Thesis advisor: Arthur Lewbel / My doctoral research comprises both structural empirical work in the field of household economics (Chapters 1 and 3) and reduced-form theoretical work in econometrics (Chapter 2). The first chapter quantifies consumption gains in the form of consumption expenditure savings for couples living together versus apart. Moreover, I comprehensively analyze the key drivers of heterogeneity in consumption gains across couples. The second chapter, which is joint work with Stefan Hoderlein, develops the first difference-in-differences model for binary choice outcome variables when treatment effects are heterogeneous. Finally, in the third chapter, I study the realized gains in consumption levels upon move-in from single to couple and move-out from couple to single, separately by gender. Chapter 1. In “Heterogeneity in Consumption Gains from Living Together as a Couple”, I estimate consumption gains from living together versus apart. Specifically, this chapter quantifies these gains from consumption economies of scale for married as well as unmarried cohabiting couples in the U.S. I also comprehensively analyze the determinants of heterogeneity in consumption gains. For this purpose, I extend a recent collective household model to incorporate heterogeneity in consumption economies of scale and perform structural estimation using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). I find that couples living together save an average of 14 percent in annual consumption expenditures compared to their counterfactual spending when living apart. Moreover, older couples and homeowner couples experience higher consumption economies of scale and thus higher consumption gains. I do not detect marital status to be a determining factor. These results have implications for appropriate adjustment of poverty thresholds across households of different sizes. Chapter 2. In “Binary Choice Difference-in-Differences Model with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects”, we develop the first Difference-in-Differences Model for binary choice outcome variables when treatment effects are heterogeneous. Our main result establishes identification of the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). Moreover, we present two extensions. First, we show identification of the joint distribution of the actual and counterfactual latent outcome variable in the treatment group. Second, we extend the basic model to allow for the inclusion of covariates. We suggest an estimator for the ATT and evaluate its finite sample properties with the help of Monte Carlo simulations. Chapter 3. In “Realized Consumption Gains from Living Together as a Couple by Gender”, I am among the first to analyze how consumption gains from living together as a couple are split between men and women and whether this varies by individual-level or couple-level observables. Understanding individual-level consumption gains is important for rationalizing marriage and cohabitation decisions on the micro-level, and marriage and cohabitation patterns on the macro-level. I use the extended collective household model from Chapter 1 and data from the PSID to estimate male and female realized consumption gains from moving in as a couple and moving out of a couple. Average realized consumption gains upon move-in are positive for women and negative for men. This reverses for dissolving couples. Lastly, individuals who move in with their spouse have higher realized consumption gains than individuals who decide to cohabit without a marriage certificate. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

In a regression context, the aim is to analyse a response variable of interest conditional to a set of covariates. In many applications the response variable is discrete. Examples include the event of surviving a heart attack, the number of hospitalisation days, the number of times that individuals benefit of a health service, and so on. This thesis advances the methodology and the application of regression models with discrete response. First, we present a difference-in-differences approach to model a binary response in a health policy evaluation framework. In particular, generalized linear mixed methods are employed to model multiple dependent outcomes in order to quantify the effect of an adopted pay-for-performance program while accounting for the heterogeneity of the data at the multiple nested levels. The results show how the policy had a positive effect on the hospitals' quality in terms of those outcomes that can be more influenced by a managerial activity. Next, we focus on regression models for count response variables. In a parametric framework, Poisson regression is the simplest model for count data though it is often found not adequate in real applications, particularly in the presence of excessive zeros and in the case of dispersion, i.e. when the conditional mean is different to the conditional variance. Negative Binomial regression is the standard model for over-dispersed data, but it fails in the presence of under-dispersion. Poisson-Inverse Gaussian regression can be used in the case of over-dispersed data, Generalised-Poisson regression can be employed in the case of under-dispersed data, and Conway-Maxwell Poisson regression can be employed in both cases of over- or under-dispersed data, though the interpretability of these models is ot straightforward and they are often found computationally demanding. While Jittering is the default non-parametric approach for count data, inference has to be made for each individual quantile, separate quantiles may cross and the underlying uniform random sampling can generate instability in the estimation. These features motivate the development of a novel parametric regression model for counts via a Discrete Weibull distribution. This distribution is able to adapt to different types of dispersion relative to Poisson, and it also has the advantage of having a closed form expression for the quantiles. As well as the standard regression model, generalized linear mixed models and generalized additive models are presented via this distribution. Simulated and real data applications with different type of dispersion show a good performance of Discrete Weibull-based regression models compared with existing regression approaches for count data.

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<p>The subject of this paper is microfinance and the question: Do self-sustainable MFI:s alleviate poverty?.</p><p>A MFI is a micro financial institution, a regular bank or a NGO that has transformed into a licensed financial institutions, focused on microenterprises. To answer the question data has been gathered in Ecuador, South America. South America have a large amount of self sustainable MFI:s. Ecuador was selected as the country to be studied as it has an intermediate level of market penetration in the micro financial sector. To determine relative poverty before and after the access to microcredit, interviews were used. The data retrieved in the interviews was used to determine the impact of micro credit on different aspects of relative poverty using the Difference in Difference method.</p><p>Significant differences are found between old and new clients as well as for the change over time. But no significant results are found for the difference in change over time for clients compared to the non-clients. The author argues that the insignificant result can either be a result of a too small sample size, disturbances in the sample selection or that this specific kind of institution have little or no affect on the current clients economical development.</p>

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I denna studie undersöks hur införandet av jobbskatteavdraget 2007 och de två utbyggnaderna 2008-2009 påverkade arbetsmarknaden i form av sysselsättning, arbetslöshet, långtidsarbetslöshet och sysselsättning i åldersgruppen 55-64 år. Med utgångspunkt från en tillämpning av konsumtionsteorin, med arbetsutbudet i fokus, så görs en difference-in-differences analys av reformens tre första år i jämförelse med tre år innan dess införande. Resultaten visar att införandet av jobbskatteavdraget har haft en positiv effekt på arbetsmarknaden i form av en större andel avbefolkningen i arbete, medan ytterliggare steg av jobbskatteavdraget ger estimat som tyder på att effekten blir en minskad aktivitet på arbetsmarknaden.

