VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Living Well: Empirical Evaluations of Economic Welfare and Subjective Well-Being

This thesis presents findings from three related but independent research projects on how policies and programs affect subjective well-being and psychological health, both generally and along specific domains. As I discuss in the Introduction (Chapter 1), the subjective experience is an important component of overall welfare, and tools for measuring Subjective Well-Being (SWB) are well validated. These measures are particularly useful when measuring the impact of policies, programs, and decisions for which income is a poor indicator of well-being./nThe first project, "Subjective Well-Being and Retirement: Analysis and Policy Recommendations" (Chapter 2) examines how individual-level happiness is on average influenced by the transition into retirement. By exploiting discontinuities in retirement incentives in 16 countries, an instrumental variables approach is utilized to estimate retirement so that it is exogenous to individual-level characteristics. Removing selection bias reveals a large, short-term positive effect followed by a steep decline. This supports theories of a multi-stage adjustment to retirement. Further, individuals facing later formal retirement experience a boost in SWB that is roughly equivalent in total value to those individual facing earlier retirement, suggesting that raising the formal retirement age is relatively neutral with regard to SWB in the long-term./nThe second project, "Whose Fault Is It?: No Fault Divorce and the Decline in Women's Happiness" (Chapter 3) explores the impact of the no-fault revolution, wherein the legal and economic barriers to divorce were drastically reduced in many states throughout the 70s and 80s. I expand upon previous research by including SWB as an important outcome, including overall SWB as well as marital-happiness, a domain-specific SWB measure. I find that women under low-barriers to divorce regimes are significantly less happy than other women, while men are significantly happier./nThe final project, "Paradox Lost?: Job Satisfaction, Gender Segregation, and the Paradox of the Contented Female Worker" investigates whether gender segregation has played a role in the well-documented "paradox of the contented female worker" (Crosby, 1982), wherein women report higher job satisfaction despite worse work conditions. Job satisfaction is a domain-specific form of SWB which is particularly important from an economic perspective, as high SWB at work is related to better productivity and lower turnover. I find that both men and women are happier in jobs that are dominated by women, suggesting that men and women may on average be making different decisions with regard to satisfaction / income tradeoffs./nAlthough the chapters are meant to be stand-alone essays, in concert these papers argue that: 1) SWB is an important outcome variable and high levels of SWB is an important social goal; and 2) policies affect SWB and therefore SWB must be considered in cost-benefit analyses of policy impacts.

Advisor: Glaser, Jack
Essays in Behavioral Corporate Finance

This dissertation explores the extent to which managerial overconfidence affects corporate decisions. This analysis includes three essays, which address a wide range of corporate decisions including financing, investment, acquisition, innovation, liquidity management and advertising decisions./nThe first essay introduces a fine-tuned test of the relationship between managerial overconfidence and corporate decisions by taking the chief financial officer (CFO) overconfidence effect into account. Ex-ante, I identify financial policies and non-financial policies such as investment, innovation and acquisition as the primary managerial duties of CFOs and chief executive officers (CEOs) respectively. I construct overconfidence measures for both CEOs and CFOs and test the impact of CEO and CFO overconfidence, both on financial decisions and on nonfinancial decisions. Based on a sample of 1,173 S&P 1500 firms, I find that financial policies are primarily affected by CFO overconfidence while only CEO overconfidence affects nonfinancial decisions. My findings demonstrate that managerial biases affect corporate decisions and managerial duties shape the ways in which top managers influence corporate policies./nThe second essay investigates how overconfident CEOs allocate resources toward innovation activities. It argues that overconfident CEOs tend to have greater innovation input. To finance innovation, they save more cash out of the cash flow and spend more on innovation when the cash flow is high. Results from an empirical analysis of 1,015 S&P 1500 firms support this argument. Moreover, based on a series of financial constraint measurements, the effect of CEO overconfidence on liquidity management is found to be more pronounced in financially constrained firms and in highly innovative firms, but not in firms without financial constraints. With regards to innovation performance, overconfident CEOs tend to have more patents, but the overall quality of their patents is not significantly better than that of rational CEOs./nThe third essay introduces a simple model of firm advertising behavior in monopolistic competition industries and applies it to the situation of managerial overconfidence. The model shows that the optimal advertising to sales ratio is determined by both firm advertising competency and consumer preference. Overconfident CEOs are more willing to use advertising as a means to convey the quality of their firms and products. Such overestimation of the effects of advertising by overconfident CEOs will result in overspending on advertising. When financially constrained, an overconfident CEO's tendency to overspend will be curbed to some extent, but his amount of advertising will increase with cash flows. An empirical analysis of 654 S&P 1500 firms supports these predictions. The distorted effect of managerial overconfidence is more prominent when firms are financially constrained and when the overconfidence measure is continuous.

