This paper uses the relationship between female partners and associates in the 200 largest United States law firms to explore the impact of senior-level women on junior-level women. I look within firms to see how the percentage of female associates changes based upon the percentage of female partners and how other mechanisms effect the causality of that relationship. I find that a 10-percentage point increase in female partners leads to a 4.7-percentage point increase in female associates, but approximately half of the effect is due to fixed factors within firms and years. This effect is asymmetric; increases in female partners have much larger effects on female associates than do decreases. Female partners also have a greater effect in firms with fewer female partners. Next, I use time lags and find that while female partners have a significant impact on female associates’ retention, the decision to join the firm is influenced by other female associates. Furthermore, I find that the female partners present when current associates were summer associates have a negative impact on the full-time hiring of female associates and their decision to join the firm full-time. Finally, I find that the positive impact of female partners was substantially mitigated during the Global Financial Crisis

As life expectancy rises and the workforce around the developed world ages, questions about retirement, savings, and health are becoming increasingly important. Are households saving enough for retirement? What is the role of employer contributions to savings accounts in determining overall savings? To what extent are households insured against health shocks and are they financially prepared to face them? How should the answers to these questions guide us in designing optimal social insurance policies? This dissertation addresses these important questions on the economics of aging. In the three chapters of this dissertation, I apply theory in analyzing the behavior of households, firms, and the social planner, and quasi-experimental research designs that use newly available administrative data on labor market behavior and health outcomes. The first chapter, jointly written with Torben Heien Nielsen, studies how households respond to severe health shocks and the insurance role of spousal labor supply. In the empirical part of the paper, we provide new evidence on individuals' labor supply responses to spousal health and mortality shocks. Analyzing administrative data on over 500,000 Danish households in which a spouse dies, we find that survivors immediately increase their labor supply and that this effect is entirely driven by those who experience significant income losses due to the shock. Notably, widows – who experience large income losses when their husbands die – increase their labor force participation by more than 11%, while widowers – who are significantly more financially stable – decrease their labor supply. In contrast, studying over 70,000 households in which a spouse experiences a severe health shock but survives – for whom income losses are well-insured in our setting – we find no economically significant spousal labor supply responses, suggesting adequate insurance coverage for morbidity (vs. mortality) shocks. In the theoretical part of the paper, we develop a method for welfare analysis of social insurance using only spousal labor supply responses. In particular, we show that the labor supply responses of spouses fully identify the welfare gains from insuring households against health and mortality shocks. Our findings imply large welfare gains from transfers to survivors and identify efficient ways for targeting government transfers. The second chapter of this dissertation is jointly written with Jessica Laird and Torben Heien Nielsen. In this chapter we empirically study how firms, which play an increasingly significant role in retirement savings, set their contributions to employees’ savings accounts, and analyze whether employer contributions reflect employees’ savings preferences. Using a reform that decreased the subsidy for contributions to capital retirement savings accounts for Danish workers in the top income tax bracket, we find strong evidence that firms set contributions to employer-provided savings accounts in accordance with their employees' savings preferences. Specifically, we find that the reform shifted employers' contributions from capital accounts to the more subsidized annuity accounts. Furthermore, these responses were proportional to the share of employees directly affected by the reform. We also find that employers with more passive savers among the affected workers had stronger reactions, suggesting that firm responses substitute for individual responses. In the third chapter, jointly written with David Laibson, we theoretically study savings in the presence of non-optimizing agents and the effect of a benevolent planner on overall retirement savings. As equilibrium behavior is jointly determined by the actions of households and social planners, we highlight the distinction between planner optimization and household optimization. We show that planner optimization is a substitute for household optimization and that this is true even when there are information asymmetries, so that households know more about their preferences than planners. Our analysis illustrates a potential misattribution in economic analysis. Is optimal behavior caused by optimizing households, or is optimal behavior caused by planners who paternalistically manipulate households that would not optimize on their own? We show that widely studied optimality conditions that are implied by household optimization also arise in an economy with a rational planner who uses default savings and Social Security to influence the choices of non-optimizing households. Therefore, many classical optimization conditions do not resolve the question of household optimization. Pseudo-rationality arises when rational planners elicit (seemingly) optimal behavior from non-optimizing households. / Economics

Location matters. A firm's proximity to other firms, finance, and infrastructure affects its profitability and productivity. My dissertation examines how. In chapter one, I quantify the underlying sources of agglomeration, or productivity gains from co-location, and investigate the extent to which those sources changed from 1880 to 1990. In chapter two, I shift to proximity to finance and measure the impact of local bank distress on local manufacturing outcomes during a period of unprecedented---and unrepeated---financial panic, the Great Depression. And in chapter three, I study the importance of local capital and infrastructure destruction on agricultural and manufacturing outcomes using General William Sherman's 1864-1865 march through the US South. Together, my dissertation chapters shed light on the influence of location on firm profitability and productivity, and in turn, US economic growth from 1860 to 1990. / Economics

