Contributor

Daniel L. Millimet, Punarjit Roychowdhury

Subject Area

Economics

Abstract

This dissertation is consist of three empirical studies in economics. The first part empirically examines the effect of universal pre-k on labor force participation of fertility age women in Oklahoma. I investigate the policy effect from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. I apply the synthetic control method (SCM) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) data to identify the causal relationship between universal pre-k and female labor outcomes. I find that universal pre-k increases labor supply of women aged 25 to 45 in Oklahoma. The second empirical study focuses on how the birth outcomes of US children respond to exposure to Chinese import competition. Exploring the variation in US trade exposure driven by China’s supply-side productivity changes and falling in trade costs, I find evidence that the rise of Chinese exports to the US is not harmful to newborn health and infant mortality; instead, empirical evidence shows that the percentage of low birth weight infants in US counties is largely reduced by the increase in US-China trade volume. In the last chapter, I develop a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound transition probabilities under various assumptions on the measurement error and mobility processes. This approach is applied to panel data from the United States to explore short-run mobility before and after the Great Recession.

Degree Date

Summer 5-19-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Economics

Advisor

Daniel L. Millimet

Second Advisor

Elira Kuka

Third Advisor

Thomas Fomby

Number of Pages

150

Format

.pdf

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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