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- Creators: School of Life Sciences
- Creators: Haydn, Joseph, 1732-1809
ContributorsHaydn, Joseph, 1732-1809 (Composer)
ContributorsHaydn, Joseph, 1732-1809 (Composer)
Description
This dissertation studies two wide ranging phenomena and their socio-economic impacts: urban divergence in terms of geographical skill sorting and fast rising housing prices. The first essay explores the empirical pattern as well as the driving forces behind the American cities’ diverging path over the past forty years. Compared to the rest of the U.S. cities, the top 20 largest cities have been growing faster in several aspects, such as city-average wage, housing price, and measured innovation intensity (e.g., patents, venture capital). In addition, this geographical divergence has contributed substantially to the rising inequality in America. To explore the causes of this divergence, this paper constructs a spatial sorting model where entrepreneurs with different talents can freely move across cities. The key idea is that cities with advantages in innovation attract more productive entrepreneurs and more workers, thereby driving up wages and housing prices. Two things distinguish my models from others: 1. Large cities are having endogenous innovation advantage in equilibrium; 2. I can freely explore the driving forces behind the divergence, with an emphasis on how technology changes can reinforce the spatial sorting mechanism. Specifically, three types of technological changes have increased the benefits of skill clustering in innovative cities: general productivity increases; improvements in communications technologies; and declines in trade costs.
The second essay studies how heterogeneous households respond to the fast rising housing prices through their life-cycle behaviors. Chinese housing market has been undergoing a rapid booming period since 1998, causing the house prices increasing significantly. As a result, households endured severe financial burdens to buy homes at price-to-income ratios of around six. Along with the rising house prices, household savings rate has been increasing consistently since 1998. Can the rising house prices be an important factor to explain the increase in household saving rate? This paper develops a life cycle dynastic model with endogenous choice on housing, coresidence and intergenerational transfer, then quantitatively analyze the effect of housing price on household saving. It shows that housing is an important motive for saving, and it accounts for about 35% of the increase in household savings rate. The housing situation affects households’ saving behavior through three channels. First, households are financially constrained due to the down payment requirement and they choose to limit their consumption in order to buy houses. Second, young adults live in their parents’ houses for a long time and save more intensively, since they get to pay less for the housing expenses under coresidence. Thirdly, older parents make large sum of intergeneration transfer in aid of the children’s housing purchase, indicating the housing affordability issue also has influence on old parents’ saving decisions.
The second essay studies how heterogeneous households respond to the fast rising housing prices through their life-cycle behaviors. Chinese housing market has been undergoing a rapid booming period since 1998, causing the house prices increasing significantly. As a result, households endured severe financial burdens to buy homes at price-to-income ratios of around six. Along with the rising house prices, household savings rate has been increasing consistently since 1998. Can the rising house prices be an important factor to explain the increase in household saving rate? This paper develops a life cycle dynastic model with endogenous choice on housing, coresidence and intergenerational transfer, then quantitatively analyze the effect of housing price on household saving. It shows that housing is an important motive for saving, and it accounts for about 35% of the increase in household savings rate. The housing situation affects households’ saving behavior through three channels. First, households are financially constrained due to the down payment requirement and they choose to limit their consumption in order to buy houses. Second, young adults live in their parents’ houses for a long time and save more intensively, since they get to pay less for the housing expenses under coresidence. Thirdly, older parents make large sum of intergeneration transfer in aid of the children’s housing purchase, indicating the housing affordability issue also has influence on old parents’ saving decisions.
ContributorsSun, Minjuan (Author) / Schoellman, Todd (Thesis advisor) / Ventura, Gustavo (Committee member) / Vereshchagina, Galina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation is a collection of two essays relating to the dynamic effects of taxation.
