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

This dissertation explores different topics in labor economics and household finance. The first chapter focuses on owners of privately-held firms, who typically invest a large amount of their personal wealth into their firm. In principle, the wealth not invested in the firm may be used as a buffer to smooth shocks to the firm. I use matched employer-employee data, together with information on the assets held by every shareholder of every Norwegian firm from 2004 to 2013 to document three facts: (1) Wealthy entrepreneurs start larger businesses and in sectors that require high initial capital investment. (2) Entrepreneur's private wealth improves firm performance, lowers the exit rate, and increases profitability. (3) Firms owned by wealthy shareholders are less sensitive to revenue and value added shocks in many dimensions. Specifically, at the top of the owner's wealth distribution, survival rate, employment growth and employees' wage growth react less to the shocks than at the bottom. I also discuss a model of the firm with costly external financing that rationalizes the results. The second chapter is co-authored with Andreas Fagereng, Luigi Guiso and Luigi Pistaferri. The chapter is related to recent work by Saez and Zucman (2016), who use US tax records to obtain estimates of wealth holdings by capitalizing asset income from tax returns. They document marked upward trends in wealth concentration. We use data on tax returns and actual wealth holdings from tax records for the whole Norwegian population to test the robustness of the methodology. We document that measures of wealth based on the capitalization approach can lead to misleading conclusions about the level and the dynamics of wealth inequality if returns are heterogeneous and even moderately correlated with wealth. The last chapter is coauthored with Eran Blass-Hoffmann. In this chapter, we study how the idiosyncratic earnings growth evolves over the business cycle in Italy. We distinguish between the two sources of variation of annual earnings growth: changes in employment time (number of weeks of employment within a year) and changes in weekly earnings. Changes in weeks of employment explain the tail events in earnings growth. Moreover, they account both for the increased dispersion and negative skewness in the distribution of earnings growth observed in recessions. In contrast, the cross-sectional distribution of weekly earnings growth is relatively stable over the business cycle and exhibits little skewness. Thus, models that rely on cyclical variations in idiosyncratic earnings growth, should focus on cyclical employment growth rather than on cyclical wage growth.
Essays in mergers and acquisitions [electronic resource]
Keywords: Business.

This dissertation consists of two essays, both studying the informational economics in mergers and acquisitions (M& As). The first essay studies the selling procedures in M& As. The second essay investigates the initiation of M& A deals, and illustrates its implications regarding bid premium. In particular, the first essay compares a seller's revenue in a standard English ascending auction to that in a negotiation with a "go-shop" provision. In the latter, the target privately negotiates with a few bidders, signs a tentative merger agreement with one of them, and then publicly solicits additional bids during a "go-shop" period. Using a theoretical framework, I show that a "go-shop" negotiation generates higher seller revenue than does an auction, when first, the bidders' costs of learning their valuations are sufficiently high, second, the bidders' valuations are moderately correlated with each other, and third, the bidders' prior probabilities of the existence of gains from trade are sufficiently low. The theoretical results are broadly consistent with empirical evidence, and they provide a novel explanation for the prevalence of "go-shop negotiations" in private equity deals. The second essay, co-authored with Yi Chen, investigates the initiation of M& A deals. In a dynamic model of merger negotiation with two-sided private information and two-sided endogenous initiation, this essay investigates (1) what determines the timing of M& A initiation, (2) who initiates the M& A negotiation, and (3) why bid premia are higher for bidder-initiated deals than target-initiated deals. The key driving force for the results is that the timing of initiation can reveal information about the target's private signal of its stand-alone value, and the bidder's private signal about its valuation for the target's firm. The model predictions are consistent with the empirical literature that emphasizes the role of private information in deal-initiation.
Essays in public economics [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first analyzes how competition between localities affects tax breaks and business location decisions. Using data on firm-specific property tax exemptions, I begin by documenting that spatial competition substantially increases local tax breaks. To do so, I exploit variation in the number of counties near a town, which is correlated with competition but uncorrelated with other observable town characteristics. I then use this pattern to estimate a model of localities competing for mobile firms by offering tax breaks. In counterfactual exercises, I find that policies that reduce competition between localities, such as restricting which levels of government can offer tax breaks, have very little effect on equilibrium firm locations but may lower total exemptions by up to 30%. These findings suggest that local tax breaks primarily lower the taxes paid by mobile firms and are unlikely to substantially affect the efficiency of firm location. The second chapter, co-authored with Raymond Kluender, studies health insurance exchanges. Information frictions in markets for insurance affect not only the choices consumers make, but also the menu of plans insurers offer. We illustrate this observation using an information friction in Medicare Advantage—beneficiaries pay two premiums, and one is much more salient. We find a larger demand elasticity for the salient versus non-salient premium. A model of insurer plan design produces simulated premiums matching the observed distribution when accounting for differential salience, but not when assuming equal elasticities across the two premiums. Removing the friction increases demand for low-premium plans, increasing consumer surplus by just 3/year when allowing supply to respond to the shift in demand. The third chapter, co-authored with Ian Hoffman, uses a machine learning framework to study heterogeneous effects of local economic shocks on income, employment, and amenities. We begin by showing that positive shocks to local labor demand and federal spending both have a positive effect on economic and amenity outcomes. We then use a ``causal tree" method to conduct a data-driven search for heterogeneity in these effects. Both economic effects and amenity spillovers are larger in above median-income counties and counties within a metropolitan area. This suggests that reallocating economic activity to these areas could potentially increase aggregate welfare, and that place-based policy, to the extent that it is similar to the studied shocks, may benefit the targeted population more in urban areas.
Essays in real estate finance and housing economics [electronic resource]
Keywords: Business.

