The objective of the thesis is to investigate Malaysia’s pay determinants from three different perspectives, namely: employees’ perspective, employers’ perspective, and both employees-employers’ perspectives. As a matter of fact, previous studies have not been able to document the potential impact of employers and firms on pay determinants within the Malaysian economy, owing to a lack of appropriate data. Therefore, with the availability of new datasets – worker-level dataset (WLD) and firm-level dataset (FLD) obtained from the Second Malaysian Productivity Investment Climate Survey (PICS-2), we have developed a matched-worker-firm dataset (MWFD), so that by employing such dataset it will add a new dimension to pay analysis in Malaysia as well as allowing for a comprehensive understanding and clearer picture of Malaysia’s pay system. From the employees’ prospective, the findings of this thesis indicate that a worker with a higher education level, skills and training generally gets a higher pay compared to those without. In addition, a worker who undergoes training from his/her current employer gets a higher pay compared to those who had training from a previous employer or only off-the-job training. At the same time, workers with complex computer skills, as well as those who are in professional employment and management, also receive a considerably higher pay. From the employers’ prospective, however, the findings indicate that firm size, human capital stock in the firm, worker performance, capital stock, and firm performance are important factors that affect the Malaysian average monthly pay. Besides, the elasticity of pay with respect to employer size is two percent, and this figure supports the notion that the Malaysian labour market can be characterised as imperfect competition. From both employers-employees’ prospective, it is obvious that both observable worker characteristics and unobserved firm-effects are key elements of pay determinants. Nevertheless, firm effects seem to explain the variability in pay determinants more than observable worker characteristics. In addition, the relationship between pay component and firm performance exhibits a positive tendency. This implies that workers get a higher pay either because of worker characteristics or that firm-effects are being employed in firms that are more productive and profitability.

Variation in health care, whether it be in terms of the utilisation of resources, observed health outcomes, costs, quality or access to health care is a well recognised and ever present feature of the modern day health care system. Health care variations challenge basic assumptions about the nature of the health care economy and raise questions about efficiency, equity and where best to direct policy instruments in health care markets. Despite the vast literature documenting variation, and the many discussions around ways to reduce variations in health care markets, the field of dental care has received little interest, in comparison to that of general medical care. This thesis will address this gap and will analyse the variation observed in a specific dental care treatment (dental radiographs) within NHS Scotland, with particular emphasis on the contribution of both dentist and patient unobserved heterogeneity. The thesis takes its focus from two strands of the literature; the underlying theoretical aspect draws on the literature concerning the theory of incentives and physician agency, whilst the empirical component makes use of recent advances in micro-econometric methods, documented in the labour economics literature. Although the thesis is predominantly an empirical analysis, the estimation strategy combines ideas from both the theoretical and empirical literature. A matched patient provider dataset from NHS Scotland is used to conduct an analysis of the variation in dental radiographs, in the presence of, and controlling for unobserved dentist and patient heterogeneity. The results indicate that the remuneration structure alone has little or no impact on the treatment decision to provide a radiograph. When a dentist changes from being on a fixed salary contract to being paid on a fee-for-service basis, they are in fact less likely to provide a radiograph. This result changes in the presence of insurance (identified as being when patients are exempt from the patient charge) and indicates that when the self employed dentist can identify the patient as being exempt, they are more likely to provide a radiograph. This result provides some support for the theory that in the presence of insurance, financial incentives do influence the treatment decision. A final result of the study highlights the importance of accounting for unobserved patient and provider heterogeneity, a factor that has had little attention in the healthcare literature. The results suggest that patient variation, as opposed to the variation across dentists, is much more important in explaining total variation. This is a similar result to that found in both the labour and education literatures.

abstract: With the increase in computing power and availability of data, there has never been a greater need to understand data and make decisions from it. Traditional statistical techniques may not be adequate to handle the size of today's data or the complexities of the information hidden within the data. Thus knowledge discovery by machine learning techniques is necessary if we want to better understand information from data. In this dissertation, we explore the topics of asymmetric loss and asymmetric data in machine learning and propose new algorithms as solutions to some of the problems in these topics. We also studied variable selection of matched data sets and proposed a solution when there is non-linearity in the matched data. The research is divided into three parts. The first part addresses the problem of asymmetric loss. A proposed asymmetric support vector machine (aSVM) is used to predict specific classes with high accuracy. aSVM was shown to produce higher precision than a regular SVM. The second part addresses asymmetric data sets where variables are only predictive for a subset of the predictor classes. Asymmetric Random Forest (ARF) was proposed to detect these kinds of variables. The third part explores variable selection for matched data sets. Matched Random Forest (MRF) was proposed to find variables that are able to distinguish case and control without the restrictions that exists in linear models. MRF detects variables that are able to distinguish case and control even in the presence of interaction and qualitative variables. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Industrial Engineering 2013

Organizational Change and Productivity Growth − Evidence from Sweden This paper uses two different firm level surveys matched with employer-employee data to investigate both determinants and effects of different types of organizational change. The results support the competition hypothesis for inducing organizational change. Among the four measures of organizational change investigated in this paper, only delayering shows significant effects on subsequent productivity growth. Firms and Skills: The Evolution of Worker Sorting We document a significant increase in sorting by both cognitive and non-cognitive skill from 1986 to 2008 using data for 28 cohorts of Swedish men. The skill differences within firms have fallen in all major industries while differences in skill between firms have increased. Two main factors drive the increase in sorting. First, workers in high-skilled occupations, such as engineers, have moved to the IT and telecom industries. Second, assortative matching of workers by skill has become more positive. Trading Off or Having it All? Completed Fertility and Mid-career Earnings of Swedish Men and Women Earnings in mid-career and children are two fundamental outcomes of the life-choices of men and women. This paper explores how these outcomes have changed for Swedish men and women born 1945−1962 by documenting changes in education, assortative mating patterns, completed fertility and mid-career earnings and also how the association between children and earnings has changed over time. Solving the Puzzle − Hours Constraints, Technical Change and Female Labor Supply This paper extends the standard theory of labor supply to incorporate an important ingredient in the labor supply decision of today's women: the role of flexibility and time constraints. Using a life-cycle model, I formalize the notion that as technology allows jobs to become more flexible, time constrained individuals can supply more hours and may therefore find it attractive to opt for a more demanding career.