In the first chapter, I focus on a key challenge faced by tax reforms: their short-run
welfare consequences. I examine a consumption-based tax reform that, despite the long-run welfare gains it generates, causes the welfare for some groups such as retirees or the working poor to fall during transition between steady states. Using a life-cycle model with heterogeneous households, I show how to devise a transition path from the current U.S. federal tax system to a consumption-based tax system that improves the welfare of current generations as well as those who are born in the long-run steady state. In a nutshell, all households alive at the time of the policy change can choose when they want to switch to the new tax system, or whether they want to switch at all. I find that implementing a tax reform with this feature improves the welfare of 95% of the population in the short run, compared to less than 25% of population in the conventional case with no choice. It takes about 20 years for half of the population to pay their taxes under the new tax code.
In the second chapter, I study the aggregate consequences of the differential tax treatments of U.S. businesses focusing on the role of legal forms of organization. I develop an industry equilibrium model in which the organizational form is an endogenous choice.
This model incorporates the key trade-off that businesses face when choosing their legal forms: the tax treatment of the business income; the access to external capital, and the potential level and evolution of productivity over time.
The model is matched to the firm dynamic features of U.S. businesses and the contributing share of each legal form in total output. Using the model, I study revenue-neutral tax reforms in which legal forms receive the same tax treatments, and
I find that the incentives induced by tax structure for organizational form and external finance are both large. Relative to the benchmark economy, unifying the tax code for all legal forms, can lead to 8% increase in the aggregate output.
In the first chapter, I focus on a key challenge faced by tax reforms: their short-run
welfare consequences. I examine a consumption-based tax reform that, despite the long-run welfare gains it generates, causes the welfare for some groups such as retirees or the working poor to fall during transition between steady states. Using a life-cycle model with heterogeneous households, I show how to devise a transition path from the current U.S. federal tax system to a consumption-based tax system that improves the welfare of current generations as well as those who are born in the long-run steady state. In a nutshell, all households alive at the time of the policy change can choose when they want to switch to the new tax system, or whether they want to switch at all. I find that implementing a tax reform with this feature improves the welfare of 95% of the population in the short run, compared to less than 25% of population in the conventional case with no choice. It takes about 20 years for half of the population to pay their taxes under the new tax code.
In the second chapter, I study the aggregate consequences of the differential tax treatments of U.S. businesses focusing on the role of legal forms of organization. I develop an industry equilibrium model in which the organizational form is an endogenous choice.
This model incorporates the key trade-off that businesses face when choosing their legal forms: the tax treatment of the business income; the access to external capital, and the potential level and evolution of productivity over time.
The model is matched to the firm dynamic features of U.S. businesses and the contributing share of each legal form in total output. Using the model, I study revenue-neutral tax reforms in which legal forms receive the same tax treatments, and
I find that the incentives induced by tax structure for organizational form and external finance are both large. Relative to the benchmark economy, unifying the tax code for all legal forms, can lead to 8% increase in the aggregate output.
ContributorsRaei, Sepideh (Author) / Ventura, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Herrendorf, Berthold (Committee member) / Bick, Alexander (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation consists in two chapters. In the first chapter I collected and digitized historical tax records from the Spanish colonial regime in Ecuador to estimate the long-run effects of a forced labor institution called concertaje on today’s economic performance. This institution allowed landlords to retain indigenous workers due to unpaid debts, and forced them to work as peasants in rural estates known as haciendas. In order to identify the causal effects of concertaje, I exploit variation in its intensity caused by differences in labor requirements from the crops a region could grow. I first report that an increase in 10 percentage points in concertaje rates is associated with a 6 percentage points increase in contemporary poverty. I then explore several channels of persistence. Districts with higher concertaje rates have been historically associated with higher illiteracy rates, lower school enrollment, and populations with fewer years of education. I also report that concertaje is associated with a higher fraction of people working nowadays in the agricultural sector.
In the second chapter I use administrative data on the ownership, management, and taxes for the universe of all firms in Ecuador to study the role of family management in firm dynamics and its implications for aggregate productivity. A novel finding I document is that family-managed firms grow half as quickly as externally-managed firms. This growth differential implies that family-managed firms account for half of employment, despite comprising 80% of firms. I construct a general equilibrium model of firm dynamics that is consistent with these facts. Entrepreneurs choose whether to utilize family members as managers or hire external managers. External managers allow firms to scale up production, but their efficiency is a affected due to contractual frictions. Changes in the contractual environment that lead to a drop in the presence of family-managed firms by half could increase output on the order of 6%, as firms that abandon family management enjoy rapid growth.
