VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Essays in macroeconomics [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

This dissertation is composed of three essays in the field of macroeconomics. In the first essay, I look at the relation between the size distribution of manufacturing plants and income levels. The typical size distribution of manufacturing plants in developing countries has a thick left tail compared to developed countries. The same holds across Indian states, with richer states having a much smaller share of their manufacturing employment in small plants. I explore the hypothesis that this income-size relation arises from the fact that low income countries and states have high demand for low quality products which can be produced efficiently in small plants. I provide evidence which is consistent with this hypothesis from both the consumer and producer side. In particular, I show empirically that richer households buy higher price goods while larger plants produce higher price products (and use higher price inputs). I develop a model which matches these cross-sectional facts. The model features non-homothetic preferences with respect to quality on the consumer side. On the producer side, high quality production has higher marginal costs and requires higher fixed costs. These two features imply that high quality producers are larger on average and charge higher prices. The model can explain about forty percent of the cross-state variation in the left tail of manufacturing plants in India. The second essay (joint work with Itay Saporta-Eksten and Edison Yu) considers the role of reduced geographical mobility in explaining the persistently high unemployment rate during and after the Great Recession. One concern during the Great Recession was that the housing bust reduced geographical mobility and prevented workers from moving for job-related reasons. We first characterize flows out of unemployment that are related to geographical mobility and then boost these flows up in counterfactual exercises to construct an upper bound on the effect of mobility on unemployment between 2007 and 2012. The effect of reduced geographical mobility is always small: Using pre-recession mobility rates, decreased mobility can account for only an 11 basis points increase in the unemployment rate over the period. Using dynamics of renter geographical mobility in this period to calculate homeowner counterfactual mobility, delivers similar results. Using the highest mobility rate observed in the data, reduced mobility accounts for only a 33 basis points increase in the unemployment rate. In the last essay, I conduct a model based accounting exercise to estimate the potential growth impact of demographic changes in India between 2010 and 2030. India is expected to see major demographic changes which include a fall in the dependency ratio, changes in age structure within the labor force, and increased urbanization. I develop a model which allows for these different channels of demographic changes and use it to estimate the potential growth impact of these changes.
Essays in market design [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

In this dissertation, we study two related classes of market institutions whose structure and design have been heavily influenced by economic theory: matching markets and auctions. In the first two chapters, we focus on matching markets, which have many applications, including hospital residency labor markets, branch assignment in the military, and school choice, which will be our main focus. In the last chapter, we focus on auction markets, which have many connections with matching markets. Chapter 1 studies the design of school choice mechanisms in school districts that desire demographically diverse student bodies in all schools by placing floors (lower quotas) and ceilings (upper quotas) on the number of students from each demographic type who can be assigned to each school. We identify inefficiencies in algorithms currently in existence and provide a new dynamic quotas deferred acceptance algorithm that is more efficient while still satisfying all diversity goals. In addition, we show that our algorithm is strategyproof, i.e., truth-telling is a dominant strategy for parents when reporting their preferences. These results suggest that replacing current mechanisms with our mechanism should improve the performance of matching markets with floor and ceiling constraints. Chapter 2 continues the analysis of school choice algorithms by comparing two widely used algorithms, deferred acceptance and the Boston mechanism (also known as immediate acceptance) with respect to incentives and efficiency. While deferred acceptance is strategyproof, this beneficial property does not come without a cost. We show that in equilibrium, the non-strategyproof Boston mechanism may ex-ante Pareto dominate deferred acceptance. This may be relevant to school district leaders whose goal is to maximize the overall ex-ante welfare of the families in the district. Chapter 3 studies auction markets, another important class of market design problems where the design of the mechanism has important implications on strategic and efficiency properties. An important issue to sellers in auctions is potential collusion between the bidders, as this can lower seller profits. However, the standard approach to modeling collusion does not capture signaling and information leakage problems that can arise when it is one of the parties with private information who is making the proposal. We build a model of collusion in a second price auction that captures these issues by building a model of collusion in which an informed party ('the propser') has the option of offering a collusive contract to a second bidder ('the receiver'). We characterize the equilibria of this game and analyze the ex-ante profits accruing to each player. We find that while both the proposer and the receiver are better off than with no collusion, the receiver achieves higher profits than the proposer, i.e., there is a first-mover disadvantage.
Essays in market design [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

