Using data drawn from in-depth interviews collected in three Chinese cities and the countrywide China General Social Survey, this dissertation examined how people found jobs during the historic period of China’s employment system change. This dissertation is written in the format of three publishable papers. The first paper revisited China’s employment system change, by focusing on individual reactions towards the changing employment policies. Perceiving the persistent political authority, individuals pursued higher education, accumulated political advantages, and mobilized network resources, to get state-assigned jobs. Individual job-seeking strategies, in turn, boosted the state’s hiring criteria, as well as facilitated the growth of the market principle. Consequently, state power and market strength have been co-developed in this process. Following my analysis of institutional constraints, in the second paper, I addressed the question of how individual job seekers and job positions are matched together. I examined how contact use matches individual qualifications to the employer’s hiring expectations, from an innovative perspective of the certifiability of job requirements. I demonstrated that informal methods facilitate job-person matching success when used in combination with formal methods, rather than being used alone. My third dissertation paper provides strong empirical evidence of the advantages of the joint use of formal and informal methods. I found that individuals who used formal and informal job search methods jointly tend to obtain more job information and thus apply for more positions. They are also more likely to exit job search successfully within a three-month time period. Using the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model, I found that the joint channel itself is more likely to lead one to late-stage career success, as indicated by one’s recent income. Above all, my dissertation systematically investigated the use of contacts in the labor market of post-socialist China, regarding its institutional constraints, working mechanisms, and advantages.

Using data drawn from in-depth interviews collected in three Chinese cities and the countrywide China General Social Survey, this dissertation examined how people found jobs during the historic period of China’s employment system change. This dissertation is written in the format of three publishable papers. The first paper revisited China’s employment system change, by focusing on individual reactions towards the changing employment policies. Perceiving the persistent political authority, individuals pursued higher education, accumulated political advantages, and mobilized network resources, to get state-assigned jobs. Individual job-seeking strategies, in turn, boosted the state’s hiring criteria, as well as facilitated the growth of the market principle. Consequently, state power and market strength have been co-developed in this process. Following my analysis of institutional constraints, in the second paper, I addressed the question of how individual job seekers and job positions are matched together. I examined how contact use matches individual qualifications to the employer’s hiring expectations, from an innovative perspective of the certifiability of job requirements. I demonstrated that informal methods facilitate job-person matching success when used in combination with formal methods, rather than being used alone. My third dissertation paper provides strong empirical evidence of the advantages of the joint use of formal and informal methods. I found that individuals who used formal and informal job search methods jointly tend to obtain more job information and thus apply for more positions. They are also more likely to exit job search successfully within a three-month time period. Using the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model, I found that the joint channel itself is more likely to lead one to late-stage career success, as indicated by one’s recent income. Above all, my dissertation systematically investigated the use of contacts in the labor market of post-socialist China, regarding its institutional constraints, working mechanisms, and advantages.

Submitted by Miquelina Nicolini (mique_n@hotmail.com) on 2015-05-28T22:51:30Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Miquelina Nicolini vf.pdf: 2513293 bytes, checksum: ab98c481446052a17578824f94e12f0b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Janete de Oliveira Feitosa (janete.feitosa@fgv.br) on 2015-06-17T13:34:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Miquelina Nicolini vf.pdf: 2513293 bytes, checksum: ab98c481446052a17578824f94e12f0b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2015-06-18T12:07:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Miquelina Nicolini vf.pdf: 2513293 bytes, checksum: ab98c481446052a17578824f94e12f0b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-18T12:08:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Miquelina Nicolini vf.pdf: 2513293 bytes, checksum: ab98c481446052a17578824f94e12f0b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-27 / The current essay shows how health service market is afected by assimetric information, that results in government intervention. To understand that, an analisis of how this market works has been done, taking in account assimetric information, specially the one brought by adverse selection, shown in Akerlof’s and Rothschild and Stiglitz’s models. Then, specificities of health market were discussed and the intervention of government, justified. At this point, the income distribution that comes from the government intervention is also approached. Finally, as an example, Brazil’s and United States’ models are shown and analised. As a conclusion, the implication of each one of these models, as well as sugestions for another studies in this area. / O presente trabalho buscou investigar como o mercado de serviços de saúde é afetado pela assimetria de informação, que acaba por justificar a intervenção do governo. Foi realizada uma análise do funcionamento do setor de serviços de saúde e como a assimetria de informação, principalmente a proveniente de seleção adversa, o afeta. Para tanto, foram levados em consideração os modelos de Akerlof e Rothschild e Stiglitz. Em um momento seguinte, foram discutidas as características e particularidades deste setor e porque a intervenção do governo acaba sendo necessária. Neste ponto discutem-se também as questões distributivas de renda ligadas ao setor de saúde. Finalmente, como exemplo, as soluções adotadas por Brasil e Estados Unidos são apresentadas e analisadas. Na conclusão são apresentadas e discutidas as implicações da cada uma destas escolhas, bem como apresentadas sugestões para novos estudos nessa área.

