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Thesis advisor: Theodore Papageorgiou / Chapter 1 examines whether moral hazard in unemployment insurance (UI) varies with the job-finding rate (JFR) and the job-losing rate (JLR). A search model allowing exogenous separation predicts that the JLR and the JFR depending on the tightness of the labor market could affect moral hazard differently. Consistent with the predictions, this chapter finds empirical evidence that moral hazard becomes smaller if JLR is higher while not varying with tightness. Policy makers should focus on JLR, which is a main driver of local unemployment rates, to adjust UI benefits according to labor market conditions. Chapter 2 estimates the impact of patient cost sharing on utilization over time by difference-in-discontinuities with population data. This chapter exploits the difference in coinsurance by cohort, 10\% vs 20\%, during ages 70-74. This chapter finds that the impact after five years on total spending is similar to the immediate impact, while heterogeneity by type of care exists. The reduction of discretionary care gets larger over time and remains persistent after age 75, possibly due to habit formation. In contrast, the impact on less discretionary care remains unchanged over time, diluting the strengthening impact of discretionary care and stabilizing the response dynamics of total spending as observed. Chapter 3 develops a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of social norms on the marriage-market outcome. Social norms have a husband work outside the home and a wife take care of children, irrespective of their comparative advantages. Social norms generate larger inefficiency if a high-skill wife has comparative advantages in working than a low-skill husband, making marriages less beneficial for high-skill women, hindering their match, and inducing them to leave the marriage market when outsourcing childcare is difficult. This effect decreases the aggregated surplus in an economy. At the same time, the decrease in the competitiveness of high-skill women could improve others in the marriage market, high-skill men or low-skill women. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

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The purpose of this study was to analyze the contribution of five factors as predictors of academic department secretaries' role conflict, role ambiguity, and propensity to leave. The five predictor variables were: (1) secretaries' decision participation level, (2) department chairpersons' communication openness, (3) department chairpersons' role conflict, (4) department chairpersons' role ambiguity, and (5) secretaries' length of service. In addition, the relationship between secretaries' report of decision participation level and preferred decision participation level as well as the relationship between secretaries' and department chairpersons' communication openness were examined.;Using the Academic Department Secretary Questionnaire, an instrument developed by the author, data was collected from 121 secretaries at five four-year public institutions in Virginia. The three research questions were analyzed using the stepwise procedure of multiple regression analysis. The two subsidiary questions were analyzed using a t-test.;Each of the five predictor variables investigated was found to be statistically significant in at least one of the multiple regression equations. Department chairpersons' communication openness was a significant factor in all three equations.;The two significant predictors of secretaries' role conflict were chairpersons' role conflict (r =.53) and chairpersons' lack of communication openness (r =.37). The three significant predictors of secretaries' role ambiguity were chairpersons' lack of communication openness (r =.52), chairpersons' role ambiguity (r =.48), and secretaries' decision participation level (r =.43). The two significant predictors of secretaries' propensity to leave were chairpersons' lack of communication openness (r =.31) and secretaries' length of service (r = {dollar}-{dollar}.25).;This study found a significant difference between secretaries' decision participation level and preferred decision level (t = {dollar}-{dollar}6.17). It did not find a significant difference between secretaries' and chairpersons' communication openness.;After presenting its findings, this study offers suggestions and strategies for reducing the negative impact of these factors.

This dissertation explores the impact of the “threat effects” of foreign direct investment on labor markets in the United States. In this context, the term “threat effect” refers to the use by employers of the implicit or explicit threat that they will move all or part of their production to a different location, even if they do not actually do so. Some economists have argued that increased capital mobility, by making such threats more credible, enhances the bargaining power of employers relative to workers through this threat effect channel. Using game theoretic and econometric analysis I found that the threat effect of capital mobility exerts a large and statistically significant negative influence on wages.