This dissertation studies two problems in market design: the random assignment with fractional endowments, and combinatorial auction with budget-constrained bidders. In the random assignment problem, a number of objects has to be assigned to a number of agents. Though the objects are indivisible, an assignment can be probabilistic: it can give an agent some probability of getting an object. I first formulate an exchange economy that resembles the random assignment problem and prove the existence of competitive equilibrium in this economy. I then propose a pseudo-market mechanism for the random assignment problem that is based on the competitive equilibrium. This mechanism is individually rational, Pareto Optimal and justified envy-free. The mechanism is, however, not incentive compatible. Budget constraints of the bidders are a very relevant feature in combinatorial auctions. I show that they pose serious challenges to many prominent existing auction formats. Given the limitations of existing mechanisms, it is useful to know what mechanisms can accommodate budget constraints. I restrict my search to mechanisms that are reasonable: they must be incentive compatible, individually rational, symmetric, non-wasteful and non-bossy. First focusing on the greedy domain, in which a bidder's marginal values, if non-zero, always exceeds his budget, I show that there exists an unique reasonable mechanism, called the Iterative Second Price Auction. For the general domain, however, no reasonable mechanism exists. I propose a mechanism that is a partial solution, called budget VCG. It is based on the principle that a winning bidder must be able to pay the externality that he imposes on other bidders. The budget VCG mechanism partially attains Pareto optimality and has some good incentive properties.
Essays in public economics [electronic resource]
Keywords: Business.

This dissertation brings together three papers that consider different public and labor policies and their impact on decision-makers. Although they take place in different settings, all of these papers inform our understanding of the outcomes policies produce. This knowledge facilitates improved future decisions and policy implementations. The first paper examines the effect of tuition subsidies on student college choices. Public tuition subsidies enable students enrolled at public colleges to pay less for their education than it costs. The institution-specific nature of tuition subsidies makes them controversial as they may distort student choices or have distributional consequences. The cuts in higher education funding in California from 2001-2010 produce plausibly exogenous tuition subsidy shocks that provide identification for the impact of tuition subsidies on student enrollment choices. Using detailed individual level data on student college enrollment and the tuition subsidy decreases experienced in the California public college system, I estimate a conditional logit college choice model. I find that a
Essays on allocation [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

The aim of this work is to provide a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the importance of allocation in several distinct settings. In the first chapter I model the dynamics of asset pricing and production during crises in financial market intermediation. Financial specialists help allocate risk by intermediating trade in riskless assets between households with heterogenous risk aversion, but face an equity capital constraint. Shocks to specialist net worth disrupt risk allocation, which can have significant effects on asset pricing and output in an environment with economically meaningful risk premia. In a calibrated version of the model, including rare disasters in production, a reduction in specialist net worth leads to a sharp decline in equity values, a dramatic increase in interest rate spreads and to a gradual reduction output. The second chapter studies the large observed changes in labor supply by women in the United States over the period from 1940-2009. I investigate if the transition of broad consumption shares away from agriculture and manufacturing and towards services (structural transformation) can account for the rise in female participation. A model of structural transformation and labor supply is constructed which differentiates between mental and physical labor, with women having a comparative advantage in mental labor. Structural transformation reallocates production to mental labor intensive service production from physical labor intensive agriculture and manufacturing, drawing women into the work force. I find that this model can account for much (70%) of the observed increase in female labor force participation but fails to properly account for the dynamics of the gender wage gap. I then present empirical evidence suggesting a link between structural transformation and female labor force participation. MSAs with a higher degree of structural transformation have seen a larger increase in female labor force participation in the period from 1986 to 2006. This iv results hold even with the degree of structural transformation is instrumented for using a measure soil quality. The third chapter is joint with Edison Yu. We quantify the evolution of capital and labor misallocation in the United States, by measuring firm level wedges in the marginal products of capital and labor using the approach developed in Hsieh and Klenow (2009) and document two facts -- (1) there is evidence of a substantial increase in misallocation measured in this manner over the period from 1970 to 2004 (2) contrary to several predictions there does not appear to be a strong counter cyclical component to misallocation, misallocation is, if anything, slightly procyclical -- suggesting that allocative efficiency might act as a moderating force during recessions.
Essays on corporate and sovereign default [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

