In the first part of the dissertation I study mechanism design under limited communication. Chapter 1 offers a detailed analysis of auctions with simultaneous limited communication. I solve for both welfare and revenue maximizing equilibria. The striking feature of optimal equilibria is that they are asymmetric even when the setup...
The goal of this dissertation is to improve our understanding of the driving forces behind short-term movements in important aggregate variables such as exports, imports, the trade balance, output, investment, and employment. The first chapter contrasts the cyclical behavior of the trade balance and trade flows in a group of...
This dissertation is composed of three chapters, each contributing to different aspects of the literature of partially identified econometric models.
In the first chapter, I introduce a bootstrap procedure to perform inference in the class of partially identified econometric models defined by finitely many moment equalities and inequalities. I provide...
Ethicity, race and gender play an important role in labor markets; labor market outcomes such as hiring and compensation are very different across different social groups. These differentials are partly the result of differences in productivity and preferences and partly the result of discrimination. Chapter two uses an audit study...
Institutions are an important determinant of a society's economic performance. To understand why institutions affect economic activity we have to understand how they affect people's incentives in the economy. The patterns of social interaction and beliefs in a society determine the choice of institution. This dissertation focuses on societies where...
I study the problem of choice between two treatments for a population of observationally identical individuals based on statistical evidence about average treatment effects that does not reveal the best treatment with certainty. I approach the problem from the perspective of statistical decision theory, derive treatment rules that minimize maximum...
This dissertation formulates, solves and estimates dynamic stochastic games to answer various questions that arise in Industrial Organization. First chapter is a "theoretic" investigation of learning-by-doing and organizational forgetting that shows them to be distinct economic forces whose interplay gives rise to aggressive pricing behavior, market dominance, and multiple equilibria....
This dissertation analyzes how individuals choose college majors. The choice of college major is treated as one made under uncertainty. Understanding any decision under uncertainty requires one to study how expectations and preferences are used to make the choice. However, since observed choices may be consistent with many combinations of...
Chapter one investigates the impact of agents' expectations about future fundamental economic disturbances (news) on macroeconomic dynamics. Several intuitive tests provide insight into the information content of the yield curve and its' ability to identify these 'news' disturbances. Bayesian estimation of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model using conventional...
The three empirical analyses in this dissertation study the effects of workers' compensation benefits on individual behavior and household consumption as well as the impacts of workplace injuries and illnesses on economic outcomes for affected workers.
In Chapter 2, I study incentive effects of state workers' compensation programs, exploiting substantial...