The dissertation comprises of two chapters that use applied econometric techniques to analyze policy related questions that have implications for educational outcomes and one chapter that assesses factors that influence foreign direct investment inflows. In the first chapter I study the impact of equity premiums on the completion numbers of minority students. In the second chapter I assess the impact that state funding cuts for higher education may have on completion numbers across racial and ethnic lines. For the last chapter I study the relationship between intellectual property rights and foreign direct investmentFor chapter one, I study the impact that equity premiums inclusion in performance-based funding models have on the completion numbers of minority students. Using a combination of administrative data over the period 2004 to 2018 with two-way fixed effects methods, I investigate the impact of the premiums on completion numbers of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students. My estimates show that in the short run (up to 2 years post-policy) there are no changes in the completion numbers of at-risk students in adopting and non-adopting states. Secondly, there is heterogeneity in policy effects across ethnicity, in particular Hispanic student completion numbers decrease in adopting states. Thirdly, public institutions become more selective in their admissions of at-risk students post-policy, which may lead to the overall null effects I establish. For chapter two, I investigate whether there exist variations in how state funding cuts for higher education may impact on completion numbers across racial and ethnic lines. Combining administrative data from 1997 to 2018 with two-stage least squares methodology, I test how institutional state funding instrumented by total state funding may influence completion numbers across racial categories. I find that changes in state funding have no significant impact on the completion numbers for each racial category of students. For chapter three, I extend Spatz and Nunnenkamp’s (2003) analysis by using a panel dataset to determine a causal relationship between intellectual property right (IPR) protections and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Using a fixed-effects Poisson model my results shows that IPR is a causal determinant of FDI within the manufacturing industry. My study concludes that as a country improves their IPR protections, the positive impact on FDI within the manufacturing industry, increases at a decreasing rate. / Economics