Thesis advisor: Frank M. Gollop / This thesis is composed of two essays that analyze the incentives and optimal regulation of a monopolist line owner in providing capacity and reliability. Similar analyses in the economic literature resulted in under-investment by an unregulated line owner when line reliability was treated as an exogenous variable. However, reliability should be chosen on the basis of economic principles as well, taking into account not only engineering principles but also the preferences of electricity users. When reliability is treated as a choice variable, both over- and under-investment by the line owner becomes possible. The result depends on the cross-cost elasticity of line construction and on the interval in which the optimal choices of capacity take place. We present some sufficient conditions that leads to definite results about the incentives of the line owner. We also characterize the optimal regulation of the line owner under incomplete information. Our analysis shows that the existence of a line is justified for the social planner when the reliability of other lines on the network is not too high, or when the marginal cost of generation at the expensive generating plant is high. The expectation of higher demand in the future makes the regulator less likely to build the line if it will be congested and reliability of other lines is high enough. It is always optimal to have a congested line under complete information, but not necessarily under incomplete information. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2000. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 1975. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: Richard Arnott / Thesis advisor: Marvin Kraus / Thesis advisor: Stephen Ross / This dissertation comprises three self-contained essays on urban agglomeration economies. The first essay studies the optimal population agglomeration in a city in dynamic contexts. The second essay tests the local labor market agglomeration economies in the Boston metropolitan area, focusing on the effects of social interactions at workplaces on individual earnings. The third essay tests the effects of social interactions at residential locations on housing values. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: Fabio Schiantarelli / It is often argued that monetary instability reduces the informational content of market signals and thereby hinders the efficient allocation of investment. Essay I uses a signal extraction framework to give empirical content to this idea. In particular, we show why this framework predicts that, as monetary uncertainty decreases, the cross-sectional distribution of investment widens. We then explore this hypothesis using panel data information for UK companies over twenty years and receive support from the data. Essay II investigates whether the Istanbul Bourse is efficient or not. To carry out the investigation, the paper applies Johansen's cointegration technique to twelve asset prices from the Istanbul Bourse along with the exchange rate between the U.S. Dollar and the Turkish Lira. The results of these tests suggest that investors in the Istanbul Bourse do not seem to consistently reap abnormal profits by being able to predict future prices. Although asset prices seem to move together in the long run, the use of ECM fails to improve forecasts over univariate martingale predictions. Although the existence of international trade in similar products has captured the attention of trade theorists over the last two decades, it has not been incorporated into models of investment. Essay III develops a Tobin's Q model of capital investment with a purpose to explain the investment decision rule of a firm operating in both domestic and foreign output markets in competition with a foreign rival. Empirical results provide support for the model's predictions. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 1997. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This dissertation consists of three essays on the determinants of voting behavior. In Chapter 1, I empirically examine why candidates who are listed first on voting ballots enjoy substantial advantages such as winning 10% more elections. I use Californian election data where ballot order is randomized but identical for every voter. With these data, I provide new empirical regularities on how such ballot order effects change with the number of votes available to voters and candidate popularity. I show that these patterns are difficult to reconcile with existing models in which ballot order directly affects a voter's choices. In Chapter 2, I propose a novel theory of ballot order effects where rational voters respond to behavioral voters and then amplify the advantage of candidates listed first due to the inherent strategic complementarity in voting. My model is an extension of a standard voting model and allows me to explicitly model the interaction of different types of voters. I estimate my model using a simulated method of moments and find that the interaction between voters is empirically important: rational order effects account for around half of total ballot order effects in terms of vote shares (votes gained just for being listed first), while also reducing the number of behavioral voters necessary to explain the data in other dimensions as well. Motivated by these findings, I suggest new policies to address ballot order effects. In Chapter 3, I investigate how newspaper consumption affects political engagement. To circumvent potential endogeneity issues, I use variation in European languages as an instrument for newspaper consumption. Specifically, I consider variation in how much physical space languages require to express some given information content. I first estimate such language efficiency from large bilingual text compilations. Using a European-wide survey that spans 18 different languages, I find that respondents who speak efficient languages are more likely to read newspapers, as is consistent with this mechanism. This finding is robust to a large variety of alternative specifications. Using language efficiency as an instrument for newspaper consumption, I find that newspaper consumption increases turnout and political interest of immigrants.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1988. / Bibliography: v.2, leaves 430-439. / by Howard J. Wial. / Ph.D.

