Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Labor Economics (Specific Aspects)'

The entire literature on adverse selection in the labour market spawned by Greenwald (1986, Review of Economic Studies, 63(3)) has been built, somewhat unwittingly, on the assumption that firms forget the type of a worker after the worker quits. In many contexts, this assumption is implausible. The first three chapters of this thesis therefore explore an alternative approach to modelling labour markets with asymmetric information by assuming firms will never forget a worker's type. The first chapter turns the standard Greenwald result on its head by showing that if the worker knows her own type and productivity is unchanging, the possibility of competitive wage offers from fully-informed previous employers means that adverse selection will never persist. Job changing frictions can cause a semi-separating equilibrium where the more productive workers have their type revealed whilst the least productive workers receive a pooling payoff. But even where asymmetric information persists there is no adverse selection because job changing frictions shield potential employers from the winner's curse. The second chapter investigates the robustness of the non-persistence of adverse selection result where previous employers are asymmetrically informed. The result is found to be robust where firms bid for the worker under a closed but not an open auction. The third chapter finds that, if workers are not sure of their exact value to their employer, there will be an adversely selected stream of job changers in equilibrium, even as the probability of a worker quitting for exogenous reasons approaches zero. Less able workers are quickly revealed as such, whilst more able workers have their type revealed gradually. The fourth substantive chapter of this thesis investigates the widely observed paradox that, despite what traditional economics would lead us to believe, there can be such a thing as too much choice. The model provides a formal theoretical explanation for this phenomenon using the regret theory of Loomes and Sugden (1982, Economic Journal, 92(368)). When options are few it is shown that enlarging the choice set improves welfare, but when options are many, a "less is more" phenomenon emerges. In some cases, excess search options can decrease search.

This thesis examines three different aspects of education policy to ascertain their effects on individual outcomes, both in the classroom and in the labour market. The goal is to provide new empirical evidence using robust identification strategies that can inform better policy. The first chapter looks at the role of pre-primary education in Germany using the German Socio-Economic Panel data set (GSOEP) to determine if attending an early education programme for longer increases the probability of attending a higher-level secondary school at age fourteen. I employ family fixed effects estimation and quasi-experimental analysis to control for selection. The results of the family fixed effects estimation show a small and negative impact of attending early education for more years. In the quasi-experimental analysis, based upon a federal law change in 1996, I find no impact of more years of early education on later schooling outcomes. In the second chapter of this thesis, I again use the GSOEP to examine the recent German reform to extend the length of the primary school day. I exploit the quasi-experimental roll-out of reform to assign treatment to women and look at whether increasing school hours increases the likelihood that mothers enter into employment or extend their hours if already working. I find that the policy has an effect at the extensive margin, drawing more women into the labour market, but that there is no significant impact of the policy at the intensive margin. In the final chapter I turn my attention to how peers' non-cognitive traits impact an individual's learning outcomes. Using an educational panel from Flanders, Belgium, I use the linear-in- means model of peer effects as well as several non-linear models to see how peers' personalities in a classroom affect Dutch and math scores. The results show that having more conscientious peers on average positively impacts Dutch and math scores, but that a greater dispersion of conscientiousness hurts Dutch outcomes. I also find that having more extroverted peers on average hurts math performance.

In this thesis I study how networks are formed and I analyse the strategies that well-connected individuals adopt in public good games on a network. In chapter one I study an artefactual field experiment in rural India which tests whether farmers can create efficient networks in a repeated link formation game, and whether group categorisation increases the frequency of in-group links and reduces network efficiency. I find that the efficiency of the networks formed in the experiment is significantly lower than the efficiency which could be achieved under selfish, rational play. When information about group membership is disclosed, in-group links are chosen more frequently, while the efficiency of network structure is not significantly affected. Using a job-referral network experiment in an urban area of Ethiopia, I investigate in chapter two whether individuals create new links with the least connected players in the network. In a first treatment, competition for job-referrals makes it in the player's interest to link with the least connected partners. In this treatment, links to the least connected players are significantly more likely than links to better connected individuals. In a second treatment, connections only affect the welfare of the new partner. Choosing the least connected player minimises inequality and maximises aggregate efficiency. This may motivate other-regarding players. In this treatment, however, links to least connected partners are not significantly more likely than links to other players. In chapter three I explore the characteristics that individuals value in the people they approach for advice. Using cross-sectional data on cocoa farmers in Ghanaian villages and a matched lottery experiment, I find an association between the difference in the aversion to risk of two farmers and the probability that one farmer is interested in the advice of the other farmer. In chapter four I study a one-shot public good game in rural India between farmers connected by a star network. Contributions by the centre of the star have a larger impact on aggregate payoffs than contributions by the spoke players. I use the strategy method to study whether the centre of the star contributes more than the average of the spokes. In selected sessions, I disclose participants' expectations about the choices of the centre of star. I find that the centre player contributes just as much as the average of the spokes, and that he is influenced by the expectations that other players hold about his decisions.

