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This dissertation is a collection of three studies in the field of higher education. Chapter 2 evaluates the higher education tax benefits which began in 1998. This study analyzes whether the tax treatment has caused changes in the enrollment behavior among those eligible. It explores the effects on full time and part time enrollment and the effects of the rule changes in 2002 and 2003, as well as examines how marginal changes in the tax benefits affect the probability of enrollment. There is an increase in overall enrollment which can be attributed to the tax benefits, although the expansion of the program had very small effects and there were very few changes in full time student status due to the program. The second essay examines students who take a break in their schooling but return to school before beginning their careers. This can cause two separate effects; as time passes, they are growing older, maturing and learning about themselves. However, they also risk depreciation of the human capital they have acquired. This study examines these competing effects on outcomes for individuals who took time off between completing their undergraduate studies and attending law school. Results indicate that those who take time off earn higher grades on average, but that the effect on earnings is dependent on what the individual did during the schooling gap. There does appear to be a small but persistent penalty for those who have a gap in schooling. In the third essay, a model is where altruistic parents care about the bundle of goods their children consume is presented and analyzed. The model results in some empirically testable predictions, which are tested using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS). In particular, students whose parents pay the entire cost of schooling should have a lower return to the amount invested than those who pay some of the cost themselves. However, the data show very little difference in the return to the amount invested between the two groups. / text

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the causal effects of malaria and poor health in general on economic outcome in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study uses panel data from the Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) for Tanzania from 1991 to 2004. Three main hypotheses are tested. First, the study evaluates the effect of malaria and other chronic illnesses on labor supply using the number of hours worked per week as a measure of outcome. Second, it determines the impact of poor health on human capital accumulation by measuring the number of weekly school hours lost to illness. The third objective deals with the question of whether changes in preconditioning factors such as income levels and healthcare accessibility have improved the disease environment in Sub-Saharan Africa over time. The study uses several identification strategies in the empirical estimation process. The first estimation strategy applies the standard Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed Effects (FE) estimators to the schooling and labor supply models. In addition to OLS and FE, the preferred methods of estimating the causal effects of malaria on schooling and labor supply outcomes are Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) and Limited Information Maximum Likelihood (LIML). Findings in this study suggest that malaria significantly increases school absenteeism. In particular, 2SLS and LIML estimates of the number of school hours lost to malaria suggests that children sick with malaria are absent from school for approximately 24 hours a week. However, the results show the effect of malaria on work hours is inconclusive. Furthermore, difference in difference estimates of the disease environment show slight improvements in the disease environment resulting from changes in income levels. The study finds no statistically significant improvements in the disease environment due to increases in the number of health facilities over time.

This dissertation examines the effect of changes in the stock of human capital on the labor force participation decision of women aged 25-54. Without the option of homebased work, some women choose to leave the labor market and stay at home temporarily for family reasons. Working women realize that time out of the labor force could impose penalties on their work careers. This is because during the break, they do not accumulate any new human capital while the existing job skills continuously depreciate. Nowadays, home-based work becomes possible for many jobs because rapid development in personal computers and advances in information and communications technology have reduced employers’ cost of offering home-based work arrangements. Working women can resolve the time conflict between demand for paid work and family responsibility by working from home. In a previous study, the home-based work decision depends on the fixed cost of working and potential home production. Women who are disabled, have small children, or live in rural areas are likely to work from home because they have high fixed costs of working and high potential home production. However, none of the existing studies applies the human capital theory of labor supply to the home-based work decision. Using data on the female labor force from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) of housing units from the 2000 U.S. Census, I estimate a nested logit model to examine the effects of expected costs of non-participation, in terms of forgone earnings, forgone human capital accumulation and human capital depreciation, on women’s labor force participation decision. I find that, other things being equal, women aged 25 to 44 who have potentially high human capital accumulation and high human capital depreciation are likely to stay in the labor force. In the case that the value of their home time is so high that they choose to stay at home, they prefer to work for pay at home than to be out of the labor force.

