The first essay studies how early health shocks affect the child's human capital formation. We first formulate a theoretical model to understand how early health shocks affect child outcomes through parental responses. We nest a dynamic model of human capability formation into a standard intrahousehold resource allocation framework. By introducing the multidimensionality of child endowments, we allow parents to compensate and reinforce along different dimensions. We then test our main empirical predictions using a Chinese child twins survey, which contains detailed information on child- and parent-specific expenditures. We can differentiate between investments in money and investments in time. On the one hand, we find evidence of compensating investment in child health but of reinforcing investment in education. On the other hand, we find no change in the time spent with the child. We confirm that an early health insult negatively affects the child under several different domains, ranging from later health, to cognition, and then to personality. Our findings suggest caution in interpreting reduced-form estimates of the effects of early-life shocks. In the presence of asymmetric parental responses under different dimensions of the child's human capital, they cannot even be unambiguously interpreted as upper or lower bounds of the biological effects. / The second essay empirically estimates the effects of education on two dimensions of preference -- decision making under risk and uncertainty and decision making involving time. We conduct a number of incentivized choice experiments on Chinese adult twins to measure preference, and use a within-twin-pair fixed-effects estimator to sweep out unobservable family background effects. The estimation results show that a higher level of education tends to reduce the degree of risk aversion toward moderate prospects, moderate hazards, and longshot prospects. In terms of decision making anomalies under risk and uncertainty, university educated subjects exhibit significantly more Allais-type behavior compared to pre-high school subjects, while high school educated subjects also exhibit more ambiguity aversion as well as familiarity bias relative to pre-high school subjects. For decision making involving time, a higher level of education tends to reduce the degree of impatience, hyperbolic discounting, dread, and hopefulness. The experimental evidences suggest that people with a higher level of education tends to exhibit more "biased" preference in risk attitude and less "biased" preference regarding time. / This thesis consists of two essays on family behavior and human capital. / essay 1. Early health shocks, parental responses, and child outcome -- essay 2. Education and preferences: experimental evidences from Chinese adult twins. / Yi, Junjian. / Adviser: Junsen Zhang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-41; 82-88). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Master's Thesis: Tobin Hanspal May 18th, 2012 Variability Among Determinants of Education Attainment: The Effect of Natural Resources and Institutional Quality in Sub-Sahara Africa ABSTRACT: This thesis exploits survey data from 21 Sub-Saharan African countries. After constructing a dataset of over 100,000 households to analyze the variability in traditional determinants of schooling attainment across exogenous domains, results indicate strong heterogeneity across countries in the effects of household composition and parental background. Additionally, findings suggest that 1) marginal effects of parental education are on average three times smaller for secondary compared to primary school attainment, 2) countries with lower corruption are correlated with higher levels of educational mobility, 3) dependence on natural resource revenue is associated with increased educational mobility. And finally 4) household wealth becomes a stronger determinant in countries with better institutions. Exogenous factors appears to have a large correlative impact on schooling outcomes, such as individuals belonging to the richest households have almost ten times the chances of completing primary schooling over the poorest quintile in less corrupt states compared to only a marginal advantage in highly corrupt states.

Economic activities are lacking in many townships around South Africa. The newly developed Reconstruction and Development Programme townships are also facing the problem of encouraging economic activities. These townships are always criticized for being overcrowded by the people who are unable to support economic activities because of lack of capacity to be employed. This study adopted assets pentagon method to find the assets which the people have in the township which they can use to support and encourage economic activities in the area. Assets Pentagon method includes social and political capital, human capital, physical capital, financial capital and natural capital. The availability of these assets in the township will be vital to encourage and support economic activities

yes / Although at the national level the relationship between financial development, human capital and economic growth has received some attention, this is largely an under-researched area at the sub-national level. Human capital may impact economic growth through the channel of innovation and along with financial development could be complementary or substitute in their relationship to economic growth. Also, human capital investment, enabled by the financial sector development, not only affects growth but also directly and indirectly affects poverty reduction through the channel of growth. In this study we examine the interaction between financial development, human capital and economic growth at the sub-national level using panel dataset covering 23 states of India for the period 1999-2013. Our analysis suggests that there is evidence of positive relationship between human capital and financial development to economic growth. / New journal still to be published by Oxford Academic Journals (OUP). Final draft suppressed for 24 months - check when journal published as to exact embargo - sm - 25/04/2018 © 2018 Oxford University Press. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version [as above] is available online at: / The full text will be available at the end of the publisher's embargo, 2 years after publication.

This dissertation contributes to the current understanding of human capital and its importance for earnings inequality and taxation. Human capital is typically defined as the stock of knowledge or skills acquired through education and working experience. The first chapter analyzes student borrowing behaviors in postsecondary education in the United States, the second chapter studies cross-country differences in earnings inequality within an endogenous growth model of human capital accumulation, and the third chapter examines the impact of endogenous human capital formations over a life-cycle on optimal fiscal policy. In Chapter 1, I document that new federal student loans for higher education in the United States have risen more than 5 times over the past 20 years. What caused this dramatic increase? I develop a heterogeneous life-cycle model of human capital accumulation to analyze individual college and borrowing decisions. Using this framework, I assess the quantitative contributions of changes in the college wage premium, college costs, maximum borrowing limits, and loan interest rates to explain the significant rise of federal student loans. I find that the calibrated model accounts for 57 percent of the actual increase in loans from 1990 to 2011. Increases in the college wage premium and college costs are important factors in generating the sharp rise in loans and, particularly, the increase in the fraction of borrowers and borrowing amounts. The expansion of credit availability and decreased loan interest rates have a relatively minimal impact on individual college and borrowing decisions. Chapter 2 explores why earnings inequality has been substantially higher in the US than in European countries over the last 30 years. I focus on the role of differences in tax progressivity, intergenerational earnings persistence, returns to education investments, and public education spending. I develop a growth model of human capital accumulation, and show analytically how those factors affect the dynamics of earnings inequality. The calibrated model accounts for 31 percent of the observed differences in earnings inequality between European countries and the US for 2003-07. Differences in returns to education investments and intergenerational earnings persistence are quantitatively important, suggesting the potential role of educational policy in ameliorating rising earnings inequality. Chapter 3, written jointly with Martin Gervais, analyzes the role of endogenous human capital accumulation in shaping optimal fiscal policy within a life-cycle growth model. We show that when investment in human capital is not verifiable---making the tax code incomplete---a non-zero capital income tax becomes optimal in order to alleviate the distortionary effects of the labor income tax on investment in human capital. This is true even if the government has access to a full set of age-dependent labor and capital income taxes. The main result is in sharp contrast to the finding in Jones et al. (1997) that all interest taxes are zero in infinitely-lived agent models with endogenous human capital formation.