With the significant rise in immigration to the U.S. over the last few decades, fully understanding the economic impact of immigration is paramount for policy makers. As such, this dissertation consists of three empirical essays contributing to the literature on the impact of immigration. In my first essay, I re-examine the impact of immigration on housing rents and completely controlling for endogenous location choices of immigrants. I model rents as a function of both contemporaneous and initial economic and housing market conditions. I show that existing estimates of the impact of immigration on rents are biased and the source of the bias is the instrumental variable strategy common in much of the immigration literature. In my second essay, I present a new approach to estimating the effect of immigration on native wages. Noting the imperfect substitutability of immigrants and natives within education groups, I posit an empirical framework where labor markets are stratified by occupations. Using occupation-specific skill to define homogeneous skill groups, I estimate the partial equilibrium (within skill group) effect of immigration. The results suggest that when one defines labor market cohorts that directly compete in the labor market, the effect of immigration on native wages is roughly twice as large as previous estimates in the literature. In my third essay, I return to the housing market and examine the effects of immigration within metropolitan areas. Specifically, I investigate the relationship between immigrant inflows, native outflows, and rents. Taking advantage of the unique settlement patterns of immigrants, I show that the effect of immigration on rents is lower in both high-immigrant neighborhoods and portions of the rent distribution where immigrants cluster. Contrary to the existing belief in the literature, the results suggest that the preferences of natives, not immigrants, bid up rents in response to an immigrant inflow.

This thesis is about imperfections in urban labour markets of three developing countries. I study how physical living conditions place constraints on labour force participation, and increase risks associated with unemployment. In Chapter One I test for the impact of high search costs on labour market outcomes of job seekers. I use a randomized trial of transport subsidies among youth living far away from the centre of the city in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Lowering transport costs increases the intensity of job search and leads to better employment outcomes. Weekly phone call data shows that treatment works to stop job search activity from declining over time. I show that the results are consistent with a dynamic model of job search with cash constraints and monetary search costs. Income from temporary work is used to smooth consumption and pay for the costs of search. I find that subsidies reduce participation in temporary work. Chapter Two looks at the links between poor housing conditions in slums and market labour supply. I test for the effect of free government housing in South Africa on households, using four waves of panel data and a natural experiment due to the allocation of new housing according to proximity from housing projects. I then use planned but cancelled projects to control for non-random selection of housing project sites. I find that government housing leads to large increases in household incomes from wage work, and increases in the labour supply of female household members. I argue that these results are due to reduced burdens of work in the home of improved housing, especially for women. In Chapter Three we look at how labour markets respond to large but temporary economic shocks caused by typhoons in the Philippines. We use quarterly aggregate, repeated-cross sectional and panel data to demonstrate robust evidence of downward wage flexibility. Lay-offs do not occur when storms hits, but hours per worker fall. We explain these results with a model of implicit contracts under which risk is shared between workers and firms through wage cuts, but workers are insured against lay-offs so that adjustments in labour demand occur through reductions in hours per worker. Our results are particularly strong for workers in long term contractual relationships in the private sector.

This thesis consists of four essays, covering four different topics. The first essay investigates the relationship between inter-firm labor mobility and regional productivity growth. Previous studies have shown that density is positively correlated with growth. I claim that it is not density in itself, but rather the attributes associated with it that drives economic growth. One such attribute is the increased possibility for labor mobility and knowledge diffusion that follows when firms and individuals locate in close proximity to each other. This hypothesis is tested using density as an instrument for labor mobility. The result shows that labor mobility increases regional growth rates. The second essay examines the relationship between agglomeration economies and relative wage costs in influencing location of multinational corporations. An inflow of firms to certain regions and industries is likely to increase demand for labor. If mobility of labor is low increased costs can be expected to deter additional inflows of firms, albeit agglomeration economies may compensate for higher wages. The empirical analysis finds that FDI has become increasingly sensitive to differences in wage costs across industrialized countries, but also that agglomeration economies related to knowledge externalities positively influences higher costs. The third essay looks at the impact of FDI on home country investments. Previous research has been inconclusive as regards the effects on domestic investments. In this article, we show that this inconclusiveness can be explained at a disaggregated level as a function of the way industries are organized. We argue that a complementary relationship can be expected to prevail in vertically integrated industries, whereas a substitutionary relationship can be expected in horizontally organized production. The empirical analysis confirms a significant difference between the two categories of industry as regards the impact of outward FDI on domestic investment. The fourth, and final, essay of this thesis analyses how increased R&D expenditures and market size influence the distribution of comparative advantage. Previous studies report ambiguous results and also refer to periods when markets were much more segmented and production factors less mobile. The empirical analysis comprises 19 OECD-countries and spans the period 1981 to 1999. It is shown how an increase in R&D-expenditures by one percentage point implies a three-percentage point increase in high-technology exports, whereas market size fails to attain significance. In addition, institutional factors influence the dynamics of comparative advantage.