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This thesis explores the relationship between capitalism and exploitation in wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis and subsequent economic recessions among the world’s most advanced capitalist nations. Starting from the position that not enough theoretical work has been done, particularly within criminology, to analyze the harms caused by crises in capitalism, I argue that a structural-Marxist framework can help fill this gap in the literature. By building a theoretical model based on Karl Marx’s original work on crises in capitalism, the structuralism of Louis Althusser, and as the philosophical materialism of David Harvey, I examine the ways in which the global financial crisis is not the unexpected event mainstream narratives maintain, but rather one that has been over a century in the making. On an empirical level, drawing insight from the Greek financial crisis, the model proposed is deployed to analyze the role that international financial institutions have had in the recent crisis and draw a link between these patterns and the status of modern capitalism, suggesting that the economic trauma we face now is intimately linked to the predisposition of capital (re)production and accumulation. This thesis ultimately underlines the fact that while we are governed by this ‘new’, more aggressive capitalism, it is also ‘the same’ in that Marx’s insights regarding the contradictions of capital accumulation are equally applicable today as they were in his time.

Thesis advisor: Theodore Papageorgiou / This dissertation addresses questions in the labor market with a focus on firms. In the first chapter, I examine different learning opportunities across firms by distinguishing learning from coworkers and firms. The second chapter studies firm organizational spillovers. In the third chapter, I investigate how exporting affects firms' hiring decisions in the entry-level labor market. Chapter 1: This chapter examines and separately identifies two types of learning at the workplace: learning from coworkers and learning from firms. I consider a structural model of idea flows in a competitive market where workers' compensation consists of learning, amenities, and wages. Workers accumulate human capital by interacting with their coworkers and directly from their firm. Using German employee-employer matched data, I exploit a clustering method to classify firms into learning and amenity groups. Then I allow learning functions to differ across groups and separately estimate firm learning and coworker learning parameters. Amenity value is estimated from switchers by relying on features of the model. I find that both types of learning are significant, consistent with previous studies examining each learning type separately. There is significant heterogeneity across firms of different types: some firms provide workers with more firm learning, while in others, workers' learning mostly comes from their coworkers. The relationship between two non-wage compensation also varies across workers. I explore the implication of the findings for inequality. Chapter 2: In this chapter, Div Bhagia and I study whether the organizational decisions of new entrants in a market are influenced by the hierarchical structure of their incumbent peers. Using matched employer-employee data from Brazil, we classify establishments into one to four-layer entities and examine how a new entrant’s decision to add an organizational layer varies with the average number of layers of other establishments in their industry and location. To address the potential endogeneity of peers’ layers, we construct an instrument based on layers of other establishments in peers’ firms that operate in different markets. We find that new entrants are twice as likely to add a layer within five years if their average peer has one more layer at the time of entry. Our results suggest that organizational structure spillovers can provide a new source of agglomeration advantages. We also find that the influence of peers is stronger in more similar industries. Additionally, we show that new entrants with high-layer peers hire more workers from within the market in the newly created layers, indicating personnel exchanges as a mechanism for organizational spillovers. Chapter 3: I investigate the impact of exporting on hiring decisions in the entry-level labor market. Firms face higher opportunity costs of foregone output when they hire inexperienced workers, who require more training than experienced workers. Using Korean establishment-level data, where I distinctively observe experienced and inexperienced new hires, I show that exporting firms hire fewer inexperienced workers but more experienced workers than non-exporting firms. Moreover, foreign market opportunities further induce exporters to favor experienced workers. This finding suggests that high export opportunities, which increase the opportunity costs of training, may increase barriers to better jobs in the entry-level labor market for young workers. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This dissertation is a collection of essays on economic growth in the presence of asymmetric information between lenders and borrowers in the credit market. The first chapter considers an endogenous growth model where lenders and capital producing borrowers are asymmetrically informed as to the borrower’s ability to successfully operate an investment project. In contrast to the existing literature, lenders can induce self selection either by rationing a fraction of borrowers, or by using a costly screening technology, or by a mix of the two. The growth rate of the economy and the equilibrium contract’s form are mutually dependent and are determined jointly. It is shown that a decline in the screening cost (representing a more sophisticated financial sector), paradoxically, may lower output growth and that benefit of an advanced financial sector becomes evident only when a threshold level sophistication is crossed. The second chapter draws a connection between financial development and economic growth in a neoclassical growth model. It is shown that at a low level of capital accumulation, lenders separates the borrowers by denying credit to a fraction of borrowers. As capital accumulates, credit market may function more like a modern credit market with less credit rationing and with an increasing number of lenders purchasing information to separate borrowers. The transition from rationing to screening results in a higher capital accumulation path and a higher steady state capital stock. The present chapter also highlights the conditions under which transition from rationing to screening regime will not occur and the economy may become trapped in a steady state with credit rationing and with a low level of capital. The third chapter of the dissertation analyzes the effect of inflation rate on the growth rate of output via its effect on the agents’ behavior in the credit market. It is shown that with inflation rate exceeding a critical level, a sharp fall in the growth rate of output takes place as the incentive to purchase information vanishes and borrowers are exclusively separated by means of credit rationing. This chapter also examines the panel data for a large group of countries for the period 1961-88, and shows that the relationship between the inflation rate and the growth rate of output closely follows the prediction of the theoretical model. / Ph. D.

