<p>This dissertation examines the extent of different forms of informal insurance provided by both co-resident and non-co-resident family members. Primarily relying on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a unique, longitudinal survey dataset from the United States, this dissertation provides new insight on the importance and unique motives that may drive interactions between family members. These two essays investigate the different forms of assistance that the family uses in two different contexts: in response to unemployment and health conditions. The results in this paper provide new insight into the role that informal interactions can have on decisions and behavior. This research suggests new direction for future economic models dealing with the family, networks, risk, unemployment, health, and location decisions. The overarching theme is that decisions are made jointly across households, not just within a household.</p> / Dissertation

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dong Li / The first essay tests whether the returns to education are different between entrepreneurs and regular employees. If the signaling model of education is correct, entrepreneurs should receive lower returns from education (relative to employees) because they have no need to signal their productivity to an employer. However, this result should only hold if the researcher is able to control for selection into self-employment and the endogeneity of ed- ucation. This is illustrated using a stylized model of signaling. The relationship between self-employment and the returns to education is tested using data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation. This rich panel dataset makes it possible to control for many business-specific characteristics, like business equity, that have been previously unaccounted for in the literature. Ordinary least squares regressions find the correlation between education and earnings to be weaker for entrepreneurs. To control for selection, I utilize a Heckman selection model using spousal health insurance and housing equity as instruments. It shows that selection biases downward the correlation between education and income for entrepreneurs. Finally, a fixed effects model is employed to control for any time invariant unobserved heterogeneity. This approach indicates that education is as valu- able, if not more valuable, to entrepreneurs as it is to employees. This does not support the signaling hypothesis. The finding is robust to different measures of entrepreneurial earnings. The second essay explores whether unemployed workers make successful transitions into self-employment. It is well established that unemployed workers are more likely to transition into self-employment than individuals coming from paid employment. A growing body of literature suggests that these formerly unemployed entrants tend to exit self-employment earlier than typical entrants. It is tempting to attribute this result to differences in ability between the two groups. However, using an adapted version of Frank (1988)’s Intertemporal Model of Industrial Exit, I show that this is not the case. In this model, entrants to self- employment receive noisy information about their true entrepreneurial ability from their earnings in the market. I show that low ability entrants to entrepreneurship should be no more likely to exit self-employment than high ability entrants to self-employment. This is because although low ability entrants will earn less as entrepreneurs, their outside wage in paid employment will also be proportionately lower. Survival in self-employment, therefore, is a function of how initial expectations match reality. This leads me to suggest that the high exit rates out of self-employment for the formerly unemployed may be because this group systematically overestimates their entrepreneurial ability at entry. This hypothesis is justified by evidence from the psychology literature that low ability individuals tend to overestimate their performance. Duration analysis on data from the 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation confirms that the formerly unemployed are more likely to exit self-employment. I also find preliminary evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the unemployed overestimate their likelihood of success in self-employment. These findings should give policymakers pause before incentivicing the unemployed to enter self-employment.

Over the last two decades privatization of public enterprises has achieved worldwide recognition. The objective of this study was to examine the suitability of applying privatization within the context of Saudi Arabia based on the hypothesis of privatization advocates that private sector employees have more efficient work values than their public sector counterparts. Therefore, this study examined the impact of sector type (public vs. private) on senior Saudi managers' work values of achievement, apathy, innovation, independence, centralization, responsibility avoidance, and job involvement. A questionnaire was developed to survey the whole population of senior Saudi managers working in private and public enterprise factories that employed more than 150 workers in the four cities of Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, and Jubail. / The results of the bivariate and multiple regression analysis indicated that sector type has a significant impact on Saudi managers' work values. However, that impact was limited only to achievement and innovation values. Private sector enterprise managers were found to be high achievers and to be more innovative than their public sector counterparts. This finding, thus, provided limited support to the behavioral or work values hypothesis of privatization advocates within the context of Saudi Arabia. / The study concluded with an evaluation of the feasibility of applying privatization in Saudi Arabia, suggesting that a partial and incremental form of privatization could be a viable policy option if adapted to fit the unique Saudi Arabian environment. It also offered some suggestions for future research in this area. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-10, Section: A, page: 3657. / Major Professor: Monte Palmer. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