The research undertaken represents an in-depth study of gender and economics from a multi-disciplinary perspective. By drawing on economic, social policy and political science literature it makes an original contribution to the disciplines of economics and feminist economics by advancing ideas on a feminist theory of policy change and institutional design. Equally, the study develops a framework for a multi-method approach to feminist research with applied policy focus by establishing a pragmatic feminist research paradigm. By espousing multiple research philosophies, it extends understanding of gender differences in policy outcomes by connecting theories from feminist economics, feminist historical institutionalism and ideational processes. Jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK and the Scottish Government, this project attempts to answer three key questions: What is the relative position of men and women in the Scottish economy and how do childcare responsibilities influence these? Which institutions, structures and processes have been instrumental in embedding gender in Scottish economic policy? To what extent and how is the Scottish Government’s approach to economic policy gendered? Quantitative analysis reveals persistently disproportionate differences in men and women’s position in the labour market. Women remain over-represented in part-time employment and in the public sector in the 10years under investigation. Using panel data, the multinomial logistic regression estimation of patterns in labour market transitions equally reveal disproportionate gendered patterns, with families with dependent children 0-4years at a disadvantage to those without. Qualitative analysis indicates that these differences are partly explained by the fact that the unpaid economy still remains invisible to policymakers despite changes in the institutional design, policy processes and the approach to equality policymaking undertaken in Scotland. Unpaid childcare work is not represented as policy relevant and the way gender, equality and gender equality are conceptualised within institutional sites and on political agendas pose various challenges for policy development on unpaid childcare work and gender equality in general. Additionally, policymakers in Scotland do not integrate both the paid and unpaid economies in economic policy formulation since social policy and economic policy are designed separately. The study also establishes that the range of institutions and actors that make-up the institutional setting for regulating and promoting equality, influence how equality issues are treated within a national context. In Scotland, equality regulating institutions such as parliament, the Scottish Government, equality commission and the law are instrumental variables in determining the range of equality issues that are embedded in an equality infrastructure and the extent to which equality issues, including gender, are consequently embedded in public policy and government budgets. Significantly despite meeting all the attributes of an equality issue, unpaid care is not classified as a protected characteristic in the Equality legislation. These institutions can ameliorate, sustain or perpetuate the delivery of unequitable policy outcomes for men and women in the mutually dependent paid and unpaid economy. Thus, economic, social and political institutions are not independent from one another but are interrelated in complex ways that subsequently have material consequences on men and women in society. In summary, there are interlinkages between the law, labour market, the unpaid economy, the welfare state and gendered political institutions such that policy or institutional change in one will be dependent on or trigger change in another. These institutions are gendered, but are also interlinked and underpin the gender structure of other institutions to the extent that the gendered norms and ideas embedded in one institution, for example legislation or political institutions, structure the gendered dimensions of the labour market, welfare state, and the unpaid economy. By shedding light on institutional and political forces that regulate equality in addition to macroeconomic forces, the analysis reveals the important role of institutions, policy actors and their ideas as instrumental forces which constantly define, redefine and reconstruct the labour market experiences of men and women with significant material consequences.

This dissertation consists of three essays in Behavioral Labor Economics. The first two chapters contribute to the understanding of non-standard preferences of individuals in the workplace, and the third studies how cultural values affect firm behavior. The first chapter studies the incentive effects of top-down favoritism in employee promotions on workers and its organization-wide productivity consequences, and provides evidence on social preferences and fairness concerns among co-workers. Using data from public high schools in four Chinese cities, I first show that teachers with hometown or college ties to the school principal are twice as likely to be promoted, after controlling for characteristics on their application profiles and their value-added in teaching. I then use the results from a survey in which I asked teachers to select anonymous peers to promote from a pool of applicants applying for promotion to infer each teacher’s revealed fairness views regarding promotion qualifications. Contrasting these with actual past promotions in turn allows me to measure if and when a teacher might have observed unfair promotions in her own school in the past. Exposure to unfair promotions adversely affects non-applicant teachers’ output, lowering their value-added and raising the probability that high-value-added teachers quit. The value-added effect appears to be driven primarily by teachers’ social preferences for peer workers and the consequent erosion of their morale when peers suffer unfair treatment, while the quitting effect comes mainly from non-favored prospective applicants’ career concerns as they learn about the principal’s bias and leave due to poor promotion prospects. These adverse spillover incentive effects lead to a substantial reduction in school-wide output, which is only slightly mitigated by increased productivity among favored teachers. Finally, a transparency reform that required principals to disclose to their peers the profiles of teachers that apply for promotion reduced the principals’ bias and improved the overall productivity of schools. The second chapter documents daily targeting behavior in workers’ labor supply decisions. Using a novel dataset on the daily production of a group of piece-rate manufacturing workers combined with their quasi-random daily income shocks from lunch break card game gambling, I show that the workers’ afternoon labor supply responds negatively to instantaneously-paid quasi-random gambling income, although wages are paid monthly. The workers’ labor supply decisions were consistent with daily mental accounting and reference dependence where the target was set on the sum of the face - valued daily (receivable) labor and (paid) unearned income, as opposed to the neoclassical model of inter-temporal labor supply. Estimation of two structural models of daily labor supply yields a coefficient of loss aversion parameter of 1.8 to 2.0, significantly different from the neoclassical value of 1; and individual specific loss aversion structural estimates correlate positively with survey measures. Using estimated preference parameters, I back out the implied total wage elasticity of daily labor supply as well as a sizable negative reference-dependent component of it. This study overcomes the common identification issues in the daily labor supply literature by exploiting high-frequency, actively taken-up and unanticipated income shifters that are independent of other labor supply and demand confounders. In the third chapter, we show that many employers anchor their wages at establishments outside of the home region to headquarter levels, and begin to study the consequences. Our analysis makes use of an unusual 2005-2015 establishment-year level dataset of average wages by narrowly-defined occupation. The dataset covers 1,800 large employers that span many different sectors and each operate in a subset of 170 observed capital city locations. We show that, across the occupational skill range—including for low-skill support staff— the average wage multinationals pay domestic workers in a given occupation at foreign establishments is robustly and remarkably highly correlated with the average wage they pay workers in the same occupation in the home country. We then instrument for headquarter wage levels with changes in home country minimum wage laws and show that externally imposed wage increases at home causally raise wages abroad. The relationships we establish between headquarters’ and their foreign establishments’ wage levels and wage changes are both driven by employers from inequality-averse societies. Occupations are more (less) likely to be removed from, and less (more) likely to be added to the foreign establishments (headquarters) of such employers after a (minimum wage-induced) wage increase originating at the headquarter. Our results point towards the existence of “wage cultures” that influence how production is organized across space.

