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This dissertation continues the tradition of identifying the unintended consequences of the US health insurance system. Its main contribution is to estimate the size of the distortions caused by the employer-based system and regulations intended to fix it, while using methods that are more novel and appropriate than those of previous work. Chapter 1 examines the effect of state-level health insurance mandates, which are regulations intended to expand access to health insurance. It finds that these regulations have the unintended consequence of increasing insurance premiums, and that these regulations have been responsible for 9-23% of premium increases since 1996. The main contribution of the chapter is that its results are more general than previous work, since it considers many more years of data, and it studies the employer-based plans that cover most Americans rather than the much less common individual plans. Whereas Chapter 1 estimates the effect of the average mandate on premiums, Chapter 2 focuses on a specific mandate, one that requires insurers to cover prostate cancer screenings. The focus on a single mandate allows a broader and more careful analysis that demonstrates how health policies spill over to affect the labor market. I find that the mandate has a significant negative effect on the labor market outcomes of the very group it was intended to help. The mandate expands the treatments health insurance covers for men over age 50, but by doing so it makes them more expensive to insure and employ. Employers respond to this added expense by lowering wages and hiring fewer men over age 50. According to the theoretical model put forward in the chapter, this suggests the mandate reduces total welfare. Chapter 3 shows that the employer-based health insurance system has deterred entrepreneurship. It takes advantage of the natural experiment provided by the Affordable Care Act's dependent coverage mandate, which de-linked insurance from employment for many 19-25 year olds. Difference-in-difference estimates show that the mandate increased self-employment among the treated group by 13-24%. Instrumental variables estimates show that those who actually received parental health insurance as a result of the mandate were drastically more likely to start their own business. This suggest that concerns over health insurance are a major barrier to entrepreneurship in the United States. / Economics

Ubiquitous access to the Internet and supporting technologies gave birth to online labor markets (Malone and Laubacher 1998). Online labor markets enable employers (employers) to contract with professionals (service providers) from anywhere in the world. Firms now are able to greatly expand their workforce and bring a large arsenal of labor to bear on IT jobs, such as software or web development using Internet-enabled procurement platforms such as Freelancer. These markets serve as intermediaries for IT services (outsourcers post Call for Bids (CFBs) for services and providers offer bids for IT services) that help match employers with service providers across the globe. In my dissertation, I try to comprehensively study this Internet-enabled phenomenon from the perspectives of these three entities on global online markets with three separate yet related essays. The first essay focuses on the "global" nature of the market, and assess the effect of global frictions and global labor arbitrage on both provider bidding and employer selection. The second essay focuses on the effect of auction mechanism - sealed versus open bid auction - on providers' bidding dynamics, and the market performance. The third essay focuses on estimating true consumer (employer) surplus of online labor markets with a quality-adjusted measure. I also test its robustness by comparing its effects on consumers' subsequent transactions. I also find that market immaturity, consumers' lack of experience in the market, and consumers' lack of familiarity with IT service providers lead to the difference between the traditional measure and the quality-adjusted consumer surplus. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

This dissertation studies the association between CEO ability and various aspects of corporate governance, specifically firm performance, executive compensation contracts and firm opacity. In the first essay of this dissertation (Chapter 2), I examine the effect of CEO ability on firm performance. My analysis uses a unique instrument of CEO ability that is based on a CEO's commitment decisions in US presidential elections. Intuitively, CEO ability is measured based on how well they forecast US presidential elections, one year prior to the race, relative to the candidates expected chances of winning. I find that this instrument of CEO ability is positively related to firm performance. Interestingly, I find that high ability CEOs have a greater impact on Tobin's q in small firms than in large firms. Yet, high ability CEOs have the greatest dollar impact on shareholder value in large firms. In addition, CEO ability appears to be quite important to outside shareholders in high growth firms. Lastly, I find that CEO ability is positively associated to merger announcement returns, which implies that higher ability CEOs engage in value-creating merger activities. The results are robust to industry and time controls, as well as various tests that consider an alternative explanation focusing on political influence. The second essay (Chapter 3) explores the effect of CEO ability on the structure and level of compensation contracts. I find that CEO ability is positively associated with total compensation level. CEOs in the highest quartile of the ability proxy earn almost $2.2 million more than CEOs in the lowest quartile of CEO ability. Further analysis indicates that CEO compensation structure differs markedly between the highest and lowest ability CEOs. Specifically, I find that the high ability CEOs receive 2.1% more stock based incentives than low ability CEOs. Thus, the low ability CEOs receive more of their pay in the form of cash compensation than do high ability CEOs. Further tests indicate that high ability CEOs have significantly greater variance in their pay than low ability CEOs, specifically due to the higher variance in stock based incentives. Overall, I provide evidence that CEO pay is associated with CEO ability and that CEO ability appears a key issue in designing CEO compensation contracts. In the third essay (Chapter 4), I examine whether CEO ability is related to corporate opacity. I argue that high-ability CEOs may seek to create greater transparency to convey their ability to the market. Simultaneously, low-ability CEOs may be signal-jamming the market's inferences about their talent by limiting the available information. An alternative aspect is that the results are driven by low-ability CEOs who seek to work in opaque firms. My analysis indicates that firms with high-ability CEOs are significantly less opaque than firms with low-ability CEOs. These findings are also robust to using a propensity score matched sample. Finally, I show that the deteriorating impact of corporate opacity on firm performance decreases when the decision belongs to a high-ability CEO, suggesting that opacity is not necessarily value-destructing decision for corporations. Overall, my analysis suggests that CEO ability is an important factor for corporate opacity. / Business Administration/Finance

