We estimate the impact of natural and human-influenced catastrophes on individual risk preferences. Using the meta-analysis process with random-effects models, we examine the significance of the effect of different catastrophes on individual risk preferences. As natural and human-influenced catastrophes have become more frequent a number of studies have evaluated their effects on risk attitudes. In this thesis a meta-analysis is performed from the results in these recent studies, allowing for comparisons across catastrophes and against results from laboratory experiments. In evaluating the change in risk-taking behavior amongst affected populations it may better inform relief efforts and policy decisions. Overall, subjects from developed nations exhibit increased risk loving behavior on average in contrast to the shift to risk aversion in subjects from developing nations.

With the transition of the economy in China, migrants start holding a more and more important position in the labor market. Therefore, from this dissertation, we try to explore different topics related to the migrants in China. This dissertation consists of three essays on who chooses to migrate, how networks affect migrants' outcomes, and what is the intergenerational impact of parental migration on children's risk preferences. In the first chapter, we briefly introduce the motivation and contribution, and then we provide the methods and detailed findings in the following chapters. Chapter 2 examines the impact of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate on the wage differentials between migrants and non-migrants in China. We find that migrants are self-selected from the upper tail of the income distribution in their home location. Consistent with a theoretical model of migration choice, we show that the size of the selection effect on wage depends on the wage differences between the prefectures of origin and destination as well as migration cost. The selection effect also differs among workers with different education and in different cities. Chapter 3 studies how networks affect migrants' migration decisions, employment, and wage levels by using 2005 China's mini-census. Different from existing studies, this paper takes into account the existence of self-selection in the labor market. With the help of a theoretical model, we have a better understanding of the mechanism of networks as well as the different network effects on rural and urban migrants. We find out that networks affect both rural and urban migrants' migration decisions positively. In terms of employment, networks exert positive impacts on rural migrants but not on urban ones, which is due to the different quality drops between rural and urban migrants when the networks increase. Such employment effects also lead rural migrants to face a more severe negative wage impact than urban migrants. Chapter 4 investigates how parental migration affects left-behind underage children's risk preferences. By focusing on migrant parent groups, we are able to estimate whether the influence of nurture could also affect children's risk preference levels or not. The findings suggest that besides the intergenerational transmission of risk preferences between parents and children, parental migrations do have an influence on girls' risk preference levels. In addition, in terms of adult children's risk-related outcomes, we are able to find a positive parental migration impact on daughters' self-employment decisions. Findings help us have a better understanding of the relevant factors of risk preferences, and also confront the impact of the separation of parents and children. / Doctor of Philosophy / Nowadays, migration becomes increasingly common and migrants take a large proportion of the labor market. With the economic development and the closer connections among regions, people are more likely to study or work outside their home locations than before. Even though there is still a strict household registration system in China, we can find the migration supporting systems are becoming established, and facilitate easier migration for more and more people. Having a better understanding of migrants helps us make better policies as well as have the labor market and society develop better. This dissertation explores who choose to migrate (Chapter 2), how the social connections or networks affect migrants' employment and wages (Chapter 3), and whether there is any intergenerational impact on migrants' children in terms of risk preferences (Chapter 4) using methods from labor economics and economic theory. We conclude that the best works tend to migrate first in the labor market, and social connections have different impacts on rural and urban migrants in terms of employment and wages. Moreover, we notice that migrant parents affect the left-behind children's risk preferences by both influences of nature and nurture. In sum, we study different topics on migrants and have a deeper understanding of how migrants are affected in the labor market as well as how migrants affect their next generations.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Aleksan Shanoyan / The purpose of this research is to evaluate and gain a better understanding of the economic feasibility of Kansas farmers growing energy sorghum for biofuel production. The net returns for 11 crop systems that included a no-till or reduced-till option and the rotations involved wheat, grain sorghum, dual-purpose sorghum, and photoperiod sensitive sorghum were simulated in SIMETAR© developed by Richardson, Shumann, and Feldman (2004) using historical data on yields and prices. The price and yield data originates from an agronomic study conducted in Hesston, KS. The biomass yields for the 3 varieties of sorghum are based on experimental work performed in Manhattan, KS. The sorghum biomass prices were obtained from the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service. Costs for the crop systems are based on the 2014 Kansas State University Herbicide handbook (Thompson et al. 2014), Dhuyvetter, O’Brien, and Tonsor (2014), and Dhuyvetter (2014). The net returns were simulated under five contract scenarios including: a Spot Market contract, a Minimum Price contract, a BCAP Price contract, and 2 levels of the Gross Revenue Guarantee contracts – 60% and 100%. Risk analysis was performed on the simulated net returns through use of the Excel add-in SIMETAR©. Stochastic efficiency analysis was used to evaluate the systems based on the distribution of net returns and risk preferences. The findings are summarized around three important factors influencing farmers’ economic feasibility of growing sorghum for biofuel use: crop systems, risk preferences, and contract specification. Results indicate that the no-till wheat and dual-purpose sorghum crop system without biomass production has the lowest costs and the no-till wheat and photoperiod sensitive sorghum system has the highest production cost. The crop systems that have a no-till option allow for the highest grain and biomass yields. Also, crop systems rotated with wheat are more preferred among producers due to higher net returns. The NTWDPS With system under the BCAP Price contract has the highest net returns and is highest in preference. The findings indicate that the risk aversion does affect the decision to produce sorghum for biofuel, but the effect is not very significant. In terms of contract specification, the results indicate that for Kansas producers, the BCAP Price contract will offer the highest net returns. These findings contribute additional insight on factors affecting Kansas farmers’ economic feasibility of producing sorghum for biofuel and can have important implications for biofuel industry actors and policy makers.