Huang Ying.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-31).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.3
Chapter 3. --- Methodology --- p.7
Chapter 3.1. --- Basic Model --- p.7
Chapter 3.2. --- Instrumental Variable Strategy --- p.8
Chapter 4. --- Data Description --- p.10
Chapter 4.1. --- China Health and Nutrition Survey --- p.10
Chapter 4.2. --- Sample Selection --- p.11
Chapter 4.3. --- Variable Definition --- p.12
Chapter 4.4. --- Summary Description of Samples --- p.14
Chapter 5. --- The Effects of Health on Labor Supply --- p.15
Chapter 5.1. --- Rural Adults --- p.15
Chapter 5.2. --- Urban Adults --- p.19
Chapter 5.3. --- Results --- p.22
Chapter 6. --- The Effects of Health on Household Income --- p.23
Chapter 7. --- Conclusion --- p.26
References --- p.29
Tables --- p.32
Appendix --- p.66

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays on agricultural and labor markets in rural India. Chapter 1 estimates the role of improvements in transport infrastructure on households' production decisions in agriculture. The Central Government of India launched a large-scale rural road-building program in 2000, targeting villages that lacked any single all-weather connectivity. Strict guidelines governed eligibility and timing of program road provision. I exploit the precise timing of road construction as a source of exogenous variation in connectivity using a household-level panel in a difference-in-differences framework. I find that households who gain access to improved rural road infrastructure diversify their crop portfolio, increase take up of complementary productive inputs and intensify labor hiring. Households subsequently enter into the sales of farm output, indicating a transition from subsistence to market-oriented farming. Evidence from a field survey suggests that these effects operate through an increase in mobility of agricultural workers across connected village labor markets. These findings emphasize the substantial barrier to productive investments in agriculture generated by poor rural road connectivity that hampers the integration of labor markets across space. Chapter 2 (with Emily Breza and Supreet Kaur) investigates whether worker utility is affected by co-worker wages, which has potentially broad labor market implications. In a month-long experiment with Indian manufacturing workers, we randomize whether co-workers within production units receive the same flat daily wage or different wages (according to baseline productivity rank). We find that for a given absolute wage, pay inequality reduces output and attendance by 0.24 standard deviations and 12%, respectively. These effects strengthen in later weeks. Pay disparity also lowers co-workers' ability to cooperate in their self-interest. However, when workers can clearly observe productivity differences, pay inequality has no discernible effect on output, attendance, or group cohesion. Chapter 3 uses experimental evidence to understand the impacts of providing workers with meaningful short-term employment during the lean season in agriculture. I randomize job offers among Indian agricultural workers who express interest in a month-long employment opportunity in low-skill manufacturing, and I follow these workers several weeks after the employment opportunity concludes. I find reductions in labor supply and gains in consumption among workers who received job offers. These effects are concentrated among landless workers, suggesting that employment provision during the lean months alleviated a binding constraint for this subgroup.

This dissertation examines how matching -- in marriage markets and labor markets -- can change under certain market circumstances and under different information provisions. The first two chapters analyze marriage market, with a particular focus on the impacts of cross-border marriage in marriage markets. Given the severely male-biased sex ratios in many Asian countries including China and India, demands for foreign brides are expected to grow in the near future. In the first chapter, I theoretically investigate the impacts of cross-border marriage on marital patterns and surplus division of couples. I use a frictionless transferable utility matching framework to analyze how cross-border marriage affects matching patterns and marital shares for couples. In the second chapter, I test the model's predictions, focusing on Taiwan (a wealthier side with male biased sex ratios) and Vietnam (a poorer side with balanced sex ratios in the marriage market). I find that cross-border marriages are predominantly made up of Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women; Taiwanese men are selected from the middle level of the socioeconomic status distribution, and Vietnamese women are positively selected. Moreover, cross-border marriage significantly affects men and women who stay in their own countries without engaging in cross-border marriage, by altering marriage rate, matching partners, and intra-household allocations within the households. My results suggest that changes in trade and immigration policies can have far-reaching implications on marital outcomes and women's bargaining power. The third chapter investigates job and jobseeker matching in labor market. Specifically, it explores whether inaccurate expectations of job seekers about their competitiveness contribute to poor job matching in developing countries. We utilize the largest online job portal in the Middle East and North Africa region to evaluate the effect of an intervention providing information about own competitiveness to job applicants. Providing information about the relative fit of an applicant's background for a particular job causes job seekers to apply for jobs that are better matches given their background. The effects of information are the largest among entry-level workers with higher levels of education, who generally face the highest unemployment rates in the region. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that changes over time in demand for skills in the job market may lead to inaccurate expectations that hinder labor market matching. Improving the efficiency of online job search may be particularly welfare-enhancing in the Middle East and North Africa region given that the young, highly-educated subpopulation that faces the greatest labor market hurdles also has the highest level of internet connectedness.