A common theme in the analysis of the contemporary Chinese economy is that the Chinese state owned enterprises fail to operate efficiently because of ambiguous property rights, soft budget constraints, and government intervention. These authors advocate an economic reform program based on large-scale privatization. This dissertation advances an alternative perspective on the state owned enterprises. In the first essay, I argue that the state owned enterprises have made an important contribution to China's macroeconomic stability. This view draws from Hyman Minsky's argument that a large government sector is indispensable for a capitalist market economy to maintain macroeconomic stability and avoid deep recessions. I argue that in the Chinese context, the state owned enterprise sector must be sufficiently large so that public sector investment accounts for about 50 percent of the total capital formation. In the second essay, I argue that the performance of the state owned enterprises can be enhanced by promoting workers' participation in management. I conducted a survey of workers' participation in management in large and medium-sized industrial enterprises in China's Henan province. Using the data collected from this survey, I performed econometric analyses to explore the relationship between workers' participation and firm performance, finding evidence that participation does improve performance. The third essay addresses what is now termed “disguised unemployment” in the state owned enterprises. The existing literature argues that the state owned enterprises fail to use their labor force efficiently. In this view, a high percentage of workers in state owned enterprises are redundant and unemployed in a disguised manner. These workers have to be laid off for the sake of efficiency. I argue that much of the disguised unemployment in the state sector may be due to insufficient aggregate demand rather than technical inefficiency. My econometric analyses find that an increase in aggregate demand leads to substantially higher productivity in the state owned enterprises, allowing a substantial part of the redundant labor force to be efficiently employed. I argue for active aggregate demand policy rather than layoff of workers as the primary solution to the problem of disguised unemployment.

This multi-method study examines the challenges and strategies of family day care providers, the least studied and most commonly employed child care workers. I also examine workers within the context of two alternative efforts to raise the compensation and status of family day care work---professionalization and unionization. Qualitative data were collected through interviews with staff and key members of a professionalization group and a union serving providers in Illinois. Quantitative and qualitative data from home day care providers come from a mail survey sent to a random sample of 1,300 licensed providers in Illinois, resulting in 553 valid responses. Using data from the provider survey, I find that providers orient themselves to their work in a variety of ways, some primarily out of a devotion to home and family, and others as a career or as service to kith, kin and community. Race is a central factor shaping provider motivations and expectations about their work. While work conditions and remuneration are troubling for all workers, race shapes perceptions of these problems. White providers are more likely to be dissatisfied with their hours and schedule, while black providers are more likely to be dissatisfied with remuneration. In analyses of the two organizations working to improve conditions for workers, I delineate the different goals, strategies and methods of each organization. While the training and credentialing efforts associated with professionalization are ideally associated with greater autonomy and status for the workers, the service orientation of this organization fails to empower workers or incorporate worker demands into their political action. The union, while more democratic in theory and practice, suffers from a narrow focus and a limited ability to marshal resources and public support. Differences in goals and methods do coincide with different opinions and participation among providers, especially by race. Black providers are more likely to invest time and money in credentials, but they are less likely than white providers to join associations for family day care workers. In contrast, black providers are far more likely than white providers to endorse and participate in the union.

This dissertation examines the relationship between social structure and the average length of time in economic exchange. The corporate merger and acquisition market is examined over a 19 year period to study the statistical relationship between the average length of time in deal negotiations and measures of institutional forces as well as established sociometric measures. Survival regression modeling is employed to assess the role social structure plays in the length of time in deal making. At the actor level, network position among investment bankers plays a role in the average length of time in deal negotiations. Investment bankers use degree centrality and exploit structural holes within their ego networks to further their duration goals. At the group level, properties of the overall network of investment bankers are related to the average length of time in deal negotiations as well. Network density of the investment bank community is related to the average length of time in deal making. Institutional forces play a role in the average length of time in negotiations as well. Measures of coercive, normative, as well as mimetic institutional forces are statistically related to the average length of time in deal negotiations. The passage of time itself is statistically related to lengthening the remaining length of time, on average, in deal negotiations.