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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:cuhk.edu.hk/oai:cuhk-dr:cuhk_344858 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Contributors | Yi, Junjian., Chinese University of Hong Kong Graduate School. Division of Economics. |
| Source Sets | The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| Language | English, Chinese |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, theses |
| Format | electronic resource, microform, microfiche, 1 online resource (viii, 204 leaves : ill.) |
| Rights | Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
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