Realizou-se um estudo das interações entre vários agentes que poderiam estar envolvidos com a estruturação de uma cooperação intermunicipal voltada à política pública de saúde. Pudemos observar que as estruturas formatadas ocorrem como uma combinação linear de plenamente espontânea, quando, então, há a interação dos personagens a nível municipal, a totalmente induzida, quando, então, a capacidade de coerção exercida pela União é suficiente para induzir os Municípios a adotarem uma postura de compartilhamento dos recursos a nível regional. De qualquer forma, o estudo verificou que interferem na formatação de uma estrutura de cooperação algumas variáveis tais como as externalidades, a motivação e incentivos, as instituições e suas alterações, a capacidade de coordenação e de solubilidade da assimetria informacional, entre outras. Assim sendo, desenhamos um arcabouço teórico apoiado nas teorias tradicional de finanças públicas, de escolha coletiva, de contratos e na institucional, a fim de esmiuçarmos dois exemplos diametralmente polarizados: a estruturação da cooperação na forma de uma coalizão por meio de um consórcio intermunicipal e a estruturação da cooperação na forma de convênios por meio da institucionalização de normas operacionais editadas pelo SUS. / A study on the interactions between several agents that could be involved with the arrangement of an intermunicipal cooperation facing the public policy of health has taken place. We could observe that the formatted structures happen as a linear combination of plenarily spontaneous, when, thus, there is the interaction of the personages at a municipal level, totally induced, when, hence, the coercion capacity set forth by the Union is enough to induce municipal districts to adopt a resourcesharing deportment at a regional level. Nevertheless, the study has verified that some variables interfere in the formulation of a structure of cooperation, such as the externalities, motivation and incentives, institutions and its modifications, the capacity of coordination and solubility of informational asymmetry, among many others. Therefore, we have designed a theoretical structure sustained on the theories of traditional public finances, of public choice, of contracts and on the institutional, aiming to crumble two diametrically polarized examples: the formulation of the cooperation as a coalition through an inter-municipal consortium and the arrangement of cooperation as pacts, which are made by the institutionalization of operational norms edited by SUS.

This dissertation seeks to develop the subject of local public finance in a manner consistent with the political economy of local governments. For ease of description, each essay will be discussed briefly. The first essay is titled "The Provision of Generalized Local Public Goods Financed by Distortionary Taxation." This essay models the provision of a local public good that is simultaneously utilized as a public consumption good and a public intermediate good. Since the public good can simultaneously enter both utility and production functions, it is considered a "generalized public good." This is done to model the provision of infrastructure by sub-federal governments, which is financed with taxes on local residents. A theoretical analysis provides a cost-benefit rule for public good provision by a rent-maximizing local government facing mobile households. Illustrative calculations of the marginal cost of public funds are provided. Calibrated to U.S. data, the role of intergovernmental transfers on the provision of infrastructure by rent-maximizing local governments is analyzed. Theoretical evidence of the higher responsiveness of local governments to matching grants relative to lump-sum grants is provided. The second essay is titled "The Impact of Local Households' Housing Tenure on Local Public Debt Levels." This essay investigates the relation between local housing tenure and local public debt. It does this by establishing housing tenure as a theoretical basis for the potential differences in how households view public debt. Homeowners capitalize the burden of local public debt into their home value, while renters do not. A hypothesis is generated that an increase in the renter share of households in a locality leads to higher levels of local public debt, all else equal. Using an instrumental variable approach, the empirical evaluation shows an increase in the proportion of renters leads to higher levels of public debt in a panel data set of U.S. local governments. Specifically, a one percentage point increase in the percent of renters increases unfunded public debt per household by $400, or about 7% of the average local debt level, and 24% of the county with the median debt level. This relationship is robust across multiple specifications. The third essay is titled "A Spatial Econometric Analysis of Local Households' Housing Tenure on Local Public Debt Levels: Implications for Federalism." This essay extends the model of the second essay by measuring the spatial spillovers using a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances. The existence and magnitude of local government spillovers related to local public debt levels are used to inform policy makers at higher levels of government. The analysis identifies possible geographic segmentation of the municipal bond markets and the role of special district debt as a key component of the spatial distribution of local public debt. Additionally, a positive spatial disturbance is found.