Education, as an indispensable component of human capital, has been acknowledged to play a critical role in economic growth, which is theoretically elaborated by human capital theory and empirically confirmed by evidence from different parts of the world. The educational impact on growth is especially valuable and meaningful when it is for the sake of poverty reduction and pro-poorness of growth. The paper re-explores the precious link between human capital development and poverty reduction by investigating the causal effect of education accumulation on earnings enhancement for anti-poverty and pro-poor growth. The analysis takes the evidence from a well-known conditional cash transfer (CCT) program — Oportunidades in Mexico. Aiming at alleviating poverty and promoting a better future by investing in human capital for children and youth in poverty, this CCT program has been recognized producing significant outcomes. The study investigates a short-term impact of education on earnings of the economically disadvantaged youth, taking the data of both the program’s treated and untreated youth from urban areas in Mexico from 2002 to 2004. Two econometric techniques, i.e. difference-in-differences and difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach are applied for estimation. The empirical analysis first identifies that youth who under the program’s schooling intervention possess an advantage in educational attainment over their non-intervention peers; with this identification of education discrepancy as a prerequisite, further results then present that earnings of the education advantaged youth increase at a higher rate about 20 percent than earnings of their education disadvantaged peers over the two years. This result indicates a confirmation that education accumulation for the economically disadvantaged young has a positive impact on their earnings enhancement and thus inferring a contribution to poverty reduction and pro-poorness of growth.

The subject of this paper is microfinance and the question: Do self-sustainable MFI:s alleviate poverty?. A MFI is a micro financial institution, a regular bank or a NGO that has transformed into a licensed financial institutions, focused on microenterprises. To answer the question data has been gathered in Ecuador, South America. South America have a large amount of self sustainable MFI:s. Ecuador was selected as the country to be studied as it has an intermediate level of market penetration in the micro financial sector. To determine relative poverty before and after the access to microcredit, interviews were used. The data retrieved in the interviews was used to determine the impact of micro credit on different aspects of relative poverty using the Difference in Difference method. Significant differences are found between old and new clients as well as for the change over time. But no significant results are found for the difference in change over time for clients compared to the non-clients. The author argues that the insignificant result can either be a result of a too small sample size, disturbances in the sample selection or that this specific kind of institution have little or no affect on the current clients economical development.

Exhaustible resource rents are an important taxable base in many countries, with revenue sharing often part of the scheme. In some cases large shares are retained for the central government. Generally, the discussions of exhaustible resource taxation consider assignment of resource rent tax base and revenue sharing from the limited perspectives of efficiency and stability. Tax assignment and sharing arrangements are assumed to have a neutral effect on investment of resource rents in long-lived public goods. We attempt to demonstrate that this may not be the case, specifically looking at the question of whether rent assignment is neutral to effects on investment of rents in long-lived public goods, a normative policy objective, and under what conditions it occurs. We test the theoretical propositions with data from the Russian Federation to derive empirical results. The results from the Russian Federation point toward an important dimension of rent tax assignment in a federation. They results show that ceteris paribus, higher share of rent for the federation may lead to lower investment in long-lived public goods and may be constrained by stability. Another argument has been made for reconsidering rent tax assignment using assertive ethnic identity as a manifestation strong ownership claims. Communities with strongly valued identities value ownership over land and exhaustible resource endowments in their areas. This may be the case especially if ethnic identity is important to the resource owning community. The empirical results show that a decrease in the regional share of rent resulted in a fall in investments in the republics and regions with strong ethnic identity. Republics among the producing regions have historical claims to a distinct identity and may have a preference for preserving their identity. This preference is manifested as higher levels of rent investment. Following this line of argument, it can be concluded that rent assignment, through rent tax or revenue assignment, should favor producing regions within the range of stability in a federation, if the objective is achieving higher investment in long-lived public goods.

Denna uppsats undersöker den initiala effekten på bostadsrättsmarknaden till följd av det statliga ingripandet på bostads- och kreditmarknaden som amorteringskravets införande inneburit. Effekten av amorteringskravet mäts empiriskt på bostadsrättspriser i Stockholm och Oslo. Faktumet att Sverige och Norge inte infört amorteringskravet samtidigt utnyttjas genom att städerna får turas om att agera kontroll- respektive behandlingsgrupp, i enlighet medDifference in Differences-metoden. Resultaten för både Stockholm och Oslo är signifikanta och indikerar en prisnedgång. En genomsnittlig lägenhet på 50 kvadratmeter i både Stockholm och Oslo har sjunkit i pris med ungefär en halv miljon svenska kronor i relation till hur trenden skulle ha fortsatt utan amorteringskravets införande. Resultaten tyder på att amorteringskravet har varit en effektiv marknadsåtgärd för att dämpa bostadsrättspristillväxten.