This paper is dedicated to the empirical analysis of the pilot trainee project Stáže ve firmách, which is considered as treatment in this analysis. The main objective of the empirical analysis is estimation of average treatment effect(ATE) and average treatment effect on treated(ATET) for characteristics like socioeconomic status and wage. Counterfactual methods for policy impact evaluation like Difference in Differences Estimator(DiD), First Differences Estimator(FD) and Propensity Score Matching(PSM) are used to estimation mentioned effects. This paper contains extension of Assignment Problem that is used for people matching purposes as alternative for PSM. This way of matching provides better control over creation of couples. Resulting pairs are more similar in selected characteristics due to better control during couples creation process.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-04-18T13:47:12Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) TESE_BRUNA DA NÓBREGA GERMANO_DIGITAL.pdf: 1843966 bytes, checksum: e3760059e9c9caf7b2b5e9854e1b340e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-18T13:47:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) TESE_BRUNA DA NÓBREGA GERMANO_DIGITAL.pdf: 1843966 bytes, checksum: e3760059e9c9caf7b2b5e9854e1b340e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-14 / CAPEs / O objetivo do presente trabalho consiste em avaliar se a política de gestão por resultados do Pacto pela educação – PPE gerou impacto nas escolas da rede pública estadual de Pernambuco que oferecem o ensino médio, no período de 2008 a 2013 (sendo 2011 o ano de implementação da política avaliada), considerando como indicadores de sucesso escolar os índices de aprovação e abandono, as notas médias obtidas no Sistema de Avaliação Educacional de Pernambuco – SAEPE em Língua Portuguesa e Matemática, e a nota média no Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação de Pernambuco – IDEPE. Como a implementação dessa política foi realizada com base em características observáveis e não de forma experimental, a análise desenvolvida neste estudo é fundamentada em dois métodos econométricos: pareamento com propensity score e diferenças em diferenças (DD). Dessa forma, são considerados dois cenários: no Cenário 1 apenas o método DD é aplicado; no Cenário 2 os dois métodos são combinados. No primeiro cenário, os resultados mostraram que o monitoramento pelo PPE gera impacto positivo e significativo considerando as notas médias no SAEPE e no IDEPE. Ou seja, a participação na política de gestão por resultados do PPE eleva a nota média das escolas nesses indicadores. Considerando os índices de aprovação e abandono, o monitoramento pelo PPE não exerce influência sobre os mesmos. O efeito do Programa de Educação Integral – PEI também precisou ser avaliado, uma vez que a política de gestão por resultados do PPE utilizou a participação neste programa como condicionante para o tratamento. Assim, no Cenário 1, o efeito da participação no PEI é significativo para os indicadores de fluxo escolar (maior aprovação e menor abandono) e para a nota média no IDEPE. No entanto, não há resultado significativo quando se avaliam as notas médias no SAEPE. É importante destacar que o IDEPE, fruto da multiplicação do índice de aprovação pelas notas médias no SAEPE, foi o único indicador para o qual se observou resultados positivos e significativos, tanto para o monitoramento pelo PPE quanto para a participação no PEI. Os resultados obtidos no Cenário 2, independente do critério de pareamento utilizado e do indicador avaliado, ratificaram aqueles já encontrados no Cenário 1, conferindo assim maior robustez à análise desenvolvida neste estudo. Avaliando as duas políticas conjuntamente, tem-se impactos positivos sobre a maior permanência dos alunos na escola, tanto para aos indicadores de fluxo escolar como para as notas médias no SAEPE. / This work aims to evaluate whether the management by results policy used by the Pacto pela Educação - PPE (Pact for Education) had any impacts on Pernambuco state funded (public) schools that offer secondary education (ensino médio), between the years of 2008 and 2013 - the mentioned policy began in 2011. The following indexes were used to measure school success: pass and dropout rates, average grades on SAEPE (Sistema de Avaliação Educacional de Pernambuco) in the subjects of portuguese and mathematics and average grades on IDEPE (Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação de Pernambuco). The policy was implemented based on observable characteristics and not in a experimental way, therefore the analysis will consist of the use of two econometric methods: Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences (DID). Two scenarios were considered: the first uses the DID method; the second combines the use of the Propensity Score Matching with the DID methods. In the first scenario, results show that PPE