This dissertation consists of three essays in applied microeconomics.The first chapter investigates the effect of coroner partisanship on COVID-19 death reporting. The politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has raised questions about the integrity and accuracy of death reporting, particularly in jurisdictions with elected, partisan coroners. Using mortality data from the CDC and manually collected data on county-level death certification systems and coroner party affiliation where applicable, I examine the parallel systems of appointed medical examiners and elected coroners and analyze the effect of partisanship on reported COVID-19 deaths. Cross-sectional comparisons do not seem to suggest counties with coroners report fewer deaths than those with medical examiners, and difference-in-differences specifications reveal limited evidence of a statistically significant but not economically meaningful effect of partisanship on reported COVID death counts. The second chapter examines the effect of new information on lead water pipes on housing prices. In 2016, the Water and Sewer Authority of Washington, DC released an online map that contains information on lead service lines (LSLs) for all properties in the district. Using the release as a natural experiment, I estimate the effect of the new information on prices of properties with and without LSLs. Recent literature has found that housing lead reduction policies such as remediation mandates have significant price effects. In DC, while the map’s release was followed by a marked increase in requests for water lead tests, neither a difference-in-differences model nor a repeat sales model captures a significant divergence between housing prices of the two types of properties after the release, implying the housing market response to the information was limited. The second chapter considers the effect of the marriage tax subsidy on the marriage decision of same-sex couples. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on United States v. Windsor in June 2013 compelled the federal government to recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages, including for tax purposes. The switch in the income tax filing status for same-sex couples meant that the marriage penalty or subsidy as a result of joint filing became a relevant factor that may enter couples’ marriage decisions. I construct a sample of married and cohabiting same-sex couples in 2012 and 2014 from public-use data of the American Community Survey. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, I do not find evidence that same-sex couples who would earn a higher marriage subsidy became more likely to marry after the Supreme Court ruling.

Fear of crime may differ between areas, even if levels of crime do not differ. Policymakers and companies should be interested in how much economical values individuals put on their emotions. No previous paper has tried to estimate the economic consequences of the kind of fear of crime that does not stem from an increase in crime. Through a hedonic fixed effect-approach and a unique data set, I close this gap by estimating the willingness to pay to avoid that fear. As the outcome variable, I use sold apartments in Stockholm municipality in the years 2017 and 2020. I find suggestive evidence of small to moderate effect of fear of crime on housing prices, even after controlling for crime levels, with an elasticity of -2% to -6%. The results are robust throughout different robustness tests. These findings may help politicians in their cost-benefit analyses when planning safety-increasing projects.

This thesis explores the impact of two behavioural finance concepts, social psychology and psychology, on household financial decisions. Under social psychology, I investigate whether the variety and intensity of social engagement enhances stock market participation. With regard to psychology, I examine two behavioural biases. First, I investigate whether mental accounting influences portfolio choice in three asset classes and whether financial advice and housing tenure increase (decrease) the effects of mental accounts on portfolio choice. Second, I examine whether households’ self-reported housing wealth are anchored on published house price indices and whether anchoring bias is mediated by market information, mortgage refinancing decisions and social factors. The main contributions and findings in the three studies are as follows. First, although there is an elaborate body of research concerning the relationship between social engagement mechanisms and portfolio choice, most studies investigate specific mechanisms in isolation. Using three waves in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), I bring together five social engagement measures in one model and show that socially engaged individuals are more likely to participate in the stock market. Consistent with Granovetter’s (1973) theory of social networks I find that a weak tie (measured by social group involvement) has a positive effect on stock market participation whereas a strong tie (measured by talking to neighbours) has no effect. More trusting individuals are more likely to participate in the stock market, as are those who identify with a political party. In contrast, the degree to which religion is important appears to have little impact. These results are robust using different specifications. Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that the likelihood of stock market participation increases with the variety and intensity of social engagement. Second, despite the established theoretical underpinnings of mental accounting in behavioural portfolio theory (BPT) and recent extensions, not much is known about their implications in real life situations. I use a recent UK household survey, the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS), which has comprehensive information about financial assets to investigate whether there are differences in the ownership and portfolio share of three asset classes among individuals who exhibit no mental account, a single mental account and multiple mental accounts, and the conditional influences of financial advice, housing, cognitive ability, time preference and risk tolerance. Overall I find that mental accounting together with financial advice and housing tenure explain variations in both the probability of ownership and portfolio share in the three asset classes. Households that exhibit a single mental account have low share of investments in, and are less likely to own, a risky asset when compared to those that exhibit no mental account or exhibit multiple mental accounts. I also find that, when compared to having no mental account, exhibiting a single mental account or multiple mental accounts increases both the probability and investment share in a fairly safe asset but decreases portfolio share in safe assets. In addition, among those that exhibit a single mental or multiple mental accounts, financial advice decreases portfolio share in risky assets and fairly safe assets and increases portfolio share in safe assets. Housing tenure increases both the probability and portfolio share in risky assets, decreases portfolio share in fairly safe assets and increases portfolio share in safe assets. These results are consistent using multi-equation regressions, sub-samples, reparametrised variables and poisson regressions. Finally, as little is known about how households derive the self-reported house prices estimates that are commonly used to determine housing wealth, the third study examines whether households are anchored on published house price indices. The key conjecture is that, while assessing the values of their homes, homeowners place more weight on house price news at the expense of property characteristics and other market information. I find support for this hypothesis using sixteen waves of the BHPS, multiple methods, and both regional and national house price indices. I conclude that changes in self-reported housing wealth are anchored on changes in published house price indices. Specifically, ownership through a mortgage and greater financial expectations increase anchoring effects while mortgage refinancing decreases the effects. Moreover, use of money raised from refinancing for home investment, as opposed to other consumption purposes, has a positive association with change in self-reported house value and both uses reduce anchoring bias. In addition, I find that computer use increases anchoring bias and, among social engagement mechanisms, religiosity reduces anchoring while other measures have no effect. These results are robust to internal instrumental variables, national aggregate house prices, alternative indices and sub-samples.

