This dissertation analyzes two important recent public policies and sheds light on the direct and indirect impacts of both and more in general on the need of sound evaluations to carefully consider possible spillovers as a fundamental component of programs. In the first two essays I focus on the "New Deal for Young People (NDYP) in the UK", a multiple treatments policy launched in 1998. Such analysis is conducted on two main margins: i. employment and ii. job quality as wage returns. I discuss possible indirect effects as substitution of workers and general equilibrium effects on wages. The main results are that the policy enhances the (re)employment proba bility of participants by 5% and the effect lasts over several cohorts. Further, no evidence of displacement as well as general equilibrium effects is found. On the rela tive effectiveness of the different treatments: IV estimates of the treatment effect of the subsidized employment option clearly point towards a negative and significant penalty of roughly 20%, due to stigma or worsening of the matching function. The other treatments do not seem to have a significantly differential impact. Chapter IV analyzes an aid policy implemented in rural Mexico: PROGRESA. The focus of the chapter is the identification of the spillovers of the policy to those households who just happen to live in treated communities, but are not eligible for the program. A formal definition of the Indirect Treatment Effect (ITE) parameter is given. Focusing on consumption the mechanisms generating such indirect effects are discussed. Those mechanisms need not be limited to the specific policy. In particular, in developing Countries policies are likely to affect all residents of the areas where they are implemented, especially when village economies and social networks create strong links between a limited number of households. The large liquidity injections into small communities increase the consumption of the non-treated through changes in the credit and insurance markets. Thus, the total effect of the policy is larger than its effect on the treated. Further, the results confirm that a key identifying assumption - that the program has no effect on non-treated individuals (SUTVA)- is likely to be violated in similar policy designs.

This thesis is concerned to trace the development of the theories of perfect competition and monopoly in the history of economic thought, from 1700 to 1926. It is shown that in the process of this development the concepts of competition and monopoly were to undergo a number of transformations as they developed from essentially crude beginnings in the pre-Smithian era to a much more fully worked cut form at the end of our period. In particular we stress the distinction between the Classical view of competition and monopoly and that of the French mathematical economist, Augustin Cournot. The Classical economists, following Adam Smith (1776), were concerned to analyze free competition, the mechanism by which economic resources move between trades in order to equalize profit differentials. In their analysis monopoly was treated as the opposite of free competition and used to denote cases where barriers to such movement exist. In contrast, Cournot (1838) analyzed the notion of unlimited or pure competition, a market structure under which producers are so numerous that each acts as price-taker. In his analysis, monopoly is defined as the case of a single producer, and pure competition and monopoly represent polar cases classification of market structures based on the number of producers in the market. The modern theories of perfect competition and monopoly are seen evolving from a synthesis of these two strands of thought, preeminently in the work of Marshall (189O). In this synthesis, Cournot's analysis was integrated with the earlier Classical ideas as far as competition was concerned, whilst the Classical analysis of monopoly was abandoned in favour of Cournot's treatment. This compromise gave rise to a number of conceptual problem's which were to be instrumental in calling into question the traditional belief that competitive analysis was generally applicable to capitalist economies.

The first chapter proposes a theory on how students’ social background affects school teaching and job opportunities. We study a set-up where students differ in ability and social background, and we analyse the interaction between a school and an employer. Students with disadvantaged background are penalised compared to other students: they receive less teaching and/or are less likely to be hired. A surprising result is that policy aiming to subsidise education for disadvantaged students might in fact decrease their job opportunities. The second chapter argues that assortative matching can explain over-education. Education determines individuals’ income and, due to the presence of assortative matching, the quality of the partner, who can be a colleague or a spouse. Thus an individual acquires some education to improve the expected partner’s quality. But since everybody does that, the expected partner’s quality does not increases and over-education emerges. Public intervention can solve over-education through a progressive income tax. The third chapter examines how higher education affects job and marital satisfaction. We build up a model with assortative matching where individuals decide whether to attend university both for obtaining job satisfaction and for increasing the probability to be matched with an educated partner. The theoretical results suggest that, as assortative matching increases, the number of educated individuals increases, their job satisfaction falls while their marital satisfaction increases. We test our model using the British Household Panel Survey data for the years 2003-2006. Our empirical findings support the theoretical results.

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This dissertation offers a collection of essays based on empirical research that seeks to find evidence of the contribution of population health, life expectancy in particular, on economic wellbeing from macro and micro data. Using cross-country macro data the dissertation revisits the `Preston-Curve' (Preston, 1975) analysis and shows that economic growth may not be the major contributor to the decreased mortality and increased life expectancy during the twentieth century. The dissertation then investigates the pessimistic findings of Acemoglu and Johnson (2007), which assert that the impact of the increase in life expectancy on per capita income is insignificant or negative. It presents alternative estimates on the impact of life expectancy on population, GDP, and GDP per capita by using alternative instruments, timelines, and country groups. While the pattern of impact varies across country groups and instruments used, the reported coefficients suggest the positive impact of life expectancy on GDP per capita in a large number of specifications. This is particularly evident for the lower income countries. The findings from the crosscountry macro data are corroborated from the evidence obtained from the within country geographic or regional level analysis using the micro level survey data from Bangladesh, India, and four African countries: Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. Methodologically this dissertation offers a unique approach by using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) combined with the Geographic Positioning Dataset (GPS) obtained from DHS Measures. While the general finding suggests positive wealth effects generated by rising life expectancy, the health and wealth relationship differs across countries. Thepolitical economy consequences of this finding bear critical implications for health investments. The finding of this dissertation supports the notion of investing in health to promote economic wellbeing. The adage `health is wealth' is not merely an intuitive proposition, but quantitatively justifiable

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This thesis consists of three independent chapters: In the first chapter, we consider a Hotelling model of price competition where firms may acquire information regarding the preferences (i.e. “location”) of customers. By purchasing additional information, a firm has a finer partition regarding customer preferences, and its pricing decisions must be measurable with respect to this partition. If information acquisition decisions are common knowledge at the point where firms compete via prices, we show that a pure strategy subgame perfect equilibrium exists, and that there is “excess information acquisition” from the point of view of the firms. If information acquisition decisions are private information, a pure strategy equilibrium fails to exist. We compute a mixed strategy equilibrium for a range of parameter values. The second chapter investigates a case of national versus regional pricing. Competition authorities frequently view price discrimination by firms as detrimental to consumers. In the case of the UK supermarket industry they suggested a move to uniform pricing. Yet theoretical predictions are ambiguous about whether third degree price discrimination is beneficial or detrimental to consumers, and in general there will be some consumers who benefit while other lose out. In this chapter, we estimate the impact that the move from regional to uniform pricing had on Tesco’s profits and consumer's surplus. We estimate an AIDS model of consumer expenditure in the eggs market in a multi-stage budgeting framework allowing for very flexible substitution patterns between products at the bottom level. We use data on farm gate prices to instrument price in the demand equation. Our results suggest that switching to a regional pricing policy can potentially increase Tesco’s profit on eggs by 37%. However, while there are winners and losers, the overall effect on consumer welfare is not significant. In the third chapter, we study the kidney market in Iran. The most effective treatment for end-stage renal disease is a kidney transplant. While the supply of cadaveric kidneys is limited, the debate has been focused on the effects of the existence of a free market for human organs. Economists as well as medical and legal researchers are divided over the issue. Iran has a unique kidney market which has been in place for over 20 years, frequently reporting surprising success in reducing the waiting list for kidneys. This paper demonstrates how the Iranian system works and estimates the welfare effect of this system.