Chapter 1 studies wage contracts and their roles in workers’ employment and wage dynamics, as well as the implications on income inequality. I develop an on-the-job search model that allows for different types of wage contracts. Using indirect inference method, I am able to estimate the structural model and evaluate the impact of different productivity elements, including firm productivity, returns to routine task and individual effort. The model is able to capture key measures on worker’s labor market mobility, wage growth and distribution. It also allows me to evaluate the implications of productivity change on income inequality through counterfactual analysis. I show that these productivity elements have different implications on income inequality, and the use of performance based wage contract is an important channel for income polarization at the top percentiles. Chapter 2 studies the effect of overtime pay on workers’ working schedule and income. How overtime pay regulations affect the labor market is a controversial yet relatively under- studied topic. In this paper, I study the effect of the revision to statutory overtime pay in 2004 on worker’s income and hours of work. Using monthly panel data on workers’ working hours and income that covers the period of rule change, I find evidence that for workers who gained statutory overtime pay coverage under the new rule, hours and income increased. I also find spillover effects on overtime pay premium and overtime schedule for workers who are not directly affected by the rule change. My results suggest that the standard competitive model does not capture well the labor market for overtime work, and government regulations could reduce labor market frictions. Chapter 3 studies debt covenant violations and their effects on corporate innovation. Exploiting the state of debt contract covenant violation and the institutional feature that creditors obtain increased control right of the firm, the paper examines the effect of increased creditor governance well before the state of bankruptcy on corporate innovation. Consistent with the view that increased creditor monitoring has disciplining effect on the managers, I find no significant change in the R&D spending, significant but model decrease in the total patent counts two years forward as well as significant and large positive impact on the citation counts of the patents. The results demonstrate that increased creditor governance is overall beneficial to firm innovation.

This dissertation contains three essays on Urban Economics. The first two chapters study the impact of land-use regulation on economic development. Many countries have land-use regulations to preserve farmland from urban land expansion. In Chapter 1 and 2, I show that such regulations can distort economic activity across sectors and locations at a substantial cost to aggregate welfare in developing countries during urbanization. Specifically, I study a major policy restricting farm-to-urban land conversion in China - the Farmland Red Line Policy - to provide causal evidence on the impact of land-use regulation on local development measured by GDP and population growth. The policy imposes a barrier to urban land development, the strength of which depends on exogenous local geographical features. In Chapter 1, I show that a greater barrier significantly reduces urban land supply, lowers GDP, and decreases population. Findings in Chapter 1 raises the question about the aggregate impact of the Farmland Red Line Policy. Therefore, in the second chapter, I develop a quantitative spatial equilibrium model that features endogenous land-use decisions in order to understand the aggregate impact of the policy. According to the model, the policy causes an excess supply of farmland and an under-supply of urban land, and the extent of such land misallocation varies across locations due to their local geographical features. In the constrained equilibrium, the spatial and sectoral mobility of workers implies that land misallocation leads to labor misallocation. The calibrated model reveals that the welfare of workers would have been 6% higher in 2010 if the policy had not been implemented. Moreover, a cap-and-trade system that achieved the same aggregate level of farmland would have been far less costly in terms of welfare. The results suggest that fast-growing economies in developing countries need to design land-use policies carefully, as the welfare costs of poorly designed policies can be substantial. In Chapter 3, I test the impact of team size on one's publication output among US university economists from 1996 to 2011. I construct a database of affiliation and publication history for all US university economists using the publication information from the Scopus Database. University funding revenue from government appropriation and private gifts is used as an instrument for the total number of economists at a university. I find that a 10% increase in team size raises one's publication on top 5 economic journals by 30%. Moreover, the team size effect disappears once crossing the affiliation border: having more economists in a nearby affiliation does not affect one's output. Finally, increasing chances to coauthor with colleagues when being part of a larger team helps explain the team size effect.

