Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-188). / by John Kevin Berner. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1988. / Bibliography: leaves 152-153. / by Michael Steven Weisbach. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-100). / by Rafic Y.W. Naja. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-193). / It is increasingly recognized that translating research into policy requires aggregating evidence from multiple studies of the same economic phenomenon. This translation requires not only an estimate of the impact of an intervention across different contexts, but also an assessment of the generalizability of the evidence and hence its applicability to policy decisions in other settings. This thesis performs evidence aggregation using Bayesian hierarchical models, which both aggregate evidence and assess the true underlying heterogeneity across settings, for applications in development economics. Where necessary, the thesis develops new methods to aggregate evidence on certain measures of evidence currently neglected in the aggregation literature such as distributional treatment effects or risk ratios. The applications considered are randomized controlled trials of expanding access to microcredit and randomized access to vitamin A supplementation in developing nations. / by Rachael Meager. / Ph. D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics. Thesis. 1971. Ph.D. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaf 128. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 35-36). / This paper identifies the effect of agricultural subsidies on farmland rental rates in the United States. Rental agreements are primarily between farmers and non-farmer landlords, but no evidence exists concerning the incidence of subsidies on these two groups. By exploiting a unique policy change in 1996 and a nationally representative dataset of individual farms, I solve the endogeneity problem with fixed effects and instrumental variables techniques. I show that non-farmer landlords capture forty percent of the marginal subsidy dollar per acre. This finding is in sharp contrast to the basic assumptions in the literature that suggest full incidence on the landlords. I discuss possible characteristics of the farmland rental market that would result in less than perfect incidence. / by Barrett E. Kirwan. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2007. / "June 2007." / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation consists of three chapters on the interaction of political institutions and macroeconomic activity in dynamic environments. Chapter 1 studies the optimal management of taxes and debt in a framework which relaxes the standard assumption of a benevolent government. We assume instead the existence of a self-interested ruler who manages the government budget. Unlike in the standard economy, temporary economic shocks generate persistent changes in taxes and debt along the equilibrium path so as to optimally limit rent-seeking by the ruler. The presence of political economy distortions causes the debt market which is complete to behave as if it were incomplete. In contrast to an incomplete market economy, taxes are positive in the long run. A numerical exercise suggests that the welfare cost of political economy distortions is high if the government chooses suboptimal politically sustainable policies which do not respond persistently to shocks. This is because the government over-saves and resources are wasted on rents. Chapter 2 studies the dynamics of war and peace in an environment with two groups seeking resources from each other. Peaceful compromise is subject to limited commitment and informational frictions since groups cannot commit to concession-making and the private cost of concession-making can be extremely high. / (cont.) We show that phases of war enforce phases of peace along the equilibrium path. Even though fluctuations between war and peace can occur in the short run, long run convergence to permanent war is inevitable since this maximizes the duration of peace in the short run. In an extension, we allow each group to waste resources during war to inflict additional damage on its enemy. Under some conditions, phases of peace occur even in the long run, since phases of peace enforce phases of war. Chapter 3 is joint work with Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. We revisit the conventional wisdom which views high levels of income as a prerequisite for democracy. We show that existing evidence for this view is based on cross-country correlations which disappear once we look at within-country variation. Rather than reflecting causality, the cross-country correlation between income and democracy reflects longer-run changes, in particular, a positive correlation between changes in income and democracy over the past 500 years. We suggest a possible explanation for this pattern based on the idea that societies may have embarked on divergent political-economic development paths at certain critical junctures. / by Pierre Yared. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis consists of three essays that examine household savings and portfolio choice behavior. Chapter One analyses the effects of employer matching contributions and tax incentives on participation and contribution behavior in employer-sponsored 401(k) savings plans. Employer sponsored retirement savings plans consist of several different incentives designed to increase employee savings, including matching contributions, tax deductibility, and tax free compounding. There is a substantial literature on the effects of match rates on retirement savings, but little on the effects of preferential tax treatment. This chapter provides estimates of the impact of employer matching and tax deductibility on retirement savings using a uniquely suited dataset from a large United States Corporation. I estimate that the effect of a one percentage point change in the match rate corresponds to a 0.06 percentage point increase in savings plan participation rates, while a similar one percentage point increase in marginal tax rates increases participation by 1.35 percentage points. Changes in the match rate have an insignificant effect on contribution rates (conditional on participation), though a one percentage point change in marginal tax rates tends to increase contribution rates by 0.16 percentage points. The effects of the match rate and marginal tax rate are transformed into changes in the annualized rate of return of the savings plan and this disparity remains. / (cont.) Finally, these estimates are used to calculate the changes in wealth at retirement due to changes in match rates and marginal tax rates under a variety of parameterizations. Chapter Two