In the second chapter I use administrative data on the ownership, management, and taxes for the universe of all firms in Ecuador to study the role of family management in firm dynamics and its implications for aggregate productivity. A novel finding I document is that family-managed firms grow half as quickly as externally-managed firms. This growth differential implies that family-managed firms account for half of employment, despite comprising 80% of firms. I construct a general equilibrium model of firm dynamics that is consistent with these facts. Entrepreneurs choose whether to utilize family members as managers or hire external managers. External managers allow firms to scale up production, but their efficiency is a affected due to contractual frictions. Changes in the contractual environment that lead to a drop in the presence of family-managed firms by half could increase output on the order of 6%, as firms that abandon family management enjoy rapid growth.
ContributorsRivadeneira Acosta, Alex Pierre (Author) / Ventura, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Vereshchagina, Galina (Committee member) / Schoellman, Todd (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This dissertation focuses on consequences of public policy on consumption responses.
Chapter 1 evaluates the effect of Thailand's car tax rebate scheme in 2012 on household consumption by examining aggregate and administrative data. Car sales doubled during the policy and dramatically declined afterwards while domestic household spending was sluggish following the policy, suggesting a substantial dampening effect of the policy on future household consumption.
Chapter 2 develops a formal model to evaluate Thai household consumption responses. A life-cycle model of consumption and saving is developed with features including uninsured income risks, liquidity constraints, durable goods with embedded adjustment costs and non-homothetic preference in durable goods. Adjustment costs and liquidity constraints are important frictions in the evaluation of the shorter-term responses to changes in relative prices, while non-homotheticity captures the income effect given that cars are luxury goods in the Thai economy context. Key parameters and the partial equilibrium responses, which are key inputs to inform the aggregate outcome of the policy, are estimated. The results show that the car-tax rebates had a sizable impact on slowing Thai household consumption following the policy due to high level of elasticity of intertemporal substitution among Thai households.
Chapter 3 examines the effect of public smoking bans in the EU countries. Using individual-level data, this chapter investigates whether nationwide smoke-free laws in Europe lead to higher smoking reduction and cessation rates among mature smokers. Exploiting the different timing in imposing smoking ban laws and using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that light smokers and heavy smokers were more likely to quit smoking after comprehensive bans were in place while there was no significant effect on average smokers. The results confirm that smoking bans, particularly when enforced more strictly and comprehensively, lead to higher smoking cessation rates even among mature smokers with well-established addiction.
Chapter 1 evaluates the effect of Thailand's car tax rebate scheme in 2012 on household consumption by examining aggregate and administrative data. Car sales doubled during the policy and dramatically declined afterwards while domestic household spending was sluggish following the policy, suggesting a substantial dampening effect of the policy on future household consumption.
Chapter 2 develops a formal model to evaluate Thai household consumption responses. A life-cycle model of consumption and saving is developed with features including uninsured income risks, liquidity constraints, durable goods with embedded adjustment costs and non-homothetic preference in durable goods. Adjustment costs and liquidity constraints are important frictions in the evaluation of the shorter-term responses to changes in relative prices, while non-homotheticity captures the income effect given that cars are luxury goods in the Thai economy context. Key parameters and the partial equilibrium responses, which are key inputs to inform the aggregate outcome of the policy, are estimated. The results show that the car-tax rebates had a sizable impact on slowing Thai household consumption following the policy due to high level of elasticity of intertemporal substitution among Thai households.
Chapter 3 examines the effect of public smoking bans in the EU countries. Using individual-level data, this chapter investigates whether nationwide smoke-free laws in Europe lead to higher smoking reduction and cessation rates among mature smokers. Exploiting the different timing in imposing smoking ban laws and using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that light smokers and heavy smokers were more likely to quit smoking after comprehensive bans were in place while there was no significant effect on average smokers. The results confirm that smoking bans, particularly when enforced more strictly and comprehensively, lead to higher smoking cessation rates even among mature smokers with well-established addiction.
