abstract: The dissertation consists of two essays in misallocation and development. In particular, the essays explore how government policies distort resource allocation across production units, and therefore affect aggregate economic and environmental outcomes. The first chapter studies the aggregate consequences of misallocation in a firm dynamics model with multi-establishment firms. I calibrate my model to the US firm size distribution with respect to both the number of employees and the number of establishments, and use it to study distortions that are correlated with establishment size, or so-called size-dependent distortions to establishments, which are modeled as implicit output taxes. In contrast to previous studies, I find that size-dependent distortions are not more damaging to aggregate productivity and output than size-independent distortions, while the implicit tax revenue approximately summarizes the effects on aggregate output. I also use the model to compare the effects of size-dependent distortions to establishments and to firms, and find that they have different effects on firm size distribution, but have similar effects on aggregate output. The second chapter studies the effects of product market frictions on firm size distribution and their implications for industrial pollution in China. Using a unique micro-level manufacturing census, I find that larger firms generate and emit less pollutants per unit of production. I also provide evidence suggesting the existence of size-dependent product market frictions that disproportionately affect larger firms. Using a model with firms heterogeneous in productivity and an endogenous choice of pollution treatment technology, I show that these frictions result in lower adoption rate of clean technology, higher pollution and lower aggregate output. I use the model to evaluate policies that eliminate size-dependent frictions, and those that increase environmental regulation. Quantitative results show that eliminating size-dependent frictions increases output by 30%. Meanwhile, the fraction of firms using clean technology increases by 27% and aggregate pollution decreases by 20%. In contrast, a regulatory policy which increases the clean technology adoption rate by the same 27%, has no effect on aggregate output and leads to only 10% reduction in aggregate pollution. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2016

abstract: This dissertation consists of two chapters. Chapter one studies distortionary effects of tax exemption of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) premiums. First, I argue that, in the competitive labor market, tax deductibility of ESHI premiums generates an implicit labor cost subsidy to the employers sponsoring health insurance (HI) which distorts the allocation of labor across employers. Second, I quantify the extent of this misallocation measured as output loss in a general equilibrium model of firm dynamics extended to incorporate tax exemption of ESHI premiums and endogenous provision of HI by the employers. The calibrated model shows that elimination of tax exemption increases aggregate output by 1.73%. About two-thirds of this effect comes from removing the misallocation of labor across existing establishments, and the remaining one-third comes from the increase in the number of operating establishments. Third, I use the model to analyze how tax exemption interacts with the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act imposing a tax on large employers not sponsoring HI. Quantitative results show that implementing the employer mandate when the tax exemption is present reduces output by 0.13%. Chapter two studies macroeconomic implications of a higher cost of health services faced by the unemployed which arise because 1) workers lose access to ESHI when they leave their jobs and 2) the uninsured face inflated health care prices. First, I provide evidence suggesting that the cost of health services for the privately insured is about 50% lower than for the uninsured. Second, I quantify the effects of higher cost of health services for the unemployed in the Lucas and Prescott (1974) island model extended to allow the workers to pay an extra cost of health services contingent on their employment status. Calibration procedure uses the differences between costs of health services for the privately insured and uninsured inferred from the data as a gap between costs of health services for the employed and unemployed. Quantitative results show that equalizing these costs across workers increases labor productivity by 1.2% and unemployment rate by 1.5 percentage points. The increased unemployment dominates quantitatively leading to a decrease in aggregate output by 0.26%. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2017

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This study investigates the importance of reduced capital misallocation in explaining the gains in corporate spinoffs. The capital misallocation hypothesis asserts that the internal capital market of a diversified firm fails to meet the needs of the relatively low growth divisions for less investment and the needs of the relatively high growth divisions for more investment. Higher differences in growth opportunities imply that more capital is misallocated. This study finds that the higher the difference in growth opportunities of a diversified firm's businesses, the more likely the firm is to conduct a spinoff. This finding supports the argument that diversified firms conduct spinoffs to reduce capital misallocation. This study finds differences in managerial ownership of spinoff firms and of nonspinoff firms. This suggests that the misallocation of internal capital is an agency problem. A low management ownership stake, coupled with the existing differential in growth opportunities between parent and spunoff firms, leads to misallocation of internal capital, thus creating incentives for a spinoff. Spinoffs should result in a shift to the “right" investment policy and to better operating performance for both the parent and spunoff firms. This improvement in operating performance for the post-spinoff firms is expected to be higher when they are from highly different growth opportunity spinoffs. I find mixed evidence regarding market reaction, changes in investment policy, and changes in operating performance. The evidence that supports the capital misallocation hypothesis does not appear uniformly and consistently across the proxies for growth opportunities. However, there is evidence that both parent and spunoff firms benefit from a spinoff. The magnitude of the benefits is larger for spunoff firms than for parent firms. This is as expected because the capital misallocation problem may be reduced, but does not entirely disappear, in the parent firm.