examines the trading and contribution behavior of employees participating in the 401(k) plan at a large United States corporation. This corporation offers employer matching contributions in company stock, and employees are prohibited from trading the matching contributions for an extended period. The empirical work details evidence of rebalancing behavior that is impacted by vesting restrictions and within-firm variation in match rates. Employees are between 3 and 7 percentage points more likely to rebalance their retirement portfolio once matching contributions have fully vested, and an additional 6 to 11 percentage points more likely if they face a 100% match rate relative to a 50% match rate. Variation in match rates also leads to changes in composition of employee contributions: increases in the match rate lead to decreases in the amount of company stock that the employee purchases with their own funds. Employees are between 13 and 19 percentage points less likely to contribute their own income to the matched asset and, if they still contribute to company stock, the employee's own-money contributions in company stock fall by between 13 and 18 percentage points. Together, these estimates provide evidence that employee contribution and rebalancing behavior is altered by asset-specific matching contributions and by restrictions on the trade of particular assets. / (cont.) Chapter Three uses data from multiple panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to identify the effect of unemployment insurance benefits on household savings behavior. This chapter extends existing literature on precautionary savings and insurance to allow for the fact that insurance benefits are multi-dimensional, including replacement rates and benefit durations; incorporates additional econometric methods to accommodate the skewness and variation in household savings; allows for heterogeneous savings responses based on the likelihood of the insured risk through a two-step estimation procedure; and by allowing insurance benefits to affect the level and composition of assets by analyzing changes in the composition of the household's portfolio across assets that are likely (or unlikely) to represent precautionary savings. I find suggestive evidence of quantitatively large reductions in precautionary savings behavior in response to variation in both replacement rates and benefit durations, though these results are not statistically distinguishable from zero. The negative effect of benefit increases on savings is magnified for households at greater risk of unemployment, and for the households with below median levels of financial wealth, though again these results are statistically insignificant once standard errors are properly adjusted. These extensions do not provide enough power to detect savings responses to variation in insurance benefits at standard levels of confidence, despite point estimates that represent economically large responses. / by Sean Patrick Klein. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2005. / "June 2005." / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis is a collection of three empirical essays on the economics of local public goods. Chapter One examines the marginal propensity of local governments to spend out of lump- sum grant income. Economic theory predicts that this marginal propensity will equal the marginal propensity to spend on public goods out of private income. A large empirical literature contradicts the prediction. A school finance reform in the state of New Hampshire is used to test the prediction. The use of direct democracy to determine the provision level of local public goods in New Hampshire provides a uniquely appropriate environment in which to conduct the test. The results provide support for the theoretical prediction. Chapter Two examines the most significant locally provided public good, education. Specifically, the chapter examines the end of court-ordered desegregation. The widespread termination of desegregation plans in the post 1990 period has returned a large number of school districts to local control and ended efforts to promote racial integration. The results suggest that the termination of a desegregation plan results in a gradual, moderate increase in racial segregation and an increase in black dropout rates and rates of black private school attendance in localities located outside the South census region. There is no effect on black dropout rates or rates of black private school attendance in the South. Chapter Three examines the impact of the most significant local tax, the property tax, on capital investment. The results suggest that the elasticity of residential capital investment with respect to the property tax is -1.9 to -.8. / (cont.) There is no evidence that business capital investment responds to the rate of property taxation in a locality. / by Byron F. Lutz. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-123). / The research presented in this thesis covers two topics: the economics of crime and econometric methodology. The first chapter addresses the question of whether higher wages reduce teenage crime rates. I exploit exogenous variation in the wages of teenagers resulting from federal minimum wage legislation. Instrumental variables estimates show a strong negative relationship between wages and arrest rates for burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, vandalism, and robbery. Wage elasticities of property crime arrest rates range between -1 and - 2. !n contrast with the results for property crime, wages do not have a strong impact on arrest rates for most violent crime. The second chapter examines the effect of crime on the labor market outcomes of victims. I use longitudinal data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to estimate the employment-related costs of crime. Estimates suggest that being the victim of a violent crime causes a transitory decline in the employment rates and household income of victims of 2 to 3 percent. Victims of property crime do not show a significant decline in employment rates or household income as a result of the crime. For victims of violent crime, average lost earnings are roughly $700, a figure close to estimates of the total property loss and medical costs suffered by victims of violent crime. The third chapter contains work, joint with Bryan Brown and Whitney Newey, that describes a relatively efficient moment-restricted bootstrap for generalized method of moments estimators. We show the bootstrap improves on the standard asymptotic approximation and illustrate that the bootstrap improvement can be large, as evidenced by Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical example in dynamic panel data models. / by Sean Michael May. / Ph.D.