A soberania já foi conceituada de diversos modos ao longo da história. Apesar disso, não deixou de ser a categoria mais elementar do direito internacional; expressando o fundamento de atuação dos Estados, foi através da soberania que o direito internacional se desenvolveu do Século XVII até os dias de hoje. Isso evidencia uma distinção entre o conteúdo da soberania, quer dizer, o seu modo de manifestação, o seu conceito, que se altera em cada período histórico, de um lado, e, do outro, a forma jurídica internacional expressa pela soberania, que se mantém intacta e que existe independentemente do conteúdo que lhe é dado, quer dizer, o lugar que ela ocupa no direito internacional. Através da análise do conceito de soberania fornecido por três autores clássicos de diferentes períodos históricos Hugo Grotius, Pasquale Mancini e Hans Kelsen o presente trabalho tem por objetivo demonstrar o caráter ideológico de cada teoria e, conseqüentemente, sua inexatidão. Para fazê-lo, foi adotado o método materialista dialético, através do qual a produção de idéias por parte do homem deve ser observada nos limites das suas condições de existência e as idéias produzidas como um reflexo consciente do mundo real. Cuida-se, assim, de observar o direito de superioridade afirmado por Grotius nos limites das condições de existência humana que se alteravam com a transição do feudalismo para capitalismo, e extrai-se o seu sentido da luta entre a Igreja e os monarcas que iam centralizando sob si o poder. Da mesma forma, observa-se o direito de nacionalidade de Mancini sob as condições de existência propiciadas pelo amadurecimento das classes sociais do capitalismo na Europa Ocidental como fruto da Revolução Industrial, extraindo-se seu sentido das lutas revolucionárias por libertação nacional que ali se desenrolavam. O caráter essencialmente limitado da soberania de Kelsen, enfim, será observado no contexto da passagem do capitalismo para sua época imperialista, como um reflexo consciente dos desenvolvimentos experimentados pelo direito internacional no fim do Século XIX e início do Século XX, após a Primeira Guerra Mundial. Assim, além de demonstrar o caráter ideológico e a inexatidão dos conceitos mencionados, busca-se demonstrar que o conteúdo da soberania em cada período histórico analisado encontra sua razão de ser na correspondente fase de desenvolvimento do capitalismo e que a forma jurídica soberania, isto é, o lugar que ela ocupa no direito internacional, é determinado pela necessidade do capitalismo de um instrumento de força que assegure a acumulação de capital, o Estado soberano. / Sovereignty has been conceptualized in various ways throughout history. Despite this, it remains the most basic category of international law; expressing the acting plea of States, it was through the sovereignty that international law has developed since 17th century until the present day. This shows a distinction between sovereigntys content, I mean, its mode of manifestation, its concept, that changes in each historical period, of the one part, and, the other, international legal form expressed by sovereignty, which remains intact and that exists independently of content given, I mean, the place it occupies in international law. Through the analysis of sovereignty concept provided by three classical authors from different historical periods Hugo Grotius, Pasquale Mancini and Hans Kelsen this work aims to demonstrate the ideological character of each theory and, consequently, its inaccuracy. To do so, it was adopted the materialistic dialectical method, through which the production of ideas by the man should be observed within the limits of his existences conditions and ideas produced as a conscious reflex of the real world. So, the right of superiority claimed by Grotius is observed within the limits of human existence conditions that was changing with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and its meaning is extracted from the struggle between the Church and the monarchs who were centralizing power under themselves. Similarly, the nationality right of Mancini is observed under the existence conditions offered by the maturing of social classes of capitalism in Western Europe as a result of the Industrial Revolution, and its meaning is extracted from revolutionary struggles for national liberation that unfolded there. The essentially limited character of the sovereignty of Kelsen, in turn, is observed in the context of transition to imperialist era of capitalism, as a conscious reflex of developments experienced by international law in the late 19th and early 20th century, after the First World War. Thus, in addition to demonstrate the ideological character and the inaccuracy of the mentioned concepts, its aimed to demonstrate that the content of sovereignty in each historical period analyzed finds its reason for being on the corresponding stage of capitalism development and that sovereignty legal form, i.e. the place it occupies in international law, is determined by the need of capitalism for an instrument which ensures the accumulation of capital, the sovereign State.