The first two chapters of this thesis analyze the response of blood donors to several features of the blood market in Portugal. The first provides estimates of the blood supply elasticity using changes in a benefit scheme for regular blood donors. In Portugal, starting from 2003, the government strictly enforced the collection of medical user fees, but with regular donors receiving a waiver. Using within-county variations in the value of the benefit, measured as the user fee for a visit to the Emergency Department, I find that the benefit increases the number of donations, both unconditionally and conditional on the number of blood drives. I estimate a one euro increase in the user fee to increase blood donations by 1.8%, on average. I also estimate a negative elasticity of blood drives with respect to the user fees. This indicates that benefits and blood drives are substitutes in eliciting blood donations. The second chapter analyzes how waiting to donate blood affects donor retention. I use a panel of new blood donors, in Portugal, between 2008 and 2012. I find that higher waiting times make it less likely for first-time donors to donate again, controlling for donor and donation site-specific variables. A 10-minute increase in waiting time until triage results in a 0.6% decrease in donor retention, on average. Donors in the upper tail of the waiting time distribution are driving the effect. New donors at blood drives react more negatively than new donors at blood donor centers. The third chapter (joint with Matteo Galizzi and Raffaele Miniaci) reports experimental evidence on risk preferences measures, from two waves of a representative sample of the UK Household Longitudinal Survey. The subjects responded to three tests: two incentive-compatible lottery tests and a survey test measuring self-reported willingness to take risk. We find significant but low correlations between the responses to the three tests across time. Furthermore, we find that at least two thirds of the subjects made inconsistent choices across lottery tests, when controlling for individual-specific levels of background income. Finally, we find mixed evidence concerning the external validity of these tests.

Abstract A well designed salary system can influence employee¡¦s work motivation and will reflect on their work performance. It would not be difficult to understand, based on the theory of expectancy, a linkage between reward and performance will motivate employee to work harder, and from which to create good performance and in turn to receive better rewards. That is to say a business which adopts an incentive reward system to motivate employee will receive better performance from them in a consistent manner and the end result is to improve the performance of the organization. In the past, there have been many researches on influence of salary system on pay satisfaction and working attitude of employee, but few has studied differences in individual risk preference which can interfere with pay satisfaction and to explore differences in risk preference of employee, the effect of variable pay on pay satisfaction and working attitudes. Through empirical analyses, it was found that: 1. In an organization, an implementation of variable pay system will affect pay satisfaction. As salary links more closely with performance, employee¡¦s pay satisfaction increases. 2. The impact of variable pay on pay satisfaction is not influenced by individual risk preference. Due to differences in salary system to motivate employee, in the business this study concludes if employee is unaware of risk or incentive that is structured in the salary system, then there will be not interaction between difference in risk preference and variable pay system, and will also have no impact on salary satisfaction. 3. Pay satisfaction will have an effect on work attitude of employee. The higher the pay satisfaction, the stronger the organization commitment and job involvement by the employee. 4. Through pay satisfaction, variable pay will indirectly affect employee¡¦s work attitude. A reflection on organizational commitment and job involvement due to salary variable as a result of performance change in part must pass through the intermediate effect of pay satisfaction. Keywords: variable pay, risk preferences, pay satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement

In this dissertation, we experimentally examine individual preferences of effort, including time and risk preferences. In Chapter 3, we find that at least in certain settings and mindsets, individuals are very patient in their time preferences for effort, choosing to distribute effort evenly over time periods. However, they do not always live up to the stated plans, suggesting dynamic inconsistency or possibly two separate decision-making systems in the mind. This relates to our model in Chapter 2: a dual-self model of allocating effort between time periods in working toward a larger goal including incomplete information between different mindsets in the same person. Chapter 4 examines the risk preferences for effort, as a measurement of the utility function of effort, and finds that in this setting, subjects are very risk-averse over effort, compared to their preferences over money: they greatly avoid the possibility of having to complete a large number of tasks. These experiments and model help provide an understanding of how individuals allocate the scarce resource of time and energy to tasks they must complete.

This thesis examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individual gambling behavior by testing whether ticket sales and revenues in the multi-state parimutuel PowerBall and MegaMillions lotteries decreased or increased between the pre-COVID and COVID periods in Florida, Texas, and Colorado. Two competing hypotheses are investigated. First, gambling activity may have decreased during COVID either due to increased risk-aversion induced by the pandemic, negative changes in household income from the loss of employment, or a combination of the two. Second, gambling activity may have increased during COVID either due to increased willingness to take risks, substitution of income previously spent on other recreational activities to consumption of gambling products, or a combination of the two. To test these hypotheses, I use linear regression methods to model sales of tickets and revenues over the period from May 2016 to March 2022. My findings reveal that ticket sales decreased across all three states and PowerBall revenues declined significantly in Florida during the COVID period. Additionally, the mean marginal effects of the lagged amount of the jackpot and the unemployment rate differ significantly between the periods.

In this applied microeconomics dissertation, we study the effect of religiosity and life events on risk preferences and how happiness affect altruism. We begin with the first chapter by examining the relationship between high-risk health behavior and religiosity. Religious beliefs can impact an individual's behavior, including their future health. The 2021 CDC analyses shows that sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are still common, with an estimated 1 in 5 people in the US having an STI, and 13% of persons in the US with age 12 years old and above consuming any illicit drugs. We estimate the effect of religiosity on high-risk health behavior using panel data from the General Social Survey and construct a high-risk health behavior index using the CDC high-risk behaviors. The religiosity index was developed by combining religiosity dimensions such as religious service attendance, prayer frequency, and religious affiliation. Ordered probit was performed to test the relationship between high-risk behavior and religiosity. The result indicates that religiosity is negatively associated with high-risk health behavior and is statistically significant. We confirmed that religious people are less likely to be involved in risky behaviors, especially for Catholics. We also find that individuals who switch religion are more likely to engage in high-risk health behaviors. In the second chapter, we examined the relationship between health and happiness and how happiness impacts altruism. The previous economics literature has shown that altruism can create a warm glow or cause happiness; we tested instead whether happy people are more altruistic. Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) covering the period of 2002, 2004, 2012, and 2014, we employed a two-stage least square approach and performed OLS and ordered probit regression. We use health as an instrumental variable for happiness. Overall, the results indicate that happiness is associated with volunteer work and giving to charity and provide a basis for policy development to focus on promoting factors that contribute to happiness and wellbeing in order to foster pro-social behavior such as volunteering and donation to charity. Lastly, on the third chapter, we investigate how life events affect risk aversion using the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) Data. Our fixed effects estimation suggests that experiencing childbirth and losing parents decrease individuals' risk-taking propensity, while getting separated from a spouse or partner increases the willingness to take risks. We also find that changing jobs increases the willingness to take risks, and individuals who become self-employed tend to take more risks. Furthermore, we examine the average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) and find that for family-related events that are relatively beyond control, such as experiencing childbirth or the death of a child, parent, or spouse or partner, people tend to become more risk-averse. On the other hand, people tend to become less risk-averse for circumstances that are relatively within control, such getting married, separated, and divorced.

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