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the role of transfer-program interactions for families and households who participate in the social safety net. The safety net is comprised of many different programs, run by different agencies, governed by different rules, and often administered by disparate and secluded entities. However, many households participate in multiple programs, subjecting them to the milieu of administrative hurdles. In this dissertation, I try to untangle some of the intended and unintended effects of program participation that may be experienced by these households. In Essay 1, I examine the effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) on food hardship in US households, utilizing food security information from the Food Security Supplement of the Current Population Survey. Because states adopted the Medicaid expansions provided under the ACA at different times beginning in 2014, the cross-state, over time variation allows me to separate the impact of the ACA on food hardship using triple difference specifications. The richness of questions in the Food Security Supplement allows me to examine the effect of the ACA across different measures of food hardship, and also examine differential response for households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Examining the mechanisms through which the ACA could affect food insecurity, I find the ACA not only increased average weekly food expenditure, but also the probability a household participates in SNAP. I employ a two-stage, control function approach to address reverse causality between SNAP and food insecurity. I find that the ACA reduced the probability that a household participating in SNAP falls into the two lowest food security categories by 6.5 percentage points and reduced the probability of being food insecure by 14.2 percentage points. Across specifications, I find strong evidence for increasing returns to program participation, and evidence of a differential impact of the ACA across the distribution of food hardship. In Essay 2, I examine how grant funding and fiscal structure affect program response over the business cycle. I compare child enrollment in Medicaid, a matching grant funding program, with enrollment the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a block grant funded program, utilizing the similarities in beneficiaries, program benefits, and administration to isolate the impact of fiscal structure. I utilize administrative enrollment records, along with individual level participation data, and find a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 7.6% decrease in the number of beneficiaries per person enrolled in block grant funded programs, and a 10% decrease in state expenditure per person decreases the probability of enrollment in a block grant program by 0.58 percentage points. I also find that enrollment is much more persistent among matching grant funded programs, and being enrolled in a block grant funded program the previous period increases the probability of enrolling in a matching grant program this period 75% more than remaining enrolled in the block grant funded program. Finally, in Essay 3 I explore the effect of the minimum wage on the self-reported value of public assistance program benefits, and the joint effect of the minimum wage and public assistance programs on the income to poverty ratio using data from the 1995-2016 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. In the first stage, I estimate a Tobit model controlling for the censoring of received benefits from below at zero, and examine the effect of changes in the minimum wage on the self-reported dollar value of benefits received for food stamps/the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)/Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), as well as the total sum of benefits. I find that the minimum wage reduces the value of means-tested benefits, but that this effect is strongest for programs with strong work requirements. Utilizing the residuals from the first stage, I employ a control function approach to estimate the joint effect of the minimum wage and program benefits on the income to poverty ratio. I find the own-effect of the minimum wage provides a small increase in the income to poverty ratio, but that the total effect, accounting for changes in benefits, attenuates by approximately 30%.

Finding revenue is a challenge that faces many municipalities in the United States. As the tax base continues to decline and demand for government services increases, local governments are forced to make hard choices. Low on the list of priorities for local governments is the maintenance, and construction of infrastructure. Traditionally there have been several ways for local governments to fund long-term infrastructure projects including, federal-aid through the process of earmarking. The practice of earmarking has been around since the first congress, but hit its peak between 2003 and 2007. The earmarking process is controversial for several reasons; earmarking bypasses traditional merit procedures for distribution of federal-aid, earmarking is said to add costs to the agency awarded the funding, and earmarking has been linked to Congressional scandals and wasteful spending. In this paper I explore how an earmark, designated to local governments to fund long-term infrastructure projects, contributes to the costs of the project.

The dissertation focuses on the incentives and economic effects of gross receipts taxes (GRTs) versus corporate income taxes (CITs). Conventional wisdom holds that GRTs are very poor tax instruments; however, several states have shown renewed interest in GRTs since 2002. An interesting question to ask is why states are reconsidering GRTs in spite of all criticisms. Are GRTs really as bad as what conventional wisdom says? There is little rigorous theoretical or empirical work on GRTs. My dissertation aims to help fill this gap by providing both theoretical and empirical analysis on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of GRTs versus CITs. Essay one provides the first systematic theoretical analysis to compare and contrast the incentives and economic effects of gross receipts taxes versus corporate income taxes. Specifically, it focuses on the incentives for vertical integration in the sense of make-or-buy decisions, the effects on profit shifting between out-of-state and in-state firms, the incentives to change organizational form for tax purposes, and the incentives for cost-saving innovation under each tax system. Several results contradict conventional wisdom and deepen our understanding of GRTs. Based on Essay one, Essay two empirically tests the theoretical prediction that GRTs eliminate the distortion on organizational form choice, increasing the chance for a firm to incorporate. The analysis uses state-industry panel data from Nonemployer Statistics during the period 2002- 2008. The results show that states with a GRT have a higher share of corporate firms. Further, by replacing the CIT with a GRT, states may promote the real activity of C corporations.

The Indian urban rental market is complex and yet ever-changing, with the ups and downs of housing demand playing a fundamental role in the affordability and stability of the market. This paper determines the income and price elasticities of demand using the demand function and Slutsky equation, respectively, for the urban rental market in order to help craft suitable national housing policy. Through this analysis, it is determined that the urban rental price elasticity of demand is -0.93 and the income elasticity is 0.81, suggesting that rental price subsidies and private income taxes are the most effective policy measures to ensure affordability in urban India.

