Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-184). / This thesis consists of three chapters on political economy. Each chapter explores the effects of a change to the equilibrium of a given market. In the first chapter, Jon Weigel and I study a randomized controlled trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on corruption at tolls. We randomly vary incentives for drivers to comply with rules instead of engaging in corruption. These incentives affect the "supply" of corruption rather than the "demand" for corruption from bureaucrats. We find that sizable financial incentives produce a 7 to 10 percentage point increase in the probability that drivers get receipts, implying an elasticity of citizen supply of bribes ranging from 0.45 to -0.95. Social incentives have no effect. Similarly, providing information about other drivers' responses to treatment (to shift social norms) does not affect behavior. Drivers' appear remarkably inelastic in their supply of bribes. We argue this reflects the fact that bribe payment may increase the efficiency of transactions in the toll setting we examine and suggest that corruption may serve to "grease the wheels" in this context. In the second chapter, Christopher Blattman, Horacio Larreguy, Benjamin Marx, and I study a large-scale randomized controlled trial designed to combat vote-buying in the 2016 election in Uganda. We find that the campaign did not reduce the extent to which voters accepted cash and gifts in exchange for their votes. In addition, we designed the study to take advantage of our large sample (covering 1.2 million voters) to examine both direct treatment and spillover effects. The spillover effects on vote-buying are also zero, but the campaign had large direct and indirect effects on vote-shares for candidates. Heavily treated areas had increases in visits from non-incumbent candidates and non-incumbent candidates improved their vote shares substantially in these parishes. Consistent with these effects, we find evidence that the campaign diminished the effectiveness of vote-buying transactions by shifting local social norms against vote-selling and by convincing some voters to vote their conscience, regardless of any gifts received. In the third chapter, I examine the effect of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age in the United States from 21 to 18. This change enfranchised a large population of new voters, expanding the electorate by almost 9%. However, I find that the Amendment had little effect on overall political outcomes in the United States. Although it did increase total turnout in areas with more young voters, it did not affect the partisan composition of the electorate and correspondingly did not lead to changes in representation or policy. These results stand in contrast to other well-studied expansions of the franchise and provide an important caveat to those findings: when the preferences of new voters are insufficiently distinct from those of existing voters, politicians have little reason to change their established positions. / by Otis Russell Reid. / Citizen participation in corruption : evidence from roadway tolls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (with Jonathan Weigel) -- A market equilibrium approach to reduce the incidence of vote -buying : evidence from Uganda (with Christopher Blattman, Horacio Larreguy, and Benjamin Marx) -- A "minor" expansion : political outcomes. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Koleman S. Strumpf. / Ph.D.

The thesis has investigated if cultural factors influence economic growth differences among countries. It was motivated by the intriguing question as to whether the gap between developed and developing countries is widening. Technically speaking, some countries which were regarded as underdeveloped three or four decades ago are now regarded as developed as articulated in the introduction to chapter 1. On the other hand, Sub-Saharan African region has failed to register convincing economic development (Seguino and Were, 2014, p. 1). The mixed methods design used in this thesis engaged distinct frameworks of both quantitative and qualitative paradigms to answer the research questions within this thesis. Implementing mixed research design in this thesis enables the investigation of how each variable in the study, environments, and institutions interact with each other in different contexts to produce measured effects. For instance, the study examined two sub-samples of developed and developing countries, 6 countries in each sub-sample. Further, the study also examined 18 representative Sub-Saharan countries to answer the research question. Lastly, a multi-case study of Malawi and Botswana was undertaken. The first two contexts of study used secondary data analysis. The multi-case study was used to drill down deeper than secondary data analysis allowed. This thesis focussed on the interaction between culture and economic growth. The literature review indicated that the impact of culture on growth is not particularly well articulated at present, and therefore this thesis seeks to make a contribution to this aspect of theory and practice. In addition, to the extent that culture has a significant impact on growth potential and its realisation, culture is not homogenous in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will have potentially significant impact upon different countries, and should be taken into consideration by governments and development agencies seeking to promote economic growth and sustainable development across the African continent.

This dissertation studies the design of prices or incentives in dynamic settings where customers are privately informed about their psychological biases, or agents are privately informed about the technology. Chapter 1 studies how firms set prices when their consumers have time-inconsistent preferences and naive beliefs. Temptation goods, such as credit card-financed con- sumption, are overvalued by consumers in the short run. It is typically assumed that a monopolistic firm maximizes profit by pricing temptation goods above marginal cost when consumer naivete is observable. However, market evidence contradicts this result. This chapter explains the puzzle by the assumption that consumer naivete is unobservable. Then it is optimal for a monopoly seller to offer a menu of options that have prices both above and below marginal cost. Chapter 2 studies a project manager deciding on workers’ workload assignments. Workers face productivity shocks over time. Workers also tend to procrastinate, although they prefer flexibility in production. Commitment of early production can overcome procrastination. The optimal compensation scheme depends on whether the manager’s objective is to maximize profit or welfare. It also depends on the degree of workers’ procrastination. When the worker is a serious procrastinator, it is optimal for a profit-maximizing manager to monitor midterm output according to a pass-fail criterion. The final chapter studies an investor deciding on resource allocation and manage- rial compensation. The manager privately observes time-varying project quality. A signal that contains information about the evolution of future quality is also privately available to the manager initially. When the manager reports a better initial signal, the investor allocates more resources to the project in every period. Growth of the project scale depends on how strongly the initial signal predicts future quality. How- ever, the project with a better initial signal may grow more slowly and distortions may persist indefinitely.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-114). / by Jaewoo Lee. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Ralph David Simpson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 203-207. / by Glenn Tetsumi Sueyoshi. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis investigates the influence of retiree health and pension policies on the retirement decisions of public sector employees. Chapter one documents the central role of eligibility for subsidized retiree health insurance. Using administrative records obtained from the Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System, the analysis finds that the well-documented spike in the separation rate at the normal retirement age almost completely disappears in the population of workers not yet eligible for subsidized retiree health insurance. A second set of results exploits quasi-experimental variation in plan design to show that increasing the service requirement for subsidized retiree health insurance stretches the distribution of separations: early separations occur earlier and late separations occur later. Chapter two presents a structural analysis of the retirement decision for the same employees. Existing models of the retirement decision treat eligibility as a fixed characteristic of the worker rather than one that evolves over the career. This chapter estimates a model of life-cycle labor supply and uses it to simulate labor supply behavior under different health and pension policies. Changes in the eligibility requirements for subsidized retiree health insurance induce dramatic changes in retirement timing that would be missed in models that do not account for an employer's eligibility criteria. Chapter three turns to the defined benefit pension plans common in the public sector. These plans create complicated incentives in favor of continued work at some ages and in favor of retirement at others. The strength of these incentives depends on many factors, such as the age of initial employment and the number of years on the job. Because employees differ along these dimensions, the value of the pension benefits earned over the course of a career varies substantially-even among employees with the same total earnings. This chapter investigates the incentive effects and distributional consequences of four stylized plan designs. It derives simple formulas for the accrual rate of pension wealth and the distribution of benefits under each of the plans and uses these formulas to gain insight into the incentives and risks they create. / by Gregory Quick Leiserson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Howard F. Chang. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-99). / by Alain Jousten. / Ph.D.