This thesis provides three essays applied to the literature of real estate finance and housing economics. Chapter one documents the imbalance of U.S. foreclosure sales with respect to recourse laws on primary mortgages. Using geographic state borders as a sharp discontinuity design, and individual housing transaction data located close to state borders, I show that the average relative volume of foreclosure sales (with respect to regular sales) was 13 percentage points lower in recourse states from 2008 to 2010. Such gap disappears in the years prior to 2008, and after 2010. Further evidence from a hedonic pricing model suggests that foreclosures in non-recourse states were sold at a larger discount after 2008 (6 percentage points from 2008 to 2010 and 9 percentage points from 2011 to 2012). Such result on housing prices is likely due to a supply shock on foreclosures induced by less restrictive recourse laws. Results are robust to differences in borrower characteristics at the loan origination, differences in model specification, and sample selection. Chapter two (based on a paper co-authored with Marco Giacolletti, a Finance PhD Candidate from the Stanford Graduate School of Business)investigates the behavior and performance of asset dealers acting as middlemen in housing markets. We use a unique dataset covering house sales and remodeling jobs in the main urban areas of California from 1998 to 2012. On average, dealers extracted substantial economic rents. Nevertheless, dispersion in the performance of single transactions is large. Since most middlemen are involved in only a small amount of trades at a time, transaction-level risk is relevant. Despite positive average economic rents, asset dealers intermediate a smaller fraction of trades in housing markets than in other decentralized market. The magnitude of transaction-level risk may help explain this fact. Chapter three assesses impact of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), a federal program designed to convert foreclosed properties into renovated affordable housing through public investment. To identify the impact, I exploit a discontinuity in how neighborhoods were selected with respect to a critical threshold. The program caused non-foreclosure housing prices in targeted neighborhoods to appreciate 6.5\% between 2009 and 2011. These pricing gains remained stable through the end of my sample in 2014. Furthermore, the program caused changes in neither the supply of foreclosures nor neighborhood income. This suggests quality improvement externalities were behind the price appreciation. Lastly, low market liquidity and asymmetric information in targeted neighborhoods may justify the NSP public initiative, despite foreclosure resale profitability after 2009.
Essays on game theory and corporate finance [electronic resource]
Keywords: Business.