In this dissertation I study a number of important questions about the sovereign and corporate credit markets. In the second chapter, I analyze the effect of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market on sovereign borrowing. In chapter three, I study patterns of international reserve accumulation by emerging economies. In a joint project with Juliane Begenau on the corporate debt market, presented in chapter four, we focus on firm financing over the business cycle.
Essays on financial intermediation [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

This dissertation consists of three studies. In the first study I This paper extends the costly state verification model from Townsend (1979) to a dynamic and hierarchical setting with an investor, a financial intermediary, and an entrepreneur. Such a hierarchy is natural in a setting where the intermediary has special monitoring skills. This setting yields a theory of seniority and dynamic control: it explains why investors are usually given the highest priority on projects' assets, financial intermediaries have middle priority and entrepreneurs have the lowest priority; it also explains why more cash flow and control rights are allocated to financial intermediaries if a project's performance is bad and to entrepreneurs if it is good. I show that the optimal contracts can be replicated with debt and equity. If the project requires a series of investments until it can be sold to outsiders, the entrepreneur sells preferred stock (a combination of debt and equity) each time additional financing is needed. If the project generates a series of positive payoffs, the entrepreneur sells a combination of short-term and long-term debt. In the second study I I study optimal government interventions during asset fire sales by banks. Fire sales happen when a large portion of banks receive liquidity shocks. This depletes bank balance sheets directly and indirectly because these assets are used as collateral. The government can respond by buying distressed assets or buying stock from banks. Stock purchases do not deprive banks of collateral, but may have a lower effect on asset prices. The optimal policy depends on the elasticity of asset prices to asset supply and the amount of assets held by banks. Calibration to the recent financial crisis is provided. In the third study conducted with Attila Ambrus and Eric Chaney we use ransom prices and time to ransom for over 10,000 captives rescued from two Barbary strongholds to investigate the empirical relevance of dynamic bargaining models with one-sided asymmetric information in ransoming settings. We observe both multiple negotiations that were ex ante similar from the uninformed party's (seller's) point of view, and information that only the buyer knew. Through reduced-form analysis, we test some common qualitative predictions of dynamic bargaining models. We also structurally estimate the model in Cramton (1991) to compare negotiations in different Barbary strongholds. Our estimates suggest that the historical bargaining institutions were remarkably efficient, despite the presence of substantial asymmetric information.
Essays on the costs and benefits of ethnic diversity [electronic resource]
Keywords: Political Science.

It is widely believed amongst scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners that ethnic and cultural mixing can threaten social prosperity. When communities and societies are comprised of individuals from different ethnic backgrounds and cultural beliefs, they tend to fractionalize and fight along those differences, in the worst cases triggering horrific forms of human oppression and violence. However, there is growing evidence in the social and behavioral sciences that diversity, because it is generally associated with greater variety of useful skills and insights, improves economic productivity and performance at intellective tasks like problem-solving, decision-making, and prediction -- skills that are critical for building smart, prosperous, and robust societies. The tradeoffs imposed by diversity raise a number of questions of increasing practical importance in today's world of globalization and cultural integration. If diversity generates both costs and benefits, what explains when one of the two opposing forces dominate? What is the net impact of diversity on the rate of social, political, and economic progress? What kinds of public policies and interventions can enable multiethnic groups and societies to minimize the costs of diversity while simultaneously realizing its benefits? This dissertation develops answers to these questions in the form of three analytical essays, drawing on insights and research methodologies from a number of disciplines, including political science, economics, social psychology, and organizational behavior. Altogether the essays provide a theoretical and empirical foundation for adjudicating between competing theories about diversity's tradeoffs and strategies for managing them.
Estimating model-form uncertainty in Reynolds-averaged navier-stokes closures [electronic resource]
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

