This dissertation consists of three essays examining the determinants of child developmental outcomes using the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). The first essay estimates the relationship between birth weight and cognitive and behavioral outcomes for children aged 0 to 13. Using family fixed effects models to control for household heterogeneity, I find that every ounce counts; additional birth weight for infants born weighing less than 2,500 grams (low birth weight infants) is related to better outcomes for measures of math ability, pro-social behavior and property offense. Additional birth weight for those born weighing 2,500 grams or more is related to higher scores of motor and social development and verbal competence for young children. The second essay, using a sample of Canadian boys and girls aged 10 to 15 in dual-earner families, finds that parental work schedules play an important role in adolescents’ engagement in risky behaviour, especially for boys. Non-standard parental work schedules (i.e. work during evenings, nights, weekends and rotating shifts) are positively related to fighting, drinking and trying drugs among boys and fighting among girls. In the third essay, I investigate relationships between symptoms of hyperactivity-inattention and being read to for a sample of children aged 2 to 4. The main finding, based on family fixed effects estimates, is that children who have higher hyperactivity-inattention are read to less. However, results from interactions suggest that this relationship is only present when the person most knowledgeable of the child (usually the biological mother) has less than a post-secondary degree or diploma.

Submitted by Yara de Almeida Campos Cordeiro (yarinha.a@gmail.com) on 2015-06-03T18:26:36Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Diss_Biblioteca.pdf: 649363 bytes, checksum: 3edcafbc40c828ea9dfa7b5ecbf4892b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by BRUNA BARROS (bruna.barros@fgv.br) on 2015-06-12T14:12:17Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Diss_Biblioteca.pdf: 649363 bytes, checksum: 3edcafbc40c828ea9dfa7b5ecbf4892b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2015-06-12T18:08:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Diss_Biblioteca.pdf: 649363 bytes, checksum: 3edcafbc40c828ea9dfa7b5ecbf4892b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-12T18:08:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Diss_Biblioteca.pdf: 649363 bytes, checksum: 3edcafbc40c828ea9dfa7b5ecbf4892b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04 / This paper investigates the expectations formation process of economic agents about inflation rate. Using the Market Expectations System of Central Bank of Brazil, we perceive that agents do not update their forecasts every period and that even agents who update disagree in their predictions. We then focus on the two most popular types of inattention models that have been discussed in the recent literature: sticky-information and noisy-information models. Estimating a hybrid model we find that, although formally fitting the Brazilian data, it happens at the cost of a much higher degree of information rigidity than observed.

A great amount of available information over the internet makes it impossible for anyone to process it all. In this thesis, we use the rational inattention theory to see how the perceived signals about the exogenous variables would change under different levels of information capacity. Those signals are then applied in the New Keynesian model and corresponding impulse responses are compared with the case of unlimited attention. We found that for some autoregressive processes the differences from the perfect attention case are not very profound while for others the results vary considerably.

The thesis deals with problems that may be encountered in school by children who suffer from an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The main objective is to highlight many practical techniques, methods and guidelines that can be helpful in teacher?s approach to an ADHD child. The theoretical part deals with the main symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity associated with life and how they affect the child afflicted by the disorder. Teaching methods that are to be used when working with ADHD children are described. In the practical part, there are three case studies to present the general problems that ADHD children, their parents, teachers and other surrounding people have to face. I also enriched the amended practical part with interviews with teachers to find out what their current approach to these children is and whether they are able to use the right working methods with the children in school to make the teaching and learning easier and more open.

Dissertation focus on problems connected with ADHD and hyperkinetic disorder. First part describes ADHD, it?s symptoms, utterances in different parts of children?s evolution, diagnosis and treatment. Main part focuses on foreknowledge, right usage of term ADHD and hyperactivity of different groups of people. As next, it focuses on finding how is the situation with recognizing of ADHD and diagnosis and consecutive work with these children.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a certain set of abuse household dysfunction experiences that many children in the United States experience. Children who experience multiple ACEs are more likely to have negative mental and physical health issues as they grow older. These outcomes include ADHD, depression, cancer, heart disease, and early death. In this study, I examined the effectiveness of child centered play therapy (CCPT), a developmentally appropriate treatment modality, with children who have experienced two or more ACEs and who are also demonstrating inattention and impulsivity symptoms. Participants were 34 students from five Title 1 elementary schools in the southwest United States (28 males and 6 females; age range 5-8 years old with a mean age of 6.12). In the sample, participants were comprised of 29.4% African American (n = 10), 38.2% Caucasian (n = 13), 17.6% Hispanic/Latino (n = 6), and 14.7% identified as biracial (n = 5). Participants were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received 16 CCPT 30-minute sessions twice a week (n = 17) or a waitlist control group (n = 17) that received treatment at the conclusion of the study. Using a factorial ANOVA, results indicated statistically significant improvement of CCPT treatment group over waitlist control group on the ADDES-4 School Total and the DOF Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problems scale indicating that CCPT was an appropriate treatment model for children who have experienced ACEs and inattention and impulsivity symptoms.