This dissertation includes three essays in the field of economics of education. The first essay provides estimates of the long-run impacts of tracking high-achieving students using data from a Boston Public Schools (BPS) program, Advanced Work Class (AWC). AWC is an accelerated curriculum in 4th through 6th grades with dedicated classrooms. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach based on the AWC entrance exam, I find that AWC has little impact on test scores. However, it improves longer-term academic outcomes including Algebra 1 enrollment by 8th grade, AP exam taking, and college enrollment. The college enrollment effect is particularly large for elite institutions. Testing potential channels for program effects provides suggestive evidence that teacher effectiveness and math acceleration account for AWC effects, with little evidence that peer effects contribute to gains. The second essay uses item-level information from standardized tests to investigate whether large test score gains attributed to Boston charter schools can be explained by score inflation. To do so, I estimate the impact of charter school attendance on subscales of the test scores and examine them for evidence of score inflation. If charter schools are teaching to the test to a greater extent than their counterparts, one would expect to see higher scores on commonly tested standards, higher stakes subjects, and frequently tested topics. However, despite incentives to reallocate effort toward highly-tested content, and to coach to item type, I find no evidence of this type of test preparation. Boston charter middle schools perform consistently across all standardized test subscales. The third essay analyzes a Massachusetts merit aid program that gives high-scoring students tuition waivers at in-state public colleges with lower graduation rates than available alternative colleges. A regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and below the eligibility threshold finds that students are remarkably willing to forgo college quality and that scholarship use actually lowered college completion rates. These results suggest that college quality affects college completion rates. The theoretical prediction that in-kind subsidies of public institutions can reduce consumption of the subsidized good is shown to be empirically important. / Public Policy

In my first chapter, I consider the long-term effects of World War II on women. WWII drew women into the workforce in unprecedented numbers and, often, into atypical occupations. After the war, they returned home where they became the mothers of the baby boom generation. Their daughters changed the female labor force by pursuing higher education and careers. My research analyzes whether cultural change during World War II helped to produce this break with the past. I use data on war manufacturing infrastructure and armed forces mobilization rates to predict whether the daughters were affected by the war's impact on their mothers. I also construct a measure of predicted war plants using pre-war infrastructure to remove the possibility of an endogenous decision to locate plants where women were particularly amenable to employment. My analysis shows that these war-related variables increased baby boomer women's education, although not their labor force participation. The primary impact was on their attainment of a college degree. The Quiet Revolution in women's employment, careers and education was therefore impacted greatly by their mothers' experiences before their daughters were born. My second chapter also considers intergenerational impacts on women's careers, though in a more contemporary context. This chapter considers the effect of a stay-at-home mother on her daughter's career choice, specifically her tendency to choose her father's career. I provide some descriptive statistics of women who choose to be homemakers and those who have chosen their parents' occupations. I hypothesize that a woman with a stay-at-home mom is more likely to choose her father's career, given that she lacks a female occupational role model in the home. I find no conclusive evidence of this, even when I only examine women in competitive careers. However, I do find statistically significant effects of the community in which she grows up. Women who grew up in communities where women were employed in competitive careers are less likely to choose their father's careers. Communities with men who are employed in competitive careers are more likely to produce women who inherit their father's occupation. Such a decision proves highly advantageous, since women in their father's careers earn more, while women in their mother's careers earn less. My final chapter focuses on the rural South and analyzes trends in segregation due to private schools. Though in less extreme conditions than during the 1960's, school children are still segregated by race. Throughout the United States, this primarily occurs because of residential segregation. But there exists a unique pattern and opportunity in the heart of the South, its rural communities. Segregation in the rural South occurs largely through the presence of private schools. This is fascinating in that different races can live relatively near each other but never go to school together. White students' enrollment in private schools is highly dependent on the black proportion of the student population. Thus, black students in public schools in largely black areas have even fewer white peers. Segregation due to private schools is highest within the Cotton Belt, a region historically known for racism. The evidence is also consistent with a detrimental effect of private schools on public school funding. I find that rural Southern school districts with high levels of private school segregation also have low levels of school resources per student, even after controlling for what the median voter could afford. Using votes for segregationist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond as an instrument for segregation due to private schools only strengthens the results. Moreover, the recent increases in white enrollment at private schools may be slowly increasing racial separation due to private schools. / Business Economics