This dissertation consists of three chapters on financial friction, misallocation and development dynamics. The first chapter considers how financial frictions and mobility distortions generate the persistence of post-reform development dynamics. I build a general equilibrium model and calibrate it to China. The mobility distortion is an occupation distortion that restricts a proportion of agents to the low-productive sector. A removal of distortions triggers the transition of the economy. Using a calibrated version of the model, the transition path displays slow convergence and mimics the patterns observed in data. The mobility distortion creates high-ability, but poor, agents before the reform. This provides a channel for financial frictions to have longer effect after the reform. Compared with the literature that uses tax distortions, the economy with mobility distortions generates slower convergence. The second chapter is a welfare analysis of the well-documented depressed migrant wage in China from a dynamic perspective. The depressed migrant wage per se attracts fewer migrant workers and lowers the migrants' consumption and the aggregate output. However, it encourages urban entrepreneurs to substitute capital for labor, relaxing the effect of financial frictions. The net effect on output and consumption depends on the stage of development. Initially, it benefits the economy by speeding up TFP growth and capital accumulation in the urban sector. In the later stage, owing to low consumption of migrants, policy intervention can increase aggregate consumption and output. The third chapter investigates why the intergenerational income mobility decreases and the inequality increase for China over the past 30 years. I propose a theoretical overlapping generation model with missing capital markets, increasing the return to human capital and increasing education cost to explain these facts. After the economic reform happens, all levels of wages go up and all families accumulate and update human capital. However, the increasing education cost and credit constraint prevent the children from rural families from accumulating human capital quickly. The urban families accumulate human capital faster than the rural families. These predictions from the model are verified in the census data. Whether this process continues or not depends on the subsidy of education. Government education policy can improve the allocation of education in the economy.

This dissertation explores the effects of factors such as industrial policy and listing on the stock market on manufacturing firms’ profitability and productivity. The second chapter investigates the effect of industrial policies on misallocation using a rich data-set of Chinese firms. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I provide evidence that government policies (i.e. the 10th Five Year Plan) favoring particular industries lead to increased misallocation (i.e., an increase in the dispersion of revenue productivity across firms in four-digit industries). Moreover, the differential changes between industries supported and not supported by the 10th Five Year Plan are quantitatively large and indicative of a substantial negative impact on aggregate TFP. Using a changes-in-changes model, I find evidence that the Five Year Plan had a positive and significant effect for most of the TFPR distribution while the effect was negative for the lowest quintile of TFPQ and positive for the highest TFPQ quintile. The results suggest increased misallocation is related to the way in which the Chinese government doled out support through the increase of subsidies and the improvement of credit conditions for a subset of firms. In the third chapter, I study the heterogeneous effects of an industrial policy -the 10th Five Year Plan on misallocation, profitability and real technology in Chinese provinces with different mix of supported intensities. I find that the 10th Five Year Plan increased misallocation, profitability and technology of supported industries in provinces with higher supporting intensities. After controlling the effects of China’s state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms and joining into World Trade Organization (WTO), the results are still robust and consistent. In the fourth chapter, I investigate the effects of listing on the stock market on firm’s profitability and technology. Using Chinese firm level data, I identify listing firms, and compute revenue productivity and physical productivity to measure profitability and technology, respectively. To deal with the endogenous problem of listing, I use the number of investment banks as instrument variable. With a difference-in-difference model, I find that listing increases firm’s profitability and technology. Empirical findings also reveal that listing changes characteristics of firms, such as asset, liability and capital structure.

[pt] Eu desenvolvo um modelo de empreendedorismo com escolha ocupacional em que os agentes se deparam com restrições ao crédito. Eu mostro que em economias em que os mercados financeiros são mais apertados, a distribuição de riqueza é caracterizada por níveis mais elevados de desigualdade. O modelo é consistente com resultados documentados na literatura acerca de perdas de PTF e outros resultados agregados. Eu também analiso a dinâmica de transição da distribuição de riqueza depois de um choque permanente e negativo no crédito disponível às famílias e mostro que a acumulação de riqueza pode mitigar a má-alocação decorrente de tais choques. / [en] I develop an entrepreneurship model with occupational choices in an environment where agents face binding credit restrictions. I show that in economies where financial markets are tighter, the distribution of wealth is characterized by higher levels of inequality. The model is consistent with documented results in the literature concerning losses in TFP and other aggregate outcomes. I also analyze the transition dynamics of the wealth distribution in the aftermath of a once-and-for-all credit crunch shock and show that wealth accumulation might mitigate the misallocation implied by such adverse shocks.