monitoring generates considerable, positive impact regarding average grades on SAEPE and IDEPE. In other words, participation in PPE's management by results policy results in a improvement of such indexes. As for pass and dropout rates, PPE has no influence on them. The effect of the Educação Integral program - PEI (Full Time Education program) also deserved attention since PPE's management by results policy required schools to be part of this program. So, in scenario 1, effects of PEI are significant in respect to pass and dropout rates (higher passing and lower dropout) and average grade on IDEPE. It was not possible to find, however, any significant improvement on SAEPE the average grades. It is important to highlight that IDEPE (which is the product of pass rates by average SAEPE grades) was the only index in which positive and significant results were observed for both PPE monitoring and PEI participation. The results of the second scenario, no matter which matching criteria is used or what index considered, corroborated with those already found on the first scenario, thus providing more substance to the analysis performed by this work. Seeing both policies combined, positive impacts are found when students stay in school for longer periods of time. This is true for pass and dropout rates as well as average performance of students on SAEPE.

In the past decades, decentralization has become increasingly important in both developing and developed countries. Based on the standard decentralization theorem, policy makers believe that local governments are closer to citizens and know more about local contexts and needs than the national governments. Consequently, they can design policies leading to a more efficient allocation of public goods. Moreover, when accompanied by empowerment of local decision-makers, decentralization is supposed to make local politicians more accountable to voters in a way that national politicians are not. Yet, the effective implementation of decentralization policies may heavily rely on local institutions. This thesis contributes to a rising literature analyzing the political economics of decentralization, that is the extent to which local political dynamics may reinforce or jeopardies decentralization reforms, ultimately affecting the citizens' well-being. I consider three countries that have devolved power to local politicians to a different extent, and tackle three obstacles that may undermine the beneficial effects of decentralization reforms: first, strong political competition at the local level; second, the need for coordinating the provision of a local public good; the interaction between political competition and coordination needs on accountability and eventually the quality of a local public good. Political competition may hinder the beneficial effects of decentralization on stability in a post-war country like Burundi. After a long-lasting and devastating civil war, in 2010 Burundi organized the first local elections, with the hope of establishing political stability through democratic means. However, together with two co-authors, I show that such political decentralization partly failed. We use a unique dataset and geographic fixed effects to show that violence was higher in municipalities characterized by fierce political competition and acute polarization between demobilized rebel groups. The former protagonists of the civil war used the elections as another stage to engage in a stiff struggle for power, and used “specialists of violence” to illicitly steer the electoral outcome.Political dynamics may undermine the coordinated management of the local sewerage networks in Brazil. I use geospatial data to proxy for the scope of coordination between neighboring municipalities: municipalities that are close “enough” are those more exposed to the spreading of water-borne diseases, which ultimately justifies cross-boundary coordination of local sanitation networks. By exploiting a Regression Discontinuity Design in close municipal elections, I show that political alignment between neighboring mayors may lead to lower access to sanitation networks of households. I argue that mayors co-managing a public good have a stronger incentive to monitor each other and ensure effective coordination when they come from different political parties, essentially because of political competition. Mayors from the same party would tend instead to be more lenient to each other, ultimately undermining the quality of the local public good co-provided.Finally, I study the effect of decentralization on the accountability of local politicians co-managing local police in Belgium. In 2005, one of the regions of Belgium introduced the direct election of mayors, while in the rest of the country mayors remained appointed by the local city councils. Together with a co-author, I exploit this reform to show that crime incidence in municipalities affected by the