Submitted by VALÉRIA PILÃO null (valeriapilao@gmail.com) on 2017-01-31T13:36:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE_Valéria Pilão.pdf: 2891737 bytes, checksum: 06a7ba19772995f2d5320a24ac7426b2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by LUIZA DE MENEZES ROMANETTO (luizamenezes@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2017-02-03T18:11:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 pilao_v_dr_mar.pdf: 2891737 bytes, checksum: 06a7ba19772995f2d5320a24ac7426b2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-03T18:11:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 pilao_v_dr_mar.pdf: 2891737 bytes, checksum: 06a7ba19772995f2d5320a24ac7426b2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-01-13 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Nas últimas décadas ocorreu uma singular aproximação entre as produções culturais e o mercado. Na imediaticidade do cotidiano observa-se a utilização da cultura como forma de valorizar a imagem da cidade, como uma modalidade de marketing para grandes corporações bem como uma forma de investimento especulativo. A partir dessas manifestações aparentes, mas não se limitando a elas, buscar-se-á a explicação do processo de cooptação da cultura pelo mercado, elucidando a particularidade brasileira e vinculando-a ao movimento de mundialização do capital. A presente tese tem como objetivo, portanto, explicitar e apreender como e por que, entre os anos de 2003 a 2013, houve um movimento de intensificação da mercantilização da cultura. Para tal apreensão, partindo da imediaticidade do real, realiza-se a análise das empresas fomentadoras de cultura que se beneficiam da Lei nº 8.313/91 que trata do incentivo à cultura, popularmente conhecida como Lei Rouanet. A hipótese apresentada é a de que a cultura se insere de diferentes formas no movimento de reprodução do capital: como um serviço, agregando valor à marca e à cidade e, assim, contribuindo para processos especulativos e criadores de renda; e como uma mercadoria que permite a realização de outras mercadorias que contêm um alto grau de tecnologia, como os aparelhos eletroeletrônicos e informacionais. Cabe ao Estado brasileiro, por meio da ampliação da lei de incentivo, realizar o papel de mediador entre as produções culturais e o mercado, contribuindo, assim, de forma institucionalizada para os processos de produção e reprodução do capital tanto de setores nacionais como internacionais e especulativos. Observa-se, ao final da pesquisa, que o movimento de expansão do capital sobre a cultura desenvolve-se no momento em que há a preponderância financeira na economia e que os setores com tendências à concentração de capital são os diretamente beneficiados com a intensificação da mercantilização da cultura. / In the last few decades there has been a unique approach between cultural productions and the market. In the immediacy of daily life, there can be noticed the use of culture as a means of enhancing the image of the city, as a method of marketing for large corporations, as well as a form of speculative investment. From these apparent manifestations, yet not limited to them, this research will seek to explain the process of co-optation of culture by the market, elucidating Brazilian’s peculiarity and linking it to the movement of capital globalization. Therefore, this thesis aims to clarify and understand how and why, between the years of 2003 and 2013, there has been a movement of intensification of cultural commodification. For such understanding, starting from the immediacy of the real, there will be carried out an analysis of the companies that promote culture and are benefited by Law 8,313/91 – popularly known as Lei Rouanet –, a Federal Law for cultural incentive. The hypothesis presented here is that culture is inserted in different ways in the movement of capital reproduction: as a service, adding value to the brand and to the city, thus contributing to processes of speculation and income creation; and as a commodity that enables the achievement of other goods with high technology, such as electronic and informational appliances. It is up to Brazilian State, through the expansion of the incentive law, to play the role of mediator between cultural productions and the market, contributing institutionally to the process of production and reproduction of capital both in national, international, and speculative sectors. One can notice at the end of the research that the movement of capital expansion over culture takes place at a time when there is a financial preponderance in the economy and that the sectors with tendencies towards capital concentration are those directly benefited by the intensification of cultural commodification.