ContributorsTawichsri, Tanisa (Author) / Silverman, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Kuminoff, Nicolai (Committee member) / Ventura, Gustavo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation consists of three essays on modern economic growth and structural transformation, in particular touching on the reallocation of labor across industries, occupations, and employment statuses.
The first chapter investigates the quantitative importance of non-employment in the labor market outcomes for the United States. During the last 50 years, production has shifted from goods to services. In terms of occupations, the routine employment share decreased, giving way to increases in manual and abstract ones. These two patterns are related, and lower non-employment had an important role. A labor allocation model where goods, market services, and home services use different tasks as inputs is used for quantitative exercises. These show that non-employment could significantly slow down polarization and structural transformation, and induce significant displacement within the labor force.
The second chapter, coauthored with Bart Hobijn and Todd Schoellman, looks at the demographic structure of structural transformation. More than half of labor reallocation during structural transformation is due to new cohorts disproportionately entering growing industries. This suggests substantial costs to labor reallocation. A model of overlapping generations with life-cycle career choice under switching costs and structural transformation is studied. Switching costs accelerate structural transformation, since forward-looking workers enter growing industries in anticipation of future wage growth. Most of the impact of switching costs shows on relative wages.
The third chapter establishes that job polarization is a global phenomenon. The analysis of polarization is extended from a group of developed countries to a sample of 119 economies. At all levels of development, employment shares in routine occupations have decreased since the 1980s. This suggests that routine occupations are becoming increasingly obsolete throughout the world, rather than being outsourced to developing countries. A development accounting framework with technical change at the \textit{task} level is proposed. This allows to quantify and extrapolate task-specific productivity levels. Recent technological change is biased against routine occupations and in favor of manual occupations. This implies that in the following decades, world polarization will continue: employment in routine occupations will decrease, and the reallocation will happen mostly from routine to manual occupations, rather than to abstract ones.
The first chapter investigates the quantitative importance of non-employment in the labor market outcomes for the United States. During the last 50 years, production has shifted from goods to services. In terms of occupations, the routine employment share decreased, giving way to increases in manual and abstract ones. These two patterns are related, and lower non-employment had an important role. A labor allocation model where goods, market services, and home services use different tasks as inputs is used for quantitative exercises. These show that non-employment could significantly slow down polarization and structural transformation, and induce significant displacement within the labor force.
The second chapter, coauthored with Bart Hobijn and Todd Schoellman, looks at the demographic structure of structural transformation. More than half of labor reallocation during structural transformation is due to new cohorts disproportionately entering growing industries. This suggests substantial costs to labor reallocation. A model of overlapping generations with life-cycle career choice under switching costs and structural transformation is studied. Switching costs accelerate structural transformation, since forward-looking workers enter growing industries in anticipation of future wage growth. Most of the impact of switching costs shows on relative wages.
The third chapter establishes that job polarization is a global phenomenon. The analysis of polarization is extended from a group of developed countries to a sample of 119 economies. At all levels of development, employment shares in routine occupations have decreased since the 1980s. This suggests that routine occupations are becoming increasingly obsolete throughout the world, rather than being outsourced to developing countries. A development accounting framework with technical change at the \textit{task} level is proposed. This allows to quantify and extrapolate task-specific productivity levels. Recent technological change is biased against routine occupations and in favor of manual occupations. This implies that in the following decades, world polarization will continue: employment in routine occupations will decrease, and the reallocation will happen mostly from routine to manual occupations, rather than to abstract ones.
ContributorsVindas Quesada, Alberto José (Author) / Hobijn, Bart (Thesis advisor) / Bick, Alexander (Committee member) / Ventura, Gustavo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The inherent risk in testing drugs has been hotly debated since the government first started regulating the drug industry in the early 1900s. Who can assume the risks associated with trying new pharmaceuticals is unclear when looked at through society's lens. In the mid twentieth century, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published several guidance documents encouraging researchers to exclude women from early clinical drug research. The motivation to publish those documents and the subsequent guidance documents in which the FDA and other regulatory offices established their standpoints on women in drug research may have been connected to current events at the time. The problem of whether women should be involved in drug research is a question of who can assume risk and who is responsible for disseminating what specific kinds of information. The problem tends to be framed as one that juxtaposes the health of women and fetuses and sets their health as in opposition. That opposition, coupled with the inherent uncertainty in testing drugs, provides for a complex set of issues surrounding consent and access to information.