Advisor: Malmendier, Ulrike
Models of Information Acquisition under Ambiguity

This dissertation studies models of dynamic choices under uncertainty with endogenous information acquisition. In particular we are interested in exploring the interactions between ambiguity attitudes and the incentive to collect new information./nThe first chapter explores the link between intrinsic preferences for information and ambiguity attitudes in settings with subjective uncertainty. We enrich the standard dynamic choice model in two dimensions. First, we introduce a novel choice domain that allows/npreferences to be indexed by the intermediate information, modeled as partitions of the underlying state space. Second, conditional on a given information partition, we allow preferences over state-contingent outcomes to depart from expected utility axioms. In particular/nwe accommodate ambiguity sensitive preferences. We show that aversion to partial information is equivalent to a property of static preferences called Event Complementarity. We show that Event Complementarity and aversion to partial information are closely related to/nambiguity attitudes. In familiar classes of ambiguity preferences, we identify conditions that characterize aversion to partial information./nThe second chapter extends the basic model to allow for choices from non-singleton menus after partial information is revealed, and studies the value of information under ambiguity. We show that the value of information is not monotonic under ambiguity. Intrinsic aversion/nto partial information in the basic model is equivalent to a preference for perfect information in the extended model. Moreover, the value of information is not monotone in the degree of ambiguity aversion./nThe third chapter studies the impact of ambiguity in a classic information acquisition model-the K-armed bandit problem. We consider a particular family of ambiguity averse preferences, the multiple-priors model [Marinacci, 2002]. A previous paper [Li, 2012] shows that major classic characterizations of optimal strategies in the K-armed bandit problems/nextend to incorporate ambiguity in the multiple-priors model. Here we explore new implications of ambiguity on the optimal incentive to experiment. First, increasing ambiguity in the unknown arm reduces the incentive to experiment, while increasing risk in the unknown arm typically increases the incentive to experiment. This suggests that ambiguity can offer an explanation for the widely observed under-experimentation in novel technology and consumer products. Second, optimal experimentation in the multiple-priors bandit problem generally cannot be reduced to that in a classic bandit problem with an equivalent/nsingle prior. In particular, the lower envelope of the classic single-prior Gittins-Jones index for every prior lying in the multiple-priors set can be strictly higher than the generalized multiple-prior Gittins-Jones index. In one-dimensional parametric family, we identify monotonicity conditions under which this discrepancy disappears so an equivalent single prior/nexists.

Advisor: Shannon, Chris
Brownness: Mixed Identifications in Minority Immigrant Literature, 1900-1960

My dissertation challenges our preconceptions of the ethnic literary tradition in the United States. Minority literature is generally read within a framework of resistance that prioritizes anti-hegemonic and anti-racist writings. I focus on a set of recalcitrant texts, written in the first part of the twentieth century, that do not fit neatly within this framework. My chapters trace an arc from Ameen Rihani's The Book of Khalid (1911), which personifies a universal citizen who refuses to be either Arab or American, to Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), which dramatizes the appeal of white identification for upwardly mobile Barbadian immigrants. I present the first comparative analysis of Afro-Caribbean, Arab, Filipino, Latino, and South Asian immigrant writings. This archive includes familiar figures such as Claude McKay and William Carlos Williams as well as understudied writers such as Abraham Rihbany and Dalip Singh Saund. I argue that these texts feature a common character: a character who does not want to be exclusively minor, who seeks to identify as widely as possible with majoritarian formations. I propose that this archetype of mixed identification be understood as "brown." Brownness is not a racial category but a literary characterization. It represents the unwieldy paradox of the majority-identified minority subject, a paradox that criticism of ethnic literature has largely ignored. I chart the complex attachments of these brown characters, their Orientalist mediations, asymptotic Americanisms, approximations of whiteness--in sum, their disidentification with minoritization itself. By exploring these vexed desires, I help to explain the perennial attraction of brown characters not only for racialized minorities but also for narratives of U.S. exceptionalism.