[pt] A literatura econômica que estuda migração sempre esteve preocupada com o impacto da migração sobre o bem-estar, seja na forma de imigração ou na forma de brain drain. Os dois artigos que compõem esta tese estão relacionados a este tema. Apesar do modelo de Roy concluir que os emigrantes são negativamente selecionados se a taxa de retorno à educação é maior na economia de origem, os trabalhos empíricos encontram evidências de emigrantes positivamente selecionados. O primeiro artigo utiliza um modelo para argumentar que se o mercado de crédito é imperfeito, tanto investimentos em educação como a decisão de emigração dependem da riqueza inicial do agente. Isto permite explicar a controvérsia entre a literatura teórica e empírica e o porquê da classe média ser aquela com maior mobilidade em alguns países. A segunda parte da tese está diretamente relacionada à literatura de beneficial brain drain. Os trabalhos nessa área argumentam que a possibilidade de um trabalhador educado de emigrar para outro país que remunera melhor sua mão-de-obra qualificada aumenta a taxa de retorno à educação na economia de origem e conseqüentemente os investimentos em capital humano. O artigo utiliza como experimento a construção de Palmas, capital do Tocantins, para investigar esta hipótese. Os resultados empíricos encontrados a partir dos microdados dos Censos de 1991 e 2000 indicam uma relação negativa entre investimentos em educação e a distância rodoviária até a capital - usada como proxy dos custos de emigração - para o período posterior à fundação de Palmas e uma relação nula para o período anterior. As evidências são interpretadas como favoráveis à existência do brain effect, uma vez que o aumento na escolaridade foi maior para os indivíduos que mais se beneficiaram com a construção da capital. / [en] The Economic literature which studies migration has always been concerned about its impact on welfare. Two different lines of research in this field focus on impacts of immigration and brain drain. The two articles which comprise the thesis are related to these subjects. Although Roy s model claims that emigrants are negatively self- selected if the rate of return is higher in the origin economy, empirical works have found positively selected emigrants. The first article uses a model to argue that both investments in education and the decision to emmigrate depend on wealth if credit markets are imperfect. This argument allows us to explain the controversy between the theoretical and empirical literature as well as why the middle-class is the most mobile one in some countries. The second part of the thesis is directly related to the beneficial brain drain literature. Works in this field claim that the possibility for an educated worker of emmigrating to another country in which skilled labor is better paid raises the rate of return to education in the origin country and consequently the investments in human capital. The article uses as an experiment the creation of Palmas, a state capital in Brazil, to investigate this hypothesis. The empirical results obtained from microdata evidence a negative relation between investments in human capital and the distance to the capital-used as a proxy to emmigration costs-in the period after the creation of the capital and no relation in the period before. Those findings are interpretated as favorable to the brain effect hypothesis, once the increase in education was greater for individuals who benefited the most from the foundation of the capital.

This thesis consists of an introductory part and two self-contained chapters related to the supply of volunteers to the Swedish Armed Forces. Chapter [I] represents the first effort to explore the relationship between civilian labour market conditions and the supply of labour to the military in the all-volunteer environment that Sweden entered after the abolishment of the peacetime draft in 2010. The effect of civilian unemployment on the rate of applications from individuals aged 18 to 25 to initiate basic military training is investigated using panel data on Swedish counties for the years 2011 through 2015. A linear fixed-effects model is estimated to investigate the relationship, while controlling for a range of socio-demographic covariates and unobserved heterogeneity on the regional level, as well as aggregate trends on the national level. The results indicate a positive and statistically significant relationship between the unemployment rate and the application rate. The results are robust to non-linear form specifications, as well as allowing the civilian unemployment rate to be endogenous. As such, the results suggest that the civilian labour market environment in Sweden can give rise to non-trivial fluctuations in the supply of applications to initiate basic military training within the Swedish Armed Forces. Chapter [II] studies how local labour market conditions influence the quality composition of those who volunteer for military service in Sweden. A fixed-effects regression model is estimated on a panel data set containing IQ scores for those who applied for military basic training across Swedish municipalities during the period 2010 to 2016. The main finding is that low civilian employment rates at the local level tend to increase the mean IQ score of those who volunteer for military service, whereas the opposite is true if employment rates in the civilian labour market move in a more favourable direction. As such, the results suggest that the negative impact of a strong civilian economy on recruitment volumes is reinforced by a deterioration in recruit quality.