The dissertation thesis focuses on the problem of driver inattention as one of the main factors contributing to the traffic accidents occurrence. The importance of this topic has been introduce on the basis of the literature review. The theoretical analysis includes terminology in the field of accident analysis related to the topic of this dissertation thesis. Existing methods for driver behavior analysis have been introduced as well as the selected resuls of existing research studies focused on the driver inattention. Research gaps have been identified on the basis of the research review, on some of them has been focused this work. The defined problem situation points to the need to find and verify the relevant modern methods for analysis of driver inattention, respectivaly influence of selected distracting stimuli on the stages of driver information processing. The series of measurements also provides quantified data, especially with regard to the perception duration of selected distracting stimuli.

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This dissertation studies asymmetric pricing in the small (APIS), where small price increases outnumber small price decreases, the asymmetry disappearing for larger price changes; and the corresponding reversed phenomenon (APIS-R). Current evidence suggests retailers deploy these pricing practices despite menu costs and potential consumer concerns. There is also evidence that inflation is only a partial contributor to the phenomena. These point to possible strategic intent driving these retail pricing practices. However, there are only a few papers in the domain, and none specifically address the cross-sectional and longitudinal variations. Further, existing results are mostly based on a single retailer, limited products, short time span, and legacy datasets dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, leaving their current relevance unsettled. Recent papers also question if small price changes are measurement artifacts. This dissertation addresses these gaps by analyzing several large contemporary datasets – a scanner dataset with more than 79 billion price observations and a matching consumer panel dataset with more than 50,000 participating panelists. Our key results imply the pricing practices can be retailers’ strategic responses to the cognitive tasks faced by consumers. Chapter 1 is a general introduction to the thesis. Chapter 2 sets up the fundamentals of the phenomena and reports robust evidence of APIS and APIS-R across the retail price spectrum. Chapter 3 examines the cross-sectional variations of the phenomena and finds that APIS and APIS-R are associated with product characteristics such as purchase frequency and category price level, as well as retail format such as HILO or EDLP. Chapter 4 explores the longitudinal variations and finds that business cycles are a major time-varying factor influencing retail practices of APIS and APIS-R. Chapter 5 concludes with reflections on the findings, implications for theory and practice, limitations, and suggestions for future studies. / Dissertation / Candidate in Philosophy / This dissertation studies asymmetric pricing in the small (APIS), where small price increases outnumber small price decreases, the asymmetry disappearing for larger price changes; and the corresponding reversed phenomenon (APIS-R). There are only a few papers in the domain, and none explain their cross-sectional and longitudinal variations. Existing results are mostly based on a single retailer, limited products, short time span, and legacy datasets dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, leaving their current relevance unsettled. Recent papers also question if small price changes are measurement artifacts. This dissertation addresses these gaps by analyzing several large contemporary datasets. The research finds robust evidence of both APIS and APIS-R in the retail price spectrum, and provides explanations for their cross-sectional variation, across products and retailers, as well as longitudinal variations, across business cycles. The results indicate the pricing practices can be retailers’ strategic responses to the cognitive tasks faced by consumers.

I cover three topics in empirical microeconomics. In the first chapter, titled Investor Attention to Firm versus Market-wide Information Shocks: Evidence from North Korean Missile Tests, I study whether attention towards salient political events leads to underutilization of firm-specific information in the South Korean stock market. I find that companies with earnings surprises in the top quartile experience a 1.6% increase in the abnormal return on the announcement day, but a same-day missile test takes away 70% of the positive response. In the second chapter, titled Does Cultural Proximity Mitigate the Effect of Immigration on Electoral Outcomes? (with Gerard Domènech), we study the effect of immigration on electoral outcomes using individual-level administrative data in Spain. In a multiple instrumentations framework, we find that recent immigrants who arrived within two years are associated with an increase in the vote share of the extremist parties. Such an effect persists for additional two years but dissipates in the long-term. When split by regions of origin, African immigrants have the greatest impact, followed by Latin American immigrants. European immigrants do not affect the extremist vote shares. An analysis of the unemployment rate and the number of children suggests that immigrants tend to assimilate over time. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that cultural proximity mitigates the political reaction to immigrants. In the third chapter, titled The Effect of Daddy Quota on Gender Labor Market Outcomes (with Petra Niedermeyerova), we study the impact of a father-specific parental leave policy on labor market outcomes in Quebec, Canada. Using a province-level difference-in-difference approach, we find that the so-called daddy quota increases the probability of employment for women and decreases the wage of younger men. The results suggest that the daddy quota promoted equal opportunities for women in the labor market. In a theoretical framework, we show that policy-driven changes in gender norms are consistent with our findings.