Advisor: Lye, Colleen
Thin-Body SOI Capacitorless DRAM Cell Design Optimization and Scaling

Capacitorless dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is a promising solution to cell-area scalability and complex fabrication process issues for conventional DRAM. The thin body SOI transistor, which suppresses the short channel effect and also minimizes variability, is selected for the capacitorless DRAM cell structure. The impact of substrate doping concentration on capacitorless DRAM cell performance is studied and a novel selective well structure is proposed./nA capacitorless DRAM cell design with BJT-based operation (BJT mode) is known to have larger sensing margins and longer retention times. Controlling band-to-band tunneling leakage (BTBT) related to the electric field plays a key role in limiting retention time. In the BJT mode, BTBT in the Hold 0 state limits data retention time (D0 failure). By optimizing the underlap between the front gate and the source/drain regions as well as the operating voltages, retention time exceeding 1 second should be attainable for a cell with 25 nm gate length. The scaling limits of optimized capacitorless DRAM cells are also investigated through the analysis of variations. Signal sense margin analysis indicates that the ultimate scaling limit is 13 nm (gate length) for embedded DRAM applications and 16.5 nm for stand-alone DRAM applications./nThe positive feedback MOSFET (PF-FET) was fabricated on thin body (10 nm) and UTBOX (10 nm) SOI structure. Positive feedback occurs as a result of both the BJT operation and the floating body effect from weak impact ionization. It exhibits very steep subthreshold slope of 0.03 mV/dec. Wide hysteresis enables the PF-FET to be utilized for memory application. The sensing margin is 62 µA/µm and retention time is greater than 4 seconds.

Advisor: Liu, Tsu-Jae King
Use of Effective Theories in Nuclear Physics

Approximations are inevitable in solving realistic physics problems, and reliability of calculations depends on evaluation of how much error is associated with the approximations. One method to quantify errors is building effective theories, which organize successive approximations as a power series in some small parameter. We apply effective theories to two problems in nuclear physics./nOne is the calculation of atomic electric dipole moments (EDMs). EDMs are of interest as a probe of CP-violating physics. For atoms, EDM signals can be thought of as departures from Schiff theorem, which states that a neutral system of point-like, nonrelativistic charges that interact only electrostatically has no net EDM. We show how each of the conditions for Schiff theorem are violated in actual atoms by expanding the Breit interaction between the electrons and the nucleus in spherical multipoles. We see that EDM signals arising from violations of the Schiff limit can be organized as a power series in RN/RA, the ratio between the spatial sizes of the nucleus and the atom. This ratio is of order 10-5, and the power series in this parameter would have quantifiable errors. We identify the contributions to atomic EDM that correspond to the so-called Schiff moment, and give the general considerations for other contributions that may be of the same order as the Schiff moment in powers of RN/RA./nThe other problem is nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction. The difficulty in describing this basic interaction is the fine tuning that exists between the long-range attraction and short-range repulsion in the NN potential. An effective theory of NN interaction must separate these two length scales. In order to achieve this separation, we introduce a harmonic oscillator (HO) basis, and restrict the calculation to a finite Hilbert space (P-space) of states with energies below some cutoff Λℏω. HO eigenstates contains a length scale, the oscillator length b, which we choose to be 1.7fm, as an intermediate scale. We show that, despite the short range nature of HO states, restricted wavefunctions contain enough information to reconstruct phase shifts. Projecting wavefunctions into this space throws away both the long-range physics due to the kinetic energy, and the short-range physics due to the strong interactions. We derive an equation in the P-space whose solution is the P-space restriction of the full-space scattering wavefunction, and identify the components of the equation that treat the long-range and short-range physics, respectively. The long-range information is encoded in what we call the tilde states, which are modification to the HO wavefunction with slower decay as r → ∞. The short-range information is modeled by a contact-gradient expansion, which is essentially a power series in a/b, where a is the length scale associated with the repulsive core in the NN potential. The behavior of the theory is investigated using a toy model of a spherical square well with a repulsive core.

Advisor: Haxton, Wick
Studies on the substrate interactions of the bacterial primase

Primases are DNA-dependent RNA polymerases found in all cellular organisms. In bacteria, primer synthesis is carried out by DnaG, an essential enzyme that serves as a key component of DNA replication initiation, progression, and restart. A long-standing question in the field of polymerase biochemistry is how the striking structural differences between DnaG and other single-subunit polymerases translate to differences in function. A specific barrier to addressing how DnaG relates to other polymerases is a relatively poor understanding of how DnaG associates with its own substrates. We investigated this issue through a multipronged approach. First, we have examined one of the earliest stages in primer synthesis by solving crystal structures of the S. aureus DnaG catalytic core bound to metal ion cofactors and either individual nucleoside triphosphates. Second, we investigated how the known classes of primase inhibitors, including two naturally-prevalent inhibitors, the nucleotidyl alarmones, pppGpp and ppGpp, and 2´-deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates, control primer synthesis. When taken together with both biochemical analyses and comparative studies of enzymes that use the same catalytic fold as DnaG, these studies pinpoint the predominant nucleotide-binding site of DnaG, leading to a reconciled model for primer synthesis by DnaG. Our studies of the inhibitors of DnaG illustrate how the induction of the stringent response in bacteria interferes with primer synthesis, and explain the ability of DnaG to differentially discriminate between dNTPs and rNTPs depending on the stage of primer synthesis. Finally, many new tools were developed, which combined with our improved understanding of how DnaG functions in substrate recognition and catalysis could motivate renewed interest in the research and development of DnaG-targeted antimicrobial agents.