為瞭解地方縣市長選舉期間，候選人所爭相開立之競選支票對於地方經濟的影響，本研究將過去僅以中央政府為研究對象的政治景氣循環理論延伸至地方層級，期能藉此彌補相關文獻僅考量政治層面的不足。而關於政治景氣循環理論自Nordhaus(1970)正式提出至今，較具爭議之實證結果分歧的部分，本研究試圖以「執政者操控經濟之能力」的差異予以解釋。 另一方面，基於地方政府彼此間的競爭性，地方層級之政治景氣循環現象對於地方經濟的影響，應有別於中央層級。本研究遂以此現象對房地產價格之影響為焦點，藉以瞭解當政治景氣循環現象可能因執政者操控能力之有無而不必然出現時，各地方之經濟狀況是否將因此而有所差異。 經由理論模型之探討，以及蒐集台灣地區民國74年至87年各縣市之相關年資料以進行實證分析之後，本研究得到下列結論： 1. 就本研究的實證資料而言，我國地方層級存在政治景氣循環現象；而執政者為達成其連任目的而於選前採取擴張政策時，將同時考量其財政自主程度，顯示執政者之操控能力對於政治景氣循環現象的發生有相當的影響。 2. 地方層級之政治景氣循環現象，將伴隨房地產價格的過度資本化，而使房地產價格有相對上較高的傾向；由台灣地區相關資料所得之實證結果亦是如此。由此，可推論此一現象對於地方經濟發展有相當影響。 3. 由於政治景氣循環現象的存在，使得都市發展程度較高、財政自主程度較高的縣市，其房地產價格偏高的現象，似乎是現今民主政治制度下一種難以避免的趨勢。 4. 地方政府贏得選舉的動機，應是中央政府制訂相關政策目標或策略時所不容忽略的，特別是那些須經由地方政府所執行者，如促進區域均衡、促進城鄉發展之策略等。 此外，基於研究結果與限制，關於如何改善在總體經濟變數、政府支出等方面因政治景氣循環現象所引發之人為波動，乃是未來值得進一步探究之課題。或是突破資料之限制，改以季資料或月資料進行實證分析，應能使研究成果更為清晰。再者，關於中央政府對於地方政府行為的影響，亦可為後續研究方向。 第一章 緒論 1 第一節 研究動機與目的 1 第二節 研究方法 4 第三節 研究範圍 5 第四節 研究限制 5 第五節 研究流程 8 第二章 文獻回顧 9 第三章 理論模型 15 第一節 政治景氣循環理論之討論 15 第二節 結合政治景氣循環理論之資本化模型 17 第四章 地方層級政治景氣循環現象探討與實證分析 22 第一節 地方政府操控經濟之誘因與工具 22 第二節 地方政府執政者操控能力之差異 30 第三節 實證分析 36 第四節 小結 49 第五章 地方層級政治景氣循環現象對房地產價格之影響實證分析 51 第一節 各縣市房地產價格概況分析 51 第二節 實證分析 62 第三章 小結 70 第六章 綜合分析與檢討 72 第一節 中央補助款角色之探討 72 第二節 地方層級之政治景氣循環現象與區域均衡發展 74 第三節 實證資料之限制 76 第七章 結論 78 第一節 結論 78 第二節 後續研究方向 80 參考文獻 82 附錄 92 表目錄 表4-1：選民的政黨偏好與改變，1983-1992 23 表4-2：第十屆至第十三屆縣市長選舉當選人名單與得票率 25 表4-3：第十二屆至第十四屆縣市議會之多數黨及該黨籍議員比例 31 表4-4：各縣市之自有財源比例 33 表4-5：各縣市自有財源比例之ANOVA分析結果 35 表4-6：實證資料來源 39 表4-7：選舉循環之虛擬變數設計 40 表4-8：平均每人歲出之選舉循環估計結果 43 表4-9：每年新闢與維護之道路面積之選舉循環估計結果 45 表4-10：地價稅收之選舉循環估計結果 47 表5-1：各縣市房地產報酬率之ANOVA分析結果 57 表5-2：變數定義與資料來源說明 65 表5-3：OLS估計結果 68 表5-4：Parks法估計之結果 69 表a-1：「平均每人歲出」迴歸分析之基本統計量 92 表a-2：「每年新闢與維護之道路面積」迴歸分析之基本統計量 93 表a-3：「地價稅收」迴歸分析之基本統計量 94 表a-4：「房地產報酬率」迴歸分析之基本統計量 95 圖目錄 圖1-1：研究流程圖 8 圖5-1：北部區域縣市之歷年平均區段地價 52 圖5-2：中部區域縣市之歷年平均區段地價 53 圖5-3：南部區域縣市之歷年平均區段地價 54 圖5-4：東部區域縣市之歷年平均區段地價 55 圖5-5：北部區域縣市歷年之房地產報酬率 58 圖5-6：中部區域縣市歷年之房地產報酬率 59 圖5-7：南部區域縣市歷年之房地產報酬率 60 圖5-8：東部區域縣市歷年之房地產報酬率 61