ContributorsMeek, Caroline Jane (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Brian, Jennifer (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Social-emotional learning (SEL) methods are beginning to receive global attention in primary school education, yet the dominant emphasis on implementing these curricula is in high-income, urbanized areas. Consequently, the unique features of developing and integrating such methods in middle- or low-income rural areas are unclear. Past studies suggest that students exposed to SEL programs show an increase in academic performance, improved ability to cope with stress, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school, but these curricula are designed with an urban focus. The purpose of this study was to conduct a needs-based analysis to investigate components specific to a SEL curriculum contextualized to rural primary schools. A promising organization committed to rural educational development is Barefoot College, located in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India. In partnership with Barefoot, we designed an ethnographic study to identify and describe what teachers and school leaders consider the highest needs related to their students' social and emotional education. To do so, we interviewed 14 teachers and school leaders individually or in a focus group to explore their present understanding of “social-emotional learning” and the perception of their students’ social and emotional intelligence. Analysis of this data uncovered common themes among classroom behaviors and prevalent opportunities to address social and emotional well-being among students. These themes translated into the three overarching topics and eight sub-topics explored throughout the curriculum, and these opportunities guided the creation of the 21 modules within it. Through a design-based research methodology, we developed a 40-hour curriculum by implementing its various modules within seven Barefoot classrooms alongside continuous reiteration based on teacher feedback and participant observation. Through this process, we found that student engagement increased during contextualized SEL lessons as opposed to traditional methods. In addition, we found that teachers and students preferred and performed better with an activities-based approach. These findings suggest that rural educators must employ particular teaching strategies when addressing SEL, including localized content and an experiential-learning approach. Teachers reported that as their approach to SEL shifted, they began to unlock the potential to build self-aware, globally-minded students. This study concludes that social and emotional education cannot be treated in a generalized manner, as curriculum development is central to the teaching-learning process.
ContributorsBucker, Delaney Sue (Author) / Carrese, Susan (Thesis director) / Barab, Sasha (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
As of 2019, 30 US states have adopted abortion-specific informed consent laws that require state health departments to develop and disseminate written informational materials to patients seeking an abortion. Abortion is the only medical procedure for which states dictate the content of informed consent counseling. State abortion counseling materials have been criticized for containing inaccurate and misleading information, but overall, informed consent laws for abortion do not often receive national attention. The objective of this project was to determine the importance of informed consent laws to achieving the larger goal of dismantling the right to abortion. I found that informed consent counseling materials in most states contain a full timeline of fetal development, along with information about the risks of abortion, the risks of childbirth, and alternatives to abortion. In addition, informed consent laws for abortion are based on model legislation called the “Women’s Right to Know Act” developed by Americans United for Life (AUL). AUL calls itself the legal architect of the pro-life movement and works to pass laws at the state level that incrementally restrict abortion access so that it gradually becomes more difficult to exercise the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade. The “Women’s Right to Know Act” is part of a larger package of model legislation called the “Women’s Protection Project,” a cluster of laws that place restrictions on abortion providers, purportedly to protect women, but actually to decrease abortion access. “Women’s Right to Know” counseling laws do not directly deny access to abortion, but they do reinforce key ideas important to the anti-abortion movement, like the concept of fetal personhood, distrust in medical professionals, the belief that pregnant people cannot be fully autonomous individuals, and the belief that abortion is not an ordinary medical procedure and requires special government oversight. “Women’s Right to Know” laws use the language of informed consent and the purported goal of protecting women to legitimize those ideas, and in doing so, they significantly undermine the right to abortion. The threat to abortion rights posed by laws like the “Women’s Right to Know” laws indicates the need to reevaluate and strengthen our ethical defense of the right to abortion.
ContributorsVenkatraman, Richa (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Brian, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Abboud, Carolina (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05