Advisor: Berger, James M.
Water Vapor Variability Across Spatial Scales: Insights for Theory, Parameterization, and Model Assessment

The subject of this dissertation is the scale dependence of water vapor variability as observed by remote sensing and in situ measurements, and predicted by aqua-planet simulation. Global observations of the water vapor field from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) are used to show that the first order structure function of the water vapor field exhibits power law behavior for scales between 50 km and 500 km throughout much of the troposphere. The power law scaling exponents are shown to vary between the boundary layer and free troposphere, with first order structure function scaling exponents of approximately 1/3 in the boundary layer and less than 1/2 in the free troposphere. Observations from the 396 m level of the WLEF television broadcast tower are used to show that the convective mixed layer layer and nocturnal residual layer exhibit power law behavior of first order structure functions and first order detrended fluctuation functions for scales between 1 km and 100 km. The power law scaling exponents computed from the tower observations of the convective mixed layer are shown to be consistent with the AIRS boundary layer regime exponents, while the exponents computed from the tower observations of the residual layer are shown to be consistent with AIRS free tropospheric regime scaling exponents. Finally, structure functions of the instantaneous water vapor field are computed from aqua-planet simulations performed at T85 and T340 spectral resolutions. Free tropospheric structure function scaling exponents for scales less than 500 km computed from the T340 spectral resolution simulation are shown to agree very well with free tropospheric scaling exponents computed from AIRS. Boundary layer structure function scaling exponents from the T340 spectral resolution are shown to be generally larger than boundary layer scaling exponents from AIRS.

Advisor: Collins, William D
Chow, Fotini Katopodes
The Roles of Religion and Spirituality in Recovery from Mental Illness

Recovery from mental illness is a deeply personal process unique to each individual, involving the strengthening of the person's sense of meaning and purpose, personal identity, and well-being. Many persons in recovery indicate that religion and spirituality are important resources for dealing with mental health difficulties. Yet religion and spirituality can also play negative roles in recovery by exacerbating self-blame, guilt, and a sense of abandonment, as well as promoting a view that mental illness signifies spiritual failure. While a number of quantitative studies have identified a positive link between religion/spirituality and mental health outcomes for people with serious mental illness, fewer of those studies have looked at recovery as process than outcome, and little is known about the relationship of religiousness and spirituality to self-stigma among mental health clients./nThis research investigates the association of religiousness and spirituality to proxies (i.e., variables that are used to represent unobservable constructs of interest) of both psychosocial well-being and self-stigma among mental health clients through bivariate and multivariate analyses. In this study, recovery is understood as process; religiousness is defined as self-identification with an institutionalized religion; and spirituality is framed as perception of self as religious or spiritual without identifying with any special religion. This study is a secondary analysis of data collected by the Center for Self-Help Research in Berkeley, California, between 1996 and 2000, on a sample of 673 new users of self-help and community mental health agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area (Segal, Hardiman, & Hodges, 2002). Results show that both religiousness and spirituality were significantly associated with proxies of both psychosocial well-being and self-stigma, after accounting for clients' demographic, clinical, and agency characteristics. The unique contributions of this study are that it: (1) shows that both religiousness and spirituality are associated with proxies of self-stigma, i.e., increased social distance and prejudiced attitude toward psychiatric patients; (2) demonstrates that the relationship between religiousness and self-stigma among mental health clients is non-linear; (3) emphasizes the proper use of statistical methods including assumption checking and adjustment for multiple testing; and (4) introduces a visual recovery narrative (model) as an aid to understanding the concept of recovery. The implications of this study for social work practice, research, and education include: (1) the possibility that the currently accepted polarized view of negative religiousness versus positive spirituality may not hold; (2) the call for training and education of social workers in religion and spirituality; (3) the need for long-term qualitative and quantitative studies to investigate the process of recovery; and (4) the importance of incorporating assumption checking and adjustment for multiple testing into social work research.

Advisor: Segal, Steven P