My dissertation is a combination of three papers that I worked on at various stages of my doctoral studies at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. The central of theme of these papers is dynamic optimality with adjustment costs and gradualness in various economic environments. In all of these papers, I shared various tasks and responsibilities of the research with my coauthors. In Chapter 1, together with Ryota Iijima, I study a model of gradual adjustment in games, in which players can flexibly adjust and monitor their positions up until a deadline. Players' terminal and flow payoffs are influenced by their positions. I show that, unlike in one-shot games, the equilibrium is unique for a broad class of terminal payoffs when players' actions are flexible enough in the presence of (possibly small) noise. In a team-production model, the unique equilibrium selects an outcome that is approximately efficient when adjustment friction is small. I also examine the welfare implications of such gradualness in applications, including team production, hold-up problems, and dynamic contests. In Chapter 2, together with Christopher Hennessy and Ilya Streublaev, I study dynamic capital structure choice with a time-varying tax rate. Absent theoretical guidance, empiricists have been forced to rely upon numerical comparative statics from constant tax rate models in formulating testable implications of tradeoff theory in the context of natural experiments. I fill the theoretical void by solving in closed-form a dynamic tradeoff theoretic model in which corporate taxes follow a (two-state) Markov process with exogenous rate changes. I simulate ideal difference-in-differences estimations, finding that constant tax rate models offer poor guidance regarding testable implications. While constant rate models predict large symmetric responses to rate changes, my model with stochastic tax rates predicts small, asymmetric, and often statistically insignificant responses. Under plausible parameterizations with decade-long regimes, the true underlying theory -- that taxes matter -- is incorrectly rejected in about half of the simulated natural experiments. Moreover, tax response coefficients are actually smaller in simulated economies with larger tax-induced welfare losses. In Chapter 3, which is also joint work with Ryota Iijima, I consider a class of games in which players commonly observe noisy shocks and gradually adjust their actions without observing information about their opponents' behavior. Under a form of richness of the noise process, I prove equilibrium uniqueness when players' adjustment is flexible enough. In the case of potential games, the unique equilibrium approximates the global maximizer of the potential as the friction vanishes.
Essays on mechanism and information design [electronic resource]
Keywords: Business.

This dissertation is a collection of articles on the topic of mechanism and information design. I study the design of markets characterized by asymmetric information with emphasis on various aspects of information elicitation and disclosure. The introductory chapter discusses in more detail the problem addressed by the thesis, and the connections between individual sections. Chapters 2-5 consider the problem of information disclosure in mechanisms followed by aftermarkets. Due to the existence of post-mechanism interactions, the performance of mechanisms is impacted by their transparency. Therefore, the designer must decide how much information to reveal after the mechanism. Chapters 6 and 7 analyze information elicitation and disclosure in a more applied setting of financial over-the-counter markets. In these sections, I focus on financial benchmarks as a source of market transparency, and discuss their construction in the presence of manipulation incentives. Finally, Chapters 8 and 9 contain methodological contributions related to the problem of designing mechanisms and their information structures.
Essays on the economics of digitization and innovation [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first chapter examines the extent to which smartphones have substituted other digital devices and expanded overall digital consumption, and I estimate the newly generated consumer surplus. To do so, I use newly available Korean panel survey data on individuals' digital device ownership and detailed usage. During the 2010-2014 observation period, smartphone penetration in Korea grew from less than 10% to over 70%. I begin by documenting the effect of smartphone adoption on device ownership and time use using a difference-in-differences strategy. I then develop and estimate a model of consumer demand for digital activities, allowing the set of activities to change as a function of the individual's smartphone ownership and physical location. The model allows me to quantify the overall consumer surplus from smartphones, how it varies across demographic groups, and how much of it results from substitution---using a smartphone for activities previously done on other devices---or expansion---using a smartphone for digital activities that were previously inconvenient or difficult. I find that the average monthly consumer surplus per person is $41, where 9 million per day. I explore the market and policy implications of my estimates through counterfactual exercises. I find that providing free WiFi at public transportation locations in Seoul increases consumer surplus by
Essays on the economics of inequality [electronic resource]
Keywords: Economics.

We investigate the long-term effect of cash assistance for beneficiaries and their children by following up, after four decades, with participants in the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Treated families in this randomized experiment received thousands of dollars per year in extra government benefits for three or five years in the 1970s. Using administrative data from the Social Security Administration and the Washington State Department of Health, we find that treatment caused adults to earn an average of $1,800 less per year after the experiment ended. Most of this effect on earned income is concentrated between ages 50 and 60, suggesting that it is related to retirement. Treated adults were also 6.3 percentage points more likely to apply for disability benefits, but were not significantly more likely to receive them, or to have died. These effects on parents, however, do not appear to be passed down to their children: children in treated families experienced no significant effects in any of the main variables studied. These results for children are estimated precisely enough to rule out effects found in other contexts and inform the literature on intergenerational mobility. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that policymakers should consider the long-term effects of cash assistance as they formulate policies to combat poverty.
Ethnic Identity Among the Children of Vietnamese Refugees at a Highly Selective University
Keywords: segmented assimilation theory
Vietnamese refugees
ethnic identity
Graduate School of Education
Thesis