Does geography impact economic growth directly even after considering economic and political institutions? This paper explores which countries are the most geographically disadvantaged and if these disadvantages play a role in their economic growth and per capita income levels. A group of the 30 most geographically disadvantaged countries is determined by summing multiple geography variables to understand the overall disadvantages these countries face. The difference between per capita income levels and growth rates of these countries compared to other developing countries is analyzed to discover the disadvantage these geographic characteristics have. This analysis will explore how important geography is to growth relative to economic and political institutions, and whether the effects of geography change over time. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Economics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester 2017. / July 18, 2017. / Economic Freedom of the World Index, EFW / Includes bibliographical references. / James D. Gwartney, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Stefan Norrbin, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Paul Beaumont, Committee Member; Katie Sherron, Committee Member; Carl Kitchens, Committee Member.

Evidence suggests that corruption in the administering of driver's licenses has the potential to create large social harm by allowing incompetent drivers on the road, but these drivers are not guaranteed to cause accidents. Similarly, contractors for a building may be permitted to do shoddy work as long as an inspector is paid a bribe. The building may not collapse with certainty, but it may do so in the face of a natural disaster that it should have been able to withstand. While we know that individuals will engage in corruption when its negative effects are probabilistic, little is known about the underlying reasons for doing so. The second and third chapters of this dissertation explore the effects that individuals' beliefs have on the decision to bribe when social harm is probabilistic. In Chapter 2, I introduce a game that captures some of the key elements of the environments in which exchanges that generate probabilistic negative externalities occur. This chapter seeks to establish a basic understanding of behavior in these types of environments, given that previous corruption experiments have focused on situations where negative externalities occur with certainty. I find that subjects are more likely to offer a bribe when they believe that others are going to bribe. When subjects are at risk of causing themselves and others to incur losses, the beliefs that they form about the likelihood of experiencing losses are inaccurate, even when they have the information necessary to form accurate beliefs. However, these beliefs do not appear to affect the decision to offer a bribe. In Chapter 3, I apply my bribery game to the study of bribing for a driver's license. I supply subjects with context-rich instructions and induce types among potential bribers to reflect drivers of different natural ability. Some drivers can bribe for a license while increasing social efficiency, because the formalities of obtaining a license are unnecessary for them, while other drivers lower social efficiency, in expectation, when they bribe, since formal licensing procedures are necessary for them. I find that subjects once again are more willing to offer a bribe when they believe that others are going to bribe. Inaccurate beliefs about the likelihood of experiencing losses are also commonplace, even in the face of full information, but in contrast to Chapter 2, these beliefs enter into the decision to offer a bribe. Beliefs about type indicate non-rationalizable overconfidence, but these beliefs are not predictive of bribing behavior. Finally, in Chapter 4, I turn my attention to the topic of group formation. Using a public goods game in which participants can select their groups, I investigate the role that personality plays in contribution behavior and group selection as the information available to participants about groups varies. I find that when participants only have access to information about the average personality profiles of groups, personality predicts contribution behavior, and participants select groups based on high measures of certain personality traits. However, when participants have access to historical contribution information about groups, both by itself and along with personality information, personality has little predictive power for contribution behavior, and groups are selected on the basis of past contribution levels. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Economics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2017. / November 3, 2017. / Bribery, Corruption, Experiment, Group Formation, HEXACO, Public Goods / Includes bibliographical references. / John Hamman, Professor Directing Dissertation; Eric A. Coleman, University Representative; Sebastian Goerg, Committee Member; R. Mark Isaac, Committee Member.

This thesis investigates the impact of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), a prominent place-based development policy in India. The first chapter studies the impact of SEZs on general economic activity as proxied by satellite lights data. Using newly assembled data on geocoded SEZ-level information and a thirteen-year panel data of 100,000 one-square-kilometer cells, it establishes that SEZs cause a significant increase in local economic activity up to a distance of 5 kilometers from the zones. The net effect is positive up to 20 kilometers from the zones, comparable in size to Indian districts. The second chapter analyzes the forces behind the increase in economic activity recorded in Chapter 1. Using nationally representative data on informal and formal sector firms and comparing current and future districts of SEZ operation in a difference-in-differences framework, the analysis produces evidence of a structural transformation in the local economy. While firms in the formal sector gain in size and productivity, SEZs crowd out economic activity from the informal sector evidenced by substantial decreases in informal sector employment, production and productivity. These trends are accompanied by non-uniform wage effects on workers in the local economy with only the higher end of the income and education distributions gaining significantly. The third chapter sheds more light on the mechanism that drives the opposite effects produced by SEZs on the two sectors of the Indian economy. Using measures of product quality and an index for the relative importance of industries in the supply chain, it finds that SEZs exert an increase in the demand for quality inputs from the local economy. This differentially hurts informal industries that are input suppliers. Secondly, evidence from a unique data-set on firm registrations in the state of Tamil Nadu suggests that increased formalization in the local economy is not brought about by an increase in informal firms registering into the formal sector. It is rather driven by a reduction in their registration rate and shutting down. Given that this sector is a major employer, this result raises concerns about inclusiveness in the growth produced by such a large-scale place-based policy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Hugh George Courtney. / Ph.D.