Over the past several decades the role of numerical simulations has become increasingly important in the design of complex systems. In many such systems directly measuring or assessing the performance is prohibitively expensive, motivating the use of numerical simulations as a cost-effective alternative. As the role of simulations becomes more integral to the design and evaluation of such high risk systems, the ability to characterize and quantify the credibility or confidence in these simulation results becomes increasingly important. The subject of this thesis is one part of establishing credibility: uncertainty quantification (UQ). At its most basic level UQ tries to identify sources of uncertainty in the numerical simulation framework and characterize their influence on the solution. The focus of this work is a specific type uncertainty called model-form or "structural" uncertainty, which accounts for the assumptions, conceptualizations, or abstractions which the physics model relies upon, i.e. uncertainty in the mathematical structure of the model. The overarching goal of this thesis is to propose a general framework to address model-form uncertainty in complex numerical simulations. In the first portion of the thesis the framework is motivated and developed within the general context of computational analysis. A variety of analysis tools and concepts are explained in order to interpret the results provided in later chapters. The implementation of the framework to specifically investigate Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes turbulence model uncertainty is described in detail. The middle of the thesis shows application of the UQ framework to several turbulent flows, building a body of evidence for the utility of the approach. The cases are the incompressible developed channel and square duct, and the transonic flow over the Delery Case C geometry. These flows provide a hierarchy of unit level problems with increasing complexity and physical phenomena, allowing for investigation of the influence of the model-form framework in detail. The end of the thesis demonstrates the framework as part of a larger UQ analysis, within the context of establishing credibility for numerical simulations of the HyShot II scramjet engine. The various sources of uncertainty considered in this analysis are identified and described. The relative contributions to the overall uncertainty from these disparate sources is obtained, highlighting the importance of being able to independently analyze their influence.
Estimation in exponential families with unknown normalizing constant [electronic resource]
Keywords: Statistics.

Exponential families of probability measures has been a subject of considerable interest in Statistics, both in theoretical and applied areas. One of the problems that frequently arise in such models is that the normalizing constant is not known in closed form. Also numerical computation of the normalizing constant is infeasible because the size of the underlying space is huge. As such, carrying out inferential procedures becomes challenging. In this thesis, the main object of study is some specific examples of exponential families on graphs and permutations, where the normalizing constant is hard to compute. Using large deviation results asymptotic estimates of the normalizing constant is obtained, and methods to estimate the normalizing constant are developed. In the case of graphs, this analysis gives some insight into the phenomenon of "degeneracy" observed in empirical studies in social science literature. In the case of permutations, this analysis is used to show the consistency of pseudo-likelihood.
Evolution and coordination of gene expression through RNA-protein interactions [electronic resource]
Keywords: Biochemistry.

Reprogramming of a gene's expression pattern by acquisition or loss of sequences recognized by specific regulatory RNA binding proteins has the potential to be a major mechanism in the evolution of biological regulatory programs. Systematic study of orthologous Puf3 proteins across eukaryotes revealed that the RNA binding specificity is highly conserved, yet the identity and functional commonalities of their RNA targets have extensively diverged. We identified six eukaryotic lineages within which RNA targets of Puf3 orthologs have been conserved over 250-500 million years of evolution. Focusing on Puf proteins and their targets across 80 fungi, we were able to construct a parsimonious model for their evolutionary history. This history entails changes in the number of Puf genes, modifications in the RNA binding specificity of the Puf proteins, and extensive and coordinated changes in the Puf targets and, in one remarkable case, switching of hundreds of mRNA targets from Puf3 to Puf4. Binding of Puf3 to more than 200 RNAs whose protein products are predominantly involved in the production and organization of mitochondrial complexes pre-dates the origin of budding yeasts and filamentous fungi and was maintained throughout the evolution of budding yeast. In filamentous fungi, more than 150 of the ancestral Puf3 targets were gained en masse by Puf4, with one lineage maintaining both Puf3 and Puf4 as regulators and another lineage losing Puf3 as a regulator of these RNAs. Gene expression profiling and sequence analysis suggest that the regulatory consequences of Puf4 in filamentous fungi are distinct from that of Puf3 for this set of RNAs in budding yeast. In filamentous fungi, Puf4 broadened its target set to include mitochondrial genes involved in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle among other functions, and Puf3 targets in these fungi diversified, notably gaining interactions with the mRNAs encoding the electron transport chain (ETC) complex I. These and many other changes involving just this handful of Puf proteins in fungi strongly support their role in coordinating gene expression through "RNA operons" and indicate an extensive involvement of RNA binding proteins and their RNA targets in the adaptation and reprogramming of gene expression. The timing and nature of these changes are distinct from those observed at the level of transcriptional control, suggesting that RNA-protein interactions provide an additional and rich infrastructure from which gene expression can be reconfigured. Beyond the static pictures of extant gene expression programs of currently employed model organisms, identifying the changes in gene expression programs throughout evolution will provide a unique window into the make-up, logic, and malleability of gene expression, ultimately contributing to our understanding of and ability to engineer this program.