More than 168 million children work worldwide. While some types of work are beneficial for children, some types are detrimental for children's health, growth, education and future well-being. The theory defines poverty and lack of access to credit as main causes of child work. While there is no one-to-one replacement, work reduces the amount of education received by child workers as it competes for children's time. This mix-method dissertation explores child work in two studies: 1) a qualitative study of child work in Tajikistan and 2) a quantitative study of microfinance participation and its effect on global child work and education. The qualitative study of the child work is analyzed through narratives of child workers and their parents in Tajikistan. This study examined the pathways to child work and the families' understanding of child work experiences. Furthermore, the factors causing the increase of child work prevalence in the country and the consequences of children's involvement in the labor market were explored. The children and parent's narratives revealed several common themes. First, the families resort to child work due to financial need. Second, less explored and unconventional perspectives on child work were recorded. Children and parents describe employment as means to become independent and gain respect and status. Moreover, they list becoming socialized and prepared to adult life from early stages of life as a value added to labor market engagement. Child work was also described as means to stay physically healthy and as a protective factor from risk-taking behaviors. The quantitative analysis of this dissertation explores the topic through a broader perspective. The study evaluates the impact of microfinance programs on child economic activity and education globally, using macro data for 113 countries of the world for the period of 15 years (1995-2010). The results of the study suggest that there is a positive association between microfinance and secondary school enrollment. The relationship between microfinance and primary school enrollment, as well as primary school completion is ambiguous. No statistically significant relationship between microfinance and child work was found. Future research directions and implications for policy are examined.

Wealth has been found to be associated with financial wellbeing in ways not captured by income as well as increased social connections, improved physical and mental health, and increased emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development among children. Preliminary research indicates that a gender disparity in net worth exists in the U.S. However, research in the U.S. thus far has been limited to unmarried households. Research conducted in Germany finds that the gender wealth gap is substantially larger among married households as compared to unmarried households. Using the 2008 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this dissertation is the first to examine whether the same is true in the U.S. This dissertation is comprised of three papers: Paper 1 descriptively examines the individual wealth holdings of men and women among married, widowed, divorced, and never married individuals. Results further consider the intersectionality of gender and race in relation to asset ownership and liabilities. Paper 2 provides the first examination of the determinants of the gender wealth gap in the U.S. among the married as well as the unmarried. Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions are conducted in order to examine how much of the gender wealth gap can be explained by labor market characteristics, education, demographic characteristics, and receipt of benefits. DiNardo, Fortin, and Lemieux decompositions are additionally conducted to determine if determinates differ across the wealth distribution. Paper 3 is the first attempt to merge the gender earnings and net worth disparities literature. Weisbrod & Hansen (1968)’s augmented earnings measure is utilized to combine net worth and earnings into one annual measure. Annual earnings, net worth, and augmented earnings are descriptively compared. Paper 1 multivariate results indicate that divorced and never married women own less than $0.30 of wealth for each dollar owned by comparable men while married women own $0.92 for each dollar owned by married men. Black women experience a substantially larger gender wealth gap. Paper 2 finds that the gender wealth gap among divorced and unmarried individuals is not explained by the characteristics listed above and is instead primarily attributable to differences in the rewards or penalties men and women receive for characteristics. Among married individuals, the gender gap can be explained largely by differences in characteristics, particularly labor market characteristics. Paper 3 finds that the gender gap in augmented earnings very slightly increases the disparity as compared to earnings alone. Results indicate that the gender wealth gap among married individuals in the United States is substantially smaller than among unmarried individuals. Paper 2 indicates that for the most part, married couples share assets and debts. The remaining differences in wealth may then be a direct result of the division of labor as determined by the labor market characteristics. Racial differences in the gender wealth gap are stark and particularly concerning. Lastly, Paper 3 indicates that although the augmented earnings measure increased gender disparities only slightly, it suggests that the gender wealth gap captures additional aspects of disparities not captured by earnings. Future research is needed to determine the impact this disparity has on wellbeing.