reform decreased faster than anywhere else in the country. We argue that the direct election of mayors increase the accountability of mayors and their incentives to fight criminality. However, we find that the effects of the reform decrease when an increasingly larger number of neighboring mayors has to coordinate the local police. The need to coordinate the local police blur accountability, mitigating the effects of the reform. To conclude, the overarching message of the thesis is that local institutions matter for the implementation of decentralization policies. Policy-makers redesigning the distribution of power between levels of government need to take into account pre-existing political and institutional dynamics that could jeopardize their policy initiatives. In particular, policy-makers could envision decentralization “at different speeds”, enabling local actors to identify objectives of development together with the right tools to pursue them, and finally decentralize accordingly. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse porte sur l'offre de travail et les décisions de fécondité des femmes en France. Dans le Chapitre 2, j’estime un modèle hierarchique en utilisant des micro-données Françaises et Allemandes. Le but étant de voir de quelle manière les régions Françaises et Allemandes différent, une fois que l’on contrôle pour des variables individuelles. Le Chapitre 3 étudie l'impact d'une première, d'une deuxième et d'une troisième naissance sur l'offre de travail et les salaires des femmes et des hommes. La question ici est de voir dans quelle mesure ces naissances ont un impact négatif, voire peut-être même positif dans le cas des hommes. Le Chapitre 4 étudie la durée qu’une mère passe hors du travail après la naissance de son premier enfant, et comment elle décide de retourner en activité. Un modèle de risques concurrents est utilisé pour cela. Le chapitre 5 présente un logiciel de gestion de versions. Ce type de logiciel simplifie grandement la production scientifique. / This thesis focuses on the labour supply and fertility decisions of women in France. In Chapter 2, I estimate a hierarchical model using French and German micro-data. The aim is to see how the French and German regions differ, once you control for individual variables. Chapter 3 examines the impact of first, second and third births on the labour supply and wages of women and men. The question here is to see to what extent these births have a negative impact, and perhaps even a positive one in the case of men. Chapter 4 examines how long a mother spends out of work after the birth of her first child, and how she decides to return to work. A competing risks model is used for this. Chapter 5 presents version control software. This type of software greatly simplifies scientific production.

L’aléa moral est une source de distorsion économique. La prédiction classique dans un cadre simple est qu’une meilleure couverture conduit à un effort moindre. Cette thèse étudie dans quelle mesure cette prédiction est ou non vérifiée empiriquement dans des cadres plus complexes. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse aux absences pour raison de santé. La politique étudiée est le jour de carence pour arrêt maladie dans la fonction publique de l’Etat en France. Cette politique de remboursement moins généreuse a notamment pour but de réduire l’absentéisme. Elle conduit à une baisse de la prévalence des absences de courte durée. Mais elle conduit aussi à une hausse de la prévalence des absences de longue durée. En conséquence, la prévalence de l’ensemble des absences pour raison de santé reste inchangée. Les deux chapitres suivants s’intéressent aux systèmes de bonus-malus d’un assureur automobile irlandais. Le deuxième chapitre s’intéresse à l’introduction d’un état très protecteur : la protection à vie du bonus. Cette protection est octroyée automatiquement et gratuitement aux assurés sous des conditions restrictives d’historique de sinistre et d’ancienneté. Comparé à la situation dans laquelle cet état protecteur n’existe pas, le taux de sinistre des assurés protégés augmente, tandis que le taux de sinistre des agents non protégés diminue, dans l’espoir d’être récompensés par la protection. L’existence de la protection est à l’origine d’un transfert intertemporel. Les assurés renoncent à de l’utilité présente en exerçant un effort supérieur, afin d’être récompensés par la protection et de profiter d’une utilité future plus élevée due à un effort moindre. Le troisième chapitre étudie la réaction juste après que l’assuré est récompensé par la protection à vie du bonus. Le taux de sinistre augmente immédiatement, mais seulement quand la protection existe depuis quelque temps. Cela suggère que l'effet d'un changement incitatif dépend de sa nature, mais aussi de son contexte. / Moral hazard is a source of economic distortion. The classical prediction in a simple framework is that