<p> These essays explore the microeconomic impact of federal, state and local public policies on individual behavior in three distinct settings. Chapter 1 examines the impact of municipal policies affecting retail liquor availability on the incidence of urban crime, based on a rapid 2012 expansion of liquor retailing in the City of Seattle. Chapter 2 examines whether state-level public sector employees are paid "wage rents" in excess of their outside options, based on an original survey of roughly 900 exogenously laid-off of government workers as part of a liquor privatization initiative in Washington State. Finally, Chapter 3 examines whether federal intergovernmental grants have a persistent long-term effect on state government tax policy, based on a 30-year panel of federal grants and tax revenue for the U.S. states. In all three cases I emphasize the identification of causal effects of policy characteristics on behavior, highlighting the importance of econometric program evaluation as a tool for understanding and developing well-designed public policy. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3646220 |
| Date | 24 December 2014 |
| Creators | Chamberlain, Andrew David |
| Publisher | University of California, San Diego |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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