This dissertation examines how firm-specific behavior concerning factors of production is shaped by institutional constraints in development countries. The initial two chapters analyze how firms in Brazil compensate workers for their labor: the first centers on the role of the collective bargaining framework, and the second quantifies the impact of firms on the racial wage gap. The final chapter focuses on firms' use of credit for working capital in response to disruptive periods of violence during Mexico's Drug War. Firms compensate workers not only with wages, but also with other job characteristics that the labor literature broadly refers to as amenities. However, it is hard to study amenity compensation because we rarely observe variation in amenities across establishments in some systematic way. One exception is the comprehensive set of amenities codified in the text of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) that unions negotiate with employers. In chapter 1, I leverage a reform that automatically extended all existing CBAs in Brazil to analyze the impact of this new collective bargaining framework on firm compensation, as measured by wages and amenities, as well as subsequent selection effects in the workforce. To quantify the value workers place on amenities secured by unions, I measure how textual elements in CBAs influence an establishment's ability to poach workers from other employers, conditional on wages, using data on the universe of CBAs merged with an administrative linked employer-employee dataset. I find that automatic extensions increase compensation by 1.6-3.8% when unions are strong---an effect that is driven by additional amenities whose value more than offsets foregone wage gains. These changes in compensation lead to an increase in hiring concentrated among low-skill workers, implying an elasticity of labor supply to the affected firms of around 2. Further evidence suggest that unions reduce compensation inequality within establishments. While union-driven changes to firm compensation can lead to an influx of low skill workers, how firms select and pay workers can have important consequences for wage disparities between groups. In Chapter 2 (work co-authored with François Gerard, Edson Severnini, and David Card), we measure the effects of firms' employment and wage setting policies on racial pay differences in Brazil. We find that nonwhites are less likely to work at firms that pay more to all race groups. This sorting pattern explains about 20% of the white-nonwhite wage gap for both genders. Moreover, the pay premiums offered by different employers are also compressed for nonwhites relative to whites. This within-firm differential wage setting contributes another 5% of the overall gap. We then explore to what extent the under-representation of nonwhites at higher-paying firms is due to the selective skill mix at these workplaces. Using a counterfactual based on the observed skill distribution at each firm and the nonwhite shares in different skill groups in the local labor market, we conclude that assortative matching accounts for about two- thirds of the underrepresentation gap for both men and women. The remainder reflects an unexplained preference for white workers at higher-paying firms. Interestingly, the wage losses associated with unexplained sorting and differential wage setting are largest for nonwhites with the highest levels of general skills. This suggests that the allocative costs of race-based preferences may be relatively large in Brazil. The first two chapters reveal that firms exercise some discretion over compensation and hiring within the context of institutions such as collective bargaining and nondiscrimination laws. But firms are also constrained by other institutions in how they carry out their day-to-day activities. In particular, the capacity of the State to exercise control over the legitimate use of force promotes the fundamental trust required between agents to make welfare-enhancing transactions. In Chapter 3, I analyze how drug-related violence affects credit use by micro and small enterprises (MSEs). Leveraging administrative data on working capital credit lines issued to MSEs in Mexico, I exploit geographic variation in homicide rates as well as exogenous kingpin captures to identify the causal effects of violence on credit use. I find that firms significantly increase the amounts drawn from their credit lines after experiencing violence shocks. More credit use could be motivated by rising short-term liquidity needs (distress story) or increasing risk of holding cash (substitution story). Rising default probabilities indicate signs of distress, although heterogeneity analyses reveal cash-for-credit substitution among non-revolving borrowers. I also find evidence that rising liquidity needs among distressed MSEs are likely driven by decreased economic activity rather than theft or extortion. As such, this paper highlights the important role that financial products play in terms of helping firms absorb violence shocks as well as providing safe alternatives to cash holdings under insecure environments.

Submitted in Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology, Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015.
Tourism can be classified either as urban tourism or as rural tourism, and it is one of the fastest growing industries globally. Rural tourism is usually associated with rural development because it has strong linkages to rural resources; but it remains underdeveloped compared to urban tourism. This underdevelopment of rural tourism serves as a motivation for this study whose aim is to examine the factors affecting the perceived satisfaction of rural tourists especially in this digital world where Information Communication and Technology (ICTs) is pervasive. In fact, ICT has transformed the travel industry in a remarkable way. The objectives of this study were: I) to select suitable theories that can explain the perceived satisfaction of rural tourists; ii) to design a conceptual model of the factors affecting the perceived satisfaction of rural tourists; iii) to empirically test the planned conceptual model of the perceived satisfaction of rural tourists, and, iv) to recommend measures to be taken for the improvement of the satisfaction levels of rural tourists to the point where they can significantly contribute to the full development of rural tourism. These objectives were achieved using content analysis of existing literature on rural tourism satisfaction and through a survey of tourists from the Malealea Lodge which is located in the Mafeteng District, in the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. The results of this study are the following: I) the push and pull motivation theory was selected to explain the perceived satisfaction of rural tourists; ii) rural tourism demographics, their push and pull motivation, and their level of ICT adoption were hypothesized as the factors that affect tourists satisfaction with their rural tourism experiences; iii) the satisfaction of rural tourists with their rural tourism experience is affected by their occupations (demographic factor), by their level of ICT adoption, and by their pull motivation; and this satisfaction is not affected by other demographic attributes nor by the push motivation of rural tourists; iv) it is recommended that rural tourism marketing be increased in order to attract clients from other regions besides Africa and Europe and other age groups apart from young Africans which were found by xiii this study to be the biggest rural tourism clientele group, and that peace and security be maintained in rural tourism destinations as these two attributes were found to have an effect on the perceived satisfaction of rural tourism. Finally, more research should be conducted on the effect of ICT adoption on rural tourism satisfaction.
M