a better coverage leads to a lower effort. This thesis studies the extent to which this prediction is empirically verified in more complex settings. The first chapter focuses on health-related absences. The policy under study is the one-day waiting period for sick leave in the French central civil service. This less generous reimbursement policy notably aims at reducing absenteeism. It leads to a decrease in the prevalence of short-term absences. But it also leads to an increase in the prevalence of long-term absences. As a result, the prevalence of all health-related absences stay unchanged. The two following chapters focus on bonus-malus systems used by an Irish car insurer. The second chapter focuses of the introduction on a highly protecting state: the lifetime bonus protection. This protection is granted automatically and freely to insurees under restrictive conditions on past claims and seniority. Compared to the situation in which this protecting state does not exist, the claims rate of protected insurees increases, but the claims rate of unprotected insurees decreases, in the hope of being rewarded with the protection. The existence of the protection induces an intertemporal transfer. Insurees waive present utility by exerting more effort, so as to be rewarded with the protection and to enjoy more future utility due to lower future effort. The third chapter studies the reaction just after the insuree is rewarded with the lifetime bonus protection. The claims rate increases immediately, but only when the protection exists for some time. This suggests that the effect of an incentive change depends on its nature, but also on its context.

This thesis presents three empirical analyses in the economics of Higher Education within the United Kingdom. The first analysis evaluates the impact of student funding reforms on participation and course choice, through the use of a difference-in-differences strategy with heterogeneous treatment effects. The results show that students who received the largest increase in study costs were less likely to move further away and also more likely to study a subject with lower graduate wage premia due to the significant reduction in the risk of investing in higher education. Students who received the largest increase in up-front financial support were more likely to attend a university further away. The second question addresses whether undergraduate subject choice is affected by changes in the expected benefits and opportunity costs of investing in HE through variation in the labour market. Students who reside in areas of high unemployment are found to be less likely to choose subjects with the largest graduate wage and employment premia. This suggests that students may be afraid of failure in challenging labour markets and instead choose to study subjects with a greater chance of success. However, lower socioeconomic status students are more likely to study subjects with the highest graduate wage and employment premia. This suggests that the students who may be the most aware of the costs, are also the most aware of the benefits. Finally, the third analysis investigates whether students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged incur a further penalty in terms of degree attainment. The results show that the most disadvantaged students outperform their advantaged counterparts. This may be due to pre-university attainment being an imperfect measure of ability in the most disadvantaged students, or that students who have had to overcome the most challenges to attend university are better-equipped and more determined to succeed.

本研究以2005年勞退新制為例，探討資遣費對資遣率之影響。在勞退新制實施之後，資遣費的給付額度不僅大幅減少，還多了上限，因此，基於資遣費往往被視為雇主所直接面對的資遣成本，資遣率是否會受到勞退新制中資遣費改變的影響，為本研究欲探討分析的議題。本研究資料來源為人力運用擬-追蹤調查資料庫，研究方法使用差異中之差異法(difference in differences)，並依據員工是否適用於勞基法，將樣本劃分為實驗組與對照組進行分析。實證結果顯示，資遣費對於資遣率並無顯著的影響力，因此政府若希望資遣費制度能有預防雇主任意資遣員工的效果，則現行的資遣費制度可能無法達到此目標，而未來是否需要針對資遣費進行修法仍有討論空間。 / This study uses the 2005 Labor Pension Act (LPA) in Taiwan as the quasi-experiment to analyze the impact of severance pay on the layoff rate. After implementation of LPA, severance pay is reduced significantly and constrained by an upper boundary. Since severance pay is often considered as the firing cost, whether the layoff rate is affected by the largely reduced severance pay is what this study expects to analyze. Data used in this study are drawn from the Manpower Utility Quasi – Longitudinal Survey (MUQLS). In order to apply the difference in differences method, the observations are divided into the treatment group and the reference group according to the coverage of the Labor Standards Act (LSA). The empirical results suggest that severance pay has no significant impact on the layoff rate. Therefore, if severance pay is expected to prevent the arbitrary layoff, the current severance pay system might not achieve this goal and some modifications of this system might be necessary.