This dissertation examines heterogeneity in the value of a statistical life (henceforth VSL) stemming from employer-provided health insurance (henceforth EHI) and worker sorting. The dissertation consists of three essays. In the first essay (Chapter 2), I investigate the effect of health-driven productivity on the wage compensation for mortality risk, and how EHI influences VSL using the US labor market data. In this chapter I build a framework showing that the level of job risks influences the incentive of employers to provide EHI. The basic notion of the framework is that health insurance is an investment in health and health is a form of general human capital. Employers are willing to invest in employees' health and pay the associated costs as long as they can recoup the costs of health investment. Occupational hazards, however, are harmful to health; productivity gains from health tend to decline as risk increases, resulting in lower health investment made by employers. As a result, the workers in risky jobs have to contribute more to their health investment in the form of lower wages than do workers in safe jobs. This behavioral response pushes down the wage offer curve of the insured in high risk occupations. Consequently, workers with health insurance, on average, accept a lower risk premium, leading to a lower VSL. Empirical findings from this dissertation suggest evidence of heterogeneity in VSL due to health insurance status: the estimated VSL for workers with health insurance is lower than those without one. In the second essay (Chapter 3), I extend the framework of the second chapter into the United Kingdom (the UK) labor market. Different from the US, the UK has universal health care system in which all eligible individuals (almost all the UK citizens) are covered by publicly-provided health care. This chapter also provides evidence that private medical insurance in the universal health care system affects the risk premium. Despite the fact that the UK and the US have different institutional settings in health coverage, findings from the UK are, to some extent, qualitatively similar to the US. A major issue in estimates of VSL is that people are not randomly assigned to jobs. That is, heterogeneous people would sort into jobs based on their preferences on risk and safety-related skills. Thus, failure to account for heterogeneity in both risk preferences and safety-related skills will bias the estimated VSL. In the third essay (Chapter 4), I discuss worker sorting and how it may affect the mortality risk premium. In this chapter, I focus on the role of personality traits in safety-related skill and their influence on worker sorting based on job risk. I use Five-Factor Model of personality or also known as the ‘’Big Five” personality traits. The big 5 personality traits are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. In my framework, these personality traits are inputs and the technology of skill formation transforms the traits into safety-related skill.

This thesis studies the determinants of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and identifies the key factors that can account for their variation across communities. The analysis examines the target audience for NEA grants, how the NEA chooses to distribute its funds, and whether the grants aimed at low-income communities are effective in targeting communities that do not otherwise have access to the arts. This study concludes that grants from the National Endowment for the Arts tend to be allocated to communities with higher college graduation rates, but not necessarily higher income levels.

Realizou-se um estudo das interações entre vários agentes que poderiam estar envolvidos com a estruturação de uma cooperação intermunicipal voltada à política pública de saúde. Pudemos observar que as estruturas formatadas ocorrem como uma combinação linear de plenamente espontânea, quando, então, há a interação dos personagens a nível municipal, a totalmente induzida, quando, então, a capacidade de coerção exercida pela União é suficiente para induzir os Municípios a adotarem uma postura de compartilhamento dos recursos a nível regional. De qualquer forma, o estudo verificou que interferem na formatação de uma estrutura de cooperação algumas variáveis tais como as externalidades, a motivação e incentivos, as instituições e suas alterações, a capacidade de coordenação e de solubilidade da assimetria informacional, entre outras. Assim sendo, desenhamos um arcabouço teórico apoiado nas teorias tradicional de finanças públicas, de escolha coletiva, de contratos e na institucional, a fim de esmiuçarmos dois exemplos diametralmente polarizados: a estruturação da cooperação na forma de uma coalizão por meio de um consórcio intermunicipal e a estruturação da cooperação na forma de convênios por meio da institucionalização de normas operacionais editadas pelo SUS. / A study on the interactions between several agents that could be involved with the arrangement of an intermunicipal cooperation facing the public policy of health has taken place. We could observe that the formatted structures happen as a linear combination of plenarily spontaneous, when, thus, there is the interaction of the personages at a municipal level, totally induced, when, hence, the coercion capacity set forth by the Union is enough to induce municipal districts to adopt a resourcesharing deportment at a regional level. Nevertheless, the study has verified that some variables interfere in the formulation of a structure of cooperation, such as the externalities, motivation and incentives, institutions and its modifications, the capacity of coordination and solubility of informational asymmetry, among many others. Therefore, we have designed a theoretical structure sustained on the theories of traditional public finances, of public choice, of contracts and on the institutional, aiming to crumble two diametrically polarized examples: the formulation of the cooperation as a coalition through an inter-municipal consortium and the arrangement of cooperation as pacts, which are made by the institutionalization of operational norms edited by SUS.

Southern California is the largest U.S. metropolitan area geographically, and demonstrates complex spatial relationships between county labor markets. This paper is interested in investigating the employment dependencies between the core city of Los Angeles its respective commuting sheds, such as San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Using time series data that includes labor demand shocks from the Great Recession, this analysis implements a vector autoregressive model to dissect the relationship between urban and suburban employment changes. The work finds a strong lagging-leading relationship between counties that varies by business cycle phase, and provides policy implications from this relationship.