In rural China, when approaching the end of nine-year compulsory schooling, students face four equally popular post-compulsory education decisions (PCED): dropout, work after graduation, vocational high school, and academic high school. The literature tends to simply treat PCED as dichotomous (continue vs. leave school), and there is a geographical research imbalance favoring inner China. An increasing volume of studies also suggest that traditionally recognized factors like socioeconomic status and academic performance are not as influential as before in advancing the schooling. People have started to look at socio-emotional support, such as the promotion of self-discipline and confidence. At present, it is grassroots NGOs (GNGO) who take the major responsibility for providing this type of support in rural China, and there is rare discussion of achievements, let alone evaluation of practical impact. Given the existing problems, the key research questions of this study are: (1) What are the current PCED determinants for China’s rural students? More specifically, what are the PCED determinants for lower secondary students in rural Guangdong, a coastal province? (2) How can GNGO intervention affect PCED by boosting certain subjective factor(s)? The tested treatment is the Lighthouse program, whose one-month summer camp aims to improve student attitudes towards their life, such as making them more confident, organized, and social. The key to answering the first question is to explore a comprehensive list of variables applying to local populations, which cannot be achieved simply through a literature review. When answering the second question, since Lighthouse participation is voluntary, it is important to deal with selection bias, to ensure that any identified Lighthouse impact results from its activities rather than the student characteristics that lead to their participation. To overcome these methodological challenges, I first employed the Delphi approach. Delphi is an iterative process used to collect and distill the judgments of experts using a series of questionnaires interspersed with feedback. It is used to identify possible PCED determinants that are missing in the literature, to determine factors that lead to Lighthouse participation, and to collect discussions about both PCED determinants and GNGO intervention. Based on the Delphi results and literature, I then designed five questionnaires for students, households, teachers, principals, and Lighthouse volunteers. In Jun-Oct 2012, I led seven research assistants in conducting two waves of surveys in eight towns, building a firsthand dataset of 6298 valid observations with imputations. Multinomial logit was used to investigate PCED determinants. It predicted the PCED probabilities, given nine groups of independent variables. Propensity score matching was used to evaluate the program impact. It calculates the treatment propensity for each student based on their characteristics, so the Lighthouse impact can be compared between treated and untreated students of similar treatment propensity. Tests of robustness and heterogeneity were conducted after both methods. Qualitative materials collected from Delphi and on-site interviews were used to explore the causal mechanism. I use relative risk ratios to report the findings of PCED determinants. The findings challenge the existing literature regarding the roles of gender and parental background, further extend knowledge of monetary reward/cost and subjective factors, and confirm new possible determinants that have seldom been investigated in literature. The main model passes the robustness check, and there exist explainable heterogeneity effects. It is notable that education aspiration stands out as a strong PCED determinant, ceteris paribus. Propensity score matching shows that the Lighthouse program mainly affects PCED by boosting educational aspiration for students with high academic performance, although that impact fades gradually if there is no follow-up service. The novelty of the program to local people, volunteer team morale, and volunteer acceptance of Lighthouse training could help explain why increases in aspiration varied across sites. The role-model effect might explain why the increase in aspiration exists, as there are signs that the students tried to copy the volunteer’s schooling decision once trust was built. This study makes three major contributions. It can be translated into comprehensive advocacy for education policies related to PCED, such as dropout prevention and the promotion of VHS. It may also suggest the value of, or at least the required improvement to, China’s educational GNGOs, which are young and remain confined by governmental regulations. Last but not least, this is a unique showcase of how qualitative-quantitative sequential mixed-method works better in exploratory analyses. The study has limitations in timing, missing data, external validity, implementation of research methods, and heavy rely on self-reported questionnaires, but they can be largely eliminated by conducting proper further studies.

Text in German
Die wirtschaftspolitische Konzeption der Bundesrepublik Deutschland wird seit 1948 als „Soziale Marktwirtschaft“ bezeichnet. Es beruht auf den Prinzipien des Leistungswettbewerbs, geregelt durch staatliche Ordnungen und ergänzt durch einen sozialen Ausgleich. Die „Soziale Marktwirtschaft“ geht dabei einen Mittelweg zwischen einer liberalen laissezfaire Wirtschaftsordnung und einer staatlichen Planwirtschaft. Vorliegende Arbeit untersucht zum ersten Mal im Detail ein Vorläuferdokument der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft, die „Freiburger Denkschrift“ aus dem Jahr 1943. In dieser Nachkriegsordnung, eine Auftragsarbeit der „Bekennenden Kirche“, finden sich alle Grundprinzipien der später eingeführten Sozialen Marktwirtschaft, eingebettet in ein umfangreiches christliches Reformprogramm für den Wiederaufbau Deutschlands. Die Arbeit analysiert den Hintergrund der Verfasser und die Inhalte der Denkschrift. Konkret wird gezeigt, welche Überzeugungen der christlichen Ethik sich in den wirtschaftspolitischen Forderungen der Denkschrift niedergeschlagen haben. Außerdem wird die Denkschrift in den biographischen Kontext der Verfasser und die zeitgeschichtlichen theologischen Zusammenhänge eingeordnet, denn viele Thesen des Dokuments reflektieren Diskussionsprozesse der damaligen Zeit. Zudem kann gezeigt werden, dass in die Freiburger Denkschrift sowohl protestantische wie auch römisch-katholische Elemente Eingang gefunden haben.
Since 1948 the economic system of the Federal Republic of Germany is called “Social Market Economy”. It is based on the principles of competitive markets, ensured by governmental competition policy and supplemented by social insurance and public assistance. The “Social Market Economy” takes a middle road between a liberal laissez-faire economy and a a centrally planned economy. The current study examines for the first time in detail the document that preceded the “Social Market Economy,” the 1943 “Freiburg Memorandum”. In this work, commissioned by the Confessing Church of the Third Reich as a post-war system, all fundamental principles of the later “Social Market Economy” can be found embedded in a comprehensive Christian reform program for the reconstruction of Germany. This dissertation analyzes the background of the authors and the contents of the memorandum. We will show specifically which convictions of Christian ethics were incorporated into the economic-political requests of the document. In addition the memorandum will be connected to the biographical context of the authors and the theological context of their time, as many theses put forward in the document reflect discussions that were in progress at that time. Also, it can be shown that Protestant as well as Roman-Catholic elements found entrance into the “Freiburg Memorandum”.
Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology
M.Th. (Theological Ethics)