Scholars in strategy, economics, and sociology of science and technology have studied technology development as a source of firms’ economic gains as well as institutional changes. Drawing on the extant research of technology and innovation strategy, I investigate the problem of knowledge generation and flows in technology development. Specifically, I explore how firms generate novel technology and develop technological breakthroughs; how knowledge flows between firms affect interfirm cooperation in a knowledge network; and how science and technology programs impact the institutions of knowledge production. In Essay 1 (Chapter 2), I examine the antecedents of knowledge recombination and technological breakthroughs. Conceptualizing a firm’s exploration as a combinatory search of prior new-recombination (an original technology component), I investigate the impacts of prior new-recombination and search boundary (local vs. boundary-spanning) on the characteristics of focal invention. In particular, I theorize and juxtapose the contrasting effects of the boundary of technological search of prior new-recombination on the propensities that the focal invention generates new recombination and becomes a technological breakthrough. Specifically, I hypothesize that, when the technological search involves new recombination in prior inventions, 1) the likelihood of generating new recombination in the focal invention is greatest for a boundary spanning search, smallest for a local search, and intermediate for a hybrid search (which involves both types of search); but 2) the likelihood for the focal invention to become a technological breakthrough is greatest for a local search, smallest for a boundary spanning search, and intermediate for a hybrid search. I find supporting evidence from the analysis of U.S. nanotechnology patents granted between 1980 and 2006. The purpose of Essay 2 (Chapter 3) is to determine the effect of knowledge flows on the formation of interfirm cooperation. By distinguishing codified knowledge flows from tacit knowledge flows, this paper demonstrates that antecedents of interfirm cooperation lie in codified knowledge flows that precede interfirm cooperation. Two properties of asymmetry in directional codified knowledge flows, intensity and uncertainty, underpin this paper’s arguments and empirical tests. The main finding in this study is that intense codified knowledge flows weaken the formation of interfirm cooperation. By mapping dyadic firms to a center and a periphery firm within a knowledge network, I theorize that the uncertainty of directional codified knowledge flows induces the center and the periphery firms to pursue interfirm cooperation differently. The results show that while uncertainty caused by distant technology components in knowledge flows hinders a center firm from pursuing interfirm cooperation, uncertainty stimulates a periphery firm to pursue interfirm cooperation. A statistical analysis performed on a sample of enterprise software firms between 1992 and 2009 supports the hypotheses of this paper. In Essay 3 (Chapter 4), I examine how the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a most recent U.S. government’s science and technology (S&T) program launched in 2000, impacts the nature of university research in nanotechnology. I characterize the NNI as a policy intervention that targets the commercialization of technology and a focused research direction to promote national economic growth. As such, I expect that the NNI has brought about unintended consequences in terms of the direction of university-industry knowledge flows and the characteristics of university research output in nanotechnology. Using the difference-in-differences analysis of the U.S. nanotechnology patents filed between 1996 and 2007, I find that, for the U.S. universities, the NNI has increased knowledge inflows from the industry, diminished the branching-out to novel technologies, reduced the research scope, and decreased the likelihood of technological breakthroughs, as compared to other U.S. and non-U.S. research institutions. The findings suggest that, at least in the case of the NNI, targeted S&T programs of the government may increase the efficiency of university research, but potentially do so at a considerable price.