Middle America is dying. The United Nations reports the average number of deaths per 1,00 population in the U.S. has steadily increased an average of 1.2 per 1,000 persons annually since 2015. Existing research offer conflicting theories regarding the factors influencing the phenomenon. the purpose of this study was to examine reliable and valid secondary data to determine if statistical evidence exists to support the prevailing theories. Statistical evidence was observed that suggests the crude death rates among U.S. non-Hispanic white (NHWs) populations was significantly higher than other U.S. population segments between 2015 and 2018. Statistical evidence was also observed that suggests U.S. NHWs sought ambulatory services for alcohol and drug use self-injuries at higher rates than other U.S. population segments. However, the evidence suggest that U.S. NHWs are not more likely to experience earlier than expected deaths from excessive alcohol or drug use than other U.S. population segments. The study's implications are that U.S. policy makers should consider long-term economic development and sustainability strategies focused on the promotion of higher education as a deterrent to self-harm among U.S. residents without college degrees or skills certifications. The study recommends future large-scale quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-use studies that examine the micro, meso, and macro factors influencing higher than expected morality rates among U.S. residents.

Master of Science / Department of Apparel, Textiles, and Interior Design / Joy Kozar / This study examines colonization, development, and globalization in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) with respect to the garment industry, the main industry of the islands. A broad-reaching analysis examined population, gender, economic factors, and import/export data in order to explore the repercussions of garment industry development and subsequent decline on the CNMI. A quantitative analysis was conducted utilizing data from the United States Census Bureau, the CNMI's Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Textiles and Apparel. This research illustrates how the effects of the garment industry in small developing nations are dramatically impacted by a trade arrangement, the Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA), which was a protectionist measure used to restrict manufacturing of certain product through a quota system. In addition, this study reveals the economic implications and societal outcomes for the CNMI after the collapse of the garment industry as a result of the 2005 MFA phase-out. Garment production orders shifted to large producer nations once quota restrictions were no longer in place. Factory closures, lost business revenue, and a loss of manufacturing positions affecting predominantly women plagued the CNMI as well as cost-of-living increases. Federalization of the CNMI took place in 2009 which further complicated the islands’ politics and guest worker population status. Tourism is now the CNMI's chief industry although its growth is dismal and heavily reliant upon world economies. A comparison between Mauritius, another small island nation, concludes the discussion with insight on women's development and future considerations for economic growth as a means of development and dependency in the CNMI.

Master of Arts / Department of History / David A. Graff / Michael Ramsay / In 1988, Irving Brown received the Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan for playing a crucial role in breaking the hold of international communism over postwar Western Europe. By doing so, he can truly be called one of the architects of Western democracy. Brown also made extraordinary efforts to fight international Communism in French North Africa during the 1950s. This paper seeks to answer the question of why these efforts in North Africa failed, and it will show the limits of American labor‘s international influence during the Cold War, in particular in French North Africa. Irving Brown successfully strengthened anti-Communist unions in Europe, and had the financial backing of the Truman Administration for those projects. However, Brown‘s efforts to build anti-Communist trade unions in Tunisia and Algeria did not have the backing of the U.S. government under the Eisenhower Administration. Instead, the AFL-CIO, with Brown as its representative, attempted to use the non-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to influence the nationalist movements of Tunisia and Algeria through their respective national unions, the Union générale tunisienne du travail (UGTT) and the Union générale des travailleurs algériens (UGTA). Disagreements within the ICFTU severely inhibited Brown‘s effectiveness and prevented him from fully realizing the AFL-CIO‘s policy goals in North Africa. Brown was overly dependent on Tunisia for his operations with the Algeria labor movement, and the ICFTU was incapable of providing adequate support to the Algerians to compete with its Communist rival, the World Federation of Trade Unions. To the extent that independent Tunisia was Western-oriented, Brown was successful in his efforts. However, in the long run, Brown failed as an architect of Western democracy, as Tunisia became a dictatorship with a socialist economy. In Algeria, the state of war forced the UGTA to turn to the Eastern bloc despite Brown‘s personal dedication to North African independence and development. Furthermore, in independence, Algeria‘s government embraced socialism and single party rule.