Over the last ten years there have been dramatic changes in the health insurance environment in the United States, spurred on by broad reforms in the public health insurance sector. In 2006 the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act went into effect, providing broad access to prescription drug insurance for millions of elderly Americans. In 2014 the main provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act began to be felt, dramatically changing health insurance markets, particularly for those seeking non-group coverage. These legislative changes both raise questions regarding how well the policy changes meet their goals, as well as offering new variation with the potential to answer questions of fundamental economic significance. This dissertation addresses such important questions surrounding the effectiveness of public health insurance in meeting policymakers’ goals, and the implications of public health insurance for private markets. In the three chapters of this dissertation I utilize the policy changes of Medicare Part D and the Affordable Care Act to provide quasi-experimental estimates of retirement lock, of the correlation of risk aversion and crowd-out of private insurance, and of the effectiveness of the individual health insurance mandate in expanding coverage. The first part studies the implications of public drug insurance for labor markets. This part examines whether the lack of an individual market for prescription drug insurance causes individuals to delay retirement. I exploit the quasi-experiment of the introduction of Medicare Part D, which provided subsidized prescription drug insurance to all Americans over age 65 beginning in 2006. Using a differences-in-differences design, I compare the labor outcomes of individuals turning 65 just after 2006 to those turning 65 just before 2006 in order to estimate the causal effect of eligibility for Part D on labor supply. I find that individuals at age 65 who would have otherwise lost their employer-sponsored drug insurance upon retirement decreased their rate of full-time work by 8.4 percentage points due to Part D, in contrast to individuals with retiree drug insurance even after age 65 for whom no significant change was observed. This reduction was composed of an increase of 5.9 percentage points in part-time work and 2.5 percentage points in complete retirement. I use these estimates to quantify the extent of the distortion due to drug insurance being tied to employment, and the welfare gains from the subsidy correcting that distortion. The results suggest that individuals value $1 of drug insurance subsidy as much as $3 of Social Security wealth. The second part of this dissertation considers the effect of public drug insurance on private drug coverage, with a focus on the correlation of crowd-out and risk aversion. I utilize Health and Retirement Survey data around the time of introduction of the Medicare Part D prescription drug insurance for the elderly in order to estimate crowd-out of private prescription drug insurance. I use individuals between the ages of 55 and 64, who are not eligible for the program, as a control group relative to individuals aged 65 to 75, who are eligible. I take a differences-in-differences approach to estimation by comparing outcomes before and after 2006, when Medicare Part D went into effect. I construct measures of risk aversion by exploiting unique questions eliciting risk preferences in the Health and Retirement Survey, as well as information on whether individuals have other kinds of insurance, or engage in risky behaviors. I find substantial differential crowd-out by risk aversion: every standard deviation increase in risk aversion was associated with about 5 percentage points less crowd-out, over a base crowd-out rate of 50%-60%. More risk averse individuals also saw greater reductions in out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs due to Part D, particularly at high levels of spending: at the 85th percentile of spending an individual one standard deviation more risk averse than the average experienced a decline of $110/year due to Part D eligibility, above and beyond the gains for an averagely risk averse individual of $382/year. The third part of the dissertation estimates the effectiveness of the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in expanding health insurance coverage. This paper studies the impact of the individual health insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) on health insurance coverage. This mandate went into effect in 2014, alongside various other elements of the PPACA. I focus on individuals ages 26-64 who are ineligible for the subsidies or Medicaid expansions included in the PPACA to isolate the effect of the mandate from these other components. To account for changes unrelated to the PPACA that occur over time and affect insurance coverage I utilize a control group of residents of Massachusetts who were already subject to mandated insurance following the 2006 health care reform in their state. Employing a differences-in-differences design applied to data from the American Community Survey, I find that the mandate caused an increase of 0.85 percentage points in health insurance coverage, or a 17% decline in the uninsurance rate. This increase was concentrated in coverage purchased directly by individuals, rather than acquired through an employer, and predominantly affected younger individuals. Both these observations are consistent with the mandate ameliorating adverse selection in the individual health insurance market. / Economics

It is important to understand the individual behavioral responses to public policies and the corresponding social consequences because they are key parameters to evaluate and design efficient social policies. In this dissertation, I examine the effects of a series of public policies in China by investigating the policy-induced individual behaviors and social consequences in different stages over lifetime. Chapter 1 examines the impact of fertility policies on the education investment in girls; Chapter 2 shows how the ethnic-specific terms in the OCP distorted individual behaviors and equilibrium outcomes in marriage market; Chapter 3 examines an unintended outcome of birth control policies - more reported twins; Chapter 4 uses the compulsory schooling laws (CSL) as exogenous shocks to estimate the causal effects of education on health at prime ages; Chapter 5 examines the effects of new social pension provision on the outcomes of the elderly, including income, expenditure health and mortality. I conclude that the public policies have significant and remarkable effects on the behaviors and welfare outcomes of individuals. In addition, these lessons from China may shed lights on the some important and general interested questions in economics. / Economics

