Chapter 1 studies wage contracts and their roles in workers’ employment and wage dynamics, as well as the implications on income inequality. I develop an on-the-job search model that allows for different types of wage contracts. Using indirect inference method, I am able to estimate the structural model and evaluate the impact of different productivity elements, including firm productivity, returns to routine task and individual effort. The model is able to capture key measures on worker’s labor market mobility, wage growth and distribution. It also allows me to evaluate the implications of productivity change on income inequality through counterfactual analysis. I show that these productivity elements have different implications on income inequality, and the use of performance based wage contract is an important channel for income polarization at the top percentiles. Chapter 2 studies the effect of overtime pay on workers’ working schedule and income. How overtime pay regulations affect the labor market is a controversial yet relatively under- studied topic. In this paper, I study the effect of the revision to statutory overtime pay in 2004 on worker’s income and hours of work. Using monthly panel data on workers’ working hours and income that covers the period of rule change, I find evidence that for workers who gained statutory overtime pay coverage under the new rule, hours and income increased. I also find spillover effects on overtime pay premium and overtime schedule for workers who are not directly affected by the rule change. My results suggest that the standard competitive model does not capture well the labor market for overtime work, and government regulations could reduce labor market frictions. Chapter 3 studies debt covenant violations and their effects on corporate innovation. Exploiting the state of debt contract covenant violation and the institutional feature that creditors obtain increased control right of the firm, the paper examines the effect of increased creditor governance well before the state of bankruptcy on corporate innovation. Consistent with the view that increased creditor monitoring has disciplining effect on the managers, I find no significant change in the R&D spending, significant but model decrease in the total patent counts two years forward as well as significant and large positive impact on the citation counts of the patents. The results demonstrate that increased creditor governance is overall beneficial to firm innovation.

Workplace sexual harassment costs the government and companies millions of dollars a year. Women who experience sexual harassment in the workplace suffer from negative mental and physical health problems, lower career attainment, decreased productivity, and a higher rate of job turnover. Sexual harassment is both costly and unjust, however the exact cost to women who experience sexual harassment is unknown. This thesis will measure the impact of workplace sexual harassment on wages in different industries. Using data on claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I calculate and analyze the impact of sexual harassment on wages, age, sex, and industry. I find that industries with high rates of women reporting sexual harassment have lower wages.

In this dissertation, I investigate how government policies influence an individual's decision to search for and accept a job and/or crime opportunity. Chapter 1 looks at how long it takes for released inmates to find a job, and when they find a job, how their incarceration rate changes. The purpose is to predict the effects of a successful job placement program. An on-the-job search model with crime is used to model criminal behavior, derive the estimation method and analyze different types of policies. The results show the unemployed are incarcerated twice as fast as the employed and take on average four and a half months to find a job. Combining these results, it is demonstrated that reducing the average unemployment spell of criminals by two months reduces crime and recidivism by more than five percent. Chapter 2 incorporates crime into a search and matching model of the labor market. All workers, irrespective of their labor force status can commit crimes and the employment contract is determined optimally. The model is used to study, analytically and quantitatively, the effects of various labor market and crime policies such as unemployment insurance, hiring subsidies and the duration of jail sentences. For example, wage subsidies reduce unemployment, the crime rates of employed and unemployed workers, and improve society's welfare. Chapter 3 investigates a market where wholesalers search for retailers and retailers search for consumers. I show how the timing, targets and types of anti-drug policies matter. For instance, supply falls if the likelihood of apprehension rises when a network is established. Alternatively, if the cost of apprehension rises for wholesale dealers when a network is searching for consumers, then revenue sharing is distorted. Such a distortion will increase retail profits and aggregate supply. As an application, the model provides an alternative explanation for why the United States cocaine market saw rising consumption and falling prices during the 1980's. Specifically, the ``War on Drugs" distorted the cocaine market and increased supply.

No description available.

This dissertation examines the literature that attempts to measure the relationship between school quality and earnings. I begin by developing a simple economic model that predicts that, everything else being equal and with comparisons being made within a market, workers from higher quality schools will have higher earnings among those with the same level of schooling and they will have steeper schooling-earnings gradients. The remainder of this dissertation explores problems that exist in this literature for which no solutions have been presented. These problems include: 1) there doesn’t have to be a direct and positive relationship between school quality and earnings; 2) the data suggest that school quality measures are frequently mismatched to workers; 3) most school quality studies include college-trained labor while completely ignoring the quality of the college attended; 4) the omission of college quality from the estimation is especially problematic for studies that attempt to measure the school quality-earnings relationship through differences in schooling-earnings gradients for those educated in different systems; 5) state of birth wage rankings thought to capture a school quality effect are not invariant to the market (state of residence) in which they are evaluated; and 6) the evidence presented herein suggests that interstate migration is selective. These problems undermine the credibility of existing estimates of a school qualityearnings relationship.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985.

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published_or_final_version / Statistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

The purpose of the research is to examine the wage-gap that occurs among men and women working in health professions. The data used for this research is drawn from the 2004 Current Population Survey (CPS). Data analysis reveals that there is a 61% wage-gap that occurs among men and women in health professions. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Sociology.