The intent of this study was to identify subgroups within the college population having a heightened risk for eating disorders. The information for this analysis was retrieved from an existing data set. The two variables that were compared were self selection of college major at the initial collection during freshman year. The sample size of 1,924 was used to see if subgroups of college majors had a heightened risk. Twenty groups composed of similar majors were studied. The majors of Dance, Dietetics, Physical Education, and Communications had heightened risk according to analysis percentage of each group in the clinical range on the Eating Attitudes Test-40 (EAT-40), EAT-40 mean, and/or EAT-40 median. Results indicate that Dance, Dietetic, Physical Education, and Communications would merit additional resources to prevent eating disorders at the college level.

本研究使用台灣的營利事業所得稅資料並且以托賓自我選擇模型來檢視租稅逃漏、稅務選查與會計師稅務簽證三者的關聯性。實證結果顯示台灣的稅務機關在查核預算的限制之下會進行有系統的稅務選查程序；進一步來說，使用會計師稅務簽證的企業組織較不易被稅務機關選查。此外，企業組織的重要特徵如規模、財務狀況、獲利能力以及會計師稅務簽證的使用與否將會影響企業組織的租稅逃漏額。最後，我們發現會計師稅務簽證的使用對於租稅逃漏的影響會隨著公司的規模大小而改變，營收大於一億的企業組織若使用會計師稅務簽證將會比未使用會計師稅務簽證的企業組織有更高的逃漏稅額。因此，我們認為與會計師稅務簽證相關的政策法規可能需要重新評估是否適切。 / This study uses the business income tax dada in Taiwan to empirically examine the relationships between audit selection, tax evasion, and the usage of CPA-attestation. Tobit model with self-selection is used in this study. Empirical results provide evidence that tax agencies in Taiwan employ a systematic audit selection process, subject to the constraints of audit budgets. Additionally, firms using CPA-attestation are less likely to be selected for audit. The results also provide evidence that some important characteristics of firms, such as size, financial position, profitability, and the usage of CPA-attestation, may influence the amount of tax evasion. Finally, we find that the effect of CPA-attestation on tax evasion may vary with different sizes of firms using CPA-attestation. Hence, the policy and tax regulations associated with the usage of CPA-attestation may need to be re-evaluated.

本文考慮當資訊不對稱下的逆向選擇問題存在時,如何遵循Myerson(1979)提出的揭露原則 (the revelation principle)來設計一套具備誘因相容性 (incentive compatibility)的存款保險契約,契約中的自有資本比率為要保機構的自我選擇變數 (self-selection variable),而保險費則為存保公司用來控制要保機構決策行為的控制變數(control var iable),依此可以建立一套自我選擇機能(self-selection mechanism),來促使要保機構誠實揭其風險類型的私有訊息(private information),進而將要保機構依風險高低正確分類,徹底解決訊息不對稱下的逆向選擇問題。