This dissertation studies labor and public economics. Chapter 1 is titled “How Does Unemployment Affect Consumer Spending?” and is coauthored with Pascal Noel. We study the spending of unemployed individuals using anonymized data on 210,000 checking accounts that received a direct deposit of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. Unemployment causes a large but short-lived drop in income, generating a need for liquidity. At onset of unemployment, monthly spending drops by 6%, and work-related expenses explain one- quarter of the drop. Spending declines by less than 1% with each additional month of UI receipt. When UI benefits are exhausted, spending falls sharply by 11%. Unemployment is a good setting to test alternative models of consumption because the change in income is large. We find that families do little self-insurance before or during unemployment, in the sense that spending is very sensitive to monthly income. We compare the spending data to three benchmark models; the drop in spending from UI onset through exhaustion fits the buffer stock model well, but spending falls much more than predicted by the permanent income model and much less than the hand-to-mouth model. We identify two failures of the buffer stock model relative to the data – it predicts higher assets at onset, and it predicts that spending will evolve smoothly around the largely predictable income drop at benefit exhaustion. Chapter 2 is titled “The Incidence of Housing Voucher Generosity” and is coauthored with Rob Collinson. Most housing voucher recipients live in low-quality neighborhoods. We study how changes in voucher generosity affect neighborhood poverty, unit-quality and rents using administrative data. We examine a policy making vouchers more generous across a metro area. This policy had no impact on neighborhood poverty, little impact on observed quality, and increased rents. A second policy, which indexed rent ceilings to neighborhood rents, led voucher recipients to move to higher quality neighborhoods with lower crime, poverty and unemployment. These results are consistent with a model where the first policy acts as an income effect and the second as a substitution effect. Chapter 3 is titled “A Permutation Test for the Regression Kink Design” and is coau- thored with Simon Jaeger. This chapter proposes a permutation test for the Regression Kink (RK) design—an increasingly popular empirical method for causal inference. Analo- gous to the Regression Discontinuity design, which evaluates discontinuous changes in the level of an outcome variable with respect to the running variable at a point at which the level of a policy changes, the RK design evaluates discontinuous changes in the slope of an outcome variable with respect to the running variable at a kink point at which the slope of a policy with respect to the running variable changes. Using simulation studies based on data from existing RK designs, we document empirically that the statistical significance of RK estimators based on conventional standard errors can be spurious. In the simulations, false positives arise as a consequence of nonlinearities in the underlying relationship between the outcome and the assignment variable. As a complement to standard RK inference, we propose that researchers construct a distribution of placebo estimates in regions with and without a policy kink and use this distribution to gauge statistical significance. Under the assumption that the location of the kink point is random, this permutation test has exact size in finite samples for testing a sharp null hypothesis of no effect of the policy on the outcome. We document using simulations that our method improves upon the size of standard approaches. / Economics

Community colleges enrolled 37 percent of students attending Title IV-eligible, degree-granting institutions in 2000, but by 2012, this had dropped to 33 percent (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 2013). At least some of this decline is hypothesized to be due to the rise of for-profit institutions, which enrolled approximately 9 percent of students in 2012, as compared to only 3 percent in 2000 (NCES, 2013). The decline in the share of undergraduate enrollment at public community colleges combined with the increasing share enrolled in for-profit colleges suggests that for-profit and public community colleges may compete for some of the same students, and several studies support this conjecture (Rosenbaum, Deil-Amen and Person, 2006; Cellini, 2009; Iloh and Tierney, 2014). This study is the first large-scale examination of the impact of for-profit colleges on the enrollment and outcomes of students at other postsecondary institutions. I make use of data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System merged with data from the Census, American Community Survey, Bureau of Labor Market Statistics and Grapevine Survey. In the first part of this study, using an event study model in which I interact year with the distance to the nearest newly-opened degree-granting, for-profit college, I estimate the effect of a new for-profit institution opening on community college enrollments and degree completions. In the second part of this study, I estimate the effect of having a new for-profit college open on county education levels. My results suggest that community college enrollments and degree completions do not decline when a new degree-granting for-profit college opens nearby, and these zeros are precisely estimated. Furthermore, I find evidence that the county-level production of short- and long-term certificates increases after a new for-profit college opens, though the number of associate’s degrees does not increase. This evidence should serve to broaden conversations about the role of for-profit colleges in the larger landscape of the American higher education system.

Abstract not available.