Asymmetric information is a large potential problem for insurance markets, especially for markets insuring health risk. Despite a large theoretical attention over the last 30 years, the empirical evidence of the extent of the problem is still limited. In part this is due to methodological problems. The fundamental problem being that the private information, on which agents' act, is generally not observable to the researcher. This thesis provides empirical evidence on selection and moral hazard, using a private dental insurance natural experiment that solves many of the methodological problems. The initial decision to select into the insurance is analyzed in the first paper. Interestingly, results indicate both adverse selection and its opposite, advantageous selection, in different parts of the sample. These results are captured in a theoretical model where agents differ in their degree of risk aversion. In the second paper the decision to opt out of insurance is related to new information on risk. Results indicate that updating is asymmetric. Agents do not take the insurer's information fully into account, even though it is public. Finally, the moral hazard effect of dental coverage is analyzed in the last paper. The treatment effect of insurance coverage is separated from self-selection, using propensity score matching, IV and difference-in-differences. The results give strong empirical evidence of moral hazard. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2004 xii s., s. 3-12: sammanfattning, s. 13-104: 3 uppsatser

Submitted by Caroline Dallava (karol.ll@hotmail.com) on 2014-02-26T16:55:26Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_CarolineDallava.pdf: 963971 bytes, checksum: 6e126bebb6cce7cc27a2ade3d81e6564 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2014-02-26T18:07:41Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_CarolineDallava.pdf: 963971 bytes, checksum: 6e126bebb6cce7cc27a2ade3d81e6564 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-02-26T19:32:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_CarolineDallava.pdf: 963971 bytes, checksum: 6e126bebb6cce7cc27a2ade3d81e6564 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-03 / Payroll tax relief refers to the elimination of the employer’s contribution to social security based on employees’ payroll and the adoption of a new social security contribution based on companies’ gross revenue. One of the goals of this change, listed by the Federal Government of Brazil in the Brasil Maior Program is to reduce the production costs of the benefited sectors by lowering the tax burden, thus contributing to job creation and formalization of labor. Hence, the goal of this study is to estimate the impact of this change on the creation of formal jobs and on the average wage of employees in the first benefited sectors, which were Information (and Communications) Technology, Leather and Shoes, Clothing and Textiles, Hotels and Call Center. We applied the econometric methodology of difference-indifferences on the data from the Annual Report of Social Information (RAIS), provided by the Ministry of Labor. The results suggest that the payroll tax relief seems to has generated jobs and has increased wage only for the Information (and Communications) Technology sector. Another interesting result is that in Call Center sector the impact on employment was not significant, but the payroll tax relief seems to has contributed to the sector’s wage increase. / A desoneração da folha é constituída pela eliminação da contribuição previdenciária patronal incidente sobre a folha de pagamento dos funcionários e pela adoção de uma nova contribuição previdenciária sobre a receita bruta das empresas. Um dos objetivos desta mudança, listados pelo Governo Federal do Brasil no programa Brasil Maior, é reduzir os custos de produção dos setores beneficiados através da diminuição da carga tributária, contribuindo, assim, para a geração de empregos e formalização de mão de obra. O objetivo deste trabalho, portanto, é estimar o impacto desta medida sobre a geração de empregos formais e também sobre o salário médio dos trabalhadores nos primeiros setores beneficiados, que foram, principalmente, Tecnologia da Informação (e Comunicação), Couro e Calçados, Vestuário e Têxtil, Hotéis e Call Center. Para isto, aplicou-se a metodologia econométrica difference-in-differences nos dados da Relação Anual de Informações Sociais (RAIS), disponibilizados pelo Ministério do Trabalho. Os resultados sugerem principalmente que a desoneração da folha de pagamentos parece ter gerado empregos apenas para o setor Tecnologia da Informação (e Comunicação), assim como aumento do salário médio dos empregados deste setor. Outro resultado interessante é que para o setor de Call Center o impacto em termos de emprego não foi significativo, mas a lei parece ter contribuído para um aumento do salário no setor.