Guatemala's banana workers, or bananeros, represented a regional working class isolated from the rest of the country's laborers by geography and their employment in an enclave export industry. Unlike most coffee workers, the bananeros were a true rural proletariat. Employment by a powerful multi-national corporation, the United Fruit Company (UFCO), also set bananeros apart from other rural and urban workers. Over five thousand in number by the mid-1920s, banana workers were the largest labor force in Guatemala under a single employer. They were also Guatemala's most militant workers. Labor disputes erupted on at least seven occasions between 1907 and 1929 Militancy did not guarantee improved labor conditions; indeed, the bananeros' record is disappointing. Despite the frequency of strikes, they resulted in few victories. Only two of the seven strikes accomplished their objectives. The poor record stemmed from the numerous obstacles that confronted labor activists. The unique characteristics of the banana industry, its enclave nature and UFCO's monopoly, posed special challenges. Geographic isolation left workers dependent upon UFCO for jobs, housing, consumer goods, medical care and other key services. Erratic employment, linked to the unstable market for bananas, further subverted the bananeros' potential leverage. Bananeros also had to contend with a state that opposed organized labor, especially in the export sector of the economy. A lack of trade union experience and the transient nature of the work force further inhibited effective strike action. Ethnic rivalry, particularly between ladinos and Africans, prevented workers from bringing coordinated pressure to bear against the company. These same obstacles hindered the establishment of stable trade unions The failure of labor activism among the bananeros prior to 1944 had profound repercussions for labor relations on a national scale. Artisans and urban workers dominated the early Guatemalan workers' movement but they were too few in number and lacked the economic leverage necessary to make organized labor a strong and permanent force in Guatemalan political life. Most Guatemalans lived and worked in the countryside and the inability of workers in export industries to organize effective trade unions seriously limited the potential of the national labor movement in pre-Revolutionary Guatemala / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation describes the genesis of a new labor movement. In the 1930s, radical workers created industrial unions because the craft unions did not respond to their needs. A grass roots phenomenon that eventually had systemic implications, working class militancy caused the break between AFL and CIO that opened the councils of organized labor to the unskilled. The 1930s history of CIO locals in New Orleans provides a backdrop, but the focus of the study is on the rank and file. Archival material contributed the viewpoint of contemporary CIO organizers who wrote from New Orleans. Labor newspapers and the African-American Louisiana Weekly gave further detail. The National Archives yielded the records of investigators from the Departments of Labor and Justice. The writings of Charles Logan, South West Regional Chair of the NLRB, furnished further insight The dissertation analyzes the political environment of 1930s labor conflict in New Orleans: the New Deal and its implications, the popular front and the conservative red-baiters, the political machine and its alliance with the AFL. Real representative unions promised worker control, but the employers fought hard to protect their power. Craft leaders and petty officials also defended their stake in the system. Solidarity across the lines of race and skill gave the workers their strength, but the new unions caused intense factional competition in the upper echelons of labor's own institutions The narrative begins in the 1880s with interracial cooperation on the Crescent City waterfront and continues through the radical strikes of the late 1920s, the rise of company unions in 1933 and the effect of consent elections after the Wagner Act. Grass roots activism took center stage in the labor movement after 1935. This study describes the challenge the workers themselves posed to several AFL maritime unions in 1936 and the new unions they created, particularly the CIO locals that emerged in several fields in New Orleans. A study of class, race and human relations, the work also presents the experience of the individuals, the violence CIO organizers endured and the contracts they signed in six industries / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation applies the human capital model to explain school retention decisions of teenagers. The probability of school retention among children ages 15 through 19 in 1960 and 1980 is determined using logistic regression. Census of the Population data is analyzed for young men and women, separately. / Changes in the probability of school retention as well as variations in the significance of explanatory variables over time are examined. Consequences of changes in social, political and legal preferences in the twenty year period are measured with respect to the explanatory variables included in the model. / The results of this dissertation suggest that maternal education, family income, family size and status, and full-time, long-term maternal employment are important determinants of a child's decision to remain in school. Teenagers living in an intact family other than the first marriage or in a single-parent headed household are less likely to remain in school. The model specifies a mother's employment by the duration of the work over time as well as the full-time nature of the employment. With the exception of teenage pregnancy and marriage among young women, the determinants of school retention diminish in importance with additional maternal education. / Finally, given the trends in the distribution of children by maternal education, maternal labor force participation, and family status, the opportunity costs faced by teenagers as well as the quantity and quality of parental inputs received suggest a negative impact on future school retention decisions. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-03, Section: A, page: 0910. / Major Professor: James D. Gwartney. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