有鑑於全球愈來愈重視企業營運對社區造成的社會、環境和經濟影響，企業的利害關係人除了重視企業的財務績效之外，也愈來愈關心企業是否有善盡其「社會公民」的責任與角色。企業責任報告之目的就是在傳統的財務報表之外，進一步揭露企業的營業活動對於社會及環境所造成的影響。為了使資本市場能更有效地運作，公司管理當局應該要揭露範圍更廣、透明度更高、並有助於投資決策的攸關性資訊，因此，發布社會責任報告的企業有日益增多的趨勢。本研究之目的即在探討三個與企業責任報告有關的議題：(1) 企業的公司治理結構之良窳與管理當局企業責任報告揭露決策的關係；(2) 企業揭露社會責任報告之決策是否會產生股價溢酬；(3)企業社會責任報告揭露決策對企業的事前權益資金成本的影響。在控制樣本的自我選擇偏誤之後，本研究的主要發現有二：第一、公司治理結構愈好的企業愈傾向於揭露企業責任報告，而且也愈可能以專節的形式在該報告中揭露公司治理資訊；第二、從有無揭露企業責任報告的角度來看，本研究發現有揭露的公司均有較高 (低) 的股價 (資金成本)。其次，從揭露的內容做進一步分析之後，本研究發現「環境績效」、「社會績效」與「公司治理」三大類內容的揭露決策均具有價格溢酬。至於「企業承諾」則對公司股價並無顯著影響。最後，企業責任報告揭露程度較高之企業會有較顯著的價格溢酬以及較低的資金成本。 / In light of the increasing emphasis on companies’ social, environmental and economic impacts on the communities, stakeholders are more concerned about whether firms appropriately assume their responsibility as a social citizen. To fulfill stakeholders’ demand of such non-financial information, many companies have recently begun to voluntarily issue the corporate responsibility reports (CRR) as a means to disclose their social, environmental and economic performance and their commitment to do business responsibly. This study intends to answer the following three key questions related to the CRR disclosure: (a) Will companies with stronger corporate governance be more willing to issue CRR? (b) Will the voluntary disclosure of CRR leads to stock price premium? (c) Will companies making voluntary disclosure of CRR have lower ex ante cost of capital? After controlling for the self-selection bias, the empirical results reveal several important findings. First, the stronger the companies’ coporate governance, the more likely the management will issue CRR. Particularly, these companies tend to disclose their comporate governance policy and procedures in a separate section in the CRR. Second, companies disclosing CRR experience significantly higher (lower) stock prices (cost of capital). A further examination shows that three out of four major components reported in the CRR (i.e., environmental performance, social performance, and corporate governance) give rise to significant price premium. The disclosure of business commitment, however, seems to bear little or no information content embedded in the stock price. Finally, companies disclosing more information in their CRR have higher price premium and lower cost of capital than those disclosing less information. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This thesis consists of four independent chapters on bank capital regulation and the issue of unsolicited ratings.<p><p>The first chapter is introductory and reviews the motivation for regulating banks and credit rating agencies while providing a detailed overview of the thesis.<p><p>The second chapter uses a simultaneous equations model to analyze how banks from six G10 countries adjusted their capital to assets ratios and risk-weighted assets to assets ratio between 1988 and 1995, i.e. just after passage of the 1988 Basel Accord. The results suggest that regulatory pressure brought about by the 1988 capital standards had little effect on both ratios for weakly capitalized banks, except in the US. In addition, the relation between the capital to assets ratios and the risk-weighted assets to assets ratio appears to depend not only on the level of capitalization of banks, but also on the countries or groups of countries considered.<p><p>The third chapter provides Monte Carlo estimates of the amount of regulatory capital that EMU banks must hold for their corporate, bank, and sovereign exposures both under Basel I and the standardized approach to credit risk in Basel II. In the latter case, Monte Carlo estimates are presented for different combinations of external credit assessment institutions (ECAIs) that banks may choose to risk weight their exposures. Three main results emerge from the analysis. First, although the use of different ECAIs leads to significant differences in minimum capital requirements, these differences never exceed, on average, 10% of EMU banks’ capital requirements for corporate, bank, and sovereign exposures. Second, the standardized approach to credit risk provides a small regulatory capital incentive for banks to use several ECAIs to risk weight their exposures. Third, the minimum capital requirements for the corporate, bank, and sovereign exposures of EMU banks will be higher in Basel II than in Basel I. I also show that the incentive for banks to engage in regulatory arbitrage in the standardized approach to credit risk is limited.<p><p>The fourth and final chapter analyses the effect of soliciting a rating on the rating outcome of banks. Using a sample of Asian banks rated by Fitch Ratings, I find evidence that unsolicited ratings tend to be lower than solicited ones, after accounting for differences in observed bank characteristics. This downward bias does not seem to be explained by the fact that better-quality banks self-select into the solicited group. Rather, unsolicited ratings appear to be lower because they are based on public information. As a result, they tend to be more conservative than solicited ratings, which incorporate both public and non-public information.<p> / Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished