There are four parts to this thesis: the first chapter analyses the structure of leisure in couples with particular emphasis on joint leisure. We take a structural approach and model the household as a two-stage decision making unit. The findings suggest that couples see joint leisure as a distinct good from private leisure. Specifically when a household decides to have more leisure, almost 40 percent of this increase is allocated to joint leisure as opposed to only 8 to 15 percent allocated to male private leisure. Furthermore, couples prefer to spend leisure together (synchronisation) relative to spending time independently, giving joint leisure the largest weight in the utility function. The findings further suggest that demographics can play a large role in determining the patterns of spousal leisure, with ethnicity and job characteristics being important factors. Finally, when analysing weekend time use patterns, there is evidence to suggest that Saturdays should be distinguished from Sundays as approximately 41 percent more joint leisure is observed on Sundays. The second chapter of the thesis begins our examination of the UK income taxation reform in 1990. The UK went from a system of joint taxation to independent taxation of couples and this reform may have had important implications for households. Across countries, there is a large variation in the income tax treatment of couples. Over the last three decades, many countries have undergone reforms in their tax systems, some have moved from joint to independent taxation, some from independent to joint, while others have begun the practice of allowing couples to choose the system they prefer. This chapter aims to give an overview of the tax treatment of couples and outlines the differences across countries, with particular emphasis on the tax reform in the UK. The third chapter investigates the UK income taxation reform in 1990 and examines how the change from a system of joint to independent taxation of couples has shifted women's relative earning potentials in the household, and how this in turn has led to changes in intra-household assignable clothing expenditures. I apply my method to a sample of UK couples with children and the findings of this chapter show that an exogenous increase in women's income relative to their spouse significantly and substantially increases female clothing expenditure and decreases male clothing expenditure ceteris paribus. However an increase in relative female earnings does not necessarily mean that children will do better relatively. The final outcome may depend on the type of transfer in question. In addition, there is evidence that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner and children may depend significantly on distribution factors such as spousal relative incomes, age gap and educational gap, despite the fact that these variables do not impact on preferences nor on budgets directly. This provides further evidence against the unitary framework in favour of the collective approach and the sharing rule interpretation of how households make decisions in practice. The final chapter of this thesis examines the effects of the tax reform in 1990 with particular emphasis on female labour supply. A method of clarifying the concept of a spouse's individual net income under a joint tax regime is proposed and following the methodology of Blundell et al (2007), the labour supply elasticities for both male and female are estimated. The analysis is extended further to include children in the model and the results show that both the number of children and their age are highly significant for women's labour supply and to a smaller extent also for men. Testing the income pooling hypothesis, the unitary model is not rejected. However, the results strongly reject the hypothesis that distribution factors have no effect on labour supply. The results also suggest that for the group of women affected, the reform generated two opposing effects on their labour supply: a positive effect from an increase in net wage and a negative effect from an increase in bargaining power. On balance, we find that a typical female decreased her labour supply by approximately 2.6 hours per week, yet she still experienced a 22 percent increase in her net income.

This thesis consists of three closely connected pieces of work and an enhanced version of my M.Phil. thesis. The first three substantive chapters analyse vertical contracting in input markets under the exercise of differential buyer power. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the case of a supplier selling its output via a supermarket that offers captive demand (due to customers who anyway make a trip for their weekly shopping), which its rival, a local store is not able to offer. It is shown that the supermarket can negotiate an input price lower than the local store's only if its advantage translates into sufficient bargaining strength in setting contracts. The existence of a waterbed effect, the implications of a partially covered market, a nonlinear pricing structure and welfare implications of a ban in discrimination are also explored. Chapter 4 modifies the standard model where size determines buyer power to show that if quantities need to be decided in advance, an increase in a retailer's size is always welfare improving. For the presence of waterbed effects, we propose a novel insight that runs across different classes of models: following a discount to one retailer, the supplier faces two competing incentives - it wants to extract profits from the rival retailer but it also wants to transfer sales towards it. The waterbed effect is shown to be present only if the discount to the retailer is small, so incentives for profit extraction outweigh those for transferring business. Finally chapter 5 studies a firm's strategic incentive to outsource when its product displays network effects. It shows that a firm would choose to increase its observable marginal cost to make its competitor less aggressive and thereby increase its own probability of winning competition for the market. This is robust to small levels of uncertainty.

Aside from the introduction and conclusion, this thesis comprises four core chapters: The first chapter investigates the presence of endogenous peer effects in the adoption of formal property rights. Using data from a unique land titling experiment held in an unplanned settlement in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I show a strong, positive impact of neighbour adoption on the household’s choice to purchase a land title. I also show that this relationship holds in a separate, identical experiment held a year later in a nearby community, as well as in administrative data for approximately 45,000 land parcels in the same city. I also discuss possible channels, including the possibility of complementarities in the reduction in expropriation risk. The second chapter examines the relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and the demand for formal land tenure. Using a unique census of two highly fractionalised settle- ments in Dar es Salaam, I show that households located near coethnics are significantly less likely to purchase a limited form of land tenure recently offered by the government. I attempt to address one of the chief concerns, endogenous sorting of households, by con- ditioning on a households choice of neighbors upon arrival in the neighborhood. These results suggest that close-knit ethnic groups may be less likely to accept state-provided goods if they can generate reasonable substitutes. The third chapter is a short chapter which presents results from a recent policy experi- ment in Tanzania where formal land titles were provided to informal settlers at randomised prices. Land owners were also randomly assigned conditional discounts, which could only be applied if a woman was designated as owner or co-owner of the land in question. Results show that conditionality has no adverse effects on demand for land titles, yet drastically increases the probability a woman is included. We discuss the implications of these results for the expected bargaining power impacts of the intervention. The final chapter investigates birth order effects on both anthropometric and edu- cation outcomes in a longitudinal survey of children from the Philippines. Birth order effects are present early in life for both outcomes, but attenuate as children approach adulthood. There is also evidence for nonlinear birth order effects, with both firstborn and lastborn children holding an advantage over middleborn children. These results are at odds with prevalent theories of birth order which predict lasting and monotonic differences in outcomes across children.

Moroccan manufacturing firms generally choose to incorporate under one of two legal forms: ‘Société Anonyme’ (SA) and ‘Société À Responsibilité Limitée’ (SARL). This thesis is about that choice and its consequence for firms’ access to bank overdraft facilities. In 2001, Morocco made a radical change to its company law regime: it replaced a company law dating from 19th-century France with modern standards of corporate governance and accountability. In Chapter One, I use the two-period FACS/ICA panel to analyse that reform and to evaluate its impact upon manufacturing firms’ access to bank credit. I find that the reform induced a substantial share of SA firms to switch to SARL, and that — relative to firms remaining in the SA status — this caused a significant and substantial withdrawal of bank overdraft facilities. In Chapter Two, I develop a theoretical model in which an agent signals its continuous type by using a variable that may take one of only two values (a ‘binary signal’); this is intended to represent a firm’s choice of legal status. I show that this binary signal provides only ‘coarse information’, and I consider the consequences of this coarseness; I solve for equilibrium conditions and I consider both the role of a principal’s risk aversion and the role of other observable agent characteristics (‘indices’). Chapter Three uses the results of Chapter Two to develop a new structural methodology for the separate identification of information and incentive effects. I apply the method to the data used in Chapter One, on the subset of firms having an overdraft facility in both survey periods (approximately two-thirds of the total sample). I find that, among that limited sample, there is no relevant information asymmetry. I estimate the potential welfare loss and conclude that, in the 95% confidence region of potential information effects and incentive effects, the maximum median welfare loss from information asymmetry is equivalent to approximately only 3% of the median bank overdraft limit. For the sample of firms having an overdraft facility in both survey periods, this challenges the common narrative that information asymmetry is an important reason for bank credit market failure.

The first chapter considers a common agency model where two competition authorities share information about a firm under investigation. It shows that information-sharing can sometimes be welfare detrimental unless the authorities coordinate their enforcement policies as well as share information. The reason behind is that the authorities may have different leniency levels and the firm may decide to provide less precise information to one in an attempt to appeal the other. Furthermore it shows that the authorities may want to distort their policies in order to prevent the firm from obscuring the information it provides. The second chapter studies the seller's incentives to provide misleading advice about complex goods such as consumer electronics, banking or phone services. It shows how the incentives to give biased and imprecise advice are affected by the possibility of ex-post litigation, when a court or consumer protection authority investigates how biased the advice is and penalises accordingly. It finds that a more biased advice will also be less precise, thus, a stricter punishment for deceiving consumers also increases precision. The third chapter analyses the impact of trade credit on a relational contract between two vertically related firms. The firms operate in an environment with unobservable shocks, like a developing country or a black market, which create moral hazard in the repayment decision. It shows that the quantity sold in the market will be distorted downwards in order to curb the constrained firm's incentives to steal the credit and derives the optimal repayment scheme.

Two teachers with two classes each participated in the research, which used a modified Campbell and Stanley equivalent time series design. Each class was randomly assigned four of eight filmstrips. Both experimental and control classes heard lectures on a module, the experimental group viewed the filmstrip, and both were posttested. Independent variables controlling for student differences, module difficulty, student attitudes, and the critical independent variable, viewing of the filmstrip (View), were regressed on student cognition. In the analysis, significant at the .001 level, View exerted a significant positive influence on cognition scores. No relation was discovered between student attitudes toward filmstrips and increased cognition.

This thesis explores the causal relationships between tax incentives, research and development (R&D) and productivity. Using R&D survey data from the United Kingdom (UK) Office for National Statistics and administrative data on corporation tax returns from HM Revenue and Customs, I first conduct empirical analyses of tax incentive policies for R&D, and then estimate the elasticity of output with respect to firms' own R&D efforts as well as external R&D performed by neighboring firms in technology and product space. In the first two chapters which focus on tax incentive policies and their evaluation, I am able to identify the policy effect of interest by exploiting two significant reforms in the UK in 2002 and 2008. I find that tax incentives had a positive and significant stimulating effect on businesses' R&D spending. I argue that the availability of a quasi-experimental set up helps in better identifying the policy impact. The production function estimation exercise in the third chapter shows that double counting of R&D human resources and materials in the production function causes the elasticity of output with respect to the firms' own R&D to be substantially underestimated. I also find that the R&D done in multi-unit enterprise groups is productive for the production facilities which themselves do not perform R&D. The Jaffe (1986) and Bloom et al. (2013) measures of external R&D, which account for closeness of firms in technology and product space can be constructed and included in the production function in the spirit of Griliches (1979). I find that the point estimate for the elasticity of output with respect to firms' own R&D is around 3 percent and statistically significant. Evidence is mixed regarding the productivity effects of R&D carried out by competitors in the product market or neighboring firms in technology space. The detailed data sets used in this study offer valuable resources for empirical work on R&D and productivity.

In this collection of essays, I explore three topics where space and distance plays a fundamental role in international economics. Not only do spatial considerations affect the pattern of trade, the frictions that arise from distance also determine where and how goods are produced and where people live. In Chapter 1, I show that human made locational characteristics can determine the spatial allocation of economic activity. I take the standard core-periphery model and add endogenous housing to its forward-looking dynamic adjustment process. By introducing a model of adjustment with an extra state variable, which I interpret as housing, I show that the distribution of housing allows the model to converge to a unique spatial equilibrium. This explains the observed persistence and robustness of economic agglomerations in the data. Chapter 2 is a theory of task assignment in the production of final goods and across countries. By allowing for tasks to differ in their suitability of being used in the production of multiple goods, my model endogenizes the allocation of tasks in the production of goods that use them. The resulting equilibrium task allocation defines the pattern of off-shoring. Tasks that are used in only one good concentrate in the country with a specialization in production of that good. Tasks used in many goods are allocated across countries, with the more substitutable tasks located in the country with the larger overall output. Gains from off-shoring are derived from a better mix of allocation of tasks into goods as well as larger scale of production. Finally in Chapter 3, I study how real exchange rate fluctuations determine the size and composition of the export sector. Using the methodology set out in Dixit and Pindyck (1994) in a heterogeneous firms model, I determine the set of trigger real exchange rates for entry and exit into exporting. My primary result of this chapter is that exchange rate uncertainty coupled with sunk cost of entry causes hysteresis in the number and productivity of exporting firms. I then extend the model to allow free entry of firms. This explains the stylized fact of the existence of non-exporting firms with higher productivity than some exporting firms.

This thesis employs two new approaches to explain some of the important debates in two key economic fields: labour market economics and macroeconomic studies related to current account imbalances. Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 begin a new strand of research by introducing the normal inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution to describe unobserved heterogeneity in the labour market. The NIG distribution can be represented as a normal variance-mean mixture with the inverse Gaussian (IG) distribution as the mixing distribution. A 0.01% subsample of the 1980 US Census, comprising all men between 18 and 65 who are in the labour force, as well as a comparable sample from Ghana, is used to show that the NIG distribution provides a better fit of the log earnings function than the normal distribution. The prediction of right skewness of the log earnings distribution arising from the log normal skill Roy selection model is rejected in favour of left skewness. The thesis then extends the model to describe the distribution of log earnings conditioned on education. The same two datasets (US males and Ghanaian males) are used for the empirical analysis. We find that, once the unobserved heterogeneity is accounted for, the return to education is almost flat for lower levels of education in Ghana, and then increases for education levels greater than ten years. One of the key differences between the two datasets is that skewness and unobserved heterogeneity is a function of education for Ghana but not for the US. The NIG framework is found to be a useful tool to model this heterogeneity. Chapter 4 uses a model that allows for a rich structure of age effects similar to those predicted by the life cycle theories to argue that the demographic shifts are partly responsible for the sustained rise in the US current account deficit and the rapid increase in China's current account surplus in the last decade. However, demographics do not have an impact on the long run equilibrium or level of current accounts. Rather, they are important determinants of the short run adjustment of current accounts to their equilibrium levels. In the next twenty years, the demographic shifts are likely to push towards further current account positive adjustments in China and current account negative adjustments in the US. Developing the infrastructure, financial markets, policy tools and regulatory settings to be able to cope with the excess capital flow remains an urgent task.

O termo determinantes de custos tem origem na expressão em inglês cost driver, que faz parte da terminologia concebida no contexto das práticas de contabilidade gerencial que eclodiram no final do século XX. O termo cost driver passou a ser utilizado para designar os fatores que causam os custos, e na medida em que estas práticas de gestão se desenvolveram, o termo passou a ser adotado para finalidades distintas. O termo cost driver é adotado com diferentes propósitos nas práticas de gestão: (i) atribuir custos aos objetos de custos; (ii) estimar o comportamento dos custos (cost behavior); e (iii) designar os fatores que causam os custos das entidades no âmbito da gestão estratégica de custos (GEC). O termo cost driver costuma ser traduzido para a língua portuguesa de duas formas: como direcionador de custos, para designar as abordagens de atribuição de custos e cost behavior; e determinante de custos, para designar os fatores que causam os custos das entidades no contexto da GEC. Embora guardem inúmeras semelhanças em seu significado, a concepção do termo se modifica significativamente conforme a abordagem em que é utilizada. Além disso, constatam-se divergências de significado, conceituação e uso do termo em cada abordagem. Nota-se ainda que a acepção do termo em cada abordagem remete a uma perspectiva microeconômica diferente, o que implica uma série de condições que devem ser consideradas para garantir a adequação conceitual da prática de gestão. A existência de diversas concepções para o termo causa ambiguidades de interpretação, indefinições, e pode até mesmo levar o usuário a utilizar o arcabouço conceitual inadequado, obtendo informações distorcidas para o processo de gestão. Esta pesquisa propõe uma sistematização para auxiliar os usuários da informação de custos na aplicação dos conceitos relacionados aos cost drivers, no sentido de determinantes de custos e direcionadores de custos. A proposta de sistematização leva em conta as visões distintas, mas complementares, dos termos determinantes e direcionadores de custos, e desenvolve uma abordagem procedimental que auxilia usuários e pesquisadores na avaliação do arcabouço teórico e conceitual que deve ser adotado de acordo com o propósito prático que se deseja. / The concept of cost drivers emerged among the specific terminology developed within the new Management Accounting practices during the end of 20th century. Cost driver was the concept used initially to nominate the factors that cause costs, and as those new practices evolved, the expression cost driver turned to new purposes within different contexts. There is at least three different Management Accounting practices adopting the expression cost driver: (i) assign costs to the cost objects, particularly product cost; (ii) understand the cost behavior; and (iii) designate the factors that cause the costs of the company, within the Strategic Cost Management context. This problem is even bigger in Brazil due to the wide translations options. Despite the similarities of meanings through the management practices, the expression cost driver has different effects for each purpose. In addition to the differences of interpretation between the approaches, there is also some differences in cost driver meaning found within the same practice. Furthermore, the concepts of cost driver for each purpose has specific microeconomic theoretical assumptions, whose conditions has to be satisfied in order to provide correct information. Considering this exposition, the existence of different concepts and meanings attained to the expression cost driver mislead users to inadequate cost analysis and design inadequate cost systems. This research propose a systematization to help users to understand cost information and design better cost practices. The proposal is purpose-oriented and assume the different existing approaches as complimentary in order to design Management Accounting information according to desired user purpose.