Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Jeffrey Richrd Kling. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-144). / by Rachel Miriam Friedberg. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Brian J. Aitken. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-91). / This thesis examines several economic implications of demographic changes. Chapter 2 documents a relation between the age structure of economies and their real exchange rate. The relation varies with the level of development. Among developed countries a 10 percentage point higher ratio of old people to the working age population is associated with a 12-15 percent higher price level. In middle income developing economies, a 10 percentage point increase in the ratio of children to the working age population is related to a 4 percent increase in the price level. A simple model attributes the findings to the effect of the age groups on the demand for nontradables. Its calibration indicates that this explanation can account for a substantial part of the observed effect of the elderly. It is also consistent with the much smaller impact of children. The fact that the significance of the elderly is limited to developed countries further supports the argument. The generational conflict hypothesis argues that the elderly might use their political power to reduce public resources for children. It is usually tested by exploiting the localized nature of school funding in the US. Chapter 3 takes a different approach using cross-country data on family benefits. I find a positive relation at the national level between the generosity of these benefits and the share of the elderly in the electorate. The findings can add to the debate on local school funding. I also suggest that the effect of the elderly may reflect the larger proportion of women among them. Chapter 4 shows that individuals with no post-secondary education are less supportive of public R&D spending. This points to possible political economy causes of technological change. A high proportion of educated voters may accelerate such change by expanding public R&D outlays. Thus an increased supply of skilled workers could raise the relative demand for them. The difference in support for R&D spending suggests that it favors skilled workers either by directly employing them or indirectly by generating skill-biased technological change. / by Jacob Braude. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 22). / Whether or not the Madrid March 11th 2004 terrorist attacks affected the outcome of the Spanish general elections three days later has been the source of great controversy in the last years. This paper analyzes Spanish electoral data for the 2000 and 2004 Congressional elections, comparing the marginal effects of the proportion of voters who voted before the elections (and therefore, before the bombings in 2004) on the voting pattern in both years. A linear approach finds mild evidence that bombs undermined support for the incumbent conservative party and increased the share of the vote for the opposition socialists, similar to previous findings by Montalvo (2006) using a natural experiment design. A non-linear approach using binomial and multinomial logit models is not successful and yields no conclusive indications on how the attacks affected the outcome of the elections. / by Sandro Díez-Amigo. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-172). / This thesis contains essays on health care delivery and financing. Chapter 1 studies the effect of organizational structure on physician behavior. I investigate this by studying emergency department (ED) physicians who work in two organizational systems that differ in the extent of physician autonomy to manage work: a "nurse-managed" system in which physicians are assigned patients by a triage nurse "manager," and a "self-managed" system in which physicians decide among themselves which patients to treat. I estimate that the self-managed system increases throughput productivity by 10-13%. Essentially all of this net effect can be accounted for by reducing a moral hazard I call "foot-dragging": Because of asymmetric information between physicians and the triage nurse, physicians delay discharging patients to appear busier and avoid getting new patients. Chapter 2 explores the development of physician practice styles during training. Although a large literature documents variation in medical spending across areas, relatively little is known about the sources of underlying provider-level variation. I study physicians in training ("housestaff") at a single institution and measure the dynamics of their spending practice styles. Practice-style variation at least doubles discontinuously as housestaff change informal roles at the end of the first year of training, from "interns" to "residents," suggesting that physician authority is important for the size of practice-style variation. Although practice styles are in general poorly explained by summary measures of training experiences, rotating to an affiliated community hospital decreases intern spending at the main hospital by more than half, reflecting an important and lasting effect of institutional norms. Chapter 3, joint with Jonathan Gruber, examines insurance enrollee choices in a "defined contribution exchange," in which low-income enrollees are responsible for paying for part of the price of insurance. Estimating the price-sensitivity of low-income enrollees for insurance represents a first step for understanding the implications of such a system that will soon become widespread under health care reform. Using data from Massachusetts Commonwealth Care, we find that low-income enrollees are highly sensitive to plan price differentials when initially choosing plans but then exhibit strong inertia once they are in a plan. / by David C. Chan. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, September 2011. / "September 2011." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis explores three aspects of the coexistence of governments and markets from an optimal policy point of view. In chapter 1, I study how the presence of financial markets shapes the government's ability to redistribute. Individuals do not, constrain consumption to equal their net-of- tax income every period, but instead use markets to allocate their resources over time. This restricts the set of policy instruments available to the government. At the same time, however, markets enable agents to enter long-term consumption commitments. Changing these contracts is costly. These potential default costs mitigate the government's ex-post incentives to renege on the promised tax schedule, and therefore provide a coninitment device for the government. In that sense, financial markets may facilitate rather than hinder redistribution. In chapter 2, I present a rationale for corporate income taxes to discriminate between debt and equity financing. For risk-averse entrepreneurs, equity generates more surplus than debt, because it provides financing and insurance. A government seeking to extract surplus from entrepreneurs would naturally tax equity-generated income more than debt-generated income. Moreover, in the presence of private information, the government can use taxes to discriminate between different types of entrepreneurs. This degree of freedom allows a manipulation of the relevant incentive constraints, and an increase in overall efficiency. The optimal non-linear tax schedule to achieve the desired discrimination is isomorphic to one that taxes debt-generated income at a lower rate than equity-generated income. In chapter 3, I explore how fast people adapt to institutional change. I study the differential reaction of former East and West Germans to a series of health care reforms. Along with the decrease in coverage under the public health insurance, former East Germans were significantly less likely to sign complementary insurance contracts in the private market. I show that the differential uptake rates of additional insurance are consistent with a model in which agents learn over time that institutions have changed and they are now responsible for optimizing their coverage. Thus, I provide evidence for the existence of a substantial transition period in the individual adaptation to new institutions. / by Jenny Simon. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics and Social Science, 1959. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-216). / by John A. Bergeron. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-110). / This thesis estimates the effects of immigration on education and crime. In Chapter I, I use a reform in immigration policy as a natural experiment to estimate the effects of immigration on native-born student outcomes in Texas. OLS estimates suggest a negative association between immigration and the passing rates of native students on a state-wide basic skills exam. However, these estimates are potentially biased by omitted variables or endogeneity. Differences-in-differences and IV estimates suggest that immigrants have a small positive effect on the outcomes of native Hispanic students and no effect on native White students. I provide evidence that resources provided for immigrants benefit native Hispanic students. In Chapter 2, I use the reform in immigration policy to estimate the effects of immigration on crime rates in Texas. OLS estimates indicate a positive correlation between immigration and crime. However, differences-in-differences and IV estimates suggest that immigrants have no effect on juvenile crime rates. In Chapter 3, I use a federal initiative to curtail illegal immigration to California as a natural experiment to estimate the effects of immigration on native student dropout rates. The operation created exogenous variation in immigration between different areas of the state. OLS estimates show a positive correlation between immigration and native dropout rates. However, differences-in-differences and IV estimates suggest that immigrants have no effect on native dropout rates. / by Samuel T. Liu. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-250). / by Alessandro Missale. / Ph.D.