This study is an attempt to test the hypothesis that outward orientation is favorable for income distribution in labor abundant country. The hypothesis is examined by using data from a cross-section of 34 developing countries. A positive relationship is found between outward orientation and income distribution. The share of lower income classes tends to increase with increased degree of openness, while the share of higher income classes tend to decrease with it. Income inequality drops when countries shift their trade strategy from an inward-oriented to an outward-oriented one. This equalizing effect of outward orientation is statistically significant. In addition to trade policy variable, this study also examines how income per capita, investment ratio, and educational variables influence income distribution. The relationship between income per capita and inequality is found to give weak support to Kuznets' inverted U relationship. Higher investment ratio is found to be favorable for higher income classes. An increase in the secondary education enrollment ratio is positively associated with lower income inequality, while mean years of schooling is positively associated with higher income inequality. / Indonesia is one of many developing countries which experienced a shift in trade policy from an inward-oriented strategy to an outward oriented strategy. Income inequality is observed to decline after the shift in trade policy. Export expansion as a proxy for the degree of outward orientation is positively associated with equality. The positive association between export expansion and equality tends to be stronger in the period after the shift in trade orientation. The effect of non-oil export expansion on equality is greater and stronger than the effect of total export expansion. The effect of export expansion on inequality in labor income distribution is greater and stronger than the effect of export expansion on inequality in expenditure distribution. The labor force participation rate and secondary school enrollment ratio have a positive association with equality. There is no significant relationship between income per capita and inequality found in the Indonesia data. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1452. / Major Professor: James H. Cobbe. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Bangladesh has been part of the globalized readymade garment (RMG) industry since the early 1980s. In 2008-09 there were 4,825 RMG factories in Bangladesh employing 3.1 million people. This workforce included 2.38 million women and is an illustration of a globalization process termed the feminization of labour. Bangladesh's RMG industry has flourished because its workers are among the lowest paid garment workers in the world. / This dissertation is a longitudinal case study of labour unions and labour movements in the RMG industry in Bangladesh between 1980 and 2009. The research and analysis are informed by insights from classical Marxist theory, world-systems theory, and Ronaldo Munck's influential "globalization and labour" thesis. / In the early years of the RMG industry there was relatively little resistance by the workers to their abject exploitation. The reasons that workers failed to resist included the harsh tactics of factory owners who would terminate, sue or arrange to have local leaders assaulted by paid thugs or the state police; the failure of civil society organizations, with the exception of a few leftist unions, to support the workers' struggles; and the fact that the garment workers were 'first generation' rural migrants to the city who lacked any knowledge of workers' rights. / In May 2006 there was a massive protest by RMG workers that secured a significant increase in the minimum wage and the first tripartite agreement in the industry's history. This victory for workers was partially undermined by unions that work collaboratively with the employers' association. Nevertheless the May 2006 upsurge changed the terrain of struggle as evidenced by the 2007 concession that legalized labour unions organizing in the export producing zones. My conclusion is that until the state changes its elite-centered policy, until the owners change their feudal mindset and abide by the labour laws and ILO conventions, and until international labour organizations are free from any hidden, protectionist agendas, militant labour movements are the only way that Bangladesh's RMG workers will be able to successfully pursue their demands.

<p>This dissertation considers the relationship between peer and individual student interaction. The central finding is that self reported friends play a crucial role in individual behaviors, a role that is more significant than other students in their school. Also, using the network of friendships within a school it is possible to construct new peer effect measures and account for endogenous peer group formation. It is however important to distinguish these peer measures from unobserved individual characteristics that may also influence behavior.</p><p>The first chapter examines the effect of potentially misidentifying the reference group on peer effect estimates. The differential impact of school, grade and friend level peer effects on student decisions to smoke and drink are calculated. Friendship nominations come from the Add Health dataset, where students can list up to 10 friends from the school. The bias due to endogenous peer group formation and simulteneity are considered using various instrumenting strategies. Peer effects are found to be large and significant at the friends level for both delinquency variables. It is possible to show that misidentifying the peer group can result in peer effect estimates that are understated by as much as 40\%.</p><p>The second chapter of the dissertation further examines the role of peer interactions, this time considering the effect of popularity on student academic achievement. Recent work has found a strong positive relationship between these variables. In this chapter I ascertain the robustness of these previous findings to controls for unobserved student heterogeneity using and instrumenting technique and a structural model. The results indicate that popularity influences academic achievement positively in the baseline model. However, instrumenting for popularity or including measures of unobserved student characteristics results in a large drop in the effect of popularity, and leads to a significantly negative coefficient in the majority of cases. Interestingly, popularity influences future earnings and attitudes positively, where this effect is robust to the inclusion of unobserved type. Policy simulations where students are redistributed based on race or income indicate that the predicted number of friendships and popularity fall but academic achievement increases. Since student popularity increases happiness and earnings, the overall effect of the redistribution policies have to be considered before implementation.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation considers incentives arising from equilibrium influences that affect the sequence of decisions that lead to family formation. The first chapter examines how state regulations directly aimed at abortion providers affect the market for abortion in the United States. Estimates from a dynamic model of competition among abortion providers show that regulations' main impact is on the fixed costs of entry for providers. Simulations indicate that the removal of regulations would promote entry and competition among abortion providers, and because abortions are found to be price sensitive, this would lead to increases in the number of abortions observed. The second chapter tests if an important negative externality of abortion access exists, namely whether abortion access makes prospective fathers more likely to leave pregnant women. Designing a number of empirical tests, I confirm that in some areas where abortion is more accessible women who give birth are more likely to be single mothers, rather than sharing parental responsibility with the biological father. The final chapter, which is joint work with Peter Arcidiacono and Marjorie McElroy, examines how gender ratios influence bargaining power in romantic relationships between men and women. Gender ratios, by influencing the prospects of matching, allow us to estimate preferences for various match characteristics and activities. We find men prefer sexual relationships more than women at high school ages, and that men and women trade off their preferred partner for an increased chance of matching.</p> / Dissertation