Submitted by Ana Luiza Perdigão Valadares Dutra (anapvdutra@gmail.com) on 2016-05-23T23:28:37Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Biblioteca.pdf: 599800 bytes, checksum: 09a9defff0536b97a30f5ad0efd728de (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by GILSON ROCHA MIRANDA (gilson.miranda@fgv.br) on 2016-05-25T14:03:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Biblioteca.pdf: 599800 bytes, checksum: 09a9defff0536b97a30f5ad0efd728de (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2016-06-13T12:28:47Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Biblioteca.pdf: 599800 bytes, checksum: 09a9defff0536b97a30f5ad0efd728de (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-13T12:29:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Biblioteca.pdf: 599800 bytes, checksum: 09a9defff0536b97a30f5ad0efd728de (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-23 / The purpose of this work is to study the role for government in mitigating capital misallocation. We develop an entrepreneurship model in which heterogeneous producers face collateral constraints on production, but can hedge idiosyncratic shocks. Hedging works as a tool for reallocating resources to states in which they are more productively deployed, and can alleviate the effect of the financial frictions and be a counteracting force to capital misallocation. Government incentives to hedging improve workers’ welfare in steady state through an increase in TFP and wages. The intervention leads to a reduction in the rate of return of entrepreneurs and an increase in wealth dispersion. These two effects cause entrepreneurial welfare to decrease.

Submitted by Vinicius Sampaio (vsampacor@gmail.com) on 2017-06-19T21:22:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Do Macro ao Micro - o Papel da Produtividade no Desenvolvimento Econômico.pdf: 746825 bytes, checksum: a5403241a146f98ff63f532bd9db2918 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by GILSON ROCHA MIRANDA (gilson.miranda@fgv.br) on 2017-06-21T14:41:27Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Do Macro ao Micro - o Papel da Produtividade no Desenvolvimento Econômico.pdf: 746825 bytes, checksum: a5403241a146f98ff63f532bd9db2918 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-04T20:03:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Do Macro ao Micro - o Papel da Produtividade no Desenvolvimento Econômico.pdf: 746825 bytes, checksum: a5403241a146f98ff63f532bd9db2918 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-31 / This work emphasizes the evolution in the understanding of productivity as a fundamental factor for economic development. Based on a diagnosis that places productivity as a preponderant factor in determining the dispersion of income across countries, different approaches are presented in order to better understand the most elementary and fundamental mechanisms that determine it, focusing on the recent literature of misallocation. In order to achieve this aim, some of the main aspects identified as potential sources of poor resource allocation and the respective mechanisms through which they act are presented, together with some key empirical results. In addition, based on this theoretical framework, this text proposes a brief reflection about the way these mechanisms affect brazilian productivity and presents some reforms - already concluded or still under analisys - that aim to address some of the distortions observed in this economy. / Este trabalho enfatiza a evolução das formas de entendimento da produtividade enquanto fator fundamental para o desenvolvimento econômico. Partindo de um diagnóstico que coloca a produtividade como fator preponderante na determinação da dispersão de renda verificada entre países, apresentam-se as diferentes abordagens desenvolvidas no intuito de melhor compreender os mecanismos mais elementares e fundamentais que a determinam, com foco na literatura recente de misallocation. Para atingir tal objetivo são apresentados alguns dos principais aspectos apontados como potencias geradores de má alocação de recursos e os respectivos mecanismos por meio do qual atuam, além de alguns importantes resultados empíricos obtidos. Além disso, de posse desse arcabouço teórico, é feita uma breve reflexão sobre a forma como alguns desses mecanismos afetam a produtividade brasileira, bem como são apresentadas algumas reformas - já conduzidas ou ainda em estudo - que visam endereçar algumas das distorções verificadas nessa economia.

abstract: The dissertation consists of three essays that deal with variations in economic growth and development across space and time. The essays in particular explore the importance of differences in occupational structures in various settings. The first chapter documents that intergenerational occupational persistence is significantly higher in poor countries even after controlling for cross-country differences in occupational structures. Based on this empirical fact, I posit that high occupational persistence in poor countries is symptomatic of underlying talent misallocation. Constraints on education financing force sons to choose fathers' occupations over the occupations of their comparative advantage. A version of Roy (1951) model of occupational choice is developed to quantify the impact of occupational misallocation on aggregate productivity. I find that output per worker reduces to a third of the benchmark US economy for the country with the highest level of occupational persistence. In the second chapter, I use occupational prestige as a proxy of social status to estimate intergenerational occupational mobility for 50 countries spanning the breadth of world's income distribution for both sons and daughters. I find that although relative mobility varies significantly across countries, the correlation between relative mobility and GDP per capita is only mildly positive for sons and is close to zero for daughters. I also consider two measures of absolute mobility: the propensity to move across quartiles and the propensity to move relative to father's occupational prestige. Similar to relative mobility, the first measure of absolute mobility is uncorrelated with GDP per capita. The second measure, however, is positively correlated with GDP per capita with correlations being significantly higher for sons compared to daughters. The third chapter analyses to what extent the growth in productivity witnessed by India during 1983--2004 can be explained by a better allocation of workers across occupations. I first document that the propensity to work in high-skilled occupations relative to high-caste men increased manifold for high-caste women, low-caste men and low-caste women during this period. Given that innate talent in these occupations is likely to be independent across groups, the chapter argues that the occupational distribution in the 1980s represented talent misallocation in which workers from many groups faced significant barriers to practice an occupation of their comparative advantage. I find that these barriers can explain 15--21\% of the observed growth in output per worker during the period from 1983--2004. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2015