influence on asset prices and real investment in the long run. In contrast, I show that under incomplete markets generated by collateral constraints, agents with heterogeneous (potentially incorrect) beliefs survive in the long run and their speculative activities drive up asset price volatility and real investment volatility permanently. I also show that collateral constraints are always binding even if the supply of collateralizable assets endogenously responds to their price. I use this framework to study the effects of different types of regulations and the distribution of endowments on leverage, asset price volatility and investment. Lastly, the analytical tools developed in this framework enable me to prove the existence of the recursive equilibrium in Krusell and Smith (1998) with a finite number of types. This has been an open question in the literature. The second chapter, "Innovation from Incumbents and Entrants," is a joint work with Daron Acemoglu. We propose a simple modification of the basic Schumpeterian endogenous growth models, by allowing incumbents to undertake innovations to improve their products. This model provides a tractable framework for a simultaneous analysis of entry of new firms and the expansion of existing firms, as well as the decomposition of productivity growth between continuing establishments and new entrants. One lesson we learn from this analysis is that, unlike in the basic Schumpeterian models, taxes or entry barriers on potential entrants might increase economic growth. It is the outcome of the greater productivity improvements by incumbents in response to reduced entry, which outweighs the negative effect of the reduction in creative destruction. As the model features entry of new firms and expansion and exit of existing firms, it also generates an equilibrium firm size distribution. We show that the stationary firm size distribution is Pareto with an exponent approximately equal to one (the so-called "Zipf distribution"). The third chapter, "Racing: when should we handicap the advantaged competitor?" studies dynamic competitions, for example R&D competitions used in the second chapters. Two competitors with different abilities engage in a winner-take-all race; should we handicap the advantaged competitor in order to reduce the expected completion time of the race? I show that if the discouragement effect is strong, i.e., both competitors are discouraged from exerting effort when it becomes more certain who will win the race, we should handicap the advantaged. We can handicap him either by reducing his ability or by offering him a lower reward if he wins. Doing so induces higher effort not only from the disadvantaged competitor because of his higher incentive from a higher chance of winning the race but also from the advantaged competitor because of their strategic interactions. Therefore, the expected completion time is strictly shortened. To prove the existence and uniqueness of the equilibria (including symmetric and asymmetric equilibria) that leads to the conclusion, I use a boundary value problem formulation which is novel to the dynamic competition literature. In some cases, I obtain closed-form solutions of the equilibria. / by Dan Cao. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / In this thesis, I use rich firm-level data to examine the impact of sectoral shocks on aggregate fluctuations and economic growth through the lens of corporate investment and entry and exit decisions. The decisions made in response to different firm-level frictions and specific features of sectors can induce different types of market failures. Understanding the macroeconomic consequences of corporate decisions is a key component of creating sound policies that facilitate stable and sustainable economic growth. I employ a unique combination of reduced-form, theoretical, and structural tools in my thesis. Each chapter typically starts with new empirical patterns relevant for macro, established using large-scale firm-level data and state-of- the-art reduced-form econometric methods. I attempt to formulate new microeconomic and macroeconomic models inspired by these patterns. I then develop a multi-pronged approach using additional rigorous reduced-form estimation to rule out alternative hypotheses, structural estimation to verify the economic content of my approach and to identify parameters, and quantitative evaluation to understand the macroeconomic importance of these mechanisms. / by Yu Shi. / 1. Real Estate Booms and Endogenous Productivity Growth -- 2. Imperfect Competition and the Network Origin of Aggregate Fluctuations -- 3. Cross-holding Networks and the Transmission of Banking Sector Shocks. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-166). / by Michael Patrick O'Malley. / Ph.D.