Informal sectors in developing countries provide a substantial pool of jobs for some of the world's poorest people. Self-employment comprises a large portion of the job opportunities available to individuals working in these sectors. This thesis is concerned with the factors that drive people to become self-employed and determine their welfare as an entrepreneur, with a special emphasis on differences between women and men. In Chapter 1, we explain the Ghanaian context to which this thesis relates and outline the contribution of each main chapter and the common themes. In Chapters 2 and 3, we examine the trade-off between domestic work, such as caring for children and household chores, and market work. In Chapter 2, we consider the extent to which individuals are able to substitute between these two tasks to adjust to short-run variation in domestic productivity brought about by outages in electricity. We find that self-employed workers adjust non-monotonically to changes in domestic productivity, initially increasing their levels of domestic work to preserve consumption levels, but then substituting towards market work when power outages become more severe. We show that this relationship is heterogeneous by sex, and build a model of time allocation to demonstrate the theoretical mechanisms behind these results. In Chapter 3 we examine whether the factors that drive occupational selection differ by sex. It is often argued that women choose jobs in self-employment because this allows them to balance income-generation with childcare and other domestic work. We test the plausibility of this claim and its implications for labour market outcomes. First, we use a simple model of occupational choice to clarify our ideas about which notions of 'job flexibility' are important for the Ghanaian context. Second, we examine whether differential selection forces between women and men may explain the raw sex earnings gaps that appear to persist in various sectors, using a multinomial logit model to adjust for non-random occupational selection. We find that controlling for selection substantially widens the earnings gap amongst the self-employed, but shrinks it for the wage-employed. Third, we interrogate our selection equations and show that domestic obligations increase women's likelihood of entering low-input self-employment jobs more than men. We assess the importance of endogeneity using a maximum simulated likelihood estimator to couch the idea that selection on observables can be used as a guide for selection on unobservables, focussing on the discrete choice made over occupation. In Chapter 4, we turn to theory to try and resolve some of the empirical puzzles that remain from Chapter 3. In particular, we attempt to reconcile the fact that female participation in self-employment is so high even when the average differences in potential earnings are large. To do this, we construct a search model, which allows for individual heterogeneity and participation in both self- and wage-employment, as well as discrimination against female workers in the wage sector. We numerically solve and simulate this model, using calibrations from the existing literature, to explain a set of stylised facts generated from a longitudinal dataset of workers in urban Ghana. We show that wage sector discrimination leads to average earnings gaps in \emph{all} sectors of the economy, even if the underlying ability distribution is the same for both sexes. We also conduct a series of experiments to examine how women and men may be affected differently by government policy. Finally, in Chapter 5 we connect our main findings to policy and make some suggestions for future work.

This thesis is about imperfections in urban labour markets of three developing countries. I study how physical living conditions place constraints on labour force participation, and increase risks associated with unemployment. In Chapter One I test for the impact of high search costs on labour market outcomes of job seekers. I use a randomized trial of transport subsidies among youth living far away from the centre of the city in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Lowering transport costs increases the intensity of job search and leads to better employment outcomes. Weekly phone call data shows that treatment works to stop job search activity from declining over time. I show that the results are consistent with a dynamic model of job search with cash constraints and monetary search costs. Income from temporary work is used to smooth consumption and pay for the costs of search. I find that subsidies reduce participation in temporary work. Chapter Two looks at the links between poor housing conditions in slums and market labour supply. I test for the effect of free government housing in South Africa on households, using four waves of panel data and a natural experiment due to the allocation of new housing according to proximity from housing projects. I then use planned but cancelled projects to control for non-random selection of housing project sites. I find that government housing leads to large increases in household incomes from wage work, and increases in the labour supply of female household members. I argue that these results are due to reduced burdens of work in the home of improved housing, especially for women. In Chapter Three we look at how labour markets respond to large but temporary economic shocks caused by typhoons in the Philippines. We use quarterly aggregate, repeated-cross sectional and panel data to demonstrate robust evidence of downward wage flexibility. Lay-offs do not occur when storms hits, but hours per worker fall. We explain these results with a model of implicit contracts under which risk is shared between workers and firms through wage cuts, but workers are insured against lay-offs so that adjustments in labour demand occur through reductions in hours per worker. Our results are particularly strong for workers in long term contractual relationships in the private sector.

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