Building on literature around biculturalism, segmented assimilation theory, and existing research on children of Vietnamese refugees, this thesis tests the validity of segmented assimilation theory, and in particular, the outcome model linking high achievement with intentional preservation of immigrant community values (Portes and Zhou 1993, Zhou and Bankston III 1994). Using attendance at a highly selective university as a proxy for academic achievement, the study investigated the patterns and degrees of ethnic identification amongst high-achieving students whose parents were Vietnamese refugees through surveys and follow-up interviews. I found that while the students within this sample of high-achievers varied with respect to ethnic involvement scores, they coalesced around shared traditional Vietnamese values, especially hard work, and expressed strong self-identification with their Vietnamese heritage. In addition to validating segmented assimilation theory and the positive nature of biculturalism, these findings underscores the need for firstly, a more holistic research approach to ethnic identity beyond conventional expressions such as language, and secondly, more research on how cultural pluralism can be promoted in educational spaces.
Ethnically and linguistically diverse children [electronic resource] : teachers' perceptions and classroom effects on vocabulary development
Keywords: Education.

In recent decades, the share of ethnically and linguistically diverse children enrolled in schools in the United States has exponentially increased. Despite the growing representation of ethnic minority and dual language learner (DLL) children, there is persistent evidence of early vocabulary gaps between low-income and DLL children and their higher-income and language majority peers. In addition, teachers hold diminished perceptions of ethnic minority and DLL children's academic skills. In three papers, this dissertation examines aspects of ethnic and linguistic minority children's classroom experiences that hold implications for children's vocabulary development and teachers' perceptions of their executive functions (EFs). Two papers utilize the nationally representative Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) to examine how the languages used by teachers and peers can promote preschoolers' English vocabulary development while supporting their Spanish vocabulary development. In the first paper, I examine whether the languages used for instruction and the proportion of DLLs in the classroom are associated with DLLs' English and Spanish vocabulary development. Findings hold implications for the optimal balance of English and Spanish for instruction, as well as the composition of classrooms for DLLs. In the second paper, I consider the association between peers' vocabulary ability and DLLs' English and Spanish vocabulary development. I also examine whether these associations vary by DLLs' initial vocabulary skills. Findings hold implications for the creation of mixed ability classrooms and the value of peer-to-peer interactions in preschool. Finally, in the third paper, I examine teachers' perceptions of elementary students' EFs. I test whether teachers' ratings of students' EFs vary systematically as a function of students' gender, ethnicity and English Language Learner status, while controlling for a direct assessment of students' EFs. Moreover, I examine whether these associations change between the fall and spring. Teachers' perceptions of students' executive functions could hold ramifications for students' academic trajectories, and may contribute to minority students' overrepresentation in school discipline and special education. Implications for practitioners and policy-makers are discussed in each paper.
Evaluating Causal Pathways to Sustainable WASH Infrastructure in Developing Countries
Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
sustainable infrastructure
water service
developing communities
qualitative comparative analysis
Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies
Thesis

In an effort to achieve the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals, external partners, such as multilateral agencies, donor organizations, and non-governmental organizations, are providing water infrastructure assets to developing communities at an increasing rate. Unfortunately, while external partners provide technical, management, and monetary support for these projects, there can be negative impacts to their involvement. When these external partners withdraw from projects after the construction phase, lack of technical knowledge transfer or community ownership can jeopardize sustainable infrastructure operations and maintenance. To better understand which factors can predict sustainable infrastructure operations and maintenance, there is a need for more exploration of how external partners are involved in project delivery. Aligning with this goal, this study looks at 26 water well projects that have been implemented in developing countries with the assistance of an external partner, Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA). Using past literature on sustainable water infrastructure project delivery in developing communities, emergent coding techniques with project documents, and surveys with EWB-USA team members, the research team developed a set of project conditions to conduct fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and respective truth tables. Preliminary results show there are several paths towards sustainable infrastructure operations and maintenance. These paths include factors that span technology and construction processes, project governance, and community engagement strategies. Results from this research will be helpful for informing how external partners deliver water infrastructure projects in the future and establish mechanisms that increase sustainable asset operations and maintenance. This thesis and the research it explains was completed as part of the degree requirements for a Masters of Art in International Policy Studies at Stanford University.