The following dissertation investigates the relationship between depressed mood and academic performance (measured in terms of grade point average) in U.S. middle and high schools. Utilizing data from AddHealth, the dissertation establishes Ordinary Least Squares, Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), and individual and sibling fixed effect regressions that attempt to control for confounding factors, including student motivation, personality characteristics, and parental inputs that are unobserved but may influence both mental health and achievement. Study findings indicate that students who report feeling depressed do not perform as well academically as non-depressed students. Additionally, the degree of GPA impact increases with the severity of reported depression. Students reporting either depressed feelings "most or all of the time" - or symptoms consistent with major depression suffer GPA reductions of 0.06 to 0.84 grade points. In addition, middle schoolers and certain minority groups are hardest hit by depression, and persistent depression has a negative impact on grades.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the causal effects of malaria and poor health in general on economic outcome in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study uses panel data from the Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) for Tanzania from 1991 to 2004. Three main hypotheses are tested. First, the study evaluates the effect of malaria and other chronic illnesses on labor supply using the number of hours worked per week as a measure of outcome. Second, it determines the impact of poor health on human capital accumulation by measuring the number of weekly school hours lost to illness. The third objective deals with the question of whether changes in preconditioning factors such as income levels and healthcare accessibility have improved the disease environment in Sub-Saharan Africa over time. The study uses several identification strategies in the empirical estimation process. The first estimation strategy applies the standard Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed Effects (FE) estimators to the schooling and labor supply models. In addition to OLS and FE, the preferred methods of estimating the causal effects of malaria on schooling and labor supply outcomes are Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) and Limited Information Maximum Likelihood (LIML). Findings in this study suggest that malaria significantly increases school absenteeism. In particular, 2SLS and LIML estimates of the number of school hours lost to malaria suggests that children sick with malaria are absent from school for approximately 24 hours a week. However, the results show the effect of malaria on work hours is inconclusive. Furthermore, difference in difference estimates of the disease environment show slight improvements in the disease environment resulting from changes in income levels. The study finds no statistically significant improvements in the disease environment due to increases in the number of health facilities over time.

This research attempts to answer the question of why some attorneys obtain a second advanced degree after their law degree. That is, if a law degree is all that is needed to practice law, then why do some attorneys continue with their studies, especially since they lack an economic incentive to do so? The research includes a literature review with background information on credentialism and human capital theory, on lawyers and law school, dissatisfaction, income and debt, alternatives to law, joint graduate degree programs, and gender. SPSS modeling is utilized to arrive at the conclusion that human capital theory and satisfaction account for lawyers' attainment of additional degrees.

Bibliography: leaves 148-155. This thesis investigates whether cross-country variations in schooling quality (the productivity of the time spent studying) affect the empirical results in studies of economic growth based on an augmented method of Solow. It was found that schooling quality is positively and statistically significantly associated with mean economic growth rates in regressions which control for physical capital investment rates, population growth rates and secondary school enrolment rates. Education levels of parents, hours of homework and the non-teaching duties of teachers were also significant determinants.

In this thesis I address several neglected issues relating to the theoretical and applied analysis of human capital and the impact of taxation. I begin with the problem of measuring the effective tax rate on human capital accumulation. I develop a forward-looking measure of the effective tax rate that is grounded in human capital theory, allowing for features that differentiate human capital formation from physical capital formation. These features include concavity of the earnings-investment frontier and adjustments in capital utilization through leisure. I argue that the few attempts that have been made to measure the effective tax rate on skill formation are either limited by the fact that they inherit assumptions applicable to the theory of the firm or have dubious theoretical foundations (Chapter Two). The new measure is used to derive the effective tax rate on human capital in 25 OECD countries, including Australia (Chapter Three). While there are numerous general equilibrium models which integrate nominal rigidities of one form or another, little attention has been devoted to nominal rigidities arising from partial indexation of income tax thresholds. No doubt one of the reasons for this gap in the literature is the difficulty associated with introducing a fully specified progressive tax regime into an applied general equilibrium model. I show that this hurdle can be overcome through a zero-profit condition for general equilibrium on the labour market. The condition is integrated into an aggregative model of the economy consisting of two sectors (consumption and education) and two factors of production (skilled and unskilled labour). Since skill formation is endogenous, the model allows us to reopen research into the optimal level of skill formation and the role of government (Chapter Four). An applied general equilibrium version of the model is used to evaluate the impact of recent tax reform proposals on skill formation (Chapter Five). A concluding chapter draws together these lines of enquiry with suggestions for future research (Chapter Six).